Silhouetted against the moon was a long, dark shape. No green light emanated from it now. The thing was tapered like a wedge. From this distance it was the size of my gloved thumb. It seemed to be waiting, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had intent. I couldn’t look away.
“It’s stationary right now,” I reported. “In front of the moon.”
“Its size?”
“I think it must be huge, sir.”
“It’s got to be a ship,” said Shepherd. “It’s too big to be anything else.”
“Mr. Cruse, Mr. Shephard, I want you back inside,” said the captain.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“I’ll start reeling in,” said Tobias.
The shape suddenly pulsed green. I counted three seconds before it pulsed again, then another three. I felt the gentle tug on my safety line and used my air pistol to position my body. Shepherd was snapping off more pictures. The thing was still motionless, flashing regularly.
Then we had to pay close attention, for we were maneuvering beneath the counterweight and between its massive engines, and then into the Starclimber’s air lock. I was glad to be back aboard the ship, though I couldn’t see how we’d be any safer inside than out.
We were imprisoned in the air lock until the pressure was high enough, and the needle moved with maddening slowness. I kept wondering what the thing was doing out there—just hovering, watching us? Or getting ready to ram the ship and pulverize us?
“I’m going to reverse the Starclimber so we have a clear view,” came the captain’s voice in my helmet. “We’re blind where we are right now.”
Through the porthole I saw the counterweight’s engines slip past, and we were back out in open space. I swallowed. Out in the open.
The moment the pressure needle touched 14.7 psi, we yanked off each other’s helmets, opened the interior hatch, and jetted out onto C-Deck, still in our suits. Kate and Sir Hugh were working in the lab, oblivious.
“You’ll want to see this,” I said to them, and we all continued on upstairs.
In the lounge, Miss Karr and Dr. Turgenev had already pulled down all the polarized blinds and were staring out the window at the strange silhouette pulsing against the cratered face of the moon.
“Miss Karr, as many pictures as you can,” Shepherd said, and hurried up to the bridge.
“It’s changing,” Kate said.
She was right. It had shrunk in length and now looked roughly square.
“What’s it doing?” said Sir Hugh, squinting.
“Turning,” I said. “And coming straight at us.”
In just a few heartbeats the shape had doubled in size.
“Why aren’t we moving?” Sir Hugh demanded. “We have to get out of here!”
“It can outrun us,” I said, remembering the incredible speed with which it had streaked overhead. I wondered what the captain’s plan of action would be.
“What on earth is it?” Miss Karr muttered, taking one picture after another.
“It’s no meteoroid,” said Kate.
“Agreed,” said Dr. Turgenev.
The thing’s green light filled the lounge as it grew in size. We were helpless, our hands raised to shield our eyes despite the polarized blinds.
“It’s stopped flashing!” said Tobias.
Kate had her field glasses around her neck and raised them to her face. I seized a spyglass that was floating near the window. Now that it wasn’t blinding us anymore, I might get a decent look at it. A faint green aura still hung about the thing as it streaked toward us. Was it some kind of ship after all? It was hard to keep focus on it, it was moving so swiftly. My eyes skittered across its dark flanks, searching for the glint of metal.
“It’s not a vessel,” Kate said quietly. “Or a machine.”
Through my spyglass I saw an eye.
It was a very long, narrow oval, and it didn’t have the hard quality of metal. It had translucence—and a kind of consciousness.
I lowered the spyglass.
“It’s alive,” breathed Tobias.
The creature filled almost the whole window now, and was still closing on us. I tried to makes sense of its blunt, sloping head. Two eyes angled far back on either side, and above them was a deep crease, which I assumed was a mouth, but I wasn’t sure, for the thing had so many deep gouges and creases. I had no idea which was its back and which its belly, because it had no limbs at all—no dorsal fins or flukes or tail. The steep angle of its eyes gave it a terrifying look. And then it opened its jaws.
“Good God!” cried Sir Hugh.
