Polymath Read Free

dragging feet leaving smeared marks. The dying horror pegged to the ground sensed his passage and hunched once more to try to strike at him.
    “Now just a moment!” Aldric said hotly, starting after him. “You can’t leave Lex to—”
    “Aldric!” Lex launched the name on the air like a dart. “Aldric, let him alone.”
    “The hell!” Aldric snapped. “Look—it was his idea he should go, wasn’t it? Are we to waste another hour finding a suit to fit me or Cheffy, have it tied up, go hunting for different boots? It took most of yesterday to find enough wearable kit!”
    “Keep your temper,” Lex said. “Think of it his way. How would you like to go see your old home wrecked and smashed, with alien creatures crawling in every corner?”
    “Did I suggest it? Did I?” Aldric wiped his face. “And—hell, talk about homes being wrecked and smashed!”
    “Calm down, Aldric,” Cheffy said. “Lex is right. At least we don’t have to
see
what’s become of our homes.” He spat over the side of the boat.
    Aldric drew a deep breath. “OK,” he said resignedly. “Let’s go hunt out a suit for me.”
    Lex hesitated, thinking wryly how just a few minutes ago he had rebuked Delvia for taking risks. But—he excused himself—a survey of the ship was essential before tomorrow’s assembly, when they were due to take stock of their resources. He said, “I can go down by myself.”
    “You’re crazy,” Aldric said. “Without a phone? When we don’t know half the species of sea-life around here? What it’s likely the rutting season for things as dangerous as that multilimbed horror Bendle had to nail down? You’re apt to wind up as stocknourishment for a clutch of eggs!”
    “I’ll keep my hatchet in my hand. Oh, get in the boat!” Lex was suddenly impatient. “We need to know what’s happened inside the ship!”
    And, as another argument struck him: “I did two dives last fall, damn it, and the captain hasn’t done one before. It’s quite likely safer for me on my own.”
    Aldric shrugged. “OK—but I don’t have to like it.”
    He bent to the stern, leaned his full weight against it, and pushed it free of the sand. It rocked violently as he lumped aboard. For a minute or so Cheffy fumbled with the oars, finding them hard to synchronize; then he abruptly got the hang of it and the boat began to move steadily over the calm water. On the beach Bendle’s team paused in their work to watch.
    Arbogast was plodding on without turning. Lex saw Delvia and Naline talking agitatedly, obviously about the captain; he hoped neither they or anyone else would run after him demanding explanations.
    Determinedly, he looked ahead toward the tarnished but still-gleaming spaceship. It was possible to see how the curve continued below the surface, but it would be some time before they were close enough to tell what part of the vessel was uppermost. As a mode of progress lowing a boat was apparently inferior even to walking.
    “It’s moved five hundred yards at least,” Aldric said from the stern. “Lex, how do you imagine it traveled so far?”
    “Rolled, I guess. Too heavy to have floated out.” Who could have predicted that on a moonless world—hence effectively a tideless one—no beach was stable? There were no meteorologists among their panicky handful of fugitives; in fact there were hardly any trained personnel,so that a dilettante like Cheffy and a hobbyist like Aldric had emerged as leaders where technical matters were concerned. He went on, “If I remember the old layout correctly, that whole stretch of ground where the ship rested must have been undermined. And we know the bottom shelves gently. As soon as it rolled enough for the locks to admit water, there was nothing to stop it sinking deep into the seabed. Must have been as fluid as a pumping-slurry with the currents.”
    “If only the locks hadn’t been open,” Cheffy said. “Remember the noise? Wind blowing across the opening, making the