Storm Ring Read online

  *

  Mick gave one last look behind, and followed, keeping a lookout in his rear-view mirror. When he was a few hundred yards past the overpass he glanced behind and saw the mutants come pounding around the bend, their legs stretching and landing, relentless. He wrenched his eyes to the road ahead, and opened her up. The others were at the bridge, maybe five hundred yards ahead, where they had dropped the bikes at the side of the road. He imagined them scrambling down the embankment to the boat waiting below, tossing their backpacks in as they clambered over the gunwale.

  He looked back again and saw their tireless pursuers were only a couple hundred yards away now, closing fast. The six bikes that followed the pack of mutants were far behind, crossing under the overpass.

  He turned and saw that Turok had stopped in the middle of the bridge. He had his gun up and was taking careful aim. Mick heard the shot and instinctively ducked. He heard a body thump hard on the concrete behind. He glanced behind again and saw the other mutes had veered to both sides to avoid the dying animal. They weren’t fast enough and were now cart wheeling over the corpse. He was fifty yards from the bridge when he heard another shot, and another mute was down.

  He saw Turok climbing the bridge parapet, the rifle slung back over his back, and jumped. It was only twenty feet to the river below. Mick squealed his bike to a long fishtailing stop, and dived for the parapet. He clambered up, stumbled, and pulled himself up and over the side.

  The fall seemed further than twenty feet, then the river closed over him. Such silence, blessed peaceful silence. He hung suspended as the water surged around him, then Turok was at his elbow, pulling. He kicked and felt himself rise, slowly. Everything had seemed to slow down. He kept rising, and broke surface. The boat had pulled away from the riverbank, shored up with pilings along this side of the bridge. Arms reached for him from a wide stern boarding ramp. He pulled himself up and fell onto the ramp, the boat’s deck three feet above them. He watched Turok follow up in one slow fluid motion. He heard Thomas gun the engine and they were moving again.

  Mick looked back and saw the mutants on the bridge. It struck him as funny. The half-animal, half-synthetic predators stood quietly waiting. They were not pacing or growling, or leaping up and down. Several had placed their forepaws on the parapet and were calmly watching as the boat pulled away.

  Carmen leaned over the stern and looked down at them. “Come on! Those riders won’t be long.”

  As they climbed the ladder up into the stern, a pulse blast struck the transom four inches from Mick’s hand, leaving a small inch-deep crater in the wood. He reached up, pulled himself over, dropping in behind the thick transom. Turok and Carmen looked at him and laughed. Another pulse hit the roof of the pilot-house, sending a shower of wood splinters that were whipped away immediately by the breeze. A few blasts went wide, leaving green contrails in the water. A minute went by with no more shots.

  Mick leaned up and took a quick look back over the transom. The bridge was half a mile away, probably out of range. He leaned back against the gunwale, and the world drifted away.

  5 | Lightsphere

  Mick woke to the distant sound of cheers. He opened his eyes and looked round, but all was darkness. He wondered if Thomas had sailed his precious fishing boat into a cave, maybe in a cove somewhere along the coast. The sound of another cheer startled him fully awake. He didn’t move, and the sound receded. Silence enveloped him again. He turned and looked up. A canopy of stars rocked gently above. He closed and opened his eyes rapidly. It felt as though the space around him was pressing tightly against him. He tried to shout, but his throat was going still. He felt himself falling back, somersaulting over and over. Something was flowing past him, as though a pale copy of the events of his life were glowing in the darkness as they passed him. He desperately opened his eyes.

  A face was looking down at him. Its mouth moved mockingly, like a fish. He saw it was Carmen, she was moving so slowly, swimming in and out of view, now back again, faster. Sound burst around him suddenly.

  “Mick! Mick!” she was saying.

  Her head turned away, and more sound filled the night. Thomas was suddenly there at his side, the tightness in his throat eased, and a delicious coolness spread down his throat.

  His voice came to his own ears as a shout. “Carmen.”

  But she hadn’t heard him. He shouted her name again, and she leaned in towards him. “Carmen!” She smiled.

  He groaned with relief – she could hear him. His throat tightened one last time, and a rack of coughs coursed through him. And finally the enfolding tightness was gone.

  His voice came again, and he heard it now as a whisper. “Thomas!” Both faces were smiling at him.

  He tried to sit up and a heat shot down his left arm. He gasped, and Carmen’s hand was on his right shoulder, pushing him down.

  “Lie still. You were shot.”

  He fell back, and the faces of the others were now hovering over him. He smiled weakly. ‘I was shot?’ he asked himself. And then he remembered the lance of pain that hit him just as he jumped from the bridge. In the water the pain had been sucked away, and he had climbed into the boat, and then the sudden throbbing, and the darkness had swept over him.

  Hands gently lifted his head and he looked around. He looked down and saw that his shoulder had been tightly wrapped in a medisheath. A glass was at his mouth again, and the delicious coolness spread down his throat.

  He nodded. They were all coming back into the stern. Some sat down on the deck, others leaned against the high gunwale.

  Turok lifted him up slowly. “Welcome back, amigo!” Mick wavered, and suddenly they were all laughing as Turok helped ease him back into a low folding chair.

  Mick laughed weakly with them. He was never so glad to feel surrounded by familiar faces. “Looks like we got away safe.”

  Turok nodded, and looked out across the gunwale. “What a night!”

  “How long has it been?”

  “About ten hours.”

  Mick looked off into the night that seemed to envelope the boat. The engine wasn’t running, they were drifting. The blackness was impenetrable, all-encompassing. “This is stranger than being adrift in space.”

  Carmen leaned back and looked up into the sky, shivering. “I know. It’s like being in the bottom of a well. Looking up helps me.”

  Mick leaned back, looked up, and exhaled easier.

  “Better?”

  He nodded.

  Turok rubbed his hands together. “Our midnight dinner, ladies and gentlemen, is served.”

  Everyone clapped, and rose with him. Franklin walked over to Mick. “How are you feeling?”

  “Much better. How bad was it?”

  He nodded at Mick’s shoulder. “The pulse went clean through. Just sizzled the bone a touch.”

  “Thanks. But I meant – how did it go getting away? Will they follow, do you think?”

  Franklin shrugged, and nodded to Thomas. “Here’s the man to ask.”

  “They might,” Thomas said. “Levrok likely wants your ship, and he still needs Franklin.”

  “True,” the old man agreed.

  Several of them lingered on deck, listening to the sounds of dinner below.

  “Levrok lost a lot of his people to that disease,” Carmen said. “He needs to regroup.”

  Thomas nodded. “If he does come after us, it won’t be right away.”

  Mick flexed his shoulder, gauging its resilience.

  “Well, thanks again for patching me up,” he said to Franklin.

  The old man half-turned to Carmen. “My new assistant did the actual splicing and sewing.” Mick widened his eyes in feigned shock.

  Carmen laughed. “Splice and dice. That’s me.”

  Franklin stood further aft, looking out into the night. “I’ve never seen such darkness,” he said.

  Mick nodded. “It’s like a black wall has dropped down around us.”

  Franklin made
a shivering laugh. “Look at this,” he said as he led Mick to the transom. He clambered down to the stern ramp, surprisingly agile for a man his age.

  He looked back at Mick. “If you can manage it.”

  Mick sat on the gunwale and swiveled his legs over.

  Franklin knelt on the ramp, his attention focused on the water. He pulled a flashlight from his back pocket, extended his other arm below the surface to his elbow, and shone the beam along his arm. Mick couldn’t see beyond three inches down the old man’s arm.

  Mick got on his hands and knees. They were kneeling only inches above the surface of the ocean. He looked across the surface. It had a surreal flatness. Franklin shone the beam along the surface, they could see about two yards.

  Carmen stood shivering up on deck behind them.

  Franklin turned off the flashlight. The glow from the pilothouse made the boat an oasis of light in the blackness. He stood up.

  Mick looked up again at the stars. “Is it the water – a different refraction of light?”

  “It’s everything, Mick. The ocean, sky, air, and light. Even the absence of light seems different.”

  “Let’s join the others,” Carmen said.

  Mick took a last look out into the night, it felt like being suspended in nothingness. He turned with relief to the ladder, and Carmen helped him over.

  Mick wouldn’t have thought sixteen people could fit in the common room below. It had the galley up forward, and four bunk beds aft, one along each side and two against the bulkhead. The area between the two ends was half-filled by a long collapsible table. In the center of the table was a round pillar, running from the upper deck down through this lower level.

  As Mick pulled out a folding chair, it struck him how stable the boat felt. ‘Or how little the boat is moving,’ he corrected himself. ‘We could be sitting in dry dock.’

  Turok plopped a large covered dish in the middle of the table, and lifted the lid with a flourish. The darkly pungent aroma of chili wafted through the room. Conversation ebbed as they began to eat.

  Mick took great comfort in being below deck in a well-lit, lived-in room, cheek by jowl with the same faces he had woken up with back on Arc-4, and the new faces of others who were practically friends already. What he had so recently experienced outside receded. Here, on this boat far from shore, there was no need to be ready to run at a moment’s notice – that felt good. The chili was worse than cafeteria leftovers, but none of them seemed to notice. He looked forward to sailing north along the coast of this continent, Inuvoro according to the maps, and then across the open sea to Polarica – almost 4000 miles in all to that distant shore. This is our reprieve, he thought.

  “–we couldn’t have made it.” Thomas was looking at him, smiling.

  “Sorry, Thomas, I was gathering wool.” The others laughed.

  “What I was saying … is that without you and Turok we wouldn’t have made it.”

  Mick shook his head. “And without you, we wouldn’t be safely here at sea. And without Carmen, my shoulder wouldn’t be crying blue murder at me right now,” and he made a mock-grimace as he stretched his arm up.

  Carmen called down the length of the table. “And without Marnie and her bat-out-of-hell driving, we’d still be back on that road.” Several hands pounded the table.

  Thomas looked around slowly. “As long as we keep helping each other like we have, we’ll get through this. And if we don’t –” He shrugged. “I can’t think of a better way of facing it.” Voices quietly agreed up and down the table.

  Thomas held up one hand briefly. “There are a few things I should say. About Boleyn for one. The engine – there are two – should give us no problem.”

  Sorel asked, “What’s her top speed?”

  “Now? About eight knots. That’s what she ran at today.”

  The faces around him looked disappointed. “Look, the old sailing vessels, with all their sails out, didn’t do much over four knots. Eight is smoking!”

  “If you say so, skipper,” Turok called out.

  “I do say so.” Faces smiled up and down the table. “When my dad ran her years ago for the fishing she could do maybe four knots on a calm day. And by the time he changed her over to a research ship, about five years ago, she was only doing half of that. He overhauled her to the lean, mean, mile-crunching machine you see today.” The others laughed. “She will get us to Polarica.”

  Carmen looked around the table. “What about sailing in sight of land?”

  “What about it?” Thomas said.

  “How about we do that?” she said flatly.

  Thomas smiled. “In fact, I agree with you. With this calm water … frankly, I’d feel better seeing land.” He glanced at the deck above. “But don’t forget, when we eventually cross the Polar Ocean, we’ll be in the open sea for four, maybe 5 days.”

  Mick looked up from his coffee. “How long till we reach that leg of the trip?”

  “Five weeks overall. In a month we should be in position to start the crossing. Knock on wood.”

  Marnie tapped her spoon against her cup. “Thomas is too easy-going to bring this up, so I will.”

  “Easy-going?” Turok asked in an innocent voice.

  “In the coming weeks,” Marnie continued, “during this trip, I move that Thomas have captain’s authority.” She looked at the nodding faces around her.

  “I second Marnie’s motion,” Mick said. “Thomas should be in charge.”

  Thomas smiled. “On one condition.”

  “Floggings at nine every morning?” Turok called out.

  “And attendance will be compulsory,” Thomas added. “Apart from that, I only need authority over what directly affects the Boleyn. Whatever doesn’t concern her, and your safety on board of course, would not be my responsibility.”

