Starfish

The top of the tread slides below them for a moment, a jointed moving road several meters across. Then a plain of jumbled metal shapes, fading into view barely ahead, fading out again almost instantly; exhaust ports, sonar domes, flow-meter ducts. The din fades a little as they move towards the center of the hull.

Most of the protuberances are smoothed back into hydrodynamic teardrops. Close up, though, there's no shortage of handholds. Caraco's smoldering headlight is the first to settle down onto the machine; her squid paces along above her. Clarke sets her own squid to heel and joins the others on the hull. So far there's been no obvious reaction to their presence.

They huddle together, heads close to converse above the ambient noise.

"Where's it from?" Brander wonders.

"Probably Korea." Nakata buzzes back. "I did not see any registry markings, but it would take a long time to check the whole hull."

Caraco: "Bet you wouldn't find anything anyway. If they were going to risk sneaking it this far into foreign territory they wouldn't be stupid enough to leave a return address."

The rumbling metal landscape pulls them along. A couple of meters up, barely visible, their riderless squids trail patiently behind.

"Does it know we're here?" asks Clarke.

Alice shakes her head. "It kicks up a lot of shit from the bottom so it ignores close contacts. Bright light might scare it, though. It is trespassing. It might associate light with discovery."

"Really." Brander lets go for a moment, drifts back a few meters before catching another handhold. "Hey Judy, want to go exploring?"

Caraco's vocoder emits static; Lenie feels the other woman's laughter from inside. Caraco and Brander leap away into the murk like black gremlins.

"It moved very fast," Nakata says. There's a sudden small blot of insecurity radiating from inside her, but she talks over it. "When it first showed up on sonar. It was moving way too fast. It wasn't safe."

"Safe?" Lenie frowns to herself. "It's a machine, right? No one inside."

Nakata shakes her head. "Too fast for a machine in complex terrain. A person could do it."

"Come on, Alice. These things are robots. Besides, if there was anyone inside we'd be able to feel them, right? You feel anyone other than the four of us?" Nakata tends to be a bit more sensitive than the others in matters of fine-tuning.

"I — don't think so," Nakata says, but Clarke senses uncertainty. "Maybe I — it's a big machine, Lenie. Maybe the pilot is just too far aw —»

Brander and Caraco are plotting something. They're both out of sight — even their squids have left to keep them in range — but they're easily close enough for Clarke to sense a rising anticipation. She and Nakata exchange looks.

"We better see what they're up to," Clarke says. The two of them head off across the muckraker.

A few moments later, Brander and Caraco materialize in front of them. They're crouched to either side of a metal dome about thirty centimeters across. Several dark fisheyes stare out from its surface.

"Cameras?" Clarke asks.

"Nope," Caraco says.

"Photocells," Brander adds.

Lenie feels the beat before a punchline. "Are you sure this is a good —»

"Let there be light!" cries Judy Caraco. Beams stab out from her headlamp and Brander's, bathing the fisheyes at full intensity.

The muckraker stops dead. Inertia pushes Clarke forward; she grabs and regains her balance, unexpected silence ringing in her ears. In the wake of that incessant noise, she feels almost deaf.

"Whoa," Brander buzzes into the stillness. Something ticks through the hull once, twice, three times.

The world lurches back into motion. The landscape rotates around them, throws them together in a tangle of limbs. By the time they've sorted themselves out they're accelerating. The muckraker is grumbling again, but with a different voice; no lazy munching on polymetallics now, just a straight beeline for international waters. Within seconds Clarke is hanging on for dear life.

"Yee-haw!" Caraco shouts.

"Bright light might scare it?" Brander calls from somewhere behind. "I would say so!"

Strong feelings on all sides. Lenie Clarke tightens her grip and tries to sort out which ones are hers. Exultation spiked with primal, giddy fear; that's Brander and Caraco. Alice Nakata's excited almost despite herself, but with more worry in the mix; and here, buried somewhere down deep, almost a sense of — she can't tell, really.

Discontent? Unhappiness?

Not really.

Is that me? But that doesn't feel right either.

Bright light pins Clarke's shadow to the hull, disappears an instant later. She looks back; Brander's up above her somehow, swinging back and forth on a line trailing up into the water — could've sworn that wasn't there before — his beam waving around like a demented lighthouse. Ribbons of muddy water stream past just above the deck, their edges writhing in textbook illustrations of turbulent flow.