Drink The Water E-Book

Scott Michael Decker

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Don't go near the water.

On a distant planet, xenobiologist Janine Meriwether finds herself haunted by a recurring dream: being dragged to her death by the Nartressan seaweed.

Soon, she learns of three others - a traumatized emergency responder, a troubled seafood mogul and a high-priced escort - who share the same nightmare.

When they begin to investigate the origin of their dream, they discover an abandoned underground research station... and set on a mission to unlock the terrible secrets hidden in the age-old facility.

Leseprobe

DRINK THE WATER

ALIEN MYSTERIES BOOK 3

SCOTT MICHAEL DECKER

Copyright (C) 2021 Scott Michael Decker

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Cover art by http://www.thecovercollection.com/

Typed by Joey Strainer

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

CONTENTS

Titles by the Author

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

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About the Author

TITLES BY THE AUTHOR

If you like this novel, please post a review on the website where you purchased it, and consider other novels from among these titles by Scott Michael Decker:

Science Fiction:

Bawdy Double

Cube Rube

Doorport

Half-Breed

Inoculated

Legends of Lemuria

Organo-Topia

The Gael Gates

War Child

Alien Mysteries (Series)

- Edifice Abandoned

- Drink the Water

- Glad You're Born

Fantasy:

Fall of the Swords (Series)

- The Peasant

- The Bandit

- The Heir

- The Emperor

Gemstone Wyverns

Sword Scroll Stone

Look for these titles at your favorite e-book retailer.

Reader Comments on Drink the Water:

“… a wonderful imagination …” – jeshi99

1

“Don't drink the water.”

Janine looked back, startled.

A man stood a few paces behind her, towering over her.

Kneeling at the end of the dock, nothing between her and the poisonous Nartressan sea, Janine felt a moment of vulnerability. A slight nudge would send her to her death. She couldn't see his face. The night fading, a blue glow to the east, only a few seaside cottage lights illuminated him from the side. “I know,” she replied, standing, “I'm a biologist.”

A dark prominent brow dominated the face, the eyes sunk too far into their sockets. The skin was white from too little sun, the hair black as though dyed. He was clean shaven, dressed in a spare formall that seemed too insubstantial to protect against the chill blowing off the bay, a small maritime insignia at the left breast. In the deeply sunken eyes was the hint of a smile. “You must be Doctor Meriwether,” he said. “Carson, Thomas Carson, Chief Biologist at the Marine Institute.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the brightly-lit building on the hilltop.

“You look nothing like your vid,” Janine said, wondering why she hadn't recognized him. She looked down to make sure she didn't trip over the equipment at her feet, and stepped—

Hands shoved her backward off the pier.

As she flailed her arms for balance, she looked at him, her body falling in slow motion toward the water.

His expression hadn't changed.

The water enveloped her, its chill cold fingers reaching every inch of skin. She didn't fight because she knew she was dead, the Nartressan water containing a prion that exuded a prothrombin antagonist. Her blood would stop clotting and would soon grow so thin as to seep between her epithelial cells. Within minutes, she'd be dead.

Janine felt tentacles wrap her ankles and yank her downward into the darker depths, vines grasping every limb, working their way up her trunk to her shoulders, to her neck, to her head. Seaweed wrapped her head, occluded her sight.

It'll suffocate me before I bleed to death, she thought, feeling curiously unafraid. Then her world went black.

Randall Simmons sat up and gasped for breath, sweat pouring off him, the remains of the nightmare dissipating from his mind.

“You all right?” his wife said, sitting up and rubbing his back.

He shook his head. “Another nightmare, same one.”

“That's the fifth night in a row.”

He wondered how long he could keep doing this. Last night, he'd stayed awake until past midnight, hoping to make himself so tired that he'd sleep through the night.

“You've got to see somebody.”

He just grunted. She didn't understand, and he didn't expect her to.

“Take a day or two off, maybe a week.”

He nodded in dull acknowledgement, both of them knowing he'd do no such thing, both knowing he was committed to his work.

