I saw them swimming below as sinuous shapes and immediately fell to my knees, worried. And excited. Because, you know. Sea monsters.
I glanced at Chet, who was whistling softly and braiding some nut-guts into a stronger cord. One did not act so cheekily nonchalant by accident; he wasn’t worried about the sea monsters, whatever they were.
“Oh!” M-Bot said, hovering past me. “Look! Ah! Um, turn around! About-face! Reverse rudder or whatever! We’re going to get eaten!”
Chet calmly tossed me the rope, one end of which he’d fashioned into a loop. Then he handed me a small red fruit he’d harvested somewhere.
“Float that out beside us,” he said, “then set the loop around it in the water and get ready to pull.”
I could hardly contain myself as I did what he said. I stood at the ready as a blue serpentine head came up and snatched the fruit. I yanked with a mighty pull, looping the thing around the neck, which let out a gaping…
…yawn?
Well, it was a sea monster, even if it barely noticed that I’d captured it. Instead it chewed on the fruit, bringing up another coil of its body from the depths below. It was like a snake, perhaps as thick as a man’s thigh, but had little flippered legs along its very long body. It bit happily at the fruit, then looked up at me with pleading eyes, its head wagging in the water.
“You,” I told it, “shall be known as Gnash the Slaughterer.”
It made a bubbling sound, then turned eagerly as Chet tossed another fruit far out into the ocean. It began moving, towing us along as I yelped and held tight to the rope.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering along beside my head, “I don’t think that creature is likely to slaughter anything.”
“It’s a garqua,” Chet explained, settling back down on the raft—er, the deck of our mighty ship. “They’re not dangerous. They come from Monrome.”
“Monrome?” I asked.
“Dione homeworld?” Chet said. “Even I know that, and I’ve forgotten the names of my parents.” At my blank stare, he continued. “No predators on Monrome.”
“What?” I said. “None?”
“None,” Chet said. “Scavengers and herbivores only.”
I glanced at M-Bot, who bobbed in the air to simulate nodding. “It’s true,” he said. “Though I doubt this one came directly from the dione homeworld—they have colonized nearly a hundred planets and have a habit of importing their local wildlife. After, ah, exterminating the local species for being too brutal and aggressive.”
“Sounds like them,” I said. “Still feels odd to me.”
“Did you assume every planet had the same ecological hierarchy as Earth?” M-Bot asked.
“Well…yeah,” I said. “I mean, it seems pretty fundamental. Things eat other things.”
“It seems fundamental,” Chet said, “because it’s the way it was for us. Doesn’t mean it has to be that way everywhere.”
Huh. I continued holding Gnash’s leash. She stopped to eat the fruit Chet had thrown—but then continued on, pulling us along contentedly. She appeared to think she’d find another piece of fruit if she kept going that direction, something Chet reinforced by occasionally tossing out another.
I contemplated the idea of a world—well, many worlds, if M-Bot was right—without predators. No hunting, no killing? How did survival of the fittest and all that work? At any rate, no wonder the diones thought everyone else was too aggressive.
The more I thought about it though, the more annoyed I became at them. They acted like they were superior—like they’d developed “prime intelligence” or whatever—because their society was peaceful. But they’d simply evolved on a planet without predators. They hadn’t become enlightened or learned a better way—they merely assumed their way was how it was meant to be.
I supposed lots of species were like that, my own included. But we weren’t conquering the galaxy—currently—or forcing everyone to live by our rules. Currently.
We spent the better part of the day crossing the ocean fragment. When we reached the far side we thanked Gnash with some more fruit and then moved on. And let it be known that M-Bot was totally wrong. Gnash was an excellent slaughterer, at least when it came to fruit.
We slept that night on a fragment with many caves that reminded me of home, and I think I got my best sleep of the entire trip there, comforted by the peaceful sound of water echoing as it dripped. The next day was full of different delights. Cliffs to scale, two swamps with utterly different scents—really, one smelled like cinnamon, like…someone I’d known once. After that, we crossed a fragment broken by winding canyons and beautiful patterns of colored stone.