"Is there any place," Rachael asked, "where real land actually projects above the water?"
Mataroreva thought a moment. "Not that I've heard of. Sea mounts like the one below us come within a couple dozen meters of the surface. But wherever you see dry land projecting above the water, it's there because the little hexalates have worked to make it so for millions of years."
They passed through the tinted plastic doors of the Administration Building. "Most of the people I've seen so far have retained much of their Polynesian ancestry in their faces and physiques," Cora said.
"Oh, you know how it is," Mataroreva replied casually. "The Commonwealth's not so ancient that pockets of settlers on nonurbanized worlds haven't retained their ethnicity. That's not to say you won't find ancient Northern Europeans or Central American farmstockers or Mongols working here on Cachalot. Not to mention a very few thranx, despite their natural hatred of large bodies of water. But the permanent residents, the ones who aren't here simply to try to get rich quick in pharmaceuticals, say, derive mostly from Polynesian or Melanesian ocean-going ancestors. I'm sure there's no genetic reason for it. But tradition dies as hard in certain ethnic groupings as it does in families."
Down a hall, than around a corner. "Here we are."
But the door before them refused admittance. "Commissioner Hwoshien is not here," it politely informed them. "He is working elsewhere at the moment."
"Where is he, then?" Mataroreva did not try to conceal his exasperation at the delay.
The door hesitated briefly, then replied, "I believe Commissioner Hwoshien is in Storage and Packing Number Two."
"Oh, terrific,'' their guide mumbled. Then his frustration vanished, as all such upsets seemed to after an instant. "Nothing for it but to go find him, I suppose." He turned, began retracing their steps.
A rich roaring greeted them when they exited the building. The shuttle, having completed its exchanges, was departing. It thundered down the lagoon on its pontoons. Then the nose tipped up. Engines boiled the sea behind as the craft arced sharply into a sky polka-dotted with white.
The noise and violence startled a flock of creatures just below the surface. Flapping membranous wings, they soared aloft, circled several times, and glided over the Administration Building.
"Ichthyorniths!" Cora shouted delightedly, clapping her hands together like a little girl. "Those I was able to study prior to leaving Earth. How wonderful!"
"Mother, what are they-birds?" Rachael was staring curiously at the distant flock.
"Didn't you read anything before you left home?"
"Yeah, I did," her daughter snapped, and she rattled off a list of popular fiction.
Cora looked resigned. "They're flying fish. Real flying fish." She stared upward, enraptured by yet another of the sea's miraculous examples of protective adaptation. Each ichthyornith had a transparent, gelatinous membrane surrounding the rear portion of its streamlined body. Within those membranes they carried oxygen-rich water, enabling them to stay airborne and clear of the water for substantial periods of time.
There were no land animals native to Cachalot. So there were no reptiles or mammals for true birds to evolve from. In the absence of true birds or flying snakes or their relatives, the ichthyorniths, with their water-carrying body sacs, had adapted to a partial aerial existence, spending as little time in the water as possible, breeding and living in a mostly predator-free niche left to them by a nonwasteful nature.
Their long silvery forms shone in the sun, light bouncing from wide wet wings and the full water sacs. They returned to the lagoon and skimmed low, searching for a place to set down.
As Cora watched, one of the winged shapes suddenly fell from formation, splashed into the water.
"Koolyanif," Mataroreva explained. "It floats just below the surface, changing color to match the sand or deep water below it. It has an arsenal of stinging spines which it can blow outward, like arrows, through a kind of internal air compression system. That's what brought down the ichthyornith."
Even in the air, life is not safe on Cachalot, Cora told herself. This is not the friendly, familiar ocean of Earth. She found herself longing for the sight of something as predictable as a shark.
Around her the plants waved lazily in the faint breeze. All seemed peaceful and quiet. But they had been on this world only a short time and had seen togluts and koolyanifs. The sea and the peacefulness were deceptive.
She wondered how the original settlers of Cachalot had coped with the inhabitants native to the world-ocean. Not being human, they had possessed other advantages. She was intensely curious to find out for herself if they had done as well as all the histories and infrequent reports indicated they had.
It seemed that would have to wait until she had confronted this Hwoshien person. She had dealt with bureaucratic demagogues before. She could handle this one, even if he could intimidate as impressive a specimen as Sam Mataroreva.
She eyed the big Polynesian as he led them down the slope toward another pier. Maybe she was overrating him. He was so relaxed, so easygoing. Perhaps it wasn't that he was intimidated so much as overly respectful of authority. He was certainly gentle enough with everyone, like an oversized teddy bear.
She resolutely turned her thoughts away from such trivialities. More important was the matter of their still unspecified assignment and her anger at being bounced around like a servant ever since they had set foot on this globe. She would straighten out both as soon as they confronted Hwoshien.
A number of craft were docked at the pier. Mataroreva directed them to a small, waterstained skimmer. They boarded and he activated controls. Immediately the little ship lifted a meter off the water. It could go considerably higher, but there was no need to expend the power. A touch on another switch and they found themselves racing across the broad lagoon toward its southernmost end.
