Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

Bony stared at the captain. It was the recklessness of ignorance, the confidence of a man who had always been able to buy himself out of trouble. How did you persuade a rich idiot like Friday Indigo that the biggest opportunity a new world offered was often the chance to be killed in unpleasant ways?

“It’s not just the land area,” Liddy said quietly, before Bony could find a tactful way of phrasing what was on his mind.

It was the first time she had spoken since she and Bony had entered the ship, and Indigo at once made a dismissive gesture of his hand. “Keep out of this. You weren’t brought along on this trip to think, so shut up.”

“I feel sure you’ll want to hear this, Friday.”

“It had better be good, girl, or you’re in real trouble.”

“I don’t know if it’s good or not; but it’s important.” Liddy turned to Bony. “When we left the surface and dived underwater to look for the ship, did you see anything unusual?”

Bony had seen very little. The swirl of blue-green past his visor, a stream of air bubbles from Liddy’s suit. He shook his head.

“Well, I did.” She paused, and this time Friday Indigo waited. “We were diving, but I wasn’t sure where the Mood might be, so I was trying to keep an eye open in all directions. Then I saw a light under the water. For a moment I felt sure that it came from this ship — I mean, what else could it be? — and I was ready to turn in that direction. But it didn’t look right. It wasn’t just a light or two, like our lights shining through the ports. It was more like a column of lights, strung out in a straight line. It seemed like they pointed at something. I followed the line of them with my eye. I saw the lights of the Mood Indigo, and then the ship itself sitting on the seabed. And I turned to head in this direction, and Bony and I came aboard.”

Indigo was silent for a moment, then he said to Bony, “Rombelle, did you see any of this?”

“Nothing.” And, at Friday Indigo’s contemptuous snort, “But I don’t see nearly as well as Liddy, under water or above it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Indigo said grudgingly. “She’s got great eyesight, I’ll grant you that. But a line of lights, under water? Give me a break.”

Bony turned again to Liddy. “Can you tell us where the thing you saw was, relative to where we are now?”

“I think it was in that direction.” She pointed to one side of the cabin. The three of them went to the port and crowded around it.

“Do you see anything?” Indigo asked. “I don’t.”

“Nor do I.” Bony turned to Liddy. “How about you?”

“Nothing.”

“So you imagined things,” Friday Indigo said. “I warned you not to waste our time. Don’t try thinking, Liddy, it doesn’t suit you. I brought you along for your body, not your brains.”

“Now you wait a minute.” Bony felt his head ready to explode. He was going to hit Indigo unless he could find a distraction. “There might be something there. It’s difficult to see outside when the cabin lights are on. Suppose we turn them off.”

“Suppose we do. We’ll still see nothing.” But Indigo went across to the console, and a moment later the cabin lights dimmed.

“Just as I expected,” Indigo said in the darkness. “Pure imagination. You and your damn lights, Liddy. You didn’t see …” His voice faded.

The sun had set, and its light no longer diffused down from above. The Mood Indigo sat in a silent, stygian gloom. But far away, so faint that one moment it seemed to be there and in the next the eye had lost it, a tiny splinter of light shone wanly through the green water.

“There it is,” Bony said breathlessly. “Liddy, you said you saw a column of lights.”

“That’s what it looked like from above. But they were all pointing in this direction, so from here they line up. I can still make out about a dozen of them, only not so clearly.”

They were silent for a long time, peering into darkness, until Liddy added, “I can’t be sure. But I think they’re moving. Yes, they are.”

Bony stared until his eyes felt ready to pop out of his skull. It was no good. To him, it was still a single blur of light. Indigo must have been in the same situation, because he said quietly and without skepticism, “Moving how, Liddy?”

“Moving this way. Look, can’t you see that one of them is slightly ahead of the others?”

Liddy must have eyes like an eagle. Bony couldn’t see any such thing. But then, suddenly, he could. The single line of light resolved itself into separate points. He tried to count them, but lost track when he reached ten. The splinter of light had at first been blue-green, now its separate points shone with a yellower glow. And each point was slowly brightening. Was it his imagination, or were they also moving up and down?

“They’re coming this way,” said Liddy. Her voice was calm, but Bony felt her hand take his in the darkness and grip it hard. “I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. They seemed to point toward the ship when I first saw them, because they were moving in single file. And they still are.”

“You’re right.” Indigo sounded anything but calm. “I can see them, too. If they keep up that speed they’ll be here in another few minutes. Thank God I installed weapons on the ship, just in case. Rombelle—”

“We’re under water, sir. Fire weapons in our situation, and we’ll be more likely to blow ourselves up than anything else.”

“Well, we have to do something. If we’re attacked we can’t just sit here.”

“I don’t think we have to worry too much.” Bony offered that reassurance more for Liddy’s benefit than because he believed it. He went on, “Remember, these are sea-creatures. Even if they are intelligent, they won’t know about fire or have the technology to develop explosives or projectile weapons.”

Bony didn’t fully believe what he said. Nor, judging from the grunt from the darkness, did Friday Indigo, but there was a certain perverse pleasure in quoting the other man’s own words back to him.

“The lights are being carried,” Liddy said suddenly. “They are some sort of oblong balls, all filled with light.”

“Bioluminescent,” Bony added. To him they were still shapeless blobs. “That’s what you would expect in marine organisms, some form of phosphorescence or bioluminescence. You wouldn’t expect ordinary combustion.”

“Stuff your combustion.” Indigo sounded frantic. “I don’t want idiot science lectures. Carried by what , Liddy?”

“I can’t tell yet. But in another minute or two we can get a closer look—”

“The scopes!” Bony shouted the words, while he groaned inside at his own mental inadequacy. He had been peering hopelessly and unthinkingly into the darkness like Neanderthal man trying to see outside his cave, while the Mood ’s sophisticated imaging sensors and image intensifiers sat unused beside him. He fumbled his way to the console, turned on an internal light, and pulled up a display connected to the scopes. A few of them would certainly not work — thermal infrared sensors relied on radiation, not physical contact with the sensors — but visible wavelengths should be fine.

Another half minute when he seemed to be all thumbs, and then he had it. The screen showed a patch of lights at its center. He zoomed in.

And there they were. He had half known it, even before he thought of using the scopes. Fourteen bubble creatures — now he could count them, easily — were drifting toward the ship along the seabed. Each one floated in front of it a giant light, pear-shaped but the size of a watermelon. With that illumination Bony could make out every detail of their bodies.