Involution Ocean

drew an eager horde of light-crazy striders. They seemed deter­mined to set up housekeeping.

Hie captain showed no concern. “They tire, men,” he told the crew as, preparing to sleep, they nestled uncom­fortably in their blankets. “And if they don’t tomorrow we’ll drive them off. We have plenty of whale oil; we’ll go up with torches and burn them out”.

The men looked cheered at this. Personally, I suspected that the plastic-clad deck was highly flammable. I foresaw the ship in a sheet of flame. The stored water in the hold would make a magnificent bloom in Glimmer Bay; but no one would ever see it.

But my fears were unfounded. Next morning, the light from the inlet slowly shamed the few wretched stars in our limited sky into hiding their faces, then turned the darkness into slate gray shadow. A splinter of light showed on the western rim of the crater behind us. It grew to a glow.

The striders liked their new home. They were getting along famously. Doubtless any novelty was welcome here. With morning they seemed much calmer, they were even magnanimous enough to tolerate a few sailors on deck. They bore no grudges.

Taking advantage of their good nature, Desperandum spread a thick pool of raw whale oil onto the deck on the port side of the ship, between the foremast and the main­mast A faint breeze bore the odor along the ship; soon the striders came clicking across the deck to investigate. They approved. They w&re silent but they pantomimed their ap­preciation thoroughly, wading through the shadow, cozy stuff and slurping it into their complicated, chitinous mouths. A few of them even danced like bees.

Desperandum waited at a distance, patiently, holding a pipe lighter in one massive hand. The oil was slowly spreading. Now the striders were trampling one another in their urge to get at the juice, with that lack of fraternal concern that seemed to be their trademark. They scamp­ered in eagerly from all over the ship.

“Issue whaling spades to take care of any survivors,” Desperandum said calmly lighting a strip of cloth. He tossed it neatly into the center of the pool of oil.

It went up with a roar. The striders began to scream, high-pitched ee-ee-ee sounds like rusty meat griders. They caught like tinder. A few of them even exploded, showering their brethren with the flaming contents of their stomachs. Striders ran desperately across the deck, faltered, and crumpled, their smoldering legs splitting and spitting over­heated juices. Some made it over the rail to the sea, and ran screeching along the surface, trailing fire.

The men began to kill the rest with the flat sides of their whaling spades. Each flattened strider left a smoldering patch on the deck. The plastic under the puddle of oil had melted a little; charred bits of strider exoskeleton were stuck in its cooling surface, but it had not caught fire.

The last screeches were cut off suddenly by the efficient crunching of spades.

“Good work, men,” said Captain Desperandum. He was all satisfaction.^J’Weigh drag. Jump lively aloft and loose the sails, and let them hang in the clews and bunts.”

The men did this. I was turning below to prepare lunch when I heard it.

Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee.

From the east, from the dry, dead dimness at the dust-washed base of the cliffs, came an astounding host of strid­ers. The twilit surface of the bay was black with them, close-packed millions scuttling furiously toward the Lun­glance. The tepid winds could never bear us away in time. The hideous little vermin were moving so fast that their saucered feet sent up puffs of dust.

They moved like a million tightly wound clockwork roaches.

Desperandum walked calmly to the stern to observe the advancing multitude. At that moment the sun appeared, edging slowly over the rim of the bay. The effect of direct sunlight was immeasurably cheering. The bay was brighter, airier place, less reminiscent of open graves, abandoned mine shafts, and similar unpleasant places. The striders were changed from an unnerving menace to a mere irrita­tion.

“Get below and fetch me a barrel of oil,” Desperandum said. Three crewmen, one of them Murphig, hurried below and were soon back, groaning under their ivory burden. Desperandum picked up the barrel and held it casually under one arm as he walked to the stem raffing. He touched the catch with one foot and folded the railing down. The striders were closing fast now, showing no fear of the sud­den sunlight, their faceted eyes glittering like cheap imita­tion rubies.

Desperandum peeled off the barrel’s watertight whale-skin top and started to pour the oil overboard in a thick stream. Having never before poured whale oil on dust, he was unaware of its peculiar properties. It did not spread out in a thin flammable film, as he had expected. Instead it soaked up dust in a thick black cake and sank like a rock.

I could not see Desperandum’s expression because of his dustmask, but I imagine that he was aghast. The creatures were almost on us now; their rusty creaking was deafening.

Desperandum set the barrel down. “Get below!” he shouted. The men stood stunned for a second, then rushed for the hatches.

The striders surrounded us now, trampling one another in their eagerness to get on deck. There were not as many as I had first thought Perhaps there were as few as a mil­lion. Still making a head-hurting noise like metal files on one’s own teeth, they began to swarm up under the railing. The ship was still moving; this gave them some difficulty. Desperandum was trying to rescue his anemone. It seemed to resent rescue and kept him at bay with snaps of its tenta­cles. They were as effective as threats of suicide.

Another day cramped in the hold was more than I could bear. I had been enjoying the sunlight Nullaqua’s sun, usually more tinged with blue than I thought aesthetically necessary in a star, had never looked so beautiful. Besides, Dalusa was out on patrol and I wanted to wait for her. So, as the rest of the crew ducked through the hatches, I sprang energetically into the ratlines and climbed up sev­eral feet above the deck. My head was on-a level with the mainsail yard.

Desperandum was still fiddling with his specimen. Now he was cut off from both of the hatches in the center hull. Worst of all, his specimen did not need any of his help, if I could judge by the sixteen drained strider corpses I had found outside its urn that morning.

Desperandum was surrounded. Suddenly the faithful Flack stuck his dustmasked head out of the kitchen hatch. “Captain! Captain, this way!” he shouted, but his voice was barely audible over the intolerable screeching. Neverthe­less, Desperandum looked up.

Something thudded gently against the side of the ship.

The screeching stopped, cut off short and unanimously. My ears rang with silence. As one, the striders leapt off the starboard side of the ship, and, in panic-stricken silence, began to skate off at top speed across the dust.

It was one of the most extraordinary things I had ever seen.

Then came something that made it pale into insignifi­cance.

Over the port railing came an immense tapering tube the size of a young tree trunk, studded with layered rosebush thorns at least six inches in diameter. It was followed by the rest of a sluggishly weaving nest of tentacles, black, thorned atrocities thick enough to use for water mains. I didn’t get a very good look as I was too busy panicking and running up the ratline.

By the time I had caught my breath, the new anemone had ensconsed itself comfortably between the mainmast and the mizzenmast, and it showed every sign of willing­ness to make its stay permanent.

It was a full-grown specimen, I noted from my somewhat shaky position on the main lower topgallant yard. Its tenta­cles were a good twenty-five feet long; its barrel body per­haps four feet high, a little over five feet if one counted its immense, rather discolored rose. It looked fat and happy, reminiscent somehow of a well-fed Nullaquan. It had seven tentacles; the eighth had apparently been chewed off in some childhood mishap.

It languidly draped three of its tentacles across the top­sail braces and the main brace, wrapping them securely like grapevine tendrils around the wires of a trellis. The inner and outer lifts of the yard beneath my feet sang with tension. I immediately abandoned it and headed for the crow’s nest.

A questing tentacle found the mainmast and tugged at it.

The entire thing shook; I clung with cramped fingers to the ratline.

For a moment the idea had struck me that the anemone had boarded us to rescue its captive offspring. That notion was dispelled a few moments later when, with a negligent sweep of one arm, the anemone knocked the glass jar from its table. It hit the deck with a crash and a clang.

The heavy iron grating had crushed two of the young anemone’s tentacles; a shard of glass had stabbed its