Emergency Medical Technician, and now having nightmares about work. How many coworkers had burned out already, traumatized by the fruitless search-and-rescues, the weed snatchings having left the populace terrified and helpless?

He looked toward the window, a hint of morning light at the edges. Four hours sleep, restless, dreaming of weed strands, of one wrapping his ankle and yanking him off the beach and into the surf.

Randall stumbled into the bathroom, relieved himself, and looked at his reflection. Gaunt and pale, his black hair making his skin look paler than it already was.

His coke came to life, the electrical implant in his ear crackling, a red alert blazing on his retinal. “Alert, all responders. Report to base.”

Randall was in his boots and out the door.

Brian Franks stepped off the yacht, and a seaweed tentacle wrapped his foot, the strand flattening to fit between the boat and dock. It yanked him off his feet, and he fell to the decking with a yelp, the slimy feel of seaweed on his leg matching the sick twist in the pit of his stomach.

“Help!” he yelled, but no one was near, and the weed dragged him to the edge. He grabbed for the gunwale and missed, flailed for anything to grab onto.

More strands grasped his leg, yanked him into the water, and pulled him deep, straight down, the sky receding as he sank into the murk, and he found himself wondering how the bay could be so deep.

And cold …

Her head clouded with weed smoke, Honeydew Diamond stumbled on the beach, thinking she'd put her high-heeled shoe into a hole.

The night dark, she had to look twice, disbelieving.

A seaweed strand wrapped her ankle. She pulled away, thinking it hallucination, and it pulled back, yanking her toward the water.

“Help!”

The friend she'd been with was nowhere around. She grabbed at the sand to stop her slide, the night on the beach with the high-paying customer turning into a nightmare on the beach.

The seaweed tightened and dragged her toward the water. She screamed, the sand scraping off her evening gown up to her waist, her breasts. A tentacle, then two, crept up her legs and around her hips. Again she screamed, a wave crashing over her, the roiling surf taking what remained of her gown over her head. I always knew I'd die in the nude, Honeydew thought inanely …

2

“Don't drink the water.”

Janine looked back, startled.

A man stood a few paces behind her, towering over her.

Kneeling at the end of the dock, nothing between her and the poisonous Nartressan sea, Janine felt a moment of vulnerability, as though a slight nudge might send her to her death. “I know,” she replied, “I'm a biologist.” Why do I have a sudden sense of déjà vu? she wondered.

The night fading, a blue penumbra to the east, only a few cottage lights illuminating him from the side, she couldn't see his face. She stood and looked at him fully, recognizing him finally from the numerous vid coms they'd exchanged. “You must be Doctor Thomas Carson. I'm Janine Meriwether, Assistant Xenobiologist at the Alien Microbiology Institute.” She stepped nimbly over the equipment at her feet to greet him.

They shook.

“Pleased. You look just like your vid,” he said, his dark prominent brow dominating his face above eyes sunk too far into their sockets. The hair was dark against skin too white.

“Aren't you cold in that formall? Seems too insubstantial in the breeze.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the brisk bay wind. She noted the maritime insignia at the left breast.

“Lived here all my life,” he said. “It's invigorating. But come on, the panel's waiting for you. Dismayed them when they found you'd already left the spaceport, but I knew where you'd gone.”

“And you came to find me.” She grinned, having come to the dock to see for herself the poison seas she'd be studying for the next year or so, rather than wait for her escort. Janine decided she liked him.

“You grew up here, didn't you?”

She bent to snap her cases closed. “For a time, but I don't remember much except the cold and the wind.” Snap-snap. “Father was in the diplomatic service, so we never stayed in one place too long. I spent more time in orbit than I did groundside.”

Snap-snap, and ready to go. She handed him one and picked up the other two. Her mobile laboratory. She'd studied the prion remotely, but not up close. The vector resisted being taken off planet. The environment couldn't be duplicated, and the creature disintegrated in the face of all attempts to preserve it. She'd had just enough time before Doctor Carson's arrival to obtain a sample.

“This way,” he said, gesturing toward a waiting hover.

