In Search Of... Part 4

Eighteen-year-old Tay lives on Rannoch, a distant planet covered with water, where undersea pods or living chambers provide life support for up to three people — usually two adults and one child. Tay learns that her parents are expecting another child and that she must marry and move into a pod of her own. Upset, she thrusts her portable breathing tube into her throat vent and slams out of the pod.

Swimming past the school, she remembers learning about the history of Planet Rannoch. One day the class viewed an ancient Video that showed the Survey Starship Macmillan arriving from Planet Earth. The starship smashed into a shock wave of radiation from the solar system’s sun and disintegrated. The lucky ones whose escape pods landed on the planet engineered underwater homes and genetically adapted their bodies for life in the sea.

Suddenly it all comes flooding back to Tay — what she is swimming away from, the future that she can’t escape — marriage to one of three available pod partners: Forth, Eden, or Esk. She powers off, kicking hard, her strokes fueled by anger and frustration. Swimming through the electrical barrier that marks the Perimeter, she finds herself outside the community’s protective Enclosure. Suddenly, a net wraps itself around her. Terrified, she feels herself being hauled up to the Surface…

Franck, a planetary surveyor newly arrived from Earth on the starship Nova Scotia, is startled to find a silvery blue alien in his net. He hauls it on board his one person landing craft. To his astonishment, the creature looks like... “A mermaid?” The creature pants, “Don’t be stupid. I’m a human. What are you?” Although her accent is strange, he realizes they are speaking the same language and that Tay must be descended from the original Macmillan crew. “You survived!” exclaims Franck.

She smiles, revealing sharp little teeth. “Of course we did.”

Franck is fascinated with Tay. He tells her about the hundred-year Planets War, and she tells him about the solar flares that destroyed the Macmillan and cause massive tsunamis on the planet’s surface every two years. Another tsunami season is due to occur in three months.

Suddenly the sea is bobbing with heads as Tay’s people swim to her rescue. One of them shoots Franck. Paralyzed, he sinks to the deck and loses consciousness.

PART IV

When Franck came to, he was alone, and the first light of dawn was tingeing the clouds. His craft swayed gently.

Not dead, he thought. I’m not dead.

He felt sick and cold and he hurt all over. He got to his feet with a groan.

No blood on the deck. It must have been some kind of energy gun Tay’s people had used on him, then.

I hope she’s all right. He shook his head, trying to think clearly. Don’t be stupid — they’re not going to shoot her!

He staggered into the cabin to find that his Communications board had gone mad. As soon as he pressed one of the wildly flashing displays, a voice filled the tiny room.

“-able 5. This is the Nova Scotia. Come in, Landable 5-”

Franck winced and pawed at the volume control. Then he reached across to flick another switch. “Landable 5 here,” he said, rubbing hard at his forehead.

The voice sounded relieved and cross at the same time. “Thank goodness! Where have you been, Landable 5? You should have reported in hours ago-”

Franck broke in on the lecture. “Nova Scotia, I have something to report now. I’m sending recorded material, but I think you had better wake up the captain....”

The process of uploading his data-to-date was the work of a moment; what took time was explaining to the Nova Scotia’s captain about Tay, the Macmillan survivors, and everything he’d learned about starship-eating solar flares.

“The amount of energy they pack is phenomenal, Captain. Down here their arrival effectively scrambles Rannoch’s magnetic field, causing earthquakes and sea surges unimaginable on Earth. But in space, with no atmospheric protection, it must be like hitting an invisible brick wall....”

When he finally finished his report, there was a tense pause, and a scurry of voices in the background, before the captain replied.

“There’s a problem, Landable 5,” she said at last. “Due to the orbit of your planet and the trajectory of our —”

“You’re too far away.” He’d already figured that out.

He heard the captain sigh.

“So it’s a choice between getting me off or getting the Nova Scotia safely out of range of the solar flares. Not much of a contest, Captain, is it?”

She had no real choice, but he had to work to convince her, anyway.

Now all I have to do is convince myself, he thought as he switched off the Communications board and adjusted the autonavigator.

He wanted to go up on deck, to scan the sea for any sign of Tay’s people. Were they just going to forget about him? Or would they be coming back to finish him off? Tay — was she going to abandon him? Would he see her again?

But when he tried to climb the steps, his knees gave out. “Three months before tsunami season,” he muttered to himself. “Three months...”

He crawled over to his bunk and dragged himself up into it. As his head met the pillow, he heard someone enter the cabin. For a long moment, he was afraid to look. Then…

Just before his eyes closed in sleep, he saw her standing there smiling.

* * *

Officer Perth turned to the new recruit.

“Ensign, check the Com.”

The Nova Scotia, returned at last after more than two years, had immediately sent a full-crew landing craft down to the surface. The ensign flicked a switch on the Communications board, and a continuous message blared through the cabin.

“Calling Landable 5. Calling Landable 5. Come in, S. Franck. Surveyor Franck, can you read me? Calling — ”

“OK, turn it off.” Officer Perth sighed and returned to scanning the horizon.

The ensign looked at his friend, equally young and inexperienced, working at the next monitor.

“It’s been well over two years,” he whispered. “They can’t seriously expect the guy to still be alive. I mean, that’s two sets of flare disturbance he’d have had to survive. Have you seen the computer simulations they cooked up from the data? The surface of this place goes like a giant Jacuzzi!” He made a thumbs-down gesture and shook his head.

Officer Perth closed his ears to their gossiping. Franck was just a name to them, a bit of history; they were recruited well after he’d been left to die on this wasteland. Wasteland! If only there were any land. Perth was up to his eyeballs in seasickness pills, but that didn’t make him like the endless churning vista any better. Everywhere he looked, it was gray, it was wet, and it wouldn’t keep still —

“Sir? Sir! There’s something big heading our way!”

