The Spheres of Heaven

13: LEARNING FROM THE BUBBLE PEOPLE

Bony was fascinated by the array of waving bubble arms on the seabed outside. He was also frightened of them, as any rational person was afraid of the totally unknown. How long he might have stood staring was anyone’s guess, but a sudden clatter and a shout of “Rombelle! Rombelle!” brought his attention back to the inside of the ship.

It was Friday Indigo, dropping from the upper level without using the ladder. He shouted, “Look outside!” and then, when it became obvious that’s exactly what Bony and Liddy were doing, “Why didn’t you dummies wake me up?”

“We only just noticed them. We were asleep.”

It was a measure of Indigo’s excitement that he didn’t blister Bony for a failure to keep watch. Instead he crowded with them to the port.

“I woke up,” he said, “and I noticed it was light, and I went to look outside. And there they were, standing on the sea floor! Waving! Rombelle, they want us to meet with them.”

That was not news to Bony. He said carefully, “Do you think that would be a good idea, sir? We know nothing about these creatures.”

“Well, of course we don’t. How could we, this is first contact. You hear me? First contact . No human or alien in the Stellar Group ever encountered these beings before. Of course we have to go out and meet them.”

Bony should have expected that answer. He sighed, and reluctantly started toward the airlock.

Friday Indigo said, “And just where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I was going for a suit — to wear outside.”

“And who told you to do that?” Indigo moved to Bony’s side. “You don’t seem to understand, Rombelle. This is first contact . A historic event. Naturally, the leader of the party conducts the initial meeting. You can come with me — provided that you stay a few steps behind and don’t open your mouth. All right?”

Without waiting for an answer Indigo took a suit and allowed it to enclose his body. Bony did not move. At last Indigo said impatiently, “Come on, man. First you’re trying to get out of the ship ahead of me, then you’ve turned into a statue. Get that suit on.”

“Yes, sir.” Bony knew what he needed to say, but he was afraid that it would offend Liddy. “I was just thinking, if we have people outside the ship, wouldn’t it be really important to have somebody back on board in case there’s an emergency? Someone who knows all the ship’s rescue systems inside and out.”

He had tried to phrase it tactfully, but tact was an unknown quantity to Friday Indigo. The captain looked at him, then at Liddy.

“Hm. You think she’s a dumb female who doesn’t know what she’s doing?”

“Well, I didn’t say—”

“I agree with you. Liddy has her uses, but handling emergencies isn’t one of them. All right. Change of plan. Rombelle, you stay here. Liddy, you put a suit on and come with me.”

“Does she need to go outside at all, sir? I mean, what would she do there?”

“She’ll carry the translation equipment. You don’t think I’m going to lug it around myself, do you, when I’m trying to establish contact with the bubble people? Remember, we’ll be recording this for posterity.”

If we have a posterity, thought Bony. But the choice was pretty clear: either Liddy stayed here, or he did. And if there was trouble, he had a better chance of saving her than she did of saving him.

“You’ll need to be able to communicate with the ship, sir, if everything is to be recorded.”

“Sure, sure. Make arrangements for that while Liddy puts her suit on. You can’t expect me to do everything. And jump to it!”

Bony jumped to it — but not because Indigo had ordered him to. For Liddy’s sake he wanted the best possible link between the ship and the outside party. The easiest way was to run a cable directly from the ship’s external line tap to the portable translation unit. It would handle only voice communication, but Friday Indigo and Liddy didn’t need to see what was happening to Bony, and he would be able to watch their every move using the ship’s imaging systems.

As Bony worked he kept an eye on what was happening outside. The Limbics maintained their circle around the ship, but they had backed away and risen a couple of meters above the seabed. Apparently they had some invisible way of varying their buoyancy and could hover at any depth they chose. They had moved beyond the region flattened by the arrival of the Mood Indigo , to where the forest of spears still stood upright. One by one they drifted downward. Bubble arms stretched down, gripped, and broke off the sharp-tipped spikes. Bony watched in amazement as the long spears were lifted and then inserted, sharp end first, into the wide dark slit on the top of the globular body. It was the ultimate sword-swallowing act. Slowly and easily, centimeter after centimeter, the whole long shaft vanished.

