Gregory Benford - Across the Sea of Suns

Rosa cried out.

Warren stared out into the hills and valleys of moving water, blinking, following her finger. A gray cylinder the size of his hand floated ten meters away.

He picked up the tree limb they used for marking the days. His hands were puffed up now from the constant damp, and the bark of the limb scraped them. No green shapes moved below. He rocked with the swell, waiting at the edge of the raft for a random current to bring the gray thing closer.

A long time passed. It bobbed sluggishly and came no closer. Warren leaned against the pitch of the deck and stretched for it. The limb was short at least a meter.

He swayed back, relaxing, letting the clenching in his muscles ease away. His arms trembled. He could swim to it in a few quick strokes, turn and get back in a few—

No. If he let go he would be sucked into the same endless caverns that Rosa was wandering. He had to hold on. And take no risks.

He stepped back. The thing to do was wait and see if—

White spray exploded in front of him. The lean form shot up into the air and Warren rolled back away from it. He came up with the knife held close to him.

But the Skimmer arced away from the raft. It cut back into a wave and was gone for an instant and then burst up and caught the cylinder in it slanting mouth. In the air it rolled and snapped its head. The cylinder clunked onto the raft. The Skimmer leaped again, blue-white, and was gone into the endlessly shifting faces of green marble.

Rosa was huddled in the shelter. Warren picked up the cylinder carefully. It was smooth and regular but something about it told him it had not been made with tools. There were small flaws in the soft, foamy gray, like the blotches on a tomato. At one end it puckered as though a tassel had fallen away.

He rubbed it, pulled at it, turned the ends—It split with a moist pop. Inside there curled a thick sheet of the same softly resistant gray stuff. He unrolled it.

SECHTON XMENAPU DE AN LANSDORFKOPPEN SW BY W ABLE SAGON MXIL VESSE L ANSAGEN MANLATS WIR UNS? FTH AS-DLENGS ERTY EARTHN PROFUILEN CO NISHI NAGARE KALLEN KOPFT EARTHN UMI

He studied the combinations and tried to fit them together so there was some logic to it. It was no code, he guessed. Some of the words were German and there was some English and Japanese but most of it was either meaningless or no language he knew. VESSE L might be vessel. ANSAGEN—to say? He wished he remembered more of the German he had picked up in the merchant marine.

The words were in a clear typeface like a newspaper and were turned into the sheet.

He could make no more of it. Rosa did not want to look at the sheet. When he made her she shook her head, no, she could not pick out any new words.

A Swarmer came later that day. Rosa did not back away fast enough and the big shape shot up out of the water. It bit down hard on the shirt as Warren’s arrow took it and the impact made the blunt head snap back. Rosa was not ready for it and she stumbled forward and into the sea. The Swarmer tried to flip away. Warren caught her as she went into the water. The alien lunged at her but Warren heaved her back onto the deck. He had dropped the bow. The Swarmer rolled and the bow washed overboard and then the tail fins caught the edge of the raft and it twisted and came tumbling aboard. Warren hit it with the tree limb.

It kept thrashing but the blows stunned it. He waited for the right angle and then slipped the knife in deep, away from the snapping jaws, and the thing went still.

Rosa helped with the cutting up. She started talking suddenly while he looked for the bow. He was intent on seeing if it was floating nearby and at first did not notice that she was not just muttering. He spotted the bow and managed to fetch it in. Rosa was discussing the Swarmers, calmly and in a matter-of-fact voice he had not heard from her before.

“The important thing is to not let one get away,” she concluded.

“Guess so,” Warren said.

“They know about the raft, the Swarm comes.”

“If they can find us, yeah.”

“They send out these scouts. The pack, it will follow where the long ones tell it.”

“We’ll get ’em.”

“Forever? No. Only solution is land.”

“None I’ve seen. We’re drifting west, could be—”

“I thought you are sailor.”

“Was.”

“Then sail us to land.”

“Not that easy,” Warren said, and went on to tell her how hard it was to get any control of a raft, and anyway he didn’t know where they were, what the landfalls were out here. She sniffed contemptuously at this news. “Find an island,” she repeated several times. Warren argued, not because he had any clear reason, but because he knew how to survive here and a vague fear came when he thought about the land. Rosa was speaking freely and easily now and she thought fast, sure of herself. Finally he broke off and set to work storing away the slabs of Swarmer meat. The talk confused him.

The next day a Skimmer came and leaped near the raft and there was another cylinder, it swam away, a blur of silvery motion. He read the sheet.

GEFAHRLICH GROSS HIRO ADFIN SOLID MNX 8 SHIO NISHI. KURO NAGARE. ANAXLE UNS NORMEN 286 W SCATTER PORT-LINE ZERO NAGARE. NISHI.

He could make no sense of it. Rosa worked on it, not much interested, and shrugged. He tried to scratch marks on the sheets, thinking that he could send them something, ask questions. The sheet would not take an impression.

A Swarmer surfaced to the west the next day. Rosa shrieked. It circled them twice and came in fast toward Rosa’s lure. Warren shot at it and hit too far back. The tip buried itself uselessly in a spot where he knew there was only fatty tissue. The Swarmer lunged at Rosa. She was ready, though, falling back from the edge, and it missed. Warren yanked on the line and freed the arrow. The Swarmer flinched as the arrow came out and rolled off the raft. The Swarmer sank and was gone.

“Don’t let it get away!” Rosa cried.

“It’s not coming up.”

“You hit it in the wrong place.”

“Went in pretty deep, though. Might die before it can get back to the pack.”

“You think so?”

Warren didn’t but he said, “Might.”

“You, you have got to find us an island. Now .”

“I still think we’re safe here.”

“Incredible! You are no kind of sailor at all and you are afraid to admit it. Afraid to say you don’t know how to find land.”

“Bullshit. I—” But she interrupted him with a flood of words he couldn’t keep up with. He heard her out, nodding finally, not knowing himself why he wanted to stay on the raft, on the sea. It just felt better, was all, and he did not know how to tell her that.

When the argument was finally over he went back to thinking about the second message. Some of it was German and he knew a little of that, but not those particular words. He had never learned any Japanese even though he had lived in Tokyo.

The next morning at dawn he woke suddenly and knew there was something near the raft. The swell was smooth and orange as the sun caught it. On the glassy horizon he saw nothing. He was very hungry and he remembered the Swarmer from yesterday. He had used the meat from the first kills to bait their lines but nothing bit. He wondered if that was because the fish would not take Swarmer meat or if there were no fish down there to have. The aliens had been changing the food chain in the oceans, he had read about that.

Then he saw the gray dot floating far away. The raft was drifting toward it and in a few minutes he snagged it. The message said

CONSQUE KPOF AMN SOLID. DIAOLEN MACHEN SMALL YOUTH SCHLECT UNS. DERINGER CHANGE DA. UNS B WSW. SAGEN ARBEIT BEI MOUTH. SHIMA CIRCLE STEIN NONGO NONGO UMI DRASVITCH YOU.