No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories

MY THING FRIDAY

Voice Journal of Greg Griffiths,

3rd Engineer on the Albert Einstein

out of the Greater Mars Orbital Station.

Day One:

Probably the 24th Feb 2198 Earth Standard, but I can’t be sure. The ship’s chronometer is bust—like everything else except me—and I don’t know how long I’ve been out of it. Judging by the hair on my face, my hunger, the bump on the back of my head and the thick blood scab that’s covering it, it could have been two or three days. Anyway and as far as I can tell it’s now morning on whichever day, which I’m going to call Day One…

What I remember:

We passed through the fringes of an old nebula; a cloud of gas that looked dead enough, but it seems there was some energy left in it after all: weird energy that didn’t register on instrumentation. Then the drive started acting up and quit entirely maybe four or five light-years later. When we dropped back into normal space I put on a suit, went out and for’ard to check the fuel ingestors. They were clogged with this gas that was almost liquid, and dust that stuck like glue; it couldn’t be converted into fuel and had hardened to a solid in the scoops…weird as hell, like I said. Ship’s Science Officer, Scot Gentry, said it could well be “proto-planetary slag”—whatever the hell that’s supposed to be!—and a total pain in the backside. And down in engineering we scratched our heads and tried to figure out some way to shift this shit.

Then the sub-light engines blew up and we saw that the dust was into everything. The anti-gravs were on the fritz but still working, however sporadically, and by some miracle of chance we were just a cough and a spit off a planet with water and an atmosphere: a couple trillion to one chance, according to Gentry. But by then, too, we knew we were way off course—light-years off course—because this proto-crap had got into the astronavigator, too.

As for the planet: it had continents, oceans, but there was no radio coming up at us, no sign of cities or intelligent life-forms. Well, if there had been, it would have been a first. The universe has been looking like a pretty lonely place for a long time now. And to me, right now, it looks lonelier than ever.

Coming in to make landfall the anti-gravs gave up the ghost…so much for a soft landing. Six thousand tons of metal with nothing holding us up, we fell from maybe a hundred feet in the air. Higher than that and I probably wouldn’t be recording this. I was in a sling in a gravity tube, trying to burn slag off the gyros, when this uncharted planet grabbed us; the sling’s shock absorbers bounced me around but saved my life.

As for the other crew members, all fifteen of my shipmates, they weren’t so lucky—

—Or maybe they were. It all depends on what this place has in store for me. But right now I have to fix my head, eat, give myself shots, then get all the bodies off the ship or the place won’t ever be liveable…

Day Two: (morning.)

Yesterday was a very strange day…and by the way, I think the days here are just an hour or two longer than Earth standard. I reckon I was right about coming to fairly early in the morning, because it seemed like one hell of a long strange day; but then again—considering what I was doing—it would.

I had started to move the bodies out of the ship.

No easy task, that. And not only for the obvious reasons. I cried a lot, for the obvious reasons. But with the old Albert E. lying at thirty degrees, and her (or his) once round hull split at all the major seams, buckled and now oblate, and leaking all kinds of corrosives, lubricants and like that…no, it was no easy task. Don’t know why I bothered, really, because I see now there’s no way I can live in the Albert E. Ship’s a death trap! Perhaps I should have left the bodies as they were, sealed them in as best I could right there where they died; the entire ship with all these bodies—my buddies—in it, like some kind of big metal memorial. Rust in peace…

But it’s way too late now, and anyway there’s lots of stuff I have to get out of there. Medicines and such; ship’s rations; a big old self-inflating habitat module from the emergency survival store; tools; stuff like that. A regular Robinson Crusoe, I be—or maybe a marooned Ben Gunn, eh, Jim lad? Oh, Ha-harr! But at least there’s no sign of pirates.

I thank God for my sense of humour. Just a few days ago on board the Albert E., why, I would crack them up so hard—they would laugh so hard—they’d tell me I’d be the death of them! Well, boys, it wasn’t me. Just a fucking big cloud of weird gas and dust, that’s all. But it cracked us up good and proper…

Later:

I managed to get more than half of them out of there before the sun went down, and I’ll get the rest tomorrow. But tonight will be the last night I’ll spend on board ship. It’s nightmarish on the Albert E. now. Tomorrow I’ll fix up the habitat I unloaded, get a generator working, power some batteries, set up a defensive perimeter like the book says. And whatever those things are I hear moving around out there in the dark—probably the same guys who were watching me from the forest while I worked—fuck ’em! I do have a reliable sidearm. Shouldn’t need to use it too much though; once they’ve had a taste of the electric perimeter—that’s assuming they’re the overly curious kind—they won’t be in too much of a hurry to come back for more.

As for tonight, I have to hope they’re not much interested in carrion, that’s all…

Day Three: (midday.)

I feel a lot better in myself, not so knocked about, no longer down. Well, down, naturally, but not all the way. I mean, hell, I’m alive! And just looking at the old Albert E. I really don’t know how. But the air is very good here; you can really suck it in. It’s fresh, sweet…unfiltered? Maybe it’s just that the air on the ship, always stale, is already starting to stink.

