Medusa's Children

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The strange little conference lasted fifteen minutes.

Tarrant knew that oxygen supplies were being expended—and, at another level of his consciousness, he was acutely aware that time was running out on Will Somerville and Myrah—but he was unable to countenance taking the group to the centre of the planetoid without explaining the dangers involved. Petersdorff, Osaka and Scotland had been told nothing of the events leading up to their first space flight. They listened to Tarrant’s story with quiet concentration, acceptance encouraged by the desire to believe they could return to Earth, and by the bizarre circumstances in which the account was presented. Petersdorff, after his initial outburst, developed a manic cheerfulness which abated only slightly when he learned that he might have to face the malign creatures known as the Horra. It appeared that his professional interest in marine biology was overcoming his concern for his own safety. Osaka and Scotland, the dysteleonics men, had greater difficulty in comprehending all that was implied by the monosyllable, Ka.

“You believe this … thing started off as a single medusa fish,” Scotland said, “then incorporated other organisms into itself. It’s hard to believe that such a. …”

“The same thing on a smaller scale has been happening on Earth for millions of years,” Petersdorff interrupted. “Your ordinary Portuguese man-of-war is actually a colony of hundreds of polyps, all of which. …”

“The point is that we have to kill it,” Tarrant said, raising his voice. “Kill it or disperse it—otherwise we may not reach the transceiver. Any more comments?”

Scotland raised an arm. “We’d better not waste any more time, Hal. If there are ten or twelve Bergmann machines scattered around the Earth, as we believe, the water is almost certain to be delivered to all of them in rotation.”

“You mean …?” Tarrant looked at Martine for confirmation.

‘It’s a good point,” Martine said. “We’d better just pray the transceiver is still delivering to the Cawley Island region—I couldn’t take a thousand-kilometre swim.”

The new uncertainty, the new variable in the problem, served to increase Tarrant’s sense of urgency. “How far is it to the centre of this place? Ninety kilometres?”

“About that.”

“Can we go that far on suit air? Even if we could swim at a steady five kilometres an hour it would take. …”

“Swimming is out,” Martine cut in. “We’ve only got enough breathing gas for about five hours, so we’ll have to ride the sled most of the way down, and break free before your bomb goes off.”

Without waiting for reactions to his words, he caught hold of the sled and manoeuvred himself into position at its control panel. Grateful for the positive leadership, Tarrant swung in beside him. As soon as the three other men had tethered themselves to the tubular framework, Martine activated the automatic control circuits and pressed the button which ignited the sled’s engine. There was a dull, continuous roar from within the combustion chamber, the caged propeller began to spin, and the sled moved off at once with the serene purposefulness of a robot device. It hunted in slow circles for a few seconds, then its sensors determined the direction of the planetoid’s faint gravity and its nose swung sharply downwards.

Tarrant discovered immediately that all his previous experience of supersonic flight through an invisible medium had been bland and monotonous compared to the roller-coaster dash through galaxies of solid-seeming bubbles which rushed to meet him and darted frantically to each side as they encountered the sled’s bow wave. When he looked behind him he saw them shattered and transformed into millions of opals and pearls which stretched upwards towards the light in the form of intertwined spirals created by the propeller wash. To his astonishment, the speed shown on the sled’s control panel was less than thirty kilometres an hour.

“We’re only getting one shot at this, so let’s not treat it as a joyride,” Martine shouted above the flurry of turbulence. “Can you take water samples, Evan?”

“I’m doing it,” Petersdorff replied, fumbling with the equipment on his belt. “Trying to avoid contamination from the exhaust.”

Scotland and Osaka steadied themselves as best they could and began taking readings from an assortment of instruments on their wrists and chest panels, while Martine started shooting film with a miniature camera attached to his helmet. Excluded from the activity, temporarily relieved of all responsibility, Tarrant nestled into the sparse protection of the sled and watched the alien world stream past him. The ambient light began to fade, but at a very much slower rate than if they had been plummeting into one of the Earth’s oceans. He wondered if this was solely because the planetoid was closer to the sun and unscreened by an atmosphere, or if it was a geometrical effect by which the globe of water served as a huge optical condenser.