  Marnie revised her motion accordingly, Mick seconded it, and the vote was unanimous.

  “One last thing,” Thomas added. “By necessity, we’ll be navigating by the stars, and that means night sailing.” He looked up towards where the pilot-house was, above deck. “Giorgi and I, and three volunteers, will take turns at the helm. But we can work that out over the next few days.” He paused. “So far voting on the choices to be made has worked fine. But the day may come when we have to elect a decision-maker. Just keep that in mind.”

  Franklin stood up, smiled, and said a quiet goodnight. “No,” he protested, “you young people stay and talk.” He was bunking with Thomas and Giorgi in a small cabin in the bow. They all waved him goodnight.

  Marnie glanced at the antique barometer on the wall. “Maybe the instruments will work when we’re closer to the pole?”

  Mick pushed his spoon round the top of his mug. “There’s a good chance Nebura’s polarity is holding off the ion cloud from the poles. If so, then yes, the neutronics should start working again as we move north.”

  Marnie rubbed her forehead. “From what Rainer told us … the effects we’re seeing up here are nothing compared to what’s happening at the equator.”

  “What difference does any of it make?” Sorel said quietly. He drank off the last of his coffee and set his mug down carefully on the table. “Dead is dead!” He stared at the faces around him. “This world’s falling apart. We’re just buying ourselves a few extra months. The less we know about this heap of a world, the better. It’ll make dying easier.”

  The table fell silent. Marnie pushed her chair back. “If I die here, I want to understand why.”

  Carmen looked at Sorel as though for the first time. “You’ve already given up.”

  Sorel stood up suddenly, almost knocking over his chair. “I’m a realist. We’re kidding ourselves.” He appeared indifferent as he looked around at friends who avoided his eyes. He walked off to the end of the room and swung down into one of the lower bunks.

  The mood was broken. The fifteen travelers broke into several desultory conversations. A few in Thomas’s group silently shared Sorel’s assessment, if not wit
h the bitterness behind his words.

  Carmen and Marnie rose a short while later and made their way to the second cabin in the bow, next to Thomas’s. Aleesha followed not long after. Across the corridor from the common room another cabin amidships held five more from Thomas’s group, including Afflek. The rest of them found places among the four double bunks at the end of the common room.

  Despite his aching shoulder, Mick went up on deck. For some reason the night seemed less frightening than it did only a couple hours before. He sat looking at the star-filled sky, spread out like a banquet for his eyes alone.

  Another figure stood at the other end of the boat, his feet spread on the rock-still deck. Sorel’s upturned eyes looked into the same sky, yet for him it held only an uninviting, indifferent emptiness. To his way of thinking this diseased world would eventually crush him, and not even realize it. This boat, all those sleeping so naively below, and himself – were as nothing. And nothing was all that awaited them.

  ______________

  By late afternoon the next day Thomas had taken them a further 150 miles north. They stood about ten miles offshore, staying in sight of land as Carmen had wanted. Inuvoro was a roughly triangular continent, with its southern coast as the longer, transverse side. Its two diagonal sides that met in the north pointed towards the small polar land mass of Polarica. An added advantage of coastal sailing was that navigating by the stars was made unnecessary. They could just follow the broad outline of the coast north. Everyone liked the tradeoff – a few extra days sailing in exchange for staying in sight of land. Thomas had cautioned, however, that once they reached the Polar Ocean they would need to resume blue water sailing.

  After a week of this the islands between the Boleyn and the coast became a vast archipelago – they passed hundreds of such islands. It had one undeniable benefit: they could stand out much further from the mainland. The dispersed islands were strung along the coast like a string of emeralds, each one a different shade of green.

  Carmen, Marnie, and Aleesha brought folding chairs up on deck from the galley-lounge. Their feet up on the stern gunwale, they sat gazing to starboard as the shore slid past. They imagined they were becoming seasoned sailors, which amused Thomas no end. That morning he had announced that they sailed nearly seven hundred miles in the last week, and was disgruntled when this news brought no hearty cheers.

  Nothing broke up the monotony of islands, trees, and ocean. The only movement was the wake of the Boleyn itself. It was like crossing an artist’s seascape, or being trapped in a child’s snow globe, with the artificial snow removed.

  It was late afternoon, and Thomas had shut off the engines, which needed several down hours a day. The silence was a relief at first, but soon the stillness around them became oppressive, as it always did. Mick came on deck and strolled to the stern. His injured shoulder was healing quickly, and he hardly noticed it as he leaned on the transom, then swung carefully down to the platform as he had every day since leaving.

  Carmen joined him as he knelt by the water. “Any change?”

  He looked up, and nodded. She leaned down beside him, and fully extended her arm under the water’s surface. She could only about a hand-span down.

  Mick cupped water in his hand. “It could just be the difference of daylight.”

  “We can check again tomorrow.” She smiled. “Don’t be a skeptic, Mick.”

  “Not a cynic?”

  “No. A skeptic wants to believe, and waits for proof. A cynic won’t believe even when there is proof.”

  He shook the water from his hand. “So what are you?”

  “Guess.”

  He gazed across the water, then turned back. “There isn’t a word for it. You have the gift of belief.”

  She leaned back against the stern. “Is that a good thing?”

  “Faith can move mountains, they used to say.” He looked back at her. “Sometimes I think the real world is the one in our minds.”

  She gave her attention again to the water. “I have a game I play. Sometimes I know things. I just know.” A feeling now, about the water, was hovering just out of her reach. She kept looking, waiting. She leaned to the side of the platform, and lowered her face almost to the water line.

  Mick watched her. “What is it?”

  “The water is changing,” she said softly.

  The Boleyn rocked slightly, just the innocent rise and fall that a mild swell might cause. The boat rocked again. He looked on deck and the others appeared unaware of it. He turned and looked out to the open sea, and saw the change.

  “Waves,” he said. “From the north.”

  Turok leaned out over the stern and pointed without a word towards the coastal horizon. They followed his gaze. A V-formation of birds very high up was crossing a little forward of them, heading northeast. “Back on Earth those would be a migrating species,” he said.

  Thomas stepped out of the pilot-house, and wandered over. He too looked at the distant flock. “First birds I’ve seen in more than a year.”

  Carmen shielded her eyes from the glare over the water. “They’re fleeing the stilling.” They watched until the flock merged with the northern horizon.

  ______________

  After dinner the others brought more folding chairs up on deck. They sat along the port gunwale and watched the sunset together in silence. But it was a different kind of silence. The changes they were seeing were minor, perhaps insignificant, yet it gave them a welcome lightness of heart. They wanted to believe the further north they went the more Nebura would heal itself, but they knew this was not in fact happening. This region, this latitude, was simply succumbing at a slower rate. A flickering hope joined them in a fragile weave of emotion that no one wanted to see unwind.

  Dinner had started out quietly, until their curiosity had got the better of them. Turok had asked the question that was on all their minds, whether the stilling was in fact getting worse. Franklin conceded that, on a global basis, it most certainly was. He explained that at the equator the sky and ocean were affected differently than back in Nebu City.

  “It is far worse there,” he said quietly. “I doubt whether anyone is left alive south of thirty degrees North.”

  Marnie twisted a biscuit in half. “From thirty North to thirty South … nothing?”

  Franklin nodded grimly.

  “And it’s spreading?”

  He nodded again. “Although it doesn’t literally spread. The same forces that produce it there – are causing it to occur everywhere else. It happened faster there.”

  “And you really have no idea what’s causing it?”

  The old man turned to Mick. “Your observation of a dispersed ion cloud is almost certainly part of it. What else did your ship’s synthetic say about it?”

  “Trinh didn’t say much,” Mick admitted. “Though I suppose she might have learned more over the past couple weeks.” He shrugged. “I assume this star’s emissions – its ions – are subtly different from what it sent out before, and the ion cloud seems to be a result of that.”

  Marnie impatiently finished her biscuit. “Mick, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t tell me a whole lot.”

  Mick plowed on. “The anomaly could be many things, such as more frequent density waves from the sun.”

  Turok leaned back, exhaling loudly.

  Franklin interrupted. “Waves of ions, stripped hydrogen atoms, more tightly packed than normal.”

  Marnie picked up another biscuit. “What else?”

  Mick ran his finger along the outer edge of his plate. “Increased ion levels. Even if that has no effect at all, it tells us a lot about this sun. For instance, there are likely more surface ejections than normal, when plasma explodes out through the corona.”

  “Sending out bigger ion waves?” Marnie said.

  Mick nodded. “And other solar material. There also may be something happening with the photosphere – the actual surface of the sun beneath the corona. It’s very thin, only a couple hundr
ed miles thick. All the visible light from the sun is produced there. Everything begins, here, with that light.” He placed his hand flat on the table. He looked up. “Or it could be something different from ions or light. Something may have affected the burning of hydrogen deep inside, at the sun’s core.”

  Marnie sat back. “I’m almost sorry I asked.” She nodded at Mick. “But thanks.”

  Franklin looked round at the glum faces. “A lot of possibilities … don’t necessarily mean a complex problem. One of those possibilities, under specific conditions, is what’s causing this. When we find that –” He stood up. “Let’s not lose hope.”

  To Mick’s surprise, the dinner had not ended on an entirely pessimistic note.

  ______________

  The weeks followed lazily one after another. The coast on their right slipped by, its forested cover growing more sparse with each passing day. This wasn’t to be explained by any climatic shift as they went north – the temperature had dropped only a negligible amount. Franklin believed the soil itself was responsible, as they had soon discovered during a brief onshore excursion. Not only was the soil thinner, its chemical makeup was substantially different. The trees appeared in lonely clusters, oases of green on an otherwise finely-ground, shale-like surface that stretched far back from the shoreline.

  They were within days of reaching the northern tip of Inuvoro, the Cape, and would officially begin their crossing of the Polar Ocean later that day. Thomas would soon be readying for the turn away from the shoreline – the long weeks of their coastal passage were coming to an end.

  A dozen folding chairs had been left out on deck from that first week. They had often sat out together after meals and during pilot-house shift changes. It was a couple hours after sunset and Carmen was sitting alone near the stern. She got up, swiveled smoothly over the transom and landed on the platform. Lying out with her head on folded arms, she looked over the side, her face barely inches from the water. She enjoyed watching the small wavelets, maybe eighteen inches from crest to crest and a couple inches deep. They gave her a strange longing. She hadn’t realized how oppressive the stillness and silence would become. Light from the quarter moon reflected off the surface of the water, making it appear opaque again. She knew of course that even under very normal conditions, water was only transparent about a couple feet down, but once submerged you could see a distance of several yards, and often much further. She suddenly wondered how transparent this water was. She felt a sudden desire to be submerged in it, and find out.

  Her eyes darted among the constantly shifting reflections of moonlight on the low crests and troughs of the waves. The moonlit-dappled surface was so near – she felt as though she was sinking into it. She felt adrift, and the sinking sensation pulled some more. There was an odd glow below her, in the shape of a large sphere. It came closer. It was like a pale bubble of light moving through the water, except the light was contained.

  It appeared to project no aura.

  She heard her name being called, and snapped her head up. She saw Marnie standing up on the stern. Carmen looked back in the water for her phantom sphere of light, but it had vanished.

  “Carmen,” Marnie said again, looking down at her.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Marnie said as Carmen joined her on deck.

  Carmen shrugged. “No, just the opposite. Sometimes this water seems intensely alive to me.”

  Marnie looked at her strangely. “We need you below – something’s wrong with Giorgi.”

  Moments later something pungent flared in her nostrils as she went below-deck behind Marnie, who looked at her sidelong as they walked down the corridor into the common room. The ship’s company was clustered around one of the lower bunks at the far end. The others parted as she approached.

  A wan face looked up at her. She couldn’t believe Giorgi could change so much in only a few hours. His skin was pale, splotchy, and small lesions had appeared around his mouth, nose and eyes. Mick was at the head of the bed, kneeling with his back against the wall, his expression unreadable as he nodded at Carmen.