I got a generator working; got my habitat set up, electric perimeter and all. Now I’ll bring out all the ship’s rations I can find, and while I’m at it I may come across the two bodies I haven’t found yet. One of them is a dear pal of mine, Daniel Geisler. That will hit me hard. It’s all hitting hard, but I’m alive and that’s what matters. Where there’s life there’s hope, and all that shit…

I’ve been finding out something about the locals who I was listening to last night. I was in a makeshift hammock that I’d fixed up in an airlock; left the airlock open a crack, letting some of this good air in. Part way into the night I could hear movement out in the darkness. After an hour or so it got quiet, so it seems they sleep, too. Could be that night and sleep are universally synonymous. That would make sense…I think.

But how best to describe them? Now me, I’m not what you’d call an exobiologist, Jim, lad, just a grease monkey; but I’ll give it a try. From what I’ve seen so far, there appears to be three kinds of what is basically one and the same species. See what I mean about not being an exobiologist? Obviously they’re not the same species; and yet there’s this peculiar similarity about them that…well, they’re very odd, that’s all…

Anyway, let me get on.

There’s the flying kind: eight foot wing span, round-bodied and skinny-legged; like big, beakless, stupid-looking pale-pink robbins. They hang out in the topmost branches of the trees and eat what look like fist-sized yellow berries. Paradoxically and for all their size they appear to be pretty flimsy critters; no feathers, they’re more like bats or maybe flying squirrels than birds, and they leap and soar rather than fly. And when they’re floating between the sun and me I see right through their wings. But they’re not the only flying things. There are others of approximately the same size and design but more properly birdlike. And this other species—very definitely a separate, different species—they stay high in the sky, circling like buzzards. I kept an eye on these high-flyers because of what I was doing. I mean, I was laying out my dead shipmates, and buzzards and vultures are carnivores. On Earth they are, anyway…

Then there’s the landlubbers or earth-bound variety. These are bipedal, anthropoid, perhaps even mammalian or this world’s equivalent, though as yet I’ve seen no sign of tits or marriage tackle. Whatever, I reckon it’s probably these man-like things—this world’s intelligentsia?—that I heard bumping around in the darkness. But since they’re the most interesting of the bunch I’ll leave them till last, get back to them in a minute.

And finally there’s the other land variety, the hogs. Well, I’ll call them hogs for now, if only for want of a better name. They’re some four or five feet long, pale-pink like the soaring things and the bipeds, and they rustle about in the undergrowth at the fringes of the forest eating the golfball-sized seeds of the big yellow berries. But they, too, have their counterparts. Deeper in the woods, there are critters more properly like big, hairy black hogs that snort and keep well back in the shadows.

And there you have it. But the “Pinks”—as I’ve started to call all three varieties of these pale-pink creatures: the quadrupeds, bipeds, and flyers—it’s as if they were all cut from the same cloth. Despite the diversity of their design there’s a vague similarity about them; their drab, unappealing colour for one thing, and the same insubstantial sort of flimsiness or—I don’t know, wobbliness? Jellyness?—for another.

Fascinating really…if I was an exobiologist. But since I’m not they’re just something I’ll need to watch out for until I know for sure what’s what. Actually, I don’t feel intimidated by any of these critters. Not so far. Not by the Pinks, anyway.

More about the man-likes:

When I opened up the airlock this morning there was a bunch of them, maybe thirteen or fourteen, sitting in a circle around the remains of my shipmates. I’ve been laying my ex-friends out in their own little groups, their three main shipboard cliques, but all of them pretty close together with their feet in toward a common centre. Ended up forming a sort of three-leafed clover shape with four or five bodies to a leaf.

The aliens (yeah, it’s a cliche, I know, but what are these things if not aliens? They’re alien to me, anyway—though it’s true that on this world I’m the only real alien—but anyway:) the locals were sitting there nestling the heads of the dead in their laps. And I thought what the hell, maybe they’d spent the whole night like that! Well, whatever, that’s how it struck me.

So then, what were they doing? Wondering if these dead creatures were edible, maybe? Or were they simply trying to figure out what these things who fell from the sky were; these vaguely familiar beings, whose like they’d never known before? They did seem briefly, particularly, almost childishly interested in the difference between the Albert E.’s lone female crew member’s genitalia and the rest of the gang’s tackle, but that didn’t last. Which was fine because she—a disillusioned crew-cut exobiologist dike called Emma Schneider—wouldn’t have much liked it.

Anyway, there they were, these guys, like a bunch of solemn mourners with my old shipmates…

After I tossed down a spade and lowered a rope ladder, however, they stood up, backed off, and watched me from a distance as I came down and began to dig graves in this loamy soil. With so many holes to dig, even shallow ones, I knew to pace myself, take breaks, get things done in easy stages: a little preparatory digging, then search for usables in the ship, more digging, fix up my habitat, make another attempt at finding my two missing buddies, dig, set up my generator—and so on. And that’s pretty much how it’s been working out…

But as yet I haven’t actually described the man-likes.

Well, Jim, lad, here’s me recording this under my habitat’s awning, and while I speak I’m watching the locals do their peculiar thing. Or perhaps it’s not so peculiar and they’re not so very alien. Well, not as alien as I thought. Because it appears they understand death and revere the dead—even my dead—or so it would seem. But how can it be otherwise? I mean, how else to explain this?

They’ve brought these instruments from somewhere—“musical” instruments, if you can call them that—from wherever they dwell, I suppose. And if this isn’t some kind of lament they’re singing, some kind of dirge I’m hearing from their drums, bang-stones, rattle-pods and bamboo flutes, then I really don’t know what it is. And I think that the only thing that’s keeping them at a respectable distance from my dead ones…is me.

