I hadn’t come here to die. Who had? My stomach was inside out, all my muscles twitching with strain of tension. Better be careful—if one of our team came around the wrong way at me, I’d easily have sheered his head off before even noticing that I’d fired the HPB. I slid my shoulder along the trunk of one of the larger glass pillars, wider than an old oak tree on Earth. The glass radiated heat against me just from the way it caught the sun’s light. No—that couldn’t be right . . . this one wasn’t in any direct light.
I twisted to look up. The sun wasn’t touching this pillar at all. Could the glass somehow be holding heat? Maybe it wasn’t glass at all?
Daring to take one hand off the HPB, I pressed my palm to the ruby pillar. Heat . . . there was heat inside. More than in the air. So they did hold heat somehow. They weren’t ordinary glass.
As I felt the glass, I took another step. The long darker striations deep inside the pillar suddenly came together into a single form through the prism effect.
I froze. There was someone on the other side of this pillar. Some thing?
The red glass cast a distorted form through itself. Elongated and thin as if seen in a funhouse mirror, the shape was taller than I was. My heart came up into my throat.
Above the stumpy shoulders, there seemed to be a head. Round like a human, not elongated like a zucchini. But was I seeing from the correct angle? If the head turned, would it elongate? Was it a trick of reflection?
My hands turned suddenly cold and trembled all the way to the elbow. I wanted to call out, to see if the being answered with Clark’s voice or one of the Marines. Years of experience in city streets held me silent. Calling out to your partner could get one of you killed. Never give away your advantage. Especially if all you have is the one.
In an instant of dread, I realized I was leaning back on the glass column, putting my weight against it. Bad—if I had to move—
And my boots were in the crunchy ground litter. I tried to shift my weight forward, to stop leaning, without moving my feet. The trillions of broken-up skeletons was to the enemy’s advantage. My own boots would give me away, and I couldn’t think of any way around that.
The dark form wasn’t moving—or was it? The light kept changing, the shape flickering.
Think . . .
My lungs hurt. Jackass! I was holding my breath!
It was the worst thing I could be doing! Now there was no way to avoid a noisy draw through my nose or mouth to start breathing again!
I formed my lips into an “O” and very slowly drew as silent a breath as possible. Let it out . . . take another . . . my lungs started working again, but it took half my concentration.
The dark, thin form on the other side shifted in flickers of interacting light and shadow.
“Stay in sight, Carmichael.” MacCormac’s voice from over a hill nearly cracked my brain in half. They were somewhere up the grade. “Where’s Malvaux?”
I didn’t speak up. I hoped they didn’t call out or come down here looking.
MacCormac was being smart. He kept his voice down, barely enough to hear. “Captain Sparren, your location?”
“Over here.” Clark’s voice was nowhere near the others, but seemed closer to me.
That terrorized me. He could be walking into a trap.
Adding to the terror was another simple fact. The form on the other side of my pillar wasn’t any of them.
“Detective Malvaux, sound off.” MacCormac kept his voice down, but if I answered we’d both be compromised.
Petrified, I had to either move or get the shadow to move. If I didn’t act, Clark or one of the Marines could come stomping down here in to a trap.
Slowly I unstuck my left hand from the weapon and scooted my butt down the glass pillar, down more, bending my legs without shifting my feet. With my clammy hand I scooped up a handful of the skulch.
I took three short breaths. One, two, three—and threw the skulch at the next pillar, across the body of the dark form. When the broken skeleton bits rattled against the glass, drawing attention away from me and across the path, I jumped out under cover of the rattle and took aim.
The dark form didn’t move. I fell back against the other pillar, shouldered my weapon, and choked, “Oh— Christ! Christ!”
In front of me was the wretched sight of Marine Private Donahue, propped up against the pillar, pinned to it by the throat. Embedded in the poor man’s neck was a gray-brown spike, driven through his throat and into the glass pillar. The young man’s wide face was paste-white, eyes beseeching the sky for help. One hand hung on the spike. His last few seconds had played out trying to pull the offender out.