Cora leaned back, marveled at the faceted hexalate formations speeding past beneath the rapidly moving craft. She could hardly wait to get into the water here, to see at first hand the marine marvels she had studied. Reefs a thousand meters and more in depth were not unknown, for the hexalates had been building on Cachalot for millions of years, long before the land had all been worn away or had subsided.
Mataroreva looked back from the controls, watched her watching. "You love the sea, don't you, Cora?"
"All my life," she told him quietly. "Ever since I was old enough to realize the difference between ocean and bathtub."
"I know how you feel," he replied. "To me, Cachalot the planet is one vast, perfect ozmidine, cut and polished by the hand of God. If I could," he said in the same voice, "I would make a bracelet of it so you could wear it on your wrist."
"Thanks for the thought, Sam. But I've been given similar gifts and promises in the past. The bracelets were fake, and the promises broke, too."
"I understand." Mataroreva turned back to his controls but continued to speak. "Bracelets, gems, can be like that sometimes; bright and flashy instead of solid, well crafted, and made with care... like promises."
Cora felt ashamed. Why couldn't she be more open, like Rachael? Age had nothing to do with her way of looking at people. It was a question of experience.
Take Mataroreva, for example. Why assume his deference toward Hwoshien was owing to a lack of backbone? He was only an employee here, without her off-world independence. And he was charming.
Ah, but Silvio had been charming. Oh, how charming! As charming, as bright, as the crystal formations they were skimming over. But Mataroreva was not Silvio. Why condemn him for being pleasant? The two had nothing in common save gender. Wasn't it time she ceased condemning all because of one? She was so tired of acting tough.
Downright delightful, this Mataroreva-Sam. Mentally he was still a mystery. But he shared her love of the sea, and the warmth of holiday and the sense of eternal vacation that hung over this world were beginning to weaken her.
Mataroreva shattered the reverie. "You know, another town was destroyed
last week. Rorqual."
This brought her brusquely back to reality. She was all business again. "Destroyed-an entire town? I know we were being brought in on this because people were being killed, but no one mentioned anything about the destruction of an entire town. And you said 'another.' "
"There have been several such incidents."
"How many?" Merced asked patiently.
"Four."
"Four deaths?" Rachael was staring at Mataroreva now.
He shook his head. His expression had become solemn. "Four towns. The entire populations, completely wiped out. Not a trace of them left behind, and we've no idea what's causing it. Twenty-five hundred men, women, and children. All gone. 'Ati."
"Similarities?" Cora wanted to know. "What were the similarities, the links tying these incidents together?"
Sam smiled patiently at her. "Hard at work already? Take your time, Cora Xamantina. We have already eliminated the obvious." He glanced back at Rachael and Merced. "You all may as well take your time. We haven't just been swimming in circles here, so don't expect to find any quick answers. Twenty-five hundred people." He returned his full attention to the skimmer controls.
"We'll determine the cause," Cora said finally, after a long silence in the craft, "and put a stop to it."
He smiled affectionately at her, not boyish at all now. "Maybe you will, Cora Xamantina. Maybe you will. I hope so, because the thought of you becoming a new addendum to the obituary disturbs me. You've seen only a bare fraction of the hostile life-forms of
Cachalot, and what they are capable of. Remember that most of the Cachalot world-ocean has not been explored, nor any of the great deeps. We don't know what's out there. Maybe something that can take a floating town apart piece by piece."
"Well said." Cora grinned back at him. "We're all suitably intimidated. Now-what are the similarities?"
Mataroreva chuckled. "If stubbornness were a cure, this world would be healthy in a day. Hwoshieo will want to explain himself."
"I'd rather you tell me, Sam."
"Don't condemn Yu until you've met him. He's been through a lot this past month."
"Isn't it permissible?"
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I haven't been instructed not to tell you.
"I suppose the most obvious link is the impossibility of this happening to a single town, much less to four. The towns themselves are supposed to be impossible to sink. Hell, they are impossible to sink! They are not solid structures. Each town is a vast raft composed of thick slabs of buoyant polymer, like the piers we just left. The town slabs are as much as ten meters thick in places, beneath some of the larger buildings. They can be broken, but the individual fragments will continue to float.
"The varied shapes of the polymer slabs-triangles, trapezoids, and so forth-give the raft tremendous structural strength while still leaving sufficient flexibility for it to glide over the waves."
"Even so," Rachael pointed out from the rear of the thrumming skimmer, "couldn't a storm, a really big storm, take a town apart?"
"No. At least, it hasn't happened yet. Even the largest waves slip under the raft sections. Those that break atop the town sift down through the drain places between the sections, or slide off. The polymer actually rejects water, ha addition being a hundred percent nonporous. And the hinges that link the sections together are magnetic or chemical, not affected by brute mechanical wave action.
"Also, each town has several means of further stabilizing itself-centerboards, special fluids which can inhibit wave action, and so on. No, storms are out of the question. Except for," and he glanced back at them helplessly, "one awkward contradiction."
"What's that?" Cora wondered.
"The fact that each town has disappeared during a storm."
"I'd call that more than an awkward contradiction."
