incandescence. There came a peal of supersonic thunder.
First he thought the Tandu were blasting the surface below. But a crackling bright explosion in the clouds showed that the destroyer itself was at the receiving end. Something high above the cloud deck was shooting at the Tandu!
He was too busy snatching up his gear to waste time in exultation. He kept his head averted, and so was spared blindness as the destroyer began firing actinic beams of antimatter at its assailant. Waves of heat scorched the back of his head and his left arm, as he stuffed the psi-bombs under his waistband and snapped his breather mask over his head.
The beams of annihilation made streaks of solar heat across the sky. He grabbed up his pack and dove into the hole he had earlier cleared in the thickly woven weeds.
The thunder suddenly muted as he splashed into a jungle of dangling vines. Straight shafts of flickering battlelight speared into the gloom through gaps in the weed.
Tom found he was automatically holding his breath. That didn't make much sense. The breather mask would not allow much oxygen to escape, but it would pass carbon dioxide. He started inhaling and exhaling as he grabbed a strong root for an anchor.
He found he was laboring for breath. With all the vegetation around him, he had expected the oxygen content to be high. But the tiny indicator on the rim of his mask told him that the opposite was true. The water was depleted compared to the normally rich brine of Kithrup's sea. The waving gill fins of the mask were picking up only a third as much oxygen as he would need to maintain himself, even if he stayed perfectly still.
In just a few minutes he would start to get dizzy. Not long thereafter he would pass out.
The battle roar penetrated the weed cover in a series of dull detonations. Shafts of brilliance shot into the gloom through openings in the leafy roof, one right in front of Orley. Even indirectly, the light hurt his eyes. He saw fronds just above the waterline, which had recently survived ashfall from a volcano, curl from the heat, turn brown, and fall away.
So much for the rest of my supplies, he thought.
So much for coming up for air.
He wrapped his legs around the thick root as he shrugged out of his backpack. He started rummaging through the satchel, looking for something to improvise. In the sharp shadows he negotiated the contents mostly by touch.
The inertial tracker Gillian had given him, a pouch of food bars, two canteens of 'fresh' water, explosive slivers for his needier, a tool kit.
The air meter was turning an ominous orange. Tom wedged the pack between his knees and tore open the tool kit. He seized a small roll of eight-gauge rubber tubing. Purple blobs flickered on the edge of his field of vision as he used his sheath knife to cut a length of narrow hose.
He crammed one end through the mask's chow-lock. The seal held, but the contents of the tube sprayed at his mouth, making him gag and cough.
There was no time for finesse. He shimmied up the root to a point within reach of the hole in the weeds.
Tom pinched the tube below the other end, but bitter, oily water streamed from the tube as he straightened the coil. He averted his face, but swallowed a little anyway. It tasted foul.
The mask's demon-lock would purge the fluid, if too much didn't flood in.
Tom reached out and pushed the tube above the surface of the narrow pool, where the battle flashes sent shafts of light into the depths. He sucked hard at the hose, spitting out slime and a sharp metallic tang, desperately trying to clear it.
One of the searing blasts flashed, scalding his fingers below the waterline. He fought the instinct to shout or pull away from the pain. He felt consciousness begin to slip, and with it the will to hold his left hand into the searing heat.
He drew hard and at last was rewarded with a thin stream of dank air. Tom sucked frantically at the line. The hot, steamy air tasted of smoke, but it nourished. He exhaled into the mask, trusting it to hold the hard-won oxygen.
The aching in his lungs subsided and the agony of his hand took the fore. Just as he thought he couldn't hold it out there any more, the burning heat from above subsided, fading to a dull flickering glow in the sky.
A few meters away was another gap in the weeds, where he might be able to prop the tube between two thick roots without exposing himself. Tom took a few more breaths, then pinched the tube shut. But before he could prepare any further, a sharp blue light suddenly filled the water, brighter than ever, casting stark, blinding shadows everywhere. There was a tremendous detonation, then the sea began tossing him about like a rag doll.
Something huge had struck the ocean and set it bucking. His anchor root came free of its mooring, and he fell into a maelstrom of flailing vines.
The swell tore the backpack from him. He grabbed after it and caught the end of one strap, but something struck him in the back of the head, knocking him dizzy. The pack was snatched away into the noise and flashing shadows.
Tom curled into a ball, his forearms holding the rim of his mask against the whipping vines.
His first thought, on coming around, was a vague surprise that he was still breathing.
