It was A ferryboat.
Rather, that’s what it looked like when it first appeared above the horizon. Then it started looking strange. There was a boat there all right, or at least the superstructure of one, but close to the waterline something else was going on. Far out, it looked like a ship run aground on a shoal, but as we watched, the shoal moved with the boat — it looked like it was carrying the boat. Other objects appeared, globular translucent things in the water, and as the whole improbable apparition neared shore, they looked like inflated bags bobbing in the water at the edges of the dark line of land. The overall impression I got was one of a shipwrecked vessel plunked down on top of an island. There was even some vegetation growing here and there.
The boat-structure was big enough, and the island was fair-size as islands go, but for something moving in the water it was huge, filling the mouth of the harbor until there was barely room to float a dinghy to either side. The superstructure was just that; there was no hull. There were three huge decks up on pilings smack in the middle of the island, and the design was out of the last century, possibly earlier, all the way back to the late 1900’s. It looked new, gleaming white with red and gold trim, proudly thrusting flying bridges to port and starboard, and sporting three, count ’em, three smokestacks, two of which belched puffs of white smoke. Why they were doing that was anybody’s guess. Crewmen were scurrying all over the decks. Humans mostly, but there were a few aliens. The island proper was also busy, but here there were no humans. Animals — beings — slithered across the ground toward the leading shore, converging on a point that would be closest to the beach. They were seallike creatures, from what we could see, with sleek wet bodies, three sets of flippers, with the front pair looking larger and very prehensile, fingerlike. Their bodies were a dull orange color.
What was very strange was the surface of the island. It was not land. Between clumps of seaweed and barnaclelike growths there lay a base of brownish-gray blubbery material, mottled with whitish scars and creases. There was more to see. Dotting the island were clusters of domed structures made of piled sea vegetation, cemented with mud or congealed sand. The seal-beings lived in these; some were still wriggling out of roof-holes and rushing to join the others.
The shape of the island was more apparent now; it was roughly oblate, a squeezed circle, with six air-bag structures positioned at even intervals around it. The bags were multi-compartmented and looked like gigantic floral arrays of balloons bunched in the water. Whether they contained just air or a lighter gas wasn’t apparent, of course, but obviously they supplied flotation. At the leading edge of the island was a high bulge.
The shore slowly came alive. Humans stretched and yawned, mashed out cigarettes, knocked out pipes. Hatches slammed and engines started. Lines began to form starting at the top of the wide, inclined section of beach.
We walked along the curve of the harbor and watched, fascinated.
“Are we to assume,” Roland said, “that everybody’s supposed to drive up on this thing and park?”
I looked the island over. No guard rails, lots of obstacles, no apparent way to get up to the decking, lots of curving slippery surface. “Can’t imagine that,” I said, “but I can’t imagine the alternative.”
“It’s a big fish and it swallows everyone,” Susan said. We all stopped and looked at her. She giggled. “What else?” she asked.
About fifteen minutes later, we stood on a narrow strip of sand to one side of what we now knew to be the loading ramp. “I’ll be damned,” John said.
About seventy-five to one hundred seal-creatures were lined up behind a bony ridge that crested the forward bulge like a mammoth brooding brow. The creatures were using their forward flippers to beat rhythmically on the ridge. It all seemed orchestrated. Sections of them would start a rhythm sequence while another slapped out a syncopated beat. Then the first group would stop while the other played on, while still another ensemble joined in. As the percussion concerto continued, the high curving bow of the island inched closer to the end of the loading ramp. It took a while. Finally the two islands met, and the creatures began to beat in unison, smacking out a single rhythm — one . . . two . . . three . . . one-two-three; three long, three short, keeping perfect time. The forward bulge began to rise slowly, as if on hydraulic lifts, raising the orchestra of drummers with it.
