Seas of Ernathe (2 page)

Racart led the way with practiced ease, but Seth lagged behind frequently, nervous at treading the slippery rocks. At one point he skidded, and yelped as one foot landed with a cold splash in a pool. He stepped back onto dry surface, chagrined; but as he plodded after Racart—who had grinned but not said a word—he congratulated himself for not having fallen headlong. Not that he was so sure he wouldn't the next time.

They wound inland, and then back toward the sea, making a gradual path northward from Lambrose. They stopped again near the end of a raised promontory, which they reached by scrambling up the side of a high, steep outcropping. The vantage point was excellent and the view superb—which Seth appreciated once he had stopped wheezing from the climb. The mist, for the moment, had disappeared.

"There's the Lambrose pier," Racart said, pointing back southward to the left. A small hump was visible in the distance, but that was all that could be seen of the unloading facility for the plankton-harvesters that operated out of Lambrose. Hidden completely was the processing facility, where the plankton was processed for food and synthetics, and for the precious drugbase
mynalar
. The
mynalars
, the several derivatives of the drugbase exported to Rethmere and from there to other worlds of the Cluster, were the reason for the colony's very existence, and the crux of the current difficulty. Seth looked, and nodded.

Southward, toward the mouth of the bay, was a large moving dot: a harvester making its slow way east to the port of Lambrose.

And to the north: Racart said, pointing, "It becomes wilder and hotter as you move toward the equator. That area was explored at one time, I suppose, but no one's been far up that way since the early days of the colony. No
mynella
. Somewhere in that direction, we think, is the homeland of the Nale'nid—another reason for our not meddling." Most of Ernathe, he explained, was unsuited for settlement—too hot and too little land vegetation. Ernathe was an old world, not nearly as full of life as in the past; but this was in part due to an unstable, variable sun, whose fits and flares and fluctuations raked the planet from time to time with fearsome radiations. The remainder of the planet, largely intertwined ocean and barren land, belonged to whatever wildlife existed—and to the Nale'nid.

A pair of
skrells
squawked high in the air, circling and shouting at one another as they roamed in search of prey. Shrieking, one following the other, the winged creatures banked and plummeted like missiles into the water. A moment later they erupted into the air, one with a mouthful of wriggling fish and the other with a howl.

"I assume there will be a search for the Nale'nid's home," Racart said abruptly. "What will happen then?"

Seth gestured ignorance. "I'm not in charge of the mission."

"But an attack on a starship is not apt to go unpunished. Not to mention the sabotage in Lambrose and Lernick," Racart said, sounding surprisingly bitter. "Isn't that true?"

Seth showed his surprise. "Probably—but I think you overestimate our capabilities. The ship's weaponry, which is probably what you are thinking of, is designed mainly to protect the ship. Besides, are you defending the Nale'nid now, after they've ruined your entire production? And senselessly endangered lives?" According to the settlement's reports, not a week had gone by in the last year without the Nale'nid causing one or another kind of disruption. However intrigued Seth might be by stories of the sea-people, he hardly thought they were in need of sympathy. Why should Racart, whose people had suffered far more, feel differently?

Racart did not face him. "I don't know. I don't know why they left us alone for so many years, and then suddenly started all this trouble. I just don't. Dammit, we don't know
anything
about them—except that this is really their world, not ours. We may have upset a natural balance of some kind."

Seth acknowledged without answering. Racart normally worked aboard a harvester at sea; whether his ideas were typical or not Seth did not know, though he would certainly find out. Then, too, Seth had his own personal interest in seeing the production of
mynalar
restored—but his thoughts at the moment were more on the sea-people themselves, the puzzle. "Perhaps," he said to Racart, for want of an answer. "If you have, the ecologists haven't noticed, and everyone else is stumped. I guess we'll have to ask the Nale'nid."

Racart grunted.

Seth knelt and peered cautiously over the edge of the rocks to the water below. The sea welled beautifully downward to a deepening and finally impenetrable green. Salt smell washed into the air, cool moist vapors faintly tart with the odor, somewhere, of seaweed. He wondered if the precious phytoplankton
mynella
were present in this water. Instead of voicing that question, however, he asked, "How deeply has this part of the sea been explored?" There were submersibles at Lambrose, he knew.