She glanced back at the dock as she followed him, wondering what had happened back there. Just a dream, she thought, shaking it off.

The hover lifted and followed a path that wound its way up the hillside. She glanced down at the small collection of buildings that comprised the hamlet of Wainsport. Sparsely settled, Nartressa was ninety-five percent water, and its main export was seafood.

But not just seafood. The seas were so abundant that over twenty thousand robotrawlers plied its waters continuously with no noticeable drop in biodensity. Although the fish had been harvested for over three hundred years, only in the last forty years had it reached these proportions. The volume showed no sign of slowing despite multiple warnings from conservationists that the harvests were unsustainable.

From the hover window, Janine counted ten such robotrawlers off the coast, and above one hovered a suborbital resupply ship, lifting the trawler's hold right from its belly and dropping in an empty hold, the operation taking ten minutes.

The hover dash squawked. “Doctor Carson, distress call from Randwick. The weed's snatched another one.”

“Pilot,” Carson said. “Alert the panel we got a live snatching. They'll be happy to wait for Janine.”

“Right away, Sir,” the woman said, putting the hover into a tight bank, the engine screaming. She got on the squawk box.

Why didn't he use his trake? Janine wondered, the acceleration pushing her into the seat. She wondered what they would find. “How many people so far, Doctor?” The sector government had sent her to investigate not the forty plus seaweed grabs, but the seaweed itself.

“Forty-five confirmed snatchings. Another twenty people are missing without explanation. Keep in mind, Doctor Meriwether, the population here is small, just under a million, and about half of those people spend most of their time on orbital processing plants. And not a single body recovered.”

“Janine, please. I hate to be called Doctor.”

He grinned at her. “Certainly, Janine. Tom.”

“Pleased.” They shook and shared a laugh. “And prior disappearances? You were going to search the records.”

“Found a few, but nothing that was definitely the work of the weed. Again, no bodies, and so it's difficult to tell whether the weed pulled them under.” In their exchanges prior to her arrival, he'd explained the local term for the seaweed. “No one likes it,” he'd told her, “It clogs the harbor, washes up on the shores, and gets tangled in the trawlers. Like the weeds in your garden, this stuff grows more rapidly than we can get rid of it. So we just call it the weed.”

Previous biodiversity studies had yielded nothing remarkable about the seaweed, except that it was the most abundant flora on Nartressa. It was regarded as the primary food source for the prolific fish populations, more than two thousand species of which had been identified. Oddly, only the one species of seaweed existed, an anomaly that defied logic or explanation, since such genetic specialization tended to be an evolutionary dead-end.

Instead, the weed had thrived.

For three hundred years, humans had lived on Nartressa and had harvested its oceanic bounty without noticeable trouble. Until two years ago. A weed strand had snatched someone off a dock in full view of a crowd of bystanders, and since then, forty-five more people had been dragged into the depths and another twenty were suspected to have met the same fate. In the year since Janine had been contacted, thirty confirmed snatchings had occurred, the rate increasing.

And now they've snatched another person, she thought, the hover banking above a beach, houses clustered at the lagoon edge, a small crowd visible near the emergency vehicles.

Janine sighed as the hover settled.

EMT Randall Simmons quartered the lagoon surface with the drone, its images funneled to his corn through the subdural optimitter as he searched for any sign of the latest victim.

Of the fifteen times he'd been dispatched to snatch sites, he'd not found the slightest sign of the victims. No trace of any weed victim had thus far been found.

Or of the weed that had snatched them. No heat signatures, no chemical traces, no spectrometer signs. Worse, biometer traces left on land of the seaweed's passage bore not a single difference from that of the ocean water itself.

Randall felt the Chief's scrutiny. “Got anything, Simmons?”

He shook his head, the three lines on his corn flat, the surface of the water featureless, but for wind and surf.

“Uh, oh,” the Chief said, “Here comes trouble.”

Randall heard the approach of a hover, its engines whining under strain. In a hurry.

He guided the drone back across the lagoon, bewildered that even in the shallow water, no trace of the victim could be found.

