Arthur Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth

“You can see Magellan in the daytime,” Loren said, anxious to change the subject, “if you know exactly where to look. But I’ve never done it myself.”

“Mirissa has — often,” Kumar interjected. “And she showed me how. You only have to call Astronet for the transit time and then go out and lie on your back. It’s like a bright star, straight overhead, and it doesn’t seem to be moving at all. But if you look away for even a second, you’ve lost it.”

Unexpectedly, Kumar throttled back the engine, cruised at low power for a few minutes, then brought the boat to a complete halt. Loren glanced around to get his bearings, and was surprised to see that they were now at least a kilometre from Tarna. There was another buoy rocking in the water beside them, bearing a large letter P and carrying a red flag.

“Why have we stopped?” asked Loren.

Kumar chuckled and started emptying a small bucket over the side. Luckily, it had been sealed until now; the contents looked suspiciously like blood but smelled far worse. Loren moved as tar away as possible in the limited confines of the boat.

“Just calling on an old friend,” Brant said very softly. “Sit still — don’t make any noise. She’s quite nervous.”

She? thought Loren. What’s going on?

Nothing whatsoever happened for at least five minutes; Loren would not have believed that Kumar could have remained still for so long. Then he noticed that a dark, curved band had appeared, a few metres from the boat, just below the surface of the water. He traced it with his eyes, and realized that it formed a ring, completely encircling them.

He also realized, at about the same moment, that Brant and Kumar were not watching it; they were watching him. So they’re trying to give me a surprise, he told himself; well, we’ll see about that…

Even so, it took all of Loren’s willpower to stifle a cry of sheer terror when what seemed to be a wall of brilliantly — no, putrescently — pink flesh emerged from the sea. It rose, dripping, to about half the height of a man and formed an unbroken barrier around them. And as a final horror, its upper surface was almost completely covered with writhing snakes coloured vivid reds and blues.

An enormous tentacle-fringed mouth had risen from the deep and was about to engulf them…

Yet clearly they were in no danger; he could tell that from his companions’ amused expressions.

“What in God’s — Krakan’s — name is that?” he whispered, trying to keep his voice steady.

“You reacted fine,” Brant said admiringly. “Some people hide in the bottom of the boat. It’s Polly — for polyp. Pretty Polly. Colonial invertebrate — billions of specialized cells, all cooperating. You had very similar animals on Earth though I don’t believe they were anything like as large.”

“I’m sure they weren’t,” Loren answered fervently. “And if you don’t mind me asking — how do we get out of here?”

Brant nodded to Kumar, who brought the engines up to full-power. With astonishing speed for something so huge, the living wall around them sank back into the sea, leaving nothing but an oily ripple on the surface.

“The vibration’s scared it,” Brant explained. “Look through the viewing glass — now you can see the whole beast.”

Below them, something like a tree-trunk ten metres thick was retracting towards the seabed. Now Loren realized that the ‘snakes’ he had seen wriggling on the surface were slender tentacles; back in their normal element they were waving weightlessly again, searching the waters for what — or whom — they might devour.

“What a monster!” he breathed, relaxing for the first time in many minutes. A warm feeling of pride — even exhilaration — swept over him. He knew that he had passed another test; he had won Brant’s and Kumar’s approval and accepted it with gratitude.

“Isn’t that thing — dangerous?” he asked.

“Of course; that’s why we have the warning buoy.”

“Frankly, I’d be tempted to kill it.”

“Why?” Brant asked, genuinely shocked. “What harm does it do?”

“Well — surely a creature that size must catch an enormous number of fish.”

“Yes, but only Lassan — not fish that we can eat. And here’s the interesting thing about it. For a long time we wondered how it could persuade fish — even the stupid ones here — to swim into its maw. Eventually we discovered that it secretes some chemical lure, and that’s what started us thinking about electric traps. Which reminds me…”

Brant reached for his comset.

“Tarna Three calling Tarna Autorecord — Brant here. We’ve fixed the grid. Everything functioning normally. No need to acknowledge. End message.”

But to everyone’s surprise, there was an immediate response from a familiar voice.

“Hello, Brant, Dr Lorenson. I’m happy to hear that. And I’ve got some interesting news for you. Like to hear it?”

“Of course, Mayor,” Brant answered as the two men exchanged glances of mutual amusement. “Go ahead.”

“Central Archives has dug up something surprising. All this has happened before. Two hundred fifty years ago, they tried to build a reef out from North Island by electroprecipitation — a technique that had worked well on Earth. But after a few weeks, the underwater cables were broken — some of them stolen. The matter was never followed up because the experiment was a total failure, anyway. Not enough minerals in the water to make it worthwhile. So there you are — you can’t blame the Conservers. They weren’t around in those days.”

Brant’s face was such a study in astonishment that Loren burst out laughing.

“And you tried to surprise me!” he said. “Well, you certainly proved that there were things in the sea that I’d never imagined.

“But now it looks as if there are some things that you never imagined, either.”

The Tarnans thought it was very funny and pretended not to believe him.

“First you’ve never been in a boat — now you say you can’t ride a bicycle!”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Mirissa had chided him, with a twinkle in her eye. “The most efficient method of transportation ever invented — and you’ve never tried it!”

“Not much use in spaceships and too dangerous in cities,” Loren had retorted. “Anyway, what is there to learn?”

He soon discovered that there was a good deal; biking was not quite as easy as it looked. Though it took real talent actually to fall off the low centre-of-gravity, small-wheeled machines (he managed it several times) his initial attempts were frustrating. He would not have persisted without Mirissa’s assurance that it was the best way to discover the island — and his own hope that it would also be the best way to discover Mirissa.

The trick, he realized after a few more tumbles, was to ignore the problem completely and leave matters to the body’s own reflexes. That was logical enough; if one had to think about every footstep one took, ordinary walking would be impossible. Although Loren accepted this intellectually, it was some time before he could trust his instincts. Once he had overcome that barrier, progress was swift. And at last, as he had hoped, Mirissa offered to show him the remoter byways of the island.

It would have been easy to believe that they were the only two people in the world, yet they could not be more than five kilometres from the village. They had certainly ridden much farther than that, but the narrow cycle track had been designed to take the most picturesque route, which also turned out to be the longest. Although Loren could locate himself in an instant from the position-finder in his comset, he did not bother. It was amusing to pretend to be lost.