A KLAXON BATTERED STEINER’S EARS. Something must have gone wrong during their interstellar hibernation flight. So much for Interplanet Trade Corp. He caught a nose-wrinkling whiff of electrical burning but he remained strapped in his reclined padded seat. It wasn’t that he couldn’t undo his straps, but his muscles had atrophied in the weeks, maybe months of sleep. He forced his sticky eyes to open and glanced around the cabin. Greens and reds dot-dashed at him from a console an arm’s length away. Strange; this cabin was too small for the Sojourn, yet he was attached by drips and feeds. He needed to be careful removing tubes before he could reach the console to silence that damned noise.
A full minute must have passed since regaining consciousness, and only then could his brain defog sufficiently to reach the panel and dance the keys. His co-pilot, Margot, remained prone on a bunk. A couple of cannula fed into her too. Damn, the alarm shrieked again, bringing his heartbeat thudding in his throat. He delayed waking her to glance at readings and the vid display. They’d landed but were sinking. Had to get out, quick.
Steiner hit the combination of buttons to lift the pod. Anti-grav motors vibrated; good, that should keep them afloat until the power ran out. He didn’t have time to find the timescale: he had Margot to wake up. It would be easier pushing her out while awake than dragging out an unconscious lump. He shouldn’t refer to her like that: he still loved her and, he hoped, she him.
He switched a tube to her wake-up cocktail. Like him she wore a soft cloud-grey top and pants. Breasts that could poke out a man’s eyes must have been exposed during the flight. Perhaps he should lower the top before she accused him. His eyes were barely ready for business but her blue-black eyes opened wide in an instant.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Waking you up. We have a problem.”
Margot looked down and adjusted her cami-top. “Stop ogling my tits, you perv. Have you been groping me?”
He couldn’t deny admiring them, en passant, but there hadn’t been time for a good time. “You must have exposed yourself in your sleep. And I took the opportunity—”
“I knew it.”
“To visually check for bleeding, bruising and—”
She threw him a narrowed-eyes withering look. “You play with your own bits, Steiner. Oh, my head. Coffee, now, not that pro-vit garbage.”
“No time to make anything. Here’s a shot to get us both moving.” He passed her a skin inject booster then applied another to his own upper arm.
She pulled a face as long as a giraffe—appropriate for her large freckles. “Is the environment safe out there?”
“Green light. Not checked details. We’re sinking. Grab your emergency pack.”
“You’re an idiot, Steiner. Orbit and assess before landing. I knew it was a mistake to let them appoint you pilot.”
“I’ve only just woke…never mind.” No point launching into a debate on why they were not on the migration ship when the anti-grav motors were whining down to nothing. “I’ve a pack and the life-raft. Hang on to your kit. Popping the hatch now.”
The whoosh of escaping air worried him. It meant the air pressure outside was less than inside, hopefully enough to allow their lungs to work. His previous glance at the row of green lights had told him the atmosphere contained the essentials. What the pretty lights couldn’t tell him about was the nose-pinching stench. Overcooked cabbage, and it looked like it. Had they fallen into a giant’s supper? He tried to ignore the odour, to focus on ejecting the fluorescent yellow inflatable dinghy. At least their escape pod wasn’t crash diving.
As the life-raft blasted to its small full size, Steiner stood up on the pod, his pumps, ideal inside, suffered reduced friction on the slippery titanium alloy. He stretched up but could only see a pea-soup horizon with a steeper curvature than Earth. No sign of islands, or mountains.
A soft whine like a mongrel dog expressing interest came and went leaving him the unnerving impression they were being watched.
A female moan impinged on his thoughts. “Get down, you fool, you’re making it sink faster.”
If they’d landed on solid ground, even a small island, they’d have all the resources of the escape pod, limited though it was. Extra food, water, medical supplies, clothing. On water, the best they had was whatever was embedded in the barely-two-man life-raft, and now their emergency craft was sinking.
It made sense for him to lighten the weight of the pod by clambering onto the life-raft. She might throw a wobbler at his pre-emptive boarding, so… “Women and children first?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
Perfect. He pulled the line so the yellow raft surged closer. It didn’t bob in the soup as he’d expected. He stepped into it and immediately knelt for stability. Damn, it meant he no longer had a connection to the spacecraft. Why had she gone back in?
“Margot, come out now or you’ll need your bathing suit.”
