Read Seas of Ernathe for Free Online Page A

breezy and cool at the rail, and he was glad Racart had advised him to wear a jacket. Ardello quivered, its great scoop nose plunging through the sea. The electroturbines powering the ship were quiet, but there were the many noises of the sea as well as of ventilators and creaking steel. Few of the sounds were immediately identifiable to Seth; this was so wholly unlike what he was accustomed to calling a ship that he had to listen carefully to pinpoint the sources of the noise. Ardello thundered and thrommed, and rolled slightly, its spotlighted structure moving ponderously against the nighttime horizon.
    Racart took him to the port side and pointed across the water to the south. "That's Lernick," he said. Seth squinted and stared before finally pinpointing a faint haze of light beyond the end of the visible shore. Lambrose, in contrast, was still an intricate assortment of lights behind the stern. Ardello was moving across the bay to the west and south, toward the "open sea"; the mouth of the bay was only a blur of deeper darkness against the mixed shadows and grays of the horizon. The sky was mostly cloud-obscured, but the starry brilliance of the surrounding globular cluster backed the clouds with a baleful, ghostly sheen that appeared to waver and crawl as the clouds shifted across the sky. Toward the west, a rift opened in the clouds: an open doorway into the jeweled darkness of the Cluster.
    Seth leaned over the rail, breathing the wet, briny air. It had been a long day, and the salt air was a potent refresher. Along the rushing prow, there was a constant sparkling green phosphorescence from plankton caught in the turbulent slipstream. Everywhere he looked, it seemed, light sparkled or shone on this world, whether from the sky or the sea.
    "Let's head below," Racart said, and Seth followed him astern and down the companionway to the crew's cabin. Most of the off-duty crew were asleep, and Seth was more than ready to follow. He hardly noticed the cramped quarters as he climbed into the high bunk. Once he was off his feet, his muscles grew leaden with relief, and he stretched on the simple foam mattress with a great feeling of luxury.
    As he was beginning to doze, it occurred to him that he had failed to learn from Racart what had happened that afternoon. He opened his eyes, and focused for a moment on the ceiling just over his head. Well , he thought with some difficulty, tomorrow will be in plenty of time . His thoughts faded, and he slept.

Chapter Four
    Ship routine was well underway when Seth ventured topside in the morning. He felt that he could sleep easily for another eight hours, but a hot brew from the galley and a generous porridge breakfast revived him to a semblance of consciousness. The deck was drenched with morning sunshine. Moving quickly in high altitude winds were a few clouds, and a steady breeze cooled the deck. The ship was cruising slowly parallel to the coast, in what was called the "outer sea"—actually just the next sea, of several, out from the bay of Lernick and Lambrose. The coast, to starboard, was a green gray margin binding the sky with the sea. Seth was disconcerted to notice its slow rise and fall as the ship rolled steadily through the waves.
    Racart called to him from the bridge, and he climbed the wheelhouse steps to join him. Ardello 's captain was there, a short, silver-blond man named Sergei Fenrose, who greeted Seth with sober enthusiasm. "If you can make some sense of this craziness," Captain Fenrose declared, "you'll be doing better than the best of us. That business last night, back in the town—no good. You don't go around shooting people, even if it's by accident. No one's been shot like that for as long as I can remember, sea-people or otherwise. Don't even know why we keep weapons on the planet." Shaking his head, he turned for a moment to watch the sonar display beside the pilot. He issued instructions for a course change, and then turned again to Seth, with a humorous