The Spheres of Heaven

18: FRIDAY GOES IT ALONE

Friday Indigo had said not a word to anyone, but he knew exactly what he must do. It had been obvious as soon as he learned that other Stellar Group members were present on Limbo.

The Tinkers and Pipe-Rillas, damn their alien guts, had met the Limbics before he had. They had ruined his chances for first contact with a new intelligent species.

But you didn’t have to be a genius to draw a few other conclusions. First, no matter what that moron Rombelle might think, the Limbics were in a primitive, pre-technology stage of development. Second, the bubble-brain Limbics were marine creatures, who did not and could not occupy the land area of their planet. Third, on Rombelle and Liddy Morse’s visit to the surface they had seen a working flying machine. Fourth, the Stellar Group members were stuck at the bottom of the sea. They had not explored the land.

Put it all together, and the answer stared you in the face: another intelligent species existed on Limbo. Its members lived not in the sea, but on dry land. They possessed technology, advanced enough to build an aircraft, and the plane’s home base must be reasonably close since Rombelle had also reported seeing the shadow pass above him on his first excursion from the Mood Indigo . Finally, and most important, no one from the Stellar Group had been in touch with the land-dwellers . First contact with them would be a truly historic event — not a useless contact with some shapeless underwater objects who spoke in gobbledygook and were made of glop.

Hey, the presence of another Stellar Group ship on Limbo might even be a blessing. It meant that Friday could go off and look for the land-dwellers alone, without having to drag along the dead weight of Bony Rombelle and Liddy Morse. For the past few days he had regretted bringing them with him at all. Sure, the sex with Liddy was nice, but hardly worth the hassle of dealing with incompetents.

The Mood Indigo lifted easily from the seabed as Friday applied power to the auxiliary thrustors. Flying the ship underwater proved to be no harder than doing so in space — easier, in a way, because water resistance damped any slight over- or under-thrust. Friday raised the ship ten meters, then spent a few minutes trimming the balance and experimenting with lateral and vertical motion. As soon as he had the hang of it he would approach the shore. He was delighted to find that he could move the ship in any direction, at the same time rising or falling in the water exactly as he chose.

At first he headed due north, so that anyone watching would assume he was taking the ship back to its original position on the seabed. Only when he was kilometers away from the stranded Pipe-Rilla ship and could not see it using any of his instruments did he curve his course east, in the direction of the land.

He maintained a leisurely pace, not because he was worried or cautious but because he was savoring the moment. Let’s face it, you could win a hundred space-sailing regattas from the Vulcan Nexus to the Dry Tortugas, and what did it get you? A shelf of rinky-dink trophies and your name in tiny print in some never-looked-at record book. You could start out in life with all the money you were ever likely to need, triple or quadruple it, and still find twenty Indigo family members with more. So if you were Friday Indigo, the name of the game had to be fame, not wealth. A first contact like this would put your name up there with Timbers Rattigan, who came back with news of the Tinker civilization, or Marianna Slung, who discovered the Angels of Sellora. You would be somebody little kids were told about in reverent tones: Friday Indigo, first human to encounter the — the — the what?

He needed a good name. The bubble-brains could be the “Limbics.” That was a lousy name and anyway Bony Rombelle had chosen it. What to call the land-dwellers?

That was a no-brainer. Friday smiled. He was on his way for first contact with the Indigoans .

The Mood Indigo drifted steadily east, twenty meters below the surface. The ship’s sonar told Friday that the sea depth beneath him was slowly decreasing, just as he had expected. It was his intention to move the ship as close to the shore as possible. With luck that would lift the upper decks clear of the surface, allowing him to use the top airlock and wade ashore without needing a suit.

The first suggestion that things might not continue according to plan came from the sea-bottom sensors. Friday had set the auxiliary drive to a constant level of thrust, which ought to guarantee a steady rise or fall through the water. But the instruments in the control cabin insisted that the depth of water beneath the ship was changing in a cyclic way, increasing steadily by up to ten meters and then, half a minute later, decreasing by the same amount. Also — Friday ended his pleasant musing and became fully alert — the inertial positioning system insisted that although he had set the thrustors to take him due east, the direction of the Mood Indigo was in fact more like northeast.

