"Explain again, Mr. Jarvis.  Why do you want to land?" said the Coordinator.
    "I have a defective spirohelical encabulator," said Jock. "It is decranning my frammistan."
     "Remain in orbit, Mr. Jarvis.  We will consult with our technicians."
      Jock sat back and ruminated on the exigencies of the universe  In his life as a prospector, traveling across the sea of galaxies that was interstellar space, he had seen many things.  Puzzles there were aplenty.  The stars like dust.  Was it Asimov who had said that?  Plenty of planets for puzzles.  The charts called the one below, "March."  In some ways, it reminded him of another he had seen.  A place where people lived on the backs of turtles.  Some of the seas were deep, there.  This one looked quite similar, but wasn't.  The seas were all shallow, here.  The instruments told him the story behind the mask of the surface.  Except for some deep cracks, this world was a lot like an 8-ball.  His passenger had paid him a very large sum of money to smuggle him down there.
     His passenger was a rat. Literally, a rat.
     And, the moon was too big.
     Puzzles.

     They had met at a saloon on Formaldehyde, a planet with a soporific atmosphere where mammals were concerned.  The air was a blue fog, and had the same effect on humans that marijuana did.  The rat had seemed stoned all of the time, too, but never once said, "Far out, man."  Nor did he play a guitar.
      There was the matter of a billiard game bet with a creature from the Horsehead Nebula.  A vertical rhinocerous with hands and fingers. An unpleasant fellow, perhaps eight feet tall.  Evil little eyes.  A bully..  The rat, who had been watching the game, paid off the bet and offered an additional ten thousand more for the ride.  A rich rat, this one.
     Having recently lost six billion on a hot stock market tip about a galactic internet company, a stable of supposedly blue ribbon Tsvinh racing cornopods that turned out to be nags, the purchase of a planet that wasn't there, some quick action by the IRS during an electronic funds transfer and, of course, women, Jock had been playing the Rhino for enough to get his ship out of hock at the spaceport so he could head for a planet with air that didn't make him hungry for chocolate 24 hours a day.
     Flat broke just didn't cover his situation.  Destitute was the word.  He had been about to lose his ship, and in losing that end up trapped on that planet for the rest of his life.

     "Mr. Jarvis?" said the radio. Jock grabbed the microphone.
     "Right."
     "Our engineers are unfamiliar with your technical problems.  We do not wish commerce with other planets, and so lack the facilities to work on a ship like yours.   It is unlikely they could repair it."
     "I can repair it," said Jock.  "Just not in space.  I need to land to work on it.  Just find me a spot out of the traffic areas and I will take care of it myself."
     "Perhaps I haven't made myself clear.  We do not want commerce with spacefaring races.  Landing here is forbidden."
     "In an emergency situation?  That is a violation of the InterCosmic Covenant.  Refuse me landing permission and I will send a signal to the Provost Marshall of the Federation.  You'll have a fleet of warships hovering over you before you can send out the general alarm!"
     "A fleet?" said the voice.  It was wavering.  Jock knew he had them, then.
     "Listen," he said, "I'm just a private citizen.  A mining engineer.  Let me land and fix my ship and I'll be gone in a few days at most.  Hours, maybe.  There'll be no trouble.  I won't even report the landing."
     The speaker crackled for a bit.
     "You won't stay long?"
     "Nope."
      More crackle. "Well, do you need any lifting equipment?"
     "Nothing. It's an exterior access panel.  I'd fix it out here, but some of the parts might drift off.  They're quite small for a klinkenhoffer assembly and must be rebrandingled before they are reinstalled.  I have my own brandingler."
      "And, you cannot make it to another planet?"
     "In about ten thousand years, yes," said Jock.  "It's the tripler for my Sheckley drive"
      "Well, much of the landing area is off limits to unauthorized personnel --- but you say you want to land away from any structures?"
      "All I need is to be close enough to technical help if it turns out I need some custom parts I can't make myself. "
     "And you have no objection to a search of your ship to confirm your reason for landing?"
     "None at all.  Send out your crew as soon as I land."
      After a brief pause, the voice said, "You have temporary clearance to land and make your repairs Mr. Jarvis. Please understand that you will be under surveillance at all times.  Should you engage in any other activities than those you have described, a proton cannon will be discharged and you will become a part of our atmosphere. Please finish your repairs within eight of your hours."

