Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Meuvonpehif flicked her truhands sharply forward, producing a small cracking sound as chitin snapped against chitin. “You concern yourself with getting us in. The rest of us will handle matters should any unfortunate humans decide to try and intercede.”
“Anyone observing our activities must be silenced.” Sijnilarget deliberately spoke in Low Thranx to emphasize the crudity of his response. “They must not be allowed to raise the alarm.”
“We don’t even know if there will be any humans to be encountered in what must surely be a largely automatic operation.” Beskodnebwyl continued to shield Tioparquevekk’s instrumentation with his body. “No one enters a strange burrow looking for trouble. How are you coming?”
“Almost finished.” Tioparquevekk hovered over his equipment. “I have analyzed and ascertained the requisite patterns. All that remains is to record them and then run a phantom, to ensure that everything will work on the day we choose to act.” He went silent, busy with all four hands and sixteen digits.
“Hey!”
Beskodnebwyl, whose knowledge of human speech forms verged on fluency, recognized the word as an exclamation of accusation. What mattered, he knew from his painstaking studies, was the intensity with which it was delivered, and whether querulousness was implied. It struck him that in this instance all the relevant ingredients were involved.
“What are you doing there?” The human who had spoken now adopted a tone more belligerent than curious. Beskodnebwyl did not panic. There were only two of the bipeds, and they were not clad in the attire of the several maintenance teams that serviced the fair. That meant they were only casual fair-goers, not unlike himself and his three companions. Behind him, he could sense Tioparquevekk concluding his work and hastily downpacking his equipment. Despite a rising sense of anxiety, the other three thranx worked smoothly and efficiently. With four hands, they were not prone to fumbling.
If this human did not occupy an official position, what right did it have to bark accusingly at Beskodnebwyl and his companions? Assuming a defensive stance, he moved forward to confront the human. It was rangy, even for its kind. Standing tall on his four trulegs, Beskodnebwyl could not have raised his head to the level of the biped’s chest. Nonetheless, he was not intimidated. Proximity to the lumbering, lurching mammal brought on feelings of disgust and mild nausea, not fear.
“I will tell you as soon as you have shown me your license.”
Looking bemused, the two men halted. The taller one continued to do all the talking. “What license?”
“The one that gives you the authority to challenge peaceful visitors to this fair.” Behind him, Beskodnebwyl sensed his companions shifting their stances to form the rest of a traditional defensive four-headed square. Whatever happened now must be resolved quietly, he knew, lest the confrontation draw unwanted attention.
The smaller of the pair spoke up, speaking to his friend. “Not only talkative bugs, but sarcastic ones.” His hand, Beskodnebwyl noted, was hovering over a slight bulge in the garment that covered his lower body. The Bwyl was not worried. If the human flourished a weapon, Sijnilarget, Meuvonpehif, and Tioparquevekk would be ready to respond with firepower of their own. Though differing greatly from thranx in their physical makeup, human bodies reacted similarly to an encounter with high-velocity explosive pellets.
The taller one’s tone became slightly less combative. “I asked you what you were doing here.” His head bobbed in a gesture Beskodnebwyl knew was meant to indicate the building behind them. “This isn’t part of the fair exhibit. There’s nothing here for the public to see.”
“We know,” Meuvonpehif commented readily in her heavily accented Terranglo. “It’s the central communications facility.”
Beskodnebwyl was furious enough to reach back and snap one of the female’s antennae. By her physical reaction, he could see that she recognized her error almost as soon as she made it. Perhaps, he hoped agitatedly, the humans would find the comment innocuous.
They did not.
The tall man chose to continue to direct his words to Beskodnebwyl. “Is it really? That’s interesting. How do you know that? It isn’t marked as such on the outside.”
“It’s function is quite obvious,” Beskodnebwyl replied a bit too quickly. “The necessary apparatus for the transmission of information dominates the roofline.”
The human nodded again. Beskodnebwyl thought his expression now indicated thoughtfulness, but it was difficult to tell. Mastering the range of human facial expressions took time and patience. “So you’ve been studying the communications center from other vantage points besides this one. That’s even more interesting. I wonder what the Dawn police would make of your interest?”
The biped was preternaturally perceptive, Beskodnebwyl thought tightly. This was threatening to get out of hand. He could feel his companions shifting their stances behind him, preparatory to . . .
He was contemplating how best to dispose of the humans’ bodies when the short human appeared to lose control of himself. Drawing the bulge from his shirt, he aimed a device that was as lethal-looking as it was compact directly at Beskodnebwyl’s head.