He thought the battle-storm was still going on, until he realized that the shaking he felt was his own body. The roar in his ears, was only a roar in his ears.
His throbbing left arm was draped over a thick horizontal stump. Scummy green water came up to his chin, lapping against the finned facemask. His lungs ached and the air was stale.
He brought up his trembling right hand, and pulled the mask down to hang around his neck. The filters had kept out the ozone stench, but he inhaled deeply, gratefully.
At the last moment he must have chosen immolation over suffocation and struck out for the surface. Fortunately, the battle ended just before he arrived.
Tom resisted the temptation to rub his itching eyes; the slime on his hands would do them no good. Tears welled, at a biofeedback command, flushing most of the binding mucus away.
He looked up when he could see again.
To the north the volcano fumed on as ever. The cloud cover had parted somewhat, revealing numerous twisted banners of multi-colored smoke. All around Tom, small crawling things were climbing out from the singed weeds, resuming their normal business of eating or being eaten. There were no longer battleships in the sky, blazing away at each other with beams of nova heat.
For the first time, Tom was glad of the monotonous topography of the carpet of vines. He hardly had to rise in the water to see several columns of smoke pouring from slowly settling wrecks.
As he watched, one faraway metal derelict exploded. The sound arrived seconds later in a series of muted coughs and pops, punctuated unsynchronously by bright flashes. The dim shape sank lower. Tom averted his eyes from the final detonation. When he looked back he could detect nothing but clouds of steam and a faint hissing sound that fell away into silence.
Elsewhere lay other floating fragments. Tom turned a slow circle, somewhat in awe of the destruction. There was more than enough wreckage for a mid-sized skirmish.
He laughed at the irony, although it made his abused lungs hurt. The Galactics had all come to investigate a counterfeit mayday signal, and they had brought their death feuds along to what should have been a mission of mercy. Now they were dead while he still lived. This didn't feel like the random capriciousness of Ifni. It was too like the mysterious, wry work of God himself.
Does this mean I'm all alone again? he wondered. That would be rich. So much fireworks, and one humble human the only survivor?
Not for long, perhaps. The battle had caused him to lose almost all of the supplies he had struggled so hard to recover. Tom frowned suddenly. The message bombs! He clutched at his waist, and the world seemed to drop away. Only one of the globes remained! The others must have popped out in the struggle below the clinging vines.
When his right hand stopped shaking, he carefully reached under his waistband and drew out the psi-bomb, his very last link with Streaker… with Gillian.
It was the verifier… the one that he was to set off if he thought the Trojan Seahorse should fly. Now he would have to decide whether to set off this one, or none at all. Yes or No were all he could say.
I only wish I knew whose ships those were that fired on the Tandu.
Tucking the bomb away, he resumed his slow turn. One wreck on the northwest horizon looked like a partially crushed eggshell. Smoke still rose from it, but the burning seemed to have stopped. There were no explosions, and it seemed not to be sinking any lower.
All right, Tom thought. That will do as a goal. It looks intact enough to have possibilities. It may have salvageable gear and food. Certainly it's shelter, if it's not too radioactive.
It seemed only five kilometers away, or so, though looks could be deceiving. A destination would give him something to do, at least. He needed more information. The wreck might tell him what he needed to know.
He pondered whether to try to go 'by land,' trusting his weary legs to negotiate the weedscape, or to attempt the journey underwater, swimming from airhole to airhole, daring the unknown creatures off the deep.
He suddenly heard a warbling whine behind him, turned, and saw a small spacecraft, about a kilometer away, heading slowly northward, wavering bare meters above the ocean. Its shimmering shields flickered. Its drives heaved and faltered.
Tom pulled up his mask and prepared to dive, but the tiny ship wasn't coming his way. It was passing to the west of him, sparks shooting from its stubby stasis flanges. Ugly black streaks stained its hull, and one patch had blistered and boiled away.
Tom caught his breath as it passed. He had never seen a model like this before. But he could think of several races whose style would be compatible with the design.
The scout dipped as its dying drives coughed. The high whine of the gravity generator began to fall.
The boat's crew obviously knew it was done for. It banked to change course for the island. Tom held his breath, unable to help sympathizing with the desperate alien pilot. The boat sputtered along just above the weeds, then passed out of sight behind the mountain's shoulder.
The faint 'crump' of its landing carried over the whistling of the tradewinds.
Tom waited. After a few seconds the boat's stasis field released with a loud concussion. Glowing debris flew out over the sea. The fragments quenched in water or burned slowly into the weeds.