“It’s the same species!” cried Kate. “It’s an etherian! This must be an adult!”
Between its cavernous jaws stretched vast blades of baleen. I knew the hatchlings could eat only astral plankton, but I couldn’t help wondering what an adult might inhale through its baleen. Even if it had no interest in us, there was no ignoring the terrible power of its head and flanks. It could shatter the Starclimber.
“It’s going to ram us!” cried Sir Hugh. “Why isn’t the captain doing something?”
Tobias looked at me anxiously, then jetted toward the ship’s phone to call the bridge.
“I don’t think sudden movements are a good idea,” Kate said. “They tend to trigger an animal’s fight response.”
“Wait,” I said, “I think it’s slowing down…it’s definitely slowing down!”
The etherian couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet from us now, filling all the windows of the lounge. It was at least the size of the Starclimber. Without warning, a single pulse of green light exploded from its body.
Haiku was flinging himself around the lounge, shrieking in terror.
A second green pulse engulfed us.
Then a third.
“Five seconds between pulses!” said Kate.
“Why’s it doing this?” Tobias said.
Kate turned to Sir Hugh excitedly. “The male firefly flashes every five seconds when trying to attract a mate.”
Miss Karr looked up from her camera, alarmed. “It wants to mate with us?”
“Bloody hell,” muttered Tobias.
The lounge’s phone rang and I snatched it up. It was Shepherd.
“We’ve got one on our other side.”
“There’s another one!” I said, jetting across to the opposite windows. Kate and Tobias came with me.
Far away, a blue light flashed rapidly.
“It’s not us they’re interested in!” said Kate. “It’s each other! They’re communicating! Sir Hugh, it’s bioluminescence, just like Photinus pyralis!”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Fireflies,” she said. “The male flashes every five seconds, the female every two when trying to attract a mate.”
The blue light was growing in size, pulsing urgently.
“Green one is moving now!” shouted Dr. Turgenev from across B-Deck.
Through my window I saw the etherian gliding slowly out from beneath the Starclimber, and for the first time I realized how truly vast and long it was. It was like something made from the moon itself, ancient and silent and mysterious. Its mottled black and gray flanks had an armored look and were scored with countless furrows, some quite fine, others deep fissures.
“It looks like it’s been mauled,” Tobias said.
“No,” said Kate. “Scars from micrometeoroids. Look how straight they are.”
“This is right,” said Dr. Turgenev, floating over with Miss Karr. “Every day, creature would encounter many such impacts.”
“It looks a bit like a blue whale,” said Tobias. “I saw one once. They can be a hundred feet long.”
The etherian was twice that, and I shook my head in wonder as I stared and stared. The ancient mariners must have felt like this, when they’d leaned far out over the railings of their vessels to take their first look at the great denizens of the oceans.
And Tobias was right. Peering down now, you might, just for a second, have confused it for a wha
le, for along its back were countless blowholes. As I watched, one of them twitched and dilated. A geyser of vapor shot out, and the Starclimber shuddered violently with the impact. The etherian pivoted deftly, adjusted itself with another little burst of gas, and then glided slowly in the direction of the growing blue light.
The creature was completely out from beneath the ship now, and I saw that the tapered end of its body glowed pale green.
“That’s where it makes its light!” said Kate excitedly, pointing. “That tail segment there!”
As if to prove her right, it gave a green pulse that made us all squint and laugh.
This was what Kate and I had seen from the Paris Observatory, all those weeks ago. I glanced at her, wondering if she was thinking the same thing. Her face was close to mine at the window, and I could smell the familiar scent of her hair and skin. But her eyes were on the etherians, and it made me sad, for everything seemed so different and ruined between us now.
I could see the massive dark outline of the blue etherian as it drew closer. Flashing, the green one glided swiftly out to meet it, about a mile from the ship. Their pulsing lights subsided to a dim, erratic stutter as the two creatures circled about each other.