“Goddamn dirty bugs want to get their filthy claws on everything!”
Reacting almost instantaneously, the trio of thranx behind Beskodnebwyl extracted from their thorax pouches weapons of their own. Confronted unexpectedly by thrice his number, the stocky biped hesitated, unsure now how to proceed, his initial bravado much reduced by the revelation that his intended victims were armed. He stared at them, glanced up at his companion, then back at the thranx. Like the rest of him, the muzzle of his weapon wavered.
Admirably calm, the tall human stepped between his friend and the armed defensive square. “Now, this I would not have expected. Piet is quite right: It is unthinkable to have disgusting, germ-ridden quasi-insects such as yourselves stumbling about this close to a vital human installation. It inevitably raises the question of why you would want to do so. The presence of concealed weapons at a peaceable venue like this fair greatly enhances those questions. As does the undeniable skill and readiness with which they have just now been deployed. Yet you are not members of an officially recognized organization.”
“I dispute nothing you say, but what does it prove save that thranx are always ready to defend themselves from reasonless attack?” Beskodnebwyl was watching the tall human carefully. The man’s stocky companion he had already dismissed as unimportant, despite the fact that he was the one holding the weapon.
“It may prove a very odd thing indeed.” The human smiled, fully exposing his teeth. Beskodnebwyl had to force himself not to turn away from the distasteful sight. “It suggests that you and I may be here for the same purpose.”
Beskodnebwyl had nothing to frown with, and the human could not understand the thranx’s gestures. It was left to inadequate words to convey subtleties of meaning. “And what purpose could that possibly be?”
“Elkannah?” the shorter man murmured uneasily. “Are you sure about this?”
“I always trust my instincts, Piet. If there’s another explanation, we’ll divine it in short order.” Turning his attention back to Beskodnebwyl, he continued as calmly as if requesting a change of shuttle seat assignment. “You and your dirt-dwelling friends are here to disrupt this fair, aren’t you? You’re planning to do something to, or with, local communications. You are here to cause trouble.”
This was it, Beskodnebwyl reflected. They would have to kill both bipeds, and kill them quickly. All it would take would be a gesture from him. The humans would not recognize it, and so the one holding the gun would not have time to react. But . . . he was curious.
“That’s the kind of observation that could get an individual killed. Why shouldn’t it?”
“Because my friends and I are here for the same reason. From civility, we plan to bring forth chaos. We don’t like your kind, you see. Among us are many, too many I fear, misguided people who think we should cuddle up to you bugs, make you part of our cultural and political lives, let you set up your teeming, odious colonies on our own worlds. That sort of thing is reprehensible, unnatural, and must be prevented at all costs.” He stopped, waiting while the bugs digested his words.
“How very astonishing.” At a gesture, the trio behind him lowered, but did not put up, their weapons. Somewhat reluctantly, the shorter human did likewise. “Your speech is admirable, except that for sake of veracity the word phrase for
stinking soft flesh
should be substituted for the derogatory term
bugs
.”
The biped smiled again. Beskodnebwyl found he was better able to tolerate it this time. “I think we may be able to come to an understanding. If we do not cooperate, our natural antipathies will surely undo our respective plans. Ours do not especially involve the communications facility. Your plan is just to destroy it?”
“Yes,” Meuvonpehif replied before Beskodnebwyl could silence her.
The biped looked in her direction. “You are lying. Such as you would not come all this way, smuggling in weapons as well as intentions, just to render the visitors to and promoters of this abomination of a fair unable to communicate with one another. You must have something more extensive planned.” He returned his gaze to Beskodnebwyl. “I will reiterate: If we do not cooperate, we will end up at cross-purposes, when what we both want is the same result.”
Beskodnebwyl nodded, an absurdly easy human gesture to imitate. “We intend to set off explosives not only here but throughout the length and breadth of the depravity.” Behind him, he heard Tioparquevekk and Sijnilarget inhale sharply in disbelief. “The more fair-goers—human and thranx alike—that we can kill or incapacitate, the stronger will be the reaction among your kind.”
Again the human nodded—approvingly, Beskodnebwyl thought. “We plan to make use of some custom-built explosive devices. As I understand it, the more creative types we execute, the angrier will be the response from your infernal hives.”
“Quite correct.” Beskodnebwyl found himself staring up at the human. Used to dwelling underground, the human’s greater physical stature did not intimidate him. That sort of psychological positioning was for open-air dwellers only. “You confirm what we already believe: that your kind are inherently violent and murderous, and must be kept as far away as possible from a truly civilized society such as our own.”
