Brightness Reef

Alvin’s Tale

I didn’t begrudge my position crammed way back, far from the window. At least not during the long descent down the cliff face with the sea looming ever-closer, closer. After all, I’d seen this part before and the others hadn’t. But once we hit water, and my friends started cooing and oohing over what they saw through the bubble up front, I started getting a little resentful. It also put me in a bind as a writer, faced with having to describe the descent later, to my readers. At best I could see a bare patch of blue over the backs of my compeers.

Looking back on it, I suppose I could solve the problem, in several ways.

First, I could lie. I mean, I haven’t decided whether to turn this story into a novel, and according to Mister Heinz, fiction is a kind of lying. In a later draft I might just write in a window aft. That way my character could describe all sorts of things I only heard about from the others. Or else I could pretend I was up front all along. In fiction, you can be captain if you want to be.

Or maybe I should rewrite it from Pincer’s point of view. After all, it was his boat, more than any of ours. And he had the best view of what happened next. That would mean having to write believably from a qheuen’s perspective. Not as alien as a traeki’s, I suppose. Still, maybe I’m not ready to take on that kind of a challenge, just yet.

All of this assumes I live to do a rewrite, or that anyone else survives who I’d care to have read my tale. Anyway, for now, this semitruthful journal style will have to do, and that means telling what I really saw, felt, and heard.

The deploying drums transmitted a steady vibration down the hawser. The fresh air inlet hissed and gurgled by my left ear, so it was hardly what I had pictured as a serene descent into the silent deep. Now and then, Ur-ronn would gasp — “What was that?” — and Pincer identified some fish, piscoid, or skimmer — creatures a hoon usually saw dead in a net-catch, and an urs likely never glimpsed at all. Still, there were no monsters of fantasy. No faery minarets of undersea cities, either. Not so far.

It got dark pretty fast as we dropped. Soon all I made out were little streaks of phosphor that Tyug had smeared in vital spots around the cabin, such as the tips of my motor cranks, the depth gauge, and the ballast release levers. With nothing to do, I catalogued the odors assailing me from my friends. Familiar aromas, but never quite so pungent as now. And this was just the beginning.

A reason to be glad no human came along, I thought. One of many problems contributing to friction between urs and Earthlings had been how each race smelled to the other. Even today, and despite the Great Peace, I don’t figure either sept would much enjoy being cooped up in an oversized coffin with the other for very long.

Ur-ronn started calling out depths from the pressure-bladder gauge. At seven cables she turned a switch, and the eik light came on, casting twin beams into cool, dark waters. I expected those in front to resume their excited exclamations, but apparently there was less to see at this depth. Pincer identified something only every few duras, in a voice that seemed disappointed.

We all tensed at nine cables, since trouble had struck there the first time. But the milestone passed uneventfully. It should, since Uriel had inspected every hoof of the hawser personally.

At eleven and a half cables, a sudden chill swept the cabin, causing fog briefly to form. Every hard surface abruptly went damp and Huck cranked up the dehumidifier. I reached out to touch the garuwood hull, which seemed markedly cooler. Wuphon’s Dream turned and tilted slightly, facing a new tug, no longer the same languid downward drift. From soundings, we had known to expect a transition to a deep frigid current. Still, it was unnerving.

“Adjusting ballast for trim,” Huck announced. Closest to dead center, she used Uriel’s clever pumps to shift water among three tanks till the spirit levels showed an even keel. That would be vital on reaching bottom, lest we topple over at the very moment of making history.

I thought about what we were doing. In Galactic terms, it was consummately primitive, of course. Earth history makes for much more flattering comparisons — which may be one reason we four find it so attractive. For instance, when Jules Verne was writing Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, no human had ever gone as far down into the oceans of Terra as we were heading today. We savages of Jijo.

Huck shouted — “Look! Is that something down below?”

Those eyes of hers. Even peering past Pincer and Ur-ronn, she had glimpsed bottom first. Ur-ronn turned the eik beams and soon the three of them were back at it again, driving me crazy with oohs, ahs, and k-k-k-k wonderment clicks. In frustration I turned the crank, making the rear wheels thrash till they yelled at me to quit, and agreed to describe what they saw.

“There’s a wavy kind of plant,” Pincer said, his voice no longer stuttering. “And another kind that’s all thin and skinny. Don’t know how they live, with no light getting down here. There’s lots of that kind, sort of waving about. And there are snaky trails in the mud, and some kind of weird fishes dodging in and out of the skinny plants…”

After a bit more of that, I would’ve gladly gone back to wonderment clicks. But I kept quiet.

