“The open end goes in front,” he explained. “Point it where you want to go. Water gets sucked in through these slits for power and the whole thing pulls you along. The harder you squeeze the trigger, the faster you go. Easy peazy.”
This was getting good. I was beginning to see why Uncle Press liked Cloral so much. He then threw me a pair of rubbery swim fins that needed no explanation.
“Get changed,” he added.
It was time to dress like a Cloran. I had been through this drill before. So I walked across the stone ledge and began to dig through the pile of Cloral clothes. Uncle Press did the same. There were shirts and pants and even shorts that I guess were supposed to be used as underwear. Good thing. I didn’t get to wear any underwear on Denduron and the rough leather clothes gave me a raging rash that was only now starting to calm down.
The material was soft and kind of rubbery. Cloral was all about water, so I guessed these clothes would be perfect for swimming and would dry fast. The colors were bright, too. All were on the cool end of the spectrum, blue, green, and purple. I knew from the times that Uncle Press had taken me scuba diving that the best colors to use underwater were in the blue family — they showed up best. Colors like red and yellow were quickly filtered away underwater so they ended up looking gray, but blue still looked like blue underwater. So did purple and green.
I had the feeling that there would be more opportunities for my scuba diving experience to come in handy here on this water territory. Uncle Press had taken me to diving classes last year and I got my open-water diver’s certification. Uncle Press then took me on a great trip to Florida where we dove in the ocean and explored some of the fresh water springs. That was fantastic. We swam with schools of fish and hitched rides on turtles.
Uncle Press and I had done a lot of great things like that. I was beginning to think that maybe those adventures weren’t so much about having fun as they were about preparing me for some of the challenges I would face as a Traveler. I guess I should be grateful — except maybe for the time he took me sky diving. It was a blast, but I really didn’t want to think about what he may have been preparing me for with that little episode. Yikes.
I grabbed a light blue shirt and pair of pants that looked sort of like the same color. Nobody knew me here, but I didn’t want to look like a clashing, colorblind geek. I picked out some blue shorts, too. I wasn’t sure if they were the right size, but when I put them on, it was like they were made for me! There weren’t any zippers or buttons, either. I dumped my Second Earth clothes and stepped into the shorts and pants, then pulled the shirt down over my head. The stretchy clothes molded to my body perfectly. They weren’t too tight, but were still formfitting enough that nothing would twist and get in the way in the water. There were even soft boots with hard rubber souls that slipped on easily and fit like they were custom-made. It was all very Star Trek.
“Put on a belt, too,” said Uncle Press, and handed me a thin, soft strap.
“That’s okay,” I replied. “I’m not a belt kind of guy.” “It’s not about fashion,” he said. “It’s a BC.” Cool. Going back to my scuba experience, I knew that BC stood for buoyancy compensator. Scuba divers have to wear a weight belt underwater or they’d float back to the surface. A BC is a vest that you fill with air from your scuba tank to help you adjust your buoyancy so you won’t sink to the bottom, or shoot up to the surface. When everything is perfect, it’s called “neutrally buoyant.” It makes swimming feel like flying. But I wasn’t sure how this little belt was going to keep anybody neutrally buoyant.
“It’s automatic,” Uncle Press explained. I think he was reading my mind again. “It takes on water for weight, or creates oxygen for lift, depending on what you need. I told you, these guys are pretty advanced.”
I took his word for it and threaded the strap through the belt loops on my new pants. I was really eager to get in the water and try out these new toys. This was like old times with Uncle Press, only better. Yes, so far I really liked Cloral. It was a major improvement over Denduron. It was warm, the clothes didn’t suck, the local fruit was pretty tasty, and from what Uncle Press told me, this was a territory that wasn’t at war with anybody and had advanced enough to create some pretty nifty gadgets. I was actually jazzed about getting out of the cavern and starting to explore.
That is, until I saw Uncle Press doing something odd. As soon as he finished dressing in his local outfit, he took one of the extra pairs of Cloral pants and tied a knot on the end of each leg.
“Grab a bunch of fruit,” he ordered.
I started grabbing off pieces of fruit from the vines. Uncle Press took the pieces and stuffed them into the pant legs he had just tied off. I figured maybe he was using the pants as a makeshift bag to carry some fruit to the surface. That was cool. I liked the stuff. He filled the pants up until they looked like a lumpy pair of legs, then yanked down a piece of vine from the wall and used it as a rope to thread through the belt loops and tie off the waist.
“Hand me one of the water sleds,” he asked.
Okay, now he lost me. What was he doing? I gave him one of the two purple sleds and he tied the other end of the vine that was holding the pants together to the handles. There was now about a three-foot length of vine between the water sled and the pants full of fruit.
“You gonna tell me what you’re doing?”
“We’ve got to swim out of here,” he explained. “Put on fins. We’ll use the air globes to breathe. We’re only about sixty feet down. There should be a skimmer waiting for us on the surface.”
“A skimmer?”
“It’s like a speedboat. Very fast. Easy to maneuver. You’ll love it.”
“Courtesy of the acolytes?”
“Exactly.”
“What’s with the fruity pants?”
“No big deal. Just a little quig bait.”
Uh-oh. That was it. Fun time was over. He punctuated this last comment by digging down under the rest of the Cloral clothes and pulling out a nasty-looking speargun. I knew this was going too well. There were quigs lurking outside. If you remember, quigs were the nasty beasties that Saint Dane used to guard the gates to the flumes. On Second Earth they were wild dogs. On Denduron they were prehistoric, cannibal bears with spiny backs. On Cloral they could only be…
“Sharks,” I said flatly. “You’re saying there are giant sharks swimming around out there waiting for us to pop out in our spiffy new rubber outfits?”
“You saw one yourself, on Denduron.”
I did. In the mine shaft flume on Denduron. I still remember its demonic, yellow quig-eyes as it rode the wave of water toward us. The memory made my knees buckle. The tropical vacation was over.
“Don’t worry,” said Uncle Press. “I’ll send the water sled out first. Our smell is already on these pants. If there are any quigs around, and I’m not saying thereare, mind you, they’ll chase the smell.”
“You think they’ll be dumb enough to go for it?”
“They’re vicious, not bright,” he answered with confidence. “We’ll have plenty of time to get to the surface and find the skimmer.”
He handed me the speargun, which I took gingerly.
“You don’t expect me to use this, do you?”
“Just hold it,” he said. He then took another small piece of vine and looped it through the handle of the water sled. With a quick tug, he tightened it down so that it pulled the trigger, then tied a knot to keep it in place. The trigger supposedly kicked over the engine, but it wasn’t making any noise.
“Why didn’t it turn on?” I asked.
“I told you, it needs water for power.”
Uncle Press knelt down next to the pool. He first placed the loaded pants into the water. They floated off to the length of the vine that was attached to the sled. Then with both hands on the sled, he lowered the purple engine underwater as well. As soon as the slits were underwater, I could hear the low whine of its motor kick to life. The trigger was pulled all the way so it was on full power. The little sled nearly yanked Uncle Press off the ledge. He had to struggle just to hang on to it.