The spike was sharply pointed, then grew wider into a series of leathery spinal segments. It sloped down to a disembodied wound of its own. It had been cut off nine or ten segments down. It was a tail.
“Aw, no . . . ” Clark came around the pillar at the same time MacCormac and Carmichael showed up.
Carmichael took one glance and wheeled away, nauseated.
“Aw . . . this is despicable.” Clark shook his head and said, “Aw,” four more times before he ran out of energy.
MacCormac grasped the atrocious tail section with both hands, put his foot against the pillar, and yanked the spike free. Donahue’s body jerked almost as if he felt the change, and he collapsed to the ground. With a heave of anger, MacCormac sent the tail section spinning off down a gulley. We heard a faint crunch as it landed somewhere out of sight.
“Looks like he . . . got a shot off.” Sucking air through his teeth, MacCormac checked the weapon fallen at Donahue’s feet. “Must’ve cut this off just as it hit him.”
“Can we get out of here now?” Clark moaned.
“What about Brand?” I asked.
“We can’t keep collecting corpses, Rory, please . . . ”
“Clark, I wish you’d go back to the ship.”
“Let’s all go back. Please.”
“No,” MacCormac said. “We keep searching . . . a little longer.”
The poor man was shattered. The image of the heartless soldier wasn’t being honored here. He didn’t have much personality, but he sure felt his losses.
“Everybody stay together from now on.” The colonel didn’t really seem to know what else to do, or what more to do. He fell back on his training, as I did. He turned away from the body of Donahue, to keep his eye on Carmichael, over there, shattered.
“Why didn’t the protection blast go off?” I asked. “If he was killed while we were still down at the camp or the pod nest, why didn’t it light off when he was attacked?”
MacCormac looked anguished. “Guess we’re just at the edge . . . ”
“It might be the landscape and all the reflections,” Clark suggested unhappily. “The ship might not be able to read . . . aw, hell . . . we’re in over our heads . . . ”
“Give me that com unit!”
Quaking with fury, I snatched the link out of his hand before he even had a chance to extend it to me. I thumbed the wide-band and shouted into the link, much louder than was safe.
“Mother, this is Rory. This isn’t right for you to do to us. We came to help. Speak up!”
Truth be told, I didn’t expect to hear anything. I was ready not to. If nothing had come, I would’ve given Clark the confirmation he wanted. We were seconds from that.
The com unit began to hum and its indicator light panel flickered, signs that a signal was being broadcast and being received.
Another crackle, and then we heard a human voice. My mother’s voice. The angel of doom and the angel of salvation, all rolled into one phantom.
“Turn due north of your position. Come two hundred meters down the flume, then take the west fork another sixty meters. Hurry. They’re moving toward you.”
5
You know how, every once in a while in your life, you get the feeling that life really is alive and it has a sick sense of humor? When I accepted this job, the general mission statement was straightforward an
d seemed to solve a bunch of problems. I had to get away from a few things for the good of the department, let things cool off, Clark needed a legal officer for the mission because somebody had to sign off on the condition of the research team before the poison-packers could legally be released to cleanse the planet of all alien DNA, and Clark personally wanted my help dealing with my mother and my sister, who were not the two most compliant women in history. My presence on the Vinza seemed to be a good thing all around, and when I agreed to come along, the mission didn’t seem as if it would disturb my life much. We’d be in cryo a large portion of the time, then a quick in and out, and more sleep to get back home. By the time I came out of the months-long hideaway, the storms of my actions would have blown over.
Not that there was so much to disturb. No girlfriend, a job but not a career, taking every day as it came. The best part of my life had been the three bitter, frustrating years tracking the murderer of my fellow officer and finally catching the guy. Of course, that was when my real troubles had begun. Everybody was on my side except the law.
