Why? Because frustration helped us to succeed with Project Consciousness?
Were they only replaying an old theme which had worked once and might work once more?
It occurred to him then that the Moonbase director who had supervised the building and the crew preparations for that original Voidship - old Morgan Hempstead - had served this identical function.
He was our Devil and we knew it. But now I'm Ship's Devi.... and best friend.
Thomas found cynical delight in this thought. Being a friend of Ship carried special perils. Oakes might have chosen the better role. Enemy of Ship. Thomas knew his own role, though. Ship chided him with it often enough.
"Play the game, Devil."
Yes, he had to play the game even though he lost.
A scraping noise intruded on his awareness. The sound came from the locker area where the sub crews prepared for their flights. Dead men's lockers, the Colony called them.
Something moved in the shadows over there, a waddling figure clad in a white shipsuit. Thomas recognized Oakes. Alone. So it was going to be that kind of a meeting.
Thomas took a handlight from his pocket and waved it to show where he stood.
Responding to the light, Oakes changed his path slightly. Oakes always felt diminished by the hangar area. Too much space used for too little return.
Bad investment.
Thomas appeared dwarfed by the immensity of the semi-inflated bag overhead.
These thoughts firmed his resolve. It would not pay to cancel this project outright without a dramatic motive. There were still some who supported it. Oakes knew the arguments.
Learn to live with the kelp!
You did not live with a wild cobra; you killed it.
Yes, Thomas had to g.... but dramatically, very dramatically. Two Ceepees could not co-exist in Colony.
Oakes did not want to know what Lewis and Murdoch had arranged. An accident with the submersible, perhaps. There already had been enough accidents without arrangement. The cost in Shipmen lives had reached abrasive levels. Colonists expected casualties while they subdued this planet, but the latest attrition rate went beyond the tolerable.
As he came up to Thomas, Oakes smiled openly. It was a gesture he could afford.
"Well, let's look at this new submersible," Oakes said.
He allowed himself to be guided to the sub's side hatch and into the cramped command gondola at the core, noting that Thomas offered no small talk, none of the unconscious obeisance of language which Oakes had come to expect from those around him. Everything was business, technical: Here were the new sonar instruments, the remote-recording sensors, the nephelometer....
Nephelometers?
Oakes had to cast back into his medical training for the association.
Oh, yes. Instruments for collecting and examining small particles suspended in the water.
Oakes almost laughed. It was not small particles which needed study but the giant kelp: fully visible and certainly vulnerable. In spite of his amusement, Oakes managed a few seemingly responsive questions.
"What makes you say that everything in the sea has to serve the kelp?"
"Because that's what we find, that's the condition of the sea. Everything from the grazing cycles of the biota to the distribution of trace metals, everything fits the growth demands of the kelp. We must find out why."
"Grazing cycles o.... ?"
"The biota - all the living matte.... The mud-dwelling creatures and those on the surface, all appear to be in a profound symbiotic relationship with the kelp. The grazers, for example, stir the toxic products cast off by the kelp into a layer of highly absorbent sediment where other creatures restore these substances to the food chain. The...."
"You mean the kelp shits and this is processed by animals on the bottom?"
"That would be one way of stating it, but the total implication of the sea system is disturbing. There are leaf grazers, for instance, whose only function is to keep the kelp's leaves clean. The few predators all have large fins, much larger than you'd expect for their size, an....
"What does that have to do wit....?"
"They stir the water around the kelp."
"Huh?" For a moment, Oakes had found his interest aroused, but Thomas had all the earmarks of a specialist blowing his own private horn - even to the esoteric language of the specialty. This was supposed to be a communications expert?
Just to keep things moving, Oakes asked the expected question: "What disturbing implications?"
"The kelp is influencing the sea far more than simple evolutionary processes can explain. Perhaps it supports the marine community. The only historical comparisons we can make lead us to believe that a sentient force is at work here."
"Sentient!" Oakes put as much disdain as he could muster into the word. That damned report on kelp-hylighter relationships! Lewis was supposed to have made it inaccessible. Was the ship interfering?
"A conscious design," Thomas said.
"Or an extremely long-lived adaptation and evolution."
Thomas shook his head. There was another possibility, but he did not care to discuss it with Oakes. What if Ship had created this planet precisely the way they found it? Why would Ship do such a thing?
Oakes had absorbed enough from this encounter. He had made the gesture. Everyone would see that he was concerned. His guards were waiting back there at the hatch. They would talk. Losses were too high and the Ceepee had to look into it himself. Time to end it.
Oakes relaxed visibly. How nicely things were working.
And Thomas thought: He's going to let us go without a struggle. All right, Ship. I'm going to pry into one of Your secret places. If You made this planet to teach us Your WorShip, there have to be clues in the sea.
"Well, I'll want a complete report when you return," Oakes said. "Some of your data may help us begin a useful aquaculture project."
He left then, muttering loud enough to be heard: "Sentient kelp!"
As he walked back across the hangar, Oakes thought it had been one of his best performances, and all of it caught by the sensors, all of it recorded and stored. Whe.... whatever Lewis had arranged happened, they would be able to edit excerpts from the record.
See how concerned I was?
From the sub's hatch, Thomas watched Oakes leave, then slipped back down for a final inspection of the core. Had Oakes sabotaged something? All appeared normal. His gaze fell on the central command seat, then on the secondary position to the left where Waela would sit. He caressed the back of the seat.
I'm an old fool. What would I do? Waste precious time with a useless dalliance? And what if she refused to respond to me? What then, old fool?