“…And there are some kurtle crabs — bright red and bigger than any I ever seen before! And what’s that, Ur-ronn, a mudworm? You think so? What a mud-worm!… Hey, what’s that thing? Is that a dro—”

Ur-ronn interrupted, “Half a cavle to bottom. Signaling the surface crew to slow descent.”

Sharp electric sparks broke the cabin’s darkness as she touched a contact key, sending coded impulses from our battery up an insulated strand, woven through the hawser. It took a few duras for the rumbling grumble of the deploying drums to change pitch as the brakes dug in. Wuphon’s Dream jerked, giving us all a start. Huphu’s claws raked my shoulder.

The descent slowed. It was specially agonizing for me, not knowing how much farther bottom lay, when we’d make contact, or with how much force. Naturally, nobody was confiding in good old Alvin!

“Hey, fellas,” Pincer resumed, “I think I just saw—”

“Adjusting trim!” Huck announced, peering with one eye at each of the spirit levels.

“Refocusing the lights,” Ur-ronn added. “Ziz shows one yellow tentacle to starvoard. Current flowing that direction, five knots.”

Pincer murmured — “Fellas? I thought I just saw… oh, never mind. Bottom appears to slope left, maybe twenty degrees.”

“Turning forward wheels to compensate,” Huck responded. “Alvin, we may want a slow rearward crank on the driver wheels.”

That jerked me out of any resentful mood. “Aye-aye,” I said, turning the zigzag bar in front of me, causing the rear set of wheels to rotate. At least I hoped they were responding. We wouldn’t know for sure till we hit the ground.

“Here it comes,” Huck announced. And then, apparently recollecting her missed estimates during the trial run, she added — “This time for sure. Brace yourselves!”

When I write about all this someday from these notes, perhaps I’ll describe sudden billows of mud as we plowed into the ocean floor, gouging a long furrow, sending vegetation tumbling and blind subsea creatures fleeing in panic. Maybe I’ll throw in fierce saltwater spray from a blown seal or two, tightened frantically by the heroic crew, in the nick of time.

What I probably won’t admit in print is that I couldn’t even tell the exact moment when our wheels touched down. The event was, well, more than a bit murky. Like sinking a probe fork into the rind of a shuro fruit and not being quite sure whether you’ve speared the core nut yet.

“Murky” also described the scene around us as slime-swirls spiraled, slowly settling to reveal a dead-black world, except down twin corridors of dazzling blue cast by the eiks. What I could see of those narrow tunnels snowed a slanting plain of mud, broken here and there by pale slim-stemmed “plants” that needed no sunlight to thrive, though I couldn’t begin to guess what else they lived on. Their leaves or fronds seemed to wave back and forth, as if in a breeze. No animal life moved in our beams, which wasn’t that surprising. Wouldn’t we top-dwellers hide if some weird vessel plunged into our midst from above, casting forth both noise and a searing gaze?

Forcing the comparison, I wondered if any suboceanic locals thought their judgment day had just come.

With her telegraph key, Ur-ronn pulsed the message everyone above waited to hear. We are down, she sent. All is well.

Yes, it lacks the poetic imagery of flags planted, eagles landed, or infinitives boldly split. I shouldn’t complain. Not all urs are born to recite epic sagas on demand. Still, I think I’ll change it in rewrite — if I ever get the chance, which right now seems pretty unlikely.

Again, sparks jumped the tiny gap, this time without Ur-ronn touching it. A reply from above.

Welcome news. Proceed.

“Ready, Alvin?” Pincer called back. “All ahead, one quarter.”

I responded — “Ahead one quarter, aye, Captain.”

My back and arm muscles flexed. The crank seemed reluctant at first. Then I felt the magnetic clutch take hold — a strange sense of attachment to once-living g’Kek parts that I tried not thinking about. The special mud treads worked as I felt resistance. Wuphon’s Dream shuddered forward.

I concentrated on maintaining a steady pace. Pincer shouted steering instructions at Huck while holding Uriel’s map for reference. Ur-ronn correlated our bearing with her compass. The hawser and air hose resumed transmitting the distant rumble of deployer drums, unreeling more tether so we might wander ever farther from safety. The confined space resonated with my deep work umble, but no one complained. The sound wrapped itself around me till I felt encircled by hoonish shipmates, making the cramped confinement more bearable. Like a ship far at sea, we were all alone, dependent on Ifni’s luck and our own resourcefulness to make it home again.