Receiving no answer, he looked up. Racart was standing very still, gazing to the northwest over the water. "Look," he said softly, raising his arm to point.

Seth followed his gaze. A front of dense sea-mist was gliding across the water toward them. There was no apparent breeze, but it lapped silently against the shore in eddies of silvery smoke. There was a scent of rock-dampness and sea-moss in the air, as if driven by the fog. "Sit down and keep your eyes open," Racart advised, and Seth obeyed without hesitation. The fog swept quickly toward the promontory, its forward edge curling under like a willowy, ghostly half-track.

The bank surrounded them, troops massing in the quiet afternoon. Seth felt instinctively for the security of the rock beneath him, as mist swirled tickling about his ears and nose. His sight was obscured momentarily, and then it opened again as the front passed, leaving patches of visibility over the flat gray water.

He squinted through the wafting scud and sat upright, stunned. Across the water, several darkish shapes were moving within the silvery earthly nebula like shadows of trees or persons. They were vague, roving figures, which without being distinguishable made him think instantly of the sea-people. His blood pounded with curiosity as he hunched forward, staring intently until the bank coalesced again and blocked his view. "The Nale'nid?" he asked Racart. His voice sounded wiry and strange against the solitude of fog.

The answer was slow, in an awed and amused voice thinned as if by distance. "Perhaps. Keep watching."

The mist paled, whitened, robbing the world of its last remaining color—and then it broke, shifted, and with a swirl reopened. Three distant but distinct figures moved across the water: two men and a young woman, human-figures but slenderer, smoother, fairer, and clad in the simplest fashion with dark glittering scales. They danced upon the water, stopped, twirled, and winked at him—and then the men whirled while the girl winked again. Seth was captured by astonishment and infatuation; they were distant as stage players set in another world, but every movement leapt to his eye as if fractured and magnified through a crystal.
How could he see so clearly?
They glided like skaters over the water, their blades the thinnest slips of mist. Laughter tinkled softly, distantly, as if spilled from the lips of others beneath the waves. They moved maddeningly fast, with the grace of deepwater fishes.

However lucid Seth had felt earlier, he now stared as if in a dream, rapt by the vision of the sea-girl, of her men turning about her in nodding circles. Before Seth could breathe and decide if he were entranced in a hallucinatory vision, the mists closed again and moments later reopened—revealing soft, driftglass green water, and moving beneath it, closer now, three shadows like courtly humanfish. The silhouettes slowed for a moment of still-life, two sea-men and one sea-woman, who then danced in a lyrical flurry and fled, leaving only the green-glass memory of their presence.

Too astonished to move or make a sound, Seth stared at the empty water and tried to hold the fading image in his mind. Its vividness vanished with the mist, and by the time he had sorted the impressions from his expectations he was hardly sure that he had seen anything at all, shadows or people. His hands pressed the rock, cold with airy dampness; the mist tickled again as its tail drifted past, and then suddenly it too was gone, receding across the water to the south. Seth slouched in the golden sunshine, letting its warmth drench his skin before he finally sighed, and turned to his friend. "They—"

His words stopped in his throat. He blinked. Racart was gone.

Now where? Seth twisted around to look, but his friend was nowhere on the promontory summit. "Racart!" He scrambled to his feet, walked along the edge of the summit, and looked down and around in all directions—but there was no sign of the Ernathene. "Racart!"

Was this a prank? It would hardly befit Racart. Could he somehow have fallen into the water? No; Seth would have heard a splash. "Where are you?" he bellowed.

The answer was a sigh of air over the water, and the soft lap of the sea against the rock face below. The outcropping tumbled to water on one end and to rock and moss on the other; Seth could not see any likely place of concealment. Kneeling at the seaward end, he gazed down carefully into the water, probing it with his eyes. There were no obstructions, so even if Racart had fallen he should have been uninjured and able to swim clear. An uncertain fear nudged Seth's mind, and sweat began to trickle down his neck as he swayed, standing. "Racart!" The call rang across the water and died.

A lone skrell freewheeled into view, circled above the water at Seth's height and cried mournfully. Why would he be hiding, testing him? No, it was preposterous to consider that. Could the Nale'nid have done something? Perhaps, but what?

