The captain did not seem inclined to go further. He leaned back in his swivel chair and steepled his blunt broad fingers.
“Let’s count up the advantages and disadvantages of each course of action,” I said at last. “First the case against going. It’s out of our way and will lengthen the voyage. It’s a voyage into essentially unexplored territory, with danger from shoals and currents. And the Lunglance might be attacked by anemones.”
“There’s not really much danger in that,” Desperandum interrupted mildly. “Even at their heyday the largest known anemone was only thirty feet long. Not large enough to menace the ship as a whole.”
“We might lose a crew member, though.”
“Possible. And you’ve left out a hazard. Glimmer is a very small bay, almost completely landlocked. The sun shines there for only about an hour a day. The gloominess and the walls are said to cause acute depression, melancholia, claustrophobia, even for the native Nullaquan.”
I lifted my brows.
“Oh, it’s quite plausible,” Desperandum said. “Have you ever visited Perseverance?”
“No, sir.”
“I have, of course. It’s quite depressing there, too; it’s built half a mile up fhe cliff on the western side of a narrow bay, with an unpleasant climate and an overwhelming sense of the presence of thousands of miles of solid rock. I have little doubt that the choice of that site as a center of religion and government has had a profound effect on the Nullaquan character.” Desperandum sighed and folded his hands over his stomach.
“Well, then, sir, considering the advantages of this side trip,” I said, when an uncomfortable silence had hobbled by on crippled feet. “I can only think of two. First, knowledge about the anemone population; second, a decision as to what to do with your little specimen! Now, as I see it, the first erne involves danger to both the crew and the wildlife. And as for the second, well, it depends on the rarity of the specimens. And since you caught one in a single day, with a single net, I can hardly believe that they are really very rare.
“And one last thing. We’re approaching Perseverance now. It would be simple to stop there and consult the Church about mounting a special expedition.”
Desperandum looked at me stonily. “I tried that four years ago. They listened politely and then asked me for my Academy diploma.”
I thought about apologizing and decided against it. It would have only have heightened the captain’s sense of inferiority, his resentment at his lack of legitimate status. “Your arguments are good, but I’m not convinced,” Desperandum said. “We will explore the bay.”
I had expected as much.
The crew showed no surprise when ordered to sail north, tacking against the wind. Theirs was not to reason why. Besides, by this time they were probably incapable of it.
Later, I leaned on the starboard rail and looked at the tier after tier of ridged and battered rock that rose and rose in ragged rows to the planet’s surface. It was a dry, bright morning, like all Nullaquan mornings. The monotony irritated me. A blast of freezing wind, a thick fog, or a savage hailstorm would have been a relief. My sinuses were giving me trouble; my chapped and itchy hands were slick with some unpleasant lotion that the first mate had given me. I didn’t like the lotion much. Below in the kitchen, where I could remove my mask, it stank.
I heard the rasp of thorns on an iron grating. The anemone had been growing quickly on Desperandum’s pampering diet, as if it were only too eager to reach breeding age and help in its species’ promised comeback. It seemed cramped In its jar and pulled repeatedly on its grating, as if building up its strength.
Dalusa was out on patrol, trying to locate the narrow inlet into Glimmer Bay. Desperandum navigated using aerial maps of the crater, made by the original colony ship. They were five hundred years old. Glimmer Bay had not even existed then.
I saw Dalusa come winging in from the north-northwest. She alighted neatly in the crow’s nest, honked her horn to alert the crew, and then leapt into space. She fell in a neat parabola, opening her wings and with a snap just before breaking her ribs on the rail. She enjoyed that.
Dalusa flew swiftly away until she was a white speck against the dark background of cliff. There she caught a thermal and circled as the Lunglance tacked sluggishly after her.
When we reached an immense promontory of fallen rock, Dalusa swept gracefully around it, out to sea. Suddenly she shot southwards, flapping energetically but making no more headway than a swimmer in a rip tide. It was a wind, a strong one. Dalusa wheeled to face it. She still made no headway, but began to gain height. The ship sailed nearer. I was able to see a thin, sleeting fog now, at the dust-air interface. There were no waves.
Dalusa seemed to be tiring. She kept gaining height, but now she was losing ground out to sea.
Suddenly she entered an area of calm. She slowed her climb, but was then caught by another wind, equally powerful but blowing in the opposite direction. She backed against it, tried to turn, looped sickeningly when she hit a patch of turbulence. Wind tore at the loose dress that was all she wore.
Recovering, Dalusa shut her wings and dropped. She gained speed, corrected her trajectory slightly in mid-fall, then opened her wings and swooped toward the ship. She had judged the windspeed beautifully. She faced the edge of the promontory. She faced it—there had always been something a little odd about the structure of her neck. Tlie two vectors, correcting one another, sent her gliding toward the ship. She made it, soared gracefully over the port rail, and collapsed silently on the deck in a wing-shrouded heap.
Mr. Flack was at her side in an instant. He extended a hand to touch her shoulder, remembered in time, and drew back. Dalusa’s long thin arms trembled with fatigue. She had hidden her face—her mask, actually—under one wing. Flack could do nothing for her. His medical knowledge did not extend to nonhumans.
“Get the lady a pallet,” Flack said harshly. “Water. Rest.”
The doctor’s panacea for those beyond his comprehension. I took a blanket from our harpooneer, Blackburn, wrapped it carefully around Dalusa, and lifted her effortlessly. She weighed perhaps forty pounds, that was mostly muscle. Dalusa’s pale shapely legs were mostly decoration. They had the texture of human flesh—more or less— but they were no denser than cork.
I carried Dalusa down to the kitchen, turned my pallet over so that no residual contamination could reach her, and set her down. She pulled her mask off.
“I’m all right,” she said. “You shouldn’t have troubled yourself.” She immediately fell asleep.
There was nothing more to be done. I went back on deck.
We rounded the promontory. The wind caught us immediately; there was a sandpaper rattle of particles on the bow. The sails filled, the braces strained tight, and the Lunglance actually listed, a surprising feat for a trimaran of her bulk. Desperandum wore ship and started on a starboard tack.
North, there was a huge gap in the rock. Five hundred years ago there had been a narrow cliff there, separating the Nullaqua Crater from a minor subcrater that was now Glimmer Bay. There bad been a crack in that cliff. The Glimmer Crater, receiving sunlight only at noon, was much colder than the parent crater. A cold draft developed, laden with abrasives. Soon a small natural arch formed, housing a vertical whirlwind, hot air above, cold below. Over two centuries, the arch expanded.
On the two hundred and thirty-seventh year of human settlement on Nullacfua, the cliff collapsed with a report heard throughout the crater. It was insufficient warning. Thousands of tons of rock fell into the sea, and the resulting tsunami wiped out almost the entire Nullaquan fleet. Five ships survived: three fishing ships accidentally sheltered by the Highisle, a single retired Arnafian warship in the Pentacle Islands, and a whaler from Brokenfoot. There were no surviving ships from Perseverance. Perseverance had been razed a year earlier in the Nullaquan Civil War.