Page 22 - Three Adventures

Voyage of the Pomeranian

experience of it. He replied that he had already concluded that owing
to my requirement for great periods of time outside the water, and
my immunity to prolonged exposure to intense light, I must inhabit a
desolate place between oceans and am doomed to venture forth in
barely seaworthy vessels forever, searching for a means to return to
life as a marine mammal—or, at least, as an amphibian.

I’ll admit my pride in superior knowledge prompted my next
question: do you then think that the cosmos consists of nothing but a
shallow sphere of air surrounding a massive ocean broken only by
occasional islands of wasteland? Certainly not, said Tristan: other
watery worlds exist; this is not the only one. That caught me off-
guard. I quickly asked him: how do you know? The sky is full of
them, he replied. Some close, some far; the closest can be clearly seen
at night, light reflecting from its huge ocean. I realized he meant the
moon. And then the bombshell: Dinadan and I, said he, were among
those planning to emigrate to the moon. We were in the final stages
of preparation when your net came down unexpectedly and seized us.
Dinadan’s third arm had been ruptured at the hectocotylus by folds
in the mesh and he needed treatment desperately.

I apologized (again) as best I could for what had happened. But I
could not help asking: why? Why do you want to leave this planet?
His answer made little sense: because this one is in decline, and we
dare not wait until it has reached a critical stage of degradation. What
do you mean by “decline?” I asked, wondering if I had made the right
translation. You have removed the carcasses remaining from my
meals, said Tristan; in that regard you have done no more than the
sea itself, which finally takes all living things back to an elemental
form, feeding an endless cycle. But human waste is not of that
character. In recent years vessels such as yours have increasingly plied
these waters, leaving in their wake a trail of death and disease. We can
presume that your science will accelerate the production of toxic
chemicals and their penetration of our environment. You have
shown no sign of slowing or reversing that trend, or of cleaning the
waste already left behind.

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