I’m looking at them through binoculars. Can’t tell the male of the species from the female; hell, I don’t even know if they have sexes as such! Amoeboid? I shouldn’t think so; that wobbly they’re not! But human-like? They are. Emphasis on “like”. They have two each of the things we have two of, er, with the exception of testicles, if they have males and if their balls aren’t on the inside. Oh, and also with the exception of breasts—if and et cetera, as previously conjectured.

Their eyes are watery-looking; not fishy, no, but uninspiringly pale, limpid and uniformly grey, large in their faces and forming triangles with their noses. As for those noses: they’re just paired black dots in approximately the right places. Their mouths are thin-lipped; their dull white teeth look fairly normal; their ears, are ears; and their shining black hair falls on their thin shoulders. Their hair is the most attractive—maybe even the only attractive—thing about them. They’re about five foot five inches tall, with slender, roughly pear-shaped bodies thick end down. They’ve got three fingers to a hand, three toes to a foot. But while their legs seem strong, giving them a flowing, gliding, maybe even graceful mobility, their arms are much too thin and look sort of boneless.

So then, that’s them, and I’m guessing they’re the dominant species. Certainly they’re head and shoulders above the rest of the fauna. And while I’m on about the rest of them:

Today I’ve seen several pink hogs doing their thing in the shrubbery at the forest’s edge. Totally harmless, I’d say, and I’m not at all worried by them. From back in the deeper undergrowth, however, I’ve heard the occasional snuffling, grunting and growling of the pink hogs’ cousins; their big, hairy black shapes trundling to and fro, but yet keeping a safe distance. Well good! And likewise the flying pinks in the treetops: I’ve seen them looking down at me but it doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand their cousins, the actual high-flying buzzards—if that’s what they are—well, there’s something really ominous about their unending circling. But so far, since I haven’t seen a one of them come down and land, I’m not too concerned.

Enough for now. I’ve had my break, eaten, brewed and drank a pot of coffee; now I’ll go back into the Albert E., see if I can find poor Daniel…

Later: (late afternoon, early evening.)

This is really amazing! It’s so hard to believe I’m not sure if even seeing is believing! It started when I was in the ship.

I’d found Scot Gentry’s body in his lab, crushed flat under everything that wasn’t tied down. Then, while I was digging him out, I thought to hear movement elsewhere in the vessel. I told myself it was just loose wreckage shifting, settling down. When it happened a second time, however, the short hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight! What the…? After all this time, three days or more, could it be that I wasn’t the only survivor after all, that someone else had lived through the wreck of the Albert E.? But there was only one someone else: my buddy Daniel Geisler! What would Dan’s condition be?

Hell, he could be dying even now!

The way I went scrambling then, I could have broken my neck a dozen and more times on those sloping, often buckled, crazily-angled decks; skidding and sliding, shouting myself hoarse, and pausing every now and then to hold my breath and listen, see if I was being answered. Finally I did hear something, coming from the direction of the airlock that I was using.

It was four of the man-like pinks. They must have followed me up the ladder I’d left dangling, and…and they’d found my good buddy Daniel. But he wasn’t alive, not with his head stove in and his back bent all the wrong way. And there they were, in the airlock, these four guys, easing Daniel into the sling that I’d fixed up and preparing to lower him to the ground.

Oh, really? And after they got him down, what else did they have planned for him? Advancing on them, I glared at them where they stood blinking back at me, with their skinny arms dangling and, as far as I could tell, no expressions whatsoever on their pink faces.

“All right, you weird fucks!” I yelled, lunging at them and waving my sidearm. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but—”

But one of them was pointing one of three skinny fingers at his own eyes, then at mine, finally out the airlock and down at the ground. It was like he was saying, “See for yourself.” They backed off as I came forward and looked out. And down there…well, even now it’s difficult to believe. Or maybe not. I mean, alien they may be—hell, they are—but that doesn’t mean they don’t have human-like emotions, routines, rituals, ceremonials. Like their cradling the dead, their dirges, and now this.

But now what—eh, Jim lad? Now the shallow graves that the other pinks were digging down there, that’s now what! The whole group, using my spade, scoops made from half-gourds, even their bare three-digit hands, to dig as neat a set of graves as you’d never wish to see right there in that soft, loose loam!

Well, what could I say or do after that? Nothing that they’d understand, for sure. So letting the four pinks get on with it, I went back for Gentry’s body. By the time I returned the sling was back in position and the four volunteers were out of there. They’d gone below and were working with the rest of the tribe, digging for all they were worth.

I might have liked to find a way to express my gratitude—to this quartet at least—but couldn’t see how to do it. These creatures looked so much of a muchness to me, there was no sure way to tell my four apart from the rest of them. Ah, well…

Day Four: (midday.)

I slept well last night; I suppose I was sort of exhausted. But I was also easier in my mind after letting the man-likes finish off burying the dead…well, except for Scot and Daniel. They wouldn’t bury those last two until they’d sat with them through the night, their heads in their laps. A kind of ritual—a wake of sorts, a vigil—that they go through with their dead. Also with mine, apparently. It isn’t a job I would have cared to do. After four or more days dead, Scot and Dan weren’t looking very pretty. They weren’t smelling too good either. Could be the man-like pinks do it to keep the buzzards and hogs from scavenging, which is something else I don’t much care to think about.

