It was the day after Malik’s waterborne combat with a coatl. He sat on the threshold of the lifepod’s hatch while eating lunch, his bare feet dragging through the ocean water to bleed off some of his nervous energy. He’d been brimming with pent-up anticipation ever since he’d triumphantly returned to his floating home yesterday. Now, as he explained the plan to his partner, even his voice took on a hint of the eagerness he felt vibrating through his body.
“Even though we haven’t managed to find land yet, I feel like we’ve made some progress figuring out our location in a macro sense.” Malik snapped off a bite of the ration bar in his hand while he met the silent amber gaze staring back at him from across the waves. A quick sip of water helped choke down the dry block of pressed grain and protean. “We’ve known where north was since shortly after splashdown, but, and this is important, now we have a better grasp of the tidal current and how heavily that massive moon affects things.”
Malik’s enthusiasm wilted beneath Oscar’s skeptical look. The massive prehistoric alligator had returned to its previously shy self after ferrying him back to the lifepod. Even the offering of two coatls earlier in the day hadn’t enticed the sea monster into being more sociable. It was clear to him that his friend valued a working relationship over a personal one. As in, Malik would work to acquire tasty snacks and Oscar would magnanimously accept them.
Malik could respect that.
He tried to recapture his momentum while ignoring the accusatory light in the leviathan’s reptilian eyes. Oscar was, no doubt, wondering when he would be presented with his share of the meal. The Chief wasn’t above resorting to petty bribery to keep his audience engaged, but the absence of readily available coatls left him no choice but to gamely soldier on.
“Let’s say the planet is here,” he began as he lifted his closed fist to serve as a visual aid. “And the moon is here,” holding the remains of his ration bar with two fingers, Malik began to circle his fist from the southwestern quadrant to the northwestern one. “We can sort of guess where we might find a land-based ecosystem.”
He could tell by its slow blink that Oscar was intrigued. A smile bloomed across Mal’s lips like that of a doting parent capturing the attention of their rambunctious child. “So we know that the moon revolves around the planet like so,” he let the ration bar make several revolutions around his fist before he continued. “Now your moon is quite a bit bigger than the ones I’m familiar with, but, then again, so is your planet. Maybe the two are connected, in some way, but that’s a mystery for another day. The part of all this that is relevant right now is the impact this supermoon has on the tidal flow of a planet virtually covered in water.”
“The tidal range along the moon’s direct path has to be enormous. I wish O’Brian were here. He’d be able to explain things far better than I can. I’m no scientist. I’m just a soldier.” A stricken look briefly flashed across his face as if he’d bumped his knuckles against a hot skillet. His lips parted, seemingly on the verge of saying more before a shake of his head banished the maudlin thoughts from his mind.
“Anyway,” Mal continued in a more subdued tone, “We’re somewhere down here in the southeast. We want to move away from the lunar path.” The ration bar helpfully circled his fist in one last orbit. “The tidal force exerted by a moon that size must be extreme. We’re talking about entire islands ending up underwater only to surface again with the tidal shift. I can’t imagine any ecosystem surviving that kind of climate.”
Mal let his fist drop to his side to give Oscar a chance to voice any questions it might have. While he waited, Mal finished off his lunch and scanned the sky for any approaching pests. Thin, wispy clouds were strung from one horizon to the other like an ephemeral veil separating the boundless ocean from the firmament. Aside from the pristine white vapor scrawled across the sky, there was not so much as a single speck or blemish upon the turquoise canvas above. Sadly, to the prehistoric behemoth’s disappointment, it looked like their relatively peaceful day would endure for a bit longer.
I wonder if I’ve depleted the local wildlife population. Surely not, but aside from the flocks I saw on my first day, the coatls have never presented as anything other than solitary creatures. I don’t even know if those first fliers were coatls. They could have been something completely different. Perhaps birds following a migratory pattern? Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong. Maybe I should spend less time looking for land and more time trying to follow the wildlife.
Thoughts about migration patterns and changing seasons drew a sigh from Mal’s lips as his broad shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug. “But all that is just conjecture. As I said, I’m not a scientist. So many factors impact tidal force that I’d never be able to calculate them all without significantly more data. And probably a Ph.D.”
