Robert Silverberg - The Face of the Waters

After a time they got the hang of it. Delagard pedalled, Kinverson chopped. When Kinverson became visibly weary they changed places, precariously creeping around the rocking vehicle until Delagard was in front and Kinverson was at the pedals.

“All right, next shift,” Delagard called finally. He had been working with his usual manic zeal and he looked worn out. “Two more volunteers! Leo, did I hear you say you’d take the next turn? And was that you, Lawler?”

Pilya Braun worked the davits to lower Martello and Lawler over the side. The sea was fairly calm, but even so the flimsy strider bobbed and rocked constantly. Lawler imagined himself being flung out into the water by some unusually strong swell. When he looked down he could see individual fibres of the invading seaplant tossing on the swells just beyond the border of the shelf that had already formed. As the movements of the sea brought them against the side of the ship he was sure that he saw some of them affixing themselves to it.

He also could see small shining ribbony shapes coiling and writhing in the water. Worms, serpents, maybe eels. They looked quick and agile. Hoping for a snack, were they?

The ledge resisted chopping. Lawler had to grip the barnacle-scraper with both hands and ram it downward with all his strength. Often it slipped harmlessly aside, deflected by the toughness of the strange new growth. He nearly lost it altogether a couple of times.

“Hey!” Delagard yelled from above. “We don’t have any of those things to spare!”

Lawler found a way of striking edge-on at a slight angle that allowed the scraper to get between individual strands of the fibrous mass. Chunk after huge chunk of the stuff now came loose and went drifting away. He fell into the rhythm of it, slicing and slicing. Sweat rolled down his skin. His arms and wrists began to protest. Pain spread upward toward his armpits, his chest, his shoulders. His heart pounded.

“Enough,” he said to Martello. “Your turn, Leo.”

Martello seemed tireless. He hacked away with a joyous vigour that Lawler found humiliating. He had thought he had done pretty well during his stint; but in Martello’s first five minutes with the scraper he chopped away as much as Lawler had managed in his whole time. Lawler supposed that Martello even now was composing the Chopping Canto of his great epic in his head while he worked:

Onyos Felk and Lis Niklaus went down next. After them it was the turn of Neyana and Sundira, and after them, Pilya and Gharkid.

“Fucking stuff grows as fast as we can cut,” said Delagard sourly.

But they were making progress. Great chunks of the outgrowth were gone. In some places it had been cut back right to the original line of sea-finger weed.

The turn of Delagard and Kinverson came around once more. They chopped and slashed with diabolical fury. When they returned to the ship both men looked incandescent with exhaustion; they had passed beyond mere weariness into some transcendental state that left them glowing and exalted.

“Let’s go, doc,” Martello said. “It’s us again.”

Martello seemed determined to outdo even Kinverson. While Lawler kept the water-strider stabilized with a steady, numbing effort, Martello went after the vegetable enemy like some avenging god. Whack! Whack! Whack! He lifted the scraper high over his head, rammed it downward with a two-handed thrust, drove it deep. Whack! Whack! Huge sections of weed broke loose and floated away. Whack! Each stroke was mightier than the last. The water-strider tipped wildly from side to side. Lawler struggled to keep it upright. Whack! Whack!

Then Martello rose higher than ever before and brought the barnacle-scraper downward in a stroke of terrible force. It carved away an immense slab, clear back to the hull of the Queen . It must have come away more easily than Martello was expecting: Martello lost first his balance and then his grip on the scraper’s handle. He clawed at it, missed, and toppled forward, plunging with a heavy splash into the sea.

Lawler, still pedalling, leaned over and stretched out his hand. Martello was a couple of metres from the strider by now and flailing around desperately. But either he didn’t see the reaching hand or he was too far gone in panic to understand what to do.

“Swim toward me!” Lawler called. “Over here, Leo! Here!”

Martello continued to thrash and flounder. His eyes were glazed with shock. Then he stiffened suddenly as if wounded by a dagger from below. He began to jerk convulsively.

The davits were out over the water now. Kinverson was dangling from them. Lower,” he ordered. “A little more. That’s it. Over to the left. Good. Good.”

He caught the struggling Martello under the arms and reeled him in as though he were a child.

“Now you, doc,” Kinverson said.

“You can’t lift us both!”

“Come on. Here.”

Kinverson’s other arm locked itself around Lawler’s chest.

The davits rose. Swung inward over the rail, onto the deck. Lawler staggered free of Kinverson’s grip, stumbled and pitched forward, landed hard on both his knees. Sundira was at his side at once to help him up.

Martello, dripping wet, lay face upward, limp and motionless.

“Keep back,” Lawler ordered. He waved Kinverson away. “You too, Gabe.”

“We got to turn him over and pump the water out of him, doc.”

“It’s not the water I’m worried about. Get back, Gabe.” Lawler turned to Sundira. “You know where my bag of instruments is? The scalpels, and all? Bring it up on deck, will you?”

He knelt beside Martello and bared him to the waist. Martello was breathing, but he didn’t seem to be conscious. His eyes were wide, expressionless, unseeing. Now and again his lips would draw back in a frightful writhing grimace of pain and his whole body would go rigid and jerk as though an electrical current had passed through him. Then he would go limp again.

Lawler put his hand on Martello’s belly and pressed. He felt movement within: a trembling, a strange quivering, beneath the hard, tight band of abdominal muscle.

Something in there? Yes. This damnable ocean, invading wherever you gave it the slightest chance. But maybe it wasn’t too late to save him, Lawler thought. Clean him out, seal the wound, keep the community from being diminished any further.

Shadows moved about him. Everyone was crowding in, staring. They looked fascinated and repelled, both at once.

Brusquely Lawler said, “Clear out, all of you. You won’t want to see this. And I don’t want you watching me.”

No one moved.

“You heard the doctor,” came Delagard’s low growl. “Back off. Let him do his work.”

Sundira put his medical kit down on the deck beside him.

Lawler touched Martello’s abdomen again. Movement, yes. An unmistakable squirming. A quivering. Martello’s face was flushed, his pupils were dilated, his eyes were staring into some other world entirely. Hot sweat ran from every pore.

Lawler drew his best scalpel from the bag and set it down on the deck. He put both his hands on Martello’s abdomen just below the diaphragm and squeezed upward. Martello made a dull sighing sound, and a trickle of sea water and some vomit dribbled from his lips, but nothing else. Lawler tried again. Nothing. He felt motion again under his fingers: more spasms, more squirmings.

One more try. He turned Martello over and rammed his joined hands downwards against the middle of Martello’s back with all the strength he could find. Martello grunted. He spewed up some more thin puke. But that was all.