Precious moments later her tousled red hair showed, followed by cobalt blue eyes so big he could see himself in them. Her thick lips twisted in distaste when she saw a metre of green goo between them. He gathered in the line and threw it at her. “Fine, but there’s more stuff to get out.”
Margot ducked back down but at least she’d kept hold of the line. He shouted down at her, “We don’t need water.”
She re-emerged behind a plastic box. Threw it but it missed Steiner’s hands and dolloped in the ocean. It didn’t splash, but glooped as if it were thick porridge. He pulled it on board. “We don’t need a radio either. The basic survival stuff is built in—”
She’d gone back down. Ridiculous, his worry lines bunched. He urged her out. “Hey, the pea soup is up to the hatch. Get out now if you don’t want to be an ingredient.”
Her disembodied voice was mostly inaudible but he caught unwelcome snippets, “…shame I can’t find…you buggered up…should still be on the Sojourn…you…king bast…”
“It wasn’t my fault.” He ground his teeth at the clichéd excuse always used by the guilty, spoiling it for the innocent, and yet he was.
Margot climbed into the dinghy just as the escape pod gulped its last breath and slid out of sight. Its position was marked by flotsam, of which the only item worthy of retrieval was a blue phial of penicillin. The rest, a mix of squares of paper; a puzzle since as far as Steiner knew, he’d not seen paper for over a year.
The warm wind whistled ‘a hi there’ and the ocean replied with ‘a me too’.
“We have a problem, Steiner, the raft is sinking too.”
“A puncture?”
They both rapped the polyastomer and it felt pumped up hard enough and yet it was lower in the green scum, even taking into account its burden. Steiner pressed the motor button and the raft lifted a little.
“Which way, Margot? You’re the navigator.”
She was rummaging in the plastic box she’d insisted on rescuing.
“Just keep us moving. In a moment the data from the escape pod’s orbit and descent will tell us the direction for the nearest landfall.”
Steering was accomplished by a touch-sensitive joystick at the rear of the dinghy. A full circle gave Steiner cause to ponder. The only sign of the escape pod’s location was a single bubble-wrapped pouch. Even that appeared to be half under the spinach-hued ocean.
“Margot, sweetness.” Such bravado. “Do you feel heavy? Just wondering if the data shows if g exceeds one on this planet in spite of the obvious greater curvature of the horizon.”
“Busy.”
It didn’t feel much different to being on a one-g G planet but then he hadn’t tried jumping or lifting a mass greater than the raft. He knew it was possible for the curvature to be different for this ocean than, say, on another part of the planet. He looked for a sun and found none. The cornflower-blue sky brightened near the horizon presently in front of him. Predawn or twilight? He headed in that direction.
Margot dabbed at a handheld. “Um, nothing definite. The data seems incomplete. Whatever created the emergency threw out the escape pod just after deciding this planet was survivable.”
Steiner looked around. “Not my idea of a paradise destination. What happened to the other passengers?”
“As pilot and navigator, we were probably ejected last, maybe weeks after the initial problem. What did you do before hibernation?”
“My fault, eh? Which way now?”
She tilted up her hands. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What, no land, islands?” He always made light of awkward situations, but surviving on a water-world wouldn’t be easy. Less so for a gloop-world.
She tapped the cream-coloured box lightly, then shook it. “Damn, it’s failed completely.” She held it over the side.
“Don’t ditch it. Might need to cannibalize it. I’m headed for the sun for now.”
Margot twisted and poked at a patch on the life-raft behind her. “Compass is one- sixty.”
“Keeping steady? Could be meaningless if this planet is like Mars with no magnetic field.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Yes, for the moment.”
Steiner craned his neck and glanced around. “No welcoming committee yet. No condensation trails in that perfect sky.”
“Let’s compose a poem to it.”
“Look, none of this is my fault, Margot. We’re here together. Get over it. Do you think I’d choose you to be stranded with?”
She didn’t answer: fiddled instead with the compass, then the defunct computer and checked the emergency packs. “Flares, desalination kit, nutrition patches, first aid gun, sonic fish stunner, and hooks…”
“Get the desalination working. That water must be salty.”
“Steiner, simple man, we don’t even know it is water. We can smell it’s as foul as burnt Sunday vegetables but it might not be potable even after filtering.”
“We have only two litres of water so after a day, we’ll have no choice.”
