Back in the oceans of a rocky planet, long before the Circs arrived at the gas giant, fish emerged in the pre-dawn twilight to eat. Fishermen set out in their boats before their star made itself known along the horizon, aiming for the time they called dawn patrol.
That custom is kept even at present. The Circs also fish at dawn, but match their timing to their own planet, Fat Beach Ball, instead. Synchronizing a human’s 25-hour circadian rhythm with the planet’s 10 hour rotation period is a hassle, and it is common for their bodies to receive the signal to begin the day at odd hours like 4 P.M. or 1 A.M. It’s a difficult lifestyle, no two ways about it, but fishermen have been in rhythm with nature since ancient times.
On a day soon after she began fishing with Diode, Terra restlessly crawled out of bed well past 5 P.M., after oversleeping. Her ancient residence on the Idaho was in the Year 120 Ring, its gravity 0.5G. She washed her face, then printed her garment and make-up before quickly dressing herself. The day’s deck dress was a lightweight platinum elf-style temple girdle from the 35th century Sirius imperial court. It was incredibly embarrassing as far as everyday clothing went, but it was just right to go out fishing.
She puffed out her chest, got on the spoke elevator and was pushed into the corner by others on their way to board. No matter where they were in space, unaccomplished people found their place in corners.
6:22 P.M. Terra met up with Diode at the Fisherman’s Wharf assembly terminal. Diode wore a slim silver and black opera-style skinsuit, a look anyone could tell with a single glance was meant for fishing. It was the same outfit as the first time, but no less charming. On the contrary, Terra felt like she hadn’t fully savored it enough. Approaching the girl, she spread her arms.
“Die-san, good morning! Your dress is wonderful again today!”
“Good morning, Terra-san. Your dress is just as wonderful.”
“No way, I’m totally too big. You’re so compact that it’s cute!”
An ordinary twister—in other words, a man—didn’t dress too gaudily. A situation like this, having a partner dressed just as stylishly, was completely new to Terra. Her eyes sparkled as she looked down and circled around her partner once in appraisal.
In contrast, Diode’s eyes were cold as she looked up and around Terra’s chest. Bluntly, she responded: “Would you mind not belittling yourself over your proportions? Also, you’re 22 minutes late.”
“Augh, I’m sorry...! I came here after I woke up from a nap, I ended up oversleeping because I couldn’t fall asleep earlier.”
“I would have guessed you were the type to sleep well.”
“It was because I got really excited when I started to think about us going out fishing again today! How about you, are you that type of sleeper too?”
“I can sleep pretty much anywhere in any way. There’s no time, let’s get moving.”
“Huh, what about breakfast? Something light.”
“You already used up the time for that. We’ll have to make do with snacking on the pemmican when we board.”
“Aaaahh...”
Diode snapped around and quickly started walking, then stopped just as abruptly. Terra, trailing behind, bumped into her.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Despite Diode’s denial, Terra could tell what the problem was. They’d felt probing gazes from others on their way to board ever since leaving for the assembly terminal that morning. The usual pair of fisherwomen would chat to catch up over each other’s husbands before going their separate ways. The deck dresses served a similar purpose—they were carefully chosen with their husbands in mind.
So, it was inevitable that the odd sight of two women walking towards their spaceship without a husband would attract curious eyes. It was also only natural that Diode would be alert to it.
“Uh, Die-san, I’ll be a barrier, so...”
Using her height to block the surrounding gazes, Terra nonchalantly stepped in front of Diode. However, Diode yanked on Terra’s elbow and put herself back out in front.
“You’re worrying over nothing.”
She proudly stuck out her chest and pressed forward like a small tugboat, leaving Terra wide-eyed.
They passed through the assembly terminal’s camera gate, headed for the pier extending out into the void of space. They passed the supply counter and greeted ‘Maintainer-san’ and ‘Supplier-san’, counted the gate numbers as they continued, then hurled themselves into the boarding tube of their boat.
Diode and her suit gleamed as she swirled down the snaking throat of the boarding tube. Terra was absorbed in the sight of something she had never laid eyes on before.
The tube ended against a wall. It was pink and smooth, almost like an aquatic mammal’s belly. That wall was the pillar boat’s hull, which had been reconditioned with fresh AMC clay. Diode confidently pressed the clay with both hands and her handprints began to glow as a large slit opened. Terra had already judged her to be an assertive twister a while back.
Diode quickly jumped into the slit and was pulled through the viscosity hatch. Terra followed by jumping in behind her. It was like being swallowed by a large beast, except there wasn’t anything unnerving about it—the process didn’t prompt any strong feelings in particular. It was something she, all of her previous partners and, long ago, her parents had done many times. However, this time felt special. Boarding after that girl was exciting.