Martine would doubtless have an answer, but the enquiry could wait until later. A torpor was settling over Tarrant as a result of the intense emotional and physical stress throughout a period which felt like years, although his memory could account for only three full days since his first encounter with the big squid. He closed his eyes and allowed his senses to be swamped by tiredness and the pervasive, choking odour of rubber, plastics and cleaning fluids circulating within his suit.

“Theo! Are the bomb circuits active?” Scotland’s voice reached him a short time later, and he forced his eyes open.

“Of course not,” Martine answered.

“That’s good—I’ve got indications of a large metal object about ten kilometres away from us. Over that way.”

“Do you think it’s the …?”

“Not a chance. This object isn’t very massive. In fact, there might be more than one.”

“I’d like to take a look at it,” Tarrant said, now fully alert, intuitions stirring.

“So would I, though we haven’t much time.” Martine made an adjustment on the sled’s control panel and signalled for Scotland to join him. The square steering vane ahead of Tarrant wavered uncertainly for an instant as Scotland assumed control, then the sled veered off its radial course. They were plunging through a blue twilight in which root forests appeared as distant vertical shadings of indigo. Tarrant peered out in front and within a few minutes began to distinguish a patch of darkness. The sled’s propeller stopped turning and went into reverse, forcing him to alter his grip on the structure, and at the same moment somebody switched on the photographic floodlights in the nose of the sled. Tarrant’s eyes widened reflexively as a fantastic scene sprang into view ahead of him.

The hull of a flying boat, minus the wings, glimmered in the rippling luminescence like the carcase of a giant whale. Its outlines were obscured by skeins of nets, and it was trailing a complex spawn of large inflated bags secured by webs of rope. Surrounding the central mass were the figures of more than a hundred men and women, attached to it by individual tethers and frozen by the sudden brilliance of the lamps in the act of towing it through the water. They were naked except for belts around their waists and hemispherical, flower-like cages strapped to their heads.

This, Tarrant knew at once, was the Clan of which Myrah, Lennar and the others had spoken. Until that moment these people had been an abstraction to him, and he found their multitudinous, living reality almost too much for his comprehension. The exclamations he could hear within his helmet told him the rest of his group were undergoing the same reaction. As he stared at the clustered swimmers he became aware that, although they had halted their progress through the water, they were not entirely at rest—at every second some of them were making odd darting movements of their heads as they captured slow-drifting air bubbles. Tarrant experienced a sympathetic constriction in his own chest as he imagined spending an entire lifetime in conditions where the simple act of breathing called for such unremitting activity. His respect and pity for the humans in the isolated little colony crystallised into a kind of anguish as he saw they were shielding their eyes and at the same time preparing to defend themselves with slim, spear-like weapons.

“Turn out the lights,” he snapped. “We’re frightening them.”

The brilliance faded immediately and a long, pulsing minute went by while his eyes adapted to the lower level of illumination. Strange as the conglomeration before him was, Tarrant realised it did not correspond with the description of the Home given to him by Lennar.

The only conclusion he could reach was that the Home had been abandoned, probably because its flimsy structure was being disrupted by the current, and that the members of the Clan were migrating in search of still water. He guessed that within the flying boat hull were all those who could not survive for a long time in open water—the infants, the sick and the aged. The problem facing these heroic people, although they had no way of knowing it, was that their quest for a new resting place could only be successful in the short term. As the planetoid shrank over a period of years the currents would become stronger and further reaching, and the inevitable outcome would be total extinction of the Clan in any of a number of ways. …

“More evidence to back your story, Hal,” Martine said, almost reverently. “I guess we ought to try speaking to them.”

Tarrant began detaching himself from the sled. “This is my job. Can you hold this position while I go closer?”

“Okay—but remember we’re short of time. What are you going to say, anyway?”

“I …” Tarrant hesitated. “I have to persuade them to follow us down and go through the transceiver.”

Martine snorted. “Good luck!”

“Thanks.” Tarrant pushed himself away from the sled and began swimming towards the colony.

“Just one thing,” Martine called after him. “My first responsibility is to my own men, so I can only give you ten minutes—and if they start throwing those spears we can’t go after you.”