She threw a weighted tube over the side as far down as it would go to minimize salt input and clamped the unit, with its petal solar cell, on its pocket holder. Margot threw him the fishing kit, even though he’d not asked for it. A welcome distraction from the increasing feeling of dread.
“Argh, a hook’s in my finger. Look, red stuff.”
“Don’t expect me to kiss it better. Drip it over the side.”
He watched his blood drop onto the ocean, his red stayed as a floating blob for a moment before suddenly being sucked down, as if a blood vacuum cleaner lurked below. The first-aid gun sealed the cut, so he needed another experiment.
“Margot, I need a pee. You must, too. No photos while I aim over the stern.”
“Let me turn off the desalination input. I don’t want my drink to be more toxic than it has to be.”
Steiner frowned as, like his blood, his urine made a puddle that didn’t merge in the gloop. It sank rather than be diluted.
The raft had drifted to a halt while he’d not kept the motor going and they were slowly sinking again. His stomach knotted. “I’d assumed we’d be within hours of land. How long will the propulsion unit last?”
“No idea. There should be paddles. Steiner?”
“Ah.”
“What? Oh, I get it. You were in such a hurry to get out of the pod, you left the paddles behind.”
“Don’t you tire of always being right?”
They agreed to keep the motor on in bursts: just enough to prevent sinking.
An accelerating drowning of the bright patch in the sky was accompanied by a reddening of ambient light and a dip in Steiner’s comfort zone. He rubbed his arms, wishing the grey uniform was long-sleeved. “Hey, Margot, are there moon-blankets in the emergency stows? I’m going into hypothermia.”
She threw him a silvery microfilm blanket. “Now we’ve lost the sun, assuming that’s what the poached egg in the sky was, we’ve no heading.”
“Thought it was one-sixty.”
She tapped the rubbery box. “It varied ten degrees or so. Either magnetic anomalies or the compass is faulty.”
“We should have thrown in a spare compass, just in case.”
“And how, simple Steiner, would we know which one was faulty?”
He grinned knowing how to wind her up. “Best of three?”
“Only you would think of packing three of everything. Ah, but you didn’t until after the event. We’ve no idea how long the night is going to be. Possibly days, as you would say. It might freeze. Hey, keep that motor going. I’m sure we’re lower in the gloop than before.”
“The battery must be flattening. It’ll get topped up by daylight, when and if it comes.”
Steiner looked over the stern but the dark green obscured any chance of seeing the drive. “Maybe the jet is clogged—”
He was cut off by silence. The boat shuddered to a sudden stop as if it had been travelling in greengage jelly rather than water. He looked at Margot but in the gloom couldn’t see her accusing expression. He scrambled once more in the sides of the raft, looking for overlooked panels that might have a folded paddle. Failing that, improvise with something appropriate, like Margot’s hand.
She yelled at him, “We’re going down. Do something!”
Through the gloom and by the new tilt of the raft to his right, he made out her paddling using her hand. “That’s too slow even if we both did it…and we couldn’t for long.”
“Asshole, there’s only one other option.”
“No need to get nasty. There’s several options, finding a substitute paddle being one. Your defunct computer…”
“No! It might still work.”
He was about to add a witty reply when the bottom of the raft tugged downwards, as if a giant slug had attached its maw beneath the boat and was vacuuming. Margot was right, one of them had to get out, swim, and push. In spite of the chill of the evening, he perspired fear.
“Okay, I’ll take the first stint over the side. I’ll push for what, an hour? Then it’s your turn, right?”
“Sure.”
Umm, he wasn’t convinced he’d be relieved but the ocean, or whatever it was, eased up to the top of the rounded bulwark of the raft. “Here goes, hoping the nights are short.”
He dipped his hand in the ocean for the first time and was pleasantly surprised at its warmth. It might be poisonous, full of alien piranhas or as harmless as a village duck pond, but he slipped off the moon-blanket, and rolled over the side.
Marvellous, an enveloping warmth of a thick soup. Must be about body temperature. Ha-ha. He could easily spend all night in this luxuriant bath. Even the pungent rotting cabbage smell was wearing off, . Overloaded olfactory senses. He swam lazy breaststrokes to the stern, placed his hands on the now slimy surface and kicked lazily. The life-raft crept forward.
Relaxed and comfortable, he heard Margot. “Faster, you idiot, I’m still sinking!”