Beyond the police tape, the wail of a woman rose. “Diagnosed with leukemia just last week, and now this!”

Twenty-four year old Benjamin Johnson, who'd gone for a jog around the lagoon, wasn't going to be found either, Randall knew. His mother, the woman watching from beyond the tape, had seen him being dragged into the water from her kitchen window and had commed EMS. Stationed on Randwick Island, Randall's unit covered an archipelago spread across six thousand square miles of ocean. They'd been on scene in minutes, the squad house on the hilltop commanding a view of the surrounding ocean. Despite their quick response, the trail had been cold already, the water an even temperature just ten feet from the shore.

Randall looked over the Chief's shoulder.

An oddly-dressed woman followed a tall, dark-haired man out of the hover, carrying three bulky valises between them. The woman's gotta be an offworlder, Randall thought. The Chief intercepted them, and a heated exchange followed, if the gestures were any indication.

Randall returned his attention to the drone, turning it back once again over the lagoon. The brisk breeze made it somewhat difficult to control even with its antigrav unit, its geopositioning only accurate to within a foot.

He brought up a grid of the lagoon, saw he'd quartered it all. On his trake, he opened a secure channel to the Chief. “Lagoon quartered. Start on the inlet?”

“No, bring in the drone. These critter-happy brain-heads want to talk to you,” the Chief told him over the coke.

Randall brought in the drone, and the mother's wail grew louder.

While he packed it, the offworlder woman started unpacking her cases. Finishing, he loaded the drone onto his hover, and stepped over to watch her.

She pulled a bot out of one case. It looked like some of the planet's bottom feeders, multiple mechanical arms sprouting from a pendulous body the size of his head. It crawled along the police tape like some alien insect.

“Nothin' on the drone, eh?” she said to him, not looking his way.

He looked at her, startled. “Janine, right? What the black hole are you doin' back on this ball o' mud?”

“Randy? That you? Haven't seen you since the fifth grade. Wondered if I'd see anyone I used to know. How've you been?”

He extended his hand. “Could be better. The weed's got us all scared, and it's getting more aggressive.”

“Any other witnesses?” Janine gestured vaguely toward the mother. “She's not in any shape to help. Won't be for awhile, either.”

“Plenty other witnesses, unfortunately, and not a single body. Five in the last two months—”

The bot scouring the ground beeped frantically, sinking its pinchers into the sand two feet from the water. The soft soil erupted.

Randall leaped backward, pulling Janine with him.

A seaweed branch burst from the earth, wrapped the bot and hurled it oceanward, pieces flying different directions as the bot disintegrated.

The branch hovered in the air, as though taking stock, then slithered into the sea.

Brian Franks, CEO of Aquafoods Interstellar, snapped awake at the stern of his yacht and stood, his breathing rough. A shiver shook him. That's not the shiver of cold, he thought, wiping the sweat from his brow and trying to catch his breath. He looked toward the dock, and the steps built into the gunwale that he'd climbed … or thought he'd climbed …

I must have been dreaming, Brian thought, looking down at his leg, then back at the dock.

He glanced at the sun, then his watch. I must have sat down and nodded off, he thought, wondering where the time had gone. If I laid in the sun that whole time, I should be lobster red. He was amazed that he wasn't, the tropical planet of Bora Bora known for its bronzed people.

En route to a visit with the Chancellor, Brian Franks had landed half a world away, had chartered the yacht and sailed it singlehandedly to the Capitol island of Waki-Waki across serene seas of glassy clarity, and had pulled into the berth three hours ago. At seventy, Brian Franks was as fit as he'd ever been. His skin was nearly milk-white, and his hair jet-black. Brian wondered why he hadn't burned. Those melanin treatments must've worked.

He looked again at the steps.

His attaché, Steve, strode along the dock toward him.

Suddenly, Brian was nervous.

“How was the trip, Sir?”

Brian just stared at him.

“What is it? You look startled.” The attaché stepped to the edge of the dock, stopping in the exact place where Brian had been standing when the weed had pulled him …

Brian started to warn him.