Time passed. We fell into a rhythmic routine. I pushed, Huck steered, Ur-ronn aimed the headlights, and Pincer was pilot. Pretty soon, it began to feel like we were old hands at this.

Huck asked — “What were you saying, Pincer, just before we landed? Something you saw?”

“Sonething with lots of teeth, I vet!” Ur-ronn teased. “Isn’t this just avout when we’re suffosed to see nonsters?”

Monsters, I thought. My umble annexed a laugh-quaver.

Pincer took the teasing well. “Give it time, chums. You never can tell when… there! Over to the left; that’s what I saw before!”

The Dream listed a bit as Huck and Ur-ronn leaned forward to look, causing the rear wheels to lose half their traction. “Hey!” I complained.

“Well, I be despoked—” Huck murmured.

“And I vee drenched,” Ur-ronn added.

All right, so I whined a bit — “Come on, you grass-fed bunch of sour-mulching—”

Just then the ground slanted a bit more, and my narrow tunnel view finally swept across the scene they’d all been staring at.

“Hr-rm-rm!” I exclaimed. “So that’s what got you all stirred up? A bunch of dross coffins?”

They lay scattered across the ocean floor, canted at all angles, many half buried in the mud. Scores of them. Mostly oblong and rectangular, though a few were barrel-shaped. Naturally, all traces had vanished of the ribbons that once bedecked them, honoring the bones or spindles or worn-out tools cast off by some earlier generation of sooners.

“But dross ships never come into the Rift,” Huck complained, pushing two stalks toward my face. “Ain’t that right, Alvin?”

I twisted to peer past her damn floating eyes.

“They don’t. Still, the Rift is officially part of the Midden. Another section of the same down-sucking whatsit.”

“A tectonic suvduction zone,” Ur-ronn put in.

“Yeah, thanks. So it’s a perfectly legal place to dump dross.”

“But if no ships come, how did it get here?”

I was trying to make out which kinds of coffins were present and which were missing. That could help pin down when the spill had been made. There were no human-style chests or urrish reed baskets, which wasn’t surprising. So far I’d only seen g’Kek and qheuenish work, which could make the site pretty darn old.

“The cartons arrived the same way we did, Huck,” I explained. “Somebody dumped them off the cliff at Terminus Rock.”

Huck gasped. She started to speak, then paused, and I could almost hear wheels turning in her head. Dumping from land just isn’t done. But she must have already reasoned that this place was an acceptable exception. If a portion of the Midden really did pass right underneath Terminus Rock, and assuming there must have once been settlements nearby, this would have been a cheaper way of burying Grandpa than sending his coffin out to sea by boat.

“But then how did the boxes get so far from land? We’ve come cables and cables by now.”

“Tides, mudslides,” Pincer answered. But I rumbled I negation.

“You forget how the Midden’s supposed to work. It sucks stuff in, isn’t that right, Ur-ronn?”

Ur-ronn whistled despair over my insistent oversimplifying. She motioned with two hands. “One tectonic flate slides under the other, you see, creating a trench and drawing old sea floor along with it.”

“To be dragged underground, melted, and renewed, pushing underneath the Slope and making volcanoes. Yeah, I get it.” Huck turned all four stalks forward, pensively. “Hundreds of years since these were dumped, and the dross has only come this far from where it fell?”

Only few seconds ago, she had been amazed by how great a distance the crates had come from the cliff! I guess it goes to show how different time can seem, when you shift from the perspective of a person’s lifetime to the life cycles of a world. In comparison, I don’t suppose humans have much to brag about, living twice as long as urs. We’re all bound for Jijo’s slow digestion soon enough, whether or not alien invaders leave us alone.

Pincer and Ur-ronn consulted their maps, and shortly we were under way again, leaving that boneyard where another generation of sinners made their slow way toward pardon in melted stone.

About half a midura later, with a sense of great relief, we found Uriel’s “jack.”

By that time my arms and legs ached from row-boating the crank handle at least a couple of thousand times, responding to Pincer’s insistent commands of “speed up!” or “slow down!” or “can’t you go any faster?” Of the four of us, he alone seemed to be enjoying himself, without any qualms or physical ague.