I think it was Susan who gasped audibly when the gigantic eye rose out of the water. I know it shook me. It’s one thing to calmly contemplate a creature of that size. As it was docking, I mulled over the biophysics of the thing. How long would it take a nerve impulse to travel from one end of the critter to the brain (wherever that was) and back again? Thirty seconds — a minute? How about internal heat? Getting rid of it would be a problem. Propulsion also. If the air-bag organs had evolved from fins to flotation aids, how did the creature move? But it was quite another thing to have that eye staring at you, an alien eye to boot. The outer structure was a red polyhedron with hexagonal facets. At the center of each hexagon was a six-sided pupil slowly contracting, and the whole eye was shot through with a riot of purple veins. I forgot about the biophysics and let the wonder wash over me.
And when that subsided, there was the mind-numbing sight of the mouth opening to contend with. The cavity was curved and so big we couldn’t see the other side. The immediate interior was lined with a grinding surface composed of pinkish-white slabs of translucent cartilage, hexagonal in shape. Farther back in the mouth the light grew dim, but we could see pale tissue forming the entrance to the throat, and below it, like a floor, a dark area. A tongue. This began to flow forward like a moving carpet. It swept over the tooth surface and came out to kiss the beach. The tongue was purple.
The punch line came when a group of crewmen in white uniforms came walking out of the cavernous interior and stepped onto the sand. They took up stations a few meters apart and began to admit vehicles into the mouth of the beast. We all laughed.
“How biblical,” John said.
“Told you!” Susan said triumphantly.
Biophysics my ass. How do they mate?
“Well . . . ” I thought of something. “Who’s got money?”
The Teelies gave me hopeless looks.
“I have some,” Darla said. “The ride’s on me.” She frowned. “That is, if I have enough for all of us.”
“Wonder if they’re taking on deckhands.”
We made our way through the lines of vehicles moving down the ramp. The men at the entrance were taking fares. I walked up to the nearest of them. He spoke no English, and our exchange in ’System got me nowhere. He gabbled something and motioned impatiently toward the next man. Everybody followed me over.
“Excuse me . . . sailor?”
“Huh?” This one was young, on the chubby side, with stringy blond hair. Fuzz sprouted on his upper lip. His uniform was immaculate, flowing with red and gold embroidery, and he wore a matching white cap with a black shiny visor. “I’m an officer, kamrada. Belowdecks Supervisor Krause. Whaddya want?”
“Sorry, Mr. Krause. How do we book passage on this . . . vessel?”
“Don’t have tickets?”
“No. Where do we get them?”
“From me. Where’s your vehicle?”
“Had a breakdown. How much for just passenger fare?”
He craned his head around and glanced at us, then turned to take another fare. “Uh, that’d be — ” He jerked his head around again and noticed Darla. “Yeah. That’d be a hunnert consols.”
“Consols?”
“Yeah, consols. Consolidation Gold Certificates. CGCs. Consols.” He took a blue square of plastic from a gloved alien hand. The face of the card bore a stylized picture of a boat mounted on an island-beast.
“You don’t take Universal Trade Credits?”
He laughed. “Not on this stretch of road, kamrada.”
“Sorry. You see, we just came from —”
“Yeah, I know, you just lucked through. That right?”
“Lucked . . . yes, we did.”
“Well, welcome to the Consolidated Outworlds, kamrada. Your UTCs won’t buy you merte out here.”
The guy’s manners were growing on me like an itchy wart. “What do you take from aliens?”
“Gold, precious metals, gems, anything. Hey, I got fares to take. Okay?”
“Sorry to put you to any trouble, but we’re in a pickle.”
“Yeah, yeah. One troy ounce of gold’ll do it. Apiece, that is.”
“Jake.” It was Darla, holding out some gold coins to me. I took them. They were very old pieces. South African gold. Amazed, I turned to her and was about to ask where she’d gotten them, but she smiled, sphinxlike, and I knew. That bottomless pack again. I looked at the coins. They were probably worth more as collector’s items than as specie — on the black market, of course. The CA handled all gold. I handed them to Krause.
