Karen looked up at Theo, her eyelashes jeweled with rain. "I used to practice targets a lot when we traveled. And on Coreco there were biting insects—like flying roaches. I used to shoot them.” She sounded almost apologetic. "Want to see?”
"Very much,” said Theo, and then saw that Karen held the most lethal gun the base was allowed.
"See that far branch jerking in the wind?” said Karen, pointing, and when Theo located the target down by the ocean, "Watch.” Without bothering to sight, the girl raised the weapon and fired from waist level. There was a streak of blue. The branch dropped into the roiling water below. "See the one next to it?” The second branch dropped.
"Excellent,” breathed Theo, who needed a rock to rest that weapon on before she could hit a target the size of a cup. "You’re really excellent!”
Karen grinned. "Yes,” she said, then calmly turned off the gun and handed it to the Commander. "Can we go now?”
"You’re sure you won’t change your mind, Dr. Leslie?” Philip was all dressed to go in case she had. She had not, and as she noted the geologist’s bags stuffed in his belt, she was glad she had not.
"No. Thank you.” She opened the hatch and stepped aside for Karen to get in out of the rain.
"Don’t be greedy, Philip,” Dr. Wexler said soothingly. "It’s her find, hers and Karen’s. We can find our own. There’s plenty.” Theo’s glance met Karen’s, whose look said, "See?”
"They’re not going for crystals.” There was an edge of irritation in Tairas’s voice. He handed the weapon to Theo. "I’d let Karen wear it, but it’s too heavy for her. But when you go into the cave, you let her carry it. You’ll both be safer.”
"You’ve seen me shoot, huh ?” Theo said, and he nodded.
“Now you should be pretty safe in this cabin.” He pointed toward what appeared to be a belt of chain mail encircling the outer hull of the craft. Made of flexible optical fiber, each gleaming stud was a laser. "I had heavy-duty power cells put in. The mesh could hold a firing of thirty minutes. If it has to. It will heat up the interior but not beyond endurance. Your lethal range is maybe one hundred and fifty feet. ...”
"Where is the switch?” Theo asked. "Just in case. I don't expect to need it.” His eyebrow went up in disbelief. "No. Really. I think the cave and all the area around will be empty. There’s no food up there.”
"There are a lot of vots,” said Karen from the front seat.
"But they’re so small. It would be like a leopard hunting mice —” She saw the lack of understanding of this simile on the faces around her. "In any event, you’re all getting wet. We’ll see you in several days at the most. If the cave is empty, we’ll be back by evening.”
It seemed to her the good-byes and good advice took forever, but at last she could shut the hatch and turn the power on.
Within seconds after lift-off the camp below disappeared. Everything disappeared. There were no mountains, no sea, no heaven, and no planet. Only themselves in this fragile container rising up through the clouds, buffeted by wind gusts.
Theo sat tensely watching the altimeter and prayed that all systems were functioning perfectly. The craft was on autopilot. She had charted their course and programmed it into the craft’s navigation system. Now she found herself wondering if she had marked the cave at the right place on the map. If not, could she make a manual landing in this weather? Just then they hit an air pocket and dropped with sickening swiftness before the craft recovered itself. She glanced over at Karen who got space sick.
“I’m fine,” said Karen. "I took an antigrav tablet when I got up. The medic was a little mad when I woke her for it. It makes you anxious, doesn’t it?”
“About the medic being mad?” said Theo, deliberately misunderstanding. “No. She probably had therapy last night,” and she grinned.
Once the craft gained enough elevation to clear the coastal mountain chain, they moved inland. The turbulence from the ocean subsided. It was replaced by turbulence over the mountains. Neither felt talkative. The cabin was dark. Rain streaked across the windows. Their only idea of the terrain below came from tracings of the sonarscope.
“Why don’t you take a nap?” Theo suggested once.
“I might miss something,” said Karen. Theo repressed a smile.
