Castaway Planet by Eric Flint, Ryk E Spoor Page A

floating on an ocean so deep that no landmass could rise out of it, not for more than an eyeblink on a geologic scale, because you can’t get that many kilometers of rock to stick up above the rest. There are plenty of water worlds out there, some of them with oceans over fifteen hundred kilometers deep, so deep that geological forces probably can’t even make themselves felt on the surface. Since this one has life like ours, though, trace elements, some kind of active geology just has to be working here to get all of that into solution. But with the gravity here, by the time you get a hundred kilometers down it’ll be all solid, ice-six, maybe ice-seven, but then there’s heat from below . . .”
    She broke off. “Sorry, got carried away. Anyway, something must have evolved here to keep itself up on the surface, where it got the advantage of all the light energy from above, or maybe harvesting things like diatoms or whatever that did use the light energy . . . maybe also keeping it away from a lower-down ecosystem like the one on Europa, where everything revolves around the vents. And that turned into colonies, and then other things started taking advantage of the colonies to support them . . .” She looked back inland, eyes shining. “We’ll have to get samples, get a look at the actual geological history . . . only it’s not really geological, it’s . . . coral-ological? Alcyoneological?”
    “ That ’s why the guide app got confused,” Sakura said suddenly. “It was right . The geometry shifted. We assume that land doesn’t shift detectably over any reasonable timescale—a few centimeters per year, right, Caroline?” Caroline nodded. Sakura went on, sounding finally like her regular self. “But these things aren’t land, they’re floating . Floating islands—floating continents —and they’re moving with wind and currents, so they must’ve been drifting at centimeters per second , maybe even more, and so the guide app lost certainty on the targets because it was like trying to get a fix on . . . I dunno, a set of waves or something. The app and the sensors could see small changes that I couldn’t with my eyes.”
    Laura was still trying to grasp it. Floating islands . . . floating things hundreds, thousands of kilometers in extent? Her mind balked momentarily at the idea. The material in question would have to remain buoyant for a timescale of . . . how long? To build something that huge, get forests growing on it? How strong would it have to be, how flexible, to keep from shattering into pieces at the first storm and waves flexing it?
    “That is fascinating, Caroline, Sakura,” Akira said after a moment. “And we will of course be studying this as time goes on. But I think the first order of business is survival, and I don’t think it matters, for that, whether we’re on regular land, an island of floating coral, or the back of a giant turtle.”
    Laura couldn’t keep from smiling at the last, and the others burst out laughing; even Melody ended up grinning. “No, love, you’re right. We’ve lost LS-5 , but we haven’t lost any of us , and that’s the important thing. This isn’t going to be easy,” she said, looking at her family steadily, reassuringly, “but we will survive.”
    Akira took her hand, and the others—even Whips—gathered around for another hug. “Now, everyone—let’s go back to our camp and figure out what we need to do next.”
    Inside, Laura was still shaking, still worried. But she could see her family—including, now, one juvenile Bemmie—straightening up, wiping away tears, taking that new breath and focusing on the moment, ready to face whatever Lincoln held for them, and that was all that mattered. If Akira and I stay strong, they’ll be strong. And that’s what we need right now.

Chapter 11
    “The seven wilderness survival principles,” Melody said, obviously looking at her omni’s display, “are positive mental attitude, first aid, shelter,