What could I do? Fight that which I’d spent my life defending? I didn’t want to fight. I was guilty and I liked it. Some things need doing. I tried to be remorseful, but it was like trying to make yourself throw up when you just don’t need to.
So I didn’t bother. I said I was guilty, I wanted to take the lumps, but the department wanted to stick up for me. For that, the air had to be cleared and the lightning rod was better gone for a while.
Here I was, wandering an alien land, lost as a baby chick. I’d come around a pillar and between two more, and now I couldn’t find Clark or the Marines.
We’d heard my mother’s warning and followed it, moving down the flume, but MacCormac had done his job and made us move with controlled retreat instead of rushing panic. We’d spaced ourselves out, with the Marines going first to sweep the area in case we ran into anything dangerous, then Clark after, then me in the rearguard. After two turns, I realized I was in trouble. I’d lost the sight of others in front of me.
And I heard something. A constant crunching noise. I crept down a gritty slope, hoping not to fall or skid out of control. The skulch was dangerously slippery on anything but flat ground, as poor Berooz had found out the hard way. Somehow I had ended up alone, which was the main thing we had been trying to avoid. I assumed it was my fault. I’d sneaked off after another shadow in the red glass.
“Go to your right, Rory. Five feet. There’s a hiding place.”
“Where are you?” I asked, keeping my voice dow.
“You turned down the wrong path. You have to hide. Get down on the ground. There’s a slab you can crawl under. And don’t speak anymore.”
The com unit buzzed slightly. How could she know what was happening? They’d planted observation devices, obviously, but I didn’t see anything mounted anywhere. That told me something—that the researchers had some idea the aliens might recognize a camera unit. There was indeed a slab, and I’d almost missed it. I dropped to the ground, discovering a flat dugout under the slab which didn’t fit the rest of the path’s floor. It had been dug by humans and formed perfectly to fit my entire length. I shimmied in, weapon and all, making sure to pull the weapon all the way inside with me and leave no clue. What about my footprints and the scratchings as I’d crawled in? I had to hope for the best.
The crunching noise was louder now, and steadier. I stayed still and flat. I had to force myself not to shift or readjust, to press my toes into the skulch, keep my arms right where they were, despite the sharp ground pressing into me. My heart pounded downward into the planet.
At my eye level, only four or five inches over the ground, there was a separation under the glass slab, through which I could see the path I’d just come down. The path crossed my hiding place and went off to my right, on down to unknown destinations. To the left was the way back to the abandoned camp and the ship. They seemed a thousand miles away right now. Too far to do any good, like Earth.
I heard sounds loud enough now that I knew the source was within a few feet of me. Not footsteps, but the constant crunching noise, steady, but somehow varied. Many of the same type of sound. I recognized it after a few seconds— tires on gravel. Did the researchers have vehicles here?
The crunching noise came around the pillars and up the path. Black forms rolled past. Each roll left a residue of mucus behind to pull up in strings behind it. The silvery strings stretched longer and longer, until the next roller came along and snapped them. I caught a glimpse of shiny armor and quivering lips not quite closed over silver teeth.
Aliens . . . big ones. Adults.
They moved only inches from my hiding place. I tried to keep my sanity by counting them. Three . . . seven . . . ten . . . twelve—I couldn’t keep up. Couldn’t concentrate past the slamming of my heart as it tried to dig underground and hide.
They made a noise, these aliens, a noise other than the crunching sounds as they rolled. They made a soft hiss, uneven, overlapping. Respiration? Exertion? Or some kind of warning system to foolish beings who might be in their path?
Like tank treads the aliens’ flexible bodies rolled past me. Through my four-inch-tall slit I saw their long, armored tails curled around in the shape of pneumatic tires, and how their zucchini heads fit into the slots of that bodily curve. I wished I could roll away too.