Two and a half hours after lift-off they began to come down. The view outside was still solid cloud. The screen showed cliffs alarmingly close. They came in at slow speed. At three hundred yards the landing pods dropped. The clouds began to look more wispy. Then, peering out, she saw the ground dimly visible, dark red, rocks shining wet.
With a sigh of relief she put the controls on manual and flew a careful reconnaissance. Karen unsnapped her seat belt and stood up to peer out at the ground. In the five minutes or more in which they circled the cave, nothing moved on the ground but water. They landed below and to the right of the cave entrance.
XVII
SlLENCE. A total absence of sound. It settled around them, cold, damp, immense. They stood in the open doorway, held there by this presence. For the moment the rain had stopped. There was almost no wind. Clouds layered overhead, trailing lethargic wisps.
"Listen,” Karen whispered, and moved closer. Theo put an arm around her. Slowly, as their ears adapted to this new dimension, they heard the voices of water and soil, murmurings, trickles, irrhythmic drippings. Something in those sounds made the humans’ skin crawl. "Come, let’s get our gear together,” said Theo.
Where there was no stone underfoot, it was slow walking. Rain turned the red soil to clay. Every step was a sloppy squelch. Pounds of mud clung to each boot and had to be stomped off on the next rock. Their joint approach to the cave was anything but silent.
From a safe distance away Karen stopped and stood ready with the gun. Theo climbed a rock and aimed a powerful torch into the black crevice. Nothing lurked in the front of the cave. She moved so that the light would penetrate the tunnel. They stood still for ten minutes or more, waiting, listening, hearts beating faster with the tension. The light flushed nothing out.
Theo waved to Karen to signal step two of their prearranged plan. Karen would remain where she was, as guard; Theo would approach close enough to throw a noise bomb into the cave.
With the clay sucking at her feet, Theo moved up. If the noise frightened any large creature out, it would be difficult to run in this. She hoped that in those circumstances Karen would not get buck fever and freeze. Trusting to instinct, she pressed the pin, threw, and began to back away. The bomb flashed a brilliant red, and its bang echoed in the hollow chamber. Again they waited.
"I was right,” Theo called. "It’s empty.”
"Or they’re still mummies,” Karen reminded her.
"Or they’re still mummies.”
Even so Theo shifted the torch to her left hand and carried her gun in the right. The two of them entered the cave mouth from opposite sides. The sandy floor of the outer chamber was wet and hard-packed as a stream bottom. The footprints they made now were the only tracks there. Theo began to relax.
"Uh-oh.” Karen pointed. The remains of the noise grenade lay perhaps a third of the way up the sloping tunnel into the inner chamber. They had forgotten the slope. The two of them looked at each other.
"What do you think?" said Theo.
"Got another bomb?”
"Right.”
Although the reverberating noise startled them, it produced no other results. They walked up the tunnel, feeling secure.
"It’s still there!” Karen’s torch played over a mound on the sandy floor. "Do you think the damp is rotting it?”
Theo took a slow, deep breath through her nose and wished she had not. "It’s not . . . doing it any good,” she said. She switched her light to wide beam to check the rest of the chamber. The stone walls had looked pale before; now they were bright red with dampness. The floor had been hilly with sandy mounds. Now it was pocked with hollows that shadowed in the light. She walked around the chamber to make sure.
"They are gone,” she said, no triumph in her voice. "They are gone ” She could hardly believe it and stood lost in wonder that her suspicions had proved to be fact.
".. . gone too.” She heard Karen without hearing her.
"Who?”
"The crystals. They’re all gone too.”
"Maybe sand washed over them,” Theo suggested absently. "It looks like a river of water came through here.” She was still puzzling over the idea of anabiosis for a bulk like this.
Using her boots as scrapers, Karen began searching at the edge of the nearest depression. "There were five or six heavy crystals here. I remember. They’re not here now.”
Theo frowned. "I don’t think anyone else has been here—unless someone from our base flew up here last night. Which would be very dangerous . . . but not impossible.” She shook her head. "The crystals are a minor detail we can worry about later,” she decided. "Let’s look at our friend here and see why it got left behind.”
"Why didn’t it go with the rest, do you think?”