Damn the instruments. Were they feeding him garbage? Had Rombelle somehow screwed them up, in his endless tinkering?

There was one easy way to find out, without depending on instruments: rise all the way to the surface, and take a look using the imaging sensors.

Friday fed more power to the thrustors. The result was immediate and disturbing. As the ship lifted higher it began to roll and pitch, rocking Friday from side to side at the controls. He swore, locked in the autopilot — God knows how well an autopilot developed for use in space would perform at sea — and called for a wraparound display from the bow imaging sensor.

Confusion. The seabed depth sonar was all over the place, and in any case there was no way to tell from its readings if the upper end of the Mood Indigo was above or below the surface. But the display ought to show one or the other, a view of air or a view of water. It provided neither. Friday saw a crazy patchwork pattern of bubbles and foam and dark streaks, plus an occasional glimpse of clouded sky. At the same moment he heard a sound. Something above his head was thumping on the highest part of the hull, loudly, imperatively, sending violent shivers through the whole ship.

The Mood Indigo was close to the surface — the bow must even be above it. That idea was confirmed when a flash of light filled the ship’s whole interior and the hull rang like a giant gong.

Goddamit, they’d been struck by lightning! The top of the ship was a natural target, projecting above the surface. This was not the smooth seas and calm water that he had expected, but the broken chaos of a howling storm. Those streaks and that foam were breaking waves, and the regular booming came from their ferocious impact on the ship.

Well, the hell with this. He’d had enough, and fortunately there was an easy solution. What went up would go down. Deep water was calm.

Friday cut the drive completely. At once the sky view dwindled in the imaging sensors and the ship’s roll became less pronounced. They were sinking. Another half-minute, and he and the Mood Indigo would enjoy the haven of the seabed.

Within seconds he learned that this plan would not work, either. The downward movement came to a jarring end. The bottom of the ship had hit the seabed. They had been approaching the shore for the past few minutes, and now they were in water too shallow for total submergence.

Friday cursed and threw everything into reverse — an act warned against in all the manuals. The whole vessel shuddered as the lateral thrustors switched polarity, urging the ship back the way it had come. For a moment it worked. The inertial positioning system showed them moving to open water; then a huge wave smashed into the exposed upper hull. The ship started to tilt. And tilt.

It was going over — all the way over. Friday managed one last desperate act, turning off the thrustors before he clutched at the arms of his seat. The ship pitched forward, farther and farther. He was not wearing a restraining harness. He lost his grip and fell toward what had been the front wall of the cabin.

It was a two-meter drop, but in the low gravity of Limbo he had plenty of time to brace himself before he hit the panelled wall. He looked straight up. The move from vertical to horizontal should have helped, because the Mood Indigo was longer than it was wide. And it had. The ports showed only water. The ship was totally submerged.

But not submerged enough. As Friday watched, the topmost port showed a white spume of foam, then a glimpse of dark cloudy sky. At the wave’s trough, the water level dropped far enough to expose the upper part of the hull. A few seconds later, a new rising wave lifted and pushed. Friday heard a groaning, scraping sound, and the ship jerked a couple of meters forward.

He could guess what came next. The Mood Indigo would be driven inch by inch toward the rocky shore, more and more exposed, hit harder and harder by the waves. The hull had not been designed for hammer blows. It could not stand much more of this kind of beating. Already he heard the groan of stressed bulkheads and tortured joints, and a grinding moan as something on the outside hull — communications antennas? manipulator arms? — was torn free.

Put on his suit, and struggle to an airlock? Even if he succeeded, he would be worse off than inside the ship. The waves outside were monsters, they would lift him like flotsam and smash his body onto the bare rocks. He dare not leave the ship.

Was that it, then? Travel hundreds of lightyears, and die on a storm-swept shore like some peasant fisherman?

