Across the Sea, Somewhere

“I don’t care what some computer says, we’re not doing it!”

“Look, it’s just the traveling salesman problem. If you have a better algorithm, I’d be happy to see it, but I somehow doubt it.”

Adelaide was already exhausted, and the sun hadn’t yet come up. Percy had come to her with completed calculations, and the two of them had proceeded to the bridge. Adelaide didn’t fully understand how Ray had known to join them, but his quietly staring at her with a smirk was annoying her nearly as much as the argument that Percy and Captain Mattson had been having since they started talking to each other.

“What does a salesman have to do with any of this? Do you think there are a lot of sales opportunities out here? Ray, why did you bring me these people?”

Adelaide interjected. “Captain, how about we start over? Clearly you weren’t given the background I had intended” — Ray managed not even to blink at this — “and I understand why that’s frustrating. Let me try to explain.”

“I am happy to listen, but I don’t know how anyone can explain this!”

“Well, to start with, I trust you saw some of the equipment Percy was using as we passed through the Triangle? That equipment is the reason we’re here. Percy took some very detailed readings, and then, over a few hours, managed some complicated mathematics to identify these Nodes which … or, we cancall them points of interest, ok?”

“What makes them so interesting?”

“It’s not that there’s necessarily anything there, it’s the way they relate to the readings we took.”

Percy took that moment to jump in. “Specifically, each point corresponds to a subset of identified —”

Adelaide interrupted him. “The math isn’t worth worrying about, Captain. Maybe Nodes is just easier, whatever. The point is that our research requires us to travel to as many of these Nodes as we can before we return home.” Adelaide gestured at the tablet that Percy had brought, which showed a circle with them at the center and a dozen glowing points scattered around. “Percy has spent some time charting a way for us to visit four in two weeks, and his math indicates that it’s the path that lets us travel to the largest number of these nodes before the Triangle closes. But we of course want your input, Captain — we know we can’t do this alone.”

Percy rolled his eyes. “There’s not room to argue with the math here, Adelaide.”

Captain Mattson laughed. “So, to do your math here, how did you decide how fast we’d be going?”

“I looked at the records from your last voyages and took an average. And I adjusted down a bit to be conservative.”

“Conservative! What if there’s a storm? Or, Christ, what if there’s a giant island in the middle of the path? Did you just assume this is a big circular bathtub?”

“Weather should be reflected in the averages, as should wind. We don’t know how these factors will apply, so there’s no principled way to incorporate them into an algorithm.”

“Oh, well as long as it’s principled! But let me ask another question. These are just random points? They might just be in the middle of nowhere? Right?”

“Right, we don’t know.”

“So, even if we don’t hit a storm that causes us to miss our return window and be trapped here forever, and even if we make it to all four of these points, when do we actually make any money?”

Adelaide had to pause at that. When she and Percy had planned their research, when she’d pitched this voyage, she hadn’t expected to worry much about making an actual profit, even if she’d had fantasies of finding treasure. But she would never be able to fund a year’s worth of voyages if she couldn’t generate at least some money from each trip. And, as the Captain was reminding her, the crew was expecting at least the opportunity for profit.

Mattson softened as she reflected. “I understand this is new for you. I should not yell - you will learn. But there are ways to make these journeys profitable. The key is land. You can see some islands on the horizon - what we need to do is go there first. Sometimes, profit is simple! Ray, you know I’m right. Can you help me explain it?”

“This whole thing is the Professor’s errand,” Ray said. “She calls the shots. If she wants to sail us around in circles, you know that you’ve agreed for this voyage.”

Adelaide looked down at the map. “Captain, you’re right that we need to make money and that we don’t know what obstacles might be in our way. But, you have to trust me, I can’t abandon the mission here. What if we just did two of the points? That would give us some slack, and we can investigate anything that looks profitable as we go. Percy, can you identify the two that give us the most time to work with?”

