Grown Men

minutes later, when they were headed down to the greenhouse, Ox bolted before Runt could react.
    Without warning, the larger man took off at a jog and dove into the surf.
    Luck’s fuckery, I wasn’t serious.
    Ox cut through the waves like a spear and then, arcing up a moment for momentum, plunged below the surface.
    Shitwit.
    Runt knew his cofarmer could swim. They’d done plenty of undersea repairs together. But without his gear, even seaboots, Ox could be mauled badly. The adult eels got aggressively territorial and they could take a finger or worse. And eel blood could be deadly. Runt had only harvested full-grown eels with equipment. And this herd had remained too small to consider regular harvest.
    A queasy feeling in the pit of his gut, Runt walked straight down to the water expecting the worst. Whoosh! A spray of water and Ox popped to the surface wrestling with a pissed-off male, its mandibles chewing the air. These conger hybrids could weigh up to fifty kilos, but Ox lifted it like a data cable in the churning water. He pulled it to the shallows and got his feet under him, two predators knotted together.
    Ox managed to loop part of the iridescent body around one superhuman triceps. Blood ran from his hands and arms, smearing his torso.
    “Crazy . . . That’s crazy.” Runt whispered to himself. “Impossible.”
    The creature managed to flip loose, then arched up and snapped close.
    Runt winced and almost shouted a warning.
    Just in time, Ox’s skull jerked back and his face hardened into a savage mask Runt had never seen before. His tremendous sinews braced with brutal purpose.
    Fuck me .
    Muscle coiling, the creature put up a fierce struggle as it lunged at Ox with a buzzsaw mouth, frantic to get back under the waves where it could breathe. The tail whipped the greenish water and Ox’s abdomen, leaving raw stripes.
    Ox froze; he seemed to be waiting for a signal from the slithering beast. Abruptly, he caught its other end behind the skull, snapping its neck clean in one pitiless mitt.
    The thrashing stopped.
    Ox stood breathing hard in the breakers about fifteen meters out. That terrible mask melted from him with every lungful until he beamed in triumph.
    Runt cheered and whooped on the shore, his voice echoing off the endless hot surf.
    Ox strode back through the shallows with the eel’s silvered length draped over his shoulders like a rubbery mantle.
    Watching his cofarmer return to the cove, Runt had the strangest sensation: a kind of foreknowing, as if he and Ox were immortal and ancient in this alien place. The suns hammered down on them both, beating their skin into identical bronze. At this distance they even seemed the same size, perfectly matched, the entire horizon bookended between them equally.
    Runt knew something then, but exactly what he couldn’t say . . . something about here and now, about Ox plowing through the surf on his huge sturdy legs, the water glittering on all his hair, his wide sunburned grin aimed at his partner and the shore.
    For an endless moment, Runt imagined the crooked corporation had folded and they’d been forgotten, laughing and living together under these perfect suns, waiting for wives that would never come, happily hunting fresh meat at the sharp edge of the galaxy.
    While Ox swam back dragging his quarry ashore, Runt cleared the sunken fire pit he’d only used when he first arrived. It had sat scorched and cold since he’d realized grilling for one seemed like a waste of wood.
    Ox strode naked across the sand, his tread slapping from the shore to the fire. Drops of water hung in his chest hair and his hair was gold in the sun. The eel was so long that even draped over his shoulder, its tail still trailed the ground, drawing a thin stripe beside his enormous footprints.
    Runt felt like he’d stepped into an adventure holo-vid. He’d split bamboo into spits and soaked them in seawater by the time Ox reached the edge of the fire pit. Runt looked up with a grateful smile.
    Ox coiled the eel like heavy rope and deposited it on a flat rock and nodded, just once, though no question had been asked. Veins stood visible along his throat and arms. He sat in the sand breathing hard.
    Using his work blades, Runt butchered the fatty meat right on the beach. He had already managed to get a fire going. He skewered the pale flesh with chunks of raw mango. In a matter of minutes, Ox’s prize was dressed and sizzling on the grill.
    “You should star in