Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

The air was cool and fresh, and the rumble of the surf almost hypnotic. I fell asleep in the cockpit with the canopy off. It was a violation of safety procedures that would have incensed the Captain.

In the morning, I set out over a wide expanse of unbroken ocean. Gentle rain squalls drifted across its face and, deeper in southern seas, a heavy storm forced me to a higher altitude. By mid-day, the black skies lightened, and I descended through a drizzle filled with that world’s bulbous airborne plants, toward an ocean suddenly still. I ate lunch on a long narrow spit that probably went completely under at high tide. (There were two moons of substantial size and, when they lined up and pulled in the same direction, the tides were fierce.)

I was cramped after long hours in the flyer, and strolled casually along the beach, enjoying the sea and the solitude. Tiny soft-shelled segmented creatures washed ashore with each wave. Most burrowed into the sand, while others hurried across the spit and returned into the ocean on the other side. I watched, fascinated, and noticed that all the movement was in one direction. That seemed strange. Also, the phenomenon seemed to be accelerating. Crustaceans and other creatures less easily identifiable scrabbled and slithered out of the breakers in increasing numbers, crossed the strip, and disappeared into the waves.

I was puzzling over it when I observed a vegetable-brown stain in the water drifting in my direction. It was out just beyond the surf, drifting toward the outer breakers. As it came closer, the foam turned muddy and the waves became almost syrupy.

Two glistening black rocks rolled ashore. One paused as though suddenly aware of my presence. It fell open, and a cluster of living dark fronds slowly uncoiled in my direction. I backed away, out of reach. Unhurried, it returned to its shell, and both creatures crossed the strand and splashed into the ocean.

I started back toward the flyer at a quick, nervous pace, but a sudden high-pitched whistling brought me up short. I turned to see that a creature resembling a porpoise had thrown itself onto the beach a few meters in front of me. The surf rolled languidly past its flanks, boiled, and seemed to draw the animal back into itself. The porpoise turned dark intelligent eyes toward me, and I heard again that shrill whistle, and read the terror in it. It struggled with the muddy tide, and tried to get higher up the beach, as though it would have torn itself altogether from the embrace of the ocean. But it made little progress, and seemed to give up when a muddy wave broke over it.

Our eyes locked in mutual horror. A second viscous wave rose around it, and when it receded the animal was gone. Moments later I caught a glimpse of a dorsal, and of a weak struggle in the water. And then everything became placid.

Meanwhile the brown tide was making inroads. The stream of marine animals across the strip of sand had stopped. A few had been captured and were being dragged back. No more came ashore.

It was enough for me. I broke toward the flyer in a panicky sprint. The tide continued to roll in. Several rivulets had already pushed across and gone into the ocean on the other side. I splashed frantically through them. They oozed and sucked at my boots. Thank God I hadn’t gone barefoot as I’d been tempted to do.

The flyer was about a hundred yards away. There were pools near it. The brown tide flowed into these, and they began to rise.

I lost balance and went down, thrusting my hands into the goop. It scorched me and I screamed and scrambled to my feet, rubbing my hands against my vest in an effort to get the stuff off.

The tide had reached the landing treads and the ladder. I plodded through it, panicked, but I think I was moving in slow motion all the same, fearful of splashing the stuff, struggling to pull my boots free with each step. I was relieved to see, at least, that it didn’t seem to be able to climb.

Gobs of it got onto my jump suit. I hurried across the last few meters and fell forward against the ladder. The thing rose around my legs and tried to drag me back. I left it both boots.

And I shuddered for Christopher Sim and his people.

Two hours later, I cruised somberly through a gray overcast sky, watching the monitors draw a jagged line across the long curve of the horizon. I was still thoroughly rattled, and promising myself never to leave the cockpit again in unfamiliar territory. It was raining, but no wind blew. The ocean was flat and silent, but I could not get my thoughts away from what might lie beneath the surface. I’d told Saje what had happened and she’d advised me to return to the base site and catch the next ride back to the ship. I’d considered it, but it would have seemed cowardly. So I’d squared my jaw and told her not to worry, and pressed on.

Just stay in the aircraft. That was my motto from now on.

A peak appeared in the mist off to my right. It was granite, worn by sea and weather.

I flew on.

There were others, a range of towers rising smoothly out of the ocean almost directly parallel to the track of the Corsarius . Some had broken and toppled, damaged perhaps by long-ago earthquakes. The formation was so geometrically correct, that I could not escape a sense that I was looking at a planned structure. It occurred to me that, if the people who had come with Sim had been aware of the dangers in this ocean, the brow of one of these peaks would be exactly the kind of place they would have chosen.

I drifted among them, riding the currents, listening to the steady cadence of rock and surf. I searched all day, and when twilight came, I landed atop one of them. The rain blew off and the stars came out, bathing the line of towers and the rolling ocean in brilliant white light. But I didn’t sleep well. And I kept the canopy shut.

The reddish sun was well into the sky when I woke. The air was cold and clear. I checked in with the Tenandrome ; they told me my aircraft was needed back at Holtmeyer’s site, and the Captain would be grateful if I returned it.

I was glad to get airborne again, but as I drifted over those gray towers I knew unequivocally that I was right about Sim. And that the proof was here. Somewhere.

I almost missed it. I’d expected that they would have chosen the top of one of the peaks. I found what I was looking for instead on a relatively narrow shelf not quite halfway between the summit and the sea: a dome.

But it was small, and I realized as I approached it that I’d been wrong. They had not marooned Sim and his crew. And I knew with knife-cold suddenness why the Seven had no names!

My God! They’d left him here alone.

I circled for half an hour, finding things to do, checking rations, wondering whether to call McIras, debating if it was not after all best to let the legends be. But I couldn’t just leave it.

Two centuries late, I floated down through the salt air.

The wind blew across the escarpment. The shelf was solid rock. No green thing grew there, and no creature made its home on that grim pile. A few boulders were strewn about, and some loose rubble. Several broken slabs stood near the edge of the promontory. The peak towered overhead, and the ocean lay far below.

I stood uncertainly before the dome in stocking feet, studying its utilitarian lines, the makeshift antenna mounted on the roof, the blank windows with drawn curtains. The sea boomed relentlessly, and even at this altitude, the air felt wet.

Unlike the Corsarius , that shelf gave no sense of recent occupancy. The dome was discolored by weather, and it had been knocked somewhat askew, probably by a quake.

Christopher Sim’s tomb. It was not a very elegant end, on this rough slab, under the white star of the ship that had carried him safely through so much. They had, I believed, intended to come back for him when the war ended and it didn’t matter anymore. And maybe they left the Cosarius as a token of a promise. But things had probably gone awry.