Early on the first night out they were on the recreation deck looking out at the stars and blue-green, mottled image of Traltha shrinking astern while they argued about the Arthurian legend of ancient Earth.
… This is another one of your legends that I’ve never understood? Kledenth was saying. “You had an aging, wise, and enlightened king who, because of the pressures of maintaining order in its country, neglected the physical and emotional needs of its much younger life-mate and queen, who in turn became so emotionally involved with its younger and physically more attractive bodyguard that it ignored the promises of fidelity it had already made and ultimately an unlawful mating for pleasure took place. As a result the once stable and prospering kingdom disintegrated and everybody died, or lived unhappily ever after. I read the story and watched some of the dramatizations, but I still can’t understand why the king allowed it to happen. Was it as wise as you say, unable to communicate its emotions, blind, or just plain stupid? I think it’s a bad story that doesn’t deserve to be told.”
“The point is’ said Joan, “that it’s a bad, sad story that could have been good. I don’t mind if the characters have to suffer provided there is a happy ending. But if people could read the signals correctly, there would be a happy ending without anyone having to suffer?
She looked at O’Mara and quickly looked away again.
“If it had happened on Kelgia” said Kledenth, “both the queen s and the bodyguard’s fur would have warned the king of what was happening right from the beginning. It could have paid more attention to its young life-mate or got rid of the bodygard, nonviolently since it liked them both. And speaking of emotional signals, O’Mara, are you still misreading or just ignoring yours?”
“My favorite character in that story is Merlin? said O’Mara, trying to move the conversation onto safer ground, “the magician who went through time in reverse and met the elderly king long before meeting Arthur as a boy. Merlin has never been given the attention he deserves, and even though time travel in either direction is impossible…
“There speaks the typical hardheaded technocrat? Joan said softly. “Is there no room in your mind for magic?”
“As a child I had plenty of room 1here for magic? said O’Mara, “but only while reading or, as now, talking about the story. Centuries ago it was the technocrats who formed groups and came together as you people are doing now, but they did it to discuss and write and dream about the effects of future advances in science. Now it has all happened. We have star travel, frequent contact and commerce with other-species sapients, antigravity, advanced medicine, everything, and so there is very little room left to us for scientific dreaming. Yet on every civilized planet there are individuals or groups who spend their spare time thinking about, writing about, or discussing the magic and legends of their pasts. Magic is all we have left.”
There was a moment of silence that was broken by Joan. “So you are a closet fantasy fan? she said. “O’Mara, you’re a strange and very interesting man, as well as being a waste of a valuable natural resource, with muscles.”
Kledenth rippled its fur and said, “O’Mara, normally I would tell you exactly what I think and feel about this situation, and you. But I have been studying a tourist book about polite and nonoffensive conversational usage and wish to practice it before we visit Earth. I think your insensitive behavior toward this female makes me conclude that you are mentally disadvantaged, visually impaired, and that your parents were unmarried.”
Before O’Mara could think of a suitably polite response he felt the instant of vertigo that marked their insertion into hyperspace followed by a momentary unsteadiness in the deck underfoot. The artificial-gravity system, he guessed, had made a less than smooth transition during the changeover from compensating for the five-G thrust of the main engines to the weightlessness of hyperspace. Right now the officer responsible would be having harsh words said to him, her, or it by the captain. Even minor fluctuations in the artificial G could cause nausea in some life-forms and spacesickness on a modern interstellar passenger vessel was just not supposed to happen. Apparently the others hadn’t noticed anything.
“Well, there’s nothing more to see here? said Joan. She tried to encircle his upper arm gently with her long, delicate fingers and pull him away from the viewing panel. “Let’s go for another swimming lesson. I haven’t shown you everything yet.”
CHAPTER 20
Their single Tralthan passenger had completed its round-trip tour and left the ship on its home world, where two others, who as honeymooners were no longer single in either sense of the word, had come aboard. As yet they had shown no interest in otherspecies legends or in anything but each other apart from galloping ponderously up and down the sloping ramp on one side of the pool.
“Theoretically,” said O’Mara, “it is possible for two Earthhumans and a pair of overenthusiastic Tralthans to swim together, but…”
“We’d be mad in the head to try it” Joan finished for him. Laughing, she added, “Am I right in thinking that you dislike the water, Kledenth?”
“You’re wrong,” said the Kelgian, ruffling its fur. “I intensely hate, detest, and abhor the water. Let’s move over to the lounger beside the direct-vision panel. There’s nothing to see, but at least we’ll be out of range of the liquid fallout.”
They picked their way between the multi-species exercising and gaming equipment that filled the remainder of the recreation deck area. Apart from the swimmers, two Nidians playing something fast and complicated that involved knocking two tiny white balls between them, and a Melfan who was lying reading on something that resembled a surrealistic wastepaper basket, they had the place to themselves. Kledenth curled itself into a thick, furry S on a nearby mattress while Joan and O’Mara stretched out on loungers.
With nothing but grey hyperspace showing beyond the big direct-vision panel, they lay watching the two Tralthans charging in and out of the pooi and slapping at the water with their total of eight tentacles while making untranslatable noises to each other that sounded like hysterical foghorns. Every few seconds they were hidden by clouds of self-created spray.
“Extroverts,” said Kledenth.
Joan laughed suddenly and said, “Now, there is a life-form that really enjoys swimming?
“Not so” said O’Mara, watching them and trying not to allow the concern he was feeling from reaching his voice. “They love playing in water and they’re safe so long as their breathing orifices aren’t below the surface for more than a few minutes. But their body density is too great for them to be able to stay afloat even with the aid of maximum muscular effort. Those two are being very foolish.”
“Lieutenant O’Mara” she said, wriggling her slender body int8 a more comfortable position on the lounger in a way that immediately upped his blood pressure, “I bow to your superior knowledge of nonswimming Tralthans. But they can’t go on not swimming and expending energy at that rate for much longer, and then it will be our turn to make fools of ourselves… What the hell!”
Slowly their loungers were tipping sideways as if trying to roll their bodies onto the deck, which had developed a gentle slope in the same direction. Water spilled over the nearest edge of the pool and rolled in a six-inch tidal wave toward them, breaking against the deck supports of intervening equipment as it came. Suddenly the deck tilted in the opposite direction, and the miniature tidal wave gurgled to a stop and began flowing back into the pooi as the deck and their loungers became level again. The Tralthans were still creating so much turbulence that they apparently hadn’t noticed anything.