Were they eating the pikes? What else could it possibly be? Bony recalled how the shafts had broken under his slightest touch. Like the strange ship that he and Liddy had seen on their trip to the ocean surface, the Limbics were not just alien, they were alien alien.

“Why the hell are you standing there gaping?” Friday Indigo’s voice was loud in Bony’s ears. “I’m all set to go. Do you have that communication connection ready?”

“Just a couple more minutes.” Bony bent over the translation equipment and went back to work at maximum speed. He hated the idea of Liddy going out there among those creatures. They had a soft, jellyfish appearance, and they hadn’t done anything threatening so far; but they also had had no opportunity to do so. It was his fault that Liddy was going. Why hadn’t he kept his stupid mouth shut?

He adjusted a final setting and lifted the translator. It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t heavy. Friday Indigo could have carried it easily enough without any help from Liddy. She was waiting patiently at Bony’s side with her suit helmet ready to close, and he handed the instrument to her. “Here, Liddy. Be careful. It looks safe enough out there, but it may not be. If you see anything you don’t like, don’t wait to find out what it is. Head straight back for the ship.”

He had spoken softly, but not softly enough. Friday Indigo came over to him, his boots clanking on the deck plates. “How many captains can a ship have, Rombelle?”

“One, sir.”

“And who’s the captain of the Mood Indigo ?”

“You are, sir.”

“Quite right. Don’t forget it. You don’t give orders, I do. Come on, Liddy.”

He led the way into the airlock. Liddy, carrying the translator, followed. As the inner hatch closed she gave Bony what seemed to him like a forlorn little wave. It was a long minute before he could see her again on the imaging display, dropping silently toward the seabed with Friday Indigo.

Their exit from the ship had been noticed elsewhere. The Limbics ceased their grazing on the sea-spears and drifted back toward the Mood Indigo . They formed a compact group, about five meters away from the humans.

Indigo held up one hand and said loudly, “Greetings, people of this planet. I, Friday Indigo, captain of the Terran ship Mood Indigo , and representative of all Terrans and all species of the Stellar Group, come in peace to your world.”

There was a silence, during which Bony wondered if the Limbics used sound at all as a means of communication. At last, a pair of slits opened in one of the bubble creature’s rounded sides. After a preliminary few seconds in which the openings pulsed like a bellows, Bony heard a strange mixture of hoots, whistles, gurgles, and hiccups.

Friday Indigo said, “What the hell is all that? Rombelle, I thought this thing was supposed to be a translator.”

“It is, sir. But with a language it has never heard before, the translator needs a sample before it can begin to translate.”

“So what did it do with my message?”

“I don’t know, sir. I don’t think it did anything. It needs a sample of their speech first.”

“How big a sample?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s no answer. Why didn’t you warn me, before you let me come out here and make a fool of myself? I want to know about this planet, and all I get are a bunch of nonsense sounds.”

“Just a moment, sir.” Bony could see the slits on the side of the body opening and closing again. “I believe the Limbics don’t use their mouths for speech.”

“So what are they doing, farting at us?”

“No, sir. They use gill slits. One of them is going to talk again.”

The translator produced another string of gurgles. This time it went on for almost a minute. Gradually the sounds modulated into something with the cadences of human speech.

“Can you understand that, Rombelle?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor can I. Liddy, give me that thing.” Indigo grabbed the translator from her and shook it violently. “Goddam heap of junk. It’s not working. If I could get my hands on the assholes who sold it to me, I’d gut and garrotte them. I paid a lot for this worthless piece of crap.”

It occurred to Bony that if Indigo’s speech was still being recorded, this was going to make an interesting entry in the annals of first-contact history.

“It is working, sir. The translator sounded more like human speech toward the end. Just keep talking.”

“About what? I can’t have a one-way conversation with these stupid blobs.”

The translator, unexpectedly, whistled and said “Globs of blobs.”

“Hear that, sir? Greet them again.”