“Understood.”

Tarrant continued swimming, hampered by the space suit, until he was some ten metres from the nearest of the Clan. They watched his progress intently, faces partly veiled by reflections on the surfaces of trapped bubbles, weapons at the ready. He tried to go closer before speaking, but several of the spears were making tentative jabbing movements which told him their owners were on the very point of throwing.

“I am a friend,” he said, enunciating as clearly as possible. “I want to talk to you.”

The shock caused by his voice was apparent from the way in which the listeners went rigid for an instant, some of them drawing back while others tightened their grips on their spears. There was a confused babble of response, the sounds fracturing on air-water interfaces. Its general tone was obviously hostile.

“I am a friend,” he repeated, then it occurred to him that to these people he had to resemble a creature from a nightmare. “I am a man, a human—just like you.”

“You do not breathe,” an older man shouted, brandishing his spear.

Tarrant spread his arms and legs to demonstrate his human shape, “I breathe. I have air in here.” He tapped his helmet.

“Not enough air for a man.”

Realising the futility of attempting to explain the functioning of his suit, Tarrant tried a different tack. “I am a friend of Lennar, and Myrah, and Geean, and Treece, and Harld.”

There was another ripple of surprise, and a woman cried, “They’re dead! It comes from Ka!”

“They are not dead,” he said, trying to project reassurance across the gulf of incomprehension. “They are alive. I bring you news of them.”

“Leave us, child of Ka.”

Tarrant surveyed the scene helplessly, and tried to remember the name of the Clan leader which had been given to him. “I want to talk to … Solman.”

This time there was a different kind of response, one which gave, the impression of being less hostile, and several white figures swam towards the deep-bodied shape of the flying boat hull. Tarrant trod water to hold his position, and waited in silence. A minute later an elderly man with white, wispy hair swam towards him with ungainly strokes. His joints were visibly swollen with arthritis, and he was flanked by younger men whose duty it was to shepherd air bubbles into the filigreed cage which surrounded his head like a halo. He advanced as far as the front rank of his people then halted, his face impassive.

“Are you Solman?” Tarrant said.

“I am Solman.” The voice was hoarse, but firm and with an imperious quality to it. “How do you know my name?”

“Lennar told it to me.”

“I sent Lennar to his death.”

“Lennar is not dead. He is alive and. …” Tarrant stopped short of saying that Lennar was well. “I have come here to help you. To bring you to Lennar and his friends.”

“Where are they?”

Tarrant took a deep, quavering breath and launched into an attempt to describe, using the vocabulary of a child, the history of two worlds and two peoples, plus the theory of the Bergmann machines and their role in stabilising the land area of Earth. But long before he had begun to speak of a “gateway” at the centre of the globe of water, and of Solman’s duty to lead the people of the Clan through it, he saw the beginnings of the older man’s smile—which was both compassionate and scornful—and he knew he was defeated. He fell silent.

“I am grateful to you, child of Ka,” Solman said. “You have given me reassurance … that Ka has grown feeble. So feeble that he has to plead for us to give our bodies up to him.”

Tarrant stretched out his hands. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand all.” Solman glanced at the men and women near him and they nodded gravely, reaffirming his mandate.

“But. …” Tarrant thought of all the occasions in the past when he had found it impossible, even when speaking to a friend from his home town, to explain his ideas on clear-cut, familiar issues in words which retained the same meaning between leaving his lips and arriving at the other person’s ears. He looked at Solman, at the arrays of naked bodies suspended at the ends of their lines in a dim continuum of blue shade and silver bubbles, at the brooding hulk of the wingless flying boat whose present owners would never understand its original purpose—and a new kind of pain was born inside him.

“Time’s up, Hal” Martine’s voice reached him across an immense distance. “We have to go.”

“I have to go,” Tarrant repeated like a compliant child.

Solman pointed downwards. “Return to your master.”

Tarrant backed off a short distance by pushing at the water with his hands and feet, then turned and swam to the sled. In the blue half-light, even to his eyes, the four bulky, helmeted figures waiting by it could have been creatures worthy of the name, children of Ka. The sled itself looked like a squat marine creature, a diablo, with knowing, watchful eyes.