Cool slime engulfed her, and she inhaled and coughed for ten agonizing seconds. There wouldn’t be a need to do this in a dry pit, but it was unavoidable with a submerged pit. The pain faded as her lungs adjusted to the gel. Terra lowered her hands and positioned them as if to raise a rattling iron shutter door at a garage, and then scooped them upwards in a sweeping motion.
“Rear pit, lift up!”
The scooping gesture activated the boating system, and a dazzling array of parts came alight. The pre-flight checklist flickered on the VUI as data from the interior sensors began to flow in. Half of the pillar boat’s functions promptly resumed.
“Mn, twister, starting...” Diode replied absentmindedly as she transferred her pit to the other end of the boat. The previously dim cockpit was violently illuminated by the VUI. She was in fact working through the activation sequence, but that wasn’t the formalized response to the decompa. Stating ‘Cockpit, lift up!’ was an established part of the sequence, but it seemed like Diode was unaware of that. Terra was irritated by the level of interest she was taking in Diode’s unconventional workflow.
The interior and exterior cameras finished booting and projected the view all around Terra. The planet was to her right, space was to the left, and directly below was the Idaho’s pier and gigantic wheel—then before her eyes, the back of Diode’s small figure appeared, her hair tied up.
“Ready to fish! Let’s go, Die-san!!”
“Alright, I’m ready, too.” Diode’s response was typically laconic, and she spun the VUI’s contact dial to call the official.
“This is Terra Intercontinental Endeavour’s leisure boat to Idaho boating officer. Requesting permission for descent.”
The registration number and identification codes were communicated in binary, so Diode didn’t need to repeat them. Her words were a necessary bit of ceremony, but beyond that they served no real purpose. However, Diode’s tone communicated immense annoyance as she said leisure boat.
“Permission for descent granted for Terra-san’s boat. Take care.”
The reply was somewhat amicable, but upon hearing that, Terra murmured.
“Take care, huh...”
They would have added something along the lines of ‘Let’s hope for a big catch’ if they had been a fishing boat, and its absence felt just a tiny bit alienating. Of course, mentioning that out loud might bother Diode, so Terra muttered it off-line.
“So, shall we depart?”
The pillar boat's umbilical disconnected the moment permission was granted, enabling it to move in freespace. Diode spoke calmly and raised her hands over the cluster of folding fan-shaped throttle panels.
While in its at-anchor form, the pillar boat is, as the name implies, a 220-meter-long, 20-meter-wide blunt cylinder. Diode opened two small holes at the front and back of the hull for tiny RCS nozzles. —Poof... Poof... Poof...—the pillar boat separated from the pier with three gentle jet-like bursts from the nozzles. Diode began a turn to point the pillar boat’s aft end in the direction of orbital travel, then braked.
“Port departure complete. When does the window open? I do think we’re just in time to make it, at least.”
“Umm... Yes, our timing is fine. Eight minutes left until then!”
“We’re almost out of time, that’s not fine at all!”
“Waaah! I’m sorryyy!”
“Let’s eat something while it sends us down. Reentry shape, please.”
“Okay!”
Now it was Terra’s turn. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Decompression—changing the boat’s shape to her desires.
As if working clay with an imaginary hand, she started to mold the boat into the image in her mind. The pillar boat was soft, cool, and nice to the touch. At the bow end, she worked the cylinder shape into something resembling a tricorne, then pinched it tight. She spread the aft like a flared skirt, then carefully leveled out the base. The shape would allow them to decelerate as they dove into the atmosphere.
Secretly enjoying herself, Terra calmly kneaded the clay to remove unwanted lumps. Even so, she felt like she was making others wait on her, and the result still ended up showing traces of being hastily beveled.
All 18,000 tonnes of AMC clay easily responded to Terra’s modeling; the pillar boat’s shape smoothly flowed from a long, thin cylinder into a charming cone. The origin of the reentry form’s shape was murky, but it had been called the “apollo shape” since ancient times. The underside had a radius of 50 meters, and the cone was more than 20% wider than it was tall.
“Phew, done!”
“OK. Timing, please.”
Fishing grounds are set 10 hours in advance. To put it another way, fishers sync themselves to the fishing grounds by going to sleep 10 hours before departure so they can descend and arrive at the right time.
“It’ll only be a moment, 30 seconds remaining! 29, 28, 27–”
“That’s fine. Okay, initiating reentry.”
“But we still have 25 seconds...!”
“It’s not a problem if we’re only off by a few seconds.”
6:58 P.M. Diode interrupted Terra’s countdown and leisurely announced the start of reentry. Beautiful flames the color of black tea gushed out of the pillar boat’s nuclear fusion engine and through its large underside, decelerating them.
