Involution Ocean

We rounded the promontory. The wind caught us imme­diately; there was a sandpaper rattle of particles on the bow. The sails filled, the braces strained tight, and the Lunglance actually listed, a surprising feat for a trimaran of her bulk. Desperandum wore ship and started on a star­board tack.

North, there was a huge gap in the rock. Five hundred years ago there had been a narrow cliff there, separating the Nullaqua Crater from a minor subcrater that was now Glimmer Bay. There bad been a crack in that cliff. The Glimmer Crater, receiving sunlight only at noon, was much colder than the parent crater. A cold draft developed, laden with abrasives. Soon a small natural arch formed, housing a vertical whirlwind, hot air above, cold below. Over two centuries, the arch expanded.

On the two hundred and thirty-seventh year of human settlement on Nullacfua, the cliff collapsed with a report heard throughout the crater. It was insufficient warning. Thousands of tons of rock fell into the sea, and the resulting tsunami wiped out almost the entire Nullaquan fleet. Five ships survived: three fishing ships accidentally sheltered by the Highisle, a single retired Arnafian warship in the Pentacle Islands, and a whaler from Brokenfoot. There were no surviving ships from Perseverance. Perseverance had been razed a year earlier in the Nullaquan Civil War.

The year after the Glimmer Catastrophe was known as the Hungry Year.

The Lunglance headed as closely into the wind as possi­ble. Mr. Bogunheim was at the tiller; the sails luffed a little and Captain Desperandum chided the man absently. The captain was gazing into the dim recesses of the bay, his binoculars pressed tightly to the lenses of his dustmask.

Films of dust were forming in the wind shadows of ob­jects on deck. The anemone rattled its bars. I wondered if it recognized our location. Like one of those homing birds, widgets, pidgets, some name like that . . .

It was after noon now. Dim light filtered into the bay from two sources, the entrance, two miles wide, and a glow­ing sliver of hills at the eastern part of the crater. An im­mense ridge of dark rock blocked most of the afternoon light that shone on the hills beyond. It was as dim, as gloomy as the interior of a shuttered cathedral. There was a church­like atmosphere inside. The Lunglance soon passed the bordering guardian cliffs and sailed eastward in the hushed, weak wind.

Behind us an immense vertical beam of pale light, fifty miles high, shone through the mouth of the bay and across to the broken, battered cliff wall. It was sublime in the ex­treme. Everyone on deck, with the’ exception of Desperan­dum, stared, completely rapt, at the dim colossus of light. It glowed like the promise of redemption.

I tore my eyes away and shivered. It was as cold and gloomy as the bottom of a well in Glimmer Bay, but dry. Dessicated. Mercilessly dry, drier than the driest desert on Earth, Bunyan, or Reverie, dry enough to make one’s nose split and bleed at night, dry enough to make one’s hair crackle with static electricity, dry enough to make sparks sting one’s knuckles over and over again. It stole the water from my mouth, the tears from my eyeballs.

And cold. The men got out their night gear and put it on. Nullaquan nights were cold; here they would be much worse.

Hot air coming into the bay cooled by expansion; cold air replaced it. There was a faint, shuddery draft in Glim­mer Bay, like the breath of a beast with lungs of ice. Dry ice.

The beam behind us gave no heat. The narrowness of the channel caused it to be absolutely stationary; the sun’s movement would have no effect on it except to change its brightness. The lowest part of the beam was slightly fuzzy with dust mist; the beam grew fainter with height as the air grew thinner and clearer. Eventually the beam vanished, but the light itself still made the airless cliff wall glow with a dim vacuum radiance, forty miles away.

At sea level, the entire bay was a rough oval, fifty miles long, twenty-six miles across. The inlet was located at about the middle of the bay.

.. We sailed east. It grew dimmer; many times the sailors turned to stare regretfully at the light behind us.

Now the captain decided to conduct a test for the pres­ence of anemones. Under his orders the crew scampered up the ratlines and furled the sails. Desperandum heaved a dust drag overboard, then threw out an immense gutted chunk of shark meat. A wired-on float kept it from sinking.

