Crashlander

And where the thick crust cracked in early days, magma oozed through to build the world's single continent. Today a wandering line of volcanoes and bare rock stretches from the south pole nearly to the north. The continent's mass has been growing for billions of years.

On the opposite face of a lopsided planet, the ocean has grown shallow. Fafnir's life presently discovered the advantages of coral building. That side of the world is covered with tens of thousands of coral islands. Some stand up to twenty meters tall: relics of a deeper ocean.

The mines are all on Shasht. So also are all the industry, both spaceports, and the seat of government. But the life — recreation, housing, families — is all on the islands.

* * *

Finding the old lander had indeed been a stroke of luck. It was an identical backup for the craft that set Sinbad Jabar down on Meerowsk in the Fourth War, where he invaded the harem of the Patriarch's Voice. The disgrace caused the balance of power among the local kzinti to become unstable. The human alliance took Meerowsk and renamed the planet, and it was Jabar's Prize until a later, pacifistic generation took power. Jabar's skin is displayed there still.

Somehow Feather had convinced the ARMs that (1) this twin of Jabar's lander was wanted for the Smithsonian Luna, and (2) the Belt people's would raise hell if they knew it was to be removed from Mars. The project must be absolutely secret.

Ultimately the ARM crews grew tired of Feather's supervision, or else her company. Rapidly after that, Feather grew tired of watching me read. «We'll only be on Fafnir two days, Beowulf. What are you learning? It's a dull, dull, dull place. All the land life is Earth imports —»

«Their lifestyle is strange, Feather. They travel by transfer booths and dirigible balloons and boats, and almost nothing in between. A very laid-back society. Nobody's expected to be anywhere on time —»

«Nobody's watching us here. You don't have to play tourist.»

«I know.» If the ARM had Boy George bugged … but Feather would have thought of that.

Our ship was in the hands of ARM engineers, and that made for tension. But we were getting on each other's nerves. Not a good sign, with a three-week flight facing us.

Feather said, «You're not playing. You are a tourist!»

I admitted it. «And the first law of tourism is: read everything.» But I switched the screen off and said, in the spirit of compromise, «All right. Show me. What is there to see on Mars?»

She hated to admit it. «Nothing.»

* * *

We left Mars with the little stealth lander in the fuel tank. The ARM was doing things the ARM didn't know about. And I continued reading …

Fafnir's twenty-two-hour day has encouraged an active life. Couch potatoes court insomnia: it's easier to sleep if you're tired. But hurrying is something else. There are transfer booths, of course. You can jump instantly from a home on some coral extrusion to the bare rock of Shasht … and buy yourself an eleven-hour time lag.

Nobody's in a hurry to go home. They go by dirigible. Ultimately the floatliner companies wised up and began selling round-trip tickets for the same price as one-way.

«I do know all this, Beowulf.»

«Mph? Oh, good.»

«So what's the plan?» Feather asked. «Find an island with nothing near it and put down, right? Get out and dance around on the sand while we blow the boat up and load it and go. How do we hide the lander?»

«Sink it.»

«Read about lamplighters,» she said, so I did.

After the war and the settlement, UN advance forces landed on Shasht, took over the kzinti structures, then began to explore. Halfway around the planet were myriads of little round coral islands, each with a little peak at the center. At night the peaks glowed with a steady yellow light. Larger islands were chains of peaks, each with its yellow glow in the cup. Lamplighters were named before anyone knew what they were.

Close up … well, they've been called piranha ant nests. The bioluminescence attracts scores of varieties of flying fish. Or, lured or just lost, a swimming thing may beach itself, and then the lamplighter horde flows down to the beach and cleans it to the bones.

You can't build a home or beach a boat until the nest has been burned out. Then you have to wait another twelve days for the soldiers caught outside the nest to die. Then cover the nest. Use it for a basement, put your house on it. Otherwise the sea may carry a queen to you, to use the nest again.

«You're ahead of me on this,» I admitted. «What has this lander got for belly rockets?»

«Your basic hydrogen and oxygen,» Feather said. «High heat and a water-vapor exhaust. We'll burn the nest out.»

«Good.»

* * *

Yo! Boy, when Carlos's 'doc is finished with you, you know it!

Open.

The sky was a brilliant sprawl of stars, some of them moving-spacecraft, weather eyes, the wheel — and a single lopsided moon. The island was shadow-teeth cutting into the starscape. I slid out carefully, into a blackness like the inside of my empty belly, and yelled as I dropped into seawater.