  Giorgi’s eyes opened at the sound of her approach. He smiled crookedly. “Thomas’s cooking …”

  His voice was cut off by a wet-sounding peal of coughs that locked down his throat, the muscles beneath his jaw clenched briefly in a spasm. The coughing passed. His heaving chest subsided, his throat slackened. His pulse was visible now in his tightened throat; his mouth hung open.

  Her mind flashed back to Rainer. She balled a fist and suppressed the memory as she leaned by the bunk. “What’s this, Giorgi?”

  He lifted his shoulders imperceptibly.

  “You’re alarming everyone, you know,” she said, in a schoolroom tone. “I haven’t seen people looking so grim since the last time you beat up on poor Mick.”

  He grinned weakly as Carmen was joined by Marnie carrying one of the ship’s medical kits. Carmen looked up at Mick. He turned and nodded to Turok, gesturing at the bunk. “Let’s get this top bed off, give him more air.”

  The bed’s catches were released and the top bunk was lifted away. Rummaging in the bag, Carmen pulled out a pressure-release hypodermic. After checking his temperature she punched in those symptoms she had seen and guessed at, and waited as a midlevel meds cocktail slotted itself in the pressure chamber.

  Carmen leaned back over him. “Time to dream your cares away, Giorgi,” she said, smiling, and held up the hypo. He nodded. “Is there anything else we should know … did anything out of the ordinary happen to you in the last couple days?”

  He paused. “I felt dizzy a lot … a few blackouts.”

  She nodded. “I need you to stop alarming everyone. Promise?”

  He smiled, lifted a hand off the bed sheet, and raised his thumb. She placed the pressure-release hypo against the pulse in his neck and depressed the nozzle. A sibilant release sounded, followed by a slight surging visible beneath his skin. She packed away the hypo, waited a moment, and then looked up at the others. He was already snoring softly.

  “He should sleep for ten hours or so. Let’s keep him covered.”

  She withdrew and joined the others standing in a small clot at the galley end of the room. No one uttered the words, but there was little doubt the CTT had reappeared. They thought they had left it behind.

  ______________

  Giorgi’s condition worsened the next day. Carmen and Mick jury-rigged a battery of pharmaceuticals from the Boleyn’s medical stores after consulting a scaled-down medical synthetic on the notebook holofield. His fever abated, but little else – the coughing and vomiting continued. They all contemplated, privately, the possibility that there would be no cure for Giorgi’s illness, just as there was none for the stilling that laid siege to Nebura itself.

  It was almost six AM, and Thomas was nearing the end of his four-hour piloting shift. Mick had volunteered for the next four-hour stint, and was making his way to the pilot-house carrying two steaming mugs of coffee.

  Thomas gladly accepted the mug held out to him. “I could smell that through two sets of doors,” he said, smiling, and sipped loudly. They settled into a companionable silence.

  The sun was edging above the eastern horizon, spreading an orange fire along Nebura’s rim.

  Seeing the sunrise was the high point of Thomas’s day. “The first settlers called this planet Kalaalit. You know why?”

  “New Kalaal,” Mick replied.

  Thomas nodded, and looked awkwardly at his friend. “Mick, we all accept what is happening.” He nodded at what lay beyond the pilothouse windows. “No one is to blame for that.”

  Mick gazed at the horizon without really seeing it. “I hate feeling helpless.”

  Thomas sipped again meditatively. A short time later he formally handed over piloting duty to Mick, ‘the ritual of transfer,’ he had grandly called it, in their first days at sea. He closed the door quietly behind him. Mick was alone with the stunning sunrise, and his thoughts.


  As Thomas had taught them, Mick ensured the bow was aligned with two specific, barely visible stars, in different constellations. It wasn’t really necessary with the coast still in sight. He checked that the Boleyn’s centerline angle against an agreed, far-off landmark was correct. Providing the stilling’s effects dissipated as they moved north, he and Turok hoped to soon have the neutronics back up. It was comforting just to hold the wheel, and feel the ever-present, slight shudder coming up through the deck from the engines. They didn’t really hear them any longer. When the engines were shut off that first day, everyone had been spooked by the silence. Mick’s eyes returned to the bow.

  They had removed Giorgi from the large bunkroom, joined as it was with the common room, and moved him into one of the forward cabins. Mick dreaded to think how that cabin might become their sick bay, and saw in his mind a progression of patients moving through it over the coming weeks. ‘We’ll be a death ship,’ he thought bitterly. He suddenly cursed this world – this Kalaalit – that Trinh had brought them to. There were times he felt angry at the indifferent control Nebura had over their lives. He tried to remind himself that this world itself was suffering as well. He eased back in the high piloting stool, leaning into its comfortable wraparound back, and looked off into the sky. He saw wisps of white very high up. They were too distant to seem like clouds, though their presence at all was a move in the right direction. Until a few days ago the skies had been unvarying expanses of cloudless blue.

  He thought of how Carmen had so uncomplainingly taken charge of Giorgi’s treatment. ‘Every symptom is like a message,’ her actions seemed to say. And once understood, might lead to a solution. He reproached himself for having let his determination slide recently. They faced three problems: finding a way off the planet, Rainer’s CTT disease, and the stilling. He wondered what their message was.

  He was glad to reach the end of his shift. He was tiring more easily in recent days. The muffled sounds of sliding doors below and water being drawn wafted up through the deck – the Boleyn was waking up. He turned off the engine – silence enveloped the morning. They drifted forward gently, and came to a gliding stop. He slipped the leather catch over a wheel spoke, to hold the rudder in place. He unlatched the door, slid it open, and froze.

  He was certain he had felt a slight puff of breeze. He stepped fully out on deck. There it was again, a telltale bit of wind. He looked up at the wind-vane on the stump of mast above the pilothouse. It wasn’t turning at all. He stepped back in and saw it was locked in place. He released it and stepped out. Again, nothing. He felt foolish. He looked up and saw the lateral cups were now slowly rotating. He looked forward to a day of incremental changes: small waves, clouds, and wind.

  ______________

  Carmen again looked in on Giorgi before joining the others for breakfast. She had spent much of the night monitoring her patient. His original symptoms, dizziness and blackouts, had progressed to a fever and delirium. Rainer’s words kept coming back to her.

  She stepped into the small cabin and was shocked at Giorgi’s high color, his labored breathing. At his collarbone she saw a strange lesion, like nothing she had ever seen. Within its red rim the skin had a cloudy texture. She pulled back the bedcover to reveal several more of the fiery discolorations on his chest. She felt his forehead, and saw the bed sheet was soaked with perspiration. Then the cloudy opacity of the lesion at this collarbone cleared – for a moment she thought she could see right through Giorgi’s body, then the swirling cloudiness returned. She hastily pulled the bedcover back up. Maybe if she brought down the fever the lesions might recede. They had tried everything else.

  There was only one thing she could think of doing.

  ______________

  Four of Thomas’s men emerged on deck carrying Giorgi’s prone body. Carmen was already on the stern platform, in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. Another of the men had hold of the sick man’s upper body as Mick, who was holding his legs, slid down the transom and landed lightly on the platform. He swayed there for a moment as Carmen slipped a life preserver over Giorgi’s shoulders and zipped it closed.

  Moving to the platform’s edge, she nodded at Mick, turned and slid smoothly into the water. After levering Giorgi over the side of the platform Mick joined Carmen in the water, where they held the unconscious man easily between them. The water had a surprising buoyancy.

  Carmen was grateful when one of the others handed her a life preserver. “He feels cooler already. I should have thought of this before.”

  As an inflatable Dacron stretcher was tied to the side of the platform Mick looped two life preservers to the ends. Carmen brought Giorgi forward and they rolled him onto the webbing. The stretcher had holes activated by a nozzle – she made it somewhat less buoyant. He was about 75% submerged, his head held high on the stretcher’s headrest. She noticed that his lesions remained opaque. They receded noticeably over the next ten minutes, growing first filmy, and a much healthier-looking pinkish crust began forming. The cooler temperature and the water made a surprising difference.

  Mick pulled at the stretcher, testing how secure the ties were. He looked over at Carmen. “How long?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s try 30 minutes at first. See if it brings down his fever.”

  “We could set up a cot in the stern.”

  She considered. “Yeah. That should work.” They looked towards the shoreline about three miles away. She felt tired from her long night at Giorgi’s side.”Mind if I swim around a bit?” she asked.

  He smiled with surprise. “Go ahead. You’ve earned it.”

  She nodded and drifted lazily away. She swam about twenty yards from the Boleyn. The water was much clearer now, almost normal. She unzipped her life preserver and let herself submerge a few feet. Bending at the waist she scissored her legs, pushing herself down. She was surprised that she could see about ten yards now, easy. The stilling had definitely reached here. It flashed into her mind that only a few weeks earlier she had been onboard the Arc-4, in orbit around this planet, and here she was now, swimming through clear, emerald-green waters. She smiled at the incongruousness of it.

  She was down about twenty feet. Rolling over, she was about to scissor her legs and make for the surface when below her appeared an out-of-place glowing. It was like what she had seen before. She stroked sideways, pivoted, and saw it again. It looked to be a fairly strong reflection of light, about twenty feet further down. She looked up, saw that the sun was directly overhead – about noon, she thought. ‘Where is it being reflected from?’ she asked herself. She looked down again, and it was clearer now – a definite sphere-shaped bubble of light. But she needed air. She kicked twice and felt herself float peacefully up. Breaking surface, she saw Franklin on the platform talking with Mick, who was still in the water holding the stretcher. Aleesha and Marnie were over on the far side of the pilothouse, looking towards shore. She took a deep breath, and dived again.

  Using long strokes she slivered her lean body deeper, and the sphere loomed swiftly into view. She slowed and hung suspended several feet above it. Kicking sideways she moved in towards it on a half-parabola, and felt herself slowly drawn closer. She stopped again a few feet away. It was beside her now – a perfect sphere of light. Looking at it was disorienting, like being back up at the surface, as though the Boleyn would hove into view at any moment. She looked up and saw the sunlight reaching down, fading into a grayish-green relative darkness above her. The sphere was maybe thirty feet in diameter. She looked down between her gently kicking legs, white against the inky blackness below. She looked ahead into the light, trying to see inside. But there was nothing to see, it appeared empty. She tentatively pulled herself forward with short, paddling strokes, until she got herself within an arm’s length of the bright surface. When she reached towards it there was a slight tingling on her fingertips, as though the effervescing bubbles from a carbonated drink were tickling her skin. She again felt the need for air. When she stroked with her other hand her f
ingertips touched the surface of light, and broke through. Her fingertips were no longer tickling, they felt warm. They seemed to have broken through into a place empty of water.

  A touch of vertigo stole in. The need for air scrabbled around inside her like a live thing. She yanked her hand back from the sphere. Flailing, she backed away and kicked for the surface. Her hands reached through and she felt flooded with relief as her head broke above the welcoming light-dappled surface. She was about to call out to the boat – but it wasn’t there. Turning rapidly in every direction, she couldn’t see it. She floundered and suddenly realized she couldn’t see the sky, in any direction. She knew a moment of pure terror. All she could see was a bright concave surface of water, in every direction. She willed herself to be still. She looked down at her body, which was projecting part-way out of the water, and she wasn’t falling back down into it. A hysterical laugh burst from her lips, and she clamped her mouth shut. She thought quickly, realized she must have got disoriented and swum right back into the sphere. She was hanging inside an inside-out world of water, and was breathing air! Then she understood there was no gravity pulling on the upper half of her body. Suddenly she didn’t want to be half-in and half-out of whatever this was, and quickly kicked her legs. She felt herself suddenly shoot forward into the sphere. Her whole body was inside. It felt like a surreal version of a space-walk. Water-droplets were spooling off her skin in every direction, she was in a shower of suspended drops, which were gliding back towards, and flowing into, the globe of water that enveloped her. Then the fear returned – she was shocked into immobility by its size.