We hoon elect our captains, then obey without question while any sort of emergency is going on — and this whole voyage qualified in my mind as a screaming emergency — so I tucked away any resentment for later, when I pictured getting even with Pincer in many colorful ways. Maybe the gang’s next project should be a hot-air balloon. Make him the first qheuen to fly since they gave up starships. It’d serve him right.

By the time Huck finally yelled “Eureka!” my poor muscles and pivots felt as if we’d covered the entire width of the Rift, and then some. My first relieved thought was — No wonder Uriel provided so much hawser and hose!

Only after that did I wonder — How did she know where to tell us to look for this jeekee thing?

It stood half buried in the mud, about twelve cables south of where we first touched down. Judging from the portion that was visible from my “vantage point” way in back, it consisted of long spikes, each pointed outward in a different direction, as if aimed toward the six faces of a cube. Each spike had a big knob at the end, hollow I guessed, to prevent sinking in the muck. It was obviously meant to be found, being colored a garish swirl of reds and blues. Red to really stand out at short range, since the color’s almost totally absent underwater, and blue to be visible from farther away, if your beam happened to sweep across it in the deep darkness. Even so, you had to be within less than a cable to see the thing, so we’d never have come across it without Uriel’s instructions. Still, it took two search spirals before we stumbled on the jack.

It was the strangest thing any of us had ever encountered. And don’t forget, I’ve heard a g’Kek umble and witnessed a traeki vlen.

“Is it Buyur-uyur?” Pincer asked, superstitious awe invading his voice vents, along with a returned stammer.

“I bet a pile of donkey mulch that’s not Buyur-made,” Huck said. “What do you think, Ur-ronn?”

Our urs pal stretched her neck past Pincer, her muzzle drying a patch of the bubble window. “No way the Vuyur would’ve vuilt anything so frightful-ghastly,” she agreed. “It’s not their style.”

“Of course it’s not their style,” Huck continued. “But I know whose it is.”

We all stared at her. Naturally, she milked the moment, pausing till we were on the verge of pummeling her.

“It’s urrish,” she concluded with a tone of smug conviction.

“Urrish!” Pincer hissed. “How can you be so—”

“Exflain,” Ur-ronn demanded, snaking her head to peer at Huck. “This ovject is sophisticated. Uriel could forge nothing like it. Not even Earthlings have such craft.”

“Exactly! It’s not Buyur, and no one currently living on the Slope could make it. That leaves just one possibility. It must have been left here by an original sooner star-ship, when one of the Six Races — seven if you include glavers — first arrived on Jijo, before the settlers scuttled their craft and joined the rest of us as primitives. But which one left it? I’d eliminate us g’Keks on account of we’ve been here so long that I’ll bet the jack would’ve moved a lot farther into the Rift by now. The same probably holds for glavers, qheuens, and traeki.

“Anyway, the clincher is that Uriel knew exactly where to find it!”

Fur riffled around the rim of Ur-ronn’s nostril. Her voice turned colder than the surrounding ocean. “You suggest a conspiracy.”

g’Kek stalks twined, a shrug.

“Not a horribly vile one,” Huck assured. “Maybe just a sensible precaution.

“Think about it, mates. Say you’ve come to plant a sooner colony on a forbidden world. You must get rid of anything that’d show on a casual scan by some Institute surveyor, so your ship and complex gear have to go. Nearby space is no good. That’s the first place cops’d check. So you sink it amid all the stuff the Buyur dumped when they left Jijo. Sounds good so far.

“But then you ask yourself — what if an unforeseen emergency crops up? What if someday your descendants need something high-tech to help ’em survive?”

Ur-ronn lowered her conical head. In the dimness I could not tell if it denoted worry or rising anger. I hurried to cut in.

“Hr-rm. You imply a long view of things. A secret kept for generations.”

“For centuries,” Huck agreed. “Uriel no doubt was told by her master, and so on back to the first urrish ancestors. And before Ur-ronn snaps one of my heads off, let me rush to add that the urs sages showed great restraint over the years, never seeking to use this cache during their wars with qheuens, then humans, even when they were getting their tails whipped.”

That was meant to calm Ur-ronn? I rushed to save Huck from mutilation. “Perhaps — hrm — humans and qheuens had their own caches, so there was a standoff.” Then my own words sank in. “Maybe those caches are being sought now, while we serve as Uriel’s dipping claw, in search of this one.”

There was a long silence.

Then Pincer spoke.

