The Great Hydration

The masked Gamintes swung a ramp over the side of the desert dray, then picked up their flingers. The curtain screening the rear compartment swished aside. Market Master Rherrsherrsh came through, moving on crab-like legs, stalks and antlers waving. An unmistakable seaweed smell wafted from him as he swept by them and proceeded down the ramp.

The Gamintes motioned the Earthmen to follow. They crossed a sandy beach. An odd sensation assailed Krabbe. To see more-than-people-sized lobster-like creatures disporting by a seaside made the scene surreal, as if invented by a mad artist. He could almost expect to find shrimp-sized humans lurking beneath rocks in the pools.

As Bouche had surmised, they were making for one of the cave entrances. Inside, the tunnel angled sharply down, lit by radium lamps and forking frequently.

“Did you notice something back there?” Bouche asked.

“What?”

“The lobsters on the beach. Did you see any little lobsters? Or larval forms or anything? Everybody was full grown.”

“Maybe the young are kept in nurseries. They probably hatch from eggs.”

“Yes, or maybe there just aren’t many of them. A low birthrate would make sense in these conditions. And a low birthrate suggests a long-living species. These guys are probably old. And their leaders will be oldest of all.”

“I see what you mean,” nodded Krabbe. He and his partner had learned to gauge the shrewdness of a species by the length of its life-cycle. They had once struck a deal on a planet where individuals lived for no more than two Earth years. It had been like taking candy from a child.

Here they were going to have their work cut out. From the look of it Tlixix individuals lived a long time. They would have to, to gain the experience and deviousness needed to keep control of Tenacity.

They continued downward for some time, until the tunnel widened into a globe-shaped chamber. Their path was here blocked by four Tlixix who carried in their pincers versions of the weapon also toted by the Gamintes and which seemed to be almost universal on Tenacity: a kind of catapult-crossbow flinging a whirling curved blade.

In a sense the newcomers answered Bouche’s question. They were smaller than the Tlixix Krabbe and Bouche had seen so far, which probably meant that they were younger. Their sheen was different, greener, and a fresher smell came from them.

One spoke to Rherrsherrsh, who turned to face the party behind him. The partners switched their translators on.

“The Gamintes may leave the refuge.”

Thankfully the black guards turned and retreated.

Bouche turned his translator off again. “See that? Now we can be sure they’re taking us seriously. The Gamintes are the lobster’s guard dogs. It wouldn’t do to let them get wind of what’s coming.”

That’s right, Krabbe thought. But two more points clicked up in his mind. One, the Tlixix were capable of fielding fighting troops of their own. And two, the partners were still under guard.

It might become necessary to let the Tlixix know, accidentally as it were, that their movements had been followed by their colleagues in space. And that the Enterprise could smash this dome like an egg.

At the other end of the chamber a door irised open.

Flanked by the Tlixix guards, the Earthmen went through. They now stood in a much larger chamber utterly drenched in a fine drizzle. The floor was awash. And in the centre lay a spacious pool where half a dozen Tlixix lolled.

An air of luxury pervaded the chamber, which was bathed in golden light. The walls were pale blue, like the roof of the larger dome. A seaweed-like plant of various reddish hues floated in the pool end trailed across the floor in long ribbons, giving off a pungent smell.

Rherrsherrsh beckoned Krabbe and Bouche to come forward. Their burnooses already soaked, the Earthman approached the pool, throwing back their cowls to reveal their faces as three Tlixix reared up from the water to scrutinise them.

There was a marked difference between the creatures in the pool and Rherrsherrsh and his companion in the World Market. Whereas Rherrsherrsh’s face was generally agitated, his whiskers constantly twitching, the crustacean faces now confronting them possessed an icy stillness. These creatures were larger, too, and the greenish-blue of their segmented body-shells tended to yellow. A feeling of hoariness surrounded them.

They were quite possibly several centuries old.

A voice like a soft roar came from the middle one of the three.

“So you claim to come from another world in space.”

“Yes,” Krabbe replied.

“And you claim you can give our world back its water.”

“Yes.”

“Then you must tell us how.”

Krabbe let his partner answer that.

“First of all,” Bouche said dryly, “where do you think your water went to when it disappeared?”

The Tlixix leader paused, and spoke less vociferously.