"Escape From The Crater"

Escape From The Crater

by Carl L. Biemiller

Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York.

The boat was quiet when Kim awakened, except for the still-sleeping cryo’s muted snores and the little, barely noticeable hums of functioning instruments busy about Adam’s never-ending housekeeping and data recording. Kim checked the banks automatically, noted that the other hydronauts had already done their chores, and that Tuktu had logged seismic readings. He noted the time: seven-thirty; sunlight spilling in the open hatch, vitamins, tea, and what looked like fish-hash cakes in an induction pan. A light glowed on the com console, and he leaned over to poke a button and listened to Toby’s voice.

“Kidnapped,” she said, “to ride some kinda fish in the nine o’clock parade. We let you sleep because Genright didn’t want you arguing about anything he might take from ship’s stores. He says to wake up Major Bell with a dextrose-protein shot. He can know he’s being stabbed while he’s asleep. We also thought you might want to talk to him without us being around, because you are so mysterious lately, but we know what’s going on anyhow, as usual. And the tunnel videos are in your own locker, not the boat files. We’ll use usual contact with you from the lake, but Genright says watch out for big amplification from the parade grounds.

“Tuktu says that if you’re real hungry, there are two lake trout on a string from the buoy, unless the Kirl have snaffled them by now. What’s a warden like me doing around here anyhow?”

Kim took a gel ampule from medical stores and gave Major Bell and air inject, at the same time shaking him awake.

The Major looked at Kim blearily, then grinned.

“Can you swim?” asked Kim.

“Sure.”

“Come on, then. Eat when we get back.”

They shattered the little layer of morning mist on the lake surface, already begun to shred with a movement of air that smelled of woodsy things on the shore. The day promised fine and the mountains looked near enough to touch. The water was chill, its wet shock immediate. And as it closed over Kim’s head, he wondered when and how much to tell their new guest about their situation and his own. He surfaced with the decision, now and almost everything, but he reserved a generous expanse of almost.

The cryo’s blond head emerged with a slurping grin and emitted a cry of pure joy loud enough to divert a hunting kingfisher from the target of its dive, and cause it to fly off squeaking loud bird curses. There was much to be said of Major Bell.

He was a good listener too. They returned to Adam, climbed into zip suits, demolished the fish hash, and the Major said not one word until Kim had said what he intended to say. Even then, he sat a full minute in reflection before he spoke.

“See if I’ve got it straight. Mission accomplished: found Kirl. Orders to eliminate Kirl. Disregarded same and now subject to disciplinary action likely to escape Kirl and help them at the same time. Collateral problem: how to make solution of present problem stave off future wrath of superiors.”

“That’s about it,” said Kim.

“No, it isn’t,” snapped Major Bell. “How to fit the random and unexpected element, namely me, into your plans sensibly and, preferably, with my full cooperation. You think I’m stupid? I’ve lived through trouble before, you know.”

“Died through it too. And if I weren’t going by the regulations, you might have stayed dead. I didn’t need more complications, you know. At that, we barely brought you through. We’re not experts in that type of work.”

“Okay, what do you trade for my help?”

Kim laughed, a young and bubbling, infectious sound.

“That swim felt mighty good, didn’t it?”

Major Bell shook his head. “Kids,” he said, “where are the rest of the wardens?”

“I hate to confuse you so soon in your new life, but they are shaping up a parade.”

Major Bell looked at his hands. He used one to pinch the other. “Yes,” he said, “the swim was nice. I have the feeling that I might need to see a parade about as much as I need anything.”

There was a shadow in the hatch, and Moses shouted from it.

“About that time, isn’t it?”

The Kirl elder was in good spirits. The morning was in his whiskers. They were rayed erect and the tendril mist was in them, each droplet a jewel of sunlight.

“My people are here,” he said. “I’ve told them we’re ready to go up-lake. Nothing more. Where is the, ah, procedure?”

His people were there. They lined the shore and they festooned rocks and they rafted together floating belly up in the water, some of them patently dozing to lullabies of ripples.

“An opulence of otters,” murmured major Bell.

“Rather a congress of Kirl,” corrected Moses.

Kim looked at their bland faces.

“Fur,” he said, “as I can see.”

A deep and hollow voice rolled from the lake, awakening the assembly and turning all heads in the direction of the sound. “Boom, boom, boom, boom…”

“They’ve got the mask mikes amplified,” said Kim.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom…”

“Oh, Kirl…”Toby Lee’s soprano reached into screechier octaves. It was followed by the pair of churchly basses chanting.

“See the great Forerunners
Swimming down the lake
Note, at least, two tons of meat
Trailing in their wake.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.”

