Involution Ocean

bomb it with this. Try to be accurate, Dalusa.”

“What is contained?” Dalusa asked, shaking the bag.

“Water,” Desperandum said, lying so convincingly that I almost did a double take. “While you were aloft did you notice the creature’s latest position relative to the hatches?”

“Yes, Captain. It had three of its arms over by this hatch—' she pointed with a dramatic flare of wing—“but the other was unguarded.”

“Fine. The men will be equipped with spades and nets. We will exit through the kitchen hatch and surround the specimen. Any actions taken will.be strictly in self-defense and will involve the least amount of harm possible to the specimen. Try not to let it catch you. Remember your blood will poison it”.

The men seemed eager to obey this order.

I went up on deck, armed with a spade, beside Calo­thrick. In desperate circumstances I thought it would be eas­ier to kill the monster by feeding it Calothrick than by stabbing it to death. Any creature as simply constituted as an anemone would be hard to kill.

I had high hopes that the blood in Desperandum’s bag would be an overdose. Poison would work, as long as Da­lusa believed Desperandum’s lie and carried out her job. I wondered if she had smelled the blood inside when she had her mask off. I had never asked her about the keenness of her sense of smell. What would she do if she knew it was blood? Bathe in it thereby blistering off her entire skin sur­face, or perhaps sip K, scorching her gullet and earning almost certain death from bacterial infestation?

But it was all beside the point now. Dalusa sculled swiftly upward on skin-taut, bat-furred wings and dropped the bag with a nasty splatter right onto the rosebud trunk junction of the anemone’s limbs.

The anemone waved its tentacles indecisively as a gruel of dotting blood trickled down its trunk. Then it vomited, ejecting a thick yellow )>aste from the hollow tips of its thorn beaks. The paste squished nastily as it squeezed out; the noise lasted about five seconds.

Then the anemone stopped retching and, with apparent finickiness, flicked its arms and spattered the crew with its paste. A glob barely missed my head. Most of the crew, however, had been hit, as they had been closing in on the beast, with commendable courage. Disconcerted by the barrage of filth, they fell back in confusion. The anemone unstuck itself from the deck, threw out four tentacles, and dragged itself loopily through a group of crewmen. One alert sailor threw a net over the creature, which it promptly stole as it slid overboard to disappear beneath the dust.

Two of its breathing siphons appeared a dozen yards from the ship, each spitting a plume of dust.

Desperandum wiped splattered filth from the lenses of his dustmask and looked over the side. “Good! We can still track it!” he shouted. “Lookout!” Dalusa had disappeared. “Lookout! Dalusa! Where is that woman?” There was a crunch and a scream of metal. The impact of the collision threw me on my face. I rolled over next to a splatter of vomit.

“Hard about!” bellowed Desperandum. “Shoals!” The rocks beneath the surface must have been smoothed by erosion, otherwise they would have punched a hole through our starboard hull. As it turned out, we were only dented, and we were able to make the middle of the bay by sunset It came early here, at a little before one o’clock. Once again the beam from the bay’s inlet was our only source of light Soon eighteen of our twenty-six crew members began to complain of nausea, Including the captain. It did not take Mr. Flack long to determine that the cause of the illness was some microorganism from the anemone. Wherever the vomit had spattered, the crewmen’s skins were alive with clustered scarlet bumps. Those most severely affected began to run fevers. None of the sick men showed an appe­tite for dinner.

Except for Captain Desperandum. As young Meggle was ill, I brought in the officer’s meals myself after helping the skeleton crew clean the deck. Desperandum was not badly afflicted. Only the fingers of his right hand had the rash, where he had wiped clean the spattered lens of his dust­mask.

When I brought in the tray Desperandum was talking to Flack. Flack was stripped to the waist; the rash mottled his chest where the contagion had penetrated his thin shirt. His face was flushed, but his physician’s duty to the crew kept him on his feet where a more sensible man would have gotten drunk and gone to sleep.

