Solbidyum Wars Saga 6: Defeat of the Tottalax (29 page)

“You said you intended to attract the Uhangi by playing classical music,” Truath said, “I would suggest you start playing it.”

“Right!  Marranalis,” I called, “start up the music.”

In the past few years since rescuing some of my fellow Earthmen from the moon and Mars colonies, Earth's classical music had become widely popular throughout the Federation, so I was not surprised when I heard the sound of a Richard Strauss composition begin to play.  We waited for nearly thirty minutes, and while some fish seemed to be attracted to the sound, and came and swam about outside the submarine, there was no sign of any Uhangi.

Finally, I sighed and asked, “How long does it usually take to get an Uhangi to appear?”

“Generally about twenty minutes; I would suggest you turn the volume down lower.  At the level you are playing it now, it’s too easy for the Uhangi to hear, and they will simply stay where they are to listen.  Sound travels well underwater, so you may need to bring the level down quite a bit to draw an Uhangi out,” Truath said.

I nodded and instructed the operator of the sound equipment to lower the volume, twenty minutes later we switched from Strauss to Dvořák's Symphony No.9 and lowered the volume even more.  By now, I was becoming quite bored and was about ready to give up when Truath said, “There!  There’s an Uhangi!”

“Where?” I said as I peered out looking about to see it.

“Over there in that cluster of wossaf.  If you watch you will see it rise up every so often and look in our direction.”  Just as she was saying this I noticed a form rise up a bit, and I assumed it was peering at us, even though I could not see its eyes.

“What do we do now?”  I asked stupidly as I had not thought of exactly what we would do, if and when we actually encountered an Uhangi.

“Lower the music some more,” she said.  “Make it come to us,” she said in an almost whisper.

I signaled for the soundman to lower the sound more.  It seemed to me that I could barely hear the sound anymore but apparently the Uhangi hearing is more acute than that of humans.  Slowly, I saw the creature creep out of the cluster of wossaf and start to crawl across the sandy bottom of the sea floor.  Now that it was out of the wossaf, I could see its entire body.  It had a long shell that was bullet-shaped at one end and opened at the other with tentacles and a pair of giant eyes located there.  I had expected the Uhangi to swim sort of like a squid, but instead it pulled itself across the sea floor using its long tentacles.  When it reached the sub, which was now sitting on the bottom, it slowly began pulling itself up on the transparent outer hull by using the suction cups on its tentacles.  When it reached an elevation about equal with my head, it stopped and started making some clicking and grunting sounds,  As it did I heard the translating machine we had brought with us say, “More!”  “Want/need bigger/more.”

“Ah, I assume that means it wants louder and more music?”  I said to Truath.

“Yes, but you need to negotiate now before you give it more.”

“Ah, maybe you should do that,” I said realizing I was out of my league at the moment.

“Fine, let me try to talk to it,” she answered.

“More/bigger/need you talk me/ see you/ hear you/ grow new same one this shell bigger other/ you talk / more make bigger you need.”

This was followed by a bunch of clicks and moaning sounds as the machine translated.  While it was translating, I said to Truath, “By the stars, what did you just say?”

“I said that if it wanted more music and louder it would need to talk to us and tell us if it had seen any objects similar to this ship only larger, that was new in this area,” Truath said.

“Ah, that’s what you said!  Now I realize what you meant about it not being easy to talk to an Uhangi.”

“Need bigger/more, see any new shells/ Uhangi leave/ come here/ new shells too many/ Uhangi leave/ more bigger now,” the Uhangi said.

“It’s saying that it, or other Uhangi have seen new objects down here somewhere, and that is why so many Uhangi have come to this location.  They moved here to get away from those objects,” Truath translated.

“That’s what it said?”  I responded, “ask it where these other structures are.”

“Ah, sir, I can’t ask them that,” she exclaimed.

“Why?  Is there some sort of taboo they have about their locations?”