He kicked harder until she stopped yelling. It was more difficult but sustainable. By experiment, he found he only needed to push with one arm, do a lazy kick with his feet and a half-breaststroke. Cycling a range of push and swim activities he was able to keep the raft from sinking.
After ten minutes, he needed a break. He wasn’t sure of the accurate time lapse. Hour or five minutes; it was too dark to read his watch, unless he fiddled with it, and that meant slowing, sinking, more shouting.
Steiner had been immersed long enough to sample his swimming medium, enjoyed the alien aperitif and had formulated his review for the next customer.
“This pea-soup has a bitter foretaste.” He could only manage gasps of sentences. “It tastes like a kale consommé. Smooth consistency. Ah, unidentifiable lumps. Maybe rotting astronauts. A smorgasbord. Stings my eyes…” He punctuated with a bout of coughing.
“Careful, Steiner. You’ll joke yourself to death.”
“Funny.” He resumed coughing. “Let’s swap.”
“Keep pushing. I’ll tell you when two hours is up.”
“We agreed. An hour,” he spluttered.
“You agreed, but it takes two to contract. Now, if you don’t mind I need to think.”
He wondered what she wanted to think about. It would annoy her to feel that her survival depended on someone else, especially him. She should spend dry time fiddling with what electronics they had to attract a rescue and to download data to find out what had happened on board the Sojourn. Okay, a homing beacon should have been alerting nearby spacecraft ever since the escape pod was launched.
Pushing wasn’t difficult but his arm ached as did his neck, having to lift it out of the muck. “I’m getting RSI. Stand by.”
He rolled onto his back and looked at the stars. The atmosphere twinkled them in patterns he didn’t recognize, not that he expected to. His arms were too tired to push over his head so he used his hands to paddle himself a one-eighty to push with his feet. It worked fine. Great, he could watch for shooting stars or the telltale line of an orbiting spaceship. Two moons, one near the horizon sending reflected silver over Margot’s head. She snored. He hoped she’d locked the rudder: he didn’t want to waste his efforts. He was too low in the gloop for the horizon to be more than a few metres away but he could see for light years overhead.
The misshapen second moon fluoresced the colour of French fries, in fact it looked like a potato. Was everything on this planet food-related? His gastronomical gazing had to wait, when the warm but foul gunk crept across his face and it was enveloping his hips. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he realized he was slowly becoming lower in the ocean.
“Hey, Margot, wake up, I’m sinking!” No response, he’d better keep moving. Swimming must have kept his body mass afloat as well as the raft. They’d assumed, stupidly, that the density of the ocean was greater than water on Earth. After all, it had the appearance of something thicker. Maybe gravity was greater, or the viscosity of local goulash meant they’d need to be much lighter.
“Margot, we have a problem. Wake up!”
He heard a grunt, and after more shouting from him, more grunts. While he waited for her proper awakening, he wondered how by keeping moving he was floating. He’d always enjoyed swimming so his body must have been on auto with his limbs flip-flapping just the right movements. Damn, he swore he could hear more snoring, an encore. Steiner rarely betrayed anger, but he was working up to it. Not only with whatever the original emergency was in space, and with the user-unfriendly ocean, but now with Margot persisting in unconsciousness while he agitated. He could just see her hair. It might be red in daylight but now it looked black streaked with white. Still on his back he scooped a handful of the slop and lobbed it. He sank more, and had to swim harder to regain floating.
“What the frigging hell?”
“We have a problem, Margot. This stuff—”
“You can stay in the stuff for another hour. Goodnight.”
He stopped pushing the raft with his feet but paddled to maintain buoyancy. “D’you want more?”
“Speak.”
“This ocean is pulling me under as well as the raft.”
“Take your shoes off.”
“Margot, don’t be absurd. We’re both wearing ship pumps not hiking boots.”
He could see her sit up and look over at him. Her voice became shrill. “The raft is sinking again. Do something.”
He obliged by kicking the raft as he swam feet first again. “We need a better strategy. Start by jettisoning everything heavy.”
“Steiner, I’ve already done that.”
“I’m struggling here.” He was too. Must be a combination of having to push continually and the nagging thought he wasn’t going to pull through this crisis. His heart hammered.
She continued, “Heaviest is the water, and nutri-drinks. About 500 mills has come through the desal. Wanna try it?”
