The Spheres of Heaven

11: THE ARRIVAL OF THE BUBBLE PEOPLE

Bony wanted to hurry without seeming to. The strange triple-winged craft had not reappeared, but it might at any moment and they were very visible out on the open rock. He didn’t want to frighten Liddy by telling her of possible danger that might never materialize, and the only other reason for haste that he could offer was the blue sun, sinking fast toward the horizon as they came within sight of the sea.

He pointed ahead. “See the way it seems to be dropping straight down toward the water? Dusk won’t last long here. We must have landed close to the equator of Limbo. Better hurry.”

He did not mention the other thing that puzzled him. The surface gravity of Limbo was low. That should mean that the planet was small, about the size of Earth’s Moon. But then the horizon should be close, as the planet curved away from them.

It wasn’t. His guess was that the horizon was as far away here as on Earth. What did it mean, if you had a planet the size of Earth with a gravity like that of the Moon? The obvious answer was that the density was small. How small? Bony couldn’t do the calculation in his head, but he vowed to pass it on to the ship’s computer when they got back on board.

His attention was on the setting sun, the sky which had turned from violet-blue to green, and the far-off horizon. It was Liddy, hurrying down the pebbled shore, who stopped abruptly and said, “What’s that ?”

She was pointing to their right, at ninety degrees to the sun. The arc of a dark circle loomed over the horizon. Bony felt the satisfaction of a question answered.

“It’s a moon. So Limbo has one — at least one.” Bony held his hand out at arm’s length, measuring the arc between his fingers. Everything looked big close to the horizon, but Bony estimated that if the full circle were visible it would stretch five degrees across the sky. Earth’s Moon was only a tenth of that. “It’s huge,” he went on, “or else it’s very close.”

They had stopped walking and stood about twenty meters from the placid sea. Bony felt divided urges — to watch the moon rise and study it, or to get safely back to the Mood Indigo .

While he was trying to make up his mind, Liddy spoke again. “If that’s a moon, shouldn’t it either be rising or setting? It’s not doing either. And it doesn’t look like a moon to me. I can see a funny sort of pattern on it. Can’t you?”

Now that it was pointed out to him, he could. The circular arc displayed a slow dilation and contraction, like the pupil of a vast eye. He could see moving color patterns, fringes of green and orange and yellow and blue. And Liddy was absolutely right; the object, whatever it was, was not moving relative to the horizon. But surely, if it had been there when first they left the ship and rose to the surface, they would have noticed it.

“Look below the water,” Liddy cried. “You can see it there, too.”

The circle didn’t end at the waterline. The same pattern of expansion and contraction, much fainter, showed underneath. As the sun dipped toward the horizon and the light became less intense, you could pick out part of the circle even under water. It seemed to have its own source of illumination. And right between the two, at the surface, a narrow band of steam or white smoke created a line of brightness. The line rippled and shimmered as though it was the site of intense turbulence, a furious mixing and blurring of air and water.

“What is it?” Liddy asked. And Bony — Mister Know-it-all himself, who prided himself on having answers for everything — couldn’t even offer a guess.

“I don’t know.” He made a decision. Despite its apparently peaceful appearance, Limbo had more potential dangers than he could imagine. “We can talk about what we’ve seen when we’re back inside the ship. Come on, Liddy. Suits closed.”

He led the way into the water, over-inflating the suit as he went to make sure that it would float. The unfamiliar cramped feeling around his belly and chest was proof that the pressure was increasing. He turned to Liddy, now an overstuffed roly-poly figure who nodded to him behind her visor. He turned on his suit thrustors at a low level, and side by side they coasted out to where the beacon still emitted its steady call.

As they went he became increasingly pleased that they had left the shore when they did. From this angle the sun was even lower in the sky. The sea was calm, but submerged in water up to his neck he found visibility increasingly difficult because of reflected glints on the surface. Without the directional radio feed from the beacon they would never make visual contact.

And then there was a new worry. Although the sea was calm he could feel the pull of a current. It was urging them in the direction of the rainbow eye.

“Can you feel that?”

“The current. Bony, it’s getting stronger.”

“I know. Angle your thrustors and give them higher power. Let air out of your suit. Don’t worry if we lose radio contact when we go under. We should be close enough now to see the ship. Look down as you go.”

