Deathworms of Kratos (v1.1)

by Edmund Cooper

  In his survey, Conrad had not only discovered the existence of more hives or nests, he had also seen much animal life. Clearly, Kwango had been right. Most of the animals had been scared away from the vicinity of the Santa Maria by the noise and disturbance of its touch-down. But, twenty or thirty kilometres away from the vessel, herds of game roamed the grasslands. Some of the animals looked amazingly like Terran deer, okapi, buffalo, eland, bison. If in fact Kratos were ever to be colonised, there would be no shortage of meat.

  In the manipulation of an exo-skeleton, Kwango proved more adept than Andreas had anticipated. The stockade was completed in just over three days. Lou Andreas was proud of it. It was a formidable stockade. Between them, Andreas and Kwango had cleared three hectares of timber. And now the sharpened logs “planted” by the robots constituted a very tough barrier.

  Strangely, Kwango had taken to the use of an exo-skeleton almost as the proverbial duck takes to water. He had needed far less instruction than either Batista or James. Once secured in his harness, it was as if he really felt the great machine to be an extension of his own body. At first, he had fallen down two or three times; but he learned from the falls and picked himself up. Soon, he was able to walk, leap, run. Soon he was as good as, or better than, Lou Andreas himself.

  Andreas was somewhat mortified. Was there nothing that this black joker could not do? But he was very glad of Kwango’s rapid learning of exo-skills when it came to trimming the “pine” logs and hauling them back to Base One. Kwango, without appearing to work unduly hard, somehow managed to deliver fifteen logs for every ten delivered by Andreas.

  It was strange to see Kwango harnessed in eight metres of pseudo-body loping—not walking—back to Base One with two bundles of logs under his steel arms. What was even more galling was the fact that Kwango somehow made the exo-skeleton move gracefully.

  The robots lasered the rough ends of the logs before they were lowered into holes prepared by the sonic drill. Kwango became adept at tossing the logs into their holes as if he were flinging darts at a dartboard.

  Conrad was pleased with the stockade. It looked a very solid structure—tough enough not to get smashed if there were any more nocturnal visits. He ordered searchlights to be erected as before, and he had trip wires linked to vid-cameras. If there was another visitation, he wanted a record that could be studied.

  After the evening meal, he read the reports compiled by Liz James and Chantana Le Gros. All they had to go on was the messy stinking remains of the head; but from that alone they had derived a remarkable amount of information and had extrapolated high probabilities.

  Most important of all was the fact that the creature had a brain no larger than an orange—which clearly ruled out high intelligence. Second, there was no evidence of any skeletal system—so it was more like a king-size worm than a king-size snake. Third, it was, as Kwango had suggested, an omnivore. James had found traces of animal and vegetable matter in the mouth. Fourth, the skin was a vast lung/excreting mechanism. Fifth, it partially digested animal prey by using jets of hydrochloric acid. Sixth, it was warm blooded. Seventh, its visual system was primitive in the extreme. The eyes themselves would probably not respond to colour, only to light intensity and movement.

  Conrad was tired. He had been doing a lot of work and a lot of thinking. But his brain refused to rest. So, before he went to his cabin, he challenged Kwango to a game of chess. He fully expected to lose. Kwango had a much higher I.Q.

  So he started off with a king’s pawn opening and developed his pieces as fast as he could. Kwango saw the attack on the king’s side coming, and had his defences set up in advance.

  “No good, Commander, think of something else.” Kwango was smilingly happy. His next move was obviously to get the rooks into play, since Conrad had not yet castled.

  Conrad sighed. It would have to be death or glory. He wasn’t going to smash Kwango on chess logic.

  He sacrificed a bishop, just for the hell of it. Kwango, confident as always, took it with the pawn in front of the king.

  Conrad followed it up with a suicidal queen exchange. Kwango was laughing—until Conrad’s knight bracketed king and rook.

  “Shit!” said Kwango.

  The black knight took the white rook and then was itself taken.

