The Spheres of Heaven

he clutched at the arms of his seat. The ship pitched forward, farther and farther. He was not wearing a restraining harness. He lost his grip and fell toward what had been the front wall of the cabin.

It was a two-meter drop, but in the low gravity of Limbo he had plenty of time to brace himself before he hit the panelled wall. He looked straight up. The move from vertical to horizontal should have helped, because the Mood Indigo was longer than it was wide. And it had. The ports showed only water. The ship was totally submerged.

But not submerged enough. As Friday watched, the topmost port showed a white spume of foam, then a glimpse of dark cloudy sky. At the wave’s trough, the water level dropped far enough to expose the upper part of the hull. A few seconds later, a new rising wave lifted and pushed. Friday heard a groaning, scraping sound, and the ship jerked a couple of meters forward.

He could guess what came next. The Mood Indigo would be driven inch by inch toward the rocky shore, more and more exposed, hit harder and harder by the waves. The hull had not been designed for hammer blows. It could not stand much more of this kind of beating. Already he heard the groan of stressed bulkheads and tortured joints, and a grinding moan as something on the outside hull — communications antennas? manipulator arms? — was torn free.

Put on his suit, and struggle to an airlock? Even if he succeeded, he would be worse off than inside the ship. The waves outside were monsters, they would lift him like flotsam and smash his body onto the bare rocks. He dare not leave the ship.

Was that it, then? Travel hundreds of lightyears, and die on a storm-swept shore like some peasant fisherman?

Never. Not Friday Indigo. He held on tight as the attack of another giant wave made the ship’s structure groan in protest.

First, a suit. The hull might be breached at any moment, and even though a suit could not protect him from the rocks it could keep him from drowning.

But his suit, damn it, was on the next level up. Friday started to crawl along the curve of the wall toward the ship’s bow. He had to pause and grab and hold tight as each new wave hit. Twice he slid back a few feet. But he kept trying, and he made progress. When he finally had the suit in his hands, putting it on was far from easy. He had to wait for a quiet moment, release his handholds, and slide the suit on as far as possible in the few seconds before he was again grabbing and clutching and swearing. The suit did its best to help, but it was slow, focused work. Almost a quarter of an hour passed before he was waiting for the next shock to subside so that he could set the helmet in position.

He waited, and became aware of something else. He had been so intent on what he was doing that the strength of the blows on the outside of the ship had not been on his mind. Now he thought — or imagined — that the last few waves had hit less hard. Could it be that the storm had passed its peak?

The imaging sensors were useless, a blur of foam and mist. Friday clamped his helmet into position and began to crawl up the sloping wall. His target was one of the ports, normally on the side of the hull but now, with the ship turned horizontal, it stood right above his head.

This climb was even harder. When he reached the halfway point the hull curved over his head, so that soon he was relying on his hands only while his feet swung free. The impact of the waves still tried to jar him loose from his handholds, but now the low gravity of Limbo helped. He was able to hold on and keep climbing, until finally his helmet was level with the port and he could peer out.

His view was toward the rear of the ship and — for the moment — above the surface. The sky was dark, riven by clouds, but in a few places he saw far-off flickers of lightning. Their random flashes illuminated a series of gigantic white-topped wave crests, rolling irresistibly in toward him. They seemed bigger than ever. The storm was in no way past its peak. So why did he feel that the sledgehammer blows on the ship were becoming less destructive?

He held on tight, staring hard at the nearest wave. It was changing shape as it approached. Its smooth profile was breaking, falling in on itself as he watched. The wave was certainly going to reach the Mood Indigo , and it might push the stranded vessel farther forward. But some of the breaker’s forward momentum was lost with every meter that it travelled.

Why? How?

Friday ducked his head and gritted his teeth until the wave had hit and passed, then turned to stare to the left and to the right. He saw water, as expected — but beyond the water was land. A gray shoreline, and farther away black, rocky hills jutted up on either side.

Thatwas the reason why the storm felt weaker. The Mood Indigo had been incredibly lucky. Instead of being thrown onto the stony shore, to be hammered until it broke apart, the ship had been driven by the storm into some kind of fjord or drowned river valley whose sides broke the force of the waves and protected anything within its harbor. Every meter that an extra-large wave forced the Mood Indigo only served to protect the vessel better from the next one.

The danger now was that the ship was not in a true fjord, but in a narrow strait between two islands. If that were the case, relief from the storm might be only temporary.

Friday turned to find out what lay ahead. A passing wave threw up a screen of foam and it was a few moments before he had a clear view. He peered, stared, and whooped aloud in triumph.

“You did it, Friday-man, you incredible genius son of a bitch. You did it!”

A few hundred meters in front of the ship the river valley narrowed farther. Waves still broke on its shores, but they gradually diminished to a rolling surf no more than a meter high. Friday saw through blown spray a line of columns amid the breakers, together with the hint of a black jetty. Beyond, clear and stark in the odd half-light of the storm, stood a pair of jet-black buildings. They were low-built and ugly, hugging the shore like a pair of beached whales, but to Friday’s eyes they and the whole scene were beautiful. Because this was undoubtedly the work of intelligent beings — beings who could in no way be the bubble-brained bottom-feeding nonsense-gurgling morons that Bony Rombelle had named as Limbics.

Friday Indigo feasted his eyes and murmured, “First contact, here I come!”

* * *

He couldn’t recall anything in his life as frustrating as the next four hours.

The waves had moved the Mood Indigo as far as they could, until the ship was firmly grounded halfway along the river valley. The ship was now in no danger, but unfortunately it had not been moved quite far enough. Friday had no way to leave it and survive, as long as the waves remained big enough to lift a suited man and smash him on the rocks.

He fidgeted and fretted, doing all the possibly useful and time-consuming things that he could think of. The airlock, if and when he finally got to use it, was positioned above the waterline. He made sure that it was ready to use as soon as the waves subsided enough. Supplies, he might need supplies. He packed enough concentrated food for a week into a small backpack. Water was available, there was even too much of it, but an empty bottle might come in handy. Yes, and he mustn’t forget a translation unit — one that he hoped would perform a sight better than the piece of junk he had tried on the witless bubble-brains.

It was slow work, moving about in a ship that had been turned through ninety degrees so that walls became floor and floor became a wall. The occasional super-wave thumped and pummeled hard enough to be worrying. Even so, he had done everything that could be done in less than an hour. Then it was a long, infuriating wait, with another worry: Night was approaching on Limbo. He could certainly spend thirteen hours of darkness on board the Mood Indigo , but he just as certainly didn’t want to. He had not been able to coax an enhanced picture out of the battered imaging equipment — that sort of thing was one of the fat oaf Rombelle’s few talents — but by staring out of a port until his eyes ached he believed that he could make out minute black dots moving near the two buildings on the shore. Sizes at such a distance were deceptive, but he guessed at something maybe a meter high. Midgets, if they were built like people. But the dots that he saw seemed much longer than they were tall.

Three more hours and it would be dark. He couldn’t bear to wait any longer. The waves seemed smaller, and once he got close to the buildings on the shore they would surely present no danger. He clambered awkwardly into the lock. Operating it when everything was turned through ninety degrees was not easy, but finally he had it open