No, but he could demolish an energy drink and asked for one. She held it over, a tube to his mouth. Tasted orangey and such a sweet contrast to the green gore he subsisted in. His skin had stopped stinging. He’d become desensitized, numbed.
“Steiner, allow me another half hour’s sleep. I’ll replace you for a couple of hours. I’m a good swimmer.”
He had a choice? Boosted by the glucose intake he rotated and this time used his head to butt rubber while he let his legs do most of the propulsion. It worked well, though it could be just the change of muscles. He had to be careful not to head butt the rudder, but it was just lower than his head needed to be.
Soft laughter now, not from Margot, and unless he was going mad, not him either. As if the joke was on him. It was probably the wind, and that thought triggered more.
Suppose the wind picked up and created large waves? The ocean was abnormally calm. Perhaps the liquid was so dense it took more turbulent airflow to create a wave. Long ocean waves were often caused by steady winds, friction-pulling on the surface. A smile came as he thought maybe they were in a large lake. The horizon was so damned close. They couldn’t see beyond a kilometre or so. He’d have to work up a plan to use a microcam: throw it up in the air. Train a seagull, except he’d not seen any wildlife. Except Margot.
He squinted at some of the soup scooped up in his hand. The moonlight wasn’t much but if there were bits of seaweed they were too small to see. Like in milk, which, was a kind of solid in colloidal suspension. They were in green milk.
He anxiously scanned the sky for a line. Potato moon swam in an iridescent halo. Purple, emerald, ruby—beautiful, like an aurora borealis. Earth’s moon traditionally was made of cheese, this one had an aurora Dauphinoise. His stomach rumbled.
NORMALLY, STEINER GAVE UP swimming after a few lengths in a pool ̶ low boredom threshold. Now, it didn’t matter. His life was forfeit. He and Margot could only keep swim-pushing for so long. Their energy and vits wouldn’t last beyond a few days, then they’d weaken until pushing wasn’t an option even if swimming was. Of course he might’ve been floating in food all this time. Or poison. Suppose it was like the phytoplankton on Earth, Ceto, and Mazu III. He knew algae could be poisonous such as the neurotoxins in red tide algal blooms on Earth, but maybe this was Ceto, he knew it was smaller than Earth. Then he didn’t want this planet to have a totally liquid surface. They needed to be dry eventually; humans rot in more ways than one.
Just as Steiner considered a wake-up call to Margot, she poked her head over the side at him. “Look behind you.”
Hooray, a rescue ship; hopefully a cruise liner with all-in food, drink and women. He rotated again to push with his head. No ship. “Your horizon is farther away than mine.”
“A peachy colour. Probably pre-dawn twilight.”
He slumped, chin on his chest and stopped kicking, just flapped his hands enough to keep himself afloat. How could she dash his expectations like that? He’d better start up again before she yelled at him, but it took much more effort than he’d anticipated. He’d paddled himself to exhaustion. “Now you’re awake, dearest Margot, and it’s a new day…”
“Sure. It’s my turn.”
If that readiness wasn’t surprising enough, Steiner was astonished to see Margot had slipped off her silver blanket then fingering the hem of her cami-top and lifting it. Higher. He was treading water, or whatever it was, then put his hand on the cord circling the raft to get a better look. Silly, since he’d seen her half-naked before. But a sleeping dummy isn’t as erotic as a vibrant upright and contradictory woman. Whoops, he was missing her speech, no doubt amusing herself with a tease.
“…time before this raft sinks? Not time enough, I guess. Pity, because I am feeling soooo horny.”
She pulled her top off over her head, shook her breasts then folded her top and stowed it. Her voice dropped a pitch to velvet. “I want something dry to put on after my dip.”
Steiner estimated the raft would be below the surface in five minutes with the weight of both of them, especially bouncing. It could be longer if he found some polystyrene, anything he could fix around the raft. Damn, it was difficult climbing in. The struggle would shorten the float time even more. “Margot?”
“Wow, apart from the stench, this is like a beauty spa’s mud bath.”
She’d slipped over while he’d climbed in. He’d been thwarted and not for the first time. Kind of endearing, and yet…
“Margot, did you learn at school about witch dunking trials?”
She saved her breath and merely splashed him. Their survival was more important than a fumble…but only just. Her teasing gave him hope.