Then a black foot came down only inches from my face, heavily cabled with long brown Dracula claws and a spike out behind the heel. It ground into the skulch, then moved on, sucking bits of skeletal gravel, then dropping them to bounce into my eyes. The one walking wasn’t dragging his tail, the lower curve of which swished up close and bumped the glass stone which cloaked me.
Dinosaurs . . .
“You’re not very observant, are you, Rory?”
“Not as much as you, I guess.”
“M’am.”
“M’am . . . ”
“Look at the difference. There was a time during early television and movies when dinosaurs were portrayed dragging their tails on the ground behind them. The hordes accepted the vision without question. That’s what hordes do. Then, one day, an astute scientist looked at fossilized dinosaur tracks, I believe brontosaurs, and he asked the question any four-year-old should’ve been able to see clearly, ‘Where’s the mark made by the tail?’ Since that moment, all images of dragging tails were wiped out. Dinosaurs were never again portrayed as sweeping great thick tails along the ground. We realized the tails were for balance and were never dragged. On that single day, all of science changed. All the perceptions of an entire ancient species changed in that one moment. Science always bends. Remember to bend.”
“Yes, M’am.”
During this brief expedition into the crazed fear-reaction of a human mind, the last of the aliens rolled by and sudden-ly I was alone. Where were they on the move? What did beings like that travel after? Was there migration going on? Had they run out of food in one area and were looking for more somewhere else? Were they moving for food or for breeding purposes?
Where did this put them on the evolutionary line? I wished I were a scientist and could think of answers.
Being alone was a hundred times worse. For a terrible moment I wished the aliens would come back so I would at least know where they were. If I stood up, tried to move on, would I run flush into them? Would I turn the curve of a pillar and run into Clark’s corpse the way I had run into Donahue’s? Would my mother speak to me again over the com unit? Or would she change her mind and abandon me to my own devices? I honestly couldn’t predict.
In the worst case, I’d be alone out here. Clark and the Marines would be gone, discovered, dead. I tried to mentally pace my way back to the ship, the shortest way, and horribly realized I didn’t really know the way. I’d followed MacCormac and forgotten to read the street signs. I thought I remembered the way back . . . two bends, a long stretch of downward slope, a bend to the right . . . or was it two bends, one left, then right? And weren’t there t
racks around at least three columns the sizes of buildings?
God, I couldn’t remember. If I went down the wrong track, made the wrong turn—
Thinking of myself again. What about Clark and the Marines? If they were only a few yards away, also hiding, would I be leaving them behind? Even worse, if I skulked away, they might do what we were doing—waste time looking for me.
I felt like a fool, like a jerk, taken in by a sense of honor that had never paid off once in my life. I’d had a chance to get the ship and its crew out of this mess and blown the gift of escape. There were too many ways to die down here, for sure.
But there were survivors too. I’d heard my mother’s voice. They were here somewhere, cloaked. Somehow I didn’t feel all that vindicated.
The silence almost drove me to screaming. I bit my lip to keep from calling out and running madly away in any direction until I dropped of exhaustion, to be covered by gauze and eaten by weevils. I physically fought to get a grip on myself and only partly succeeded. Five minutes passed—or was it twenty? Eight—or thirty? I had no idea how long I lay there in paralyzing terror. Seconds, maybe. Panic isn’t a good judge of time.
No matter how I played with time, the aliens didn’t come back. They were headed in some direction for their own purposes, not just roaming around looking for me. Still, I had no way to know their behavior. Maybe they had rearguards. Maybe I’d still be caught.
Finally I found the nerve to shimmy backward out of my flat hiding place. When my head cleared, I almost dove back in, but managed to force myself to my feet.
Maybe heroes get scared. I don’t know. Don’t care.
“Where are you?” I hissed, caught between wanting to yell out and wanting not to make a sound at all. “Answer me . . . somebody speak up, please, this isn’t funny . . . ”
No answer. I didn’t dare raise my voice.
I looked for footprints, but the black skulch revealed nothing but the telltale scratching of the aliens as they had rolled past.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 31