  But the sequence of events had not only opened Kwango’s defence, it had destroyed his attack. He began to develop his remaining pieces. But now he was one move behind and could only play a defensive game. Six moves later, Conrad was able to castle and double his rooks. Kwango protected his remaining rook with bishop and king. But, relentlessly, Conrad manoeuvred himself into position for a disclosed check. At which point, Kwango resigned.

  “Commander, temperamentally you are a bloody kamikaze pilot. You have no subtlety, no elegance. But I know your style now. That is the last game you will win for a long time.”

  “No doubt,” returned Conrad tranquilly. “I seem to recall that you played for Nigeria. So now you know my style, you will be able to smash me—but not always.”

  Kwango laughed. “Not always,” he agreed. “Players like you sometimes produce rabbits out of hats.”

  Conrad was silent for a while. Then he said: “It was our first game, Kurt. You did not know my style nor I yours… In a way, we are faced with a similar situation here on Kratos.”

  “The worm-like creatures?”

  “Precisely.”

  Kwango yawned. “I’m going to hit the sack. But before I do, there is something I should tell you. I don’t think it was a good idea to use searchlights again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think those bastard things may be night creatures, and I think they may be phototropic. Like bloody moths.”

  “Have you any evidence to support this notion?”

  “No. Except that they smashed all the lights on the first perimeter.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “Possibly. I don’t think so.”

  Conrad also yawned. “We’ll see,” he said.

  They did see.

  Later that night, the death worms came again. This time, they could not breach the perimeter defence. But they still managed to put out two of the lights. And five of their dreadful heads were left impaled upon the sharpened logs of the stockade.

  The vid cameras recorded what happened to the massive bodies. The surviving death worms ate them. The odd thing was that the decapitated victims still struggled and threshed about, trying to defend themselves even as they were being devoured. It took a long time for them to die. The bodies continued to writhe until there were only three or four segments left. As he studied the playback, Conrad was reminded of the blood frenzy of sharks.

  PHASE TWO

  Battle Royal

  Ecologist Kurt Kwango asked permission to deliver a brief lecture on extrapolations derived from analysis of the nature, and evidence of the behaviour, of what everyone called the death worms. He received permission. Conrad would have preferred a confidential report first; but he knew that Kwango was temperamental and liked to show off. High I.Q., brilliant mind—and the emotional instability of an adolescent. If Conrad had refused permission, it was a stone cold certainty that Kwango would have sulked, keeping his information to himself until he could find a sufficiently dramatic moment to reveal it.

  Kwango surveyed his fellow Expendables benignly. “Are you sitting comfortably, children? Then I’ll begin.”

  “Cut the crap,” said Andreas. “You got a bad case of colonic verbalese.”

  “Some day, Lou,” retorted Kwango with a note of insult in his voice, “you must allow me to teach you how to use an exo-skeleton efficiently.” Kwango did not wait for any response, but turned his attention to the rest of the group.

  “We have all been very busy recently, and a number of interesting facts about our charming, if aggressive, nocturnal visitors has been discovered. We are all familiar with the excellent analyses carried out by James, Le Gros, and the indefatigable Lieutenant Smith. Al
so, the good Commander has provided useful data about the incidence of the hives or nests of these creatures. As you know, I am an ecologist. The facts we have been given are like pieces of an old fashioned jig-saw puzzle. They have little significance until they are fitted together to make a picture. That is my job. I am a dedicated Addict of jig-saw puzzles. It is my business to relate the functions and behaviour of our charming friends to the environment or eco-system in which they operate.

  “Let us review the known facts. First, the robot probes brought to Terra sufficient data to convince the clever boys that Kratos was a planet that might be suitable for colonisation. They brought pictures of the networks of ruts, but they did not detect any animal life capable of creating them. Interesting. The robot probes did not orbit very long. I have checked the records and find that they orbited for only fourteen K-days.

