The Great Hydration

Krabbe closed the window slate, shutting out the sunlight, leaving the room illuminated only by the radium-energised fluorescent patch on the ceiling. In the greenish glow their living space was little more than a large cell, meant to accommodate visiting tribesmen to the most perfunctory of standards, and now crammed with stores and equipment.

For the past three local days they had eavesdropped continuously in various parts of the market with directional microphones and hidden cameras. At length the language machine had produced its miracle, comparing sound, gesture and situation to build up a usable vocabulary. Krabbe and Bouche could now wear earplugs which would receive Tenacity speech and convert it into Terra standard. Disks worn at the base of the throat, kept in place by neckbands, likewise converted their speech to that of Tenacity, at the same time damping the original voice with cancelling anti-sound.

Now the time had come to meet with this world’s controllers. Krabbe had to admit he was intrigued.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll find out how to gain an audience with the—the ‘Tlixix’—tomorrow.”

He was interrupted by the slap of bare feet on the metal floor in the corridor. The door was suddenly shoved forcibly inward. Three black, fierce-eyed Gamintes charged into the room. One of them held on a leash a purple salamander-like creature the size of a small dog, but with six scrabbling legs.

Krabbe and Bouche retreated. The salamander creature rushed about the room, towing its keeper after it, uttering sneezing noises and scratching at the food crates. Then it began butting its head against one of the four water drums in the corner.

The Gamintes glared about them, fingering their flingers. Krabbe picked up a translator plug and began fitting it into his ear. One of the Gamintes knocked his arm away, sending the plug flying. But not before he had caught his first few harsh words.

“There is water in this room! You have been stealing water!”

The explanation came to Krabbe. He or Bouche should have thought of it before, he told himself. It was logical that the Tlixix would breed an animal capable of sniffing out the stuff that obsessed them most. The market was probably patrolled by the beasts, to locate any leaks in their system. Their noses were sensitive enough, evidently, to smell the small amount the Earthmen had been using.

A second Gaminte knelt at the water drum and after a few moments succeeded—to Krabbe’s surprise—in fathoming the screw cap. He recoiled as the cap came off, then screwed it on tight.

Bouche edged towards a DE beamer, but he never reached it. There was shouting from the Gaminte. Lean, rubbery, amazingly strong arms seized the Earthmen, who were swiftly propelled from the accommodations house. Standing in the sun was a vehicle that was little more than a platform on fragile caterpillar tracks.

Krabbe and Bouche managed to raise the hoods of their burnouses before, ungraciously, they were heaved aboard it.

The Hydrorium was a large metal building, clad in white glass which made it dazzling to look upon. The Pavilion of Audience that confronted it was, however, the smallest in the Market. Entrance was through a circular doorway which irised open. Not until they were in the short tunnel behind it, and the door had closed, did a second door open ahead of them.

“It’s a vapour lock,” Bouche said admiringly. “They’re taking us to the lobsters. Hell, Karl, do you realize something? This planet is as alien to them as it is to us!”

Krabbe did not answer. They were in a dimly lit hall, the walls running with moisture, the floor wet and slippery. Some distance off, in tented bath-couches, washed by sprays, were two Tlixix.

The Gamintes pushed their prisoners forward. A sharp, salty, seaweed smell wafted from the lobster-creatures, a smell from Tenacity’s remote past, seeming to bring with it images of tidal pools, of surf, of tangy breezes and scudding foam. The tents parted. The Tlixix reared above them.

Feelers quivering, antlers waving in agitation, massive crustacean heads bent in inspection, their faces, if such they could be called, alive with whiskery motion, and framed by the helmet-like upper segments of their body shells, which glistened green and blue.

For all their alienness there was a cold sense of power about the beasts. It was a feeling Krabbe had expected, and one which he relished.

A voice hoarse and breathless, harsh and clicking came from one of the Tlixix. In reply a Gaminte embarked on a long explanation in guttural tones. Then the Tlixix turned to the Earthmen and spoke again. Bouche raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

“We are strangers, Market Master,” he answered in Terra standard. “We cannot understand you.”