Nine hours later, Ko was on the edge of sleep and the rest of the
crew were bunked down planetside. DSV Crescent IV orbited above
on remote.  In Ko's dreaming state, for some reason he imagined
his mother, Hanna, was still living, and was boiling some water
in a large earthen pot.  The water got hotter and hotter, and
then it commenced to boil.  But it did not continue to boil.
The boiling fell away, and then returned, fell away and then
returned again, over and over and over.  The sound of the water
was cyclic, almost like a deep thunder, which rolled closer and
closer to a crescendo as it passed overhead, and then rolled
back away again, before the next cycle started.

A particularly deep thunder resonated out of the distant dream
space, growing in its intensity and its pervasion. Ko opened his
eyes.  The walls of the hall were shaking.  He leapt out of the
bunk, and crossed over to the window.  The thunder drew nearer.

He had seen large oceanic waves before, but this wave was large.
The wave was perfect, consistently peeling away over the top of
an enormous barrel.  The impact zone must have been about 500
yards from the white crystal shore, but moving parallel, it
continued to break from west to east, getting closer and closer
to the front of the groundstation.

As it passed the chaotic thunder of its passage reached a peak,
and as it charged off into the eastern distance, the sound of
it fell away gradually into a background rumble.  It was not
out of sight, far down the coast, before the sound of another
approaching wave brought Ko's attention back to the western
horizon.

It could have been two hours afterwards, it could have been
four - Ko could not say for sure - when Skip appeared with a
steaming cuppa.  After a while, all of the crew members had
appeared from their sleep, and were standing at the windows,
watching the succession of huge waves pass across the vista
in front of the groundstation, and then pound their way down
the crystal coast.



"Do you mean to say surfers catch those things" said Rosie,
who was the fourth of the ship's crew, and the Archivalist.

"They sure do", replied Skip, "they come from all over the
galaxy to ride those things."

"How far do they travel?", Dat asked.

"The surfers or the waves?", replied Skip.

"The surfers" [Ko].
"The waves" [Dat and Rosie]
"Both" [Jerry]
All of them spoke at once.

Skip, always on the lookout, it appeared, for showmanship,
helped himself to another cuppa, and blew slowly on the
its surface to cool it down.

"Well", he drawled slowly, "the surfers go as far as they
want or can".  He put his cup down on the table.  The wave
which was just passing shook the coast and the groundstation
the table and the coffee cup, setting up concentric ripples
on the surface of the beverage.

The crew looked at him, waiting for him to finish.

"The waves", continued Skip, aware that all eyes were upon
him, and that all ears were directed towards his next words,
"well, the waves ... they go right around the planet."

The thunder of the last wave fell away as it peeled off down
towards the eastern horizon.  Relative silence prevailed.
The crew watched the wave moving off out of sight, and as
the rising sound of the following wave overtook the falling
sound of the last wave, they turned as one to see next one
slowly break out of the western horizon.

Skip continued, "Most of the surfers who book onto the tour
catch their own wave anywhere between 50 and 100 miles, before
they literally pull the PIN.  Part of the standard issue,
along with the Enviro wetsuits is a personalised robot
retrieval shuttle, which follows the surfer down the coast
as far as he travels, and is activated when the surfer hits
the retrieve button, hidden under the neck of the Envirosuit.
It is basically just a standard issue sub-space energy beacon
used for navigation throughout the galaxy, only its smaller
and is tuned to a specific energy band to match the mini-shuttle.
This robot shuttle then descends to the surfer, either on the
wave, or in the water (at whatever depth mind you), and
automatically bundles him, or her, into the small adaped cargo
hold, and brings him straight back here to the groundstation
cargo dock."

"The groundswell comes up from the southern oceans whenever
the great storms arise down there, and this largely happens
every time the binary stars align - every 14 days.  These
storms always generate groundswell that heads north, and east
until it hits the great equatorial crystaline band, at which
point the surfing waves form.  In the summer, the lull between
surf is sometimes a week, but in the winter this lull becomes
non-existent, for the storms are of such intensity that they
rarely have time to abate before the next cycle commences."

"You say the surfer disappeared direcly out in front of the
groundstation", interrupted Ko, "So he had only just taken
off on a wave?"

Skip looked at the DSP Commander and shook his head.

"Not exactly", he said after a pause.  "Pedro Goofo,
always took things to the extreme.  This was his 20th
tour with Surfahoy out here to the Emerald Planet. He
would consistently go further than all the others put
together.  It started in the beginning with rides of
3 or 4 thousand miles, and the more he came back, the
further he would go.  On his second last tour, I recall
that he made it right around the other side of the planet
before he pulled the pin.  That was a ride of over 8,000
miles.  I remember that because the retrieval shuttle
robot had to be reprogrammed when it returned, as it
ended up doing a full circuit - in the same direction,
rather than simply returning back westward, the
direction it had travelled from."