"I think because we exposed it,” Theo said. "We removed the sand. You will note the left side, which we could not lift out of the sand, has reconstituted? The right, the side exposed, has not. The water ran off too quickly for the dry tissue to absorb it evenly.”
"So we really killed it?”
"In a broad sense,” Theo agreed. "From the smell I would guess it died of gangrene. Does that make you sorry?”
Karen shook her head. "Not after seeing the dining room,” she said.
An hour passed in preparation. Lighting and recording camera were rigged, equipment carried in from the work wagon, tarps spread over the sand, a folding table set up for the microscope and instruments, rubber suits and gloves put on.
It was a definite relief to put on the filter helmets. Along with the dust and microbes they eliminated odors in the air. The one remaining cave bear smelled a bit heady, so much so, in fact, that Theo had kept the direct lights off it, thinking even their faint heat would increase the scent.
As she checked Karen’s helmet to make sure it was securely fastened at the throat, their eyes met through the plastic face masks and she saw something was wrong.
"What is it? Can’t you breathe?”
"I can breathe O.K. . . . It’s ... I feel so alone in here.”
Theo nodded her own bubble-enclosed head. "It’s isolating,” she agreed, "but necessary. Once we get to work you won’t notice it as much.” She gestured toward the specimen. "Shall we, Dr. Orlov?”
"O.K., Dr. Leslie.”
Theo reached over and turned on the light.
The creature was almost twice as large as it had been before and no longer curled into a rounded shape. It lay stretched out, head exposed, skin smoothed and peppered with pores. The three legs on the top side, the side away from the sand, were still curled and withered, their claws grotesquely large. The legs below were fully extended, like a sponge enlarged by water. The abdomen was misshapenly swollen either by liquids or gas or both. Only the head seemed to have absorbed moisture at an even flow. It was cushion-round, large eyed, with a most peculiar mouth. Theo was about to squat down to have a closer look at the mouth and the lip apparatus in particular.
"Don’t!” Karen grabbed her arm with a force that pulled Theo off balance and swung her back, away from the body, before letting go. Karen grabbed the gun from the table. As she pointed it at the dead thing, Theo yelled, "Don’t burn it!”
"Its eye moved! It’s not all dead!”
Theo looked at the saucer-sized eye. It was open and focused on Karen.
XVIII
LlKE a sick thing half wakened from fever dreams, the creature did not move. After regarding Karen blankly, its head shifted, with great effort. Its eyes scanned the cave and came to rest on Theo. Then, as if helpless to stop it, the head fell back onto the sand; leathery opaque eyelids slid down.
The whole thing took less than thirty seconds from the time Karen pounced until Theo regained her balance and stood erect. “Back away,” she said softly to the girl. “I don’t think it can stand up, but ...” She put her hands on Karen’s shoulders and guided her until they were in the tunnel mouth.
The animal made a noise then, a great sucking sort of snuffle. Karen turned her head away, and Theo found herself wanting to gag because she could visualize the condition of a respiratory system that produced a sound like that. Instead she watched carefully as spasms shook the creature’s body. Its eyes opened again—and searched until it found them.
“Is it in pain?” Karen’s whisper was almost inaudible through the helmet.
"I don’t know.”
"It’s still dying?”
"Yes.”
"Poor animal.”
To her surprise Theo found her eyes filling with tears. Since the mask prevented brushing them away, she had to blink furiously. It was dangerous not to see clearly at this moment. "Why am I crying for this?” she wondered, and then admitted to herself the real cause of her tears. And stopped them.
"Think about it later,” she said. Her normal voice was loud enough to echo in the chamber.
Startled, the animal snorted and jerked its head up. The short claw arm and left front leg flayed the sand and found leverage. With a groan it raised the shoulder of its bulk and faced them. Both eyes lit up with eagerness—to kill, or perhaps to communicate. Its mouth opened and the jaws moved, but no sound came out. The body jerked; the tongue bulged, and the creature vomited up two small yellow crystals. It stared at the crystals for a moment, as if surprised. Then suddenly, with desperate energy, it tried to push its ruined body toward them, the claw arm and three wizened legs audibly flopping. Once, twice, then abruptly, as if a life switch had been turned off, it collapsed and rolled sideways, dead.