This morning, their yelping, rattling and piping woke me up just as they were finishing with filling in the last two graves. As I put up my awning I saw—just outside my habitat, outside the electric perimeter—one of the pinks sitting there watching me. Now I know I’ve said they don’t have much in the way of facial expressions, but this one was cocking its head first one way and then the other, and if anything looked curious as hell. I mean curious about me. He, she, or it kept watching me while I boiled water, shaved, made and drank coffee and ate a ship’s-rations facsimile homeworld breakfast.

I tossed the pink a sweet biscuit which it sniffed at, then carefully bit into, then got up, went unsteadily to the side of the clearing, leaned on a tree and threw up. Credit where credit’s due for perseverance, though, if for nothing else, because when it was done throwing up it came right on back and sat down again, watching me like before but just a shade less pink. Then when I set out to have a look around, explore the place, damned if he, she, it didn’t come gliding after, albeit at a discreet, respectful distance.

As for why I wanted to go walkabout: long before we discovered that the galaxy was a pretty empty place, someone wrote in the survival handbook that if you get stuck on a world and want to know if there are any higher civilizations, just take a walk along a coastline. Because if there is intelligent life, that’s where you’ll find its flotsam and jetsam. Doesn’t say a hell of a lot for intelligence, now does it? Anyway, ever since I clambered from the wreckage of the Albert E. I’ve been hearing this near-distant murmur. And no matter where you are, the sound of small waves breaking on a beach is unmistakeable.

I followed a man-like track through the woods until I came across a fresh-water stream, then followed the stream and track both for maybe a quarter mile…and there it was, this beautiful ocean: blue under an azure sky, turning turquoise where it lapped the white, sandy beach; gentle as a pond and smelling of salt and seaweed. All that was missing was the cry of seagulls. Well, no, that’s not all that was missing; there was no flotsam and jetsam, either. No ships on the horizon, no smoke rising in any direction, and no footprints in the sand except my own. But I did have my Man, Woman, Thing Friday, following dutifully behind me.

Sitting on a rock looking at all the emptiness, I told him, her, it: “You know something, you’re sort of indecent? Well you would be, if you had a dick or tits or something!” There was no answer, just those huge limpid eyes watching me, and that small pink head cocked on one side, displaying—or so I thought—a certain willingness to at least try to understand what I’d said…maybe. And because of that, on impulse, I took off my shirt and put it on Friday, who just stood there and let me. The pink being small, that big shirt would have covered its naughty bits easily—if there had been any to cover! Anyway, it made Friday look just that little bit more acceptable.

We walked perhaps half a mile along the beach, then turned and walked back. But as we approached the stream and the forest track, that was when I discovered that there was a fourth variety of pinks. And as if to complement the others—the bipeds, the quadruped grubbers in the woods, and the soaring aerials in the treetops—this time it was the swimmers, where else but in the sea?

These two dolphin-like pinks were hauling a third animal—for all the world a real dolphin, or this world’s equivalent—up from the deeper water into the shallows. The “real” dolphin was in a bad way, in fact on its way out; something big and, I have to assume, highly unpleasant had taken a very large chunk out of it. Almost cut in half, its plump body was gaping open, leaving a long string of guts trailing in the water behind it. I suppose that no matter where you are, if you have oceans you have sharks or things much like them. It did away with an idea I’d been tossing around that maybe later I would go for a swim. Reality was closing in on me again, and it was all pretty sick-making.

I moved closer, and Friday, oddly excited, came with me.

The ocean-going pinks didn’t seem concerned about our nearness; preoccupied with pushing the “real” dolphin up out of the water, they more or less ignored us and I was able to get close up and take a good look at them. First the fishy dolphin:

Even as I watched it the poor thing expired. It just lifted its bottle nose out of the water once, gave a choked little cry and flopped over on its side. It was mammalian, a female, slate-grey on its back, white on what was left of its belly. If I had seen it in a Sea-World on homeworld I would have thought to myself: dolphin, probably of a rare species.

As for the sea-pinks: if I had seen them in a Sea-World I’d have thought to myself, weird! From the waist up they were much the same as the bipeds, even to the extent of having their thin rubbery arms. Maybe in their upper bodies they were more streamlined than the land-dwelling variety, but that seemed to be the only difference. Oh, wait; they also had blowholes, in the back of their necks. From their middles down, however, they were all dolphin, the pink merging into grey. And I could see just looking at them that they weren’t stupid.

Meanwhile Friday had taken out a bamboo flute from a little bag on a string round his (let’s for the moment say his) waist, and had begun tootling away in a high-pitched register that was almost painful. And before I knew it a half-dozen man-likes had come down the track to join us on the beach. Keeping their distance from me—almost ignoring me—they hurried to the water’s edge and very carefully began to drag the dead dolphin creature up the beach into the shade at the rim of the forest. And while one of them sat cradling the dead thing’s head the rest of them set to work scooping out a grave. Astonishing! But—

—Well, I thought, don’t people have this special affinity with dolphins back on Earth? Sure they do. And as Friday and me headed back along the forest track toward the Albert E. and the clearing, already I could hear the mournful singing, the rattling and banging of the pink burial party on the beach. What was more, back at the wreck, I saw that they’d even been decorating the graves of my shipmates, putting little markers on them with various identifying squiggles.

Damn, but these guys revere the dead!