“Right.” Indigo returned the translator to Liddy, struck a pose, and said, “Greetings, people of Limbo — damn it, the bubble heads surely don’t call their own planet that . It’s your fault, Rombelle, giving this place such an asinine name and getting us all thinking of it like that — anyway, where was I? I, Friday Indigo, captain of the Mood Indigo , come in peace to your world, whatever you call it, and wish you well in the name of humans and whoever. There. That should do it.”

The Limbics appeared to be listening attentively. Their spokesman’s gill slits opened, and after a few moments of silence the translator gurgled and said, “The second walking makes it new after four braces. Next water will open the lonely day for gold.”

“Damn and set fire to it, I told you it was a piece of junk. Are you going to tell me that you could understand that?”

“No, sir.”

“It was gibberish.”

“Perhaps it needs a larger sample.” But Bony was not convinced. He had seen translation machines perform successfully after unbelievably small samples of languages. Of course, that was for human languages. “Sir, I’m not sure this is going to work.”

“Of course it’s not working, you dummy. Didn’t you hear what it said?”

“I mean the translator may never work, no matter how big a language sample we give it.”

“It was sold to me as a general translator.”

“Between pairs of human languages. Maybe it even works with Tinker and Pipe-Rilla talk. But no one has ever had to deal with an intelligent marine organism before. The concepts that the Limbics evolved to deal with may be just too strange to translate.”

Unfortunately, Bony didn’t believe that. The gill slits were moving, and the translator said, “Is it Monday for the flower, or was it the one at the end?” But at the same time, the Limbics as a group were steadily backing away while still facing Liddy and Indigo. The bubble arms were repeating the signal they had given earlier. Come. We want you to come .

“You’re full of it, Rombelle. I tell you, it’s this crappy machine.” Friday Indigo took the translator from Liddy and dropped it to the seabed. “Concepts too strange to translate, my ass. Look at them. It’s clear enough what they mean. They want us to follow them. Come on, Liddy. And Rombelle, you stay here and look after the ship.”

“Sir, I don’t think that going with them is a good idea.”

“Did you hear me ask your opinion?”

“But we won’t be able to communicate with each other when you’re more than a few meters away.”

“How awful. Do you think I can’t manage without the benefit of your advice? You’ll find out what we learn when we get back.”

Liddy spoke for the first time since leaving the ship. “Don’t worry about us, Bony. We’ll be fine.”

“Enough of the soft talk.” Indigo went to Liddy’s side and took hold of the arm of her suit. “Let’s go. They’re waiting for us.”

The Limbics had formed into a circle around the two humans. They began a slow and steady movement across the seabed, ushering Liddy and Friday Indigo away toward the undersea ridge. The water was less clear today, and in just a couple of minutes the group of figures was merging into a cloudy blue-green haze.

Bony watched until they were invisible. He had stayed on board the ship in case an emergency affected the other two and he needed to perform a rescue. But Friday Indigo, coddled from birth, would not recognize an emergency if he saw one. To know danger for what it was, you first needed experience with fear. Bony had that, if he had anything. But how would he know if an emergency had arisen, with the others out of sight and the water preventing radio contact? He had to put himself in a position where he could save Liddy.

He gave the command to reel in the cable attached to the translator and tuck it away in a cargo hold, and turned the unit off.

It was time to try an experiment that he had been thinking about in every free moment of the past twenty-four hours. With the others out of harm’s way, the only person he could hurt was himself.

Bony slipped on a suit, left the helmet open but in a position where he could snap it closed in a fraction of a second, and went across to the main control desk of the Mood Indigo . He already knew that the ship’s fusion drive could not be used underwater. The auxiliary ion thrusters ought to work, though. They could provide thrust for very long periods, but they had low power. They were designed only for small adjustments to position in space, and they could never lift a ship into orbit.

They might, however, be enough for what Bony had in mind. He knew the total mass of the ship, and he had calculated how much water it displaced. From that he could estimate the average density of the Mood Indigo as about fifteen percent more than the density of water. On Earth, that would mean the auxiliary thrusters would have to lift a lot of weight. Here, however, the heavy-water ocean of Limbo provided considerable extra buoyancy.