  She very deliberately closed her eyes. She lifted her heavy arms to cover her chest, and keeping her legs straight she crossed one ankle over the other. Her breathing slowed, and she took in one great lungful of air after another, and tried to clear her mind. She was sure. The sphere extended several hundred feet across, many times the distance the sphere appeared to be from outside.

  She didn’t want to think of that, so she asked herself to solve this problem. When a laugh bubbled up, she grabbed hold, and then started giving back her solutions. ‘One, crush this panic.’ She kept her eyes firmly closed. ‘Two, get outside.’ She felt her skin drying quickly. ‘Three, get back to the surface.’ She opened her eyes, and looked at the silvery blue lightsphere of water around her. It was like being inside a zero-G stadium of light. The surface was now further away, and bringing on a renewed vertigo. She breathed deep. If it’s further away, she thought, then I must be moving. She loosened her ankles and made a tentative kick. Nothing. She scissored her legs. Again, nothing, except she did seem to be moving deeper into the sphere’s center. Then she just stopped fighting it, and let herself drift. She reached out above her head. Minutes passed. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. It felt like the split-second before some terrible accident, a segment of time stretching out before the moment of impact. She screamed when the tingling suddenly started in her toes. She couldn’t look. Then a sensation of wetness was climbing up her feet, on her shins now. She wrenched her eyes open and saw she was sluicing out through the sphere’s surface. She had floated right across it. She clamped her mouth shut as the water climbed up her chest, wrapping round her neck and chin. Water closed over her head. She was out, enveloped in water again.

  She kept her eyes closed. She let herself drift for several seconds, feeling the wonderful relief of being pulled by gravity. She welcomed its heavy embrace. She kicked away from that direction, lifting her face and arms. Finally she opened her eyes, and saw the surface rising, or dropping, towards her. She wasn’t sure, she hesitated – then decided she didn’t care. She broke through and moaned with relief when she saw the sky above her. She turned and there was the beautiful Boleyn. Suddenly the sound hit her: the world’s sound, the sound of air in her ears. So loud. She couldn’t seem to speak. She had no idea how long she had been gone, and was exhausted. Franklin was leaning over talking to Mick, as he had been before. She lifted a hand and waved weakly. She rolled onto her side and scissored her legs. Glancing at the pilot-house, she saw that Marnie and Aleesha were still talking, as before. She felt weak, and kicked again to keep herself above water. Mick was calling to her, but she couldn’t get any words out. The water closed over her head.

  Suddenly Mick was at her side. Arms were reaching down. The world faded.

  6 | Storm Ring

  Aleesha looked at her reflection in the mirror. There was no mistaking that as far as her looks were concerned, the flaws were clearly winning the battle. Not that it mattered, of course. She could look at herself without a micron of vanity, without expecting to see anything in particular, perhaps because others felt vain on her behalf, by their focusing on one aspect of her person to the exclusion of all else. It freed her to look at herself impartially, clinically. This led to an inevitable conclusion: what others considered she possessed – beauty – was something she felt completely indifferent to. If she was beautiful, she reasoned, her feelings should reflect that. But they didn’t. So to her mind her beauty was a sham, a thing that only existed for others. And by thinking it, she thought, they make it real; and by thinking the opposite, I make the opposite real, for me. This understanding could one day produce in her an awakening, though that hadn’t happened yet. She was only beginning to see that by controlling her thinking, her expectations, she was deciding in advance what her world would be.

  She finished washing her face, made her way to the galley where she grabbed a mug of steaming coffee, and climbed to the main deck. It was about seven in the evening. She sat on the deck, her back against the pilothouse, her legs stretched out so her feet were resting on the gunwale. That day the sky had had honest-to-goodness clouds. They were larger than any they had seen in weeks, and were lower in the sky. The breeze that moved the clouds had picked up too – if you turned away and looked back a minute or two later, their position would have changed. A gentle breeze was blowing even now. Aleesha looked around, and it occurred to her they might be leaving the stilling behind. Nebura was beginning to feel like a normal world. ‘Well, almost!’ she thought, as her eye fell on Carmen standing in the bow, looking intently into the dark water.

  Aleesha hadn’t known what to make of Carmen’s swimming outing a few days before. Or more to the point, her wild report of an underwater sphere of light. The others’ reactions hadn’t helped matters. Franklin had been politely skeptical, Sorel scornful, Marnie had clearly wanted to believe her, but in the end, hadn’t. Mick had come the closest of any of them to doing so. ‘Our not believing her,’ Aleesha thought, ‘has made Carmen herself less able to believe it.’ Aleesha smiled. ‘Maybe she and I aren’t so different.’ Carmen had spent much of that day resting in her cabin after Mick had brought her back.

  Giorgi’s illness had receded after two hours in the water, then leveled off. His body’s lesions had rapidly crusted over after several hours lying on a cot in the stern. He had looked peaceful under his umbrella. Then in the late afternoon he had woken and hobbled around the stern, breathing deeply. Yet everyone suspected, including himself, that he was one of Rainer’s ‘walking ghosts’. He seemed oddly reconciled.

  The one thing Carmen had said that piqued Aleesha’s interest was when she showed her wristwatch to them at dinner. It was one of several fairly expensive marine watches – from Boleyn’s glory days as a marine research vessel – that Franklin had handed out in their first week on board. Carmen’s watch had unaccountably been fifteen minutes ahead of the others. She said in no uncertain terms that she had spent fifteen minutes inside the sphere, and concluded the sphere carried within itself some sort of time distortion. ‘You go, girl!’ Aleesha said to herself. Add that to the space distortion which Carmen had enlightened them about earlier. ‘A more plausible theory,’ Aleesha thought, ‘is she has Rainer’s disease, and it’s on a wild romp now in the sunny uplands of her mind.’ Aleesha was not particularly curious about this world. ‘But what if Carmen’s right?’ she asked herself. ‘Ne
bura had delivered up some rich weirdness so far. Why not marine globes of light with a terminal case of space-time curvature?’ The engine had been shut off. She jumped at the sound of Carmen’s voice. Carmen was pointing frantically at something in the water.

  Aleesha stood up and walked over. Mick had joined Carmen a while earlier and was looking at whatever Carmen was so excited about. They were both getting excited now.

  About a hundred feet off to the side, and fairly deep, maybe forty feet down, was a pronounced glowing in the water. ‘Is that Carmen’s sphere?’ Aleesha asked herself.

  Carmen had turned to Mick. “It’s bigger,” she said. She was almost bouncing from foot to foot with excitement.

  Mick stepped up onto the gunwale while holding a shroud that stretched down from the Boleyn’s unused half-mast. “You went inside that?”

  Carmen shook her head. “This must be a different one. It looks bigger, and deeper.”

  Marnie and a couple others came on deck, Franklin among them. “It could be something on the bottom, some light-absorbing surface,” the old man said, dropping into a squat. “Strange it would emit light this late in the day, though.”

  Carmen turned to Seamus in the pilothouse. “How deep is the bottom here?”

  “Hundred and fifty feet, give or take.”

  Carmen turned back to the water. Aleesha hadn’t been expecting it, but she realized afterward that it made sense. Carmen needed to prove to herself that she wasn’t losing her mind. She stepped up onto the gunwale beside Mick, who stood on the other side of the shroud angling for a better look. Without warning, she bent at the knees and torpedoed in. Marnie shouted and the others came forward to where Mick still stood on the gunwale. It was at most five seconds after she dove that Mick too launched himself from the side of the boat, slicing cleanly into the water.

  Aleesha was shocked by the risk her two shipmates had taken, and leaned her head against the pilothouse doorjamb. She almost didn’t want to watch. Carmen was clearly visible. She had reached the depth of the sphere, and hovered about fifteen feet to one side as Mick joined her. They had been down for close to a minute now. They hesitated, it seemed as though Carmen was gesturing to Mick, explaining something. Treading water side by side, Carmen reached out and took hold of one of Mick’s hands. They started off and swam straight toward the sphere. Without slowing they passed straight into its bright surface.

  ______________

  Mick had been half a second behind Carmen when she passed into the light. He closed his eyes and felt the tingling in his hands travel down his arms. When they had set out from their underwater perch outside the sphere, they had made several strong kicks and built a fair momentum. They hit the sphere surface with their arms thrust out before them. Once his hands entered the surface, they vanished from sight like the light had absorbed them. Then his arms were vanishing too, as though being slowly swallowed. His arms felt light, and then the top of his head was tingling, and a single flash pressed against his closed eyelids. The tingling tickling sensation traveled down his body, reached and passed through the soles of his feet, and then it was gone. He opened his eyes.

  He was still holding Carmen’s hand; she squeezed his hand almost painfully. He looked behind at the retreating wall of light, and turned to look at her. She was watching him closely.

  When he smiled weakly back at her she gave him a thumbs-up. “Mick?”

  It was like she had spoken in a vaulted cathedral. Her voice filled the space, yet it didn’t lose any of its quality of quiet nearness. He cleared his throat. “We did it!”

  She looked ahead, then turned back. “How far do you think it is?”

  He looked past her, judging the distance, and shook his head. “But how? It shouldn’t be more than fifty feet.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He glanced around at the perfect symmetry of the sphere. “You really think this is a curvature of space.”

  She nodded. “Or else it’s a shared illusion.”

  “No.” He breathed out heavily. “Truth doesn’t play favorites. I can’t deny what I see.”

  She smiled. “I’ve been doing just that, to myself, these past few days.”

  They fell silent. He wanted to move faster, and tried a few experimental kicks, but it made no difference. They continued gliding through the seemingly weightless environment of the sphere.

  “It’s better just to relax. We’ll reach the other side eventually.”

  He looked at his watch, and estimated they had been inside the sphere for about seven minutes.

  He couldn’t see her face when she spoke again – she was looking ahead to the other side. “When I was in the other one,” she said. “I mean after the vertigo wore off, I felt better than I have in years.” She paused. “How do you feel?”

  “Not bad, actually. It’s like the perfect space-walk.” He bent his knees, brought his legs up, and crossed his ankles. He felt ridiculous, and didn’t care. “I haven’t felt this great in years.” He laughed, and the open sound of it was a surprise. He laughed again, louder, and then shouted.

  Carmen laughed along with him. She reached out towards the other side, as though she wanted to embrace all of it, and then brought her hands down to rest on her shoulders.

  Mick let loose with another shout, his voice somersaulting down into a tenor warble of sound that rolled forward through the sphere. Carmen clapped and let out a long pealing whistle. They glided on, filling the sphere with their shouts.

  As their laughter faded Mick looked at Carmen’s watch. “Does your watch have one of those miniaturized holofields,” he asked suddenly.

  The question took her by surprise. “Uh, sure, I guess so. Why?”

  Mick reached down and pulled a palm maser from his belt clip. “Take the back off your watch.”

  She looked at him quizzically, took off her watch, deftly pressed on the center of its back plate, then the outer edge. She did it again, and the plate levered up. In the meantime Mick had adjusted his maser to a half-inch long, laser-narrow beam. He slipped Carmen’s watchband over the maser, held it in place, and then sent a two-second beam into the micro pulse cylinder inside the open watch. For two seconds a small holofield cube, only a couple inches on a side, was emitted from the watch’s front face plate.

  “Bravo!” Carmen said.

  “Wait,” he said.

  He adjusted the maser-beam wavelength all the way down, and toggled another control. Then he sent a continuous beam into the back of the watch. An image cube sprang into life above Mick’s lap, about thirty inches on a side. It showed an opaque region in the bottom center – Polarica, he assumed. He turned off the beam and the holocube image continued on. Surrounding that landmass was the Polar Ocean, and surrounding that was an irregular circular obstruction – a ribbon of what looked like volatile atmospheric activity. Polarica itself, and the ocean around it out about 200 miles, appeared to be entirely free of any disruption. Looking at the area of atmospheric turbulence they saw whorls of horrendous winds and spinning tsunami-like waves crashing against each other – it formed a two-mile wide perimeter that, like the wall surrounding an ancient fortress, completely encircled the relatively small polar continent. It appeared to extend vertically right up into the outer edge of Nebura’s troposphere.