No point in mentioning his own worry, that with the sun setting its light would no longer penetrate all the way to the seabed. Bony released excess air, switched the thrust of his suit to high level, and drove down into blue-green water. He could sense the pull of the current, weaker now, and he could make out the shape of Liddy’s suit a few meters ahead of him. He could not see any sign of the Mood Indigo .

Unexpectedly, Liddy veered off to the right. Her eyes were exceptionally sharp, he knew that. Maybe she had caught sight of the ship and was heading in that direction. In any case, he didn’t want to lose contact. Bony changed the angle of his own drive thrustors and dived to catch up.

He was looking for the ship, but what he finally saw was a faint blur of light. He swore at his own stupidity. Of course that’s what they would see, the ship’s internal lights shining out of the ports. Friday Indigo wouldn’t be sitting in darkness. The light became steadily brighter, and finally Bony could make out its source, the bulbous, bottom-heavy shape sitting quietly on the sea floor. He had never in his life expected to be so pleased at the prospect of Friday Indigo’s company. He came up behind Liddy and watched as she went under the airlock and up to its open hatch. He took half a minute more, reeling in the surface beacon and its connecting line. He had already worried that it might have been noticed by whatever or whoever flew that strange tri-lobe aircraft through the air of Limbo. Then he joined Liddy, heaved himself into the lock, and sat panting on the edge of the hatch. It was good to be there, but he wouldn’t feel fully safe until the lock had cycled and he was once more inside the ship with both outer and inner hatches closed.

Friday Indigo was waiting for them as they emerged into the cabin of the ship — but he didn’t wait long. Bony could tell that the captain was angry or nervous because his mouth was twitching. Bony hardly had his helmet open before Friday Indigo was in his face, shouting, “For God’s sake, Rombelle, do you realize how long you’ve been gone? Hours and hours, without one damned signal back to me. You’d better have an explanation. And it had better be a lot more than you were just farting around on the surface up there.”

“It was.” Bony felt energy going out of him, like the extra air bleeding out of his suit. With his helmet still on his head and the body unit of his suit unopened he flopped down onto a drive housing. “I’m going to tell you what we saw. I’m not going to try to explain it.”

“You’ll do what I tell you to do. I don’t pay you to be a robot or a parrot.”

“I don’t trust my own judgment, sir, that’s why I don’t want to guess at explanations. I’ve been wrong about so many things about this planet. I’ll give you an example. We found land.”

“That’s great!”

“I thought so — at first. It’s just a few kilometers from here, bare black rock with no sign of life. So I concluded there must be no land life, that plants and animals hadn’t emerged from the sea yet. Then we saw something flying, and I decided that I’d been wrong. I couldn’t imagine a flying form emerging directly from a sea-life form.”

“Then you weren’t thinking straight. Haven’t you heard of flying fish?”

“I thought of that — later. But it didn’t matter, because this was nothing like a fish, and we realized that it wasn’t a bird or an animal, either. It was some kind of aircraft. But it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“God damn it!” Indigo’s dark brows lowered into a frown and he thumped the cabin wall with his open palm. “That’s terrible news. It means we don’t have this place to ourselves. We’ve been beaten to it. One of the Stellar Group expeditions came through alive.”

“I’d love to think you’re right, sir, but I don’t believe you are. The flying machine wasn’t like any aircraft or spacecraft in the solar system, but it also wasn’t like anything else I ever saw or heard of. Like nothing inside the whole Perimeter.”

To Bony, that was bad news. Friday Indigo obviously didn’t agree. He was grinning hugely. “If you’re right, we’ve got it made. Can’t you see it? A new planet, a new intelligent species, new technology like nothing you’ve ever seen. And nobody but us knows a thing about it! We’ll go up there, talk to whoever runs the flying machine — this ship has the best universal translator that you can buy — and go home with a negotiation position you wouldn’t believe.”

“If we can get home. That’s another thing. There may be a way. As we were coming back, Liddy and I saw something that we feel sure wasn’t there when we left the sea to take a look ashore.”

As Bony stripped off his suit he described the rainbow-hued arc. It was difficult to find words for something so unfamiliar, the partial circle with its darker and poorly defined extension under the water.

“When we saw it,” he said, “I couldn’t think what it might be. But as I sat puffing and panting on the lock hatch, I had an idea. The thing looks like a circle, but actually it must be a spherical region. I believe that it’s a Link access point — the same one we came through to get here.”