“Sheesh-eesh-eesh. Those aliens up at the Glade must really have the grown-ups spooked.”

Another pause, then Huck resumed. “That’s what I’m hoping all of this is about. The aliens. A mutual effort of the Six, pooling resources, and not something else.”

Ur-ronn’s neck twisted nervously. “What do you nean?”

“I mean, I’d have liked Uriel’s word of honor that we’re down here seeking powers for the defense of all the Commons.”

Not simply to arm urrish militia, in some of the grudge fights we’ve heard rumors about, I thought, finishing Huck’s implication. There was a tense moment when I could not predict what would happen next. Had tension, worry, and Tyug’s drugs strung our urrish friend to the point where Huck’s baiting would make her snap?

Ur-ronn’s neck slowly untwisted. An effort of will, I saw by the dim light of the phosphors. “You have…” she began, breathing heavily. “You have the oath of this urs, that it will ve so.”

And she repeated the vow in Galactic Two, following it with a laborious effort to spit on the floor, not an easy act for one of her kind. A sign of sincerity.

“Hr-rm, well, that’s great,” I said, umbling for peace. “Not that any of us ever thought any different. Right, Huck? Pincer?”

Both of them hurried to agree, and some of the tension passed. Underneath, however, seeds of worry had been laid. Huck, I thought, you’d bring a jar full of scorpions in a lifeboat, then drop it just to see who swims the best.

We got under way again and soon were near enough to see how big the jack really was. Each of the bulbous balloonlike things at its spiky tips was larger than Wuphon’s Dream. “There’s one of the cables Uriel talked about,” Pincer announced, waving a claw toward one spike, from which a glossy black strand made a relatively straight line, though buried in places, aimed north, in the direction we had come.

“I bet anything that line’s broken somewhere tween here and the cliffs,” Huck ventured. “Prob’ly used to go all the way to some secret cleft or cave near Terminus Rock. From there the cache might’ve been hauled in without an urs ever having to get her hooves wet. That end point may’ve gotten cut in an avalanche or quake, like the one that killed my folks. This jack thing is a backup, so the cord can be picked up again, even if the first end point is lost.”

“Good thinking. It does explain one thing that had me puzzled — why Uriel had so much equipment on hand. Stuff that proved so useful for diving. In fact, it makes me wonder why she needed us at all. Why didn’t she have a hidden bathy of her own in the first place?”

Ur-ronn was getting over her funk. “A g’Kek accountant inventories the forge warehouse regularly. He’d notice anything as un-urrish as a suvnarine, just lying around, ready to ve used.”

Her voice was sarcastic. Yet Huck agreed.

“The difficult parts were there, the pumps and valves and gaskets. I’m sure Uriel and her predecessors figured they could whip up a hull and the rest in a matter of months. Who ever expected an emergency to strike so quick? Besides, we bunch of crazy kids offered a perfect cover story. No one will associate us with god-caches from the Galactic past.”

“I prefer to think,” Pincer interjected, with a dramatically miffed tone of voice, “that the real reason Uriel begged pretty-please to be allowed to join our team was the superior design and craftsmanship of our ship-hip.”

We quit bickering to stare at him for a moment — then laughter filled the tiny cabin, making the hull vibrate and waking Huphu from her nap.

The four of us felt better then, ready to get on with the mission. The hard part was over, it appeared. All we had to do now was order Ziz to attach a clamp to the cord on the jack’s other side and signal Uriel to haul away. There would then be a long wait while we slowly rose up toward the surface, since g’Keks and urs are even more likely than humans to get the bends if air pressure changes too rapidly. From books we knew it’s an awful way to die, so a tedious ascent was an accepted necessity. We had all packed snacks, as well as personal articles to help pass the time.

Still, I was anxious to get on with it. Claustrophobia was nothing compared with the ordeal that would commence when everyone onboard — each in his or her unique way — started feeling the need to go, as some Earthling books politely put it, “to the bathroom.”

There would be, it seemed, one slight difficulty in clamping on to the second cord.

We saw the problem at once, upon rolling around to look at the Jack’s other side.

The second cord was missing.

Or rather, it had been cut. Fresh-looking metal fibers waved gently in the subsea currents, hanging like an unbraided urrish tail from one of the jack’s spiky ends.

Nor was that all. When Ur-ronn cast our beams across the ocean floor, we saw a wavy trail in the mud, meandering south, in which direction the cord apparently had been dragged. None of us knew how to tell if this was done days, or jaduras, or years ago. But the word recent came to mind. No one had to say it aloud.