The meat began to drift slowly from the ship. There were no signs of questing tentacles. Perhaps it was too deep for the creatures. A dust strider came skating creakily up out of the distance on saucer-shaped feet. He began to chew thoughtfully on the meat. The diet of adult striders differed from that of their larvae. The strider found the meat ac­ceptable and was soon joined by a dozen relatives, skating up rapidly out of the gloom like roaches after a forgotten crumb. Desperandum grew impatient; he pulled the shark meat back on board. The striders clung to it tenaciously. Desperandum dropped the meat to the deck with a thump and the striders scattered, but not for long. Brushed aside, they returned single-mindedly to the meal. Desperandum finally had to swat one of their number with a whaling spade, whereupon the rest scuttled energetically away and leapt overboard.

There was not much plankton here; the light was too scarce. The Glimmer Bay ecology must be based on car­rion washed in by the currents, I thought. The light was growing dimmer ahead of us as the sun sank. Desperandum set out lanterns.

The light was welcome, but it seemed almost a profana­tion of the titanic gloom and stillness. I felt uncomfortably conspicuous. The lights were like a shouted challenge to whatever denizens lived in this stagnant backwater, this nasty little rock coffin. I didn’t like this place. I didn’t like the black, looming cliffs, going up and up and up until they seemed taller than God. Those cliffs seemed eager to give in under their own massive weight, to slump together into the narrow gloom-choked bay and flatten the Lunglance like a bug between two bricks. I didn’t like the cold and the silence.

I decided to go below and start work on the day’s last meal. As I turned to go I glanced over the rail. .

The dimness was speckled with hundreds of little red sparks. It was the reflection of lamplight in the multifaceted eyes of an incredible horde of dust striders. The Lunglance was surrounded by the little beasts, silently watching our lamps with the devotion of moths for a candle.

It must be a spawning ground, I thought. They could flatten themselves and ride the currents into the bay, then rush back out after breeding, skipping lightly across the dust with the wind at their backs.

More appeared even as I watched. They were thick for yards in every direction. The first mate engaged Desperan­dum in rapid conversation. The captain looked over the rail and shrugged.

The striders grew agitated. Panic spread through the packed thousands; they began to jump up and down lightly like water droplets on a red-hot griddle. They were going into a frenzy. I was disquieted. It was a good thing that the rail was four feet above the water. The spidery little mon­sters, six inches across, were leaping energetically upwards, but the deck was out of their reach.

Then they started to climb atop one another, careless of life, smothering the weak underfoot in the dust, inspired to some inexplicable peak of insectine fanaticism by the unwonted stimulus of light. Soon the first dozens were over the side, scuttling insanely across the deck, running in cir­cles, falling onto their backs and kicking their spiny, saucered legs frantically. The men drew back indecisively as the creatures poured onto the deck. I also began to with­draw. I passed the anemone’s jar; with a cunning whiplash movement it almost managed to sink its black hook-thorns into the back of my neck.

Slowly, not seeming to realize it, the men were forced into the dimmest area of the deck, behind the mizzenmast and close to the hatch that led to the captain’s cabin and the hold.

Suddenly one of the creatures leapt up and sank its mul­tiple mandibles into Mr. Grent’s calf. He yelped with pain. Tliat did it; the men went berserk, and soon the pattering rattle of little cup-shaped feet was joined by the brittle crunching of striders mashed underfoot.

Desperandum gave orders, bellowing so loudly that his mask speaker shrieked with distortion: “Get below, men! I’ll handle this!”

The captain bounced across the deck to the nearest lan­tern and shut it off. With a few final vindictive dance steps the men began to file through the hatch. Desperandum, brushing bugs off his legs, headed for the second lantern. I stepped nimbly onto half a dozen hapless striders and ducked through the kitchen hatch. I slammed it behind me and felt my way down the stairs to the light switch.

There were two striders on the kitchen floor. I flattened them with a saucepan and started cooking.

Mr. Flack spread ointment on the bites of the crewmen. That night fhe men ate in the hold. They slept there, too, as the striders showed no inclination to leave the ship. We peeked up every half hour, the lantern invariably