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Malik felt the cold grip of existential gloom tighten around his chest like a vice squeezing the hope from his heart. He didn’t have all the answers. He didn’t even have some of them. But he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that to stay here was to gamble on a miracle. Considering how he’d defied the odds by escaping the Starlight Journey, he felt like he’d already used up his share of deus ex machina for the rest of his life. He was certain, in a bone-deep way that he found difficult to quantify, that if he didn’t start covering more territory, soon, he would die out here among the endless waves.
“So that gives us a direction to travel in,” Mal said, hoisting himself to his feet. His long arms lifted high over his head as he raised onto his tiptoes in a shivering stretch. “What we’ll do,” he continued after snapping his neck to one side, then the other, “is launch the drone heading east while we set a course bearing northeast. We’ll have it intercept us at the end of its charge and then do the same thing the following day, except we’ll launch the drone due north. We’ll be able to cover significantly more area that way than we have with our current search pattern.”
“So what do you say, Oscar?” Mal asked while the waves lapped against the lifepod’s hull to the rhythm of some primeval song. “It could be a long trip, but it's not like we’d be leaving behind a safe neighborhood or fantastic schools for the kids.”
Malik weathered one blink of his friend’s large amber eyes before he lifted a hand with its palm toward the gargantuan alligator in the universal gesture for ‘stop.’
“I hear what you’re saying and I understand,” Malik said patiently. “There’s no reason to yell.”
The slitted amber eyes, which only hinted at the massive creature below the surface, stared daggers at the inconsiderate human.
“I know that the coatls are tasty. I get it. It’s not everywhere that you can find a flying snake with the same complex umami.” Malik knew his friend was a dedicated gourmand so he’d anticipated their first point of contention. “What if, and bear with me for a moment, but what if the roaming snacks that live on land are even tastier?”
Mal carefully smothered the smug smile that threatened to twist his lips when he saw Oscar’s large eyes rise just a little higher above the rolling ocean. He knew he had the leviathan’s attention. Now he just needed to close the deal.
“Think about it. Where else would a discerning gentleman like yourself find new and exciting meals? Certainly not out here! We both know you’ve had every kind of fish in the sea. But have you had pork? Or beef?” After days of constant companionship, Mal had become fluent in Oscar-ese. He could tell that Oscar was intrigued when the gator's eyes began to drift just a bit closer to the pod. “Those are the kinds of food native to my home world. But do you know what they all had in common?” Malik paused a beat, letting the anticipation build before the proverbial hammer dropped.
“They were all found on land.”
He could almost feel his friend reel in shock as Malik flipped his aquatic world upside down.
“I don’t know if we’ll find cows or pigs out there,” Malik said, trying to manage his friend’s expectations. “But we’ll find something that you’ve never experienced before.”
“We’ll also find my people,” the Chief continued in a quiet, halting voice as if each syllable weighed upon his tongue like cast iron ingots. A tumultuous rush of emotions washed across his blue eyes like a sudden squall sweeping across the sea. “They’re out there. Somewhere.” His storm-wrought gaze tore itself from Oscar’s glimmering eyes to scan the horizon as if he expected to find his crew laughing and waving at the far edge of his vision. “I was ready to spend my life keeping the colonists safe because that was my job. My duty. But now, after being out here and remembering what it was like to be alone, I realize that I want more than that.”
A quiet chuckle rattled past his lips as his lips curled into a bemused smile dripping in self-deprecation. “Hell, Oscar, I’ve been anthropomorphizing you for days now. If that isn’t a sign that I’m in desperate need of human contact, I don’t know what is.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Mal continued hastily as the sea monster in question narrowed its eyes to malevolent slits, “You are a fantastic listener and I’m extremely grateful for the help you gave me yesterday.”
“And, you know, not eating me when you had the chance.”
“Alright!,” Malik said, anxious to change the subject to a more comfortable topic. His hands clapped once, sending a sound like a muffled gunshot racing across the empty ocean. “Let’s focus on the future. We’ve got a plan now and the sooner we get started the sooner we can plunder the distant lands of all their tasty treats.”
“There’s one more thing that I need to know,” he said, his stormy blue eyes taking on a considering light as he met the sea monster’s steady gaze.
“What color would you prefer for your harness? Pewter? Or gunmetal?”
Malik would have sworn that he saw Oscar’s amber eyes widen with alarm.