Orb (32 page)

Of course, our other immediate concern was the Orb. By the time Kelly, followed by Diana, and Paul, holding Angie, reached us the Orb had departed, either having disappeared over the horizon or beneath the surface. All were gone save one, the constant, unfathomable OceanOrb.

“You almost gave me a heart attack, but you damn well saved our lives!” Diana said, addressing Thompson, although it’s likely he never heard her.

To Kelly, also, all else except saving Melhaus went unnoticed. She took over.

“Hypovolemic shock,” she said after assessing his injury. “Keep applying pressure. The amount and color of blood indicates no damage to a major artery or lung penetration. He has a chance.”

“Make the most of it,” Thompson said, as if making the words an order mattered. “Sorry. I know you will, Kelly.”

Without responding, Kelly entered
Desio
. A minute later she emerged holding a large medical kit in one hand and wound dressings in the other. From the kit she removed a flexible thick metal band and clamped it to Melhaus’s wrist. A display on the kit’s lid immediately lighted with several biometric measurements. “Fourteen percent blood loss,” Kelly said. “Manageable. I have some time.”

A long tube protected by a sterilized wrapper was removed from the kit. Inside the tubing was a light green liquid. At one end of the tube was a small synthetic rubber bulb. “Break off the arrow shaft and pull back his shirt,” Kelly commanded, and Thompson complied. “This procedure will go better before I bring him out of shock.” With a sure and steady hand Kelly removed the arrow and inserted the surgical tube deep into the bleeding wound. Once satisfied that the tube was fully inserted she deftly withdrew it, simultaneously squeezing the bulb, depositing the tube’s contents along the entire length of the injury. “Crude, but effective,” she said.

“What’s in the liquid?” Paul asked.

“Biochemicals. A sterilizing agent, an anticoagulant, and a new drug that promotes rapid healing.”

“Do you have his consent?” Diana asked. As Kelly frowned, Diana placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and said, “You can have mine.”

As she continued to monitor vitals, Kelly applied a surgical dressing to the wound and started an AI regulated IV.

“I have one bag of pre-made fluid for the shock. More can be made up as needed. Let’s make him comfortable right in place. We can move him inside before nightfall. It’s as sterile out here as inside
Desio
. ”

“Prognosis?” Thompson asked. His hands, yet to be washed, were stained red with blood.

“Let me ask
you
a question,” Kelly responded. “Did you deliberately aim for a portion of the anatomy that would cause the
least
amount of trauma?”

“That, doctor, would be absurd,” Thompson remarked.

“For the record,” I remarked, “not a complete answer.”

“Uh huh,” Kelly said, sharing my skepticism. “If there are no complications, he’ll do fine …
physically
. That’s only half the battle, of course.”

During Kelly’s expert administrations we waited expectantly for her patient, who had remained unconscious, to open his eyes. This was prompted not only out of concern for Melhaus’s welfare, but with a healthy curiosity for what he might have to say, if anything, concerning his actions.

Eventually, with a moan and a fluttering of eyelids, the physicist gazed up at five crewmates staring at him—and slowly comprehended that he was flat on his back, somehow injured, but very much alive.

“Good to have you with us, Doctor Melhaus,” Thompson said.

The voice provided a focus for Melhaus’s attention.

“Thompson … I can’t believe you shot me … with, with … an arrow…?”

“My apologies,” Thompson responded, “for not being a bit more high-tech.”

Diana leaned in and, with a conspiratorial voice, said, “Larry, I know what you think of drugs. I told Doctor Takara to go easy on the pain medication.”

Melhaus rasped out a laugh or a cough, grimacing from the effort. The last thing he said before Kelly ushered us away was, “Paul, you were right. You were right.”

Nobody believed this more than Thompson. I noted with interest that he washed the blood from his hands inside
Desio
, not at the shoreline, which would have been much more convenient.

A COMPLETE TOP-DOWN inspection of
Desio
was ordered by Thompson to determine if the ship was in any way damaged or sabotaged.

“Nothing amiss in my cabin,” I reported.