Steve stepped onto the yacht without incident. “Are you all right, Sir? You look pale.”

“Help me off this boat,” Brian said hoarsely, finding his voice.

His attaché was leading him into the marina clubhouse before he realized it, his hands cold and clammy, his heart beating rapidly. He couldn't seem to catch his breath, and his brow felt hot and moist.

“This way, Sir.” The waiting hover-limo whined at a low hum.

“Sammy!” said a voice.

Brian ignored it, heading for the limo.

“Sammy Ericson! Hey, Sammy, ain't seen you in forty years!”

Brian whirled. “I don't know you, Sir!”

“Sammy? Come on, it's me, Alfred! Alfred Santos!” The man two feet away wouldn't be put off. “We were stationed together on Nartressa! Don't you remember?”

“You're mistaken, Sir. I've never been there. Pardon.” Brian stepped into the waiting limo.

The man continued to watch him, looking bewildered.

Brian relaxed as the acceleration pushed him into the seat. Nartressa? he wondered. The marina dropped out of sight, the man dropping from his thoughts. Pull yourself together! Brian told himself, wondering what had happened at the dock.

His attaché began to brief him on the upcoming meeting, the hover heading into the city, the steep slopes of the volcanic mountain behind the city dominating the island. The hover-limo took him directly to the penthouse suite of the Bora Bora Hilton, the north tower overlooking the bay. And the blue, blue ocean.

Within minutes, servants had undressed him and were bathing him, another showing him a selection of tuxedos for the evening.

Dried and coiffed, Brian ate a light meal and donned the chosen tux.

“Any other arrangements for the night, Sir?” Steve asked.

Brian stepped to the door of the waiting hover-limo, wondering whether to order a delight for later. “Yes, Steve, but a somewhat older woman than before. Someone with experience.” Better that than trying to forget in a cloud of weed smoke, he thought.

Honeydew Diamond woke sweating on the penthouse divan, the echo of her own scream in her ears, the second time in two days she'd had the same nightmare.

Steve, the nicely-dressed gentlemen who'd acquired her for his boss for the evening, rushed into the room.

“Sorry,” she said, “just a nightmare.” She looked around. No sign that her unnamed customer had returned from his evening engagement.

“He's not back, yet,” Steve said. “Need anything to help you relax? He's got the finest Tilaxian wines, Sechuan powder, Nartressan weed—”

“No!” Honeydew said. Too quickly, she realized.

She'd had nightmares at least once a week for the last four years, since that night on the Nartressan beach, when the wealthy son of the shipping tycoon had taken her there to get the freshest weed right from the source. Instead, it'd gotten her. She didn't remember what'd happened. Didn't remember if she'd been dragged into the water or if someone had stopped the seaweed, or what. She'd found herself on an outbound shuttle, compensated at double her usual rate, a note in her pocket, without any awareness of what had happened in between.

“You look pale,” the attaché said.

She found her reflection in a mirror. Her black hair made her white skin even whiter. “No more than usual. Tea.”

“Huh?”

“Do you have tea? Hot tea?”

“Hot tea, please,” he called to the air.

A bot brought it out.

“Fancy.” She took a sip, felt its warmth spread through her, felt the cold dissipate from inside. The darkness still lurked, but was held at bay. She vowed she would never give in to the darkness. “How soon?”

He hesitated a moment. “The Limo is still at the reception. You have other obligations?”

She shook her head. “I just hate to wait.”

“The immerser is over there. Fantasies, games, adventures. Bystanders or interactives. He'll let you know when he arrives. Just call my name if you need anything.”

She nodded and watched him leave the way he had come. She might offer herself to him if she had the opportunity, confident his boss would double her usual pay. But what she wanted was companionship now. She hated being alone.

The darkness encroached when she was alone.

She pulled her knees to her chest and watched the hoverport for her patron's arrival.

3

Triangular blue tubes coursed through bedrock, sparkling with energy, pulsating at each juncture, like neural signals in some vast underground brain.