Then, suddenly, their tails erupted into flashes of colors we hadn’t seen before. Purples and reds and oranges, dazzling in their intensity. It was all so joyful I had to laugh, echoing the delight of everyone at the window, to see this ecstatic color in the dark of space.
Haiku too seemed enchanted with the cosmic fireworks. Before this, he’d been shaking his fist at the creatures and making strange yipping sounds. But now his old man’s face tilted and became thoughtful, eyes bright.
Tobias chuckled, watching the etherians. “These two seem pretty keen on each other.”
“It’s some kind of courtship ritual!” Sir Hugh exclaimed.
I glanced at him and saw not the pompous oaf who wanted to keep Kate down, but the young, curious man who’d always loved nature and wanted to study it his whole life. His face shone.
The etherians’ flashing become fiercer and more rapid until they were swirling around one another, grazing flanks. Then, as we all watched, completely spellbound, they touched the narrow ends of their tails together and seemed to fuse, rotating as one. The combined light from their lanterns blazed as a single turquoise star.
Sir Hugh cleared his throat. “Perhaps this isn’t entirely appropriate for all present.”
“I’m quite all right, thanks,” said Kate, sounding fascinated. “I imagine the male’s fertilizing the female’s eggs right now. If it’s similar to a firefly’s cycle, the female should lay her eggs in several days. Thousands of them, if what we saw earlier’s any indication.”
Miss Karr fired off more pictures.
Round and round the two etherians slowly twirled. I quite admired their abandon.
“They seem completely oblivious to us,” said Sir Hugh. “I wouldn’t have thought they’d be willing to mate so close to alien creatures.”
“I wonder how long it takes them to grow to full size,” Kate said.
“It would be useful to see some intermediary forms,” Sir Hugh agreed. “Do you think perhaps there’s a larval stage involved?”
“If it follows an insect model,” Kate replied thoughtfully. “But there’s also the shark model to consider.”
“Indeed,” Sir Hugh said, and he seemed genuinely interested in her opinion. “Of course it’s too early to make any conclusions. Fascinating stuff.”
“Look, they’re separating,” said Kate.
With twin blasts from their vents, the two etherians had parted. They circled each other for a time, and then jetted off together into the depths of space. They moved so fast, they almost seemed to dissolve into the darkness.
“Did you see that?” I said. “Their speed!”
“Incredible,” said Miss Karr.
“Is possible for them to achieve enormous velocity,” said Dr. Turgenev. “Is no friction to slow acceleration.”
“They could travel between worlds,” I said. These were just the shallows. I wondered what awaited the creatures in the deeps.
“How far do you think they’ll go?” Miss Karr asked.
Kate shook her head, still staring. “I suppose they can go wherever they want. Maybe out of the solar system altogether. Imagine that. They’ve probably seen planets we don’t even know exist.”
I imagined the two etherians skimming the surface of the moon, moving so quickly that its gravity couldn’t drag them down, and then sailing onward together, toward the red planet and beyond, to colonize the shores of other worlds.
A REEF IN SPACE
We were homeward bound.
Now that we’d begun our descent, we needed someone in the stern to be the ship’s eyes. Below C-Deck was a tiny lookout post, and the thick window gave a view straight down at earth. It was a funny kind of upside-down crow’s nest, to be sure, but lookout was a job I was well acquainted with, and I must admit, I liked the quiet and calm.
Two powerful floodlights were mounted on the Starclimber’s stern, illuminating the spidery traction arms and the astral cable that ran between their rollers like a golden thread. It stretched down toward earth, looking thinner and thinner till it disappeared into the blackness. I kept a careful watch out for etherians and their eggs.
It was night over the Pacificus, but earth’s eastern curve glowed faintly with the coming dawn. The west coast of North Americus was silhouetted like a map, and I could actually see the pinprick glimmer of cities, the brightest of all coming from Lionsgate City.