He returned to his niche behind the starboard fin and snap-hooked himself in place as the engine growled into life. Guided once again by its sensors, the sled began boring down towards the heart of the world, and as it picked up speed Tarrant had a final glimpse of the people of the Clan.

Indomitable, pragmatic, they had already begun to swim towards a haven which existed nowhere but in their own dreams.

Commander Leon P. Cavray, of the South Newzealand Navy, stared thoughtfully at the tactical display projected on the main screen in his operations room. His own ship—the corvette Dalton—was represented near the bottom of the screen by a slim ellipse from which sprouted an arrow indicating course and speed. A number of other vessels were scattered over the ten thousand square kilometres of the South Pacific covered by the display, and were indicated by various symbols. The image intensities of all but one had been muted—the exception being a red triangle which pulsed with an angry brilliance.

“That’s The Rose of York,” said Naipur, the weapons officer. “There’s no doubt about it.”

Cavray fingered his short beard. “You think there’s no doubt about it.”

“Excuse me, sir, but that’s a contradiction in terms.”

“I know.”

Naipur sighed noisily, not troubling to hide his impatience. He was a neat, ambitious man who had carried out a thousand successful long-range engagements of enemy ships on training simulators, and who desperately wanted to test himself and his charges in a real situation. The dispassionate peace which lay over the world, coupled with the growing scarcity of reliable Seafire nuclear torpedoes, had led him to despair of ever adding combat honours to his service record. And now that a perfect, heaven-sent chance had come his way he was baffled by his captain’s reluctance to carry out Staff orders.

“It’s in exactly the right area,” he said. “It’s exactly on course for Harpoon, it refuses to enter into radio communication, and all the other vessels in the designated area have been eliminated. What more do you want?”

“I’d like visual confirmation.”

“To get that you’d have to go in dose—and in a nuclear situation you can’t do that.” Naipur strode across the room and tapped the bright-flaring symbol with his finger. “This is The Rose of York.”

Cavray looked mildly surprised. “That, Mr Naipur, is a red triangle on a map. Send out a reconnaissance drone.”

“We’ve only got one left, and it’ll take a good thirty minutes to check it out.”

“All combat equipment is supposed to be in a state of instant readiness,” Cavray reproved. “But if you get the drone airborne within fifteen minutes I won’t mention this lapse in my report.”

“Thank you, sir.” Naipur gave a very correct salute, his face expressionless, and walked to the door. As soon as he was in the narrow gangway outside the operations room he broke into a silent-footed run, heedless of the stares of the ratings he almost collided with on his way to the weapons hangar.

As the darkness began to grow more intense around the sled Martine switched on its forward lights. Their twin beams lanced straight ahead, creating the illusion that the sled was winging along an alley swarming with alien life. Air bubbles appeared as solid globes of mercury which rushed forward, threatening in their massiveness, only to disperse harmlessly in the invisible bow wave. A dozen varieties of fish darted into the surrounding gloom or formated with the sled, effortlessly keeping pace with its descent.

“The lights aren’t a good idea,” Tarrant said. “They’re making us too conspicuous.”

“Okay. If you. …”

“Leave them on a minute,” Petersdorff said. “I can use some film of the fish.”

“Film?” Tarrant raised his voice in exasperation. “A few hours ago you were. …”

He, broke off as—with frightening suddenness—the nightmarish shape of a big squid appeared out of the murk, swimming parallel with the sled. The great triangular fins along the side of the pointed forebody writhed in a succession of sine waves, the tentacles pulsed in time with the creature’s breathing, and a huge eye reproached the five men for having strayed beyond their natural bounds. Tarrant’s mouth twisted in shock as he saw other similar outlines materialising from the darkness. He reached for the only underwater weapon he possessed, which was a sheath knife.

“Something else you were right about, Hal,” Petersdorff shouted, sounding almost happy. “Definitely a giant form of Loligo vulgaris.”

Tarrant tried to squeeze further into his niche. “For God’s sake watch out!”

“It’s all right—they won’t attack anything as big as the sled.”