                                       II

     The landing place, just as the rat had predicted, was perfect.
     Above ground, the native structures were large square and rectangular buildings elevated the height of three men from the surface by columns. The ground, according to his mining survey electronics was riven with drainage tunnels made out of the same material as the structures, some kind of  local concrete.  He landed thirty feet off target, right on top of an access lid.  The rat dropped through the small cargo port and disappeared.  When the scanning crew came aboard, there was nothing amiss for them to find.
     The natives were talking plants, very tall and very green.  Jock ruminated about them, then decided that a human and a sequoia tree were genetically almost identical. These folks were okay with him. It turned out that they liked being around him, too, because he exhaled carbon dioxide.  More than what would be an official visit collected around the ship.  In no time at all it was a jungle out there on the runway.  Some had cameras.  He posed for several photos with his arms draped over the trunk/limb joints of a couple of them wearing what looked like hunting vests made of sharkskin. Lots of pockets.  They didn't wear pants. It was obvious why.  Their sexual organs were in their heads. They reproduced while French kissing, probably, he imagined.   The females were flowers, the males something like venus flyraps.  He took to one of the guys right away, and named him Kelp.
     The hand translator, working through the ship's computer, handled the linguistics.
     In answer to a question, Kelp said, "Yes, I am an omnivore, Jock. Primarily I eat what you call insects, but I enjoy the occasional mammal, present company excepted."
     "So do I," said Jock.  "What kind of mammals do you have here?
      "Various kinds, some of them domesticated.  The type you asked about, the one you call a rodent is not one of those.  Their flesh is poisonous.  We shoot them for sport."

     Later, after Kelp had gone off to perform his military function, whatever that was, Jock broke out some tools, popped a lower panel aft and replaced a circuit component in the backup bathroom lighting system.  Several plants with no pants wearing nasty looking sidearms watched him with one swiveling eye stalk while the other cast about looking for God knows what.
       "I'll have to run some tests," he told one of them, and clambered back into the ship.  There, he broke out a bottle of scotch, poured himself a dram and lovingly replaced the bottle in its snug compartment.  He sat there, sipping the elixer, staring at the various screens and readouts, wondering why he didn't just leave.
      In the end, he let his curiosity have the com.
      Some of these beings had more than one head, like a thistle or a rose bush.  Some were dark green, some brown and some light green.  But, they all had one thing in common.  They had legs like roots which ended in the most incredible claws  Imagine a cross between an eagle and a velociraptor.
       What in the world would they do with something like that?
       When the giant moon lifted from the horizon, he found out.

       His ancestors were from Scotland by way of Nova Scotia.  As a kid, he had visited a place in the nearby Canadian maritime province of New Brunswick.  It is called the Bay of Fundy.  Due to the funnel-like shape of the local geography, and the particular slope of the bay floor, the incoming tide in the Bay of Fundy was quickly focused into what is called a tidal bore - an oceanic version of a huge jelly role that raced across the mudflats at great speed.  When the tide came in at the Bay of Fundy, you could ride it on a surfboard.

      A forward visual screen showed it coming.
      Since the net orbital velocity of the giant moon was a thousand miles an hour, that's how fast the tide was coming in.  Jock's quick reflexes were all that saved the ship.  His hands danced like mosquitos over the console.  The ship leaped into the air just as the bore arrived.  His last view of the Kelp people made clear the evolutionary purpose of their strange root claws.  They just grabbed the bottom and became seaweed.  And now he understood the universal system of drain pipes, the building stilts and the reason why they had told him to finish his repairs quickly.
      What didn't make sense to him was why they hadn't explained the reason for haste.

                                       III

    The water reached a depth of  twenty feet and remained so for six hours, then receeded.  Before he had lost his recent grubstake, Jock had purchased a Hubble brand ship's telescope.  It worked in many areas of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Using the standard visual function, he studied the landing field as the sea drained away.  That system of giant pipes was a work of engineering art. There wasn't a mountain on the planet.  Just a scattering of large and small, very low islands like the Earth chain known as the Florida keys. To drain this fast, those pipes had to take advantage or more than gravity.  They used the elasticity of water itself.  One fine job, that.
     He wondered where the rat went to survive it all, but knew that he had.  The city sewers and drains of Earth had long been home to smallers relatives of his recent passenger, and they had survived the immersion of the streets above them many times in history.  His guess was that they knew where they could find air pockets - bubbles trapped under hard ceilings.
     A strange thought came unbidden.
     This entire planet was a a military installation.  Why?

