Sky-Water

For the Telescope!

The ship's crew worked long hours around the clock to make the necessary adjustments to the ship—adding metal plating to the hull and grappling equipment to hold us to the telescope.

Meanwhile, I visited the oceanography team led by Dr. Chen. Of all the science teams in the moon-castle, I felt most comfortable around Dr. Chen's. Unlike Dr. Zimmerman's night crew, who only cared about the lifeless stars, or Dr. Lima's genetics crew who were so caught up in microscopic cells, that they missed the person the cells formed, Dr. Chen and his crew cared about life—water life, specifically. But to Dr. Chen, every life in the world tied into water life.

"We need to remove the man-o-war from Dr. Zimmerman's telescope," I told Dr. Chen in Chinese. It was the one language I still struggled with, but Dr. Chen never made me feel bad about stumbling on my words. When I made mistakes, he corrected them without chastisement. "Do you have any suggestions?"

Dr. Chen put his hand on his chin and thought through everything I had told him about the situation. "It would be quite difficult to do without hurting one or more of the creatures that make up the man-o-war. Most likely, the pneumatophore—the, eh... "sail"part—is most likely stuck on top of the telescope. But even if you can somehow push it off the top without puncturing it, it's likely that the eh... tentacles—the dactylozooids and perhaps even the gastrozooids—may be wrapped around the telescope, itself."

"So what do you suggest?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "This is certainly not a problem I thought I'd need to solve. In any event, the ordeal will be very dangerous—not just for the man-o-war, but for your crew as well. If it should wrap its tentacles around your ship, I'm afraid its barbs would pop your diving bubble with very little effort. I wouldn't recommend going up there at all. No. It's too dangerous for everyone involved."

"But Dr. Zimmerman's research--"

"Dr. Zimmerman needs to recheck his priorities. Life comes before research. Eventually that man-o-war will die naturally, or move on on its own. He can wait."

"I'm afraid we're already gearing up to go, Dr. Chen. Dr. Zimmerman is offering to pay us well and Captain Akash thinks he can get us up there without incident. He just needs to know what to do once we're there."

"Foolish." Dr. Chen shook his head and sighed. "But if I cannot stop you... then I suggest you use your boat, itself, to push the pneumatophore off the top of the ship. The creature is only dangerous from below. If you push it gently from the side—making sure that you don't press any sharp edges into the creature—then it should slip off the top of the telescope without any resistance—aside from its own body weight, I mean."

I relayed that information back to Captain Akash, who nodded and squinted in deep thought. Devising such a careful plan was something I had never seen him do before. He had always just known how to handle pirates, sea-turtles, and sweet-water currents without much consideration. Navigating open water was second-nature to him. But never before had he traveled to the top of the sky-water. In fact, very few people had. I think it was that fact that made him so determined to do it. After such a long life in the ocean, Captain Akash had finally found a new challenge to excite his old bones.

"I want to go, too!" Maypop shook my arm and bounced on her toes. "I've never been in the sky-water before! Let me go, too!"

"It's not up to me to decide that." I put my hand on her shoulder to calm her down. "But it might be very dangerous up there."

"Then why are you going?" She let go of me and put her hands on her hips. "Do they need a translator to talk to the man-o-war?"

"Are you kidding me?" I said with a smile. "I want to see the top of the sky-water!"