“I’m a bit surprised,” Kelly said. She had just completed inventorying her ransacked drug supply. “You’re lucky Larry made no attempt to expunge your chronicle of the mission.”

“Lucky?” I said with mock chagrin. “Actually, I’m rather offended.”

“Offended?” Paul and Kelly simultaneously asked.

“Yes, offended,” I replied. “I have a theory. That Larry didn’t consider my work worthy of reading. In fact, the more I dwell on it, at least you scientists had
your
work judged sufficiently valuable to destroy or at least have threatened.”

“You realize,” Paul said, “there
is
a perverse logic to what he’s saying.”

“There is a perverse logic to
everything
he says,” Diana observed.

“You bet there is,” I said, persisting with my argument. “I mean, even Bruce thought enough of my work to offer it up to Larry for sacrifice.”

“Whoa,” Thompson said, “That was an act of sheer desperation. I wouldn’t let it go to your head.”

“And Larry
did
scoff at the offer,” Paul emphasized. “Almost instantly, as I seem to recall.”

“See? There you have it then,” I said. “I rest my case.”

“Yes, there we have it,” Thompson echoed. “Finally, with a little help, a theory you have proven. Bravo!”

I graciously accepted the honor for what it was worth.

The inspection of
Desio
revealed, for the most part, alterations which we had been expecting, including several quite clever changes made to the laser power supply and firing circuitry. One notable exception: The ultrasonic humidifier, which was now in serious need of repair. Per Thompson, Melhaus had removed the unit’s piezoelectric transducer, installing it in a high-frequency sound-emitting device of his own creation. With it, he had attracted the Orb. Another example of his warped brilliance. For all the right reasons, further use of his invention was never considered.

In a bit of good news, none of the collected samples, onboard experiments, or saved files were compromised. Better yet, there had been no tampering with the ship’s operating systems. If we could manage to get through one more full day without misadventure, we could safely depart for home.

And because of this, and despite the other setbacks and damage done, we were in an ebullient mood; nobody more so than Doctor Diana Gilmore.

“I may not have to pummel Melhaus into another dimension after all,” she said.

She didn’t seem to mind that he was recuperating close by and might be listening. We were once again collected at the outside worktable, each of us digging into, and actually enjoying for a change, the processed food displayed in front of us. We had only missed one day of meals, but we weren’t accustomed to such ill-treatment. This especially applied to Angie. Of all of us, she was the hungriest, and I spoiled her with a big extra portion of her favorite dry food. Having eaten a stomach full, she was now spread out across my lap, belly up and legs spread apart, looking very much like a spatchcocked chicken.

“And so, tell me, Bruce,” Kelly prodded. “You stood there realizing that any moment you could be toasted by the laser, with an Orb the size of a small building hovering nearby, having an absurdly difficult shot to make, all the while realizing the dire consequence of failure. Seriously now, what planet did you come from to pull that off?”

“I can’t take full responsibility for my actions.” Thompson contended. “One part of me, the one that
gets
all of that, I forced into submission. Another part of me became convinced that I was taking practice shots at an archery range.”

“Oh, great,” Diana said, unsatisfied. “You held our lives in the balance based on the mere pretense of fooling around at an archery range?”

“Afraid so.”

“You reckless SOB,” Diana hissed, staring hard at Thompson and sounding indignant; but in the next breath, and deliberately loud enough for all the world to hear, she said, “Gutsiest damn thing I ever saw.”

“You both were brave,” Kelly said, draping her arms around my neck and leaning over to peck my cheek.

“Was I there?” I said. “Just what the hell was I thinking?”

“May I join the chorus of praise?” Paul said. “You both have our
undying
gratitude.”

There were groans, then more groans when I congratulated him on his deadpan delivery.

“And just how big was the Orb, in your estimation?” Kelly asked.

“Upwards of forty meters, diameter,” Thompson ventured. “Born right before our eyes, right out of the maelstrom.”

“That matches our estimates from further away,” Paul stated. “Amazing. And I assume you also observed the Orbs skimming along the surface, combining into ever-larger entities?”

