"Chase?"
"Here."
"I can see the Corsarius."
"Alex, have you thought about what you’re going to do with it?"
"You mean the ship? I’m not sure. I suppose we should take it home."
"How? It has no Armstrongs."
"There must be some way to manage it. It got here. Listen, you should see this beach."
"You’re out of the capsule," she said, accusingly.
"I’m sorry you’re not here."
"Alex, I have to watch you every minute! Do you have anything down there to defend yourself with? I didn’t think to pack a weapon."
"It’s okay. There are no large land animals. Nothing that could be a threat. By the way, if you look at the sky a little to the north, you’ll see something interesting."
I heard the sound of movement over the commlink, and then she caught her breath. Wally Candles’s wheel. The cluster of stars seemed almost to spin in the heavens: a blazing halo dominating the night, a thing of supernal beauty.
I went back to the capsule and extracted two blankets from the utility box. "What are you doing, Alex?"
"I’m going to sleep on the beach."
"Alex, don’t do it."
"Chase, the cockpit is cramped. Anyhow, it’s lovely out here." It was: the surf was hypnotic, and the moving air tasted of salt.
"Alex, you don’t know the place. You could get eaten during the night."
I laughed—the way people do when they want to suggest that someone is being unnecessarily alarmist—stood in front of one of the capsule’s cameras, and waved. But her concern was sufficiently infectious that I would probably have retreated back into the cockpit, if I could have done so graciously.
With a suspicious glance at the black line of jungle which was only a dozen or so meters away, I spread one of the blankets on the sand. The spot I’d picked was only a few quick steps from the capsule. "Goodnight, Chase," I said.
"Good luck, Alex."
In the morning, I crisscrossed the island for an hour, but there was nothing. Disappointed, I set out again, over a wide expanse of unbroken ocean. About midmorning, I ran into a sudden squall. I went higher, to get over the storm. There were patches of heavy weather throughout most of the rest of the day. I inspected more sites, sometimes in bright sunlight, sometimes in cold drizzles. There were plenty of floaters, which sheltered from the storms under trees or on the lee side of embankments and rock walls.
My instruments were most effective at shorter ranges, so I stayed within fifty meters of the surface. Chase urged me to go higher, arguing that the capsule was subject to sudden violent air movements, and a sharp downdraft could easily drive it into the ocean. Still, there was no sign of turbulence, despite the numerous storms.
I looked at probably twenty islands that third afternoon. None seemed promising. I was approaching one more (which was big, and a lot like the island with the volcano), when something odd caught my eye. I wasn’t sure what it was, though it was connected with a cloud of floaters which were milling aimlessly just off the surface, about a half kilometer north of the island.
I switched over to manual, and cut air speed.
"What’s wrong?"
"Not a thing, Chase."
"You’re losing altitude."
"I know. I was looking at the floaters." Several of them reacted in a way that suggested they were aware of my presence, just as they had the day before. But they must have decided I was no threat.
No wind blew. The ocean was calm.
I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong in the picture: sea, sky, animates.
A wave.
It was on the far side of the floaters, approaching: green and white, its crest breaking and reforming, it rolled through the silent sea.
The island was long and narrow, with a high rocky coast at the eastern hook, sloping down into bright green forest and white beach. Quiet pools lay within sheltered glades.
"My kind of place," said Chase, not without irritation.
I drifted down through the heavy afternoon air, and settled onto the sand just beyond the water line. The sun, approaching the horizon, was almost violet. I pushed the canopy back, climbed out, and dropped to the ground. The surf was loud.
I looked out across that ocean over which no ship had ever sailed. It was a lovely, warm, late summer day, with just enough bite in the salt air. Here. If there was an appropriate place on this world for the conspiracy to come to its climax, it should have been here.
But I knew it was not so. The scanners had shown no evidence of previous habitation. No one else had ever stood on that beach.
Out beyond the breakers, some of the smaller floaters played in the air currents.
The wave kept coming. It was somehow not in sync with the surface: too symmetrical, too purposeful, and perhaps too quick. It was in fact accelerating.
Curious.
I walked down toward the waterline. A couple of huge shells, one almost as big as the capsule, were lolling gently in the shallows. A small creature with a lot of legs sensed my presence and burrowed swiftly into the sand. But it left its tail exposed. Something else, a quick flicker of light, moved in the water and was gone.
Some of the floaters turned toward the wave, and it dissipated. They exhibited uncertainty. Most drifted as high as they could without lifting their tendrils out of the ocean. A few, smaller, brighter colored, probably younger, were nudged loose altogether and rose into the afternoon sky.
I watched, fascinated.
Nothing happened.
One by one, the floaters settled back toward the surface, until, eventually, almost the entire herd was down on the water again. I assumed they were feeding on the local equivalent of plankton.
The ocean stayed quiet.
But I could feel their uneasiness.
I was about to return to the capsule when the wave reformed. Much nearer.
I wished I’d brought the binoculars with me, but they were in a storage bin behind the seats, and I didn’t want to take the time to go back to the aircraft, which was about two hundred meters down the beach.
The wave was headed directly toward the floaters, approaching on a course more or less parallel to the coastline. Again, it seemed to be gaining velocity. And getting bigger. A thin line of foam developed at its crest.
I wondered what sort of sense organs the floaters had? Anything with vision would have been clearing out, but they only bobbed nervously about on the thin strands that resembled nothing so much as tethers, as if the creatures were tied to the ocean.
The wave rushed toward them.
There was a sudden squeal, a shrill keening that seemed just on the edge of audibility. The floaters erupted skyward simultaneously, in the manner of startled birds. They were apparently able to pump air through the central gas bag, and they were doing that vigorously, trying to gain altitude, but the larger ones were slow.
Nevertheless, the entire colony would, I thought, be well clear of the water when the wave passed; why then did their cries sound like panic?
The wave acquired a sharp angular shape as though its essential fluidity had hardened. And it passed, harmlessly, I thought, beneath the retreating floaters.
But several of the creatures were abruptly jerked down toward the surface, and were hauled twisting and flailing in the wake of the disturbance. Two got tangled in each other’s tendrils. And the wave changed direction again. Toward shore.
Toward where I was standing.
Chase’s voice: "Alex, what the hell’s going on?"
"Feeding time," I said. "There’s something in the water."
"What? I can’t get a good look at it. What is it?"
Her questions were coming closer together, tumbling over one another. The onrushing wall of water climbed higher. It was long, almost as long as the beach itself, which would have taken fifteen minutes to walk across.