“But wouldn’t the pressure eventually get high enough to crush their lungs, no matter how high the air pressure is?” Vale asked.

“There’s precedent from pre-force-field days—divers immersing themselves in an oxygenated fluid. It let them dive much deeper.”

“I’m sorry, no.” It was Doctor Onnta, representing medical in Ree’s absence. The Balosneean leaned forward and shook his golden-skinned, downy-feathered head. “That would only work up to a thousand atmospheres or so. At that point, humanoid enzymatic processes begin to break down. Increase that to tens of thousands of atmospheres, and cellular lysis occurs—the cell walls themselves burst under the pressure. None of us could survive that.”

Vale looked back to Pazlar. “Would a thousand atmospheres internally be enough?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“Not even close,” Pazlar confirmed.

“So if we get the internal pressure high enough to protect the diving vessel, anyone inside it would be turned to jelly.” She sighed. “Can we rig a remote probe?”

“Too much interference. We couldn’t control it or guarantee it would function at all.”

“So do we have anyoptions?”

The Elaysian paused before answering. “There’s one. I hesitate to bring it up because it’s not a sure thing, and it would put one of my people at risk.” Vale just waited until she went on. “But we do have one person aboard who evolved in a high-pressure environment.”

“I should clarify,”Se’al Cethente Qas said to its senior science officer and first officer, “that Syr’s surface pressure is less than two hundred standard atmospheres. You are speaking of a pressure nearly a thousand times greater.”

“But Syrath biology isn’t as affected by pressure as ours,” Melora Pazlar told it. “And even most humanoids can survive a pressure a thousand times normal, with sufficient preparations and time to acclimate.”

“Simulations show your life processes should not be critically affected by the pressures believed to exist in the upper range of the hypersaline layer,” Doctor Onnta said.

“Believed to exist?”Cethente replied. But it was more amused than alarmed. Pazlar and Onnta were right; unlike the fragile protein-based chemistry on which their bodies depended, Syrath anatomy was far more robust, based upon piezoelectric crystal “cells” in a liquid silicate solvent, with genetic information encoded structurally in chains of dislocation loops and electrically in stored potentials, rather than chemically in nucleic acids.

“I know we’re asking you to take a chance, Cethente,” Vale said. “And I know it’s somewhat outside your area of expertise. I could order you to do it; in fact, I probably will if I have to, because it’s the only way to fix this mess. But you deserve to have a chance to volunteer.”

The astrophysicist pondered the decision carefully. It was incapable of the fear that the humanoids probably assumed it was feeling. Syrath were hard to damage and nearly impossible to kill—permanently, anyway. It wasn’t something they revealed to other races without need, not wishing to earn their envy. They might not have been physically indestructible, but their neural information was encoded in the same ways as their genetic information and distributed just as widely through the body; indeed, they were both facets of the same thing. Any sizeable intact part of a Syrath’s body, even if “dead” for weeks, could regenerate in the proper growth medium into a new Syrath with the same basic personality template. True, many memories would be lost, even most if the surviving portion were small enough; but Syrath saw that as a way of getting a fresh start, sparing themselves the tedious sameness of immortality. So while they weren’t reckless with their lives, preferring to avoid the inconvenience of dying, the Syrath had simply never evolved the capacity for mortal fear.

Still, Cethente recognized there was cause for concern here. It could survive most anything, but if the diving vessel Ra-Havreii’s engineers were designing failed, Cethente could be trapped in the ocean depths forever. Its body might be crushed if it sank to where the pressures were sufficiently deep, or it might simply be buried slowly, encased in the hot allotropic ice of the planet’s mantle. Either way, Cethente would be risking a death far more permanent than any of its previous three—and probably far more prolonged and unpleasant, though it could only remember the two less severe ones.

Of course, there was an option, though it would come as something of a shock to the others. It only needed to have a portion of its physical structure survive and be returned home in stasis, and the essence of Se’al Cethente would survive in a new form, and with a new thirdname. It would lack most of its memories of Titanand its discoveries, which would be a grave loss; but at least part of Cethente would live on.

“Tell me, Doctor Onnta,”Cethente chimed before making its final decision, “how easy would it be for you to reattach my legs if I had them removed…?”

CHAPTER T

WELVE

DROPLET

It had begun to rain the day before, a matter of some discomfort for Riker, who had insufficient means to build a shelter. Aili felt somewhat guilty about being unaffected by the downpour, aside from being able to enjoy the soothing sound of the rainfall and a slightly less saline flavor to the water—though the rain brought a faint metallic tang all its own, for it was still precipitating asteroidal debris out of the atmosphere. Aili was also concerned that if the rain kept falling and diluting the water at the surface, Riker’s floater islet would lose some of its buoyancy and subside a little, leaving him more vulnerable to the high swells being kicked up by the growing wind—swells that often drenched much of the floater’s land surface despite the way it bobbed with them.