Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

Confident again, he let out more air and turned to pick out the place where he would land. He was unlucky in his timing. While he was still searching for a preferred landing point, a great mother wave came sweeping in silently from behind. It picked him up effortlessly, turned him in midair, and crashed him headfirst down on the stony bottom. His helmet took the impact, as it was designed to do, but it left his head ringing. As he staggered to his feet again, a sister wave hit.

This one finished the job. Friday was lifted, carried forward, and deposited in a crack between two boulders. The wave retreated and left him there, breathless.

He was ashore — but still in danger. Another wave could soon be on its way. He forced himself to wriggle forward, grabbing at rocks and thinking of nothing but the next few inches of pebbles and stone. He kept going, forward and upward, for what felt like hours. Finally he saw that the boulder in front of his face was bone-dry.

He was safe.

He rolled over and lay on his back, staring up at the sky. The clouds were racing, but they seemed less thick and ominous. The storm was definitely coming to an end. If he had waited another few hours …

But if he had waited, although the sea would be calmer it would also be dark, and he would not have tried to make it ashore. And here he was. He took a deep breath, sat up, and looked to his right. From his point of view his arrival on the beach had been filled with noise and violence; however, during a storm the whole shore must be such a chaos of wind and breaking waves that the arrival there of one human could pass unnoticed.

The beings over by the buildings had apparently seen nothing, and most of them had gone inside or about other business. A couple were still standing outside. He could see them more clearly now that blown spray no longer obscured the picture. They were multi-legged, with long, flat, bodies. They seemed to possess some kind of blue-black shell, but he was still too far away to tell which end was which, or if they had such things as eyes and ears.

Well, that would change soon enough. Friday struggled to his feet and checked that his backpack and the translation unit at his waist were in position and intact. The translator was in a case. The case was supposed to be waterproof, but you never knew when some crooked supplier would sell you another piece of junk. He turned the unit on, and heard the beep that indicated it was ready to go to work.

Maybe this time the damn thing would perform as advertised. Friday was going to have a few bruises after his rough landing, but he smiled to himself as he opened the front of his helmet and headed off along the pebbled beach. Maybe it was time for a little bit of luck.

He waved. Still the creatures over by the buildings did not notice him. Well, they would become aware of Friday Indigo soon enough.

First contact, here we come .

There is no training manual, “Ten things to remember in first contact with an alien species.” Even had there been one, Friday Indigo would not have opened the data file. You learned things by hiring other people to sort out what was important and tell you what you needed to know and when you needed to know it. In any case, there was no big mystery about first contact.

Friday was making no attempt to walk quietly, but the wind was blowing hard and the surf still ran high. He came within ten meters of the two aliens and still they had not noticed him.

He had been studying them as he approached. They were like nothing he had ever seen or heard of. That was good. The worst thing after all his efforts would be to learn that they were already members of the Stellar Group.

Not these babies, though. They were low-slung, with a long, horizontal body and what seemed like an inordinate number of jointed legs. He counted five pairs, each with a carrying pouch on its outer side. That total didn’t include four at the front end terminating in pincers like lobster claws and surrounded by bristly projections capable of independent movement. The blue-black, hard-cased body was about a meter and a half long, so the creatures would be at least as tall as humans if they ever reared up onto their hind legs — which so far they showed no signs of doing. The two just seemed to be talking to each other, making chittering, clicking sounds and waving long stalky antennas.

One of those antennas finally turned in Friday’s direction. There was probably an eye at the end of it, because he could see a dark-blue gleam there — and the alien in charge of that particular antenna at once changed its clattering to a high-pitched squeak. Apparently the squeak meant something to the second alien, because they both swung round instantly to face Friday.

This was it, the big moment.

He raised his hand in a formal gesture. “Greetings, alien strangers. I, Friday Indigo, captain of the Terran ship Mood Indigo , and the representative of all Terrans and all species of the Stellar Group, seek your friendship and am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

Of course, they would not understand him. That was too much to hope for. The translating machine had to listen to a bit of chat from both sides before it did anything useful. But his words would be recorded, and that was what counted. That was what went into the historical archives.

He lowered his hand and waited for their response.

It came in unison, and with astonishing speed. Two claws moved to two leg pouches, dipped in, and came out holding short black canes. The canes pointed at Friday. He heard sharp popping sounds like the bursting of small party balloons.

He didn’t see anything, but suddenly he felt as though his brain had turned to boiling liquid and was fountaining out of the top of his head. That was impossible — he had opened the faceplate of his helmet, but surely the rest of it was still in position. He tried to reach up to check, but before he could get his hand past shoulder height he was falling backwards.

As he fell he decided that he had been wrong. The worst thing that could happen was not that the aliens would prove to be members of the Stellar Group. The worst thing that could happen to him was what was happening right now.

Chan Dalton knew within half a second that something had gone wrong. Subjective time inside a Link transition — the only time that had meaning there — was the single dizzying moment when your head turned inside out. After that you were back in the real world. In this case the real world was supposed to be the gauzy starlit splendor of the Geyser Swirl; that’s not what he was seeing. The forward observation chamber of the Hero’s Return revealed a murky green gloom, and hovering within its depths sat a gigantic alien spaceship.

The alien ship moved, jerking forward. Chan’s eyes refocused. Suddenly he was looking not at a distant behemoth but at a small fish-like creature, inches away from the transparent wall of the observation chamber. As Chan watched, the little animal darted away and disappeared.

Half a second in human terms was an eternity to the ship’s computer. While Chan was still peering after the vanished fish, the audio outlet in the observation chamber sounded an alert and continued with a message: WARNING. ANOMALOUS ENVIRONMENT. CURRENTLY CHANGING SENSOR OBSERVATION SUITE, RECALIBRATING INSTRUMENTS, TAKING READINGS. THIS SHIP IS ON EMERGENCY STATUS.

In the pause that followed, Deb Bisson gripped Chan’s hand harder than ever. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

All her previous Link experience had been within the solar system. She didn’t know just how unusual this one was. Chan tried to speak with a confidence that he didn’t feel. “We completed the transition. I assume that we’re somewhere in the Geyser Swirl. But we’re in a gravity field when we expected to be in free fall, and we’re under water when we thought we would emerge into open space. We won’t know more than that until the computer has taken and interpreted sensor readings.”