  “It’s like a maelstrom,” Carmen said. “A very controlled maelstrom.”

  “A ring of storms.”

  “A storm ring, yeah.”

  “Look at how defined its perimeter is, outside and inside.”

  “It could be artificial,” Carmen said.

  “Looks that way. Or maybe nature on Nebura just appears to us, at times, artificial.” He reached up into the holofield and ran his finger along the dancing light that formed the storm ring perimeter. “I wonder if it might be part of the stilling – like its front line. Or maybe it’s the planet’s reaction to the stilling?”

  “Defending Polarica?” Carmen said with a smile.

  Mick withdrew h
is hand, and looked up again at the symmetrical concave space around them. They had moved more than half-way across now. They weren’t entirely weightless, he noticed, because he could change his posture even though there was no counter-force for him to push against. None of their movement altered their trajectory across the empty space of the sphere. Being there produced a startling feeling of contentment.

  Carmen was peering closer into the holofield. “Your storm ring has no break, no gap that I can see.”

  “Right. How do we get through it,” Mick agreed. “I can’t imagine sailing the Boleyn through that.”

  “Look, over here. This section seems less volatile.”

  Mick expanded the holofield’s interior. “You’re right. It’s like a parting of the storms. Narrow though, about a thousand feet maybe.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “Thirty miles west of here.”

  They looked for a while longer.

  Mick snapped off the holofield and leaned back. He felt stronger than he had in weeks, since receiving that grazing wound back on the bridge in Nebu City. It wasn’t just a feeling; his muscles did seem stronger, his breathing deeper, his thinking clearer.

  They were mere feet from the surface of light. The tingling and tickling touched again his outstretched hands, traveled down his arms, the feeling of pressure and wetness enveloping them suddenly as they broke through. His head was through, immersed again in water. He opened his eyes and watched his body and legs steadily re-appear as if they were re-materializing, emerging from a bright hole in space. Carmen was ahead of him, fully out, waiting for him, smiling. She nodded and pointed to the surface. They kicked and slowly rose above the sphere, back into darkness.

  When they were less than ten feet from the surface Carmen touched his arm. He turned and saw her staring intently off to one side. He followed her gaze and saw there was another sphere about half a mile away, apparently hovering half in and half out of the water. He glanced back at her. She looked as excited as he was by the prospect of seeing a half-sphere of light above the surface. They kicked, and keeping their eyes on the distant sphere, broke surface. Where the second sphere should have been was just a normal clear day – there was no half-sphere above the surface.

  Their shipmates were leaning over the gunwale. “Come on!” Aleesha called again.

  Mick and Carmen took one last puzzled look, turned and swam towards the Boleyn’s stern ladder.

  ______________

  Aleesha sat in the galley lounge across from Mick and Carmen. They had just finished describing what happened inside the sphere. The whole ship’s company sat around the room. Aleesha was not surprised at the lack of response.

  She shivered when she remembered what she had seen only minutes earlier – Mick joining Carmen down by the sphere, and then both of them swimming directly into it. Carmen had been slightly ahead of Mick. When her arm passed through, Aleesha had caught a movement on the other side of the sphere. She glanced to the other side and saw an arm emerging from that other side. She shifted her eyes quickly back and saw Carmen in down to her waist, and Mick’s head was just entering. She shifted again back to the other side and saw Carmen was half out of the other side, and Mick’s head was just breaking through. She gasped and looked back, just catching sight of Mick’s feet vanishing inside. When she looked back, they were both out. They had looked relaxed, cheerful even. Then they swam up to the surface, pausing for a little more sightseeing close to the surface. Everyone on the boat had seen it.

  Mick explained about jury-rigging a holofield on Carmen’s watch.

  “The neutronics worked?” Turok asked.

  Mick nodded, and smiled when Turok went off to check if the notebooks’ systems were up. They began describing the storm ring. This time the new information met with no skepticism. They were all considering the possibility of a way through it when Turok walked back in. ‘He looks disappointed,’ Aleesha noted.

  They looked at him, but he shook his head.

  “Is this storm ring stable?” Franklin asked Mick.

  “It was when we observed it,” Carmen answered.

  “While you observed it …” Franklin repeated thoughtfully.

  “The Boleyn was visible in the holofield too, Franklin,” Mick added.

  Franklin glanced at Mick, and nodded. “So let’s assume what you saw is happening now.”

  Carmen smiled ruefully. “I see your point.”

  “What point?” Thomas asked.

  “With the sphere’s time distortion,” Carmen explained, “what the holofield showed us could be happening at some other time.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes. “You guys handle it.” Gruffly announcing his intention to adjust their heading for the gap, he walked away.

  “I doubt it’s an instance of space-time curvature,” Franklin resumed.

  Carmen sat forward. “Why not?”

  “You said you were inside the sphere for – what? … twenty minutes?”

  Mick held up his wrist. “My watch says 9:21. What time do you have?”

  Franklin checked his watch. “9:43.”

  “It’s twenty-two minutes slower inside.”

  “Not slower. Time is not moving inside the sphere at all.”

  Carmen sat back. “So tell me. Why is a place of no-time not a result of space-time curvature?”

  “With curvature, a horizon exists between the two sides – space-time has a different value on each side.” Carmen and Mick nodded. “On one side time would flow faster or slower, as you said. But I suspect even if you spent a hundred years in the sphere, when you come out it would still be zero duration here.”

  “I wonder what determines duration inside the sphere,” Mick mused aloud.

  “It could be random,” Franklin said quietly.

  Mick took a breath. “You mean I could go inside and be in there for … a thousand years, by chance, and emerge out the other side a second later?”

  Franklin rubbed his jaw. “Probably not.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Carmen said firmly. “It’s not just random. Let’s say it’s a no-time bubble in space-time. What about space?”

  “Well, we think of time and space as uniform, which they mostly are,” Franklin said. “Time value throughout space doesn’t fluctuate, it stays the same. It’s the same with space. When space is a uniform medium the shape it gives to objects, throughout time, stays the same.”

  “So you think the sphere’s space-time is uniform?”

  Franklin nodded. “Yes.”

  “If not a curvature then what?” Carmen asked.

  Franklin shrugged. “What if there are many of these spheres? You’ve seen two, after all. It strikes me that they’re like pockets, or cells in a body. They could well have some compensating influence for the imbalances on Nebura.”

  “You mean, like they’re part of Nebura’s ecology?” Carmen asked.

  Franklin smiled. “Yes.”

  Carmen massaged around her eyes. “I wonder where their light comes from.”

  “It’s likely a property of the surface,” the old man said. “Something that happens inside the surface.”

  “But the surface had no inside,” Carmen said. “It was paper-thin.”

  Franklin had poured himself another coffee, and set it down slowly on the table. “The surface itself could be the region of no-space, or infinite space, in the sphere. And don’t ask me how crossing that might have changed you. I have no idea.”

  They brooded over that for a moment.

  “You said the sphere you saw a mile off our bow,” Franklin resumed, “had no upper half above the surface of the water?”

  Mick nodded. “We think they rise up from some lower depth, or even from beneath Nebura’s crust, and then, extinguish themselves at the surface.”

  “I wonder.”

  Mick smiled. “Tell us, Franklin.”

  “Maybe the sphere is still there when it rises above the surface, but the incandescence is not visi
ble, or gets switched off.”

  “And then they rise through the atmosphere,” Mick ventured.

  Franklin took a sip from his mug. “And?”

  Carmen jumped in. “And – they either break up somewhere in the atmosphere, or go out beyond it, into space.”

  “A sphere distorting space-time, or very likely a great number of them, replete with oxygen and nitrogen, floating through space …”

  Carmen chewed her lip, and nodded. “From Nebura’s point of view it would serve no purpose,” she objected. “If they dissipate in the upper atmosphere they would do their compensating act there somehow.”

  Franklin looked up at the deck above, lost in thought.

  Mick had walked over to the galley counter. He turned around to face them. “Think of this world as a living body. If the lightspheres serve as Nebura’s resistance to the stilling –”

  “As part of an organism, they’re alive,” Franklin insisted. “Is that what you think?”

  Mick stood straighter, surprised by Franklin’s sudden intensity.

  “Because what you’re suggesting,” Franklin said ruefully, “is what I’ve been thinking these past few months. And perhaps mistakenly, I resisted it.”

  Mick hesitated. “It changes my approach, when I conclude something is organic.”

  “And so it should,” the old man mused. “So it should.” He shook himself and looked soberly at them. “I think I want to sleep on this. It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?” Smiling, he nodded goodnight and made his way out of the common room.

  Mick looked out through the porthole at the darkness beyond. ‘The lightspheres are alive,’ he thought wonderingly.

  Carmen sighed. “Talking with Franklin sometimes feels like getting lost in a labyrinth.”

  “Sometimes?” Mick said as he emptied his mug into the sink. They laughed quietly.

  ______________

  Thomas poured a dollop of whisky into the mug of coffee he had set on the pilothouse counter. The ocean had a light swell. Carrying the mug up the steps of the ladder was not the easy exercise it had been in earlier weeks. Carmen had volunteered to take a shift at the helm, and sat next to him, behind the pilothouse instrument panel. Thomas’s eyes raked the early morning horizon, looking for the ring of storms. The horizon looked clear. The waves were now like a mildly windy day on an inland lake – no white-caps, but not a calm day by any stretch. The surface was gradually acquiring the wide sweeping swell of ocean waves. Thomas and Carmen talked for a while, swapping theories of the storm ring and the spheres.

  Thomas nodded at the horizon. “These spheres are something new. I’ve never seen anything like what we saw yesterday. My father never mentioned them either.”

  “The storm ring is likely recent, but not the spheres,” Carmen said. “Maybe they only appear in the ocean.”

  “You think there’s a link between them and the stilling?”

  “It would be a big coincidence if they weren’t.”

  Thomas shrugged. “Our immediate problem is getting through this ring. How much further?”

  “About three hours. Are the others up yet?”

  “Only Mick and Turok. I passed them in the lounge checking on the neutronics.” She scanned the horizon. “We’re far enough from the stilling for the holofield to be working. Why don’t you go down for a while?”

  “You don’t mind?”

  She shook her head. “You should be there – help plan our passage through.”

  “Maybe I can help with a backup plan,” he replied, and stepped out.

  ‘I wonder what that might be?’ she thought.

  She picked up the binoculars and looked for storm activity high in the atmosphere. If the storms really reached to the upper troposphere the ring’s upper chute should be visible long before the storm’s wall was. Luckily it was a cloudless sky. She looked straight ahead to the center of the horizon and slightly up, at full magnification. She could just barely see a single arced line, a ruffling of the air that followed Nebura’s curvature, like a heat haze in the desert. She knew that slowly more of the ring’s upper section would become visible, until it was all spread out before her – a wall of storms across the horizon.

  _______________

  “But it must be there!” Mick protested.

  It was no longer just Mick and Turok in the common room – the entire ship’s company, except for Carmen, was standing around the long table, peering at the notebook’s holofield.

  Turok tapped a sequence of keys and the image cube expanded out, filling about 1/3 of the room. “We’ve been all along the coordinates you gave me, yard by yard,” Turok said. “There’s nothing, no opening, no gap even a few inches wide.”

  Mick was shaking his head. “I don’t understand it.”

  The others were fascinated by the swirling upheaval of extreme weather raging before them. The fact of its smooth exterior surface made it doubly so.

  Mick turned to Thomas. “If there’s no gap, can we just sail through this thing?”

  Thomas had pulled up a chair close to the holofield. He was chewing at his thumbnail as he peered inside. “Show us the full ring again,” he said, turning to Turok.

