At other times he went below and attended to chores such as helping the three women and two men to reach the cruiser’s chemical lavatory. Without the pressures of sexual deprivation, he handled the men and women impartially, and there was no conversation with them at any time. He understood, and was proud, that Ka regarded Somerville and him as superior instruments of his will. They were far stronger than the people of the Clan, mobile, possessed of valuable skills and knowledge—and as such had no reason to communicate with any but each other. The five he had rescued from the water had been useful in that they had served to induct Somerville and him into the corporate entity that was Ka, and they might be useful again, but until then they were relegated to the status of inert appendages.
Several times during the day they saw other craft. At one point a destroyer flying the Republic of Queensland flag came almost to within hailing distance, but drew away incuriously to dwindle over the horizon. Sunset found The Rose of York holding its north-easterly course in a calm, glassy sea which progressively darkened from green to black as the light faded from the sky. When Tarrant went up for his spell of duty he discovered Somerville anxiously examining the meters which reported the state of the boat’s propulsion system.
“We’re down about eight volts,” Somerville said gloomily. “Some of the batteries aren’t holding their charges.”
“It may not come to much.” Tarrant insinuated his flat body into the space beside Somerville and clicked switches which isolated various battery trays, his eyes taking in the condition of each. On one circuit the meter needles sagged dramatically. “There’s where the trouble is—Port Four.”
Somerville swore savagely. “I only bought that set last month. It’s the same old story—new is bad.”
“Let’s just wait and see what happens,” Tarrant said. “They may not collapse for days.”
At regular intervals during the next four hours he ran checks on the suspect tray and was forced to admit that the overall condition of the batteries in Port Four was deteriorating at a noticeable rate. The boat continued to cut its way through the darkness, using energy its solar panels had gathered and fed into the batteries during the day, but its speed was gradually falling. Tarrant knew he would soon have to choose between selecting a lower propeller speed or risking the consequences of overloading the remaining healthy units.
“We can’t afford to lose speed,” Somerville said when he came back on watch.
“It’ll only be for a couple of hours.” Tarrant glanced at his watch. “At first light we can bring my boat alongside and transfer my batteries.”
Somerville came to decision. “We’ll do that right now, without waiting for first light—I want those batteries on charge as soon as the sun comes up.”
Tarrant nodded compliantly and, leaving the boat to steer itself, they went aft. It took only a few minutes to haul the smaller boat alongside against the drag of the bow wave. As Tarrant climbed down into it, stretching his legs across a margin of racing black water, he felt a moment of uneasiness. It seemed to him that he had once known a good reason to avoid that kind of situation, but in the urgency of the moment he had forgotten what it could be. In any case, no harm could befall him as long as his friend and mentor quivered within his chest cavity. He ran a line up from the stern of his boat and Somerville secured it, creating a more stable bond between the two craft.
The task of transferring the batteries was longer and more difficult than Tarrant had expected. In the past he had done similar work without paying too much attention to wisps of gas in the battery compartment, but now each time he put his head in too far he felt a strange, writhing pain in his right lung and was forced to draw back. The batteries themselves were tricky to disconnect in the uncertain light from Somerville’s lamp, and became wilfully massive as they were being handed from one boat to the other, causing strained muscles and broken fingernails.
Tarrant was sweating profusely by the time he had passed over the last weighty cube and his arms were trembling with fatigue. His boat was riding higher in the water, testimony to the amount of work he had done, and with the change in angle of the connecting ropes had moved a short distance away from The Rose of York. Tarrant knelt down to replace the cover of his battery compartment. He was leaning forward, tightening wing nuts, when the cruiser gave his boat a sharp nudge, and he fell forward against the outer gunwale. In the same instant something wet and dark slapped itself around his waist. Then he was in the water, facing death by nightmare.
Other tentacles encircled his body as he went below the surface. Guided by instincts that had never been called into play before, Tarrant twisted violently, trying to get his booted feet into the central mouth area towards which he was being drawn. His feet bedded on a rubbery mass. Mercifully, there was no crushing pain which would have let him know he had driven his feet into the squid’s mouth, but his situation was nonetheless critical. He was under water, in the grip of a monster which thrived in that environment, and being carried further downward with every second. In a very short time the air in his lungs would be exhausted and he would drown, provided that the Horra—using all its advantages—had not managed to destroy him first.
As Tarrant fought to retain his meagre supply of air against the fierce pressure on his chest, he became aware of yet another threat to his life. One of the squid’s tentacles, smoother than the others, was feeling for his mouth, trying to force its way into his throat. He got his right hand free from the coils which were gathering around his body and fended off the stabbing arm, but he knew his success had to be pitifully brief. The dead air in his chest was trying to explode outwards, creating a force which could be resisted for only a matter of seconds. As the blood-warm bubbles began to flee from his nostrils, Tarrant experienced a sense of resignation, discovered that death was only terrible while one refused to accept its inevitability. His struggles began to weaken as he realised that a being which had to breathe air would never be a match for one which spent its entire existence under water.
He relaxed, already partially drowned, waiting for the inevitable—then became aware of the steady pulsing of water at his right leg. It was the pumping action of the squid’s siphon. Part of his mind noted the phenomenon and was unconcerned, but another part—which housed all that was stubborn and unyielding in Tarrant’s character—saw it as searing revelation. The squid, just like any other animal, did have to breathe, did rely on oxygen to keep it alive. And to that extent it was every bit as vulnerable as he.
Summoning the last remnants of his strength, he moved his right foot sideways. It encountered the leathery, penis-like tube of the Horra’s siphon at full extent as it exhaled water. He waited until the tube had retracted then thrust his foot down inside it. The effect on the creature was immediate. It convulsed and swerved and tumbled, and the tentacles which had been drawing Tarrant inwards relaxed their hold and began pushing him away. As this was something they had not been designed to do, they were relatively ineffectual, and Tarrant—aware he could not survive a fresh attack—fought to remain inside the cone of threshing arms. The air bubbles streamed from his mouth and nose, shivering and scrambling in their eagerness to fly to the surface.