I felt a pang of yearning. I wanted home; I wanted my sky. But there was apprehension mixed up in it too. My worries felt heavy enough in zero gravity, but back on earth they’d become much, much heavier. Kate would have to return to her family, and what if she couldn’t get out of her engagement? What if she didn’t want to? I had a quick, sickening image of her in a wedding dress, James Sanderson grinning beside her.
The Starclimber began to shiver, like an airship in light turbulence. I pulled myself closer to the porthole and peered along the astral cable. It glittered in the floodlight—something I’d never noticed before. I squinted. There was something on the cable’s surface. My first thought was ice. But that was impossible. There was no water up here to freeze.
I picked up the ship’s phone. “Cruse here. There’s something on the cable.”
“We’re already slowing down,” said Tobias. “We can feel it.”
Speed was virtually impossible to discern up here. With only the distant earth as a reference point, it always seemed we were motionless. Only the pitch of the ship’s rollers told me we were moving at all—and right now, that we were decelerating from a hundred twenty aeroknots.
“Whatever it is, I think it’s getting thicker,” I said in alarm.
“We see it now too,” said Tobias.
It would take the ship about thirty seconds to come to a full stop. We were shuddering like a motorcar over gravel now. I watched the traction arms, afraid they’d get damaged. In the distance I thought I made out shadows massing around the cable. How far away I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was just one of the many illusions cast by the ghostly half-light of space. I looked away and blinked, and when I looked back there was something looming toward us.
“Stop the ship, stop her!” I yelled into the ship’s phone. “There’s something dead astern!”
Color suddenly exploded from the darkness of space, a phantasmagorical jungle lashing against the porthole. I recoiled with a cry. The ship was still moving, crashing through a dense tangle of bizarre foliage. A brittle symphony of tinkling sounded against the hull. I could scarcely see the astral cable, or the traction arms, shaking violently as they tried to keep their grip. In horror I watched as one of the arms snapped and dangled limp, buffeted by branches and tendrils. Sparkling clouds of astral dust dazzled my eyes.
Finally things stopped smashing against the ship, and I knew we’d come to a s
tandstill. Shivering with a cold sweat, I exhaled raggedly. No alarms sounded. That was good. We hadn’t been breached. We were still airtight.
“Make way, Mr. Cruse, I’m coming down.”
It was Captain Walken, maneuvering himself into the crow’s nest beside me.
Together we stared out the porthole.
“This wasn’t here when we came up,” I said, dazed.
Bristling from the cable were all manner of strange growths. There were clumps of pink spongy material that looked like the human brain. Jutting up among them were crooked crystalline tendrils of brilliant crimson and purple, some as long as ten feet. Clinging to the cable were colonies of enormous barnacles with jagged craters. As I stared, a few gaseous bubbles emanated from them, floated up, and were quickly inhaled into the branchlets of a strange orange plant with sharp leaves angled at the sun.
Days ago there had been nothing, and now a coral reef bloomed in outer space.
“I think what we have here,” Sir Hugh told us in the B-Deck lounge, “is a remarkable colonizing event.”
Everyone had crowded down into the crow’s nest to have a look by now, and we were all discussing what was to be done. The Starclimber was at a standstill.
“Outer space must be teeming with microscopic life,” said Kate. “They’re drifters mainly. And we’ve given them something they’ve never had before—anchorage.”
“They seem to like it,” said Tobias.
“I wonder,” Kate mused, “if it’s the electricity in the cable, stimulating their growth.”
“Also do not forget heat,” said Dr. Turgenev. “There is significant heat loss through cable.”
“That could easily be a factor,” said Sir Hugh. “Like algae in warm water.”
“But why wasn’t any of this here when Starclimber came up?” Miss Karr asked. “The cable’s been here for two months, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, but is only electrified as ship travels up it,” Dr. Turgenev explained. “Ship completes circuit, you see?”
“So all this grew in a matter of days,” Kate said excitedly. “It’s remarkable!”
“I appreciate its scientific importance,” said Captain Walken. “But my chief concern is whether we can move through it. Dr. Turgenev?”