Never. Not Friday Indigo. He held on tight as the attack of another giant wave made the ship’s structure groan in protest.

First, a suit. The hull might be breached at any moment, and even though a suit could not protect him from the rocks it could keep him from drowning.

But his suit, damn it, was on the next level up. Friday started to crawl along the curve of the wall toward the ship’s bow. He had to pause and grab and hold tight as each new wave hit. Twice he slid back a few feet. But he kept trying, and he made progress. When he finally had the suit in his hands, putting it on was far from easy. He had to wait for a quiet moment, release his handholds, and slide the suit on as far as possible in the few seconds before he was again grabbing and clutching and swearing. The suit did its best to help, but it was slow, focused work. Almost a quarter of an hour passed before he was waiting for the next shock to subside so that he could set the helmet in position.

He waited, and became aware of something else. He had been so intent on what he was doing that the strength of the blows on the outside of the ship had not been on his mind. Now he thought — or imagined — that the last few waves had hit less hard. Could it be that the storm had passed its peak?

The imaging sensors were useless, a blur of foam and mist. Friday clamped his helmet into position and began to crawl up the sloping wall. His target was one of the ports, normally on the side of the hull but now, with the ship turned horizontal, it stood right above his head.

This climb was even harder. When he reached the halfway point the hull curved over his head, so that soon he was relying on his hands only while his feet swung free. The impact of the waves still tried to jar him loose from his handholds, but now the low gravity of Limbo helped. He was able to hold on and keep climbing, until finally his helmet was level with the port and he could peer out.

His view was toward the rear of the ship and — for the moment — above the surface. The sky was dark, riven by clouds, but in a few places he saw far-off flickers of lightning. Their random flashes illuminated a series of gigantic white-topped wave crests, rolling irresistibly in toward him. They seemed bigger than ever. The storm was in no way past its peak. So why did he feel that the sledgehammer blows on the ship were becoming less destructive?

He held on tight, staring hard at the nearest wave. It was changing shape as it approached. Its smooth profile was breaking, falling in on itself as he watched. The wave was certainly going to reach the Mood Indigo , and it might push the stranded vessel farther forward. But some of the breaker’s forward momentum was lost with every meter that it travelled.

Why? How?

Friday ducked his head and gritted his teeth until the wave had hit and passed, then turned to stare to the left and to the right. He saw water, as expected — but beyond the water was land. A gray shoreline, and farther away black, rocky hills jutted up on either side.

Thatwas the reason why the storm felt weaker. The Mood Indigo had been incredibly lucky. Instead of being thrown onto the stony shore, to be hammered until it broke apart, the ship had been driven by the storm into some kind of fjord or drowned river valley whose sides broke the force of the waves and protected anything within its harbor. Every meter that an extra-large wave forced the Mood Indigo only served to protect the vessel better from the next one.

The danger now was that the ship was not in a true fjord, but in a narrow strait between two islands. If that were the case, relief from the storm might be only temporary.

Friday turned to find out what lay ahead. A passing wave threw up a screen of foam and it was a few moments before he had a clear view. He peered, stared, and whooped aloud in triumph.

“You did it, Friday-man, you incredible genius son of a bitch. You did it!”

A few hundred meters in front of the ship the river valley narrowed farther. Waves still broke on its shores, but they gradually diminished to a rolling surf no more than a meter high. Friday saw through blown spray a line of columns amid the breakers, together with the hint of a black jetty. Beyond, clear and stark in the odd half-light of the storm, stood a pair of jet-black buildings. They were low-built and ugly, hugging the shore like a pair of beached whales, but to Friday’s eyes they and the whole scene were beautiful. Because this was undoubtedly the work of intelligent beings — beings who could in no way be the bubble-brained bottom-feeding nonsense-gurgling morons that Bony Rombelle had named as Limbics.

Friday Indigo feasted his eyes and murmured, “First contact, here I come!”

He couldn’t recall anything in his life as frustrating as the next four hours.

