Across the Sea of Suns by Gregory Benford Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes against the glare and looked out at the shallow troughs. The sea warped and rippled where the thing had just disappeared. Warren sensed that it had judged them now and was gliding back in the blue shadows under the raft, coming around for its final pass. It would not see the shirt until it turned and that would bring it up and near the corner where Warren now stood, between its path and Rosa. He drew the arrow back in a smooth motion, sighting, straining, sighting—
    Rosa saw the dim shape first. She flicked the rag out of the water with a jerk. Warren saw something dart up, seeming to come up out of the floor of the ocean itself, catching the refracted bands of light from the waves.
    Rosa screamed and stepped back. The snout broke water and the mouth like a cut was leering at them and Warren let go the arrow
thunk
and followed it forward, scrabbling on all fours. The thing had the arrow in under the gills and the big flaps of green flesh bulged and flared open in spasms as it rolled to the side.
    Warren snatched at the arrow line and missed. “Grab the end!” he called. The arrow was enough to stun the Swarmer but that was all. The thing was stunned with the nail driven deep in it, but Warren wanted more of it now, more than just the killing of it, and he splashed partway off the raft to reach the snout and drag it in. He got a slippery grip on a big blue ventral fin. The mouth snapped. It thrashed and Warren used the motion to haul it toward the raft. He swung himself, the wood cutting into his hip, and levered the body partway onto the deck. Rosa took a fin and pulled. He used the pitch of the deck and his weight to flip the thing over on its side. It arched its back, twisting to gain leverage to thrash back over the side. Warren had his knife out and as the thing slid away from him he drove the blade in, slipping it through soft tissue at the side and riding up against the spine. Warren slashed down the body, feeling the Swarmer convulse in agony. Then it straightened and seemed to get smaller.
    The two stood back and looked at the scaly green body, three meters long. Its weight made the raft dip and turn in the swell.
    Something sticky was beginning to drain from the long cut. Warren fetched a can and scooped up the stuff. It was a thin, pale yellow fluid. He did not hear Rosa’s whimpering, stumbling approach as he lifted the can to his lips.
    He caught the cool, slightly acrid taste of it for an instant. He opened his mouth wider to take it in. She struck the can from his hands. It clattered on the deck.
    His punch drove her to her knees. “Why?” he yelled. “What do you care—”
    “Wrong,” she sputtered out. “Ugly. They’re not … not
normal
… to … to eat.”
    “You want to drink? Want to live?”
    She shook her head, blinking. “Na … ah, yeah, but … not that. Maybe …”
    He looked at her coldly and she moved away. The carcass was dripping. He wedged it against a log and propped cans under it. He drank the first filled can, and the second.
    The dorsal and ventral fins sagged in death. In the water he had seen them spread wide as wings. The bulging brain-case and the goggle eyes seemed out of place, even in the strange face with its squeezed look. The rest of the body was sleek like the large fish. He had heard somebody say that evolution forced the same slim contours on any fast thing that lived in an ocean, even on submarines.
    The Swarmer had scaly patches around the forefins and at each ventral fin. The skin looked as though it were getting thick and hard. Warren did not remember seeing that in the photographs of dead ones, but then the articles and movies had not said anything about the Swarmer scouts either until a year ago. They kept changing.
    Rosa crouched under the lean-to. Once, when he drank, she spat out some word he could not understand.
    The third can he set down on the boards halfway between them. He cut into the body and found the soft pulpy places where it was