“Nonsense.” Friday Indigo glared at Bony. “You can’t possibly have a Link access point in water.”

“We’ve never seen one before, I know that. But we did get here somehow, and we have no other candidates. If this is one, it isn’t open always. It wasn’t there earlier today. But if it’s a Link access point and we can get the Mood into the right place at the right time, we can go home.”

“Go home?!” Indigo was infuriated. “You talk of going home — when we haven’t done a single thing that we came here to do. I want to find out all about this planet! I want to know everything here that’s valuable! You saw just a tiny bit, as much as you could walk to in a couple of hours, and already you talk of leaving! Well, forget that idea. It’s too late tonight, but tomorrow when it’s light we’ll head outside again and make another trip to land. This time we’ll be better organized, and we’ll take plenty of instruments. And before we’re done with this damned place, I’ll know it inside out. I’m going to find that flying vehicle you saw. I’m going to take a close-up look at it. Maybe I’ll even take it back with me.” Indigo was stamping up and down the cabin. “Rombelle, you’re a fool. You just don’t get it. This place, Limbo or whatever you want to call it, is opportunity .”

Bony stared at the captain. It was the recklessness of ignorance, the confidence of a man who had always been able to buy himself out of trouble. How did you persuade a rich idiot like Friday Indigo that the biggest opportunity a new world offered was often the chance to be killed in unpleasant ways?

“It’s not just the land area,” Liddy said quietly, before Bony could find a tactful way of phrasing what was on his mind.

It was the first time she had spoken since she and Bony had entered the ship, and Indigo at once made a dismissive gesture of his hand. “Keep out of this. You weren’t brought along on this trip to think, so shut up.”

“I feel sure you’ll want to hear this, Friday.”

“It had better be good, girl, or you’re in real trouble.”

“I don’t know if it’s good or not; but it’s important.” Liddy turned to Bony. “When we left the surface and dived underwater to look for the ship, did you see anything unusual?”

Bony had seen very little. The swirl of blue-green past his visor, a stream of air bubbles from Liddy’s suit. He shook his head.

“Well, I did.” She paused, and this time Friday Indigo waited. “We were diving, but I wasn’t sure where the Mood might be, so I was trying to keep an eye open in all directions. Then I saw a light under the water. For a moment I felt sure that it came from this ship — I mean, what else could it be? — and I was ready to turn in that direction. But it didn’t look right. It wasn’t just a light or two, like our lights shining through the ports. It was more like a column of lights, strung out in a straight line. It seemed like they pointed at something. I followed the line of them with my eye. I saw the lights of the Mood Indigo, and then the ship itself sitting on the seabed. And I turned to head in this direction, and Bony and I came aboard.”

Indigo was silent for a moment, then he said to Bony, “Rombelle, did you see any of this?”

“Nothing.” And, at Friday Indigo’s contemptuous snort, “But I don’t see nearly as well as Liddy, under water or above it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Indigo said grudgingly. “She’s got great eyesight, I’ll grant you that. But a line of lights, under water? Give me a break.”

Bony turned again to Liddy. “Can you tell us where the thing you saw was, relative to where we are now?”

“I think it was in that direction.” She pointed to one side of the cabin. The three of them went to the port and crowded around it.

“Do you see anything?” Indigo asked. “I don’t.”

“Nor do I.” Bony turned to Liddy. “How about you?”

“Nothing.”

“So you imagined things,” Friday Indigo said. “I warned you not to waste our time. Don’t try thinking, Liddy, it doesn’t suit you. I brought you along for your body, not your brains.”

“Now you wait a minute.” Bony felt his head ready to explode. He was going to hit Indigo unless he could find a distraction. “There might be something there. It’s difficult to see outside when the cabin lights are on. Suppose we turn them off.”

“Suppose we do. We’ll still see nothing.” But Indigo went across to the console, and a moment later the cabin lights dimmed.

“Just as I expected,” Indigo said in the darkness. “Pure imagination. You and your damn lights, Liddy. You didn’t see …” His voice faded.

The sun had set, and its light no longer diffused down from above. The Mood Indigo sat in a silent, stygian gloom. But far away, so faint that one moment it seemed to be there and in the next the eye had lost it, a tiny splinter of light shone wanly through the green water.

