The Medusa Chronicles Read Free Page B

animal: a medusa, a creature the size of the Shore itself, swimming in that unimaginably remote sea. This whale had been shaped by evolutionary pressures in an environment not entirely dissimilar to Jupiter’s hydrogen-helium air-ocean, and surely had much in common with themedusae. And yet Falcon felt a kinship of common biology with this tremendous terrestrial mammal that he knew he could never share with any Jovian medusa.
    Ham, the simp Ambassador, was at his side. “There you are, Com­mander Falcon. Another Legal Person (Non-human).” And he pant-hooted with laughter.

2
    During dinner, the USS Sam Shore discreetly submerged.
    Hatches and service ports were closed and sealed silently. Ballast tanks were opened, the in-rush of water politely muffled so as not to disturb the passengers. The dive planes were set for a one-degree descent, barely noticeable even to those guests paying close attention to the level of the drinks in their glasses.
    Falcon noticed, of course. He sensed the angle of the deck, the tilt from one end of a corridor to the next. Through the sensors in his under­carriage he picked up the change in the subsonic frequency coming from the engine, signalling a decrease in the power output, possible now that the ship was moving underwater in its optimum environment.
    Very few things escaped Falcon.
    After dinner, and before Springer’s speech, he and Webster went for a walk.
    The so-called service deck of the Shore , beneath the immense hangar deck, was a cavern of girders and rivets and rails and cranes and rotating platforms, where once fighter planes and nuclear-tipped missiles had been fuelled, serviced, refurbished. Now this brightly lit chamber had been transformed into a combination of shopping mall and upper class hotel—and on an astounding scale, a full mile of it.
    â€œYou should feel at home here, Howard,” Webster was saying. “After all, if the Queen Elizabeth hadn’t crashed, you’d have ended up a cruise liner captain too, wouldn’t you? Of course, nowadays you’d never get a dress uniform to fit . . .”
    Falcon ignored him and inspected the fixtures. For this prestigious cruise the ship’s owners, together with the World Food Secretariat, Marine Division, had used the space to mount an exhibition of the modern ocean and its uses, presumably intended to prompt well-heeled passengers to become investors. Falcon and Webster glanced over exhibits, models and holographic and animated images of various wonders natural and otherwise—although Falcon was unsure if anything about Earth’s oceans could still be called natural. At the close of the twenty-first century a large proportion of mankind was fed by tremendous plankton farms, sustained by the forced upwelling of nutrient-rich materials from the ocean floor. As land-based mineral sources had been depleted the sea bed had been extensively mined too. Of course, in this year 2099, humanity was more than conscious of the needs of the creatures with whom it shared the world—and even, in the case of the uplifted chimps, shared political power. But the whole Earth was becoming a managed landscape, Falcon thought, like one vast park—which was one reason people like himself became hungry to leave.
    They found a panel on career opportunities, and Webster bent to see, curious. “Look at this stuff, Howard. The specialisms you can take on: seaman­ship, oceanography, navigation, undersea communications, marine biology . . .” He straightened up stiffly. “You know, the Bureau of Space Resources uses some sea floor locations for simulation work. You can trial suits designed to cope with the heavy pressures we will ­encounter on Venus, for instance. Shame we can’t go see that during this jaunt.”
    â€œNo,” Falcon said, “this tub is strictly a shallow diver. Just enough to hide from enemy aircraft—”
    â€œExcuse