“We want nothing less. Back on Earth, you know, we step on bugs all the time. Have been doing so since the beginning of our recorded history.”
“What more can be expected,” Beskodnebwyl responded, “from a species that flops about like ambulatory sacks of iron-based blood and loose meat?”
Skettle’s smile faded slightly. “We understand each other, then. We will not interfere with whatever it is you intend to do, and you will not interfere with us. Working separately but with the same goal in mind, we will with our endeavors here succeed in putting relations between our species where they belong: at a distance sufficient to ensure that we have to do no more than tolerate your presence in the same galactic arm as ourselves.”
“I could have put it better,” Beskodnebwyl replied, “but your words will do. It may even be that we will, over the next several days, find reason to cooperate more closely in carrying out our respective efforts, and might even try to synchronize our operations in hopes of achieving maximum outcome.”
“That’s a fine idea.” Skettle started to retrace his steps. At no time did he turn his back on the bugs. “We should arrange for some of us to meet daily to continue this exchange of information. How about at the Syxbex Restaurant, on the lakeshore?”
“That location will be eminently satisfactory.” Beskodnebwyl maintained the defensive square, watching as the pair of bipeds retreated. “We want to be sure to avoid any misunderstandings.”
When we have done what we came for, he mused, we will also find a way to kill you. Loose antennae could not be allowed to flutter about. Besides, it would give him pleasure to preside over the demise of so forthrightly antagonistic a human. He raised a foothand in the human gesture of farewell.
Skettle waved back, thinking as he and Botha turned the first available sheltering corner that he was going to delight in seeing this particular bug’s skull cracked and its brains oozing out over the colorful pavement that had been laid down for the fair.
There is nothing in art, in philosophy, or in politics to match the fervor of mutual cooperation among discordant bands of fanatics.
6
The supply station had a spectacular setting. Located on a low rise overlooking a vast salt pan smoking with geysers, mud pools, and hot lakes, it doubled as a geothermal research station for the score of scientists and their support teams studying the wonderfully bewildering variety of silicate and sulfuric minerals that gushed forth from the bowels of the planet. These often differed markedly from their terrestrial analogs. Every week of exploration, sometimes every day, elicited new cries of discovery from delighted geologists.
In addition to being crammed full of mineralogical revelations, the thermal wilderness was awash in beauty. While yellow and its variations were the predominant colors, there were also rich varieties of blue, green, and red thanks to the presence of the tough, active, endemic bacteria that thrived in the thermal pools. Occasionally, a brisk south wind would sweep through the valley, brushing away the clouds of steam to expose kilometer after kilometer of roaring geysers, gurgling hot springs, plopping mud holes, and steaming rivers. A certain species of thermotropic eel-like creature nearly two meters long had biologists almost coming to blows over its taxonomy. Was it a highly advanced worm or an exceedingly primitive fish? Or something entirely new to science?
On the rare occasions when it rained, the combination of steam, fog, and drizzle made it impossible to see more than a meter in front of one’s face even at high noon. At such times fieldwork was restricted. Unseen, the tentative network of hastily laid prefab pathways could not be negotiated in safety, and even aircar work was halted. The resident scientists would cluster in frustrated, argumentative knots inside the air-conditioned labs and living quarters, anxious to be released from regulations even though they knew these had been drawn up with their own safety in mind. But when was there ever a scientist who paid proper attention to personal safety when a host of new discoveries lay close at hand?
Brockton was working on a robot probe designed to take samples from the hottest vents when he felt the first vibration. It was accompanied by a muted rumble, as if one of the back doors had been opened. A glance showed that both of the big service bay barriers were still shut. With a shrug, he returned to his work. He was alone in the shop except for the automatics, Norquist and Oppervann having decided to take a long lunch. They did not have many opportunities to interact with the scientific staff and took every chance to do so. To improve their education, both men insisted. To try to put the make on one of several attractive unattached ladies among the staff, Brockton knew.
Nothing more than casual flirting for him. He had a wife and two kids on Tharce IV. He was here because he didn’t mind the desert, and because in a year on Comagrave he could make the equivalent of three years’ salary back home. His family understood. When his contract was up, he would be able to take a whole year off doing nothing but watching his kids grow.
Though considered a party-killer, he got along well with his workmates. His skills, honed through fifteen years of experience, were greatly appreciated by both his colleagues and his employers, and he did not try to play the disapproving father figure to his predominantly younger coworkers. Removing his hands from the interior of the probe, he shut the access panel, picked up the nearby magnetic welder, and began to reverse the polarity on the interior latches. Once flopped, they would hold the panel shut as securely as if it had been melted into place.