He could hear the dollop of liquid as Margot found her own swim-push methodology. In fact she’d find it easier to float because of her curves compared to his: one biscuit away from anorexia. He should improvise his own water wings for next shift. With eyes eager to shut, and a brain urging shut down, Steiner forced himself to follow a few tasks he’d been thinking through while overboard.
The compass read one-seventy, a pleasant surprise. It meant they hadn’t travelled in circles. They might have been heading away from land just over the eastern horizon but he immediately put that out of his mind. He risked standing and glanced at the horizon. On Earth that would mean five kilometres. Nothing but green. He sat again and rummaged in the stow pouches. The raft jerked with the pushes every five seconds or so. A slower pace than his. Better check over the side soon.
He found the microcam with its transmitter and button battery. He took off his watch to make accessing the vid link easier. There it was; an image of his puckered face, thin, worried. Being immersed in an asparagus swamp didn’t make him a film star. Good luck, Margot. If he could launch the cam, say, a hundred metres up then he should be able to see up to…he did the mathematics on his watch…thirty five kilometres—though less on this smaller planet.
The bow storage had an emergency pouch. He took out an orange plastic flare pistol and smiled. Now for the dangerous bit. He took a cartridge, checked it was the kind with a tiny parachute and hunted for a spoon. He made do with a spatula from the first aid kit. The pyrotechnic compounds would fry the cam before good images were transmitted if he didn’t remove them. Probably potassium perchlorate, various nitrates and magnesium, of which the latter could give him a nasty burn. He scooped the reagents out over the side. He used glue from the raft repair kit to fix the cam, switched it on and checked the image. After setting to record, he aimed directly up, hoping it would parachute back into his hands.
He looked away in case his tampering messed up the explosive detonator then squeezed the trigger. The detonation was louder than he expected but it was followed by a satisfying whoosh and a scream. He opened his eyes thinking he might have shot Margot, but saw the projectile shoot above him.
“What the friggin hell are you doing?”
“Just an experiment. Keep pushing.” As he spoke he heard the planet sigh. At least that was what it sounded like: like the ‘ah’ from a grateful crowd at a firework display.
Perhaps Margot’s ears were full of soup, but she must have noticed the flare. “That was a dud? Had you seen an aircraft?”
Her spluttering gave him a wry smile. Now she’d know the bitter taste, a long way from a beauty treatment. He put her out of his mind as he watched the image. It was too tiny to see properly but once finished, he’d be able to zoom in. The image jerked around so much it was all blurred. He looked up and couldn’t see it. Then a white spot—the parachute. There must be some wind after all, for it was off to their right. He wouldn’t be able to catch it. The raft bumped, settling lower.
He leaned over. “Margot, keep pushing.” Wrong side. No, there was the small jet control and rudder. In the light of the pre-dawn gloom, he looked again but the green soup looked smooth and thick. No ripple or bubbles. “Margot!” He looked around all four sides. No sign. Sweating with panic, he slithered over the stern expecting to tumble onto her. Nothing! He was afraid to dive in case the force of the strange ocean didn’t let him up. Nevertheless, he swam with feet and one arm doing a breaststroke while feeling down. Maybe she’d suffered a stroke or a fit a few metres back. Only last year she beat him in a breaststroke race by a length. He swam for a few seconds then probed down again. More sorties. He didn’t want to lose her. He felt sick.
After a few minutes he remembered the raft. It would sink without him pushing. He looked and there it was, perhaps five centimetres sticking above the surface, less at the stern. It had turned, or he had, and he was at least fifteen metres distant. He over-armed as fast as the gloop would allow. He reached and pushed at the raft, kicking furiously though his feet made hardly a splash. The raft shoved forward and upwaard until he could relax. Margot had ripped out his heart when she ended their tryst but his feelings remained…a tear diluted the soup.
This time there was an 'argh'. The worldly angst of it filled his ears then emptied slowly. Hallucination from the atmosphere? Or from accidental swallowings?
Exhausted, he knew an empty raft would be more buoyant but he’d be dead before he saw twilight again. A plop over to his right made him realize his watch was left in the raft. He gave another big push then climbed in. He found the watch on the floor and snapped it on to examine later. He stood to spot any sign of Margot but all around was the damned pea soup. He desperately needed sleep but it couldn’t happen yet. That thought took him to the first aid kit. He swallowed a Benzedrine followed by two sachets of nutrijuice.