"You mean to say ...", Ko's words trailed off into silence.

"Yep", continued Skip, "I mean to say that he ended up
out the front of the groundstation after travelling right
around the entire planet on the same wave.  It was some wave."

"But thats .... thats 16, 342 miles!" Dat sounded incredulous.

The others looked similarly awed.

Skip moved over to the coffee robot and dialled up anothery.
You could tell that he was enjoying being the local here on
the narrow crytaline equatorial banded ground of the Emerald
Planet.  The others could not take their eyes of the waves,
which were increasing in size if anything as the morning
progressed.

"How many ground based Holographic Archival Units do you have
along the equatorial band down here?" asked Ko.

"Counting the one here at the groundstation, there are 26 all
told, although the majority of these are located in the first
few hundred miles, as it is this record that most of the surfers
prefer to take away with them.  There is one on the other side
of the Emerald Planet, and another two positioned midway between
these two, giving quarters, but the rest are all in the first
quandrant. Nearly every other surfer has stayed in the first
quandrant of the planet."  Skip shrugged.

"Take Rosie up with you", Ko spoke to Dat, "take the shuttle
to the closest geostationary HAU to this groundstation. You
know the procedure to extract the data we need.  Sixty-one
days ago, is that correct Skip?"

"Sixty one days today - that's right", Skip confirmed.

"Correlate the unit data for a hologram of the surf just out
there", finished Ko, pointing out the window to the ocean in
front of the groundstation.  We will get all the other ground
data together by the time you return."

Four hours later, the swell was still rising.  The impact zone
had moved out to almost a half mile, and the waves were starting
to look like miniature mountains, yet they retained their
perfection and symmetry, as the broke down the crystal coast.

The crew and Skip were assembled around the groundstations main
Visual Field Display unit, and the relevant data had been
assembled and placed online from all the scattered Holographic
Archival Units, including the local geostationary one in orbit,
surprisingly enough, almost directly overhead of the station.

Skip kicked it off, and immediately the screen became alive
with an enormous wave.  The wave appeared to be almost twice
the size of the waves today, and they could just make out a
small figure of a surfer in a grey Envirosuit patiently waiting
out beyond the crest of the wave.

"Some wave", whispered Ko.

"Wait till you see the next one", retorted Skip, who had seen the
video over and over again in the last 60 days or so.

They watched as the first wave passed, and saw the solitary surfer
starting to paddle, not inwards towards the shore, but outwards,
towards the bright green horizon, upon which - on this day - the
tell-tale darker lines of groundswell were clearly to be seen.
Suddenly the surfer stopped paddling out, and propped on his board
for a long moment, before turning back towards the coast.  The dark
green form of a huge wave began to loom up from the right of the
screen, and the surfer paddled faster and faster.  The ocean on
the sceen took on the form of an ever-increasing slope, and then
commenced to become steeper and steeper towards the appearance
of a wall, before the surfer finally reached passed that point
of equilibrium, and committed himself into the point of take-off.

"There goes Pedro", said Skip, as the surfer quickly stood to
take the yawning, drop before leaning into the wall and picking
up sufficient speed to keep clear of the break.  Pedro was really
a goofy-footer, and surfed backhand here on the big lefts of the
southern side of the equatorial land.

He trimmed the board and climbed back up into the barrel, before
increasing speed to perform a deep bottom turn and speed back up
across the extent of the wave, hitting the lip at the top, and
dropping back into the pocket.  Suddenly the wave broke passed the
screen, as the limit of the recorded was reached, and the wave
passed down the coast.

"Well, we have followed his progress passed all the HAU's down the
coast, and the three units placed one, two and three quarters of
the way around the planet.  Let's have another look at that final
record when he get's back."  Ko shook his head in awe. "It still
cannot believe he made it right around, but the evidence is here."

Dat Hulko selected the final splice of the video archive, and
the screen cleared to show a huge wave approaching the groundstation
from the western coastal horizon.  With increased resolution, the
form of a lone surfer was accentuated on the face of the wave,
positioned in the pocket of the barrel.  He seemed almost motionless,
hanging like a object on a string, in the eye of the raging thunder
which detonated itself in symmetric arrays of power, until all
energy merged into the chaotic wildness of the fury of the broken
wave.  Onwards he glided, onwards towards the HA Unit mounted on the
groundstation roof.  The five people watched as the wave and the
surfer approached again.

"We've got a time for the ride of 326 hours", Rosie announced,
"although I dont now how he sustained himself or kept himself
awake for that peiod of time. What's that? That's almost 14
terran days.  How could he have made it?"