Janine sat up, startled, her coke beeping insistently, her dream fading.

The spider-bot was alerting her it had obtained the samples she'd requested.

She was out of bed in a moment and only the icy floor reminded her she needed to dress. Pants, shoes, shirt and jacket, and Janine was out the door, valise in hand.

The compound, although fenced, had only a cursory gate which always stood open. She headed for the nearest hover and cursed it to life, its liftoff slow, comming Doctor Carson.

Her geopositioner showed the spider-bot a mile down the hill, at the marina. Engines screaming, the hover banked and shot that way, the bay-side cluster of houses looking like a quaint seaside village of old New England, manicured hedges separating stone-faced cottages.

She landed the hover beside the boathouse, noticing a knot of people at the dockhead. A few looked her direction as she leaped from the vehicle.

The cluster parted for her. On the dock sat the bot.

Intact.

She knelt beside it, not quite believing. “Who put it together?”

An old salt with peppered hair and a half-mechanized face gestured vaguely out to sea. “Found it on the dock like this when I got here.”

She looked it over.

Undamaged, not a screw missing.

Did I imagine its coming apart? she wondered, opening her valise beside the bot. “All right, monkey, in your nest.”

“Yes, monkey mama,” it replied, and climbed into its setting. The bioanalyzer beeped and lit up, its cover closing automatically to prevent contamination.

The approaching whine of a hover alerted Janine. That'll be Carson, she thought. She looked at the old sailor. “I'm Janine Meriwether, Xenobiologist at the Alien Microbiology Institute on Sydney.” She stuck out her hand.

“Cap'n Baha, Abraham Baha. Pleased.”

They shook. “Likewise. Ever seen this happen before?”

Cap'n Baha shook his head. “Every sea eventually gives up its drowned, but not this one.” He gestured vaguely again out to sea.

“What happened?” She pointed to her own face to indicate his half-mechanized one.

“Harvester got tangled in the weed. We were chopping ourselves loose when it yanked the whole rig under. Net-shank whipped past my face and took half off, exposed all the way to the brain. I was the lucky one.”

Janine frowned. “How's that lucky?”

Cap'n Baha shrugged. “I lived. No one else did.”

Doctor Carson ran over, his hover powering down behind him. He stopped, puzzled.

She gestured at her valise. “Intact, not a screw missing.”

“But …” His brow wrinkled with bewilderment.

Janine shook her head at him. “I've never seen anything like it.” She looked out to sea, wondering what they were dealing with.

“You've been on eight, ten drowning search-n-rescues, right? Worked with teams half across Nartressa, and you know this Xeno, too, eh?”

Randall nodded at the Chief, fidgeting uncomfortably. He stood in front of the Chief's desk, and he'd just been asked to accompany the Xenobiologist Janine Meriwether to multiple snatch sites for the next two weeks.

“Look, Randall, I've got a crew to run, rescues to attend to, medical emergencies to respond to. I need someone to keep this offworlder out of my office long enough for me to do my job. And you're looking haggard, Randall. Needing a break, I can tell. Not sleeping well, nightmares, panic attacks. How about something different for awhile?”

Randall left the office, blinking away tears in the stiff breeze, looking across the saddleback between the EMT compound and the research station.

The island's twin peaks were connected by a road, and off the road were twenty or so cottages, one of them Randall's. The best he'd been able to wrangle from the Chief had been, “I'll have to discuss it with my wife.” Dejected, he walked along the road, wondering what he'd tell her.

The late summer grasses lining the road waved in the wind, just a tree or two between him and a view of the ocean. The planet was virtually devoid of larger vegetation, these few trees having been brought from off-planet.

Unless you counted the weed, he thought.

The water was a dull metal gray, the surface calm with occasional patches of weed visible just above the waterline. From a distance, it just looked like seaweed. The detritus lining every shore, washed up by the tide and the waves, looked like the seaweed that Randall had seen in stills from Old Earth, the leaves rubbery, dark green-brown, the connecting branches looking like the tentacles of some menacing alien creature and, on the ends, some bulbous nodules that served as floats.