The waves had moved the Mood Indigo as far as they could, until the ship was firmly grounded halfway along the river valley. The ship was now in no danger, but unfortunately it had not been moved quite far enough. Friday had no way to leave it and survive, as long as the waves remained big enough to lift a suited man and smash him on the rocks.

He fidgeted and fretted, doing all the possibly useful and time-consuming things that he could think of. The airlock, if and when he finally got to use it, was positioned above the waterline. He made sure that it was ready to use as soon as the waves subsided enough. Supplies, he might need supplies. He packed enough concentrated food for a week into a small backpack. Water was available, there was even too much of it, but an empty bottle might come in handy. Yes, and he mustn’t forget a translation unit — one that he hoped would perform a sight better than the piece of junk he had tried on the witless bubble-brains.

It was slow work, moving about in a ship that had been turned through ninety degrees so that walls became floor and floor became a wall. The occasional super-wave thumped and pummeled hard enough to be worrying. Even so, he had done everything that could be done in less than an hour. Then it was a long, infuriating wait, with another worry: Night was approaching on Limbo. He could certainly spend thirteen hours of darkness on board the Mood Indigo , but he just as certainly didn’t want to. He had not been able to coax an enhanced picture out of the battered imaging equipment — that sort of thing was one of the fat oaf Rombelle’s few talents — but by staring out of a port until his eyes ached he believed that he could make out minute black dots moving near the two buildings on the shore. Sizes at such a distance were deceptive, but he guessed at something maybe a meter high. Midgets, if they were built like people. But the dots that he saw seemed much longer than they were tall.

Three more hours and it would be dark. He couldn’t bear to wait any longer. The waves seemed smaller, and once he got close to the buildings on the shore they would surely present no danger. He clambered awkwardly into the lock. Operating it when everything was turned through ninety degrees was not easy, but finally he had it open and could look sideways and down at the water below.

Smaller they might be, but the waves still hit the hull of the Mood Indigo with frightening force and speed. He guessed the peak-to-trough distance as three meters. Much bigger than he’d thought when staring out of a ship’s port. But that was only here, near the ship. Ahead, by the buildings on the shore, the waves damped down to one-third the size.

A darker cloud across the already hidden sun made up his mind. He must go now, or give up the idea until tomorrow. He waited for a calm patch between two waves, then dropped easily into the water.

Within a few seconds he realized his mistake. He had gauged the suit’s internal pressure correctly, so that he bobbed comfortably in the water with his head and suit helmet clear. But he had misjudged his direction of travel. The waves tended to carry him forward, along the river valley and toward the buildings, but at the same time a strong crosscurrent wanted to take him sideways. He used the suit’s thrustors to compensate, and found himself rotating helplessly in a complicated interaction of waves, current, and thrustors. He was still moving sideways, toward a place where head-high breakers met the shore among a jumble of boulders.

It would be a terrible place to land. Friday increased the force of the suit thrustors, only to discover that pushed him off balance and drove him face-first into the waves. He switched the thrustors off completely. As he came upright again, he felt his feet touch bottom. He immediately released air from his suit. As his buoyancy decreased, his footing became more firm. He should be able to walk parallel to the shore, until he reached the small breakers and calmer water near the buildings and jetty.

Confident again, he let out more air and turned to pick out the place where he would land. He was unlucky in his timing. While he was still searching for a preferred landing point, a great mother wave came sweeping in silently from behind. It picked him up effortlessly, turned him in midair, and crashed him headfirst down on the stony bottom. His helmet took the impact, as it was designed to do, but it left his head ringing. As he staggered to his feet again, a sister wave hit.

This one finished the job. Friday was lifted, carried forward, and deposited in a crack between two boulders. The wave retreated and left him there, breathless.

He was ashore — but still in danger. Another wave could soon be on its way. He forced himself to wriggle forward, grabbing at rocks and thinking of nothing but the next few inches of pebbles and stone. He kept going, forward and upward, for what felt like hours. Finally he saw that the boulder in front of his face was bone-dry.

He was safe.