“Sure, I could do that,” Percy said. “But do you realize what you’re giving up? If we halve our input…”

“I understand. But we need to think beyond this one trip. Can you and Captain Mattson please be professional to each other long enough to chart a new course?”

Mattson and Percy began to pass the tablet back and forth, discussing a variety of two-node paths. They were both large men, and Adelaide began to feel like she might be crushed if she didn’t step away. She turned towards the window and saw the island Mattson had referenced. She grabbed a spyglass the Captain had left and raised it to her eye while smiling at the affectation.

Raising it to her eye, she realized she had misjudged if she thought the Captain would prioritize romanticism over practicality. There was an entire user interface in here that was currently set to rangefind but could also take photos and, apparently, apply some sort of night-vision. She looked first at the island, and saw what seemed from a distance to be large flowering shrubs covering a small hill. As she turned East, she was impressed to see that the spyglass automatically compensated for the rising sun, allowing her to look at the horizon without being blinded. And, while there was no land in that direction … Adelaide twisted the device to zoom in and confirmed it — the water was bubbling near the horizon. And it looked like…

“Ray, do you see what’s happening over to the east? In the water?”

Ray took the spyglass and looked where she had pointed. Moments later, he called for the Captain, who looked for even less time.

Captain Mattson flipped on the ship’s intercom. “Everyone get inside!”

Adelaide stared out of the windows as the foaming of the sea approached from the horizon. Her normal vision now sufficed to see what the spyglass had revealed — something was emerging from the sea. Or, rather, many somethings. It was hard to see them for all of the spray that they were kicking up, but they didn’t look large individually, less than a foot in length each. And while they were leaping out of the water, they didn’t seem to be returning to it - there was a cloud of the things forming and approaching the Strider. Something about the process — either the creatures or the water they kicked up, Adelaide wasn’t sure — gave the illusion that there was something shining, even metallic in the water.

“Captain, what are they doing? Do you think they’ll know to avoid the ship?”

“I’ve never seen them before! But I do not think they will want to crash themselves against —”

Before he could finish, they heard the sound as the creatures began to pound themselves against the hull. A few of the stronger ones went farther and began to pelt the deck itself, with a few thumping against the windows of the bridge.

“I guess I was wrong! Blind as bats, maybe! I’m glad we are inside!”

“Will these windows hold?”

“The windows are reinforced! These are not the first things to try to break through!”

And then, as quickly as it began, the thumping ended. Adelaide looked west and saw the same pattern repeating itself to the west, outside of the Strider’s shadow.

Captain Mattson triggered the all-clear intercom signal, and then turned and said, “You see, Percival? Unexpected things happen every morning! Was this in your computer?”

Cautiously, Adelaide opened the bridge’s door and walked over to one of the strange animals, flapping on the deck. It had the body of a thin fish, but it had extended fins that were almost as wide as the body was long. Adelaide picked it up, avoided dropping it as it wriggled, and saw that these fins must have been what allowed the strange animals to glide.

The Captain looked at the animal she held. “They look like bats! So perhaps they really were too blind to see the ship!”

“But bats aren’t actually blind. And, look, it has eyes - four eyes, actually, although they’re small. And they can’t be blind — if they were, why would they wait until daytime to do this whole routine?”

Before the Captain could speculate, Emma walked up onto the deck. “I heard all that noise - what happened?”

Ray walked over to her and handed her one of the creatures. “You’re the expert, Emma, but I think breakfast just got delivered.”

***

They weren’t bad, as it turned out.

Emma had cleaned the creatures, which the Captain had taken to calling “dawn bats,” and fried them up. They tasted pretty much like any fish did when it was fried - tasty, but not exactly exotic. And Emma reported that they didn’t actually have much meat on them. She put the ones they didn’t eat into the freezer in her locker, but she didn’t seem optimistic about their sale value.

Adelaide was pleased to see that everyone was willing to try them, at least. Not that she’d worried about the crew Mattson had selected — she couldn’t imagine there was room for a picky eater through the Triangle — but she didn’t know how many of her own passengers had experienced this kind of eating-what-you-kill living before, let alone with a strange fish-bird no human had ever tasted before. But Percy, Alessio and Trish all dug in without complaint, even if Alessio spent a lot of time taking photos of the food rather than actually eating it.