Electric sparks flashed as Ur-ronn reported the situation to those waiting in the world of air and light. Surprise was evident in a long delay. Then an answer came back down, crackling pulses across the tiny spark gap.

If in good health, follow trail for two cables, then report.

Huck muttered. “As if we’ve got any choice, with Uriel controlling the winch. Like a little case of narcosis or the cramp-jitters would make a difference to her?”

This time, Ur-ronn didn’t turn around, but both tails switched Huck’s torso sharply, just below the neckline.

“Ahead one half, Alvin,” Pincer commanded. With a sigh, I bent over to begin again.

So we set forth, keeping one beam focused on the snake-trail through the mud, while Ur-ronn cast the other searchlight left and right, up and down. Not that seeing a threat in advance would give us any kind of useful warning. There was never a vessel as unarmed, slow, and helpless as Wuphon’s Dream. That severed cord we had seen — it had been made by beings using Galactic technology, intended to survive millennia underwater and still retain immense strength. Whatever had sliced it apart wasn’t anything I wanted to make angry.

A deeper, more solemn mood filled the cabin as we crept onward. After cranking for more than a midura against the ever-changing traction of slippery muck, my arms and back were starting to feel the stinging tingle of second-stage fatigue. I was too tired to umble. Behind me, Huphu expressed her boredom by rummaging through my backpack, tearing open a package of pish fish sandwiches, nibbling part of it and scattering the rest through the bilge. Splashing noises and a wet tickling on my toe-pads told of water accumulating down there — whether.from excess humidity, or some slow leak, or our own disgusting wastes, I didn’t care to guess. The aroma inside was starting to get both complex and pretty damn ripe. I was fighting another onset of confinement dread when Pincer let out a shrill yell.

“Alvin, stop! Back up! I mean engines back full!”

I wish I could report that I saw what caused this outburst, but my view was blocked by frenzied silhouettes. Besides, I had my hands full fighting the momentum of the crank, which seemed determined to keep turning in the same direction despite me, driving the wheels ever forward. I held the wooden rods in a strangle grip and heaved with all my might, feeling something pop in my spine. Finally, I managed to slow the axles, then at last bring them to a stop. But for all my grunting effort, I could not make them turn the other way.

“I’m getting a list!” Huck announced. “Tilting forward and to port.”

“I didn’t see it coming!” Pincer cried out. “We were climbing a little hill, then it just came out of nowhere, I swear!”

Now I could feel the tilt. The Dream was definitely tipping forward even as Huck frantically pumped ballast aft. The eik beams seemed to flail around the darkness up ahead, offering an unsettling view of yawning emptiness where before there had been a gently sloping plain.

I finally managed to get the crank turning backward, but any sense of victory was short-lived. One of the magnetic clutches — attached to a wheel salvaged from Huck’s aunt, I believe — gave way. The remaining roller bit hard into the mud, with the effect of abruptly slewing us sideways.

The beams now swung along the lip of the precipice we were poised upon. Apparently, what we had thought was the main floor of the Rift had been but a shelf along the outskirts of the actual trench. The true gash now gaped, ready to receive us, as it had received so many other things that would never again partake in affairs up where stars glittered bright.

So many dead things, and we were about to join them.

“Shall I cut ballast?” Huck asked, frantically. “I can cut ballast. Pull the signal cord to have Ziz inflate. I can do it! Shall I do it?”

I reached out and took two eyestalks, gently stroking them in the calming way I had learned over the years. She wasn’t making any sense. The weight of all the steel hawser we trailed was greater than a few bricks slung under the belly of Wuphon’s Dream. If we cut the hawser too, we might rise all right. But then what would keep the air hose from tangling and snapping as we spun and tumbled? Even if it miraculously survived, unsnarled, we would shoot up like the bullet-ship in Verne’s First Men in the Moon. Even Pincer would probably die of the bends.

More practical with death looming before us, Ur-ronn fired off rapid spark-pulses, telling Uriel to yank us home without delay. Good idea. But how long would it take, I wondered, for the crew above to haul in all the slack? How fast could they do it without risking a crimp in the air hose? How far might we fall before two opposite pulls met in a sudden jerk? That moment of truth would be when we discovered just how well we’d built the Dream.