Later:

This afternoon I went back into the ship searching for anything that might make my life here just that little bit more comfortable, more familiar, and—what the hell—homeworldly? I took a small stack of Daniel’s girlie magazines that I’d been coveting for God knows how many light-years, a photograph album with pictures of some ex-girlfriends of mine, some busted radio components I might try tinkering with, and various bits and pieces like that. Friday climbed up there with me, then went exploring on his own…

Later:

It’s evening now and raining. Even though the stream looks pure enough, I’m using my awning to collect the rain. Friday appears pretty fixated with me. He’s taken to me like a stray dog. So I switched off the perimeter and let him in out of the rain. He’s sitting there in one corner, not doing much of anything. When I ate I didn’t offer him any; as we’ve seen, ship’s rations don’t much agree with him.

Speaking of rations, what I didn’t realize till now is that most of the stuff I took from the Albert E.’s galley was damaged in the crash. I’ve preserved what I could but at least seventy-five per cent of it is wasted. I’ll burn it tomorrow.

Which means, of course, that some time in the not too distant future I’ll have to start eating local. Maybe I should keep an eye on the pinks, see what they eat. Or maybe not. If Friday can’t eat my stuff, it seems unlikely that I can eat his.

It’s all very worrying…

Day Five: (mid-morning.)

When I woke up this morning I caught Friday going through Dan’s soft porn mags. My old photograph album was lying open, too, so it looks like Friday’s curiosity knows no bounds! Alas, he also appears to be disrespectful of my personal property. Thoroughly PO’d with him, without really knowing why (I suppose I was in a bad mood,) l switched off the perimeter and shooed him the hell out of here, then went walkabout on my own. The last time I saw him he looked sort of down in the mouth—about as far down as a pink is able to look, from what I’ve seen of them so far—as he went drifting off in the general direction of the Albert E.

Something entirely different:

I’ve discovered that the man-likes go hunting, with spears. I saw a bunch keeping very low and quiet, sneaking off into the thick of the forest. There was a second bunch, too, with half a dozen members who were watching me just a little too closely as I moved around the clearing. It seemed to me they were interested in my interest in these graves I‘ve been discovering. I can tell that these mounds in the forest’s fringing undergrowth are graves because of the markers on them. But not all of them have markers, only the more recent ones, which are easily identified by the freshly turned earth. I don’t know if that’s of any real significance.

Anyway, this second party of hunters kept looking at me, at each other, and at their spears, as if wondering if they should—or if they dare—have a go at me! Maybe they didn’t like me looking at the graves because I wasn’t showing sufficient reverence or something; I don’t know, can’t say. But it was as I was examining the more recent graves that these hunter pinks became especially disturbed. Then, as I knelt to examine a thick-stemmed cactus or succulent that was sprouting in a marked mound—a fleshy, sickly-looking green thing with a pinkish head, something like a bulbous great asparagus spear—that was when the hunters displayed the most anxiety, even to the extent of looking more than a little hostile.

However, whatever might have happened next was averted when the first party of hunters came bursting from the forest in hot pursuit of a hairy black hog who was also in pursuit of a small pink grubber. The big black was rampant so I could only suppose that the small pink was on heat; but however that might be, the hunters were only interested in the black. And again I supposed they’d been using the little pink as bait. Well, right or wrong in that respect, at least I now knew what they had been hunting and could reasonably assume that this was what they ate—that it was one of their staples, anyway.

In the confusion, as the big horny hog tore round the clearing after the small scurrying pink, I tried to make it back to my habitat. Bad idea. In rapid succession the hog took three or four long thin spears in his back and flanks, lost all interest in the small pink grubber and went totally crazy! Squealing and trying to gore everything in sight, with both parties of hunter pinks now getting in their best shots as they glided after him, he turned, saw me, came slavering and snorting straight at me!

Of course I shot him; my bolt stopped him dead, exploded in his skull, sent blood and brains flying. He immediately bit the dust, twitched once or twice, and lay still…following which there was total, motionless silence; so that even with the hunters all over the place, they’d become so frozen into immobility that the clearing looked like nothing so much as an alien still-life!

And that’s the way it stayed, with nobody moving so much as a muscle until I broke the spell, holstered my weapon, and made my way stiff-legged and head high right on back to my habitat.

Friday was already in there, sitting in his corner on a box of old clothes he’d rescued from the Albert E. Probably figured he was doing me a favour bringing stuff out of there. Anyway, I was glad to see he was still my pal, and maybe even my only pal in these parts now.

Looking out from under my awning, I watched the end of this business with the hog. Finding their mobility again, several of the hunters hoisted the dead tusker and carried their trophy in a circle round the clearing in an odd, paradoxically muted celebratory procession. At least I’m supposing that’s what it was. But when they passed out of sight, that was the end of that and I haven’t seen the hog since. But I imagine there’ll be a merry old feast in the clearing tonight.

Later:

Toward evening I ventured out again. There was no sign of festive preparations, no fires, nothing. Come to think of it, I’ve never yet seen a fire. Maybe they don’t have fire. Me, I can’t say I fancy raw hog!

Anyway, there was no sign of the spearsmen, and the handful of pinks who were out and about seemed as bland and harmless as ever; they paid little or no attention to me. But in any case I wasn’t out too long before it started in to rain again, so that was the end of tonight’s excursion.

Friday is already asleep (I think) on a layer of old clothing in his corner. Not a bad idea.

So it’s goodnight from me, Jim lad…

Day Six: (mid-morning.)

