The Diamond-Toothed Shark Hunt

 

Jack Morton

 

 

 

The smell of unwashed gym shorts fills the shuttle.

I try to talk, to penetrate the grim, masculine silence.

Mention some war-correspondence during the Tarrak rebellion. Garth, the grizzled harpooner fought on Tarrak 4. Some others are ex-military. I record some names and backgrounds, but they still won’t talk much.

My editor wanted coverage of the glamourous side of the trade, jewellers, merchants. I said if I’m doing this, I’ll be centering the workers. Sold him on the excitement angle: the brave people who do the most dangerous job in the sector.

Diamond-Toothed Shark hunters.

Their bodies, muscular like Peyson or wiry like Joseph, all wrapped in scars, promise the danger. But for the story to work I need them to open up, give me something personal.

 

 

I rachet the strap on my suit. “Tighter.” Garth, his voice two bricks rubbing together. “That’s air, flotation, and protection.”

I ask, “Protection from shark bites?”

A sneer drags weathered skin across Joseph’s knife-edge cheekbones. “Shark teeth’d pierce this hull.” He bangs on the aerostat hatch.

“Protection from icefall.” Garth explains.

I recall endless twinkling fields, the planet’s rings I saw from orbit. Beautiful. Unstable. Gravity tears clumps off, pouring frozen storms down towards the surface.

A powerful hull and magnetic shields atop the aerostat guard its hydrogen inflated underbelly. But hunters venture out, away from that protection.

The mask envelopes my face, rubber sucking on skin.

The tank of silica aerogel, the translucent blue they call frozen smoke, fills with my share of the buoyant hydrogen. I stand taller.

The hatch opens, gas rushes in from the high-pressure atmosphere.

It’s not floating, like the weightlessness of space. Walking to the hatch, the dense gas—mostly sulfur-hexafluoride—resists like thin water. I grip the ladder. Hand over careful hand, I follow the gentle tug of gravity, while the hunters fling themselves along, dropping meters at a time unattached.

We climb down into clouds tinted yellow by ammonia crystals. They cluster at the bottom when I arrive, hovering with steady kicks of flippered feet. Heat flushes me, remembering Garth’s warning: “Sink too low and the gravity gets stronger. Your buoyancy-tank won’t save you, and you’re not strong enough to swim up. You get stuck in freefall. Out of scanner range. Alone.”

Sweaty focus, as I fix my line to the ladder.

Attached, we fan out. The burly hunters graceful as dancers, swimming into the yellow mists.

A message crackles down the lines.

“Got something!”

“A shark?!”

Joseph snorts at my overexcitement. “You’ll know when it’s a shark.”

“What then?” I kick in his direction. His rangy form solidifies in the fog, holding a curled nautilus-shell.

“These guys can’t swim in the depths like a shark.” He explains in curt tones. “They hide from icefall inside shells.”

He slams a fishing knife against the creature’s casing. Not a scratch.

“Sharks’ favorite prey.” He releases it. It sinks briefly, then bladders inflate out of the shell, catching it. Appendages spill between them and propel it away. “That’s why they got the teeth.”

Those teeth, used in industry and prized as jewelry throughout the sector.

I start to ask more, but Joseph swims off, ignoring me.

Alone again in these soupy clouds. Hunters and shelled creatures form dull shapes.

One nautilus passes close by.

A silent burst of slick, black skin erupts from beneath it. A muscular tail sends a bloated sac of a body darting through the gas. Its angular head opens, overlapping spirals of crystal daggers spread into a sparkling grin. Jaws close around the shell, the crack ringing through my suit. Fragments scatter. Another lash of blackness, and it’s gone.

Cries of “Contact!” and shouted directions.

Another crack. Adjusted instructions down the line, the hunters swarm.

A tug cinches my belt.

I turn. Double back along my line.

A cluster emerges. My line and Peyson’s entangle a nautilus-shell.

He swims forward to free the creature.

A shark explodes from below. The glittering bear-trap slams shut, shattering the shell.

And shredding our lines.

Comms die, the hardline cut, my own gasping breath the only sound.

I swim for the limp, sinking end of my line. Peyson stops me, frowning, and waves me to follow.

My legs burn trying to keep up, but he still pulls ahead.

Joseph’s misty figure appears, line intact. Peyson relaxes as the hunters connect. I slow, safety in sight, but Joseph waves at me to hurry.

Then the icefall begins.

Rounded hailstones, sharpened frost-blades, massive slower-moving ice-boulders. The suit absorbs the piercing blows, but I’m buffeted into contortions, goggles useless.

I head blindly after the hunters.

A monster chunk slams into me.

Plastered against the surface, I plunge towards the depths. Outside the meteor’s lee smaller stones race past.

Crawling across its frozen surface, I inch toward the edge.

I push off.

Free of the boulder, my fall slowed by my hydrogen tank, I watch it drop, enveloped by the thicker clouds that fill the depths of the lower atmosphere.

I kick to head upwards. Harder and harder I lash flippered feet through heavy gas. I slow, but don’t stop. Unable to resist the pull of the dense planet below.

I sink, steady, unstoppable.

Alone.

Not alone.

A pure, crystalline note sounds.

Then another.

They blend into harmony. Then fade.

A hulking shadow moves through the gas. Powerful strokes keep the shark in motion. It passes in front. Behind.

A second approaches, twisting, circling, matching my descent. They bare rings of glistening jewel-fangs. I shut my eyes.

And hear.

The music.

I look, and see clouds, thick and yellow, passing through their open jaws, creating a stained-glass chorus of singing swords.

Notes modulate. A call-and-response melody.

A song.

A conversation.

One dives, then surges up. It hits me, mouth closed, and pushes me with it.

We rush upwards. Alongside, the other shark keeps pace. Its teeth sing, cheering us on.

Gravity’s hold on me eases. The suit creaks as less and less force resists the beat of the shark’s tail.

The ladder materializes above.

I roll off the shark, and seize the bottom rung.

The two sharks circle below, mouths wide. The thinner clouds mute their voices. But I know they’re singing.

I swim in a circle of my own. My toothless body just as silent. But I hope they understand my message of thanks.

 

 

I enter the aerostat to back pats and bear-hugs from the hunters. Peyson fusses motheringly at the ice scars on my suit. Joseph’s face splits in a boyish chortle, revealing a huge gap between his front teeth.

The hatch seals, and air pumps away the dense sulfur hexafluoride. When the masks come off, a clamour of excited voices fills the diving bay. Laughs of relief. Tales of past exploits and fallen comrades. A warmth fills my chest. My close call has earned their words.

Demands grow for my own story.

I describe the fall. The hunter’s listen, rapt. Joseph verifies the size of the ice-chunk. Their eyes widen as I describe freefall into the lower atmo, and the sharks’ arrival. I’ll need time to capture the angelic music in words, but I do my best. And when I recount the race back to the ladder a few cheers arise.

Garth’s gravel pit voice interrupts. “No one can know.” We all turn. “Sharks that sing through their teeth, that communicate, that saved your life? They’ll be marked as protected. Market’ll dry up. That story would kill the hunt forever.”

The hunters turn sober faces my way, waiting for a response. The bay goes as silent as the shuttle on the way here. As silent as the sharks’ song, once I’d left their depths. Unless I lend them my voice.