  Turok tapped the keyboard and the storm ring dissolved. It was replaced by an image cube representing thousands of miles of the planet’s surface – the cube’s top 1/3 was blank, signifying space above Nebura’s atmosphere. Turok toggled in, focusing on the large but narrow band covered by the ring. Thomas walked all the way around, looking into the cube from several positions.

  “Over here,” he said, pointing at a part of the ring on the other side. “Is this a gap?”

  Turok went in closer. A narrow gap or channel free of storms leapt into view. And even closer. The channel’s two inner sides were not smooth like the storm’s exterior surface, but jagged, with deep stormless cavities and fissures that reached into the sides of the breach. It looked to be about a half-mile wide, a great distance under such extreme conditions.

  “Where is that?” Thomas asked.

  “Four days away, to the east,” Turok said.

  “Well, there’s my answer,” Thomas said. “As long as there’s a gap to use, I can’t agree to take the Boleyn into that hell of wind and waves.”

  Mick nodded. “I agree.”

  “Are we sure this ring is static?” Franklin asked. He was sitting in the galley area, drinking a coffee.

  Mick looked at the old man.

  He elaborated. “Will that gap stay where it is?”

  “We don’t know,” Mick answered.

  Franklin stood up and walked over. “Turok, can you download and play back the holofield from Carmen’s watch?”

  Turok smiled. “Sure.”

  “Will the playback work here?” Mick asked. “Not inside the sphere, I mean.”

  Franklin shrugged. “Why not? The holofield memory shouldn’t change.”

  Seamus had already left to get Carmen’s watch. Thomas walked over and adjusted the image cube to a specific location, closer to the coast and further north.

  “There’s an old seaport about fifteen miles offshore,” he said to the room as he toggled in for a closer look.

  “A seaport?” Turok asked. “Why so far from land?”

  “It was the law.” Thomas shrugged. “In those days they were cautious about foreign submersibles.”

  The seaport came into view, a cube-shaped structure that sat low in the water.

  “Easy to miss,” Mick said, leaning closer.

  “There were other, less permanent buildings there. They’re gone now.” He paused, then said quietly, “I’m thinking this can be our fallback rendezvous point, if things don’t go according to plan today.”

  “Wouldn’t a rendezvous on the coast be better?” Mick asked.

  “I’m also considering the stilling,” Thomas added. “If it suddenly gets worse, which I suppose it will eventually, it’s hard to predict which coastal area would still be accessible.” He nodded to the
seaport. Its upper section looked a lot like an old drilling derrick. “It doesn’t look like much, but it’s reliable.”

  “Are there any of these submersibles still docked there, underwater I mean?” Turok asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “They’re long gone. Where they ended up is anybody’s guess.”

  Mick glanced at Thomas. “Any objections to making that our fallback?”

  They all nodded agreement, and the facility’s co-ordinates were noted and passed around.

  Turok leaned over and adjusted the image cube to show an underwater section of the ring. There was a shocked exhalation all around as a roiling deepwater channel of submerged whirlpools sprang to life before them, like a can of worms. Giorgi, who was sitting by the far end of the table, turned away from the holofield. Turok quickly returned the image to the exterior of the ring, above water.

  Carmen walked in. “Which sicko here wants to see my personal holofield?”

  The others smiled as she handed it over to Turok. The memory transfer was immediate. Turok keyed in playback. It was a grainier image cube, but the storm ring could clearly be seen.

  “There’s the gap,” Carmen said, “right where it should be.”

  “So why isn’t it there now?” Mick asked the room.

  “Turok, check the playback timestamp,” Franklin said.

  “What? It’s in the future?” Carmen asked.

  The cursor was moved to the corner of the image cube, and the stardate and time appeared.

  “It appears 35 minutes from now,” the professor confirmed.

  “So the ring does change,” Mick said.

  The old man puffed out his cheeks. “We still have time to make it.”

  “I wonder how long it stays open,” Mick asked as they quickly re-scanned playback.

  “Could be thirty days … or thirty seconds,” Franklin said.

  Thomas turned to Turok. “What’s the pressure like in there?”

  A gauge reading came up. “Almost fifty percent lower than outside.”

  “Squall conditions,” Sorel said, to everyone’s surprise. He had largely stayed out of the way in the weeks since leaving Nebu City.

  “Yet look at how quiet it is,” Thomas added.

  “There shouldn’t be any problem, then,” Marnie added. “We can just take the Boleyn through. Can’t we?”

  Thomas was shaking his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Lightning.”

  “A little lightning –”

  “A lot of lightning,” Thomas replied, a weight to his words. “Clouds in the gap are dense with ice crystals.” He ran his hand across his face. “Add to that the massive ion levels. At that pressure their charge is just waiting to be tipped. A boat passing through there would draw a first lightning strike, triggering a cascade at all levels. It would be like running a gauntlet of maser fire.”

  “That’s just great!” Sorel said. He folded his arms and leaned his chair back against the wall.

  Thomas was peppered with questions. His answers got shorter and shorter. “We shouldn’t try to take the Boleyn through,” he concluded.

  Mick put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Do you have any inflatable craft on board?”

  Thomas looked puzzled. “Yeah, a cutter and two dinghies. Why?”

  “They’re submersible?”

  “Of course. But even if we got through the gap, we can’t sail all the way to Polarica in those.”

  “No, we take the Boleyn,” Mick said. “What we need is a way to draw the gap’s fire.”

  As he quickly explained his plan several others hurried up on deck to unpack the cutter and dinghies.

  _______________

  Carmen had resumed her shift at the helm. She had watched the towering cliff-face of the storm ring grow steadily larger through the pilothouse windshield. It rose up sheer, about a mile away, and disappeared high in the sky – a weather front unlike anything she’d ever seen. She shook her head, trying to imagine the forces being exerted behind that front, an Everest of tightly-packed winds and waves. She could make out the gap quite clearly. It was hard to miss. When she had first seen it, far off on the horizon, the gap had looked like a long rip had appeared in Nebura’s atmosphere. It stood out grayish white against the ring’s much darker cliff-face. Seeing the gap now close-up, just the thought of entering it made her shudder. She pushed away the thought. Out where the Boleyn was sailing all remained relatively calm, with mild winds and a barely perceptible swell, no whitecaps. She imagined men in wooden vessels sailing towards the glacial shelf of a prehistoric iceberg hundreds of miles long – such mariners might have felt something similar. No matter how massive, though, an iceberg was static, immovable. This storm ring was a dynamic, fluctuating wall that extended up as far as the eye could see.

  Thomas and several of his men had removed, dropped over the side, and inflated the three submersible lifeboats in a matter of minutes. They had kept looking at the storm ring they were approaching until Thomas ordered them to ignore it. The two dinghies bobbed alongside the Boleyn, one on each side, while the smaller cutter was pulled along in their wake. Mick and Turok would soon be leaving in the cutter. Everyone had helped with the emergency packing in case the dinghies were needed. The extremely compact engine panels had been inserted in their aft compartments on the three craft.

  Carmen was looking ahead when the gap started to form. A clear vertical line had appeared in the stormwall, like the crack in a slightly open door. The line gradually opened, avalanches of water sliding down from where the high waves in the ring had been suddenly cut off. Once started the two sides moved apart quickly. After a couple minutes the gap had widened to about five hundred yards, and stopped. The cascade of water dissipated, and the winds in the channel had almost immediately died down. The channel surface grew calm.

  _______________

  Mick and Turok approached the gap in the cutter, a two-passenger semi-dry submersible. They were riding the long swells between waves. At first Mick thought their smaller vessel made the sea seem rougher, the swells deeper. But he soon realized the sea was in fact getting worse as they neared the stormwall. At the bottom of each wave’s trough the Boleyn was hidden by the wave behind them. The sheer height of the ring was staggering. No physical structure of such a height, onworld, could withstand the forces that stormwall must be under.

  Mick looked back at the distant Boleyn, a lonely sentinel on this ocean, which wasn’t as quiet as it had been. Turok turned and looked at the friends onboard being left behind.

  “We’re the shuttle and they’re the mother ship,” Mick said.

  “I’m starting to miss the sweet emptiness of space,” Turok sighed.

  Mick laughed, nodding. He looked at the small, detachable maser-buoy that projected from the cutter’s stern. The flat-topped platform’s buoyancy was controlled from the cutter’s helm.

  He returned his attention to the way ahead. The wall of the ring was literally formed of water, like the surface of a clear lake turned on its side – it looked to be only a few inches thick. High up, above maybe 2,000 feet, the thin water-wall was replaced by what looked more like an energy field. Nor was this surface of the ring, the stormwall, as stationary as Mick had thought, especially in the lowest 500 feet. It flexed in and out in places, small ripples traveled along its surface before spending themselves, large circular sections would turn slightly opaque, as though the wall was degrading, and billow out several feet before the process reversed itself, and fell back into the wall. They gradually got closer. They could see that the sea at the base of the wall was oddly smooth, calm. The energy of what surf existed was apparently dissipated about a hundred feet out, where waves foamed as though against a series of underwater seawalls. From there the sea formed a marine glacis that sloped gently down and lapped against the stormwall. It behaved like a reef, except that it was constantly shifting about, adapting itself to the slight movements of the ring itself. They were a couple hundred yards
from the ring now.

  Mick nodded at Turok, who went to the craft’s other end. He slipped his hand in a covered pocket, activating the side panels – they pushed out smoothly. The vessel, now octagonal in shape, no longer had a discernible bow or stern.

  The strengthening wind was pushing them across the waves, slowly back away from the ring, The sky seemed to darken slightly, clouds were rushing south. The vessel lurched suddenly and spun around. The wind had shifted and was blowing from due west, which meant it was moving along the ring’s outer edge. The wall served to focus and accelerate the wind. Mick looked up as the sky seemed almost to tilt, and then the wind shifted again, moving further until it was coming out of the southwest. Now they were being blown towards the wall, the waves growing higher, their swell shorter. Turok looked at Mick with a worried expression. The gap was about a hundred feet away. It was time to dive.

  Turok reached into another pocket and activated the stowed upper panels. All sides of the cutter rippled up, connected, and sealed, shutting out first the waves that had begun washing in over the sides, then the wind, and finally the lowering sky. It seemed preternaturally quiet inside the inflated vessel, its sealed panels glowed a soft orange around them. They strapped themselves in. The vessel still spun and climbed with each wave, several times dropping out from under them with a stomach-wrenching suddenness. Mick supposed that Thomas was likely at that moment backing the Boleyn away from the area, giving himself sea-room. Turok activated the opacity control for the craft’s mid-level panels and a wide underwater vista sprang to life all around them. The gap lay straight ahead.

  The steep careering ride was flattening out as they got nearer to the gap. They could clearly see the underwater section of the ring, with its mass of interweaving maelstroms. The enclosed whirlpools moved slowly in a writhing dance, never colliding. The ocean had calmed as they moved through the area under the sloping glacis. Mick didn’t slow as they crossed over the thin wall of the gap. The buffeting movement of the sea abruptly ended. Their ears popped, and Mick glanced over at Turok. Grinning, they returned their attention to the panels.

  It was like moving through an underwater vault, so still was the underwater channel. It was darker, as if the light was being partially filtered, but not enough to eliminate visibility. They moved ahead quickly. When they reached the channel’s midpoint Turok released the maser-buoy, which rose smoothly to the surface. He brought it up on the monitor and nodded. “Looks good, Mick,” he said.

  They left it behind, and were soon nearing the far side of the channel. The gap’s opening into the expanse of ocean inside the ring that surrounded Polarica lay straight ahead. They slid past the plasma-like wall of the gap and into the bright ocean. It appeared to be a normal day here, not the storm conditions developing outside the ring, and not the stilling-calm conditions of weeks before – a normal day.

  They quickly surfaced and lowered the panels. They looked about, startled by the dramatic change away from storm conditions, like someone had shut a door.

  “Thomas would appreciate this,” Mick said.

  “Everyone would.”