The combustion promptly cut after several seconds, reentry burn complete. Now that they were in separate orbits, the Idaho shot forward, momentarily racing through an arc overhead before trailing away behind the boat. It followed their elementary comprehension of orbital motion: “the front is the back; the back is the front.”
By the time the boat was sinking into the atmosphere, it was nearly time for their fishing grounds in FBB’s night side to brighten.
Mother Beach Ball’s rays lit an extended shoreline of thin cirrus clouds, a cliff of stacked stratus, and a valley of coiled, swirling stratus which yawned into the depths.
“Ok, let’s have breakfast.”
“Die-san, are you really okay with pemmican? It’s like eating pet food in the bath...”
“I’m used to it.”
The Circs’ fishermen descended with their boats at dawn.
Five hours of daylight fishing, five hours of night fishing. The cycle set by FBB's ten-hour rotational period is the same for most of the planet. Whether a fisherman likes it or not, that won't change. In the morning when visibility is good, the fishermen descend for a haul. After dark, they ascend to a safe altitude and cruise on alert as they wait through the night. When the haul comes up short, they navigate under the light of FBB’s several moons to catch species that surface in the darkness. At dawn, they return to their base ship.
And it was through many fishermen following this cycle for hundreds of years that they had arrived at the present.
Terra was following the cycle as well. To be specific, they started to fish for sweet mackerel following the plan of keeping their catches “modestly large” like they had discussed the first night. The fish are found in the high-altitude ammonia cloud belts, diving in and out of the clouds without a care.
However, Terra had failed to catch them. She had been overenthusiastic and wove a net that was too large. Thanks to her blunder in spreading the mesh too far and wide, most of their prey had spilled out. Merely 200 tonnes remained in the net. Converted into the equivalent amount of propellant, it would keep the pillar boat afloat for 100 seconds at most.
With regret, Terra pulled in the net then changed her target to schools of bowstring parrotfish, a borderline class-large species living on the cliff-like faces of red phosphorus cumulus and which emerged at noon. However, while preparing a flag-shaped net for the bowstring parrotfish school they were cautiously approaching, she noticed they had instead encountered a school of string spiderfish.
Spiderfish are a small species that form gigantic schools within cumulus clouds and, as Terra thought about it again, are definitely hunted by bowstring parrotfish. It was already too late by the time the realization set in, though. String-covered spiderfish rapidly overfilled the net as they spilled down the cliff like an avalanche, crossing 200,000 tonnes in only a moment. The catch corresponded to 11 hai, and it quickly capsized the pillar boat.
Unlike with the surfers, they weren’t trawling in a high-speed form. The current hull shape wasn’t providing any lifting power. To keep their forward momentum going, Diode nervously adjusted the engine to run its jets at full throttle with both hands. Despite her nervousness, she maintained a flat tone.
“Terra-san, we caught too much, didn’t we?”
“Aaah I’m sorry, I overfilled it! My mistake—the volume would have been fine if they’d been bowstring parrotfish, but I got careless.”
“Never mind the incident report, if we don’t do something, our jets are going to melt the boat before we even run out of fuel.”
“W-we’re throwing the catch out, right?!” It was a waste, but there wasn’t anything moderate about the large catch at all. “I wonder if half is good. That would leave us with five hai.”
In a panic, Terra loosened a part of the net, but Diode raised one hand to stop her.
“That’s not what I meant. Please, change shape.”
“Change shape?!”
“We’ll be flying for a good while, so I want you to decomp us into a shape that has a high glide ratio.”
That was an unexpected proposal.
“So we’re not throwing away our catch? We’re bringing it back?”
“Mhm.”
“But you said that we had to be careful not to overfish, and besides, it’s so heavy it might make it hard to leave the atmosphere.”
“I said it’s fine, so please just do it. I can get through this with motivated piloting, leave that part to me. But if your conclusion is that it’s physically impossible, we’ll give up on it, of course.”
Free to decide, Terra reached her own conclusion. “If it’s for gliding at high altitude, then what about making a flying wing or a glider shape? Wait, maybe something like that could work if it needs strength. Would a parachute work better? Ah, what if I pressed the whole catch into filler and molded our airfoils around it, how about that?! I think it’d go great if we did that! For sure!”
“...Come again? Never mind. I barely understand, but I’m entrusting it to you.”
Terra filled with fervor at Diode’s declaration. From the moment they discarded the 315,000 tonne catch, she had been thinking about how they could have brought it back.
Decompression—Terra transformed the long, narrow shell-shape of a powered flight boat into a flat wing, a significant change. She pulled the dangling net inside the boat, repeatedly breaking the catch down into pouches.