He could have deduced that fact without calculation, from the sedate and gentle descent of the ship in their first arrival. The question remained, just how much extra lift did the denser water provide?

He had gone as far as calculation would permit. Now he had to make the practical test.

Bony keyed in the command to provide aft thrust at a minimal level. There was a slight vibration through the ship, the view outside the ports vanished in a cloud of gray silt stirred up from the sea floor, and nothing else happened. The ship’s inertial navigation system showed that the Mood Indigo had not risen a centimeter.

A slightly higher setting produced a similar lack of result. Bony added thrust in slow increments, waiting each time to make sure that the situation had stabilized. On the fifth increase he felt a different tremor in the ship. A silt cloud still obscured the view outside the ports, but the inertial navigator indicated that the ship was rising, slowly and vertically.

He did not want to go all the way to the surface, though it was nice to know that he could. Bony carefully adjusted the power setting until the Mood Indigo was hovering at a constant depth. He knew the direction that Liddy, Friday Indigo and the group of Limbics had taken, but the imaging sensors showed nothing but the continuous blue-green of sea water.

Bony activated a pair of lateral thrustors at their lowest level, so that the ship began to crab slowly sideways through the water in the direction taken by the group of Limbics. If they had changed their minds before reaching the ridge, Bony would be out of luck.

He was a little lower in the water than he had realized, and became aware of the approaching ridge by the reappearance of the cloud of blown silt. He raised the ship another ten meters, waited until he reached the brow of the ridge, then hovered stationary while he inspected the displays provided by the imaging sensors.

He stared desperately at the seabed, seeking a group of figures. He had a problem. If he went too high, the amount of scattered sunlight filtering down around the ship made it hard to see detail below him. But if he went lower, silt raised by the exhaust of the thrustors obscured everything.

If he could not find them he had to return the Mood Indigo to its original position, so that Friday Indigo and Liddy could get back to it. As he reached that conclusion, he realized that although he saw no moving figures, either bubble people or humans, the view below was not totally featureless. He could make out a faint trail of suspended mud, a haziness where something appeared to have recently disturbed the bed of the sea.

It must mark the way that they had travelled. Just beyond the ridge it angled wide to the left. Continue on his original course, and he would have missed them completely.

Bony rose, to a height where he could still just see the ghostly arrow of blown silt, and directed the ship along the trail. He went slowly. He wanted to know what was going on with Friday Indigo and Liddy, without the captain being aware of it. Indigo’s instruction had been explicit: stay in one place and look after the ship. He had already violated that, and if he got in the way of what Friday Indigo was trying to do it would make things worse.

No danger of getting in the way at the moment. On the seabed the trail went on and on, but no matter what he did with the image intensifiers he could detect no sign of figures, human or otherwise.

Was he following an illusion, a path made by some other creature that lived on Limbo’s tranquil seabed? In fact, wasn’t there a hint, at the very limit of visibility, of a quite different shape out there? He fancied he could discern a long, low form, with some kind of conical shell on top. The sort of thing you would see if the ocean of Limbo was home to a gigantic sea-snail.

He allowed the Mood Indigo to drift forward, slower and slower. Now he could discern a bright line along the upper edge, as though the body of the great snail was edged with gold.

Nearer. And just a little nearer yet, though he remained ready at any moment to cut in an alternate set of thrustors and shoot away at maximum power. The snail lay silent and motionless on the bed of the ocean.

And then, in a moment, the image changed — not on the seabed, but inside Bony’s mind. It was like one of those optical illusions, where a figure suddenly transforms as you look at it into a quite different one. The sea-snail was even bigger than he had thought, and it was no longer a snail. It was a ship, lying on its side.

And not just any ship. The outer hull was misshapen, all bulges and wens. Although he had never encountered a vessel like the one before him, Bony recognized those lines.

The object on the sea bed was a Pipe-Rilla ship, built by — and unique to — that alien member of the Stellar Group.