“No sir, not that I know of, but they don’t have words for places and directions, or if they do we haven’t figured them out so far.”

“Great, how are we supposed to find out where the subsea base is if they can’t tell us?  Can it perhaps show us?”  I asked.

“You reveal/unhide new shells/ we more bigger you need / you reveal/unhide.”

I shook my head trying to figure out how that jumble or words could possibly convey what I wanted.

The creature didn’t say anything, but slowly began waving some of its tentacles about and then extended one out in a long direction as if pointing.

“Sir, I think it is saying you need to go in that direction to get to the base, but honestly I am not 100% sure that is its intention.”

“Can’t it lead us there?”  I asked, just as the Uhangi said, “Talk stop, want/need bigger/more now,” as it dropped from the hull and began creeping back to the cluster of wossaf.

“Sir, it’s done talking, it expects you to keep your part of the bargain and play it more music louder again.”

“Can’t we get it to come back and talk more?”  I asked.

“No sir, Uhangi have a short attention span and do not like to talk long.  We were lucky he stayed this long.”

“I see, how long will we need to stay and play music so it will feel we have honored our part of the bargain?”  I asked.

“I should think about 30 minutes should suffice.”

“Very well.  Sergeant,” I said to the man at the sound controls, “play the Uhangi something with a bit more volume.”

While we played the music for the Uhangi, I went over maps and charts of the area with the captain of the submarine.  All we had to go on was the direction that Uhangi had pointed in and no idea how far, or even if it was the right direction.  There didn’t appear to be much in that direction to look in; most of the water in the area was only 100 to 200 meters deep and hardly a place one could easily hide an underwater base, but as I followed a line out on the sea floor I noticed a weird depression marked upon the map.

“Captain, what is this?”  I asked.

“They call that the Argrais Sink.  It’s an anomaly in the area, it's basically a shaft a kilometer in diameter, and over 3 kilometers deep. There were a lot of debates about its origin years ago; some saying it was an old volcano vent, others that it is a giant vent created by a methane release millions of years ago.”

“It looks big enough to take ships down into,” I said.  I wonder if the Brotherhood might be using that to hide their base.”

“We can certainly look,” the Captain said.  This sub can easily go to the bottom of that hole.”

Thirty minutes later, our agreement with the Uhangi fulfilled, we were under way to the Argrais Sink.  When we arrived there, my first impression on seeing it was that it resembled a giant meteor crater.  That illusion was quickly dispelled, however, once we cleared its rim, and we could peer down into it.  It seemed to go on and on forever, vanishing eventually into total blackness.

“Admiral, do you think it is wise for us to go down there?”  Marranalis asked.  “If the Brotherhood does have a base down there, and they detect us, we can expect them to take action against us, and we won’t have any way to get out of here quickly.  We’ll be trapped in by the wall of the shaft and totally at their mercy.”

He was right and I knew it, but we also needed to know if the Brotherhood were down there or not.  “Captain, I said, turning toward the sub captain,” can we turn off all the lights on the sub except for the ones in the control room?  That way, it may make us harder to see.  Also, lower us slowly reducing ballast, or whatever, so we don’t have any engine noise.  We need to get close enough to see what, if anything is down there.”

“Certainly sir, it will take us longer to get down there, but we can do it.”

“How long to you anticipate it will be?”  I asked.

“About an hour and a half I would imagine,” he replied.

“All right, let's do this.  Marranalis, I want you monitoring the sensors, any sign of activity down there, and I want us out of here quickly.”

“Yes sir,” Marranalis said.

“You don’t think there is someone down there who would try to hurt us, do you?”  Truath asked.