As Adelaide was finishing up, a member of the crew sat next to her at the folding table that had been pulled out in anticipation of the meal. A tall man with blonde hair, Adelaide had seen him walking the ship but they hadn’t yet been introduced. He began to eat, and Adelaide asked, “How do you like it?”

He looked up at her. “It’s good - nothing fancy, but it’s nice to have hot fresh food out here. You don’t always get that.”

“I suppose it’s another lucky break. I’m Adelaide, by the way.”

He shook her hand. “Tom Grinston. I hear you were with the Skipper when these dawnbats popped up?”

“Yeah. It’s lucky I was inside — I wouldn't have wanted to take one of these to the face.”

Tom laughed a bit at that. “I’ve had worse, but no reason to get hit with any more weird fish bats then is strictly necessary.”

“That’s more or less my thinking. But it is something, to get our first real glimpse of the fauna out here. The only really new thing I’ve seen.”

“What about those shiny things?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t see them when you were up on the deck? Let me show you.” Tom scarfed down the rest of his plate and led Adelaide back up to the deck and pointed over the westerner rail. “See them?”

Adelaide saw them immediately, in the shadow of the Strider. It looked like there were disco balls bobbing in the waves. There were dozens of them, but they were concentrated in a relatively small area near the Strider itself. “Have we pulled any of those up?” she asked.

Tom shook his head. “We can, though. If you think they might be worth something.”

“I think it’s worth a shot.”

Tom and another crewmember whose name she hadn’t caught cast out a net woven from a dark purple fiber. A few minutes later, they pulled it up, wet and containing two silver spheres.

“Can you put one of those on the bench here?” Adelaide pulled out a utility tool she’d purchased at the Top Drawer and unsheathed a small knife that she’d been told would keep an edge even if she tried to cut a rock with it. And, for all she knew, cutting a rock was exactly what she was about to attempt.

She pressed the tip to the sphere and the silver coating immediately began to flake off as if it were gold foil. Her knife then began to snag as it entered something with the consistency of a tough sponge. Some sawing and body weight let her keep making progress, and eventually she’d carved out enough to take a look within.

The shiny outer layer appeared to be thin scales, much thinner than those of any fish she’d seen but otherwise similar in texture. Those scales were pearlescent, glittering and throwing off light even as they flaked away from the cut edge. And then there was just the spongy material she’d cut through, which was a nondescript sort of off-yellow. There were, however, a few dark off-color bits, like seeds but smaller and less firm.

“What is it?” Tom asked.

“I have no clue,” Adelaide responded. “I wonder where they come from.”

Captain Mattson walked over. “What have you found?”

They showed him the little shiny sphere they’d cut open. “Interesting! But Adelaide, I came over because we’ve settled on a course and are ready to go. Unless you want to look at these things for longer!”

Adelaide was tempted. There was something interesting happening here, and it seemed almost rude to sail away. But she wasn’t a biologist, and this wasn’t an entomological expedition. There was no reason to believe she could actually figure out what sort of creature or plant or whatever was responsible for these strange silver spheres even if they spent their whole two weeks on it. And wasting time on this would prevent them from doing the actual research she was qualified for.

The weird thing was that this moment was maybe the only chance anyone would ever have to figure out what these spheres were. Sure, sometimes some creatures appeared in multiple Seas, but plenty had been seen once and never again, at least so far . So there was every chance that nobody would ever see these things again and nobody would ever know any more about them than she did right then. On the one hand, that arguably made further investigation even less important, but it also made walking away feel more tragic.

But there wasn’t really any choice. Her own research was more important and, if successful, would hopefully make dilemmas like this less common.

“We should get going.” Adelaide paused. “But scoop up as many of these as you can first. They might be worth something.”

Mattson laughed. “Now you’re getting it!”