He climbed down from the outcropping and scouted in a semicircle around the base of the promontory, inspecting every crevice and break in the rock. Something, he decided, must have happened
to
Racart—but nothing so simple as falling from the rocks. Uncertainty tugged at him, a feeling that there was something he was failing to consider, some danger he was overlooking. He was kilometers from the settlement. He could probably find his way back alone—but what would he do if he found Racart seriously injured . . . or would he be able to return in time with a proper search party?

Damn it, had the
mist
snatched him away?

Seth moved through the mazework around the pools and channels to the landward of the promontory, looking into each pool one by one, into each stream, as if he might find the grinning face of his friend, laid to rest by some dreadful assassin. He saw only dark-bottomed and mossy-edged pools, and cutting flows of water seeking the sea. He slipped; one knee banged hard on the rock, and his leg was soaked again. Water sopped coldly in his shoe, and his knee ached fiercely as he straightened it. Determinedly, he ignored the pain.

He called, again and again. No answer . . . and the appearance of more sea-mist made even the attempt seem hopeless. Lambern turned a deeper gold as it sank lower in the sky, and he realized grimly that he would probably have to return alone and simply hope for the best—either that Racart would make his own way back or that a search party would find him.

For a last look, he scrambled back onto the outcropping and searched anxiously in all directions. "Racart!" He stared, puzzled and frightened, into the water; the reeling sensation of depth reminded him curiously of his vision of the Nale'nid. There was no evidence that the sea-people were involved; but as a starpilot he depended professionally on intuition. A feeling that could not be ignored . . . and with a moment's reflection on it he was possessed of a strange peace of mind amid his disquiet.

He moved down from the outcropping. Whether his friend was safe or not—and with the sea-people, who could tell?—it was past time to start the trek back.

Finding the way back to Lambrose was not easy. The broken, indented shoreline and the drifting bits of sea-mist made it impossible to get a clear view of where he was going; Seth felt he was trying to negotiate a maze with bleary, sleep-filled eyes. He detoured inland to skirt a rugged lagoon, and then hesitated, unsure whether to angle back toward the sea where he could keep the Lambrose pier in sight, or to keep inland to avoid blind avenues onto outjutting peninsulas. He wished he had paid greater attention to the route when he had been with Racart.

He turned seaward to follow the line of the shore; it seemed wiser to keep his destination in view as much as possible. But the groundrock dipped and rose in a clay-sculpture profile, so even that route provided a challenge. Perseverance brought him near to the actual coastline and directly into a silvery thick mass of sea-mist.
Again?
he wondered uncomfortably—but he shrugged and moved on along his path into the fog, changing his gait to a slow, cautious shuffle. His skin tingled, sensitive to the touch of the flowing mist, as if a mild electric current were charging the mass. The sounds of his shuffle were clear but muted. He stooped and strained forward with all his senses to detect any obstacles or pitfalls before his feet.

He thought about Racart, who might be anywhere. Soon he was so lost in contemplation, and so keyed to the sound of his own movement, that when he heard other sounds he straightened with a start.
Pat, pat
of footfalls, a ripple of faint laughter like the chortle of a stream. The sounds were quiet, but very clear and very close. It seemed he was being shadowed. He stopped instantly and strained his ears to hear more.

Nale'nid?

There was no further sound. Hesitantly, he called out, "Hello? Who's there? Hello!" Silence answered. He tried again and received the same answer. Sea-mist had made the world a fuzz of soft gray, the landscape an indistinct montage of darker shapes. He looked around slowly, taking care not to lose his bearings. "Racart! Racart!"

When he gave up and moved on, he was more uncertain of his position than ever. Someone was playing a game at his expense, but he could not tell whether it was a malicious game or a friendly one. There was little else to do but continue walking. He heard the
pat, pat
of feet once more, and—he thought—a murmur of voices. Breaking through the mist once was a bright female voice, just a bit too fluttered, a bit too quick to be like any of the human voices he knew. The brief flurry of words, if "words" were what they were, fell in a strange tongue, enchanting—and he felt a sudden urge to abandon his path, to seek the voice's source. Could it be the girl he had seen earlier, could she know something of Racart?