No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories

  There may be survivors. Maybe the Green won’t go into the cold places, maybe it won’t invade the deserts. Who can say but that an oasis pool, or perhaps the pack ice, or a black smoker down on the sea-bed, may well be the last refuge of animal life?

  Or there again, maybe sixty million years from now another space rock will come hurtling from the sky, and this time it’ll kick-start, revitalize the vertebrates…though it’s possible it could just as easily announce the rise of the insects!

  Who can say?

  But I have remembered the name of that American author who wrote about a terrible colour out of space: he was called H. P. Lovecraft, and tonight when I go out and look at the sky, I may have a word with him. I may say, “Well, Mr. Lovecraft, wherever you are now, I just want you to know that the stars don’t leer. But on the other hand, looking at them and wondering what else is out there, I’m pretty sure I know what you meant…”

  MY THING FRIDAY

  Voice Journal of Greg Griffiths,

  3rd Engineer on the Albert Einstein

  out of the Greater Mars Orbital Station.

  Day One:

  Probably the 24th Feb 2198 Earth Standard, but I can’t be sure. The ship’s chronometer is bust—like everything else except me—and I don’t know how long I’ve been out of it. Judging by the hair on my face, my hunger, the bump on the back of my head and the thick blood scab that’s covering it, it could have been two or three days. Anyway and as far as I can tell it’s now morning on whichever day, which I’m going to call Day One…

  What I remember:

  We passed through the fringes of an old nebula; a cloud of gas that looked dead enough, but it seems there was some energy left in it after all: weird energy that didn’t register on instrumentation. Then the drive started acting up and quit entirely maybe four or five light-years later. When we dropped back into normal space I put on a suit, went out and for’ard to check the fuel ingestors. They were clogged with this gas that was almost liquid, and dust that stuck like glue; it couldn’t be converted into fuel and had hardened to a solid in the scoops…weird as hell, like I said. Ship’s Science Officer, Scot Gentry, said it could well be “proto-planetary slag”—whatever the hell that’s supposed to be!—and a total pain in the backside. And down in engineering we scratched our heads and tried to figure out some way to shift this shit.

  Then the sub-light engines blew up and we saw that the dust was into everything. The anti-gravs were on the fritz but still working, however sporadically, and by some miracle of chance we were just a cough and a spit off a planet with water and an atmosphere: a couple trillion to one chance, according to Gentry. But by then, too, we knew we were way off course—light-years off course—because this proto-crap had got into the astronavigator, too.

  As for the planet: it had continents, oceans, but there was no radio coming up at us, no sign of cities or intelligent life-forms. Well, if there had been, it would have been a first. The universe has been looking like a pretty lonely place for a long time now. And to me, right now, it looks lonelier than ever.

  Coming in to make landfall the anti-gravs gave up the ghost…so much for a soft landing. Six thousand tons of metal with nothing holding us up, we fell from maybe a hundred feet in the air. Higher than that and I probably wouldn’t be recording this. I was in a sling in a gravity tube, trying to burn slag off the gyros, when this uncharted planet grabbed us; the sling’s shock absorbers bounced me around but saved my life.

  As for the other crew members, all fifteen of my shipmates, they weren’t so lucky—

  —Or maybe they were. It all depends on what this place has in store for me. But right now I have to fix my head, eat, give myself shots, then get all the bodies off the ship or the place won’t ever be liveable…

  Day Two: (morning.)

  Yesterday was a very strange day…and by the way, I think the days here are just an hour or two longer than Earth standard. I reckon I was right about coming to fairly early in the morning, because it seemed like one hell of a long strange day; but then again—considering what I was doing—it would.

  I had started to move the bodies out of the ship.

