Drowning World Read Online Free PDF

under the weight of the intruder, the skimmer banged and bounced in an inglorious and quite noisy descent toward the water below, banging off trunks and smashing through branches at the astonishing rate of one irate invective per second. It landed stern-first with a great splash, its back end sinking halfway under the surface before it finally stabilized atop a pile of exhausted wood.
    Breathing hard, teeth clenched, Hasa picked himself up off the slanting deck. An intermittent morbid gurgling continued to rise from the part of his craft that was now underwater. His initial reaction was to kick the console, the walls, the floors, everything around him. He wanted to hurt every corner of the craft that had so rudely betrayed his trust. But he didn't dare, because further violent movement risked destabilizing his already precarious roost. Losing the skimmer didn't worry him. If it sank, it sank. Fine and good riddance. Once safely back in town he would eagerly apply to collect the insurance. But it could not be allowed to sink before he had recovered and stowed somewhere safe and stable those few vital elements of survival he had mentally inventoried only moments earlier.
    Moving as carefully and slowly as his temper and the rain-slicked floor of the skimmer would permit, he made his way to the back of the vehicle. The storage lockers he sought were now underwater. Opening them and extracting their contents meant working up to his neck in the placid nutrient-rich liquid. He did not worry if the food paks, for example, were spoiled or not. Everything on Fluva that was subject to invasion and spoilage by mold or fungi was sealed tightly against such intrusion. Anything that wasn't did not last more than a week before it was overwhelmed by the planet's incredibly fecund, moisture-driven flora.
    So the food paks he dragged out were still secure in their self-cooking wrappings. He located a repeating pistol and packets of old-fashioned explosive shells. Fancy neuronics and electrics didn't work well on alien worlds where the neutral tolerances of inimical local life-forms had yet to be calibrated. Either of the former might do no more than give a tickle to an onrushing carnivore. Explosives, on the other hand, had the virtue of not being species- or nervous-system-specific. They were marvelously egalitarian in their lethality.
    Locating two rain capes, he immediately slipped one over his head. Though his tropical suit was ostensibly fully water-repellent, a person couldn't have too many layers of rain protection on Fluva. The rest of the gear he crammed into a backpack that he hung on a sturdy branch on one of the trees located safely outside the downed craft. If the skimmer's unseen suspect wooden supports suddenly gave way, sinking it to the ground twenty meters below, he would still have his limited store of salvaged supplies. This essential survival task completed, he crawled carefully down the branch he had used to reach the other tree and back into the skimmer.
    Why he decided to check on the emergency beacon he didn't know. Even though the rest of the skimmer had lost all power, including backup, whatever had caused the trouble should not, could not, affect a unitary-sealed emergency beacon. That device would be secured firmly in the center of the skimmer's hull, in the region of greatest protection, sending out its powerful locating signal together with details of the accident that had caused its activation. If outside the regional pickup range of Taulau or any other town, the signal would then be picked up by one of the satellites orbiting the planet and relayed to the nearest appropriate outpost. But having secured his emergency supplies, he now had nothing left to do. So for the hell of it, he decided to check the beacon.
    What he found made less sense than anything he had encountered since he'd hit the water.
    Removing the appropriate panel in the center of the deck, he made sure it was fastened to a sticktight on one wall