James White - Double Contact

Somehow Murchison had to show them that neither the visiting ship nor the medical station were a threat and that they were in fact, the opposite. She held up both her hands, palms outwards, for silence.

When it came, she lifted the brush again and held it close to the other’s face, but this time she didn’t use it to sketch. Instead she snapped off a couple of inches of the handle, at the end opposite the hairs so that it remained usable, and held them apart for a few seconds. Waiting until it seemed that she had all of the spider’s attention, she brought the broken ends together and spat delicately on the join before handing both pieces back to the spider.

“Join it,” she said slowly. “Fix it. Mend it.”

While she was speaking, the other made sounds that seemed to have a questioning note, but immediately got the idea. Onto the join it spat a very small quantity of the sticky saliva it had used earlier to seal the knots of her restraining rope, and when it had hardened, handed the brush back to her. Apart from the small gob of hardened saliva where the repair had been made, the brush was a good as new. She began sketching with it again.

This time she didn’t bother showing the island, ships, or sun. At the left of the picture she drew instead a vertical line of four figures to represent herself, a spider, Naydrad, and Prilicla. Slightly to the right of them she placed a similar line of figures, except that her figure was divided by a narrow space at the waist and one of her legs was separated by a short distance from her body. The figure of the spider showed three limbs detached from its body, and similar radical dismemberment to the forms of the Kelgian and her Cinrusskin chief. A little farther to the right she drew a larger picture of the med-station buildings, followed by another vertical line of figures that were whole again. To make her meaning even clearer she drew four short arrows linking the damaged figures to the station, and another four pointing from it to the whole figures.

Again she indicated the join in the brush handle and said slowly, “We mend people.”

The spider didn’t appear to understand her at all because it pushed the sketch away before retying the rope around her ankle and sealing the knot. It left quickly without speaking.

Murchison threw the brush angrily at the discarded sketch. The rain had stopped and sunlight was shining through the narrow opening in the ventilation wall. She moved to it, hoping that more light would lighten her spirits, and wound down the ratchet until it was fully open.

Noise as well as light was pouring in, but the excited chit-tering of crew members and the creaking of wooden mechanisms could not drown out the single, loud clicking voice that was almost certainly that of the captain using a speaking trumpet. On the beach outside she could see spiders swarming over the other ships, opening their sail seals and raising the boarding ramps.

Something important was happening, Murchison thought, something that would almost certainly involve this armed fishing-fleet opening hostilities against the medical station. Angrily she returned to sit on the folded hammock, knowing that her lamentable recent attempt at communication was certainly responsible for it and that she deserved everything that was going to happen to her.

It was while she was glowering despondently at the empty doorway that she noticed something amiss. Beside it there had been an unlit lamp with single containers of water and sand on each side of it, and now there were three containers there. Feeling greatly relieved but completely undeserving of her sudden change in fortune, she spoke quietly.

“Stop showing off, Danalta,” she said, “which barrel of sand is you?”

Throughout the ship the sound of spider voices and the loud creaking and rumbling of wooden mechanisms being operated reached a climax. The level of light coming from the corridor increased and with it came a steady flow of warm air that could only be blowing off the beach as the sail shields were opened fully and deployed. A moment later the rocking action of the waves intensified as the ship pulled free of the sand. The fleet had set sail and she knew its objective.

“They’re going to attack the med station,” said Murchison urgently above the ship noises. “We have to get back there to warn them—”

“You already have warned them,” said Danalta. Its sand-container shape, which had grown an eye, ear, and mouth, moved sideways to reveal her communicator lying on the floor with its TRANSMIT and RECORD lights blinking. “I was here during your conversation with the spider, and Captain Fletcher, with the help of Dr. Prilicla, who uses a similar form of language, says that it has almost enough to program a translator for spider talk when we get back. Prilicla needs you there, it needs all of the med team, as quickly as possible. One of the Trolanni casualties is giving cause for serious concern.”

She picked up the active communicator and clipped it to

her equipment belt. Apologetically she said, “For a while I forgot what I do for a living. I must report to Prilicla at once.”

“It will waste less time,” said Danalta firmly, “if you report to it in person. Pathologist Murchison, we must return to the station, now.”

Rarely had words been spoken with which she was in more complete agreement, Murchison thought fervently as she looked around her low, cramped, and highly uncomfortable prison, but returning to the station was not going to be easy, especially for her. She pointed at the ventilator opening.

“Those ships are moving fast,” she said, “and we’re already two hundred meters from the beach. Even if we left now, by the time I swam ashore and ran all the way back, we might not get there until after the fleet arrived.”

The sand container slumped into a more organic shape and rolled up to her feet, growing a rudimentary jaw with very sharp teeth as it came.

“With my assistance we will both go by sea,” said Danalta as it bit through the rope securing her ankle. “Will I enlarge the ventilator opening for you?”

“No,” she replied sharply. “It will open widely enough to let me out. We don’t want to damage their ship unnecessarily. I was trying to make friends with them.”

“Then jump,” said Danalta.

Instead of jumping she made a long, shallow dive that took her about twenty meters from the ship’s side before she had to surface. She heard the splash of Danalta’s less graceful entry into the water, the excited chittering of spiders as more and more of them spotted her, followed by the hissing plop of crossbow bolts striking the water all around her. She took a deep breath and dived again, then wondered if a few feet of water would make any difference to the penetration power of the crossbow bolts when she could swim faster and maybe be more difficult to hit on the surface. But the next time she came up for breath and looked back, she was in time to hear the spider with the speaking trumpet call out a few loud, sharp syllables after which the shooting stopped.

Relieved and grateful, she continued swimming. Then she wondered if her spider captain didn’t want to hurt her, or if it believed that it would recapture her with the others at the station and simply wanted to save ammunition. A green, sharklike shape with a long, corrugated horn growing from the top of its head broke the surface beside her before she could make up her mind.

“Grasp the dorsal horn firmly in both hands,” said Danalta, “and hold on tight.”

She was glad of the extra grip afforded by the corrugations as the shape-changer picked up speed and its wide, triangular tail whipped rapidly from side to side, thrusting it faster and faster through the water. It was exhilarating and uncomfortable and a little like water-skiing without the skis. Danalta was cutting through rather than over the steep, breaking waves in the bay so that she had to twist her body and her head backwards every time she needed to breathe, but doing so showed that the distance between them and the pursuing ships was opening up. Laughing, she wondered what her spider captain would think about her moving so fast through the water that she was leaving a wake.