  No easy task, that. And not only for the obvious reasons. I cried a lot, for the obvious reasons. But with the old Albert E. lying at thirty degrees, and her (or his) once round hull split at all the major seams, buckled and now oblate, and leaking all kinds of corrosives, lubricants and like that…no, it was no easy task. Don’t know why I bothered, really, because I see now there’s no way I can live in the Albert E. Ship’s a death trap! Perhaps I should have left the bodies as they were, sealed them in as best I could right there where they died; the entire ship with all these bodies—my buddies—in it, like some kind of big metal memorial. Rust in peace…

  But it’s way too late now, and anyway there’s lots of stuff I have to get out of there. Medicines and such; ship’s rations; a big old self-inflating habitat module from the emergency survival store; tools; stuff like that. A regular Robinson Crusoe, I be—or maybe a marooned Ben Gunn, eh, Jim lad? Oh, Ha-harr! But at least there’s no sign of pirates.

  I thank God for my sense of humour. Just a few days ago on board the Albert E., why, I would crack them up so hard—they would laugh so hard—they’d tell me I’d be the death of them! Well, boys, it wasn’t me. Just a fucking big cloud of weird gas and dust, that’s all. But it cracked us up good and proper…

  Later:

  I managed to get more than half of them out of there before the sun went down, and I’ll get the rest tomorrow. But tonight will be the last night I’ll spend on board ship. It’s nightmarish on the Albert E. now. Tomorrow I’ll fix up the habitat I unloaded, get a generator working, power some batteries, set up a defensive perimeter like the book says. And whatever those things are I hear moving around out there in the dark—probably the same guys who were watching me from the forest while I worked—fuck ’em! I do have a reliable sidearm. Shouldn’t need to use it too much though; once they’ve had a taste of the electric perimeter—that’s assuming they’re the overly curious kind—they won’t be in too much of a hurry to come back for more.

  As for tonight, I have to hope they’re not much interested in carrion, that’s all…

  Day Three: (midday.)

  I feel a lot better in myself, not so knocked about, no longer down. Well, down, naturally, but not all the way. I mean, hell, I’m alive! And just looking at the old Albert E. I really don’t know how. But the air is very good here; you can really suck it in. It’s fresh, sweet…unfiltered? Maybe it’s just that the air on the ship, always stale, is already starting to stink.

  I got a generator working; got my habitat set up, electric perimeter and all. Now I’ll bring out all the ship’s rations I can find, and while I’m at it I may come across the two bodies I haven’t found yet. One of them is a dear pal of mine, Daniel Geisler. That will hit me hard. It’s all hitting hard, but I’m alive and that’s what matters. Where there’s life there’s hope, and all that shit…

  I’ve been finding out something about the locals who I was listening to last night. I was in a makeshift hammock that I’d fixed up in an airlock; left the airlock open a crack, letting some of this good air in. Part way into the night I could hear movement out in the darkness. After an hour or so it got quiet, so it seems they sleep, too. Could be that night and sleep are universally synonymous. That would make sense…I think.

  But how best to describe them? Now me, I’m not what you’d call an exobiologist, Jim, lad, just a grease monkey; but I’ll give it a try. From what I’ve seen so far, there appears to be three kinds of what is basically one and the same species. See what I mean about not being an exobiologist? Obviously they’re not the same species; and yet there’s this peculiar similarity about them that…well, they’re very odd, that’s all…

  Anyway, let me get on.

  There’s the flying kind: eight foot wing span, round-bodied and skinny-legged; like big, beakless, stupid-looking pale-pink robbi
ns. They hang out in the topmost branches of the trees and eat what look like fist-sized yellow berries. Paradoxically and for all their size they appear to be pretty flimsy critters; no feathers, they’re more like bats or maybe flying squirrels than birds, and they leap and soar rather than fly. And when they’re floating between the sun and me I see right through their wings. But they’re not the only flying things. There are others of approximately the same size and design but more properly birdlike. And this other species—very definitely a separate, different species—they stay high in the sky, circling like buzzards. I kept an eye on these high-flyers because of what I was doing. I mean, I was laying out my dead shipmates, and buzzards and vultures are carnivores. On Earth they are, anyway…

  Then there’s the landlubbers or earth-bound variety. These are bipedal, anthropoid, perhaps even mammalian or this world’s equivalent, though as yet I’ve seen no sign of tits or marriage tackle. Whatever, I reckon it’s probably these man-like things—this world’s intelligentsia?—that I heard bumping around in the darkness. But since they’re the most interesting of the bunch I’ll leave them till last, get back to them in a minute.