  They proceeded to a point about a hundred yards beyond the stormwall. Turok glanced at Mick, and activated the maser-buoy. They could clearly see the buoy bobbing on the gentle swell back inside the channel. An electron beam is not visible, but they both knew it was rising a hundred feet straight up, a continuous beam. After about thirty seconds the first small lightning strikes began shooting down. Then bead lightning flashed from cloud to cloud inside the gap, and more flashes lanced out, hitting the area above the buoy. Turok reached into a side storage fold, and pulled out the pulse grenade rifle. He aimed at a cloudbank about a thousand feet up inside the gap, and fired off a pulse. It passed through the cloud, and seconds later there were flashes within the cloudbank. He shot another couple pulses. Bead lightning proliferated, bouncing between clouds, and blue jets flashed down. Turok kept firing, and the frequency of lightning strikes hitting the area above the buoy increased.

  _______________

  Thomas stood in the pilothouse by Franklin and Carmen watching the lightning strikes ripping down into the same area, above where the buoy had surfaced minutes earlier. Rolling peals of thunder began arriving moments later. Turok’s first pulse shot, which had come out through this side of the gap, had been a surprise even though they were expecting it.

  The storm out on Inuvoro’s side of the storm ring was holding steady. Thomas hoped it would level off soon.

  “How long do we wait?” Carmen asked, raising her voice to be heard over the thunder.

  Thomas glanced at Franklin.

  “The number of lightning strikes will peak,” Franklin answered between thunderclaps. “After it tapers off by about half, then we should go.”

  She turned to Thomas. “Otherwise we’ll be facing that gauntlet you were talking about.”

  “That’s right,” Thomas shouted, grinning. Carmen smiled back, a bit uncertainly.

  The staccato lightning strikes were becoming much more frequent, about two strikes per second. The noise of thunder was non-stop, one blast overlapping with the next. The pulse blasts from the other side had stopped. The lightning frequency suddenly leaped up the scale. The sky high in the gap, far above the clouds, had taken on a strobe effect – lightning in the upper stratosphere was almost continuous. A cascade of strikes was pouring down into the air above the buoy. After about ten seconds it finally started tapering off. Within a minute there was only one strike every couple seconds.

  Franklin glanced at Thomas. “Time to go.”

  Thomas started the engine and took the Boleyn forward towards the gap. The others came up on deck and found their places in the two dinghies, both considerably larger, but less maneuverable, than the cutter. They had been watching the gap on the holofield. In the event of lightning hitting the Boleyn, they’d push off immediately in the dinghies. The research ship crested the glacis and moved ahead quickly. Everyone but Thomas were sitting in the dinghies, bobbing along beside the ship. Thomas would only have seconds if it came to abandoning ship.

  He didn’t pause outside the towering stormwall. The ship crossed over. It was like passing under a long low bridge – the Boleyn was immediately cast into gloom. Carmen looked up from her place in the starboard dinghy at the sudden darkness that had engulfed them. She was mesmerized by the continuing display of bead lightning strikes high above, much slower now. She held her breath, waiting for the first telltale signs of plasma discharges in the lower clouds – that would signal a stepped leader, a series of vertically displaced flashes. That would bring Thomas running for their dinghy. They had glided about fifty feet in without incident, into a twilight region that seemed larger to Carmen than the channel they had been watching on the holofield. She looked back. The gap and the morning world beyond appeared far away, seen through a filtering energy field. The Boleyn sailed on. No lightning strikes rained down from above. Carmen began breathing easier.

  _______________

  Mick and Turok had reluctantly left the Polarica side of the ring, and were back in the gap, submerged, watching the Boleyn’s progress through their upper panels. Several minutes earlier the bead lightning strikes hitting above the maser buoy had stopped. The research ship had passed the buoy, and was moving on towards the inside stormwall. Mick glanced at Turok, nodding upwards.

  “Yeah, let’s take her up,” Turok said.

  As they moved towards the surface they were surprised when the light dimmed even more. They surfaced to starboard of the research ship. Turok activated the upper panels, and a small circle appeared above, revealing a soft, crystal-clear darkness, and stars. They looked up into a twilight sky of startling clarity, as it would appear from space. The clouds had entirely disappeared. The cutter’s upper section rippled down to the middle section, as it was when they had set out from the Boleyn, but in its expanded octagonal form.

  Their shipmates in the 3-vessel convoy waved and shouted at the
m. Mick was relieved that the plan was working. The inner gap wall was less than half a mile ahead. They cautiously ramped up their speed. Even so, they remained strapped-in.

  Mick was surprised when it began to rain. Turok was grinning, his head thrown back to receive the downpour. A look of fear suddenly crossed his face. Mick followed his gaze and saw that high up shreds of wind were ripping across from both sides of the gap. The rain was getting much heavier – but Mick suddenly knew it wasn’t rain. Above where the clouds had been only moments earlier several jets of water had burst through – water was entering the gap from inside the two severed sides of the storm ring. The falling water would soon turn into a deluge. Mick glanced over at the Boleyn and saw Thomas running for one of the dinghies, as its upper panels were rapidly being raised. Mick couldn’t see to the Boleyn’s port side. He could only hope the other dinghy’s crew had acted as swiftly. Turok moved quickly and shouted to raise their panels and dive. Mick waited precious moments until he saw the bow of Thomas’s dinghy lurch forward and down, dipping below the surface. Waves had stacked up around them with terrible speed. As the cutter’s side fell off a crest, their panels finally clicked and sealed shut. A ribbon of water sheeted into a flat geyser for half a second as they fell upside-down into the trough. Mick slipped the craft below surface and righted her.

  “This gap is collapsing!” Turok shouted as they dove deeper.

  Mick nodded grimly. “The other dinghy–”

  His words were torn away as the cutter was wrenched deeper and back towards the outer wall of the storm ring. Mick tried to compensate but the cutter was toppling end over end, and it slammed through, outside the gap wall into what daylight there was at a depth of sixty feet. They were hurtling sideways, careering side over side now. The floor of their miniature craft was rotating continuously, nosing its way back up in a heartbeat, and down again. The falling abruptly ended as a jarring impact shuddered up through their legs and backs, and the cutter was whirled around, rose up, and then fell back again. They had been shunted miles from the storm ring.

  The toppling gradually subsided. Mick estimated they were a couple hours from the Inuvoro coastline, but at this speed the return journey would be shorter.

  He reminded himself that the greater risk they faced was being blown against the cliffs that lined this northernmost stretch of Inuvoro’s coast. They would be caught between wind, waves, and that unforgiving shore, and would be hurtled against the cliffs repeatedly by the pounding waves. Visibility in this roiling of currents and cross-currents was near-zero. On the surface it would have been worse, and the violence of the storm would have made these coastal waters unnavigable. Mick reasoned that the cutter, a polyhedron of inflated panels around a hollow inner core, should technically be able to sustain even the crushing impact of the coastal cliffs. What had him spooked was the prospect of crashing alongside those cliffs for miles, being sucked back out by the undertow and then hurled back in again, time after time. Mick looked appreciatively at the much heavier synthetic material in the cutter’s floor panels, four times the thickness of the side and upper panels. The absence of the repeated thump of thunder was about the only consolation. The minutes rolled on with majestic inertia. They were in a void of noise and tearing movement.

  For a while Mick’s thoughts went to the others. He asked himself again if the second dinghy had had time to get its panels up and dive. As for the Boleyn – there’s no way it could have survived this. If the dinghies were washed far enough south they would miss the cliffs entirely. Twenty miles south there were sandy beaches. Mick remembered how they had left the coastal islands behind days earlier.

  Mick withdrew into himself. They could do little to control their direction or speed. The crashing motion seemed to drift away for a time. A terrible impact brought him back, and he saw that several of the panels had partially inverted themselves, making that side a fretwork of beehive-like concave depressions, but in the next moment they popped back out. He saw a rock wall slide past on one side, close. Land was so near – he could reach out and touch it. The cutter was grinding along the cliff, turning like a polyhedral gear locked into its sprockets. Then the current’s ebb hauled them down and away from the grinding surface, only moments later to hand them off to the returning current’s inflow, back towards shore, gathering speed, and the crashing impact as before. Their gear-like rotating crawl would take them along a distance, and then the undertow would catch them again. It happened over and over. Mick felt like Sisyphus caught and held in a symbiotic hell of surf and cliff. He had reflexively braced for yet another impact against the cliffs. But it never came.

  The inflow that hurled the cutter in somehow failed to impact the cliff. Instead it had carried the craft on, past the cliffs into an oppressive darkness, and the waves fell away. The current’s ebb tried to pull the cutter back, but the craft reversed only a short distance. Several more surges carried them further in. There was still a little rocking to and fro, but it was dying away fast.

  Mick wondered how their craft had inexplicably come to rest, even as the suffocating external blackness blended into unconsciousness.

  7 | Parting

  Carmen had been standing below the dinghy’s rapidly closing aperture – struggling to stabilize the craft’s panel spreaders – waiting for Thomas. The dinghy was at its most vulnerable when the upper panels were only partially raised. Thomas had suddenly reared up on the heaving deck and scrambled aboard the dinghy, falling inside as the aperture rippled in overhead. He slammed down into one of the carousel of seats along the lifeboat’s circular gunwale, the straps closing across him. Carmen watched through the aperture as Marnie retracted the bow and stern warps, releasing the craft. She caught a glimpse of the other dinghy already away from the Boleyn’s side, high above them on the crest of a wave. Her breath caught when she saw they had none of their upper panels raised yet!

  Carmen turned towards her seat despite the dinghy’s rolling, spinning, the butterflies-in-the-gut sensation of rising up and sliding down. As the upper panels irised the last few inches and sealed, shutting out the wind and spray and noise, the dinghy suddenly upended, and she found herself spread-eagled against the upper panels that now served as the craft’s deck. She looked up at the others all strapped in upside down in their seats, and crawled over above her seat, waited, then reached in between two of the panels to take hold of the seam fold. Moments later the dinghy upended again, and she hung right-side up. She let go and fell neatly into her seat. The straps crossed her waist and chest and locked in place.

  Carmen couldn’t shake the image of the other dinghy, its upper panels still fully open.

  _______________

  Mick heard a muffled crunching noise somewhere above him, like an army of geckos were whisking up and across the cutter’s top panels. The noise grew louder, and he felt the craft bobbing up and down. Mick opened his eyes to blackness. He shook his head, finally recognizing the sound – the craft must be grinding along beneath a low overhang. They bobbed down, moved forward, and rose only to grind along again, which increased until they were being dragged fully pressed against the upper surface. Mick realized they were moving through an underwater tunnel. Mick reached down and depressed the buoyancy nozzle until they descended away from the overhang, then he released it. He noticed there was still a current bearing them down, and each time the craft touched the overhang again, he took them further down. They were descending steadily further. He wondered how long he had been unconscious. The minutes dragged on.

  Mick lost track of time. Eventually the cutter emerged into a larger body of water, and they drifted. He again adjusted the buoyancy, and they glided up until the cutter broke surface. They sat in apparent stillness, though Mick knew they were drifting. An image flashed in his mind of being trapped in a dark sphere that extended away infinitely in all directions.

  A soft hiss of sound came at him. He jerked back, then recognized it as the distant sound of the storm. The familiar noise roused him
.

  “Mick? You alright?” Turok whispered.

  Mick hesitated. “Yeah.”

  The relief in Turok’s voice was palpable. “Man, don’t do that.”

  “What year is it, I wonder?”

  “That is so not funny, Mick.”

  Mick smiled. He shakily reached down, pushed back the foldout array, and after releasing his safety straps slowly stood up. He listened as the upper panels of the cutter rippled down. Though it produced no sliver of light, no movement of air, and no sound beyond what noise they themselves produced, he felt a sensation of openness above them, and on all sides. He thought he detected a slight flow of air, and it changed shape around them. The silence had a weight and heft – the slap of the silicon panels against water echoed, bouncing off surfaces above and to the sides. They drifted on. It was a relief just to be away from the storm, Mick told himself.

