Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

The instructions on the label, closely written out in Dr Nikitin’s meticulous hand, said that a concentration of one part to a thousand parts of water would be sufficient to clear a hectare of bay from fireflower. Lawler mixed it in a concentration of one part to a hundred and had himself swung out over the water in the davits to spray it on the weeds around the Queen of Hydros ” bow.

The weeds seemed unbothered by it. But as the diluted oil trickled down through the clotted plants and spread out through the water around them an undersea commotion began, and quickly became a turmoil. From the deep came fish, thousands of them, millions, little nightmare creatures with huge gaping jaws, slim serpentine bodies, broadly flaring tails. Vast numbers of them must have been nesting down there under the plants and now the whole colony was rising as though with one accord. They smashed their way upward through the matted clumps of roots and went into a wild mating frenzy at the surface. Dr Nikitin’s oil, harmless though it was to the weeds, appeared to have a potent aphrodisiac effect on the creatures that lived in the water below them. The wild writhing of vast numbers of the snaky little things set the sea into such turbulence that the tight clusters of interwoven weeds were ripped apart and the ships were able to make their way through the channels that appeared. In short order all six vessels were past the zone of congestion, moving freely in open water.

“What a clever bastard you are, doc,” Delagard said.

“Yes. Except I didn’t know that was going to happen.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not a clue. I was simply trying to poison those plants. I had no idea those fish were underneath them. Now you see how a lot of great scientific discoveries get made.”

Delagard frowned. “And how is that?”

“By sheer accident.”

“Ah, yes,” said Father Quillan. Lawler saw that the priest was in his cynic/unbeliever mode. With a mock-solemn intonation Quillan exclaimed, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”

“Indeed,” Lawler said. “So he does.”

A couple of days beyond the water-plant zone the sea became shallow for a time, hardly any deeper than Sorve Bay, with utterly transparent water. Gigantic contorted heads of coral, some of it green, some of it ochre, much of it a brooding dark shade of blue that was practically black, could be seen rising from a sea floor of brilliant white sand that looked close enough to touch. The green coral sprouted in fantastic baroque spires, the blue-black was in the form of umbrellas and long thick arms, the ochre had the shape of great flaring flattened horns, branching and rebranching. There was also a huge scarlet coral that grew as single isolated globular masses, vivid against the white sand, which had the wrinkled, involuted shape of human brains.

In places the coral had expanded its reach so exuberantly that it breached the surface. Little whitecaps licked around it at the waterline. The clumps that had been exposed longest to the air were dead, bleaching to whiteness in the hard sunlight, and just below them was a layer of dying coral that was taking on a dull brown colour.

“The beginning of land on Hydros,” Father Quillan observed. “Let the sea level change a little and all this coral will be sticking out of the water. Then it’ll decompose into soil, seed-producing air-dwelling plants will evolve and start sprouting, and away we’ll go. Natural islands first, then the sea floor rises a little more, and we get continents.”

“And how long do you think it’ll be before that happens?” Delagard asked.

Quillan shrugged. “Thirty million years? Forty, maybe. Or maybe a lot more than that.”

“Thank God!” Delagard bellowed. “Then we don’t have to worry about it for a while!”

What they did have to worry about, though, was this coral sea. The ochre coral heads, the horn-shaped ones, looked sharp as razors, and in places their upper edges lay only a few metres deeper than keel depth. There might be other places where there was even less clearance. A ship that passed over one could find itself laid open from bow to stern.

So it was necessary to move warily, searching for safe channels within the reefs. For the first time since they had left Sorve there could be no night sailing at all. By day, when the sun was a beacon striking patterns of sparkling lines on the shimmering white sea-floor, the voyagers wove a cautious path between the coral outcroppings, staring down in wonder at the unthinkable swarms of gilded fish that clustered around the coral, swiftly and silently going about their business, great hordes of them threading down every passageway as they fed on the reef’s rich population of microlife. By night the six ships anchored close by one another in some safe open sector, waiting for the dawn. Everyone came up on deck and leaned out, calling to friends on the other ships, even conducting shouted conversations. It was the first real contact most of them had had since their departure.

The night spectacle was even more dazzling than the daytime one: under the cold light of the Cross and the three moons, with Sunrise adding its own measure of brilliance, the coral creatures themselves came to life, emerging from a billion billion tiny caverns in the reefs: long whips, scarlet here, subtle rose there, a sulphurous yellow on this kind of coral, a glaucous bright aquamarine on that one, everything uncoiling and reaching forth, all of them frantically flagellating the water to harvest the even tinier beings that hung suspended in it. Down the aisles of the reef came stunning serpentine things, all eyes and teeth and shining scales, that slithered diligently along the bottom, leaving elegant belly-tracks in the sand. A pulsing green luminescence flowed from them. And out of a myriad dark dens appeared the apparent kings of the reef, swollen red octopoid creatures with plump, baggy, prosperous-looking bodies held secure within long swirling coiling tentacles from which emanated a throbbing, terrifying bluish-white light. By night every coral head became the throne for one of these great octopoids: there it sat, glowing smugly, quietly surveying its kingdom with gleaming yellow-green eyes that were larger across than a man’s outstretched hand. There was no escaping the gaze of those eyes as you peered over the rail in the darkness to look down at the wonderworld beneath. They stared at you confidently, complacently, revealing neither curiosity nor fear. What those great eyes seemed to be saying was, We are masters here, and you are not at all important. Come, swim down to us, and let us put you to some good use . And sharp yellow beaks would open suggestively. Come down to us. Come down to us . It was a temptation.

The coral outcroppings began to thin out, grew more and more sparse, finally vanished altogether. The sea floor remained shallow and sandy a while longer; then, abruptly, the brilliant white sand could no longer be seen, and the turquoise water, which had been so clear and serene, turned once more into the opaque dark blue of deep waters with a choppy covering of light rippling swells.

Lawler began to feel as if the voyage would never end. The ship had become not just his island but his entire world. He would simply go on and on aboard it forever. The other ships travelled alongside it like neighbouring planets in the void.

The odd thing was that he saw nothing much wrong with that. He was fully caught up in the rhythm of the voyage now. He had learned to enjoy the constant rocking of the ship, accepting the little privations, even relishing the occasional visitations of monsters. He had settled down. He had adapted. Was he mellowing? Or was it, perhaps, that he had simply become an ascetic, not really needing anything, not caring much about temporal comforts? It could be. He made a note to ask Father Quillan about that when he had a chance.