“There it is,” Bony said breathlessly. “Liddy, you said you saw a column of lights.”

“That’s what it looked like from above. But they were all pointing in this direction, so from here they line up. I can still make out about a dozen of them, only not so clearly.”

They were silent for a long time, peering into darkness, until Liddy added, “I can’t be sure. But I think they’re moving. Yes, they are.”

Bony stared until his eyes felt ready to pop out of his skull. It was no good. To him, it was still a single blur of light. Indigo must have been in the same situation, because he said quietly and without skepticism, “Moving how, Liddy?”

“Moving this way. Look, can’t you see that one of them is slightly ahead of the others?”

Liddy must have eyes like an eagle. Bony couldn’t see any such thing. But then, suddenly, he could. The single line of light resolved itself into separate points. He tried to count them, but lost track when he reached ten. The splinter of light had at first been blue-green, now its separate points shone with a yellower glow. And each point was slowly brightening. Was it his imagination, or were they also moving up and down?

“They’re coming this way,” said Liddy. Her voice was calm, but Bony felt her hand take his in the darkness and grip it hard. “I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. They seemed to point toward the ship when I first saw them, because they were moving in single file. And they still are.”

“You’re right.” Indigo sounded anything but calm. “I can see them, too. If they keep up that speed they’ll be here in another few minutes. Thank God I installed weapons on the ship, just in case. Rombelle—”

“We’re under water, sir. Fire weapons in our situation, and we’ll be more likely to blow ourselves up than anything else.”

“Well, we have to do something. If we’re attacked we can’t just sit here.”

“I don’t think we have to worry too much.” Bony offered that reassurance more for Liddy’s benefit than because he believed it. He went on, “Remember, these are sea-creatures. Even if they are intelligent, they won’t know about fire or have the technology to develop explosives or projectile weapons.”

Bony didn’t fully believe what he said. Nor, judging from the grunt from the darkness, did Friday Indigo, but there was a certain perverse pleasure in quoting the other man’s own words back to him.

“The lights are being carried,” Liddy said suddenly. “They are some sort of oblong balls, all filled with light.”

“Bioluminescent,” Bony added. To him they were still shapeless blobs. “That’s what you would expect in marine organisms, some form of phosphorescence or bioluminescence. You wouldn’t expect ordinary combustion.”

“Stuff your combustion.” Indigo sounded frantic. “I don’t want idiot science lectures. Carried by what , Liddy?”

“I can’t tell yet. But in another minute or two we can get a closer look—”

“The scopes!” Bony shouted the words, while he groaned inside at his own mental inadequacy. He had been peering hopelessly and unthinkingly into the darkness like Neanderthal man trying to see outside his cave, while the Mood’s sophisticated imaging sensors and image intensifiers sat unused beside him. He fumbled his way to the console, turned on an internal light, and pulled up a display connected to the scopes. A few of them would certainly not work — thermal infrared sensors relied on radiation, not physical contact with the sensors — but visible wavelengths should be fine.

Another half minute when he seemed to be all thumbs, and then he had it. The screen showed a patch of lights at its center. He zoomed in.

And there they were. He had half known it, even before he thought of using the scopes. Fourteen bubble creatures — now he could count them, easily — were drifting toward the ship along the seabed. Each one floated in front of it a giant light, pear-shaped but the size of a watermelon. With that illumination Bony could make out every detail of their bodies.

The ball-like heads sat on rounded iridescent trunks that quivered when the creatures moved, as though the whole animal was boneless and made of soft jelly. Nothing in the head resembled a nose or mouth, unless it was the wide horizontal slit that sat close to the top of the rounded body. Above the head, connected to it by a pair of delicate-looking fringed stalks or antennae, hovered two green spheres that were probably eyes. If so they were separately controlled, turning independently and apparently randomly to point in different directions. The watermelon-pear light was carried easily by four string-of-bubble arms or tentacles, and four more waving limbs attached to the bottom of the globular body carried it easily over the uneven ocean floor.

The whole added up to such an appearance of fragility and vulnerability that Bony felt reassured. The creatures shown by the scope seemed as soft and harmless as children’s toys. But so, he reminded himself, did a Portuguese man-of-war, with its agonizing sting.

