Eileen Gunn: Stable Strategies and Others

“So why do some people get stuck in the walls, when others don’t?”

“Um…could be anything. Body chemistry? Rubber shoes? Blood type?”

“Figure it out, Mr. Asimov. It’s time you and Mr. Heinlein earned your keep. Because I don’t think we’re going to just sail back to Philly without some serious brain-cell work.”

Isaac asked again, “Where do you think we are?” And where, for that matter, was Heinlein? He had disappeared.

“In one sense, we’re pretty much where we’ve been headed all along. See those clumps of seaweed?” The ocean was festooned with tangles of weed. “Sargassum. We’ve overshot Bermuda and we’re now in the Sargasso Sea. The question is when is now?”

Peering over the rail, Isaac saw something moving at the bow. It was Bob Heinlein, the crazy son of a bitch, crawling the huge degaussing cables.

The still, seaweed-filled water ahead of the ship’s bow stirred, then churned. Heinlein didn’t notice. A huge tentacle lifted from the water and reached for him.

He was right! He thought he had glimpsed an extraneous cable from the deck, when everyone else (including, Bob noted with satisfaction, Grace) had eyes only for the Jane Russells on those cannibal women. But he couldn’t be sure without going over the rail for a closer look. And here it was, most definitely an extra, smaller cable, no thicker than Bob’s arm, twined amid the larger cables, which were plenty large enough for a surefooted and experienced seaman to stand on.

Whoops!

Bob clamped both arms around a cable, as his traitorous right foot dangled in midair. Steady. The footing’s slick, but that’s no reason to fall. Keep your wits about you. He set his foot back on the cable, tested his weight, took a deep breath of salt spray — and suffered another childish coughing spasm. Damn it! It was like breathing underwater down here, only feet above the waves. But at least the seasickness was kept at bay by the constant wind — the same wind that threatened to sweep Bob off the cables, and into the sea….

Bob pondered his next move. He had to find out where this cable led, and where it came from. Initially he had planned to Jim Hawkins his way completely around the ship, if necessary, but now…. What was that splash? Nothing important, probably. Best to keep his mind on the task at hand.

He heard Asimov calling his name.

Bob froze. He didn’t want Asimov or Grace Hopper (especially Grace Hopper) to see him clutching the side of the ship like an overboard cabin boy. Wait a sec! He spied exactly what he was looking for. Now to….

“Look out!”

“Climb, Bob! Climb!”

Something smacked against the hull beside Bob. Foul-smelling ichor spattered his face. He recoiled, nearly falling, and, twisting, saw a tentacle as thick as his torso slithering back into the sea. As he gaped, another tentacle rose dripping from the waves. In the water, something large and gray moved just under the surface.

Falling had been a poor enough option before. Now it was out of the question. So was staying put. Yet Bob couldn’t make his limbs move. He watched in horror as the leathery, tulip-like pod at the end of the tentacle waved back and forth at eye level, like the swaying head of a cobra, drooling water, an eyeless predator looking for prey.

“For God’s sake, Bob!”

That awful pod lunged for him! Without thinking, Bob turned and ran up the cable. Behind him, the pod splatted against the hull. Grabbing an outstretched hand, Bob pulled himself over the rail and onto the deck, where a small crowd had gathered.

Absently, he wiped his cheek. His palm came away covered with black muck. He cursed and slung it away, over the rails.

Asimov started to laugh, a little nervously. “Bob, I didn’t know an old geezer like you could move that fast.”

“Stow it, Isaac,” Bob said, automatically, but then he began to laugh too. Hopper and the sailors laughed as well, and briefly they all shared the comradeship of danger evaded.

Then the tentacle slapped into the hull again, and Asimov, sobered, said, “I don’t suppose that thing can climb?”

“If it could, it would be here by now,” Hopper said. “It can’t reach as high as the rail.”

Bob thought of the smaller ships of an earlier day, those that rode lower in the water, and shuddered. Could the Mary Celeste ’s crew have been plucked from their ship by just such a kraken? Never mind that: he’d made a discovery that the others should know about. “There’s an extra cable. Running amid the degaussing cables.” He pointed. “Do you see it?”

They did. “It’s like a creeper among larger vines,” Asimov said. “Not always visible. How far does it go?”

“It pierces the hull over here,” Bob said, grateful he’d spotted the source-location before scrambling for safety.

“Gr— I mean, Ensign Hopper?” Asimov was trying to sound like a sailor. “This cable could be our ‘unknown factor’ interacting with the Tesla current.”

Ensign Hopper looked over the rail. “Right below us is our ‘bonus’ control room, too. I’m afraid, gentlemen, we’ve simply come around full circle. We know there’s something going on, but we don’t know what or who is making it happen.”

“We know where the people responsible are operating from, at any rate,” Bob offered.

“But they’re not here. Maybe they disappeared into a bulkhead during the phase change,” Asimov said. “I’d bet my wallet that none of the swabbies left on board know anything. These guy aren’t physicists.”

The water had grown strangely quiet. Bob pointed it out to the others. “Look at this. The kraken’s left, without even a farewell.”

They all looked. Where the kraken had been, there was only a kraken-shaped blob of black ink. As they watched, it broke up, dissolved, and disappeared. The brute was definitely gone.

“What do you suppose…?” Bob felt a shadow fall over him. He looked up to see what had blocked the sun — and saw a glistening gray trunk arching snakelike over the bridge of the Eldridge .

Tapering, the trunk rose more than a hundred feet to an impossibly tiny head, flat and flared like the spade of a shovel. It was a plesiosaur, by God! Placidly, like a cow, the critter was chewing something that dangled from its slowly working jaw and, spaghetti-like, inched its way up. There was something familiar about that spaghetti — the tulip-shaped pod at the end. Aha! No wonder the other monster had sped away!

Bob was transfixed again, not by fear this time but awe. Like a rube goggling up at the Empire State Building, Bob looked up, up, up to the apex, the culmination of this strange marine food chain, and thought: What a journey of exploration this could be. The HMS Beagle — pah! Think of the wonders, undreamed of by Darwin, that the USS Eldridge could bring into port. Think of the knowledge that would flow from it. Think of the stories he’d be able to write.

“My God,” Bob murmured to himself. “Sprague de Camp, eat your heart out.”

The Sargasso Sea was a convergent zone in the restless Atlantic where warm water and cold came together and changed places, and the action of wind and wave gathered the seaweed and sculpted it into rough circles or long rows. The brownish sargassum, a mass of serrated leaves and little round berries, smelled rank and vegetal, like an exotic soup. Tiny transparent crabs crawled in its tangles.

“…and may God have mercy on their souls,” Grace concluded, and the coffins went crashing down through the crabs and seaweed. She smartly returned her hat to her head and, to the assembled crew, said: “Dismissed to stations.” They scattered to their tasks with gratifying alacrity.