David Brin: Sundiver

Jacob nodded. If he looked anything like LaRoque, now, they’d stand a good chance of scaring the alien to death!

He hefted the brown cannister, then sprayed a shot out onto the deck. It didn’t have much range but it might do as a weapon. There was still plenty of the stuff left.

The deck jerked under them, then jounced twice more. Jacob looked out and saw that they were tipping over. The magnetovore that held up this side of the ship was rolling along lower and lower, toward the edge of the deck and away from where the photosphere covered the sky.

One of the beasts on the other side must have lost its hold, then. That meant it was almost over.

The ship shuddered and then began to right itself. Jacob sighed. There still might be time to save the ship if he could disable Culla immediately. But that was clearly impossible. He wished he could go up and join Helene.

“Fagin,” he said. “I’m not the man you used to know. That man would have had Culla by now. We’d have been out of here and safe. We both know what he was capable of.

“Please understand. I tried. But I’m just not the same anymore.”

Fagin rustled. “I knew, Jacob. It was to achieve this change that I invited you to Sundiver in the first place.”

Jacob stared at the alien.

“You are my artful dodger,” the Kanten whistled softly. “I had no idea the issues here were as critical as they turned out to be. I asked you here solely to help break the chrysalis you have been in since Ecuador and then to introduce you to Helene deSilva. The plan succeeded. I am pleased.”

Jacob was at a loss.

“But Fagin, my mind…” he trailed off.

“Your mind is fine. You simply have an overeager imagination. That is all. Truly, Jacob, you invent such fantasies. And so elaborate! I have never met a hypochondriac such as you!”

Jacob’s mind raced. Either the Kanten was being polite, or he was mistaken or… or he was right. Fagin had never lied to him before, especially regarding personal matters.

Could it be that Mr. Hyde wasn’t a neurosis at all but a game ? As a child he had created play universes so detailed that they could hardly be distinguished from reality. His worlds had existed. The neo-Reichian therapists had merely smiled and credited him with a powerful, non-pathological imagination because the tests always showed that he knew he was playing, when it mattered that he know it!

Could Mr. Hyde have been a play-entity?

It’s true that until now it never did any actual harm. It was a perpetual annoyance, but there always turned out to be a valid reason for the things it “made” him do. Again, until now.

“You were non-sane for a time when I met you, Jacob. But the Needle cured you. The cure frightened , so you went into a game. I do not know the details of your game; you were very secretive. But I know now that you are awake. You have been awake for perhaps twenty minutes.”

Jacob clamped down. Whether or not Fagin was right, he had no time to stand here and blather about it. He had only minutes to save the ship. If it was possible at all.

Outside, the chromosphere shimmered. The photosphere loomed over their heads. The dust trails of the P-laser crisscrossed the inner shell.

Jacob tried to snap his fingers, and winced in pain.

“LaRoque! Run upstairs and get your lighter. Quick!”

LaRoque stepped back. “Why, I have it right here,” he said. “But of what use…”

Jacob was moving toward the intercom. If Helene had some reserve of power she’d been holding back, now was the time to use it. He needed a little time! Before he could switch it on, though, an alarm filled the ship.

“Sophonts,” Helene’s voice rang out. “Please prepare for acceleration. We will be leaving the Sun shortly.”

The woman’s voice sounded amused, almost whimsical.

“Due to the mode of our imminent departure, I would recommend that all passengers dress as warmly as possible! The Sun can be very cold this time of year!”

A blast of cold air blew constantly from the ventilator ducts around the Refrigerator Laser housing. Jacob and LaRoque huddled around their fire, trying to keep the cold air off it.

“Come on, baby. Burn!” A pile of flesh-foam shavings smoldered on the deck. Slowly the flames grew as they piled on more chips.

“Ha ha!” Jacob laughed. “Once a caveman, always a caveman, eh, LaRoque? Men get all the way to the sun, and they build a fire to stay warm!”

LaRoque smiled weakly, and kept piling on larger and larger shavings. The loquacious journalist had said very little since Jacob released him from his couch. Now and then, though, he would mutter something angry and spit.

Jacob held a torch into the flames. It was made from a clump of flesh-foam stuck to the end of a liquitube. The end began to smolder, giving off thick black smoke. It was beautiful.

Soon they had several torches. Smoke billowed into the air, carrying a foul stench. They had to stand back, in the path of the air duct, to be able to breathe. Fagin moved well into the gravity-loop.

“Okay,” Jacob said. “Let’s go!” He hopped out of the hatchway to the left and tossed one of the smoldering brands to the end of the deck, as far as he could see. Behind him LaRoque was doing the same in the opposite direction.

With a heavy rustling, Fagin followed them out. The Kanten went straight out from the hatch to the opposite end of the deck to act as a lookout, and to draw Culla’s fire if possible. Fagin had refused a coating of flesh-foam.

“It is all clear,” the Kanten whistled softly. “Culla is not to be seen.”

That was good and bad news. It localized Culla. It also meant the alien was probably working to bolix up the Refrigerator Laser. It was getting COLD!

Once it had begun, Helene’s scheme made perfect sense to Jacob. Since she still had control over the screens surrounding the ship, (the crew were alive to prove it), she could let in heat from the Sun at whatever rate she wished. This heat could be sent directly to the Refer Laser and pumped back out into the chromosphere, plus waste heat from the ship’s power plant. Only this time the flow was a torrent, and directed downward. The thrust had stopped their fall and they had begun to climb.

Naturally, such meddling with the ship’s automatic heat control system had to be inaccurate. Helene must have decided to program the mechanism to err in the direction of coldness. In that direction mistakes would be more easily corrected.

It was a brilliant idea. Jacob hoped he’d get to tell her so. Right now it was his job to make sure it had a chance to work.

He edged around the dome until he reached the point where Fagin’s view was cut off. Without looking around, he threw two more of the brands to different parts of the deck ahead of him. Smoke boiled from each of them. The chamber was getting hazy from the smoke released so far. The trail of the P-laser beam shimmered brightly in the air. Some of the weaker trails were disappearing, attenuated by cumulative passage though the smoke.

Jacob moved back into Fagin’s cone of view. He had three more smoldering brands. He backed up onto the deck and tossed them at different angles over the top of the central dome. LaRoque joined him and threw his as well.

One of the torches passed directly over the center of the dome on its way over. It entered the x-ray beam of the Refrigerator Laser and vanished in a cloud of vapor.

Jacob hoped it hadn’t deflected the beam much. The coherent x-rays supposedly passed through the shell with near zero contamination of the ship, but the beam wasn’t designed to handle solid objects. “Okay!” he whispered.

He and LaRoque hurried to the wall of the dome, where spare parts for the recording instruments were stored. LaRoque opened a cabinet and climbed as high as footholds allowed, then offered his hand. Jacob scrambled up next to him. Now they were all vulnerable. Culla must react to the obvious threat implied by the firebrands! Already visibility was dropping well below normal. The chamber was filled with a foul stench and Jacob was finding it increasingly uncomfortable to breathe.