The two people stood silent, watching the great eyes film. Finally Karen gave a little shrug and went and laid the gun on the table. "I’m going outside for a while,” she announced and trudged off down the tunnel. Theo’s helmet bubble bobbed assent.
"If you’re going to be sick, take off the helmet.”
In spite of her own revulsion, she found the cave bear fascinating. It was a carnivore, the first she had seen here. Radulae lined the great lips like a drill. The jaws were lined with very efficient shredders, the tongue and cheek cavity with acid sacs. It apparently fed by puncturing the victim, pouring on acid, and pumping out the solution. None of Eridan’s animals was capable of much speed, and this thing could probably outrun them. Those short upper armlike things were grippers. The claws were cruelly efficient.
The creature was large and awkward to handle. Theo worked rapidly but with great thoroughness. Samples of each different tissue went into opaque specimen bags and into the cryogenic unit for instant freezing. The idea of staying here another day was not appealing. She would run all tests in the base lab.
The crystals were more of a mystery than ever. She picked up one with the tongs and studied it against the light. It dripped something, acid or saliva. Its surface was curiously etched. She dropped both crystals into separate noncorrosive vials and sealed them. Had the starving creature swallowed them in its death agony ? Or were they like human gallstones ?
"Wait until the people back there find out what kind of gems they’ve been collecting.”
Theo jumped and nearly dropped the vials.
"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Karen apologized. "It’s raining again.” She looked at the remains of the creature and quickly looked away. “I came back to help. ...”
Theo checked the face behind the helmet bubble and remembered her own reaction to her first autopsy. She had passed out cold and clammy. "Will you forgive me if I do it myself?” she said. "I know it’s pure selfishness, but I concentrate better alone on a job like this.”
Karen at first appeared willing to buy this line. Then a slow grin spread across her face. "I know you,” she said. "You’re afraid I’ll throw up.”
"Uh-huh,” Theo said. "I did the first time. Woul
d you prefer carrying those bags there out to the freezer in the work wagon? It’s the green box on the left—”
"And it’s marked 'frozen.’ ”
"Right.”
"I’ll find it. Trust me.” Karen collected a load and went out into the rain. She was gone just long enough for Theo to begin to wonder where the child was when she heard her stomping mud off her boots. "I was hunting vots,” Karen announced. "I saw a burrow so I went to see how they were doing. And it was empty. Ripped open from the top. And I found another, too. Empty.” "Probably friends of our friend here did it,” said Theo. "They must wake up starving.”
"Nasty things.” Karen picked up four more bags and headed out. "The vots never hurt them when they were helpless.”
"Grass feeds the herbivores and herbivores feed the carnivores,” said Theo. "A browser feels no sorrow for the grass it eats. This creature feels no sorrow for the browser it eats. Both kill with no malice.”
Karen paused to consider this.
"I'm not sure I understand the part about malice yet,” she said finally. "Or if I want to. Are there predators among people too?” Theo paused in her work, wondering if Karen was thinking of her parents’ death and trying to fit this reason to an acceptance of that loss. If so, it was no time to tell a comforting lie.
"They could be called that, I suppose, those people who inflict great personal harm on others. I would not give them the dignity of calling them predators, but then that is my own prejudice. There is malice in humans; some of us get tainted by our own weakness. ...”
"Like the people who killed . . .” Karen still could not say it. ". . . who mutinied at Base One?”
"Like them. But for every person who becomes a 'predator’ there are a thousand who do not.” And then she added, thinking of Karen, "And if we are lucky, there may be one who is really something special.”
"You aren’t disappointed because that makes me sick?” Karen gestured at the carcass.
"No. It makes me sick too. But, like you, I can shut part of my mind off until it’s safe to think again. Now go dump those bags in the freezer before your arms get the shakes from holding them.”
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