Silence was the only response, as the holographic record of the
final moments of Pedro Gooffo continued to be replayed.  They
watched as he turned and looked back into the barrel for a long
moment before sliding up high on the wall of the wave. Out of
the high place in the pocket he drove, downwards for speed.
Faster and faster he travelled, until a lightning quick turn
propelled him out ahead of the break, far out along the liquid
moving steepening wall of motion. He was almost directly in front
of the groundstation.

Suddenly, he descended again for speed, and then rose up to the
lip of the advanced wall of the wave, to its very top, where he
hung for a brief brief moment, before he let loose a powerful
cut-back on the lip.  Down into the pit of the wall he accelerated,
but he was not travelling in the direction of the wave, he had
turned and was travelling back towards the tube.

He trimmed his downward motion and suddenly turned directly into
barrel.  Just as he crossed over the point which would indicate
his entire circumsurf of the planet, he made a final trimming
thrust with the board, and disappeared forever, into the yaw of
the barrelling wave.

The entire company was speechless.  Another huge green perfect
wave thundered past before anyone broke the silence.

"We thought he'd just surface out of the whitewash", said Skip.
"When he didn't surface, of course we became concerned. But the
greatest concern dawned on us when we started to analyse the
video data record.  He literally disappeared."

"Could he have lost the Envirosuit?", asked Ko, of the archivalist.

"Negative," explained Rosie, "those things have a tolerance far
above whatever could have been encountered inside that wave.
Besides," she added, "I checked the make of suit.  It was a
Lemming Wool product.  It does not malfunction or break.
At the turn of last century Lemming Wool bought out the entire
FBI operation, and have never looked back since."

"We have analysed that last few seconds a hundred times", added
Rosie. "We have looked at the record of light, we have looked
at the record of matter, and at the record of energy.  We have
examined the molecular structure of the surfer and his board.
The record shows that when he reached a point some 15 feet
inside the mouth of the barrel, he literally ceased to exist."

"This record is confirmed by the record of the data held in the
receiver of the robot mini-shuttle which followed Pedro right
around the planet", she added.

Rosie rolled the Video Archive backwards until Pedro came out
of the barrel backwards.  Then she let it run forward in slow
motion.  This data has been supplemented by the data taken from
the Holographic Unit in orbit.  Watch as we switch on the atomic
tracker which picks up the energy source of the emergency PIN,
used by the surfer in case of emergency.  These units are the
same as deep space beacons, and are able to be located anywhere
in the galaxy with the corresponding receiver."

At the same point, fifteen feet inside the barrel, and going
very fast in the wrong direction, the image of the energy source
of the subspace beacon suddenly winked out. The screen went blank,
and the peoples lapsed to a prolonged silence.

Two large waves thundered past the groundstation before Ko spoke:

"Superimpose the record of Pedro's departure with that of his
arrival back please Rosie". He scratched his two day stubble
pensively and then added "and find the record of that last
cutback, after he had passed the planetary circuit marker".

A moment later, displayed side by side, was the image of Pedro
leaving and Pedro arriving on the same wave.

"Thanks Rosie, now zoom in on the surfboards in both frames."

The before and after surboards came into focus, side by side.

"Whhoooooaaaahh!" cried Skip, "I never noticed that before".

The outgoing surfboard was the standard cream colored imitation
of the original fibreglass surfboards, but the incoming surfboard
was colored as white as the crystal cliffs, and from it emanated
a pulsating silver glow.

"What does an analysis of that silver radiation tell us Rosie?"

Rosie nodded to Ko and immediately began to run her diagnostics.
But she could find nothing, and after another 30 minutes had to
admit defeat.

"Whatever energy we are seeing is not able to be determined", she
said in a steady voice. "I have not seen anything like this before".

"One more thing before I'm done", said Ko.  "Show me that last cut-back
one more time. in slow motion".

The image of the surfer was replayed back out of the barrel, and
reversed through passed the cutback, and then fowarded in slow
motion.  They watched as the cut-back manouever was run, the surfer
at first gliding along the lip of the wave, far in advance of the
barrel, then suddenly reversing direction in one fluid motion where
the surfer crouched and then extended his feet.

"Stop the record again", broke in Ko, "and take it back once more.
Tell me what you see in that crouch, and watch his left gloved hand."

They all watched as the cutback ran a second and a third time.

"There is a switch of some sort on the deck of his board", said Jerry,
"Can you zoom in on his left hand?"

When the data record was then expanded, it became clear that at the
time when the surfer had crouched during the cut-back, he had reached
down with his left hand and thrown a small switch on the back section
of his surfboard. Rosie also focused in on the departure record of the
surfer, and sure enough, there was the small switch towards the tail
of the surfboard.