Didn’t sleep too good and it’s left me grumpy. Late last night the pinks were at it again, howling, thumping and rattling, and that includes Friday. I woke up (very briefly) to find him gone and my defensive perimeter switched off—the little pink nuisance! I got up long enough to switch it on again then went back to sleep. But I must find a way to get through to him, warn him against doing that. It’s either that or simply ban him from the habitat altogether.

Everything tastes lousy this morning, even the coffee. Must be the water: it’s too clean, too sweet! My poor old taste buds are far more accustomed to the recycled H₂O aboard the Albert E. Maybe I should climb up there one last time and drain off whatever’s left in the system. Also, I should look for a remote for my defensive perimeter switch; the habitat didn’t have one.

Actually, there are several items in the handbook that the habitat doesn’t have: inexcusable deficiencies! Some dumb QM’s assistant storeman on the Greater Mars Orbital should have his ass kicked out of an airlock!

As for last night’s ceremonial rowdyism:

There’s a new grave under the low vegetation at the rim of the clearing. I reckon it’s the hog. Having eaten the thing—or at least the parts they wanted—the pinks must have buried whatever was left. So their rituals extend even to their prey. This is all conjecture, of course; but again, as with the dolphin, I can’t find this practice altogether strange. I seem to remember reading somewhere that many primitive tribes of Earth had a similar attitude toward Ma Nature’s creatures: an understanding, appreciation and respect for the animals they relied upon for food and clothing.

Later:

I’ve managed to fix up a remote from some of the electrical kit I took from the Albert E. Now I can switch on my defensive perimeter from outside. Not that the man-likes have been intrusive—well, except for my man Friday—but I like to think that my few personal possessions are secure, and that I’m retaining at least a semblance of privacy…

Today I went fishing with a bamboo pole and line I managed to fix up. Friday went with me, showed me the grubs in the sand that I could use as bait. I brought in an eight-inch crab-thing that Friday danced away from. It had an awful lot of legs and a nasty stinger, so I flipped it back into the sea. The fish that I caught were all small and eel-like, but they taste fine fried and make a welcome change from ship’s rations. I offered one to Friday, which he didn’t hesitate to accept and eat. So it seems these small fish are another pink staple.

Later: (evening.)

I had a sleep, woke up in the afternoon feeling much refreshed, and went walkabout with Friday. We chose to walk a forest trail I never used before; Friday seemed okay with it so I assumed it was safe enough. When we passed a group of pinks gathering root vegetables, I paused to point at a small pile of these purplish carrot-like things and raise a questioning eyebrow. Friday must have understood the look; he pointed to his mouth and made chewing motions. Going to the pile, he even helped himself to three of the carrots. None of the gatherers seemed to mind. So I have to assume that these tubers are yet another pink staple.

Then, because it was getting late, we headed for home. But, did I say home? I must be going native!

Back at the habitat as we were about to enter, I witnessed something new. Or if not exactly new, different. First off, as I went to use the remote to cancel the electrical perimeter, I noticed Friday looking up into the sky above the clearing. And Friday wasn’t the only one. As if suddenly aware of some imminent occurrence, all the other man-likes were sneaking back into the shadows to hide under the fringing foliage. Several of them had taken up spears from somewhere or other, and they were all peering up into the sky.

I went into the habitat with Friday, and we both looked out from under the awning. At first I couldn’t see anything of interest. But then, on a level with the highest of the treetops, I saw a small shape drifting aimlessly to and fro. It was a young aerial pink; (I immediately thought of it as a fledgling, which if it had any feathers I suppose it would have been.) Whatever, it was a pink flyer getting nowhere fast, looking all confused and lost up there.

Then, much higher overhead, I spotted something else. Spiralling down from the dusky indigo sky there came a black speck, faint at first but rapidly increasing in size. Its wings—real wings this time—gradually folded back, becoming streamlined, until in the last moment the hawk-buzzard-vulture dropped like a stone and stooped on its prey…and itself became the prey!

In the instant before it could make deadly contact with the young floater, a great flock of adult aerials launched themselves from the high canopy, converged on the buzzard and slammed into it from all sides. Squawking its pain, winded and flapping a broken wing, the thing tumbled into the clearing. Even before it hit the ground there was a spear through its neck and it had stopped complaining. And up in the treetops, the aerial ambushers were already drifting back to their various roosts.

Now, if I hadn’t witnessed this event with my own eyes, I’d never have believed that the adult flyers could move so fucking fast and with such deadly intent! Not only that, but to my mind the incident formed a perfect parallel with what had happened to the black hog: both had been examples of deliberate entrapment. And I wasn’t in the least surprised as night came on once again to hear the mournful ceremonial wailing, rattling, thumping and piping of the man-likes…

Another staple? Possibly. Another grave in the morning? I’d bet my shirt on it—if I hadn’t already given it to Friday…

Day Nine: (midday.)

I’m getting a bit lax with this. But the less I have to do, the more I feel like doing nothing! The last two days I’ve spent my time on the beach fishing, dozing, getting myself a tan that my old shipmates would have killed for. It’s alarming how pasty we used to get in space, keeping away from naked sun and starlight and all the gamma radiation. But this is a friendly sun and I’m protected by atmosphere. Friday’s skin must be a lot more fragile than mine; he made himself a shelter from spiky palm fronds and spent most of his time in the shade.