“Jesus Christ.” He jingled them, feeling their weight. “Where’d you snag these, a museum?” He bit into one, checked the tiny toothmark. Something about pure gold; you can tell. “Yeah, they’ll do. But . . . uh, you’re two short, right?”
“I’m afraid that cleans us out. Is it possible that some arrangements could be made? Otherwise we’ll be stranded here.”
“Sorry, no credit. But . . . well, maybe we can work something out. Know what I mean?”
“Such as?”
He was eyeing Darla. “Like to buy you and your friends a drink. In my cabin, of course. Can’t fraternize with the passengers ’cept at the Captain’s table, but what the Old Man don’t know . . . unnerstand?” He took more tickets. “Yeah, in my cabin, especially your femamikas here —” He did a double take, finally noticing Susan’s breasts. “Sure would be my pleasure.”
“Look, friend —”
“Jake, take it easy.” To Krause, Darla said, “I’d love to lift a few with you, sailor, but my friend Susan’s a teetotaler. You and I can have a pretty good time, though, just the two of us.” She actually winked at him. “Deal?”
He laughed. “I dunno, three heads are better sometimes.” He must have noticed my face turning black, and sobered up. “Yeah, sure. Just you and me.”
I held out my hand. “Our money, please.”
Darla took my arm. “Wait a minute.”
“Hand it over, sailor. We’ll starhike it.”
“Suit yourself,” Krause said, reluctantly handing me the coins, “but hikers don’t have much luck around here. Limit’s four passengers per vehicle, big extra charge for more.”
Yeah, sure. “We’ll take our chances.”
“You’re going to be sorry come high tide, kamrada.”
When we got back to the beach, Darla was ready to kill me. “Starhike it? Who’s going to pick up five of us plus an alien anthropoid?”
“We’ll go in different vehicles.”
“Feel lucky today? I don’t.” She stamped a boot in the sand. “Damn it, Jake, sometimes I don’t understand you. Do you actually think I’d let that cretin get near me? Sure, I’d go to his cabin, even have a few with him. But you’d be surprised what else I have in that pack. Little transparent capsules that make you very sick for a long, long time. And they work fast. Wouldn’t kill him, of course. Understand? Besides, even if I had to sleep with him . . . ” She didn’t finish.
She was right. “Sorry, Darla. I should have finessed it.”
“But you have to take every trick, don’t you?” She was furious with me — and proud of me, all at once.
“Jake, Roland?” John was standing at the waterline, letting little waves lap over his feet. “Is it my imagination,” he asked, “or is the water getting higher?”
“He’s right,” Roland said. “I’ve been noticing it. And here’s the cause.” He pointed to the eastern sky.
The edge of a huge white disk was showing above the horizon. A moon, and a big one, twice Luna’s size, I guesstimated. The tides would be fierce, and high tide here could mean complete inundation. Great.
“What should we do?” John asked.
“I’m going back to him,” Darla said. “I hope he’s still in a mood to deal.”
She was so right I wanted to strangle her. “Hold it a minute. There’s got to be another way. He could be trouble.”
“Not the type. I’ve met his ilk before, the chubby little fart. You stay here. I can handle him.”
“Maybe one of the other men . . . ”
She gave me a world-weary look. “Jake.”
“Right.” I gave it up. Our relationship was about as well-defined as ghosts in a fog. Not only did I not have a leg to stand on, the leg had nothing to stand on.
“What’s that noise?” Roland asked.
I tore the beeping key from my pants pocket. “Sam! Sam, is that you?”
“Who the hell were you expecting, the Chairman of the Colonial Politburo? Of all the goddamn stupid things you’ve done, boy, this has to be the grand prizewinner. There’s three things any moron can learn in life without too much trouble, but you can’t seem to get ’em straight. Want to know what they are? I’ll tell you. Don’t spit out the port at Mach one, don’t eat blue snow on Beta Hydri IV, and don’t ever poke your nose through a potluck portal! Common sense, right — and you’d think any pudknocker’d pick that up real easy, but not you, boy, not by a long shot —”
We laughed and laughed and laughed.