He rolled over and lay on his back, staring up at the sky. The clouds were racing, but they seemed less thick and ominous. The storm was definitely coming to an end. If he had waited another few hours …

But if he had waited, although the sea would be calmer it would also be dark, and he would not have tried to make it ashore. And here he was. He took a deep breath, sat up, and looked to his right. From his point of view his arrival on the beach had been filled with noise and violence; however, during a storm the whole shore must be such a chaos of wind and breaking waves that the arrival there of one human could pass unnoticed.

The beings over by the buildings had apparently seen nothing, and most of them had gone inside or about other business. A couple were still standing outside. He could see them more clearly now that blown spray no longer obscured the picture. They were multi-legged, with long, flat, bodies. They seemed to possess some kind of blue-black shell, but he was still too far away to tell which end was which, or if they had such things as eyes and ears.

Well, that would change soon enough. Friday struggled to his feet and checked that his backpack and the translation unit at his waist were in position and intact. The translator was in a case. The case was supposed to be waterproof, but you never knew when some crooked supplier would sell you another piece of junk. He turned the unit on, and heard the beep that indicated it was ready to go to work.

Maybe this time the damn thing would perform as advertised. Friday was going to have a few bruises after his rough landing, but he smiled to himself as he opened the front of his helmet and headed off along the pebbled beach. Maybe it was time for a little bit of luck.

He waved. Still the creatures over by the buildings did not notice him. Well, they would become aware of Friday Indigo soon enough.

First contact, here we come.

There is no training manual, “Ten things to remember in first contact with an alien species.” Even had there been one, Friday Indigo would not have opened the data file. You learned things by hiring other people to sort out what was important and tell you what you needed to know and when you needed to know it. In any case, there was no big mystery about first contact.

Friday was making no attempt to walk quietly, but the wind was blowing hard and the surf still ran high. He came within ten meters of the two aliens and still they had not noticed him.

He had been studying them as he approached. They were like nothing he had ever seen or heard of. That was good. The worst thing after all his efforts would be to learn that they were already members of the Stellar Group.

Not these babies, though. They were low-slung, with a long, horizontal body and what seemed like an inordinate number of jointed legs. He counted five pairs, each with a carrying pouch on its outer side. That total didn’t include four at the front end terminating in pincers like lobster claws and surrounded by bristly projections capable of independent movement. The blue-black, hard-cased body was about a meter and a half long, so the creatures would be at least as tall as humans if they ever reared up onto their hind legs — which so far they showed no signs of doing. The two just seemed to be talking to each other, making chittering, clicking sounds and waving long stalky antennas.

One of those antennas finally turned in Friday’s direction. There was probably an eye at the end of it, because he could see a dark-blue gleam there — and the alien in charge of that particular antenna at once changed its clattering to a high-pitched squeak. Apparently the squeak meant something to the second alien, because they both swung round instantly to face Friday.

This was it, the big moment.

He raised his hand in a formal gesture. “Greetings, alien strangers. I, Friday Indigo, captain of the Terran ship Mood Indigo , and the representative of all Terrans and all species of the Stellar Group, seek your friendship and am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

Of course, they would not understand him. That was too much to hope for. The translating machine had to listen to a bit of chat from both sides before it did anything useful. But his words would be recorded, and that was what counted. That was what went into the historical archives.

He lowered his hand and waited for their response.

It came in unison, and with astonishing speed. Two claws moved to two leg pouches, dipped in, and came out holding short black canes. The canes pointed at Friday. He heard sharp popping sounds like the bursting of small party balloons.

He didn’t see anything, but suddenly he felt as though his brain had turned to boiling liquid and was fountaining out of the top of his head. That was impossible — he had opened the faceplate of his helmet, but surely the rest of it was still in position. He tried to reach up to check, but before he could get his hand past shoulder height he was falling backwards.

As he fell he decided that he had been wrong. The worst thing that could happen was not that the aliens would prove to be members of the Stellar Group. The worst thing that could happen to him was what was happening right now.