Then again, he has been looking kind of droopy just lately, all shivery and sweaty. Since my human routines, activities and such aren’t naturally his, I think it’s possible that Friday’s been spending too much time in my company and that it’s beginning to tell on him. I find I can’t just shoo him off, though, because now it seems I’ve grown accustomed to his face. (Ugh!)

Day Twelve: (early to mid-morning.)

For breakfast I sliced and fried up some of the purple carrots that Friday has been bringing in for me. Wary at first, I took just a single small bite. Not at all bad, they taste something like a cross between chilli peppers and green onions; but like an Indian curry, they do cause internal heat and lots of sweating. Maybe Friday has been eating too many of them, because he gets sweatier day by day! Then again, I’ve seen quite a few of the man-likes with the same condition: their skin glistens and moisture drips from their long-nailed fingers, especially when they cradle the dead before burial.

And speaking of the dead:

Just an hour or so ago, a hunting party of five pinks went out into the forest. In a little while they were back, four of them carrying the fifth between them. He’d been torn up pretty badly—gutted in fact, I expect by a black hog—and he died right here in the clearing. His hunter buddies at once took up his body again, headed off down one of the tracks with it, and the regulation party of mourners and “musicians” went trooping after. So they obviously have a special burial place for their own kind somewhere in the woodland…

Later: (towards noon.)

Friday’s veggies have given me bad indigestion. Maybe I should have left them alone, but I was trying to show my appreciation of his generosity. Anyway, since I know I’ll have to start living on local stuff sooner or later, it probably makes sense to start eking out my dwindling stock of ship’s rations right now with anything I can forage—or whatever Friday can forage for me.

Later: (mid-afternoon.)

Midday, after Friday went off on his own somewhere, I took the opportunity to sneak into the forest along the same track taken by the man-like burial party. This was after they had returned, because I didn’t want them to get the idea that I was spying on them, which I was. Maybe a mile along the track I chanced upon their village and discovered something weird and wonderful!

For some time I had been wondering about biped society: did they have a communal place—I mean other than the clearing—where they lived and brought up their kids?…stuff like that. Because until now I hadn’t seen any man-like children. Only now I had found just such a place. But it wasn’t only man-like kids that I saw.

The track ended at a limestone cliff that went up sheer for perhaps eighty, ninety feet. And there were ladders, ledges and even tottery-looking balconies fronting the hollowed-out caves. The cliff face was literally honeycombed with these troglodyte dwellings. And that was it; the biped pinks were cave-dwellers. But that wasn’t what was weird and wonderful.

I’ve told how these pink species seem to parallel the various types you might more reasonably expect to find on a burgeoning world: feathered birds, wild forest tuskers, even dolphins. Now I saw that there was something more to it than that, though exactly what I couldn’t say. But the extensive cleared space at the foot of the cliffs was like a pinks playground watched over by a handful of adults, and they weren’t just looking after the man-like kids who were playing there. No, for there were little pink hogs running around, too, also being cared for. And on the lower ledges, and in the many creepers climbing the cliff face, that’s where gatherings of infant pink floaters roosted. What’s more, in a freshwater pool fed by a gentle waterfall, I thought I could even make out a young pink dolphin practicing “walking” on his tail! The whole place was a pinks kindergarten, but for all pink species, not just man-likes! And hiding behind a tree, suddenly I knew my being there wasn’t in order and my presence wouldn’t be appreciated.

Then, hurrying back toward the clearing, I glimpsed hunters heading my way and moved quickly, quietly aside into the forest shade. The hunting party passed me by; but back there under the trees I had found another pink graveyard—the pink graveyard, the graveyard of the man-likes! All of the graves had the weird asparagus plants growing out of them; some with as many as four spears, each as thick as my forearm and from eighteen inches to two feet tall, with bulbous tips as big as a clenched fist. But there were also some with collapsed stems and bulbs with empty, shattered husks. And once again I experienced that sensation of trespassing, of feeling that I really shouldn’t be there.

How did I know this was the biped graveyard? Because every plot was well tended and marked with unmistakable, stylized pictures of man-likes drawn on papery bark, that’s how. And one of the graves—a mound without the weird plants—was brand new and the soil still wet!

I would have left at once but the strangest thing happened. One of the fattest of several asparagus stems on an older grave had started quivering, and the leaves or petals on the big bulb at its tip were peeling back on themselves and leaking a gluey liquid. Not only that, but something was wriggling in there—something pink!

That was enough and I got the hell out of there.

Luck was with me; I got back to the clearing and my habitat without encountering any more pinks, and Friday was waiting for me with a big bunch of those purple carrots. This time, though, I haven’t accepted them. Actually, I’ve only just realized that I’ve been feeling a little sick and dizzy ever since breakfast.

Day Fourteen: (I think…or maybe Fifteen?)

God, I’m not at all well. And what happened this morning hasn’t much helped the way I feel.

I was dreaming. I was with this woman and it was just about to turn into a wetty. We were in bed and I was groping her: one hand on her backside, the other on her breasts, while the, er, best of me searched for the way in; but damned if I could find it! And even for a guy who has spent most of his time in space, that wasn’t at all like me. I mean, it simply wasn’t there! But anyway, as I went to kiss her she breathed on me, causing me to recoil from her strange, sweet breath—and likewise from the dream.

I woke up—came starting awake—and saw these big limpid, alien eyes staring straight into mine! It was Friday, under the sheet with me, and both of us were sweaty as hell!