"Well ... Holy Huey".  Skip set his cuppa down and stared at the screen.
"I thought his surfboard was a custom job".

Everyone looked at Skip, who made the most of the opportunity by taking
the last doughnut.

"What do you know of his board?" asked Ko.

"It was some gun alright", replied Skip, "Nine foot three inches, narrow
all the way from tail to nose, eighteen inches at the widest point, no
rocker - not even the hint of a rocker.  I recall he constantly tried
a number of boards, but that one he had ridden for the last year or more.
I know he made it himself, custom chemistry too for the ammonia ocean
here on the Emerald Planet - light, strong and lightning fast. It was
a real gun for sure.  We looked for him, we looked for it, Couldn't find
hide not hair of either of them.  Now it looks like he knew something
we didn't. I never noticed that little switch before, but I know Pedro
was a Deep Space Vessel navigator for many years before he retired to
surf pretty much full-time.  Its amazing how many of the surfers who
booked on the Surfahoy Tours out here, either were retired natigators,
or were navigators on leave from their ships."

"Sounds like you dont know the history of Elbie Engine", responded Dat,
who looked at the empty tray of doughnuts.

"Do tell", said Skip, and fetched another tray and coffees from the
robot dispenser.

"Nothing much to it really", Dat went on. "The first of the deep space
engines was known as "The Torch" and was commissioned around 2200 when
the Alpha Fleet left on their first journey.  But only a decade later,
the Elbie Engine was conceived.  It is of course both an engine *and*
a navigation system at the same time, because it is powered by the
stellar groundswells, and their superpositions out in deep space. The
entire concept of this method of motion was originally based on surfing,
the first engine designer was a dedicated surfer, and the name "Elbie:
itself is but a shortened form of LB - for Long Board."

"The Elbie made it possible to explore the entire Milky Way galaxy in
which we is.  All the Deep Space Vehicles, including the Crescent class,
such as the one upstairs, have an Elbie engine in the back.  The only
place we cannot go is beyond the limits of this galaxy, for beyond the
edges of our galaxy, the groundswells of the stars become too small to
effectively 'ride', and there is no way we can cross such a huge gap."

"Well, thanks for the brief history lesson Dat", said Skip, "interesting".

Ko stood up and addressed the group.

"Dont believe we can find out much more here and now", he said to noone
in particular, "We may as well fit-out for the return journey. Let me
know if you want a lift back outa here Skip".

Before Skip could respond, the groundstation communications console
lit up with an incoming message, and Skip wandered over to receive it.
It was a text transmission, and as the words appeared across the screen,
he turned around, and said to the others: "I think you should all have
a look at this."

They crowded around the comms module, and watched the message unfolding
down the console.  It was from the Surfahoy Tours Corporate Headquarters,
in Seattle, Northam.

    =====================================================
    Attention - Skip Boylin, Emerald Planet outpost.
    Re: Disappearance of Pedro Goofo.

    A regular communications transmission was received
	at the Galactic Navigation Center (NGC), which is out
	on the rim of the 17th quandrant,  from an unknown
	subspace beacon. When the PIN code on this message
	was distributed into the net for matching, it turned
	up bearing a match to Pedro Goofo's PIN.

    GNC advises the source location of the beacon appears
	to be somewhere in the Hydra Cluster. Please advise
	Commander Ko Hanna Moku of the DSP Crescent IV.

	Surfahoy Tours HQ.
	BAIL.
    =====================================================


The crew of the Crescent were silent and had turned a little pale.
Skip looked from one to the other, and noone uttered a word.

"Where's the Hydra Cluster", Skip finally asked Ko.

Ko turned around a stared at the next incoming wave as it peeled
off in perfect formation down the length of the coastal range.

"You'd better tell Skip where it is Jerry."

Skip turned to Jerry, who was also watching the wave break past
the groundstation. "Well?" he asked, "where in the galaxy is
the Hydra Cluster"?

Jerry turned around and looked Skip in the eye.

"The Hydra Cluster is not in this galaxy", he said.

Another of the rising swells surged passed the windows.

Skip appeared pretty confused. "Well, where abouts is it?
he asked quietly of Jerry.

"The Hydra is a galactic cluster which is located well
over half way across the other side of the known universe."

The group fell silent, and the sound of the ocean returned to mind.
The thunder of another passing wave decreased in intensity as it
charged on its journey eastward down the equatorial coast of the
Emerald Planet, and before its distant rumble had passed out of
earshot, the rising sound of the next wave commenced to climb up
over the bright green western horizon.


END of PART II





NEXT Chapter - The Emerald Planet (Part III)