Liddy Morse and Friday Indigo had moved away from the port to stand next to Bony, staring at the display.

“Son of a bitch,” Indigo said softly. “They’re real. You didn’t make them up after all.”

“They’re real all right.” Bony had the computer hooked in to the scope circuit, analyzing the movement of the creatures on the display. He glanced at its output. “Real, heading right for us, and unless they decide to stop they’ll be here in seven minutes.”

“What do we do?”

Apparently Indigo had decided that Bony, science lectures and all, was not such an idiot. Bony thought for a moment. “If they’re as soft as they look, there’s no way that they can damage the hull. But I’ve been wrong so often today I wouldn’t put money on it. I suppose we could all put space-suits on. But I doubt if it’s worth it. If they can break into the hull, the suits won’t hold them for a minute.”

Indigo nodded. “No suits, then. So what do we do?”

The same question again, and a very reasonable one. But Bony was out of ideas. He had been exhausted, even before he and Liddy arrived back aboard the ship. Now he felt giddy with fatigue, and his brain had already gone on strike. “I guess” — he looked apologetically at the other two — “I guess we wait.”

Seven minutes.

The sea-creatures steadily came closer. The tension in the cabin grew until it was thick enough to choke them. No one had anything to say.

Six and a half minutes.

Bony decided that seven minutes would hardly feel longer if you were being operated on without anesthetics by a sadistic torturer. Purely for something to do, he asked the ship’s computer what a planet would be like if it had the same gravity as Earth’s moon and was the size of Earth. It asked him a bunch of foolish questions about density distributions, none of which he could answer. He told it to make any default assumptions it liked, and stop bothering him.

The answer came quickly, but it was not very informative. If a world had the same size and internal mass distribution as the Earth, then if its surface gravity was equal to the Moon’s mean surface gravity, its average density would be 0.91.

Less than one. According to the computer, the average density was less than that of ordinary water. But the whole ocean of Limbo was salty heavy water, with a density fifteen percent more than ordinary water. There was no way that Limbo ought to possess an ocean at all. At that planetary density, all liquid water should have sunk below the surface.

Bony stared at the offending number. Nothing about Limbo made sense. The ridiculously low density. The heavy-water sea. The blue giant star, too young to allow life to develop on a planet around it. The Link access point, in water where no Link access could be. And if there were such a Link point, how had they been able to transfer to it when the ship’s automatic protection system forbade transfer with substantial matter present? Limbo simply became stranger and stranger with every passing hour.

But maybe it was about to get stranger yet. In the darkened cabin, Liddy said softly, “They’re here.”

It was not necessary to use the imaging sensors and the enhancers to know that. They could see light shining in through the ports. The ring of sensors on the Mood Indigo stood about four meters above the seabed, and they gave an excellent view of the scene below. Fourteen bubble-creatures, each with its light, had drifted to surround the ship in a rough circle. As Bony watched, one of them left the circle and floated in toward the base of the vessel, beyond the imaged area. A soft thump vibrated through the hull. It sounded more exploratory than violent, but Indigo said nervously, “They’re attacking the ship. What do we do now?”

“That doesn’t seem like an attack. No, don’t!” Bony spoke to Liddy, who was about to go over to the port. “Stay here, where we can see them with the image system and they can’t see us. I don’t think they have good night vision, because they’re carrying lights. But if you get close to the port they may see reflected light from your face. Keep your voice down, too. If they can’t see or hear us they may go away.”

“It’s back in the circle,” Indigo said. “The one who banged on the ship, I mean. They’re all there now. Uh-oh. What are they doing?”

The giant glowing pear-shapes were dimmer, and the scene provided by the ship’s imaging sensors was fading steadily to a uniform gray.

“I don’t know how they’re doing it, but the lights they’re carrying are going out.” Bony clicked the image sensitivity range to a different setting, and the scene outside again became visible, now in black and white. “Look at them. They seem to be settling down. I think the Limbics are going to sleep.”

“The who?” Friday Indigo stared. “Where the hell did you get that from?”

“We need a name for them, and they live on Limbo. I think they’re probably intelligent, seeing how they use portable lights to see at night.”

The creatures no longer stood above the seabed on their bubble strings of tentacles. Instead, the rounded end of the body had settled comfortably down onto the sea floor, where the array of pikes had been crumbled to dust by the arrival of the Mood Indigo. At the upper end of the body, the antennae with their green sphere eyes drooped down to sit on each side of the soap-bubble head. Each had placed its light neatly on the sea floor, with the wide end of the pear facing down.