One of the squid swooped in close to the starboard side of the sled, coming to within an arm’s length, and Tarrant—past caring what others might think of him—reacted by giving a full-throated scream. He struck out with the knife, but the squid moved effortlessly beyond his reach, then closed again.

“Take it easy, Hal.” Petersdorff’s voice registered surprise and concern. “They’re just curious.”

“I don’t like the brutes, either,” Martine said. “What can we do to get rid of them?”

“Try the lateral photofloods.”

A second later there was a searing flash of brilliance from each side of the sled, and the squid vanished before it like phantoms. Tarrant gave a sob of relief and tried to steady his breathing as the lights were doused. He could hear Martine and Petersdorff having a whispered argument above him, and guessed Martine was pointing out how much he had gone through in the previous three days. Tarrant knew he should be grateful, but all at once he felt no more obligation to be courageous or disciplined. For what seemed an eternity he had been frightened, shocked, threatened, violated, punished—and now he was reaching the limit of what he could take. Life had become a nightmare in which somebody had thrown away all the old rulebooks, and he felt entitled to do the same. With luck he would be back on Earth within another hour or so, and if that happened he was going to live exactly as he pleased from then on, and in the meantime he was going to hang back and let others take the responsibilities and the risks, and if anything scared him he was going to let the whole universe know he was scared, and if he had to die he was going to claim the right to go out kicking and cursing and screaming.

Curled up in as small a compass as he could attain with the bulk of the suit, Tarrant clung to the framework of metal struts and watched the darkness gather around as the sled continued on its reckless plunge into the centre of the planetoid. He ignored all attempts to draw him into communication. After a time the others accepted his new passive role, and he realised this with a flicker of pleasure. The appearance of the Horra was not repeated, but it was no longer possible for him to drift off into semi-consciousness. In spite of his exhaustion, he remained alert and nervous, and all the while the darkness became more complete. …

“I don’t see how this can be,” Theo Martine was saying, many light years away. “We’re bound to be within ten kilometres of the centre.”

“I know,” Scotland replied. “That’s what’s bothering me.”

“You’re sure your instruments are working?”

“Positive.”

“I confirm the readings,” Osaka said. “There aren’t any sizeable chunks of metal or anything else up ahead of us.”

There was a lengthy pause before Martine spoke again. “That leaves us with two possibilities, gentlemen—the transceiver is built of some substance which doesn’t register on our instruments; or … or the system doesn’t require the physical presence of a machine at the target location.”

Tarrant listened to the words from his remote cocoon of loneliness, and—without his quite knowing why—a mood of bitter sadness began to steal over him.

“It might explain why there are two planetoids,” Osaka said. “If there’s no physical transceiver, the water must have been transmitted to a target location at the united focus of the Bergmann machines on Earth—but the sun must have got in the way every now and then. It would have been logical to switch to an alternative target location.”

“I like it,” Martine said. “I like that a lot.”

Tarrant’s sadness increased, causing him to squeeze his eyes shut, contorting his whole face in protest. He waited, straining his ears for words which had yet to be spoken.

“Of course,” Martine continued, “it means that the Special Products team have balled up the design of this bomb we’re riding around on. The proximity fuse won’t function unless there’s something for it to be proximate to.”

“Any chance of modifying it? Putting in a timer?”

“Underwater? In the dark? With no tools or components?”

“This is all to the good,” Scotland said. “Instead of letting the sled go ahead by itself … leaving us to swim God knows how far in the dark … we can switch on all the lights and go down-current at full speed … right through the gate. The sled has buoyancy bags, hasn’t it? We’ll even have transportation when we come out on the other side.”

Tarrant fought a battle against his own psychic inertia. “We’re not going to do it that way.”

“It’s come to life again,” Petersdoff whispered incredulously. “It spoke!”

“This sled is my responsibility,” Tarrant said.

“Just like the ship was.”

“That’s enough, Evan.” Martine’s voice cut sharply through the blackness and the blur of other sounds.

Petersdorff was not subdued. “We had a ship to take us back to Earth. And we lost the ship. So now we go back on the sled.”

“Nobody is disputing that,” Martine said angrily.

“I am,” Tarrant countered, straightening up against the onrushing flow of water so that he could be closer to Martine.