Officer Perth stared around wildly at the horizon, but the ensign called again.

“No, sir, not out there. Down there. It’s coming up beneath us, sir, and it’s coming up fast.”

Perth peered over the boy’s shoulder at the monitor and tried not to gasp. “Weapons on line, Ensign. And you, get me a readout on local predators — the big ones. What do we have that matches... that?”

“Too late, sir — it’s closing!”

“Rising on the port bow, sir! Do I fire, sir?”

“NO!” bellowed Perth. “Not yet....”

They could see it now, a spreading blackness that curved the surface of the sea like a dark bubble. The thing was as big as their landing craft. They could hear a sinister crackling coming from it, as if electricity were discharging from its hide into the air. And then it broke clear of the surface and settled — not an animal after all, but an alien craft. What showed above water was like a translucent turtle shell or the hardened bell shape of a jellyfish. They peered, open-mouthed —  was there movement inside the dome? Then, with a hiss, it split lengthways, the upper halves sliding round to form a second hull. And there was something on its deck....

With an odd gill-like slit in the front of its throat and the long-muscled body of a swimmer, it — he — dived into the sea and powered across to them.

“A... merman?” breathed Officer Perth, awe-struck.

The merman gave a cheerful wave from the water and started to clamber up on deck. “Hey, guys!” he said. “Franck here. What kept you?”

“FRANCK?”

There was a stunned silence as Franck vaulted over the railing. “Perth, my old mate!” He flicked his long, wet hair back from his face and looked about eagerly. “Got any coffee? Who are the new boys? Ensign!”

“Y-yes, sir?”

“Coffee all round.” He thumped Perth enthusiastically on the arm as the ensign scurried below deck. “This is a celebration!”

Officer Perth was having trouble catching his breath. With a brain full of questions, it was hard to know where to start. His gaze landed on Franck’s craft.

“That’s,” Perth pointed, “that’s Landable 5?”

Franck grinned. “We turned it into a submersible — good, eh? Then we worked out an underwater anchorage, pretty much midway between the Surface and the Enclosure. That was low enough to escape the worst of the tsunami disturbance, but not so low that the pressure would crush the craft. Electrifying the hull was just an extension of what they already do on the Perimeter — they tune it to the frequency of the major big predators’ electro-sensors, and hey presto! no unwelcome visitors with sharp, pointy teeth.”

“We? You had help?”

Franck gulped appreciatively at the hot mug he’d been handed. “You wouldn’t even be talking to tiny bits of me if I’d been on my own! I owe everything to the people here. Perth, there’s so much — you wouldn’t believe...”

Franck shook his head, remembering.

“It hasn’t been easy to find my place here.” He grinned and rubbed his chest ruefully. “Pretty much the first thing they did was shoot me! They assumed I was some kind of horrible alien. And it didn’t get a whole lot friendlier when they realized I was human.” He lowered his voice. “Rannoch’s people had no reason to trust the universe we’ve come from. Some of them were sure we’d be sending in anthropologists to study them like freaks. Some of them figured it was the end of everything they’d ever achieved. As soon as the rest of the universe got here, they’d be knee-deep in overpopulation, pollution, overfishing, crime... It took me ages to convince them that Galactic Law would protect them. It’s their planet. They’re in control. And, Perth — they have so much to offer! The things they know how to do!”

He leaned forward.

“It’s only since the modifications,” and he pointed almost shyly to his throat vent, “this and the blood adjustments, that I’ve been able to see what they’ve achieved. It’s...” Franck waved his hands about, lost for words.

“It’s a lifetime’s work,” he said, eyes shining, “to learn what Rannoch has to teach!”

Then, unexpectedly, Franck laughed. “Speaking of work,” he smiled slyly, “after two years of not showing up, I guess I can consider myself well and truly fired. But still, I’d hate to think of you being short-handed because of me. So I’ve found you a volunteer.”

He leaned casually over the railing and banged the side of the craft twice. At once air bubbles began to come to the surface, and a shape could be seen rising from the depths.

“Allow me to introduce the first Rannoch recruit, Acting Ensign… Tay!”

She exploded out of the water like a leaping dolphin, did a handstand over the railing, and landed on the deck silvery feet first and grinning hopefully. The crew gasped as cold seawater splashed over them all... and then they stared.

Officer Perth cleared his throat. “Hello,” he murmured.

* * *

Time passed, and the universe continued to surprise, until one day…

“Katrine, be reasonable! You are not old enough to leave home!” said her father.

“Fyne’s going off-planet next quiet season! And Stenness, too!”

“That’s right. And that’s because Fyne is how old? And Stenness?” said her mother.

“Oh, great. Now you’re trying to use facts against me. It’s not fair!” Katrine wailed.

“It will be. The tsunami season after this, you’ll be,” began her mother.

“Agghhh! Do you have any idea how long that is?”

“Well, yes, actually, it’s fourteen months and three days...,” started her father.

But she’d stopped listening. With a frustrated cry, the girl slammed a breather into her throat and, with unconscious grace, dived, disappearing under the choppy waves.

For a moment, Tay and Franck stood there, looking at each other. Then they let out their breath in a phew.

“We should have called her Gale,” murmured Tay, but her husband was distracted.

“Wind’s getting up,” he said. “It won’t be long before we’ll be needing to submerge. Should I go after her?”

Tay shook her head.

“No, Franck,” she said. “Leave her be. She’ll be back. And you know...,” she looked up at him with a smile, “I remember feeling just the same.”