The humans in the cabin sat in frozen silence, watching and waiting for what felt like forever.

At last Liddy said, in a whisper, “If they’re going to do nothing, why did they come?”

“I have no idea,” Bony replied just as softly. “But I suspect we’re not going to find out tonight. Maybe they think that we’re asleep. Animals without technology follow the same schedule as the sun.”

“Do you really believe they’ll stay quiet until morning?” Indigo had sagged slowly back in his chair as the immediate danger seemed less.

“It looks like it. They’re not moving.”

“Then I’m going.” Indigo came to his feet, quietly but with determination. “To my own cabin. No, Liddy” — she had been sitting with her head bowed, but lifted it as he stood up — “not tonight. It’s been a tough day. Tonight I need peace and quiet, not company. You stay here with Rombelle and keep watch. And you, Rombelle, none of your damned banging and hammering. You won’t wake me, because I’m putting a wave feedback unit on as soon as I get up there. But if those Limbic things of yours are asleep outside, let’s keep it that way.”

Indigo went across to the ladder, carrying with him the tiny portable light that now provided the only illumination for the cabin. In the final glimmer before Indigo and the light disappeared, Liddy glared — not at Indigo, but at Bony. As soon as the captain was on the upper level and out of hearing, she whispered, “Why do you let him treat you like that?”

“Who?”

Bony realized it was not a very intelligent question, given that Indigo was probably the only human male within a hundred lightyears. But before he could say more, Liddy burst out, “You’re much smarter than he is. You do all his work, and all his thinking.”

“Not so loud!”

Her voice had been rising in pitch, and when she spoke again it was shriller than ever. “Who explored the seabed outside the ship, and the surface of the water, and the land? Who may have found the Link? Not Friday Indigo. You did it all. But he treats you like dirt — and you let him, with never a word of complaint. He tells you he had a hard day, he needs to rest — when he hasn’t done a thing. And you don’t utter one peep.”

The injustice of it had Bony speechless — almost. “Me!” He heard his voice squeak with outrage. “You think he treats me badly? What about you? It burns me up, the way he talks to you. How do you feel when he says, `I brought you along for your body, not your brains’? How dare he say that? The nerve of the man!”

“What’s wrong with my body?”

“Nothing.” Bony wished there were enough light to see her facial expression. Was that anger, or insecurity? “I think your body is perfect.”

“So you’re agreeing with what he did. He didn’t buy me for my brains. He bought me for my body.”

“That might be true , but it doesn’t make it right . You have a beautiful face and body, but you have a brain , too, a good brain. You’re a person , Liddy. More than just a body, more than just a b-brain. A whole person!” He was stammering in his excitement, and his voice grew louder. “How can you let him treat you like a b-b- bimbo?”

“And how can you let him order you to keep watch while he sleeps? Don’t you need sleep, too? Does he think you’re a machine, and not a human being? Do you know the only reason I didn’t scream when he said that to you?” Liddy was close to screaming now. “It’s because I wouldn’t feel safe if he was on watch, he’d do something stupid. But I feel safe with you. Indigo and I know we can rely on you to do anything that’s needed. Doesn’t that mean he bought you even more than he bought me?”

“The arrogant little bastard.” In his anger Bony brushed off her question. “He talks to you like you’re a moron. He makes you share his bed and he forces his body on you. When I think of you screwing with that mouse-brained idiot—”

“Mind your own business, Bony.” Liddy’s voice turned icy.

“It is my business.”

“Oh, is it? Since when? You think now you own me, instead of Friday Indigo? Well, let me tell you, he owns you a lot worse than he owns me. With me, it’s only an hour or two every few days. I can stand that, I was trained for it. Can you say as much? It’s twenty-four hours a day for you, every day, servant and slave. How do you stand it, Bony Rombelle?”

Any thought of whispering was long gone. Bony was drawing in his breath for another loud exchange when he stopped, frozen. He was facing Liddy, and over her shoulder at one of the ports he saw a faint, pale circle.

He reached forward and placed his hand over her mouth. He dropped his voice back to a whisper. “Don’t move. Don’t make a noise. There’s a Limbic behind you, right outside the ship.”

