David Brin: Sundiver

In their subsequent discussion of whether Tuborg or L-5 was the best brand of beer, Jacob had to struggle to remember that this was an alien, not a lisping, overly polite human being. But the lesson had been brought home when, in the course of a conversation, they found themselves separated by a sudden, unbridgeable gap-Jacob had told a story about Earth’s old class struggles that Culla failed to understand. He tried to illustrate the point of it with a Chinese proverb: “A peasant always hangs himself in his landlord’s doorway.”

The alien’s eyes suddenly became bright and Jacob for the first time heard an agitated clacking coming from Culla’s mouth. Jacob had stared for a moment, then moved quickly to change the subject.

All things considered, however, Culla had the closest thing to a human sense of humor of any extraterrestrial he had met. Fagin excepted, of course.

Now, as they approached the landing, the Pring stood silently near his Patron — his expression, and Bubbacub’s, once again unreadable.

Kepler tapped him gently on the arm. The scientist pointed at the port. “Pretty soon, now, the Captain will tighten up the Stasis Screens and begin to cut down the rate at which she lets space-time leak in. You’ll find the effects interesting.”

“I thought the ship sort of let the fabric of space slip past it, like riding a surfboard into a beach.”

Kepler smiled.

“No, Mr. Demwa. That’s a common fallacy. Space-surfing is just a phrase used by popularizers. When I speak of space-time I’m not talking about a ‘fabric.’ Space is not a material.

“Actually, as we approach a planetary singularity — a distortion in space caused by a planet — we must adopt a constantly changing metric, or set of parameters by which we measure space and time. It’s as if nature wants us to gradually change the length of our meter sticks and the pace of our clocks whenever we get close to a mass.”

“I take it the Captain is controlling our approach by allowing this change to take place slowly?”

“Exactly right! In the old days, of course, the adaptation was more violent. One adapted one’s metric either by braking continuously with rockets until touchdown, or by crashing into the planet. Now we just roll up excess metric like a bolt of cloth in stasis. Ah! There goes that ‘material’ analogy again!”

Kepler grinned.

“One of the useful by-products of this is commercial grade neutronium, but the main purpose is to get us down safely.”

“So when we finally start stuffing space into a bag, what will we see?”

Kepler pointed to the port.

“You can see it happening now.”

Outside, the stars were going out. The tremendous spray of bright pinpoints which even the darkened screens had let through slowly faded as they watched. Soon only a few were left, weak and ochre colored against the blackness.

The planet below changed as well.

The light reflected from Mercury’s surface was no longer hot and brittle. It took on an orange tint. The surface was quite dark now.

And it was getting closer, too. Slowly, but visibly, the horizon flattened. Surface objects only barely discerned earlier came into focus as the Bradbury settled lower.

Large craters opened up to show smaller craters within. As the ship descended past the ragged edge of one of these, Jacob saw it too was covered with still smaller pits, each similar in shape to the larger ones.

The tiny planet’s horizon disappeared behind a range of mountains, and Jacob lost all perspective. With every minute of descent the ground below looked the same. How could you tell how high up you were? Is that thing just below us a mountain, or a boulder, or are we going to touch down in just a second or two and is it just a rock?

He sensed nearness. The gray shadows and orange outcrops seemed close enough to touch.

Expecting the ship to come to rest at any moment, he was surprised when a hole in the ground rushed up to engulf them.

As they prepared to disembark, Jacob remembered with a shock what he had been doing when he slipped into a light trance earlier, holding Kepler’s jacket during the descent.

Surreptitiously, and with great skill, he had picked Kepler’s pockets, taking a sample of every medication and removing a small pencil stub without smudging the fingerprints. They made a neat lump in Jacob’s side pocket now, too small to stand out against the taper of his jacket.

So it’s started already, he groaned.

Jacob’s jaw tightened.

This time, he thought, I’m going to solve it myself!

I don’t need help from my alter ego. I’m not going to go around breaking and entering!

He struck his balled fist against his thigh to drive out the itchy, satisfied feeling in his fingers.

When Dr. Martine left her quarters and took service corridors to the E.T. Environments Section, she thought of herself as using discretion, not stealth. Pipes and communications cables clung, stapled, to the rough unfinished walls. The Hermetian stone glistened with condensation and gave off an odor of wet rock as her footsteps rang down the fused path ahead of her.

She arrived at a pressure-sealed door with a green overhead light, the back entrance to one alien’s residence. When she pressed the sensing cell next to it, the door opened immediately.

A bright, greenish-tinted light spilled out — the reproduced sunshine of a star many parsecs distant. She shielded her eyes with one hand while with the other she took a pair of sunglasses from her hip pouch, and put them on to look into the room.

On the walls she saw spiderweb tapestries of hanging gardens and of an alien city set on the edge of a mountain scarp. The city clung to the jagged cliff, shimmering as if viewed through a waterfall. Dr. Martine thought she could almost hear high pitched music, keening just above her aural range. Could that explain the shortness of her breath? Her jittery nerves?

Bubbacub rose from a cushioned pallet to greet her. His gray fur shone as he waddled forward on stubby legs. In the actinic light and one point five g-field of his apartment, Bubbacub lost whatever “cuteness” Martine had seen in him before. The Pil’s bowlegged stance spoke strength.

The alien’s mouth moved in short snaps. His voice, coming from the Vodor which hung from his neck, was smooth and resonant, although the words came clipped and separated. “Good. Glad you come.”

Martine was relieved. The Library Representative sounded relaxed. She bowed slightly.

“Greeting, Pil Bubbacub. I came to ask if you have had any further word from the Branch Library.”

Bubbacub displayed a mouth full of needle sharp teeth. “Come in and sit. Yes, good that you ask. I have a new fact. But come. Have food, drink first.”

Martine grimaced as she passed through the g-transition field of the threshold — always a disconcerting experience. Inside the room she felt as though she weighed seventy kilos.

“No. Thank you, I just ate. I will sit.” She selected a chair built for humans and carefully lowered herself into it. Seventy kilos was more than a person should weight.