  And finally there’s the other land variety, the hogs. Well, I’ll call them hogs for now, if only for want of a better name. They’re some four or five feet long, pale-pink like the soaring things and the bipeds, and they rustle about in the undergrowth at the fringes of the forest eating the golfball-sized seeds of the big yellow berries. But they, too, have their counterparts. Deeper in the woods, there are critters more properly like big, hairy black hogs that snort and keep well back in the shadows.

  And there you have it. But the “Pinks”—as I’ve started to call all three varieties of these pale-pink creatures: the quadrupeds, bipeds, and flyers—it’s as if they were all cut from the same cloth. Despite the diversity of their design there’s a vague similarity about them; their drab, unappealing colour for one thing, and the same insubstantial sort of flimsiness or—I don’t know, wobbliness? Jellyness?—for another.

  Fascinating really…if I was an exobiologist. But since I’m not they’re just something I’ll need to watch out for until I know for sure what’s what. Actually, I don’t feel intimidated by any of these critters. Not so far. Not by the Pinks, anyway.

  More about the man-likes:

  When I opened up the airlock this morning there was a bunch of them, maybe thirteen or fourteen, sitting in a circle around the remains of my shipmates. I’ve been laying my ex-friends out in their own little groups, their three main shipboard cliques, but all of them pretty close together with their feet in toward a common centre. Ended up forming a sort of three-leafed clover shape with four or five bodies to a leaf.

  The aliens (yeah, it’s a cliche, I know, but what are these things if not aliens? They’re alien to me, anyway—though it’s true that on this world I’m the only real alien—but anyway:) the locals were sitting there nestling the heads of the dead in their laps. And I thought what the hell, maybe they’d spent the whole night like that! Well, whatever, that’s how it struck me.

  So then, what were they doing? Wondering if these dead creatures were edible, maybe? Or were they simply trying to figure out what these things who fell from the sky were; these vaguely familiar beings, whose like they’d never known before? They did seem briefly, particularly, almost childishly interested in the difference between the Albert E.’s lone female crew member’s genitalia and the rest of the gang’s tackle, but that didn’t last. Which was fine because she—a disillusioned crew-cut exobiologist dike called Emma Schneider—wouldn’t have much liked it.

  Anyway, there they were, these guys, like a bunch of solemn mourners with my old shipmates…

  After I tossed down a spade and lowered a rope ladder, however, they stood up, backed off, and watched me from a distance as I came down and began to dig graves in this loamy soil. With so many holes to dig, even shallow ones, I knew to pace myself, take breaks, get things done in easy stages: a little preparatory digging, then search for usables in the ship, more digging, fix up my habitat, make another attempt at finding my two missing buddies, dig, set up my generator—and so on. And that’s pretty much how it’s been working out…

  But as yet I haven’t actually described the man-likes.

  Well, Jim, lad, here’s me recording this under my habitat’s awning, and while I speak I’m watching the locals do their peculiar thing. Or perhaps it’s not so peculiar and they’re not so very alien. Well, not as alien as I thought. Because it appears they understand death and revere the dead—even my dead—or so it would seem. But how can it be otherwise? I mean, how else to explain this?

  They’ve brought these instruments from somewhere—“musical” instruments, if you can call them that—from wherever they dwell, I suppose. And if this isn’t some kind of lament they’re singing, some kind of dirge I’m hearing from their drums, bang-stones, rattle-pods and bamboo flutes, then I really don’t know what it is. And I think that the only thing that’s keeping them at a respectable distance from my dead ones…is me.

  I’m looking at them through binoculars. Can’t tell the male of the species from the female; hell, I don’t even know if they have sexes as such! Amoeboid? I shouldn’t think so; that wobbly they’re not! But human-like? They are. Emphasis on “like”. They have two each of the things we have two of, er, with the exception of testicles, if they have males and if their balls aren’t on the inside. Oh, and also with the exception of breasts—if and et cetera, as previously conjectured.