The washed-up seaweed was poisonous, and no matter how it was processed, it couldn't be used as food. How the indigenous fish population managed to eat it was a mystery, as well as how the fish ended up being edible. Someone had explained it once to Randall, but he'd been unable to follow the logic. How the weed could be smoked was another mystery, but he'd been told that the smoke induced euphoria and visions.

He walked up the path toward his home, the disarray of the front yard reminding him it needed tending. Little else grew except the native grasses, the imported trees requiring nutrients that didn't occur naturally in the rocky soil.

The house was empty, his wife not yet home from her job at the hospital, three hundred miles and two hours away.

He fixed himself some tea and sat in the living room, still not sure what to tell her. He knew if he didn't take the offer, the Chief would put him on disability. Too many of his coworkers had gone out on stress-leave for the Chief not to see the signs in Randall's face. But going with the Xenobiologist seemed like admitting to failure.

He yawned, knowing he needed to cry, knowing he needed to sleep, the steam from the tea warm against his face.

The triangular blue tunnel led slightly downward, its ribs pulsating evenly, the sound of rushing fluid all around him. The apex of the tunnel was high enough above his head that he didn't need to bend over, but the walls leaning in from the sides caused him to feel claustrophobic. He put his hand to one of the blue, rubbery ribs. Warm to the touch, and reactive, pulling away slightly as though unaccustomed to touch.

The ridged floor also gave slightly as he walked along the tunnel.

He came to a six-way intersection, wondering which way to go. Each tunnel curved away slightly, and he realized as he looked among them that he didn't know which way he'd come. Panicked …

He woke, chilly, sweating, his breathing rough.

Randall wiped his brow, looked around his living room. Beside him on the table, the tea was cold. The windows were darker.

From outside, he heard the whine of an approaching hover, its engine high-pitched.

His wife's shuttle.

What will I tell her? he wondered.

Brian Franks slipped a ten-galacti chit to the valet as his hoverlimo purred to a stop in front of him. He slid into the back seat and the door was closed behind him, shutting out the revelry still pouring from the Chancellor's palace.

The array of electronics lit up as the hover lifted off. Usually, he welcomed the soft voice over his coke, the arrays of symbols across his corn, the soft hum of machinery under his hand.

“Remote office off,” he said, stiffing a yawn.

Coke and corn shut off.

The reception with the Chancellor had gone well. He'd received Brian with all the pomp and circumstance of a visiting dignitary.

Although no contracts were signed, no agreements made, no details discussed, the Chancellor's greeting alone had assured Brian that his company had already been chosen for exclusive rights to trawl Bora Bora's waters.

Aquafoods Interstellar was the largest operator of seagoing fish trawlers in the galaxy, and Brian had made it that way. He'd taken a small company with just four worlds under contract and had extended its reach to the breadth of the galaxy. Now, nearly two thousand watery worlds depended on the distribution that his company provided.

Premier among its products were the Nartressan lines, the crown jewel of Aquafoods Interstellar, making up fully a quarter of its volume by weight. But because the catch from the Nartressan waters was such premium quality, the product cost half-again more than comparable seafood and was fifty percent of AI's profit margin.

The Chancellor's favor in AI's contract would sway the watery world's legislature to grant the company exclusive rights to the rich fisheries of its tropical seas, Bora Bora being eighty-five percent water.

Brian yawned again, realizing he'd been awake more than twenty hours since landing his yacht that afternoon.

The hover entered a triangular blue tunnel, which narrowed, seeming too small for the ship. The clear plasma ball enclosing Brian hurtled through the tunnel, ribs passing so fast they appeared to go the other direction. The ball shot into pool of pulsating liquid, a clear green fluid with fingertip-size bubbles suspended in it, the pulses compressing the plasma ball with each beat, beat, beat.

Brian started awake, gasping as though he'd been drowning. The city lights rushed past below, the hum changing as the hover slowed.

What was that? he wondered, wiping sweat away and trying to still the rapid beating of his heart, heart, heart.