“Hal, I know how you feel.” Martine touched his shoulder briefly. ‘Believe me, I know what’s going on in your mind—but here are the facts. The simple, engineering facts.”

He went on to give a detailed description of the electrical system which had been put together in such haste to detonate the sled’s explosive charge. His words, emotionless and academic, carried all the more conviction for the grotesque circumstances in which they were being delivered. And in spite of Tarrant’s mental turmoil, he eventually had to accept that it was impossible—because of the underwater environment—even to carry out a suicide mission in which the bomb would have been triggered manually.

“It isn’t anybody’s fault,” Martine concluded, trying to offer the absolution Tarrant needed. “The system just isn’t adaptable.”

“We’re starting to pull across current,” Bram Scotland said, the outline of his helmet faintly visible in the glow from the sled’s control panel. “We must be nearly there.”

Martine turned away from Tarrant at once. “Take her off automatic. Go with the current.”

“Do you want the big lights?”

“Not yet—save them in case we run into trouble.”

Tarrant stared ahead, into the dark heart of the world, and an arctic coldness developed in his gut as he thought about Martine’s final words to him. Every organism, every mechanism, was conditioned by its environment—and, if the environment changed, failure to adapt meant failure to function and survive. This applied to electrical circuits, dinosaurs, civilisations. As he became aware of the awful conclusion which was surfacing through resistant layers of his mind, Tarrant tried to stop thinking altogether, but the logical processes—having been set in ponderous motion—could not be halted.

Man was supreme on Earth, even in this latter day, because he had been given many opportunities to be flexible, and had taken them. Man was doomed to extinction in this alien globe because he had lost most of his adaptive capability.

Not enough air for a man, the nameless member of the Clan had said, unable to enlarge his world-view to accommodate a new reality.

Return to your master, Solman had said, unable to think in new categories.

Fifty kilos of high explosive, Miss Orchard had said, arriving at an old solution to a new problem.

As he felt the sled change course to go with the current, Tarrant—knowing that the others were too preoccupied to be aware of his actions—opened the snap-hook which held him secure. He kicked himself free of the sled, and within a few seconds was completely alone in the black waters which were the stronghold of an enemy he would never see.

Commander Leon P. Cavray ground out a cigarette in a cluttered ashtray, while his eyes took in every detail of the picture on the television screen before him. The reconnaissance drone he had dispatched was little more than a ducted fan engine fitted with a camera pod, and therefore it could fly close to enemy craft with little risk of being seen or destroyed.

In this instance it was hovering a few hundred metres to one side of a cabin cruiser which was holding a steady northeast course on the prehistoric blue surface of the South Pacific. The clarity of the transmitted picture was exceptionally good, and Cavray could discern the name, The Rose of York, painted on the bows. He could also see the figure of a middle-aged man on the cruiser’s bridge, a man whose name he knew to be Willard Somerville. The man was wearing a white shirt and a scrap of red material on his head, and he was looking neither to one side nor the other as his boat traced an invisible line towards Harpoon Island.

“Nice picture,” Lieutenant Naipur said conversationally. “Nice. Clear.”

Cavray eyed him coldly. “What’s the precise range?”

“Eighty-seven kilometres, sir.”

“Torpedo transit time?”

“Sixty-one minutes, sir. Plus one minute or minus threepoint-five depending on current.”

Cavray looked back at the screen and made one last attempt to understand why an obscure and law-abiding farmer should decide to throw his past life to the winds and become an international criminal. There had to be some explanation—and yet his knowing it would have changed nothing. His orders were clear, precise and immutable.

“All right, Lieutenant,” he said tiredly. “Cast the first stone.”

Naipur’s face remained impassive. “Sir, is that an order to destroy the nominated vessel with a medium-range nuclear torpedo?”

“That’s what it is. But in the meantime keep trying for radio contact.”

“Very good, sir.” Naipur turned to the waiting weapons controllers and gave a series of orders, and within twenty seconds a long, black cylinder—expelled from the mother ship in a plume of compressed air—was acquainting itself with the medium in which it had been designed to operate. It aligned its various axes in accordance with programmed instructions, selected its optimum cruising depth, and began boring through the water towards the position its quarry would occupy sixty-one minutes in the future.