  Their eyes are watery-looking; not fishy, no, but uninspiringly pale, limpid and uniformly grey, large in their faces and forming triangles with their noses. As for those noses: they’re just paired black dots in approximately the right places. Their mouths are thin-lipped; their dull white teeth look fairly normal; their ears, are ears; and their shining black hair falls on their thin shoulders. Their hair is the most attractive—maybe even the only attractive—thing about them. They’re about five foot five inches tall, with slender, roughly pear-shaped bodies thick end down. They’ve got three fingers to a hand, three toes to a foot. But while their legs seem strong, giving them a flowing, gliding, maybe even graceful mobility, their arms are much too thin and look sort of boneless.

  So then, that’s them, and I’m guessing they’re the dominant species. Certainly they’re head and shoulders above the rest of the fauna. And while I’m on about the rest of them:

  Today I’ve seen several pink hogs doing their thing in the shrubbery at the forest’s edge. Totally harmless, I’d say, and I’m not at all worried by them. From back in the deeper undergrowth, however, I’ve heard the occasional snuffling, grunting and growling of the pink hogs’ cousins; their big, hairy black shapes trundling to and fro, but yet keeping a safe distance. Well good! And likewise the flying pinks in the treetops: I’ve seen them looking down at me but it doesn’t bother me much. On the other hand their cousins, the actual high-flying buzzards—if that’s what they are—well, there’s something really ominous about their unending circling. But so far, since I haven’t seen a one of them come down and land, I’m not too concerned.

  Enough for now. I’ve had my break, eaten, brewed and drank a pot of coffee; now I’ll go back into the Albert E., see if I can find poor Daniel…

  Later: (late afternoon, early evening.)

  This is really amazing! It’s so hard to believe I’m not sure if even seeing is believing! It started when I was in the ship.

  I’d found Scot Gentry’s body in his lab, crushed flat under everything that wasn’t tied down. Then, while I was digging him out, I thought to hear movement elsewhere in the vessel. I told myself it was just loose wreckage shifting, settling down. When it happened a second time, however, the short hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight! What the…? After all this time, three days or more, could it be that I wasn’t the only survivor after all, that someone else had lived through the wreck of the Albert E.? But there was only one someone else: my buddy Daniel G
eisler! What would Dan’s condition be?

  Hell, he could be dying even now!

  The way I went scrambling then, I could have broken my neck a dozen and more times on those sloping, often buckled, crazily-angled decks; skidding and sliding, shouting myself hoarse, and pausing every now and then to hold my breath and listen, see if I was being answered. Finally I did hear something, coming from the direction of the airlock that I was using.

  It was four of the man-like pinks. They must have followed me up the ladder I’d left dangling, and…and they’d found my good buddy Daniel. But he wasn’t alive, not with his head stove in and his back bent all the wrong way. And there they were, in the airlock, these four guys, easing Daniel into the sling that I’d fixed up and preparing to lower him to the ground.

  Oh, really? And after they got him down, what else did they have planned for him? Advancing on them, I glared at them where they stood blinking back at me, with their skinny arms dangling and, as far as I could tell, no expressions whatsoever on their pink faces.

  “All right, you weird fucks!” I yelled, lunging at them and waving my sidearm. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but—”

  But one of them was pointing one of three skinny fingers at his own eyes, then at mine, finally out the airlock and down at the ground. It was like he was saying, “See for yourself.” They backed off as I came forward and looked out. And down there…well, even now it’s difficult to believe. Or maybe not. I mean, alien they may be—hell, they are—but that doesn’t mean they don’t have human-like emotions, routines, rituals, ceremonials. Like their cradling the dead, their dirges, and now this.

  But now what—eh, Jim lad? Now the shallow graves that the other pinks were digging down there, that’s now what! The whole group, using my spade, scoops made from half-gourds, even their bare three-digit hands, to dig as neat a set of graves as you’d never wish to see right there in that soft, loose loam!