     "No," said Jock into the mike.  "I replaced the defective part, but didn't have time to rebrandingle it.  The system needs to be tuned.  I'll have to land, again."
      They were more comfortable about that this time, and let him settle the ship down on the flat roof of one of their bulky buildings.  Kelp came out from the door of a small roof shack to greet him.
       "You do fine under water, don't you?" said Jock.
       "Above or below," replied Kelp, "it's the same.  One must leave the water for some scientific experiments, and of course to study the universe.  The stars were a bit of a surprise for us."
      "How long have you known about them?" asked Jock.
      "Perhaps a thousand years," said Kelp.
      "You're afraid of them, aren't you?" said Jock.

      As the story unfolded, a great deal became clear to Jock.  Kelp's legends spoke of a visit from the gods during some prehistorical era.  The descriptions of the event were blurred by scientific ignorance, but seemed to indicate that some space-faring agricultural species had discovered the planet, and being unaware that there was a sentient species living in the seas, set up shop and began to harvest the waters.
      The dragnets of their boats had nearly caused the extinction of Kelp's species, which had been forced from the shallow seas down into the deep cracks in the crust.  It  was there, in an environment not of their liking that they had been forced to develop the processes of science or die.  In time it spurred the development of the science of warfare which had culminated in a series of battles that drove the invaders away.  But the suspicion was ingrained in the culture.  The planetary culture was dedicated to the art of defense.

     "There's something you haven't told me," said jock.  "About the rats, I mean."
      Kelp's eye stalks swiveled around to look directly at him.
      "And, what it that, Jock?"
      "My guess is that they're starting to fight back, just like you did."

      The flight to the island which was the center of government took four hours because, though he was terrified, Kelp wanted to see space.  None of his kind had done so in living memory, though the old legends said that some had been taken there during the retreat of the gods.  It was while they were on orbit that the answer had come to Jock.  While Kelp was staring at his planet and the stars, Jock had activated his mineral exploration systems.  He saw something he should have seen the first time he orbited this world.  The shallow seas, had he not been distracted, would have told him what he needed to know without any other source of information.

      The Great Hall reminded Jock of official buildings he had seen on many planets.  This one differed mainly in that the dome was painted with a mural of the sea as seen from the ocean bed.  Had he not known before, this would have informed Jock about the origin of the Kelp people.

       "They are animals," said the High Counselor.  His manner indicated he was a plant used to respect..
      "They are intelligent," said Jock.  "They know the truth.  You cannot watch for the gods unless you can have stable platforms above the surface of the sea, and you can't be above the surface of the sea in any numbers without the drainage system.  They live in the drainage system.  Do you know they are not of this planet?"
      That caught the High Counselor off guard.  It was just as Jock had guessed.  The rats were on the islands, clustering on the few hills for survival during high tide, when the Kelp people emerged from the sea.
      "They are not of this world," Jock repeated.  "Their flesh is what in your case would be known as alien protein, which is why it is death to eat them."
      "If this is so," said the High Counselor, "how did they get here?"
      Jock had a feeling that the plant had already guessed the truth.
      "In the chariots of the gods," he said.  "They are the most traveled species in the history of the universe."
       "You say we must not kill them, yet you also say that they are not of this planet.  If that is true, we want them gone more than ever."
      "I understand," said Jock.  "And, I can solve your problem."

                                      IV

       The scene was an eerie one.  Jock's flashlight illuminated the underground chamber probably for the first time in its history. The rats who sat between the flash and a wall threw shadows that were twenty feet high. Jock's former passenger stood close by, staring at Jock and Kelp.
      "This being is our enemy," he said simply.
      "I know," said Jock.  "And he is more dangerous than you think."
      "He dare not touch us down here, Jock.  He needs his astronomical and military facilities."
      "I have agreed to provide Earth protection for the planet," said Jock.  "They can now block the outlets of these drainage systems. Those of you who do not drown immediately will run out of air in the pockets"
      Jock's former passenger hissed a hideous rat hiss. "I should kill you right now," he said.
     "Kill me," replied Jock, "and you kill all of these. You kill all of their species on this planet."

      Jock stared at the planet named March from orbit.  The sun was glistening off the vast shallow seas.  The radio speaker crackled, then the voice of his friend, Kelp issued from it.
      "The cargo ships are on the way, then, Jock?" he said.
      "They're on the way," said Jock.  "British Petroleum jumped at the opportunity.  The rats will embark for a planet of their own, and you will soon have both the protection of Earth and wealth beyond your wildest dreams."
      "We have long used this petroleum, Jock.  It makes pools in many of our islands.  We were unaware that it exists beneath the oceans.  You say there is a great deal of it?"
      "A great deal is exactly the expression I would select," said Jock. 

(C) 2002 Larry Leonard