The luminous dial on Tarrant’s chest panel told him he had less than one hour remaining in his life support system, and hence he was grateful when the Ka-Horra took him.

His eyes being less well adapted to the darkness than those of Myrah or Lennar, he saw nothing of his captor or its fellows. He felt the sudden constriction of its tentacles around his body, and he heard the complex turbulence of its wake as it carried him down towards his rendezvous with Ka—but no images assailed his mind.

Tarrant was glad of this circumstance, because he had learned that his eyes were the pathways of fear. Sightless, and therefore immune, he was able to force himself to remain at rest until the ghastly flight had ended, and he knew he had been delivered into the jealous custody of his former master.

The unseen tentacles relaxed and floated away from him, and their hold was replaced by a more subtle constraint. A gentle, coaxing, all-enveloping pressure surrounded his body. He knew that black labia were drawing him inwards, that black pseudopods were probing and caressing him, that black membranes were curling and converging around him in dreadful simulation of the placental trophoblast which had once given him life.

He waited, unmoving, for perhaps a minute, sensing the inarticulate bafflement which must have been growing in the corded, living jelly, trying to judge the moment at which ingestion would turn to rejection. Eventually, unable to wait any longer, he reached for his knife. There was some resistance to the movement of his arm, but no more than if he had been forcing it through a deep pool of spawn.

“You made a mistake, Ka,” he chanted aloud—as he began to cut—and the words were punctuated by his gasps of exertion.

“In all your centuries of life … ah! … every being you encountered … ah! … man or squid or fish … ah! … shared the common need to breathe … ah! … and this has left you … ah! … with no flexibility of response … ah! … ah! … AH!”

The hour which followed never subsequently became clear in Tarrant’s memory.

It was a time of fever and of delirium, a time in which—to preserve his sanity—he delivered lectures and sermons on the necessity of being adaptable; on the need for absolute reliability in control systems; on the design of the simple space suit, the basic piece of engineering which enabled a man to exist in one world while breathing the air of another, and which for that reason meant life for him and death for Ka.

There were periods when the labour was comparatively easy, when he could sever tissues without the aid of the knife simply by flailing his arms and legs. There were other periods unbearably hideous in retrospect, when only the blade would do and he had to hack through organic ropes, billowing membranes, spongy clumps and clusters; or when he blundered against what felt like skeletal remains which moved in time with the convulsions of the surrounding tissue as though the original life force was imprisoned within them.

Break up the central mass, Miss Orchard kept saying, and laughing her raucous laugh. All you have to do is reduce its connectivity. …

Finally, there came the moment when a crushing pain in his chest told him—or the part of his identity which was preserved in the eye of the storm—that his supply of breathing gas was almost exhausted, that his time of invincibility was drawing to a dose. Knowing he had done all that could be asked of him, he headed for clear water, half-crawling and half-swimming, guided by blind instinct and desperation.

Several times on the journey he touched powerful, rubbery bodies and knew he had encountered the big squid—but now they were nothing more than that, and nothing less. No longer Ka-Horra, medusa’s children, they were feeding eagerly on the abundant plasm which drifted all around them, extracting their own form of revenge on the being which had subverted their destinies.

The roar of the current, when it came, was louder to Tarrant than the pounding in his temples. He felt himself being thrown about at an ever-increasing pace, twisting and tumbling in a black maelstrom. The clamour of the waters grew louder, grew unbearable … then there was light.

Tarrant struck out with the fleeting dregs of his strength, instantly aware that the space suit which had been so essential to the continuance of his life now represented a deadly threat because of its lack of buoyancy. He reached the surface, and was trying to open the helmet with one hand while swimming with the other, when he heard shouts in the distance. He fought to remain afloat, to fill his lungs with clean blue light, then he was gripped by strong hands and felt the angular solidity of the sled beneath him. Somebody opened his helmet, permitting him to gorge himself on the soft, fresh air of an October morning.

“We’ve been trying to keep this thing from sinking for the best part of an hour,” Theo Martine grumbled. “Where have you been?”