back again? Thirty seconds ? a minute? How about internal heat? Getting rid of it would be a problem. Propulsion also. If the air-bag organs had evolved from fins to flotation aids, how did the creature move? But it was quite another thing to have that eye staring at you, an alien eye to boot. The outer structure was a red polyhedron with hexagonal facets. At the center of each hexagon was a six-sided pupil slowly contracting, and the whole eye was shot through with a riot of purple veins. I forgot about the biophysics and let the wonder wash over me.
And when that subsided, there was the mind-numbing sight of the mouth opening to contend with. The cavity was curved and so big we couldn't see the other side. The immediate interior was lined with a grinding surface composed of pinkish-white slabs of translucent cartilage, hexagonal in shape. Farther back in the mouth the light grew dim, but we could see pale
tissue forming the entrance to the throat, and below it, like a floor, a dark area. A tongue. This began to flow forward like a moving carpet. It swept over the tooth surface and came out to kiss the beach. The tongue was purple.
The punch line came when a group of crewmen in white uniforms came walking out of the cavernous interior and stepped onto the sand. They took up stations a few meters apart and began to admit vehicles into the mouth of the beast. We all laughed.
'How biblical,' John said.
'Told you!' Susan said triumphantly.
Biophysics my ass. How do they mate?
'Well…' I thought of something. 'Who's got money?'
The Teelies gave me hopeless looks.
'I have some,' Darla said. 'The ride's on me.' She frowned. 'That is, if I have enough for all of us.'
'Wonder if they're taking on deckhands.'
We made our way through the lines of vehicles moving down the ramp. The men at the entrance were taking fares. I walked up to the nearest of them. He spoke no English, and our exchange in 'System got me nowhere. He gabbled something and motioned impatiently toward the next man. Everybody followed me over.
'Excuse me… sailor?'
'Huh?' This one was young, on the chubby side, with stringy blond hair. Fuzz sprouted on his upper lip. His uniform was immaculate, flowing with red and gold embroidery, and he wore a matching white cap with a black shiny visor. 'I'm an officer, kamrada. Belowdecks Supervisor Krause. Whaddya want?'
'Sorry, Mr. Krause. How do we book passage on this… vessel?'
'Don't have tickets?'
'No. Where do we get them?'
'From me. Where's your vehicle?'
'Had a breakdown. How much for just passenger fare?'
He craned his head around and glanced at us, then turned to take another fare. 'Uh, that'd be?' He jerked his head around again and noticed Darla. 'Yeah. That'd be a hunnert consols.'
'Consols?'
'Yeah, consols. Consolidation Gold Certificates. CGCs.
Consols.' He took a blue square of plastic from a gloved alien hand. The face of the card bore a stylized picture of a boat mounted on an island-beast.
'You don't take Universal Trade Credits?'
He laughed. 'Not on this stretch of road, kamrada.'
'Sorry. You see, we just came from?'
'Yeah, I know, you just lucked through. That right?'
'Lucked… yes, we did.'
'Well, welcome to the Consolidated Outworlds, kamrada. Your UTCs won't buy you merte out here.'
The guy's manners were growing on me like an itchy wan. 'What do you take from aliens?'
'Gold, precious metals, gems, anything. Hey, I got fares to take. Okay?'
'Sony to put you to any trouble, but we're in a pickle.'
'Yeah, yeah. One troy ounce of gold'll do it. Apiece, that is.'
'Jake.' It was Darla, holding out some gold coins to me. I took them. They were very old pieces. South African gold. Amazed, I turned to her and was about to ask where she'd gotten them, but she smiled, sphinxlike, and I knew. That bottomless pack again. I looked at the coins. They were probably worth more as collector's items than as specie ? on the black market, of course. The CA handled all gold. I handed them to Krause.
'Jesus Christ.' He jingled them, feeling their weight. 'Where'd you snag these, a museum?' He bit into one, checked the tiny toothmark. Something about pure gold; you can tell. 'Yeah, they'll do. But… uh, you're two short, right?'
'I'm afraid that cleans us out. Is it possible that some arrangements could be made? Otherwise we'll be stranded here.'
'Sony, no credit. But… well, maybe we can work something out. Know what I mean?'
'Such as?'
He was eyeing Darla. 'Like to buy you and your friends a drink. In my cabin, of course. Can't fraternize with the passengers 'cept at the Captain's table, but what the Old Man don't know… unnerstand?' He took more tickets. 'Yeah, in my cabin, especially your
'Look, friend?' 'Jake, take it easy.' To Krause, Darla said, 'I'd love to lift a few with you, sailor, but my friend Susan's a teetotaler. You and I can have a pretty good time, though, just the two of us.' She actually winked at him. 'Deal?'
He laughed. 'I dunno, three heads are better sometimes.' He must have noticed my face turning black, and sobered up. 'Yeah, sure. Just you and me.'
I held out my hand. 'Our money, please.'
Darla took my arm. 'Wait a minute.'
'Hand it over, sailor. We'll startuke it.'
'Suit yourself,' Krause said, reluctantly handing me the coins, 'but hikers don't have much luck around here. Limit's four passengers per vehicle, big extra charge for more.'
Yeah, sure. 'We'll take our chances.'
'You're going to be sony come high tide, kamrada.'
When we got back to the beach, Darla was ready to kill me. 'Startuke it? Who's going to pick up five of us plus an alien anthropoid?'
'We'll go in different vehicles.'
'Feel lucky today? I don't.' She stamped a boot in the sand. 'Damn it, Jake, sometimes I don't understand you. Do you actually think I'd let that cretin get near me? Sure, I'd go to his cabin, even have a few with him. But you'd be surprised what else I have in that pack. Little transparent capsules that make you very sick for a long, long time. And they work fast. Wouldn't kill him, of course. Understand? Besides, even if I had to sleep with him…' She didn't finish.
She was right. 'Sorry, Darla. I should have finessed it.'
'But you have to take every trick, don't you?' She was furious with me ? and proud of me, all at once.
'Jake, Roland?' John was standing at the waterline, letting little waves lap over his feet. 'Is it my imagination,' he asked, 'or is the water getting higher?'
'He's right,' Roland said. 'I've been noticing it. And there's the cause.' He pointed to the eastern sky.
The edge of a huge white disk was showing above the horizon. A moon, and a big one, twice Luna's size, I guess-timated. The tides would be fierce, and high tide here could mean complete inundation. Great.
'What should we do?' John asked.
'I'm going back to him,' Darla said. 'I hope he's still in a mood to deal.'
She was so right I wanted to strangle her. 'Hold it a minute. There's got to be another way. He could be trouble.'
'Not the type. I've met his ilk before, the chubby little fart. You stay here. I can handle him.'
'Maybe one of the other men…'
She gave me a world-weary look. 'Jake.'