As she pushed the evenly flattened pouches inside both wings, they expanded to an imposing length, which now provided lifting power. However, the lively squirming of besshu inside the pouches was capable of creating instability, so Terra reinforced the internals. Luckily, they had caught string spiderfish, so she stretched out their strands and tied the fish together with their own parts. Tightly packed and functioning like elastomers, the pouches were aligned and hardened, and Terra’s plans for reinforcement were beginning to show the desired result. To finish, she quickly lined up longitudinal ribs throughout the wing, fixing the whole thing in place.
“It’s done!” Terra announced. The pillar boat’s finished appearance almost looked like a primitive V-shaped hunting tool. It was a gigantic flying wing with a 500-meter wingspan.
“Wh-” Diode looked out over the wing from left to right, then spoke like she’d been punched in the gut. “What...is this...”
“Sorry, the shape’s weird, isn’t it? I don’t think anyone’s ever made their pillar boat look like this before. But I think I managed to do it just fine... Ah, I’m not trying to brag or anything! Also, those yaw rudders, I only noticed in the middle of decomping that it wouldn’t turn, so they were entirely an afterthought!”
Multiple perpendicular foils resembling a shark’s dorsal fin extended above and below the wing and had been thoughtlessly placed down its length with visible signs of regret. When Terra realized that she’d completely forgotten essential parts of an aircraft, such as vertical and horizontal rudders or a tail boom, she tried to shove them in at the last minute.
“If you’re careful when pitching the nose, it won’t suddenly dive or break, I think! It’s misshapen, but please make use of it one way or another...”
“...Misshapen, right...”
Diode cautiously touched the throttle swarm, remaining silent as if in astonishment. Refiring the engine that had been moved elsewhere by the decomp, Diode tested the rudders a few times to ensure all of the parts were strong enough, accelerated with the jets at full throttle to verify the composite thrust was directed through the composite center of gravity, then swiftly turned around and spoke with a nervous expression.
“How...”
“Huh?”
Diode turned to look ahead. “Huh? Huh?” Terra tilted her head to the side.
After the shape change, the pillar boat could successfully climb with a thrust ratio of one to eighteen. They welcomed dusk after ascending to 40 kilometers above sea level. As the five-hour long night swept over them, Diode suddenly lifted both arms.
“I’m beat. Fuel consumption this low feels like cheating. If the thrust ratio holds up until we make the return, we’ll have a clay surplus.”
“Ehe, fuheheheh.”
“We’re taking 11 hai back with us. Seriously, what’s up with that? Crap, Terra-san, you’re the best.”
“Heheheh, huh?”
Thinking she was being praised, Terra grew bashful, but suddenly froze when she noticed the dark blue eyes staring at her.
“Um, what is it?”
“Do you understand what you just did?”
“Uh, no...?” I made an awesome boat based on the fantasies I wander into every day. “...I don’t know, I’m sorry!”
“Let me rephrase. Why do the fishermen who fish at noon and sit idle at night usually bring in an average catch of six or seven hai when they come back in the morning? Why do you think that is?”
“H-huh?”
“It’s because they’re blowing through their fuel overnight. You could say it’s a bottleneck.”
“Then, why am I crap...?”
“Please forget that. It was something that slipped out accidentally.” Diode sighed, then turned to face forward again. “...The decomp is incredible.”
“Ah, yes, that’s true. Decompressing in general is really curious, like why does the fish clay turn into the shape we want...”
“I’m saying you’re what’s incredible!”
Diode said it like she was scolding Terra, who replied “Okay!” and ducked her head.
The ship circled in the night sky, and before long the sound of rhythmic breathing from a sleeping person began to fill it. Diode's small body gently floated in the gel, asleep. Just as she’d said, she could sleep anywhere. The station keeping had been left to the boating system, so Terra also folded her arms over her dress and looked up into the starry sky.
After five hours of sleeping that way, the wakeup alarm loudly sounded from the VUI.
Off in the direction of the giant which loomed in the depths of night, the faint, flame-colored light of dawn began to spread. Terra heard the cold voice of her new partner.
“Please bring up the guide container. Full-element.”
Astonishing Officer Bonus, they arrived at the Idaho 66,000 tonnes in the black, having brought back a 211,000 tonne catch while consuming 135,000 tonnes of propellant.
Diode and Terra headed to the W.E.B beer hall, but this time there were no tears. They toasted with their cups of coffee-like, cleaned the plates of bacon-like, fried egg-like and vegi-like they’d ordered, and tried to figure out why the fermented wheat flour-based singed dish was called toast. When they finally took their leave, their faces were composed.
Terra walked back to her ancient residence against the crowd commuting to work. Taking off her outfit, she laid down on the cushioned floor and sank into the pleasant exhaustion of spending a day out and returning in the morning. However, she wasn’t used to processing an entire day’s lingering feelings in the mornings, and momentarily stirred restlessly, disoriented.
8:10 A.M. Terra finally noticed that she had overlooked an important detail.
“...Where is she going back to?”