  “That is significant,” went on Kwango. “Ladies and gentlemen, if some alien robot probe orbited Earth for fourteen days when the northern hemisphere was in the throes of winter, would the probe be able to provide useful data about the life cycle of, say, the Arctic seal in summertime?”

  He paused dramatically. No ‘one spoke. Conrad gazed at him intently. Kwango was gratified.

  “The point is that the death worms of Kratos are anachronisms. They belong to much earlier geological ages—ages that might correspond to the Carboniferous or even perhaps as late as the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods on Earth. Consider the evidence.

  “Much of the relatively small animal life forms we have found so far are comparable to creatures of Earth, and must have passed through similar phases of evolution. But the death worms! Ladies and gentlemen, it is as if on Terra the dinosaurs had survived through to the Pliocene or even the Pleistocene. They don’t bloody belong!”

  “So what, funny man,” growled Lou Andreas, still smarting. “They are here. What the hell does it matter if they are not meant to be here? It’s our job to annihilate the bastards if we can. Otherwise, no colonists. Kratos is a write-off.”

  “Lou is right,” said Fidel Batista. “Your damned theorising is of no use, Kurt. What we want is the secret ingredient that makes them all go pop.”

  “You are both wrong,” said Kwango loftily. “Our job is first to understand their function in the ecosystem and then see how we can neutralise their danger to man. Right, Commander?”

  “Right, Mr. Kwango. Proceed. But justify this operation quickly. We all have work to do.”

  “You want the conclusions first or the reasoning?”

  “The conclusions. If they are not crazy, you can then support your argument.”

  Kwango grinned. “Hokay, Boss. Fasten your seat belt. Like the dinosaurs of Earth, the dinosaurs of Kratos destroyed their own environment. Earth dinosaurs operated in humid swamps. But when they ate all the foliage off the plants, the swaps dried up. Bang went the dinosaurs. Of course, it took a few million years. Same thing happened here on Kratos. Only some of the dinosaurs—if you want to call them that—were stupidly smart. They changed their eating habits and they went underground. And because of that they managed to survive. But they didn’t evolve. They devolved… So I’ll just tell you what we got, man. And you can fire de sixty-four thousand solar questions later. We got a species that has two brains—one at each end—like some Terran dinosaurs. It’s gone underground because it needs to create the humid conditions it once had. It is omnivorous, cannibalistic and regenerative. Cut one in two, and unless its best friend eats the sections, presently you got two death worms. These interesting creatures are phototropic and sensitive to heat stimulus. They stay in the hives or underground until conditions are right for their emergence to the surface. Then they come out and have a ball. We know that they breathe through their skin. Has anyone, other than me, been checking the rainfall and temperature readings lately?”

  “My God, he’s right!” Liz James sprang to her feet. “Kwango, I love you. You are a genius!”

  “Darling, I love you also,” said Kwango. “And it is self-evident that I am a genius. In this particular zone where the good Commander in his wisdom decided to touch down, we are about to enter the rainy season. What is the Terran word? Monsoon. Ah, yes. So, ladies and gentlemen, to put it briefly: you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  There was a silence. Then Conrad said: “Kurt, you really can back these extrapolations up?”

  Kwango grinned. “Yep. You didn’t know it, Boss, but you hired me to be the thinking man of this outfit.”

  “So it seems. Have you got any more bad news? If we are going to try to do anything about these creatures, we might as well know the worst.”

  “Yes, Commander, I have more bad news. I studied the pix you took of Mount Conrad. There were no entrances visible. Which indicates that the creatures are capable of subtlety. Why no entrances? Answer: entrances are concealed, probably at some distance from the nest. Why this, then? Answer: because the death worms fear attack. Attack from what? Other death worms… In fact, there is probably an entrance to that hill right here near our perimeter.”

  “The shaft the robot fell down,” said Conrad.

  “Score one, Commander. That shaft was carefully constructed. At the bottom, branching off, there is a tunnel, yes?”

  “There is a tunnel,” agreed Conrad.