Mataroreva adjusted the heading of the skimmer, angling it slightly to starboard. "But some of the storms have been too light to damage a sensitive flower, let alone an entire town. The storm that covered War-mouth when it was lost was measured by a weather satellite almost directly above it. Our weather system is even more advanced than our cross-planet communications system. It recorded the winds at the height of the storm at less than forty kilometers per hour. There's no potential for destruction in that."
"Sounds like something is using the storms for cover," Merced murmured. Mataroreva nodded.
Cora wasn't ready to rule out natural causes. "What about seismic disturbances?"
"All the towns, though drifting near fishing reefs or sea mounts, were in essentially open ocean. The biggest quake on this world might shatter someplace stable like Mou'anui, but it would send only a swell rippling under the floating towns. They're immune to quakes."
"You said you found pieces of the polymer sections?"
"Yes. Shattered and torn. Not only sections of the town foundations but buildings, equipment, structures; but not a single body. Not one corpse. Either the cause of the destruction has a ghoulish nature, or it's a red herring. True, corpses will eventually sink, or be taken by the numerous scavenger species, but it does seem unlikely that not one out of twenty-five hundred has been found."
"Did all the wreckage show similar damage, the effect of identical forces?" Merced was making notes on a recorder.
"Everything was just-splintered." Mataroreva shrugged enormous shoulders.
"You've been out to the sites?" Rachael asked the question respectfully.
"No, but I've seen the tridee tapes that were brought back."
"There was no sign of melt-down in the debris?"
Mataroreva looked approvingly back at Merced. "I know what you're thinking. No, no meltage. No indication of the use of energy weapons. The polymer sections would show that for sure. We discarded that possibility long ago."
"Then you've discarded weaponry as a cause?"
"No, of course not. We have our own specialists working on sections of broken buildings and raft, on the chance that a more exotic variety of weapon might have been used. But the molecular structure of the polymer fragments is unaltered. That rules out, for example, the use of supercryogenics, which could freeze the material and cause it to fragment"
"What about ultrasonics? That could produce a similar effect without affecting structure."
Mataroreva threw him a peculiar look. "I thought you were all just oceanographers."
"Physics is only a hobby." Merced sounded apologetic.
"Sure. Yes, I suppose that's a possible explanation. But I've been told by our local peaceforcer computer that in order for ultrasonics to produce that kind of universal destruction, a different frequency setting would have to be used for each element of the town.
One for the polymers, one for the stelamic walls, another for seacane furniture, and so on. Practically every object of any size that was recovered was in pieces. It seems incredible that an attacker could have enough weaponry or could adjust frequencies rapidly enough to obliterate everything before counteraction could be taken."
"They wouldn't have to destroy everything," Merced argued. "All they'd have to do is jam or eliminate a town's communications. Then they could proceed with methodical annihilation under cover of the storm. You said your satellite system was sophisticated. Can't it monitor the towns through a few clouds?"
"Certain energy weapons, yes, they'd be detected if used. That's one of the things that has contributed to the frustration. Our satellites have given us nothing in the way of explanatory information. It seems self-evident that there are weapons which can operate without being detected."
Merced nodded. "I know of a couple which probably could, no matter how advanced the orbital scanning system."
"For example?"
Merced squirmed uncomfortably, aware he was very much the center of attention. "As I said, it's a hobby. Now, I'm not positive about this, but I've heard that the Commonwealth armed forces have access to devices which can affect the interatomic bonds of elements. The explosive result would be very
much like the destruction you've described, Sam. The device could be adjusted far more rapidly than a subsonic projector and would be unlikely to set off a town's warning system, which, I presume, would be directed to keep an eye out for much more conventional weaponry."
"Some of them aren't even equipped to detect that," their pilot admitted. "Our primary source of danger on Cachalot has always been inimical local life-forms, not other people." He looked unhappy. "By this world's nature, by the way the population is concentrated yet dispersed, we have to maintain a peaceful society.
"Oh, we have our occasional troublemakers, but we've never, never experienced anything on this scale of mass murder. The local peaceforcers have always been able to cope. Our problems run more along the line of drunken brawls or jealous husbands. And there are some who become frustrated because they're unable to adapt to our world and our ways. But frustrated enough to organize and commit wholesale slaughter? I doubt it"
"If we rule out human or off-world attack," Cora declared in measured tones, "that leaves something from the sea."
"That's your department. That's why you've been brought in. Human or other intelligent assailants will be dealt with by the peaceforcers, but... well, the Commonwealth has had people on Cachalot for over four hundred years and the original settlers for four or five hundred years before that, and we're still comparatively ignorant about the local denizens."
"That's nothing new," Cora said. "There's still much we don't know about life in Earth's oceans. You needn't apologize."
"I wasn't apologizing," Sam said matter-of-factly. "I'm not the apologetic type."
"Well, we can rule out the storms as direct causes," Merced allowed. "I don't know about you ladies, but I personally am not ready to deal with human attackers. All we could do is determine that they were the likely cause of the trouble."
"That would be sufficient," Mataroreva told nun. "You're not here to provide final solutions. Only to determine causes."