Steiner wanted to make a paddle or sail but nothing larger than the flare pistol was hard plastic. Leaning over the side using the first aid gun’s bag as a webbed hand would only make the raft go in circles. Waiting for the amphetamine to kick in he lay back for a moment, and immediately fell asleep.
He awoke saturated in sickly green sap oozing at his lips while the boat rocked. It was sinking unevenly, and so was he. Like waking up in a more comfortable bed, he wondered if he should bother rising.
No Margot. He couldn’t believe that and listened for her bawling him out for not pushing fast enough. Nothing. No sign of rescue for him either, and the bennies and food wouldn’t last more than a week. His need for constant movement bar fifteen-minute powerless naps cut survival to maybe two days. He gazed at the royal blue sky hoping to see a condensation trail then he remembered the flare and the data on his watch. No time now. He bailed out as best as he could, checked the compass was on one-sixty, and stumbled over the side. After a frantic push to ensure the raft’s temporary survival, he rolled onto his back.
While kicking and using his head to push, he studied the movie. He couldn’t see anything properly until the cam had descended slowly as if in a dance. He kept pausing and zooming until his already sore eyes had to shut a while. Not asleep, just resting. Eventually, he thought he detected a frame with a dark patch. Maybe a giant had left a lump of sourdough bread in his borscht. A few more seconds and he spotted the raft, so he had an estimate of direction. He clambered back on the raft, took the lock off the rudder and hand-paddled to get the bow heading two-ten. Maybe ten kilometres. A day’s swim-pushing.
Once more he jumped over the side, but it was different. He negligently went vertically over. And his feet touched the bottom. He was waist deep.
His heart banged like it was in a race. Did that mean it was this shallow all over? Including where they’d been? Had Margot merely got the huff and waded off in the opposite direction?
A laugh echoed around him.
Steiner desperately put cupped hands to his mouth. “Margot… Margot?” If he wasn’t so worried over her, he’d have laughed at the elementary absurdity of their assumption. Hey, the escape pod had sunk, and it was much more than a metre in all dimensions. Maybe the seabed was softer or deeper there.
He tried a low jump. Squidgy, possibly mud. He didn’t feel up to stooping down to retrieve a sample. He reassessed his situation. It meant he could wade-tow rather than swim-push. He climbed into the raft and removed the digital compass and used its Velcro to hook over his wrist. He aimed at two-ten and pulled on the life-raft’s line wrapped around his hand. It was easier, he supposed, than wading through treacle. More like a verdigris porridge. After half an hour, his legs ached but he pushed on. He wondered if the bed was the slope leading to the island ahead, which he couldn’t yet see. The bennies began to wear off. While he trudged, he only thought of resting, and Margot. Could he build up enough of the seabed to rest the boat on and have a sleep? Too risky. Sun was stronger than yesterday. He could get sunburnt or heat exhaustion, especially as the sea was so warm. Must be in the tropics.
Margot. She was on the same astronaut induction course on the Sojourn, getting ready to explore and make money trading with exoplanet colonies. The fiery redhead had initially showed no interest in his bungled advances. He admired her fastidious approach to work, having to prove herself to fight off nepotism allegations with such famous military parentage. He, on the other hand, had no parents he knew of. After a while he realized he’d been sleepwalking.
He turned and found the raft sinking. He could now see over the side and the green stuff oozed through the sides in three places. Maybe through the bottom too but there was a permanent pool from the previous swamping.
“Hey, Margot, we must have damaged the boat with our love-making. Hah. Oh, we didn’t, did we? Must have been all that clambering in and out, or…” He poked a finger in the rubbery sides. His finger went through! “Okay, Margot, the soup we’ve swam in is eating the boat.”
He pulled at the life-raft to collect valuables: the flare pistol, first aid gun, the nutrients. He hadn’t a rucksack so couldn’t take the water. The raft must have reached a critical un-mass. He abandoned it, turned and headed for the island.
Now a rumbling as if he was in the stomach of a hungry giant.
He’d gone beyond panic. Either he survived, or he didn’t. Even so, his stomach tightened at the thought of his skin being corroded. Not so bothered about his insides. It was unlikely the sea was more acid than the hydrochloric in his stomach. Could be other nasties, though he assumed his queasiness was from stress and grieving rather than poisoning.
Freed from having to tow the raft but encumbered by armfuls of supplies he staggered on. His eyes itched. His skin stung again, and looked more grey than pink, more green than grey. Surely he must be near the island. Juggling his load he poked a spare finger at his watch to get the cam image up.