  “So. I bet anyone a litre of booze that it and any other nearby shafts lead to Mount Conrad.”

  There were no takers.

  “To sum up,” went on Kwango happily, “we have here on Kratos an Earth-type ecology with one glaring inconsistency—this massive creature which refused to perish when surface conditions became unfavourable. It is a devolved dinosaur with some of the characteristics of a worm, some of the characteristics of an ant, facilities for hibernation and—” he never finished his sentence.

  Matthew, manning the screen on the nav deck, reported over the intercom. “Commander, a group of the worm-like creatures, estimated at approximately two hundred and fifty, is rapidly approaching the perimeter. Estimated distance five kilometres. Approach path, north-north-east. Estimated speed, twenty to twenty-five kilometres per hour. Estimated arrival time, thirteen point five minutes plus or minus approximately ten per cent.”

  “Is it raining out there?” asked Kwango before Conrad could speak.

  “Light to moderate,” reported Matthew. “Visibility good. Commander, do you have any instructions?”

  Conrad’s brain got into top gear. “Where are the other robots? Are they outside?”

  “No, sir. Mark is carrying out recycling maintenance schedules, Peter is processing animal protein extraction as requested by Miss James, and—”

  “Spare me the details. Three exo-skeletons must now be readied for immediate use. Have control systems and power sources checked for optimum efficiency. Execute!”

  “Decision noted. Execution proceeds. Estimated time of check-out and make-ready is seven point five minutes. Approaching creatures have different colouration from such creatures already encountered. Approaching creatures are white.”

  “Bloody marvellous,” said Kwango. “It was, of course, to be expected.”

  “Your next revelations will have to wait,” said Conrad. “You, Andreas and Batista are pretty good at using the exo-skeletons. So you can get yourselves harnessed up fast. Batista, how many of those cold nitro-bombs have you got in the fridge?”

  “Nine, Commander.”

  “Then get them out and show Andreas and Kwango how to arm them. You and the other two have just volunteered to be our first line of defence. You will harness yourselves in the exos, get outside the perimeter and meet our visitors, if you can, one kilometre from the Santa Maria. You will toss your nitro-bombs for maximum effect and then take any individual action you see fit. If the bombs don’t deflect them, I recommend that you tear up a few trees and beat the bastard’s brains out. In the light of Kwango’s revelations, try to smash them both ends. While this little party is getting under way, I will take the chopper and a laser rifle and start cutt
ing them up from the sky. Le Gros and James, armed with laser rifles, will stay inside the perimeter for a last ditch defence—if it comes to that. Lieutenant Smith will assume command of the Santa Maria, and will oversee operations from the nav deck screen… Lieutenant Smith, if the perimeter is breached and the Santa Maria is jeopardised, you will instruct Matthew to programme lift-off. You will then follow sub-space return procedure. O.K.?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Let’s move, then.”

  “If it’s any consolation, Commander,” said Kwango, “they are not coming to attack us.”

  “They are heading our way.”

  Kwango shrugged. “Coincidence. We just happen to be in their path.”

  “I don’t buy that kind of coincidence,” snarled Andreas. “Come on, black man. Let’s go get harnessed up and start tossing cold-nitro around.”

  Conrad was airborne and over the marauding swarm of deathworms before the men in the exo-skeletons had armed themselves and left the stockade.

  He looked down at the dreadful creatures, fascinated. Their means of locomotion was, oddly, by vertical rather than horizontal rippling, and their heads were kept at a fairly constant height of about two metres above ground level. Some, he estimated, were more than a hundred metres long. They would weigh in at considerably more than the three hundred tons estimated by Kwango.

  Conrad circled the swarm, then went down to fifty metres altitude, stabilised and put the chopper on automatic, its pace matching the pace of the death worms. He would have liked to go lower; but, as yet, there was no means of knowing how high the creatures could rear. It would be stupid to let himself and the chopper get taken out by an enterprising, if devolved dinosaur.