What the screaming fuck? He (shit, maybe I should have been calling Friday “she” all this time!) was holding my face in its wet, three-fingered hands, its body trembling with some kind of weird passion. I jerked back, kicked it out of there and was on my feet before it could get up from the dirt floor. But finally it did, and there it stood in a padded bra, frilly knickers and a lacy chemise that could only have belonged to Emma Schneider. And I knew it was so because Friday’s mouth was a ghastly crimson gash that was thickly layered with the Albert E.’s ex-exobiologist’s fucking hideous lip gloss!

Jesus H. Christ!

And out he, she, it went; out of my habitat, out beyond the defensive security perimeter, and out of what’s left of my life in this fucking place for good. And I hurled the February, 2196 issue of Lewd Lustin’ Lovers it had left lying open on my folding card-table right out there into the clearing after it! But even after I’d washed myself top to toe, still I felt like I’d been dipped in dog dirt, and here it is noon and I still do…

Later: (mid-afternoon.)

I went down to where a stream joins the ocean to swim in a pool there. I’m still not a hundred percent, crapping like a volcano blowing off, and throwing up purple, but at least my skin feels clean again.

When I was in the water I thought I saw Friday lurking near the rocks where I left my pants, socks and shoes, but he wasn’t there when I came out and dried off. Back in the habitat when I went to switch on the perimeter I couldn’t find my remote…I could have sworn it was in my pants pocket. And that’s not all; the perimeter’s wiring had been yanked out of the generator’s connection box. It’s not impossible that Friday did it accidentally when I tossed him out of bed, but it’s also possible he’s been in here sabotaging stuff. When I’m feeling better I’ll fix things up again, try to knock together a new remote.

But that’s for when I’m feeling better. Right now I’m feeling lousy, so I’m going to have to get my head down…rest and recuperation, Jim lad.

Later: (early evening.)

Went back to the old Albert E. I was going to climb the ladder, go looking for tools, electrical gear, and like that. No way, I was too weak. Made four rungs and had to come down again before I fell.

Down there under the ship’s crumpled hull, it suddenly occurred to me maybe I should pay my respects to the crew, which I haven’t been doing for a while now. And what do you know, these slimy shoots were gradually uncoiling, standing up out of their graves.

Dizzy and staggering about like I was falling-down drunk, I went to kick the things flat, crush, destroy and…and murder them? But a bunch of bipeds got a hold of me, guiding and half-carrying me back to my habitat.

I thought I saw Friday standing there, just watching all of this—the little pink fairy! But hell, it could have been any one of them. No, I reckon it was him. And now I can’t help wondering if maybe he’s poisoned me—and if so, was it deliberate?

My temperature’s way up…I’m sweaty and dizzy as all get out…puking all over the place but bringing nothing up. What the hell? Is this the end of it?

Don’t know what day it is but it feels like morning.

They’ve carried me out into the clearing, and I think it’s Friday who’s cradling my head. He doesn’t seem to mind me talking to my personal log. He’s seen me do it often enough before; probably thinks it’s some kind of ritual, which in a way it is or has become. Well, and we all have our rituals—right, Jim lad?

I’m no longer sweating; in fact I feel sort of dry, almost brittle. But my mind is very clear now and I think I’ve figured it out. Something of it, anyway. It’s that thing called evolution. If I was an exobiologist like Emma Schneider I might have worked it out earlier; but no, I’m just a grease monkey.

Evolution, yes. We human beings became the Earth’s dominant species by evolving. We walked upon the dirt—the earth under our feet, terra firma—but wanted a whole lot more. What about the winds above the earth, and the vast waters that flowed over it? So we made machines, vessels to sail on the seas and in the skies; finally we even built space-ships, to journey beyond the skies. So you might say that in a way we achieved our dominance mechanically: that old opposing thumb-theory-thing.

Well, the pinks are also becoming dominant, on their world as we did on Earth. Except so far, with them, it’s all biological. For the time being they don’t have much need for machines; they’re conquering the skies, seas, and forests without mechanical devices, by utilizing and changing the DNA of the various species that live in those environments and then by inhabiting them themselves.

On Earth we took out the predators, who were our competitors, by killing them off. Well, the pinks are doing it, too—except they are doing it by becoming them! It explains why the vultures stay way high in the sky and why the black hogs stick mainly to the deeper woods—because having evolved alongside the pinks they’re learning to keep their distance. As I should have kept mine…

I must have passed out but now I’m back. Probably for the last time, Jim lad.

Friday is still cradling my head, but his sweating has become something else. The pinks are unisexual, I’m pretty sure of that now. I can’t any longer feel my body, my limbs…can only just speak or whisper, and I’m able to turn my head a few inches but that’s all. My eyes are still working, however, and from time to time as Friday relaxes his efforts (fuck it, I’ve gone and made him a “he” again!) I can see it’s his time. What time? Well see, he’s not sweating any more, he’s ovulating!

I see these silvery droplets with their tadpole cores issuing drip by drip from beneath the steeply arched nails on his central digits, his ovipositors. And now he sticks his fingers deeply into my neck. I can barely feel it, for which I’m truly, truly glad, Jim lad.

Who knows, maybe me and my old Albert E. shipmates—or I should say our pink descendants somewhere down the line—maybe they’ll get back out into space again. Because it surely has to follow that whatever issues from us will be a lot more man-like than these man-likes.

And that, I think, is all for now, probably forever. Uh-oh! Maybe we should make that definitely forever, because here come the musicians…