“Remarkable, was it not?” Thompson understated. “There were, however, two things we did not see, and one may be dependent on the other: The Orb, despite repeated provocation, never acted in an overtly aggressive manner; merged Orbs, no matter how large they became, never left contact with the OceanOrb.”

“And just how large can they become?” I asked.

“Oberon.”

I just about choked on the reconstituted grape juice I was drinking. The unlikely utterance came from Melhaus. I was familiar with only one Oberon.

“As big as the King of the Fairies?” I said, having a pretty good idea that’s not what he meant.

“I don’t follow,” Melhaus remarked.

“Oberon,” I said. “A whimsical character in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. King of
all
the fairies. Not very big, though.”

“The Oberon I refer to is much more massive.” Melhaus’s deadpan delivery, completely unintentional, was much better than mine.

“How much more massive?”

“I should tell you that Oberon is a moon. A moon orbiting Uranus. It has a diameter of fifteen hundred twenty six kilometers.”

“That
is
bigger than Shakespeare’s Oberon,” I replied, casting a glance at Thompson. I recalled the day when he told me he was an avid reader of the Bard. He was having difficulty suppressing his laughter. Melhaus, however, was oblivious.

“The volume of Oberon,” he continued, “when rounding off, is one point nine billion kilometers cubed.”

“A very big number,” I commented.

“A number,” Melhaus insisted, “comparing quite favorably to the volume of water—two point four billion kilometers cubed—contained by this planet’s ocean.”

“Are you claiming one Orb can reach that size?” He certainly had captivated my attention, but when he didn’t respond right away I assumed I had lost his. This was not so, for he was carefully considering a reply.

“It is theoretically possible. The entity can bend the laws of physics to its own advantage, making rapid changes to the molecular density of its surface, perhaps to its entirety. This is not only plausible but completely evident. I would otherwise be at a total loss to explain the perfectly round shape, textureless surface, resistance to the laser, and the way they can merge at will. By controlling its molecular density, the entity is able to overcome the size limitations we typically associate with Earth organisms. I doubt the Orb are restricted by anything but the total volume of water in what, through force of habit, I will call the ocean. As Paul astutely pointed out, the entity is the ocean.”

This was one more mind-boggling concept to set my own wheels in motion.

“You must concede this much, Kyle,” Thompson interjected, “imagining an Orb as immense as the Uranian moon Oberon is as phantasmagorical as anything found in the plays of Shakespeare. It strains the imagination.”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” I replied, “but perhaps Shakespeare himself said it best: ‘The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact.’ I submit that if the Bard were alive today he would amend his words and add “scientist” to the group.” (I must confess, with an AID in front of me I could look more the genius than Melhaus by quoting from any literary source practically at will.)

“And it appears all four archetypes are represented on this voyage,” Thompson responded. “I’ve dubbed you the poet. Reluctantly, of course.”

By now Melhaus had dropped out of the conversation. Only this time it wasn’t due to intolerance to all things literary; he was simply too exhausted to continue.

“Seems that you two put the formerly good doctor to sleep,” Diana said as Kelly went over to monitor her patient’s vitals.

“But
he
,” I said, “has started
me
thinking.”

“Oh shit,” Diana said, grinning. “Here we go again.”

“If you remember,” I said, unfazed, “I was rebuked for suggesting the plankton were seeded here by an alien race with the aim of transforming the planet into a habitable world for their subsequent arrival. Now I understand
exactly
how the plankton arrived on this planet. Via the alien race that is already here. The Orb.”

“This is your fault, Thompson,” Diana complained. “Encouraging him. Congratulating him on proving a theory.”

“Diana,” I persisted, “it was
you
who said the phytoplankton was out of place, that it shouldn’t exist here all by its lonesome. Yet it conveniently produces the entire planet’s oxygen. It’s
Melhaus
who believes the entity can bend the laws of physics to its own advantage. That would be key in accomplishing the journey here. And it is Paul
and
Bruce who both agree that this is a very young, incredibly stable planet. Is there a better place to begin a new world? Taking all this into account, is it so far fetched—of course it is, but that doesn’t rule it out—that in the distant past, the Orb, a moon unto itself, carried the phytoplankton to this eminently suitable ball of rock, and now they both call it home?”