Bugger! “Margot, I’m just as far away as before! Ah, no, this isn’t live.” You fool. He examined again the dark spot on the image and zoomed in—a bigger dark spot. He looked at the water level, down to his thighs. Spacesuit apparel was thinning and falling apart like the boat. He wondered if the entire ocean was made of disintegrated spaceships and their crew. His eyes focused on the horizon. No sign of land. The reflected light to the camera would be different from shallow water.
“Margot, there isn’t an island, just thinner soup.” Nevertheless, he strode on.
His innate optimism bore fruit as a dark green mound appeared in front. He splashed towards dry, or at least less-wet land.
The island was about a hundred metres in diameter. Gentle waves lapped, more plopped all around, sculpting low terraces. “Please, Margot, let it be high tide now.” Reinforcing that hope was a patch of brighter green at the apex, about three metres above soup level. It might be the driest spot on the planet so he relaxed his arms, letting rations, water and the few bits of hardware tumble. He followed, and he was asleep in seconds.
He dreamt his island turned into the back of a whale, a hundred kilometres long. They’d been on its back all the time and it was about to submerge. They eat phytoplankton, so maybe the mouthfuls he’d swallowed would be safe after all. Water and food in one. He could live for years. A cetacean parasitic human louse. The post-amphetamine low sent him deeper into sleep.
MANY WAKE-UPS and monotonous days later, a non-watery sound stirred Steiner to consciousness. A whooshing noise accompanied a shadow flitting over his opening eyes. There, back towards his sunken escape pod flew a rescue ship. No Sojourn markings, more like a military scout—the Grebe, Margot’s father’s cruiser. What was that pilot doing? Perhaps he hadn’t spotted the island for he was hovering several kilometres offshore. Ah, over the sunken homing beacon.
Steiner remembered to get the flare gun and load an unadulterated cartridge. The firework umbrella was spectacular. Mostly red, probably strontium nitrate. He was pleased to remember. The craft continued away and disappeared into a point. Perhaps another flare? He’d one more. His emotions roller-coastered from hope to dejection. Then the dot reappeared. Steiner fired the last flare. Too hasty, in the wrong direction. The ship overshot his island but dropped altitude. Damn he was going to settle on the ocean surface at least three kilometres away. It would float on real water…
If only Steiner had a working radio. He was watching a catastrophe. The ship sank remarkably quickly; its hatch must have been low. A small object was ejected, and expanded, yellow. Hopefully, its motor would reach the island and with a working radio, food that wasn’t green. No, it’d stopped. He’d not seen the island? Steiner couldn’t see properly at that distance but bet himself that the man, or woman, was standing, gazing three-sixty. Steiner had no flag now his clothes had disintegrated. The boat started up again in his direction. Then stopped. It was sinking, fast. It was as if the asparagus had learnt how to absorb manmade polymers quicker. Now it was gone but a tiny blob was there on the surface.
Steiner cupped his hands. “Stand up!”
His unaccustomed voice echoed as if the planet was helping him.
No reaction, so he took a bearing with his compass, and walked into the soup. Once he was up to his knees he couldn’t see his rescuer but he plodded on, shouting encouraging come-ons. He was used, by now, to wading in the scum, it was his food, water and only companion. After all it was partly composed of Margot.
Eventually, he saw a silver-suited woman. She was stationary though twisting around holding something to her face—no doubt a pair of binoculars. He presumed she was standing and tried to see if she wore a rucksack, hopefully with a radio, or this performance was going to be repeated with the next rescue craft.
He called out, “Hey!”
His yell reverberated like a womb heartbeat.
She turned his way, still peering through the glass. Hooray. They closed in on each other. He was smiling, she continued to examine him. He saw a flash. A shove in his chest threw Steiner back into the gloop, arms flailing.
“What the fuck?” He struggled up on shaky legs. Did she object to his lack of clothes and thought he was going to molest her? It must have been his wild beard. Yet he was still identifiably human, surely? He glanced at his green chest. A neat finger-width hole, must have missed his heart, or he’d know by now. Ah, his heart became two trashcans having a fight. Blood oozed from the hole, emerald colour, matching his skin. Normal, wasn’t it? Those little scales… His knees wavered and gave way.
“Margot, your wait is over, I’m coming in to join you.”