There it was again. A second tremor, stronger than the first. He had picked up enough geology from hanging around the station’s scientists to know that where geysers and thermal pools are present, stronger seismic activity was to be expected. But this didn’t feel like one of the numerous minor temblors he had experienced many times during the preceding months. It had a different feel to it—more of a bump than a rumble.
The station was constructed on a flexor foundation that was designed to distribute any shock evenly across its base. Anything short of a tectonic convulsion would be dissipated by the integrated flexors before it could cause any damage. The contractors had known what they were doing. Though he had not worked in construction, Brockton had seen enough to know good work from bad. Upon arriving, he had taken an off day to make his own inspection of the station and its outlying structures. Everything had looked reassuringly solid.
That was when the ground fell away and the roof started to come down on top of him.
The roar that accompanied the collapse was frightful, a caustic clamor in the ears that masked the screams of those crowded into the central dining area for lunch. Feeling the floor fall away beneath him, he grabbed wildly for the probe. It was plunging downward as well, until he managed to hit the open programming panel. Bluish light emerging from its flat underside, the probe rose and steadied on its tiny repulsion field. Brockton’s terrifyingly rapid descent slowed. Kicking the field up to full power, he found that the probe could muster just enough lift to keep them both aloft. For how long he did not know.
Then the rest of the roof came down.
Guiding the probe, he made a mad dash for the nearest crumpled doorway. He just did manage to slip through a rip in the crumpling, warping fabric. Outside in the glare and steam of the day, he turned his head to look back in the direction of the station. Keeping both arms and legs wrapped tightly around the laboring device, he tried to make some sense of what he was seeing.
The entire station—central hub, communications tower, living quarters, lab modules, service departments, hygienics plant—was collapsing in upon itself. No, not upon itself, he saw through the rising, swirling mists. Into a gaping cauldron. A roaring river of boiling water had suddenly manifested itself directly beneath the station. With nothing to support it, the advanced flexor foundation was no more useful than a row of wooden pilings.
Despite the damp heat, he was having chills. Rising above the groans and grindings of imploding buildings were the screams of those trapped inside. A few who had been near the front exits had tried to escape that way, only to find there was no place to escape to. Like those they had left behind, they died before they could reach solid ground, crushed beneath the subsiding structures or boiled alive in the torrent that had burst forth beneath their feet.
In less than an hour there was nothing left of the supply station. It had been swept away, down the steaming cataract that now gushed from the side of the rise and into the nearest expanse of hot lake. A couple who had been out all morning studying cyanotic bacteria returned in their aircar and pried his cramped arms and legs off the probe that had saved his life. Another researcher returned later that evening. He was accompanied by the resident AAnn advisor. Decamping on a mound of solid, well-vegetated ground half a kilometer away, the numbed survivors tried to make sense of what had happened.
Brockton knew what had happened. He had survived to feel his wife next to him once more, and to hold his children. As soon as rescue teams arrived, he was putting in for a pysch dismissal. He doubted he would have any trouble getting one. Not after what he had seen.
Norquist, Oppervann, all those other fine men and women—all gone. If the rescue teams were really lucky, they might be able to recover some bones. Sitting on the ground beneath an orgthic bush, he hardly heard what the others were saying. It was starting to get dark, and he was cold. Surrounded by hell, he was cold. Of everything his fellow survivors said prior to the angelic arrival of the first rescue craft, only a few words of the AAnn, speaking in clumsy Terranglo, remained forever stuck in his memory.
“
Ssstt
, we told your engineerss not to build on that ssite!”
The stitcher’s harpoon struck the underside of the aircar with a familiar shrill
thwack
. Leaning cautiously over the side, Elrosa saw it wriggle out from under the sand, all three of its protruding, bulbous eyes triangulating on him, their intended prey. He wondered what, if anything, the voracious alien mind behind them was thinking. As he thrust his scanner over the side of the vehicle, he watched as the meter-long harpoon was slowly retracted. The stitchers learned quickly: It would not expend its killing mechanism on the armored underbelly of the aircar again.
So powerful was the expelled harpoon of a stitcher that it could penetrate the underside of a normal vehicle. Elrosa and Lu’s aircar was not normal. It had been given a ventral sheathing of glistening golden percote that would have been more appropriate to a military transport. Nothing merely organic could penetrate that layer of sprayed-on armor. It reduced the aircar’s speed and range, but not significantly. And it allowed the two biologists to proceed in comparative safety with their study of several varieties of desert-dwelling predator.
Another hopeful
thwack
. Another subsurface hunter disappointed. This was turning out to be an excellent study area.