The Kirl in the lake left it hastily. There were squeaks and barks and chatter and shouts from the startled assembly. There was a unified moan of awe and silence.

The oarfish was beautiful as a displaced arc of rainbow in the clear water, its fifty-odd feet of undulating length a sinuous sword flashing silver and blue, it incredible dorsal a livid streak of crimson.

And in the middle of that streak, Toby Lee in a wet suit, black and shining against the red, sat astride, an unbelievable rider on an impossible steed.

“Genright must have remembered that his catch could lose various segments of its body without harm and trimmed off a saddle,” said the Kirl.

“Well, it can’t dive with Gen and Tuktu swimming up there, holding its head out of water with a net every now and then” added Kim.

“That’s the most beautiful ugly thing I’ve ever seen,” said Major Bell.

“My people, nor I, have never seen Regalecus glesne, and we live in the sea.”

Something was happening out on the lake. The chanting booms stopped. A wild yell pealed up the sound range.

Kim dived for the hatch. “Gonna cut the com console before something blows with all that noise,” he said by way of fleeting explanation. “Those clowns are over-amplified.”

The yell splintered into words of a sort.

“Stand by to repel boarders!”

Toby Lee’s voice was operatic. It pierced. “Abandon ship!”

“Turn the critter loose,” bawled Tuktu.

Kim came back to Adam’s deck in two bounds.

Two hundred yards away from the one-unit serpentine parade, and coming at flank speed was Tube Steak, newly risen and cutting the diagonal of the line-of-march. There was a bow wave at his forehead. His fluke churned the lake water into a frothy meringue at his stern. It may be that the old California gray bull had never seen an oarfish. It was obvious that he intended to dine at length nonetheless. And he was rapidly closing the gap between his huge, baleen-draped jaws and the longest dinner of his life.

“That’s a whale!” gasped Major Bell.

From the slight elevation of the deck they watched Genright and Tuktu flip the net from the head of the oarfish, turning it loose. Kim watched Genright deftly touch the creature’s neck with a pulsar tube. The oarfish squirmed away in a surging squiggle and, with panic reaching its pea-sized brain, it fled like a broken arrow, and dived away at high-speed up-lake.

“TUBE STEAK, YOU BIG BOOBY, THAT’S MY OARFISH. YOU LET HIM GO!” Genright’s outraged roar rolled across the lake into the trees, and the aspens among them allowed their leaves to quiver.

“HELP ME STOP HIM, TUK!”

“YOU WANNA TRY FOR STUN?”

“I WANNA PUNCH HIS NOSE!”

Together they swam into the path of the onrushing whale. Tube Steak was not inclined to play. He boiled over them, his wash spilling them into twin somersaults to vanish beneath the water. Genright emerged still shouting.

“YOU SPOILED MY PARADE, YOU OVERGROWN SMELT!”

Kim collapsed on the deck, holding his sides, tears streaming form his eyes, choking with laughter. The old Kirl was on all fours, honking with unrestrained glee. Major Bell was howling with the same form of insane happiness. And from the rocks along the shore came the multitude sounds of Kirl yipe, and a wave of warmth born in a shared joy in the ridiculous. The Kirl were laughing loudly and long.

The noise rolled over the swimmers in the lake. They stared at each other, and by mutual consent they dived and headed for the Adam underwater.

“I would never have believed it,” said Major Bell. “Never, never, never.”

“Remarkable, remarkable,” muttered the old Kirl.

Kim was suddenly sober, his face stricken.

“A great demonstration of teeth,” he muttered, “from a crew of fools with a fool in command.”

The great Kirl put a huge paw on Kim’s arm.

“No, no,” he said. “Don’t you see? You conquered the Kirl with something better than teeth. Listen to my people.”

Toby, Genright, and Tuktu came up the knotted line to the deck and stood awash in drippings.

“Sorry about that,” said Genright.

“Will you stop that and listen,” insisted Moses.

There is no surf in any lake, but there was the sound of surf along the shore, a sustained, exuberant beat of noise. The Kirl were cheering.

Impelled by some long and almost forgotten instinct, Toby Lee shook off her mask and curtsied. Genright and Tuktu, quite stiffly and formally, bowed. The surf of sound from the shore rose and washed over the deck of the Adam.

“Kids,” said Major Bell, blowing his nose.

There was a dark fire in the old Kirl’s eyes.

“Go north up the lake when you are ready, young Forerunner. I will swim with the Kirl,” he said.

Chapter One	Chapter Two	Chapter Three	Chapter Four	Chapter Five
Chapter Six	Chapter Eight	Chapter Nine	Chapter Ten	Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve	Chapter Thirteen	Chapter Fourteen	Chapter Fifteen

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