One of the bubble people was floating high above the sea floor, its round head level with the port. Green globe eyes pressed to the thick transparent plastic.

“I don’t think it can see us.” As Bony placed his mouth next to Liddy’s ear he could smell the faint fragrance of her hair. “There’s just enough glow outside for us to see it, but I doubt it can see much in here. I certainly can’t.”

He felt her breath on his cheek, and she murmured softly, “It was the noise, all the shouting and screaming. My fault.”

“No! Mine, I got carried away. When I think of Friday Indigo—”

“Shh!”

He felt her hand on his mouth, and her body shaking. Was she shivering? No. She was laughing.

As she took her hand away he muttered, “Aren’t you frightened?”

“No. Should I be?”

“I don’t know. With all this.” He made a gesture toward the outside, which he realized she could not see. “Uncertainty is enough to scare most people.”

“Are you scared?”

“I can’t say. This is almost too interesting to let me be frightened at the same time.”

“Well, Friday Indigo isn’t frightened, either. He’s sure you can handle anything that comes along. Do you want me to have less faith in you than he does?”

“He’s a fool and you’re not. He thinks if you have enough money, you can buy safety. He thinks you can buy anything. He thinks he owns you, and any time he wants to stick his—”

Her hand was on his mouth again. “I don’t want to hear what he sticks, and I don’t want to think about where.” He felt rather than saw her move to his side on the padded bench seat. She whispered, “Do we really want to start on Friday Indigo all over again? If we’re going to talk about anybody, shouldn’t it be you and me? But not yet!”

The pale face was still at the port. They waited, now in silence, for whatever might come next. Bony, with Liddy’s body warm against his, felt willing to wait forever. At last there was a stir outside the port, and the round head with its green bubble eyes sank away out of sight. Liddy said in his ear, “What now?”

“You sleep. I keep watch.”

“Would you like to trust me as much as I trust you?”

“Of course I would.”

“Right then.” She slid farther along the bench and pulled Bony down so that his head was pillowed on her lap. “Trust me. You did most of the work today, and you’ve looked exhausted for hours. You need sleep more than I do. I keep watch.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Because you own me, right, and you can order me around just like Friday Indigo does?”

“Of course not. But if he gets up and finds me asleep in this position, instead of being on watch—”

“You mean that you don’t own me, but he owns you twenty-four hours a day? Bony, answer me one question. Is anything going to happen before morning?”

“I don’t think so. I’d be very surprised if it does.”

“So lie quiet, and go to sleep. Trust me.”

He ought to sit up and argue, but Liddy was stroking his hair and cheek and he didn’t want that to stop. He decided that he would enjoy a few minutes of relaxation, then switch with her. After that he would watch and she could sleep.

Bony thought of the Limbics in their circle outside the ship. It was odd, but they seemed less ominous now that he had seem them close up. There was a thought you had to resist. Often the most dangerous things looked the most innocuous. It was still a mystery, though: Why had they come? To destroy, to communicate, from sheer curiosity? Maybe an answer would be provided after the long night watch.

A short time later Liddy moved her position. Bony grunted and opened his eyes.

Impossibly, the cabin was filled with diffuse sunlight streaming in through the ports. He turned his head to ask Liddy what had happened, and found that a cushion had replaced her lap.

He sat up. Liddy was over at the other side of the cabin. She heard his movement and turned.

“Sleep well?”

“Great. But you were awake all night.”

“Don’t kid yourself. I lack your sense of dedication. I woke up just a couple of minutes ago when I heard knocking on the hull.”

“The Limbics?”

“That seems a reasonable assumption.” Liddy was standing by one of the ports. “I was going to rouse you and Indigo in two more seconds if you hadn’t woken by yourselves. Come look at something.”

Bony moved to her side, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“They must be early risers,” she said. “They were all up and about, and they noticed me as soon as I went to the port. I’d like to know if you have my reaction. What do you think they’re doing?”

Bony stared out of the port. Down on the seabed the Limbics had moved from their guarding circle. Now they stood in a group. Forty or more bubble arms waved in unison in the quiet water.

Bony took a deep breath. He waited one more moment to make sure, but there was really no doubt.

“They’re signaling,” he said. “Those waves of their arms mean, Come outside. We want to meet you. ”