Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon Page B

his tilted swivel chair with his feet on a tilted desk, chuckling into a tilted bottle of Scotch.
    Toole squawked: “Cap’n! We’ve struck something!”
    The skipper giggled. He had a terrific load on. I leaned past Toole and shook him. “Skipper! We’ve struck!”
    He looked at us blearily. “Heh. Sid-down, boyss, de trip iss over. Ve have not struck. Ve is yust finished. Heh!”
    “Clear the boats,” Toole said aside to me.
    The skipper heard him. “Vait!” he said furiously, and lurched to his feet. “I am still in command here! Don’t lower no boats. Ve are not in distress, y’u hear? Heh! Ve are loading. I know all about it. Go an’ see for y’uselfs, so y’u don’t belief me!”
    Toole stared at the captain for a moment. I stood by. If Toole decided the Old Man was nuts, he’d take over. If not, then the squarehead was still running the show. Suddenly Toole leaned over and cut the master switch on the alarm system. It had a separate little battery circuit of its own, and was the only thing electrical aboard that still operated. The silence was deafening as the alarm bells throughout the ship stilled, and we could hear a bumble of voices from back aft as the crew milled about. They were a steady bunch; there would be no panic. Toole beckoned me out of the room and left. Once we were outside he said:
    “What do you think?”
    “I think he’s—I dunno, Toole. He’s a seaman first and a human being afterward. If he says we’re not in distress, it’s likely true. Course, he’s drunk.”
    Toole snorted. “He thinks better when he’s drunk. Come on, let’s look around.”
    We dropped down the ladder. The ship lay still. She was careened, probably with her starboard side under water and the starboard rail awash.
    Toole said: “Let’s go to port. Maybe we can see what it is we’ve hit.”
    We had to go on all fours to get up there, so steeply was the deck canted. It did us no good; there was nothing to be seen anywhere but fog.
    Toole clung with one arm to the chain rail and puffed, “Can’t see a thing down there, can you?”
    I hung over the edge. “Can’t even see the water line.”
    “Let’s go down to the starboard side. She must be awash there.”
    She was. I stepped ankle deep into sea water before I knew whereI was. The sea was dead calm, and the fog was a solid thing; and something was holding the ship heeled over. I tell you, it was a nasty feeling. If only we knew what was under us! And then—we saw the ship being loaded.
    May I never see another sight like that one. As if to tease and torture us, the fog swirled silently away from the ship’s side, leaving a little dim island of visibility for us to peer into. We could see fifty or sixty feet of deck, and the chain rails fore and aft dipping into the sea at our feet; and we could see a round patch of still water with its edges wetting the curtain of fog. And on that patch of water were footprints. We both saw them at the same time and froze, speechless. Coming toward us over the water they were—dozens of them. The water was like a resilient, glossy sheet of paving, and the impression of dozens—hundreds—of feet ran across it to the ship. But there was nothing making the footprints. Just—footprints. Oh, my God!
    There were big splay ones and big slow ones, and little swift ones and plodding ones. Once something long and invisible crept with many legs up to the ship, and once little pointed feet, high-arched, tripped soundlessly over the chains and
something
fell sprawling a yard from where we stood. There was no splash, but just the indentation in the water of a tiny, perfect body that rolled and squirmed back onto its feet and ran over to the deck and disappeared. I suddenly felt that I was in the midst of a milling crowd of—of people. Nothing touched me, and yet, all around me was the pressure of scores of beings who jostled each other and pushed and shoved, in their eagerness to get aboard. It was ghastly. There was