Arthur Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth

These scorps were big. It was hard to judge scale here, and not until several more of the animals had scurried past was Loren quite sure that this pair was almost fifty per cent larger than average.

“What are they doing?” somebody whispered.

“I’ll tell you,” another voice answered. “They’re guards — sentries.”

Once stated, the conclusion was so obvious that no one doubted it.

“But what are they guarding?”

“The queen, if they have one? The First Bank of Scorpville?”

“How can we find out? The sled’s much too big to go inside — even if they’d let us try.”

It was at this point that the discussion became academic. The robot probe had now drifted down to within less than ten metres of the pyramid’s summit, and the operator gave a brief burst from one of the control jets to stop it descending farther.

The sound, or the vibration, must have alerted the sentries. Both of them reared up simultaneously, and Loren had a sudden nightmare vision of clustered eyes, waving palps, and giant claws. I’m glad I’m not really here, even though it seems like it, he told himself. And it’s lucky they can’t swim.

But if they could not swim, they could climb. With astonishing speed, the scorps scrambled up the side of the pyramid and within seconds were on its summit, only a few metres below the sled.

“Gotta get out of here before they jump,” the operator said. “Those pinchers could snap our cable like a piece of cotton.”

He was too late. A scorp launched itself off the rock, and seconds later its claws grabbed one of the skis of the sled’s undercarriage.

The operator’s human reflexes were equally swift and in control of a superior technology. At the same instant, he went into full reverse and swung the robot arm downward to the attack. And what was perhaps more decisive, he switched on the floodlights.

The scorp must have been completely blinded. Its claws opened in an almost human gesture of astonishment, and it dropped back to the seabed before the robot’s mechanical hand could engage it in combat.

For a fraction of a second, Loren was also blind, as his goggles blacked out. Then the camera’s automatic circuits corrected for the increased light level, and he had one startlingly clear close-up of the baffled scorp just before it dropped out of the field of view.

Somehow he was not in the least surprised to see that it was wearing two bands of metal below its right claw.

He was reviewing this final scene as Calypso headed back for Tarna, and his senses were still so concentrated on the underwater world that he never felt the mild shockwave as it raced past the boat. But then he became aware of the shouts and confusion around him and felt the deck heel as Calypso suddenly changed course. He tore off the goggles and stood blinking in the brilliant sunlight.

For a moment he was totally blind; then, as his eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw that they were only a few hundred metres from South Island’s palm-fringed coast. We’ve hit a reef, he thought. Brant will never hear the last of this…

And then he saw, climbing up over the eastern horizon, something he had never dreamed of witnessing on peaceful Thalassa. It was the mushroom cloud that had haunted men’s nightmares for two thousand years.

What was Brant doing? Surely he should be heading for land; instead, he was swinging Calypso around in the tightest possible turning circle, heading out to sea. But he seemed to have taken charge, while everyone else on deck was staring slack-mouthed towards the east.

“Krakan!” one of the Norther scientists whispered, and for a moment Loren thought he was merely using the overworked Lassan expletive. Then he understood, and a vast feeling of relief swept over him. It was very short-lived.

“No,” Kumar said, looking more alarmed than Loren would have thought possible. “Not Krakan — much closer. Child of Krakan.”

The boat radio was now emitting continuous beeps of alarm, interspersed with solemn warning messages. Loren had no time to absorb any of them when he saw that something very strange was happening to the horizon. It was not where it should have been.

This was all very confusing; half of his mind was still down there with the scorps, and even now he had to keep blinking against the glare from sea and sky. Perhaps there was something wrong with his vision. Although he was quite certain that Calypso was now on an even keel, his eyes told him that it was plunging steeply downward.

No; it was the sea that was rising, with a roar that now obliterated all other sounds. He dared not judge the height of the wave that was bearing down upon them; now he understood why Brant was heading out into deep water, away from the deadly shallows against which the tsunami was about to expend its fury.

A giant hand gripped Calypso and lifted her bow up, up towards the zenith. Loren started to slide helplessly along the deck; he tried to grasp a stanchion, missed it, then found himself in the water.

Remember your emergency training, he told himself fiercely. In sea or in space, the principle is always the same. The greatest danger is panic, so keep your head…

There was no risk of drowning; his life-jacket would see to that. But where was the inflation lever? His fingers scrabbled wildly around the webbing at his waist, and despite all his resolve, he felt a brief, icy chill before he found the metal bar. It moved easily, and to his great relief he felt the jacket expand around him, gripping him in a welcome embrace.

Now the only real danger would be from Calypso herself if she crashed back upon his head. Where was she?

Much too close for comfort, in this raging water, and with part of her deck-housing hanging into the sea. Incredibly, most of the crew still seemed on board. Now they were pointing at him, and someone was preparing to throw a life-belt.

The water was full of floating debris — chairs, boxes, pieces of equipment — and there went the sled, slowly sinking as it blew bubbles from a damaged buoyancy tank. I hope they can salvage it, Loren thought. If not, this will be a very expensive trip, and it may be a long time before we can study the scorps again. He felt rather proud of himself for so calm an appraisal of the situation, considering the circumstances.

Something brushed against his right leg; with an automatic reflex, he tried to kick it away. Though it bit uncomfortably into the flesh, he was more annoyed than alarmed. He was safely afloat, the giant wave had passed, and nothing could harm him now.

He kicked again, more cautiously. Even as he did so, he felt the same entanglement on the other leg. And now this was no longer a neutral caress; despite the buoyancy of his life-jacket, something was pulling him underwater.

That was when Loren Lorenson felt the first moment of real panic, for he suddenly remembered the questing tentacles of the great polyp. Yet those must be soft and fleshy — this was obviously some wire or cable. Of course — it was the umbilical cord from the sinking sled.

He might still have been able to disentangle himself had he not swallowed a mouthful of water from an unexpected wave. Choking and coughing, he tried to clear his lungs, kicking at the cable at the same time.

And then the vital boundary between air and water — between life and death — was less than a metre overhead; but there was no way that he could reach it.

At such a moment, a man thinks of nothing but his own survival. There were no flashbacks, no regrets for his past life — not even a fleeting glimpse of Mirissa.

When he realized it was all over, he felt no fear. His last conscious thought was pure anger that he had travelled fifty light-years, only to meet so trivial and unheroic an end.