  He heard a click, and soft phosphorescence filled the cutter. It brightened rapidly as Turok held up a cone-shaped lantern by its handle. Mick activated one of the side panels, and a slender pontoon rose up several feet. Turok stood up and secured the lantern to the stanchion. The cutter looked like a round gondola, its high ‘stern’ lantern spilling a small pool of light across an inhospitable stretch of black water. It felt like a forgotten night sky had swiveled down and been swallowed inside a vast cavern.

  “I was unconscious for a while … back there,” Mick said haltingly.

  “So it’s probably sometime tomorrow.” Turok swung the pontoon forward. He pointed the lantern up at a 60 degree angle, and switched to spotlight mode. It was like standing behind a lighthouse beam that lanced out into the darkness.

  Mick caught his breath when the ceiling slid down to meet their light. The cavern looked to be as high as an eighty or ninety floor building, and it likely gained a few floors at low tide. Turok lowered the lantern beam so it shone across the water, and the cavern’s walls were thrown into high relief. The rock-face of the wall ahead glistened black and jagged. He looked back and whistled at the distance they had drifted – he could barely make out the cavern wall far behind them. The water had seemed so still after the storm, but it appeared they had never stopped moving. Turok switched to floodlight. The water’s surface behind them was undisturbed. There was no evidence of the submerged entry they had come through some minutes earlier.

  Mick turned his attention forward, to the mouth of a tunnel that had loomed into view. Its opening was about ten yards across, and twice the height of the cutter.

  Turok looked to the craft’s panels. “I suppose going back isn’t an option?”

  Mick shrugged. “Current’s too strong.”

  “So forward it is.”

  “Let’s raise the panels partway.”

  As Turok lifted away the crystal lantern Mick stood in the center watching the upper panels ripple up. They stood on one of the benches amidships, Turok holding up the lantern. Poking their heads through the 3-foot aperture Turok switched back to spotlight and shone the beam into the opening. The current kept moving them towards it. They could only see about thirty yards in – it led off through the rock on a surprisingly straight path, more like a lateral tunnel than a cavern. Although the distance closed faster than they expected, they saw no reason to close off the cutter aperture yet. They passed into the tunnel with plenty of clearance on both sides and above.

  Turok shone the light back at the retreating opening. Watching it recede gave them a mild case of vertigo: their aversion moments earlier to entering the tunnel was now transferred to the cavern they were leaving behind. Its mouth-like blackness almost made the glossy walls of the tunnel seem welcoming.

  Turok swung the light forward again and switched to floodlight. He shook his head. “No way this is a natural fissure.”

  “Yeah, somebody put it here.”

  “Why?” Turok wondered.

  “Could be whoever made this used it just as we are now.”

  “A canal? To where?”

  Mick cocked his head and listened. The sound of rushing water echoed in the distance.

  Turok banked the cutter around a series of turns. After the tunnel dipped again the noise of the water got louder. They quickly ducked back inside, latching the lantern into its bracket amidships as the panels closed. The light was now a soft glow inside their submersible.

  They were both aware of the cutter’s limits, and knew that a serious fall in a standard 1.0 G environment would rupture several of the craft’s seals. Granted, there were no sharp objects or edged surfaces inside when console boards were not out, and even the crystal lantern had an impact-absorbing transparent synthetic exterior. In fact, the cutter’s only relatively hard element was its rubber-like floor, still pliable enough to yield to the broad contour of a wave. If the fall was more than a hundred and fifty feet, the lack of hard surfaces would scarcely matter – they would still be dead. They worried about waterfalls.

  “Whitewater coming up,” Turok announced.

  The cutter started bobbing. Their speed picked up, jostling them from side to side. One side of the craft dipped and whirled them around like a discarded party hat in a drain. The stern tipped back and they hurtled forward – Mick was looking up at the floor. On the outside the flow of water against each panel’s shallow concave surface added to the floor’s greater mass, which dissipated some of the cutter’s spin. They felt one side grind against the tunnel’s wall, rotate, and rub stuttering along the other side. The passage narrowed, angling down more steeply. The cutter suddenly accelerated.

  A bone-jarring impact compressed several of the side panels by several inches. They jetted away from that rolling end over end, then the craft arced upwards, bursting back into a whirlpool of rushing sound, and another jarring impact.

  Over and over they grazed the tunnel’s walls, bouncing off and shooting across towards the opposite wall. Each time they were deflected back and pulled yet again deep underwater. Their last dive in the channel’s confined space had gone faster, and they rose up as if from a submerged catapult, this time reaching the tunnel’s ceiling. More panels crumpled above them. Again the sound was cut off as the cutter fell, slipping under the surface of the rushing water.

  They felt the cutter pulled down again, longer and deeper than before, into a greater underwater silence. Mick had a memory-spasm of watching university students years earlier drop a watermelon from a balcony. The catapult current took hold again and swung them around. The water seemed to loosen around the cutter as it was flung up, and they were rising at a speed that made breathing difficult. Just then the loosening water inexplicably fell away. They were submerged now in – thin air.

  They felt the cutter arc further up and forward. Turok laughed a long stuttering swallow of sheer terror, as primal as the manic current behind them. The craft’s floor upended as they sailed still higher, revolving slowly. A roller-coaster anticipation took hold. The fall began with a stately slowness, and the cutter’s two occupants felt their stomachs scramble up into their throats.

  ______________

  Carmen woke to raucous cries all around. She opened her eyes and saw large shadows plodding back and forth across the upper panels of the dinghy. Her neck was sore from long hours of bracing for the surges and impacts as their craft was slowly washed ashore. She vaguely remembered crossing the shallow reef that separated this lagoon from the sea beyond. It seemed that they had crossed it several times. The sea’s undertow must have repeatedly pulled them back out, and then each time the main surge brought them closer to shore.

  The loud squawking above her broke in on her reflections. She raised her head and looked up at the shadows that rose and fell, strutting across from panel to panel. ‘It must be birds,’ she thought. She reached into the pocket behind her and the upper panels irised open. As they rippled down an alarmed protest was followed by a rush of wings, and the shadows were gone. She looked up and saw the ungainly flight of three pairs of retreating wings – Nunat condors, yellow-beaked sc
avengers that were more abundant this far north. Carmen was mildly surprised, as they had seen little wildlife since leaving Nebu City. Not wanting to disturb the others she brought the panels down only half-way. ‘They must need their sleep if that racket didn’t wake them,’ she thought. She pressed the release latch and the added restraining net that held her in place retracted smoothly into its panel.

  The fronds of tall, graceful web-trees waved gently above the craft. When Carmen tried to stand she fell back immediately into her seat, and realized the dinghy was lying on an angle. She leaned out, pulled herself forward onto hands and knees, and stretching herself out across the half-open aperture fell awkwardly to the beach. To her surprise, the sand was warm and dry.

  She half-stood, leaning one hand against the dinghy, then set off unsteadily down towards the shoreline. Wading in to her knees she splashed her face with cool saltwater. She turned and looked up along the coast.

  One end of their dinghy was propped atop the trunk of a fallen web-tree, the other end rested on the sandy beach. The craft’s floor panels, retaining in this inflated mode their tensile toughness, held the vessel at an awkward angle. The canopy of web-trees cast a complex dance of leafy shadows across the now partially-open dinghy. The fronds that clustered at the top of each tree blocked much of the sunlight, thus keeping the ground clear of undergrowth. Looking below the level of the canopy, or webline, she could see several hundred yards into the forest, and above that the vista extended all the way up the gentle slope to the ridge, maybe three miles inland.

  Carmen looked in both directions along the shore. There was no sign of the other dinghy. Someone called out to her; she turned and saw Franklin waving. The old man rolled unceremoniously down the side of the dinghy, and she walked up from the beach towards him.

  He smiled wanly. “Any sign of them?”

  She shook her head. “The beach looks empty. They must have been washed into a different lagoon.”

  Carmen wanted to hope for the best – Seamus and Giorgi and Sorel were in the other dinghy, and four from Franklin’s group as well. She turned and looked out to the submerged reef. It could only be detected by an edge of turbulence. She kept looking towards the horizon, indistinct against the fading denim-blue of the sky.

  “What do you think happened?” Franklin asked.

  “Last I saw they were cresting a huge wave inside the gap.” She paused. “They didn’t raise their panels.” She quietly turned away and walked along the beach.

  Franklin lowered himself to the warm sand, and rested his forearms on his upraised knees. A slight wind lifted away strands of grey hair from his forehead.

  Carmen returned and sat beside him.

  Franklin looked up slowly. “They didn’t have time to raise them?” he asked, sounding older.

  “I should have told them while we were waiting for Thomas. They could have raised their panels right there, and –” Her voice caught.

  Franklin reached over and held her shoulder. “It isn’t your fault, Carmen.”

  She wept silently. The old man looked across the calm water of the lagoon. A few minutes later she leaned away. She knew Franklin was right. That didn’t stop her from wondering if there wasn’t something more she could have done.

  “It’s possible they did raise their panels,” he said, “and they went to our fallback, to the seaport.”

  “We need to go there,” she said.

  “Or they may be here, as you said – in a lagoon somewhere along this section of the coast.”

  She inclined her head, deciding. “We can send someone to the seaport to check it out. The rest of us can start searching here.”

  “Whatever the outcome, in a few days we should resume our journey.”

  “To Polarica? How?”

  “We can sail a full circuit round the storm ring, and find a way through. Somehow.”

  Carmen heard the others, and they stood up. “Franklin, thanks.”

  “For what?”

  She shrugged. “For thinking ahead.”

  He smiled as they turned up towards the dinghy.

  Not only were their shipmates awake, they had set to work rolling the dinghy back off the log. Its upper panels had been lowered fully and its seats decompressed.

  Marnie called out to her. “We should put both dinghies up here in the forest. So they’re above high tide.”

  Carmen hesitated, and Franklin smoothly interjected. “Sounds good, Marnie. The others landed somewhere else along this coast. Or they may have gone on to the seaport. We need someone to take the dinghy back out there and check.”

  One of Thomas’s men, Oscar, stepped forward. “If they haven’t arrived yet, I’ll wait for them.”

  “Good man!” Franklin said.

  He looked around as he rested his hand on the dinghy gunwale, as if sensing what everyone was thinking: that the other dinghy, and the cutter, may not have landed anywhere at all.

  “The sooner we begin, the sooner we’ll find them,” Carmen said in an unequivocal tone. She sent a pulse of silent gratitude to the old man, and turned quickly to Thomas. “Any ideas where they might be on this coast?”

  Thomas stroked his chin, looking subdued. He had people missing, and the Boleyn. “All three lifeboats were in the gap, underwater, when the ring started sealing over,” he said.

  “I had the impression the ring was collapsing,” Aleesha said.

  Thomas shook his head. “That was just the gap shifting shut. We know from the holofield that the gaps open and close.” He turned back to the others. “The currents were going every which way, and there was the depth factor too. There’s no way of knowing for sure which way the storm carried them.”

  “We should look in both directions then,” Carmen concluded to the group. “There’s a river a few miles north of here. If either boat was blown that way, they might have been driven upriver. Let’s check that tomorrow, and the coast today.” She glanced towards the ridge directly behind them above the webline. “Those who go north could turn aside before the river, climb the ridge, and walk along that higher ground.”

  Marnie sat up inside the beached dinghy and turned to Oscar. “I’ll go with you out to the seaport. That’s likely where the others are,” she said confidently. Carmen could see she was worried. Marnie returned her attention to the play of morning light through the web leaves overhead.

  “I’ll go to the ridge,” Carmen said.

  “I’ll tag along,” Franklin said, and she nodded. “As you all know,” he said, turning to the others, “the stilling is headed this way. Let’s keep a lookout for any small changes.”

  The others clearly felt better, more hopeful. They began getting ready.

  Within the hour, Marnie and Oscar had set off in the dinghy. She had a four hour round trip ahead of her, plus the time she spent onsite.