Involution Ocean

Chapter 2 Boarding Ship

The entire habitable portion of Nullaqua lies at the bot­tom of a monster crater some seventy miles deep and, for the most part, five hundred miles across. Over 90 percent of the planet’s atmosphere lies pooled in this vast hollow; the rest of the planet has only a thin scattering of gases and the ruins of two Elder Culture outposts. According to ac­cepted theory, the crater was gouged by a concentrated bombardment of antimatter meteors some billions of years ago. It would have splattered a younger planet but at that time Nullaqua was solid almost to the core. Vast volumes of gas were liberated from the broken rock. After that, the multiple tons of fine dust, caused by the action of the sun on Nullaqua’s almost airless surface, sifted or were blown into the crater. This gradual but ceaseless action, continu­ing even today, has given Nullaqua an ocean of almost monatomic dust, untold miles deep. Nullaqua was given a second chance to create life. This time, she succeeded.

Five hundred years ago Nullaqua was settled by a dour group of religious fanatics. Their creed is now somewhat weakened, but still retains its colorful blasphemies and an exaggerated respect for the law.

It was that respect that now forced me to leave the com­fort of my double bed to seek my fortune on the Sea of Dust. With me was young Calothrick; I was unable to dis­suade him from coming.

I walked sullenly out of the New House, Calothrick tag­ging at my heels. We headed toward the docks east of the city. After two blocks he broke the silence.

“What’s our first step, Mr. Newhouse?”

’To take all our money out of the bank,” I said. “And call me John.”

“OK, John. Why? Aren’t we going to sign up?”

“This is not a course of action to be rushed into blindly,” I said, speaking with excessive clarity. “We have to study the situation, learn the basics of the industry, and some of the slang of the sailors. We have to buy supplies, probably get our hair cut in the current sea-dog style. We have to look like we know what’s what, even if we are off-worlders. As it is you may have trouble getting a berth. You’ll have to sign on as an ordinary seaman.”

“Ordinary seamen, huh? Well, that’s all right with me. I wouldn’t want to be better than anyone else.”

“Sure,” I said. “How much money do you have?”

Calothrick looked startled and unsure. “Not very much. About five hundred monunes.”

“That should be enough for your supplies, anyway, with maybe enough left over to buy drinks for the sailors. What’s your bank?”

“I haven’t had time to deposit it yet, it’s all in letters of credit.”

I sent Calothrick off to pick up some cash while I rented a room in a tavern at the lip of the cliff above the docks. (The Highisle was half a mile above sea level and thus escaped the worst of the dust pollution below.)

When Calothrick returned I sent him downstairs to buy drinks for sailors and to study their mannerisms. I went out and bought two dustmasks. All sailors wear them. The fine dust, stirred by gusts of wind, can destroy the lungs within a few days. Even the dense thickets of hair in the native Nullaquan’s nostrils can’t fully filter the stuff, nor can their camellike lashes and thick lids fully shield their eyes. On shore they suffice, but at sea every man jack wears a tight-fitting rubbery mask with a snoutlike round filter and round plastic eyes.

The captain and his mates give their orders through speakers connected to tiny microphones within their masks. The crew have no speakers inside their masks, as any power of speech among them would be superfluous.

Every whaler has a painted insignia, on the forehead and cheeks of his mask. They vary wildly in shape and color, it is one of their few modes of self-expression. I bought sev­eral tubes of paint and some brushes for Calothrick and myself. The mask’s natural color is shiny black, so I bought some black paint, too. It might be just as well to be able to suddenly change insignias. After all, one learns to recognize a whaler by his dustmask.

After buying sailor’s garb and cutting our hair, Calo­thrick and I took the elevator down the cliffside to look over the whaling fleet We took our dufflebags and our alien’s papers. The first three ships would have nothing to do with us. They were willing to accept me as cook, but not with Calothrick, who was an obvious ignoramus.

Finally we came across the good ship Lunglance, com­manded by one Nils Desperandum. Desperandum, an ob­vious alias, was also an off-worlder. He was an immense man, raised under at least two gravities.

Though he was only five feet tall, with his incredible bulk and thick blond beard Desperandum had a command­ing presence. He looked us over. “Cook and ordinary sear man?” he asked sharply.

“Uh . . . aye aye, sir,” Calothrick began, but I cut him off with a quick “Yes, sir.”

“Any objection to sailing with other off-worlders? We don’t go strictly by the book on this vessel.”

“None at all, Captain, if they don’t mind sailing with us.”

“Very well, sign yourselves on. Cook’s lay is one one-twenty-fifth. Mr. Calothrick, I’m afraid that the best I can offer you is the three-hundredth lay. But therell be a bonus if the cruise goes well.”

Calothrick’s face clouded but I cut in before he could offer any objections. “Well take that, Captain.”

“Good. Calothrick, see Mr. Bogunheim about a bunk. He’s our third mate. We set sail tomorrow morning.”

We signed the logbook and we were ready to go.

The Lunglance was a typical member of her breed, the dustwhaling trimaran. She was one hundred and five feet long, ninety feet at the beam. Shp was constructed almost entirely of metal, as Nullaqua has no wood. Her three me­tallic hulls were kept constantly gleaming by the abrasive action of the Sea of Dust. She had four masts and a dizzy­ing number of sails: topsails, topgallant sails, fore-royals, mainsails, and mizzens, twenty sails in all. Her deck was covered by a kind of plastic processed from grease and crushed whalebone; otherwise, the pitiless Nullaquan sun would have made the deck too hot to stand on. The crew slept in airtight, filter-equipped whalehide tents, lashed to the deck through great iron rings and bolts.

Captain Desperandum slept in his cabin belowdecks at the stern; I slept near the bow in the kitchen, next door to the ship’s stores. Both compartments were shielded from the dust by electrostatic fields across the hatches. The fields were powered by a small generator located in the middle hull; it ran on whale oil.

There were twenty-five men aboard: myself, the cook; Captain Desperandum and his three mates, Flack, Grent, and Bogunheim; two coopers, two blacksmiths, our cabin boy, Meggle, and fifteen regular seamen. All but Calothrick were squat Nullaquans with hairy noses and a dreadful an­onymity of feature.

And then there was our lookout, the surgically altered alien woman, Dalusa. I will have much to say of her, later.