We raced for the blue moon and used the thin atmosphere for braking. We had to shed nearly all of our speed before we could safely enter the water. The Explorer skimmed at subsonic speeds, just ten feet above the glass-smooth sea.
“Any particular target?” Jicklet asked Aguella.
“Ahead nine miles. That should bring us to an intercept with the phenomenon I observed.”
We crossed the day–night line and Jicklet killed the last of our speed. The ship sliced the water in a shallow angle.
There was an immediate sensation of claustrophobia. One cannot be raised on a floating airborne crystal, spend decades in a ship surrounded by a billion miles of open space, and then feel entirely calm about being plunged into the enveloping sea.
The water closed in all around us, dark, soon nearly opaque. Then, Jicklet keyed the lights and I gasped. A school of thousands of brilliant yellow eels, myriad bars of shimmering light, flew past us, around us.
“Phosphorescence,” Lackofa commented. “That may be all you saw, Aguella: a school of eels.”
“But beautiful eels,” I remarked.
The yellow swarm passed us by and now, no longer blinded by them, I saw wonders of light and motion everywhere. A fish nearly the size of the Explorer with gaping mouth and feathery fins, all bright with neon reds and blues; a creature that looked like an airfoil trailing a tangle of purple tentacles; a flight of seven or eight fish, long, dangerous-looking, brightest pink; and below us a forest of very long tentacles, so long they disappeared down out of sight.
A blur of movement!
The Explorer rocked, tilted sharply, and with a deep, groaning sound, stopped.
“Something has us, Commander!” Jicklet yelled.
She was more concerned than I. It was “her” ship, after all, and she treasured every square inch of it.
“All external lights up. Active sensors on. Weapons to full ready. Jicklet: We’ll give it a jolt of current through the hull if need be.”
“Ready, Commander,” Jicklet replied.
The external lights doubled in brilliance. The water was wonderfully clear but we were still in planetary night and the lights failed to show the full extent of the tendrils or whatever it was that had us wrapped securely. The eels and fish still swam serenely by.
“Sensor readouts coming in,” Aguella said. “Life-form. Carbon-based.” She frowned.
“What?” I asked.
“The creature that has us appears to be quite large. Unless I’m getting false readings I show a continuous nervous-electrical system extending out to the limits of the sensors. This thing extends beyond the horizon. In every direction!”
I did a quick mental calculation, the circumference of the moon, distance to horizon …
“It has to be a sensor glitch,” I said. “Nothing is that big.”
“We’re moving,” Lackofa pointed out quite dispassionately.
I had already felt the motion. We were being drawn lower.
“Okay. Shock the hull,” I ordered.
The lights dimmed as power was diverted into the hull’s metallic components. Anything in contact with us would receive a severe jolt.
“It still has us,” Lackofa pointed out unnecessarily.
“Understood,” I said. “Beam to minimum power. Wide pattern.” I was still calm. I regretted having to take harsher measures. Most likely this life-form was sub-sentient, simply a creature following its instincts. But the ship came first.
“Fire.”
The beam fired. The water absorbed most of the energy, particularly at this setting, but the creature would still feel searing, intense heat.
The water steamed and boiled around us.
“Cease fire. Report.”
“It still has us,” Lackofa said. “A creature this large may not even have pain receptors in an area this small. It may not feel us.”
I nodded. “We’ll have to cut our way out. Beam to tight focus. Mid-power. Jicklet, give us a sweep below the hull. We’ll slice the tentacles off. As soon as we’re free you’d better take us back to atmosphere.”
“Understood.”
The beam fired, a lance of light inscribing a brilliant circle beneath us.
The Explorer shuddered as the tentacles fell away. The ship began to rise.
“Something close!” Aguella yelled.
“Commander!” Jicklet cried.
The monster slammed us head on. I was knocked off my dock. My talons were wrenched and bleeding. Aguella and Jicklet were still docked but Lackofa was down, out cold. Huge! A flash of monstrous mouth, wide enough to swallow the ship in a single bite.
“Beam to maximum. Fire!”
The vast mouth was lit red. An explosion rocked the fish, its insides, superheated, had blown apart, ripping it open.
Wham!
Wham!
I staggered up. My face was wet with my own blood now.
Wham!
Lights. Blinded. Trying to think, trying to form the order.
“Missiles! Fire!”
No answer.
Wham!
Hammer blows, one after another. The force field maintained hull integrity, but we were bugs inside a bean pod being slammed again and again.
Lights gone. No sound. Silence. I lay broken and battered. Head swirling.
Water rushing in. How? The fields should have …
Something touching me. My face. Touching me, wrapping itself around me and …
I was docked.
Sky. All around me.
The crystal!
I was docked to a crystal. Azure Level. Docked, eyes open, yet in the game. I was playing Inidar. The game scenario involved two alien species, one a wandering nomad race in search of a new home. The other species was a world-sized behemoth. So vast, so all-consuming that it very nearly was the planet.
“I’ll take the Ketrans, if you choose to accept.”
“Gladly,” Inidar memmed back. “You underestimate the value of size and power. You’re an idealist, Ellimist.”
“Oh? Well, step into my lair, said the dreth to the chorkant.”
Inidar laughed.
“Shall we immerse?”
“On the other side,” he answered.
“This isn’t real,” I memmed. “You’re dead, Inidar. You died a long time ago.”
“True enough, Ellimist,” he agreed. “The Capasin killed me. Killed us all. They’re here, too, you know. Would you like to see them?”
“The Capasin? Where? Where is ‘here’?”
“Open your eyes, Ellimist, what do you see?”
“Equatorial High Crystal. But she’s dead too. And Lackofa in the next dock. Is he dead? Am I dead? Or is this some kind of dream? Hallucination?”
“Are those the only choices?” Inidar asked, mocking.