Helplessly, I felt the wheels lose contact with the muddy shelf as our brave little bathy slid over the edge, starting a long languid fall into darkness.

That, I guess, would be a nice, dramatic place to end a chapter, with our heroes tumbling into the black depths. A true-to-life cliff-hanger.

Will the crew ever make it home again?

Will they survive?

Yeah, that’d make a good stopping point. What’s more, I’m tired and hurting. I need to call for help, so I can make it to the bucket in the corner of this dank place and get some relief.

But I won’t stop there. I know a better place, just a bit farther down the stream of time, as Wuphon’s Dream slowly fell, rotating round and round, and we watched the eik beams sweep a cliff face that rose beside us like the wall of an endless tomb. Our tomb.

We dropped half of our ballast, which helped slow the plunge — till a current yanked ahold of the Dream, dragging us faster. We dropped the remainder but knew our sole chance lay in Uriel reacting perfectly, and then a hundred other things working better than there was any hope of them working.

Each of us was coming to terms with death in our own way, alone, facing the approaching end of our personal drama.

I missed my parents. I mourned along with them, for my loss was in many ways as bitter to me as it would be to them, though I wouldn’t have to endure for years the sorrow they’d carry, on account of my foolish need for adventure. I stroked and umbled Huphu, while Ur-ronn whistled a plains lament and Huck drew all four eyes together, looking inward, I supposed, at her life.

Then, out of nowhere, Pincer shouted a single word that overrode the keening of our fears. A word we had heard from his vents before, too many times, but never quite like this. Never with such tones of awe and wonder.

“Monsters-ers-ers!” he yelled.

Then, with rising terror and joy, he cried it out again. “Monsters!”

No one has come to answer my call. I’m stuck lying here with a back that won’t bend and a terrible need for that bucket. My pencil is worn down and I’m almost out of paper … so while I’m waiting I might as well push on to the real dramatic moment of our fall.

All was confusion inside Wuphon’s Dream as we plunged toward our doom. We tumbled left and right, banging against the inner hull, against cranks, handles, levers, and each other. The view outside, when I could see past my wildly gesturing comrades, was a jumbled confusion of phosphorescent dots caught in the eik beams, plus occasional glimpses of a rising cliff face, and then quick flashes of something else.

Something — or some things — lustrous and gray. Agile, flitting movements. Then curious strokings, rubbing our vessel’s hull, followed by sharp raps and bangs all along the flanks of our doomed boat.

Pincer kept babbling about monsters. I honestly thought he’d gone crazy, but Ur-ronn and Huck had changed their wailing cries and were leaning toward the glass, as if transfixed by what they saw. It was all so noisy, and Huphu was clawing my aching backside between frenzied attacks on the walls.

I felt sure I made out Huck saying something like—

“What — or who — could they possibly be?”

That’s when the whirling shapes divided, vanishing to both sides as a new entity arrived, causing us all to gasp.

It was huge, many times the size of our bathy, and it swam with easy grace, emitting a growl as it came. From my agonizing prison at the back, I could not make out much except two great eyes that seemed to shine far brighter than our failing eik beams.

And its mouth. I recall seeing that all too well, as it spread wide, rushing to meet us.

The hull groaned, and there were more sharp bangs. Ur-ronn yelped as a needle spray of water jetted inward, ricocheting back at me.

Numb with fear, I could not stop my whirling brain long enough to have a single clear thought, only a storm of notions.

These were Buyur ghosts, I guessed, come to punish living fools who dared invade their realm.

They were machines, cobbled together from relics and remnants that had tumbled into the Rift since long before the Buyur, in epochs so old, even the Galactics no longer recalled.

They were home-grown sea monsters. Jijo’s own. Products of the world’s most private place.

These and other fancies flashed through my muddled brain as I watched, unable to look away from those terrible onrushing jaws. The Dream buffeted and bucked — in sea currents, I now suppose, but at the time it felt she was struggling to get away.

The jaws swept around us. A sudden surge brought us hurtling to one side. We hit the interior of the great beast’s mouth, crashing with such force that the beautiful glass bubble cracked. Frosted patterns spread from the point of impact. Ur-ronn wailed, and Huck rolled her eyestalks tight, like socks going in a drawer.

I grabbed Huphu, ignoring her tearing claws, and took a deep breath of stale air. It was awful stuff, but I figured it would be my last chance.

The window gave up at the same moment the air hose snapped.

The dark waters of the Rift found their rapid way into our shattered ship.