“We’re only getting one shot at this, so let’s not treat it as a joyride,” Martine shouted above the flurry of turbulence. “Can you take water samples, Evan?”
“I’m doing it,” Petersdorff replied, fumbling with the equipment on his belt. “Trying to avoid contamination from the exhaust.”
Scotland and Osaka steadied themselves as best they could and began taking readings from an assortment of instruments on their wrists and chest panels, while Martine started shooting film with a miniature camera attached to his helmet. Excluded from the activity, temporarily relieved of all responsibility, Tarrant nestled into the sparse protection of the sled and watched the alien world stream past him. The ambient light began to fade, but at a very much slower rate than if they had been plummeting into one of the Earth’s oceans. He wondered if this was solely because the planetoid was closer to the sun and unscreened by an atmosphere, or if it was a geometrical effect by which the globe of water served as a huge optical condenser.
Martine would doubtless have an answer, but the enquiry could wait until later. A torpor was settling over Tarrant as a result of the intense emotional and physical stress throughout a period which felt like years, although his memory could account for only three full days since his first encounter with the big squid. He closed his eyes and allowed his senses to be swamped by tiredness and the pervasive, choking odour of rubber, plastics and cleaning fluids circulating within his suit.
“Theo! Are the bomb circuits active?” Scotland’s voice reached him a short time later, and he forced his eyes open.
“Of course not,” Martine answered.
“That’s good—I’ve got indications of a large metal object about ten kilometres away from us. Over that way.”
“Do you think it’s the …?”
“Not a chance. This object isn’t very massive. In fact, there might be more than one.”
“I’d like to take a look at it,” Tarrant said, now fully alert, intuitions stirring.
“So would I, though we haven’t much time.” Martine made an adjustment on the sled’s control panel and signalled for Scotland to join him. The square steering vane ahead of Tarrant wavered uncertainly for an instant as Scotland assumed control, then the sled veered off its radial course. They were plunging through a blue twilight in which root forests appeared as distant vertical shadings of indigo. Tarrant peered out in front and within a few minutes began to distinguish a patch of darkness. The sled’s propeller stopped turning and went into reverse, forcing him to alter his grip on the structure, and at the same moment somebody switched on the photographic floodlights in the nose of the sled. Tarrant’s eyes widened reflexively as a fantastic scene sprang into view ahead of him.
The hull of a flying boat, minus the wings, glimmered in the rippling luminescence like the carcase of a giant whale. Its outlines were obscured by skeins of nets, and it was trailing a complex spawn of large inflated bags secured by webs of rope. Surrounding the central mass were the figures of more than a hundred men and women, attached to it by individual tethers and frozen by the sudden brilliance of the lamps in the act of towing it through the water. They were naked except for belts around their waists and hemispherical, flower-like cages strapped to their heads.
This, Tarrant knew at once, was the Clan of which Myrah, Lennar and the others had spoken. Until that moment these people had been an abstraction to him, and he found their multitudinous, living reality almost too much for his comprehension. The exclamations he could hear within his helmet told him the rest of his group were undergoing the same reaction. As he stared at the clustered swimmers he became aware that, although they had halted their progress through the water, they were not entirely at rest—at every second some of them were making odd darting movements of their heads as they captured slow-drifting air bubbles. Tarrant experienced a sympathetic constriction in his own chest as he imagined spending an entire lifetime in conditions where the simple act of breathing called for such unremitting activity. His respect and pity for the humans in the isolated little colony crystallised into a kind of anguish as he saw they were shielding their eyes and at the same time preparing to defend themselves with slim, spear-like weapons.
“Turn out the lights,” he snapped. “We’re frightening them.”
The brilliance faded immediately and a long, pulsing minute went by while his eyes adapted to the lower level of illumination. Strange as the conglomeration before him was, Tarrant realised it did not correspond with the description of the Home given to him by Lennar.
The only conclusion he could reach was that the Home had been abandoned, probably because its flimsy structure was being disrupted by the current, and that the members of the Clan were migrating in search of still water. He guessed that within the flying boat hull were all those who could not survive for a long time in open water—the infants, the sick and the aged. The problem facing these heroic people, although they had no way of knowing it, was that their quest for a new resting place could only be successful in the short term. As the planetoid shrank over a period of years the currents would become stronger and further reaching, and the inevitable outcome would be total extinction of the Clan in any of a number of ways. …
“More evidence to back your story, Hal,” Martine said, almost reverently. “I guess we ought to try speaking to them.”
Tarrant began detaching himself from the sled. “This is my job. Can you hold this position while I go closer?”
“Okay—but remember we’re short of time. What are you going to say, anyway?”
“I …” Tarrant hesitated. “I have to persuade them to follow us down and go through the transceiver.”
Martine snorted. “Good luck!”
“Thanks.” Tarrant pushed himself away from the sled and began swimming towards the colony.
“Just one thing,” Martine called after him. “My first responsibility is to my own men, so I can only give you ten minutes—and if they start throwing those spears we can’t go after you.”
“Understood.”
Tarrant continued swimming, hampered by the space suit, until he was some ten metres from the nearest of the Clan. They watched his progress intently, faces partly veiled by reflections on the surfaces of trapped bubbles, weapons at the ready. He tried to go closer before speaking, but several of the spears were making tentative jabbing movements which told him their owners were on the very point of throwing.
“I am a friend,” he said, enunciating as clearly as possible. “I want to talk to you.”
The shock caused by his voice was apparent from the way in which the listeners went rigid for an instant, some of them drawing back while others tightened their grips on their spears. There was a confused babble of response, the sounds fracturing on air-water interfaces. Its general tone was obviously hostile.
“I am a friend,” he repeated, then it occurred to him that to these people he had to resemble a creature from a nightmare. “I am a man, a human—just like you.”
“You do not breathe,” an older man shouted, brandishing his spear.
Tarrant spread his arms and legs to demonstrate his human shape, “I breathe. I have air in here.” He tapped his helmet.
“Not enough air for a man.”
Realising the futility of attempting to explain the functioning of his suit, Tarrant tried a different tack. “I am a friend of Lennar, and Myrah, and Geean, and Treece, and Harld.”
There was another ripple of surprise, and a woman cried, “They’re dead! It comes from Ka!”