“Heard rumors of an allergy connected with anemones,” said Flack. “If it clears up in a week or so we’ll be all right. I’m not trained to treat forgotten diseases, though. Anem­ones have not been the vector of an illness for three hundred years. There are records in Perseverance, though, and better-trained personnel. I say we should sail there, quickly.”

I lifted the lid from a shrimp casserole. Steam gushed upwards; Flack turned slightly green. It was one of Captain Desperandum’s favorite dishes, but he dug in with a marked lack of enthusiasm and passed the dish to Mr. Grent. Bogunheim was on deck sick with the men, but Grent, like me, had been lucky.

“I agree,” said Desperandum, picking up a fork left-handed. “We cannot risk the health of the crew. It’s a bitter disappointment for me; I had intended to make a start on a full study. But shoals, the sickness, and the strider menace ... I’ll return sometime later. Soon though.” Desperandum lifted a morsel to his lips and swallowed it with difficulty.

Flack closed his eyes. “Sir,” he said faintly. “When we reach Perserverance, medical clergy should look at your arm. These things can creep up on a man, sir. . . .”

Desperandum looked annoyed. He inflicted another mouthful of casserole on himself. “You are a fine medical officer,” he said after he had caught his breath. “But you must realize that my own medical knowledge is extensive, and I was trained in a culture whose medical technology is several centuries ahead of your own. It is solely a question of will, you see, of teaching the body to obey. Ovor the years I have had some measure of success. Perhaps you would like something to eat.”

Flack shuddered. “No sir. If I might be excused . . .”

“Certainly, Mr. Flack. I forget that you are a sick man.” Desperandum was still eating, painfully, when I left.

Dalusa was not in the kitchen. Instead I found Calo­thrick there, rummaging through the cabinets in search of my private stock of Flare.

“Have you run out again?” I said.

Calothrick started, then turned and grinned nervously. “Yeah.”

“I thought you were sick. You’re supposed to be fiat on your back on deck.”

“Well, that . . . yeah . . .” Calothrick mumbled. I could almost hear gears mesh in his head as he dedded to tell the truth. “I was hit all right and I got part of the rash on my arm. But after I took a blast of Flare, it went away, and I had to rub it to bring it back. See?” He held out his thin freckled arm. The rash did not look very convincing to me, but Flack would probably chalk it up to Calothrick’s off-world physique.

“So you’ve been rdaxing on deck while the rest of the healthy ones are working overtime.”

“Wouldn’t you do the same -thing? Death, give me a break, John.”

It was a difficult question.

“Besides, everyone saw me take that first splatter. If I got well too soon they’d get suspidous.”

I nodded. “A good point Except that your bdng up and about is twice as suspicious. Get back on deck before Mur­phig sees you’re missing.”

“Hell just think I’ve gone down to the recycler to puke,” Calothrick said. “Besides, like you said, he’s too busy working to pay me much attention.”

“Murphig is healthy?” I said. “I thought I saw him take a splatter right across the leg.”

“No, he . . . well, I’m not sure if he did or not, come to think of it. Oh, here we go.” Calothrick brightened as he pulled out a jug of Flare and sniffed it. He took a frighten­ing dose and then pulled a plastic packet out from under his flared sailor’s trousers. It was held to his skinny calf with elastic bands. He started filling it with Flare.

“I saw it,” I said. “He was hit. You realize what this means? Murphig has that bottle of Flare, the stolen one. He’s cured himself.”

“Murphig one of us?” Calothrick said incredulously. “Can’t be. He’s too much of a jerk.” Suddenly the packet began to overflow. “Look out!” I said. Calothrick stopped hastily and looked at the small beaded splash on the plastic counter top.

“But he’s not an idiot; he’d do what you’re doing, faking it. There must be some other explanation.”

Calothrick strapped the packet back onto his leg. The Flare didn’t seem to be affecting him as strongly as usual. By now a blast like that was probably only just enough to hold him together. “I’m awful hungry, man,” he