The stitchers were one of several unique carnivores that lived and hunted beneath Dawn’s scattered sand seas. They impaled their prey on long, sharp harpoons built up of concentric layers of hardened calcium carbonate. It was as if a human had learned how to sharpen a femur, spear it into prey, and reel the resultant kill back in by means of the ligaments still attached to the bone. Since no one had yet dissected a stitcher, the means by which their harpoons were propelled at such remarkable velocity remained open to explication. Elrosa favored compressed air as a nontoxic and readily renewable means of propulsion. Lu came down on behalf of those who postulated the existence of multiple knots of rapid-twitch muscle fibers.
They were not out today to catch and dismember—only to take measurements. Elrosa was duly excited by the work they had accomplished over the past several days. There were more stitchers per cubic kilometer of sand sea in this area than anyone had previously encountered anywhere else. Lu thought it might be a mating territory. Stitchers mating—now that would be a ripe subject for a monograph!
Another lackluster
thunk
sounded as a harpoon struck the impenetrable underside of the aircar. He smiled to himself. It would be useful to know if the stitchers considered the low-flying intruder a threat or a possible meal. Perhaps both, he mused. Previous fieldwork indicated that the predators sometimes appeared to hunt in tandem, or even in small groups. He and Lu had seen no evidence of pack hunting thus far, but like everything else on Comagrave, organic or otherwise, very little was known with assurance.
Behind him, his partner shouted a verbal command to the aircar console. It complied, and they found themselves jetting silently forward, leaving frustrated stitchers goggling in their wake. Only the predators’ eyes and expended harpoons were visible above the surface of the dune.
Another sand-filled depression beckoned. With luck, they might find a line or two of migrating geulons, or a new species. So recently arrived were humans on Comagrave’s surface that it was the unfortunate biologist indeed who did not return from a field trip without at least several new species to record. Taxonomy was almost as exciting as actually encountering the creatures in question.
Leaning over the open side of the car, careful to keep himself as small a target as possible for anything inimical that might be lying camouflaged under the sand, he directed Lu to shift them another ten meters northward.
“That’s good!” He gestured with his upraised right hand. “This looks like a promising spot.”
His assumption was correct. Every day, they grew more skilled at predicting the movements of the planet’s endemic wildlife. No sooner had the aircar hummed to a halt than not one but three loud
thwack
s, one after another like shots from a gun, rapped on the underside of the vehicle.
Lu joined his friend at the edge. The air suspension craft hovered effortlessly some three meters above the sand. “There!” Lu pointed to where a brace of eyeballs, like pale white melons, protruded from the sand. Recorders were brought into play.
As they clicked away, Elrosa heard a decidedly different kind of
thunk
. It was higher in pitch, more immediate, and sharper of sonic detail. Turning, his eyes widened slightly as he saw the meter-long calcareous lance quivering upright in the deck. It had penetrated the plastic sheeting to a depth of a fifth of a meter. As he stared, a soft whistling sound drew his gaze upward.
“Look out!” Throwing himself to the side, he just did avoid the descending tip of the stitcher harpoon. It slammed into the deck centimeters from his scrambling right foot.
Rolling over, Lu stared in astonishment at the impressive weapon. “They know that there’s food up here—us—that they can’t get at from below. So they’ve started firing into the air, hoping to impale us on the way down. Amazing!”
The aircar was equipped with a retractable cover, but one designed to offer protection only from the weather. A harpoon would go through it like a vibrablade through gelatin. As Elrosa climbed to his feet and took a step toward the control console, a vast whistling suddenly filled the air, as of an approaching dustdevil. Lu let out an inarticulate cry and dove for the open hatch that led to the tiny, enclosed head.
He didn’t make it.
Assembling silently beneath the sand, the pack of stitchers must have fired at least fifty harpoons.
Though its power pack was approaching empty, the aircar was still hovering in place when one of the several search teams sent out to look for the two biologists finally found it. Of the two biologists who had been aboard, there remained only bloodstains on the deck, and on the side where their harpoon-impaled bodies had been dragged from within by the hungry stitchers. Studying the scene of quiet butchery, the newcomers conversed in subdued whispers interrupted only by the occasional
thwack
s of harpoons striking their craft’s underside and armored roof.
When the sole AAnn aboard suggested that perhaps she and her kind should take over field study of the stitchers, or at least supervise the work, the human in charge readily agreed. If the AAnn wanted to deal with such cunning carnivores until such time as enough was known about them to work their territories in comparative safety, he saw no reason to argue. Let the reptiloids be the ones to put their lives at risk.