“That’s what we are going to find out,” I said as the lights were turned off and the sub began slowly sinking down into the tube.  By the time we reached 200 meters, light from the surface was no longer visible, and we were in total darkness inside the transparent hull.  Inside the control room, enclosed by the metal hull, the crew operated under dim red lighting with reduced illumination on the instruments, so their eyes could adjust quicker when going and coming from the lower hull section.  I sat in one of the lounge chairs in the lower hull staring out into the blackness with Truath and a few other crew members.  From time to time, we would see life forms that lit up with internal fluorescence similar to the way some sea creatures of Earth did.  One creature that was lit up appeared to be nearly five meters long, and I wished we could turn on the lights to see what it looked like, but we needed to be as stealthy as possible.  I had instructed the Captain to keep us as close as he could to the side wall of the shaft, hoping its proximity might help hide our presence from any sensors if the Brotherhood really was there.  After about an hour and a half the Captain called to me and said, “Sir, we are almost on the bottom, our sensors are not detecting anything unusual.”

“Take her all the way to the bottom anyway, let’s see what is there,” I ordered.

Moments later, we were hovering about a meter above the sandy bottom of the shaft, and we turned on the lights to survey the area.  All we saw were several strange-looking fishes, as our lights scanned out into fading darkness.  We maneuvered about the bottom for about 30 minutes but saw nothing out of the ordinary.  We were about to return to the surface, when one of my men monitoring the scanners said, “Sir, I’m detecting a very large object coming down the tube toward us.”

“Turn off the lights,” I commanded.  Immediately the exterior lights and the ones in the lower observation deck were turned off.

“Do you think they have seen us from above?”  I asked the captain.

“I doubt it.  We are too far from them for the light to be seen," he replied.

“Can they detect us with sensors from where they are now?”

“Not if we stay this close to the bottom, and we don’t move,” he replied.

“Good!”  I exclaimed, “Keep us here for the time being.  Turn off anything that might make sound and everyone keep quiet.  Let’s see what they do.”

“I don’t think we have any choice,” the Captain said, “we’d never get past that ship undetected if we tried to surface.”

“I guess I should have asked this earlier.  Do you have any weaponry aboard?”

“Are you kidding?  This is a touring and research vessel.  Other than for a few coastal rescue and patrol boats, there are no armed ocean vessels on the planet,” the Captain replied nervously.

“Do you think they will come all the way here to the bottom?”  Marranalis asked.

“I have no way of knowing that, but where else would they go?”  I said.

“If they have been coming here regularly,” Truath began, “they haven’t been coming all the way down to the bottom.”

“How do you know that?”  I inquired.

“Because the silt at the bottom of the pit was undisturbed; any large craft setting down here would leave its mark, and we saw none.”

“She’s right, Admiral,” the Captain said.

“Well I guess we have no choice but to wait and see just what this craft does then,” I stated.

Time ticked by slowly as we waited; finally a little over half-way down the tube the trooper monitoring the sensors said, “Sir, the craft is moving toward the southern side of the tube.”

“Are you sure?”  I asked.

“Positive sir, it’s almost at the side now.  It looks like it’s going to crash!  Wait… what?  Sir, it’s disappearing into the side of the tube wall.  There must be some kind of cave or overhang there we missed on our way down, because we were on the far side and didn’t have any lights on.  Not that we would have been able to see it from where we were anyway.  Our lights wouldn’t have reached that far.”

“So what now, Admiral?”  The captain asked.  “Do you want us to wait it out until it leaves?”

“I have a feeling it won’t be leaving soon.  It’s probably bringing supplies from the surface and will need time to unload.  Let’s start back up, lights off.  Bring us close enough to that side of the tube that we can see what’s there and let’s hope they don’t see us.”

Our ascent was a little faster than our descent, and several minutes later we began to see a dim light appear above us near the walls of the pit.  Slowly, as we drew nearer, we could make out the larger mouth opening of a cave or tunnel that recessed into the wall.

“It looks like a cave or opening they carved out in the side of the tube,” Marranalis said. “The reading on our sensors indicates there is a larger complex behind it.  Do you think they made it, or that it’s a natural phenomenon?”