Message from Gondwana

by David Wiley

CHAPTER 11

  The next day Lani did indeed spend it confined in her lab. She found it was not as hard as she thought it would be. First of all, a cold front had moved in and it steadily rained most of the day, unusual for this time of year on Gondwana. They kept a close watch, but nothing seemed to be happening with the plants. Second, the Geek wasn't exaggerating when he said that Hoover was close to a breakthrough. The up-close data from all of Lani's various recorders had filled in some key areas in Hoover's attempts at formulating a plant language syntax. The Geek was excited, Lani was excited. Even Hoover the AI sounded excited. Lani was feeling good enough that when Emma stopped by supposedly to sympathize, but really to gloat, over Lani's apparent grounding, Lani played along, hanging her head and mumbling. Lani could hear Emma happily humming all the way back to her own lab space.

  Lani went back to reviewing Hoover's analysis on her lab monitor. She and the Geek were busy arguing over whether there appeared to be any concept of time in the Gondwana syntax, as they called it, when the noise finally penetrated. It sounded like dripping water. She checked the two sinks in the lab. They were completely turned off. She finally located the source of the sound, in the far corner of the lab ceiling. That was odd, she thought these self-assembling modules were supposed to be defect-free. Obviously they were mistaken. She put a bucket under the drip and went to mention it to Mumson.

  Even before she spotted Mumson, she spotted the trail of buckets. So it wasn't an isolated incident. Shoot, if water was leaking into the command center they didn't stand a chance, not with Hoover and all their communications equipment. She ran down the corridor and into the command center—nearly clobbering the Professor with the door.

  The Professor shook her head before Lani could apologize for the close call. "No leaks in here, so far, thank the Spirit, but almost everywhere else. Your lab, Miz Callis?"

  "Only in the corner, that I saw. What happened?"

  "We are trying to figure that out. From the cameras, we can't see any obvious growth on the roof, so we're wondering if some of your plants have managed to sneak some tendrils up through the slab along the walls."

  They had their answer when Soren came back inside, drenched from his trip up onto the roof. He held a vial with several wriggling worms in it.

  "What are they?" Mumson asked.

  Soren stood in a spreading puddle of water in the corridor. "Remember that flock of beautiful flutterbys that were roosting on the roof a while back? My guess is this is the larval form. They seem to like the taste of the polymer that makes up most of the roof and walls. There are burrows all over the roof. Only place they aren't chowing down is on the metal parts."

  "So the command center and fusion plant is safe then," Jonze was relieved.

  "For the moment, but there are a lot of non-metal conduits, like the fiber optic network that is connected to Hoover and our antenna on the roof," Mumson said.

  "And the cameras and microphones and all of our other sensors out there," Soren pointed out.

  Jonze took the sample vial from Soren and handed it to Lani. "See if you can't figure out what will kill them. We've got some broad spectrum insecticide, but it might be hard to apply if they are inside the walls or if it is raining out." She turned back to the others. "Soren, take a couple more of our field techs topside and collect some more worms for Lani and Emma to test. Mumson, assuming we can figure out how to kill them, what do we have that can fill in those holes or at least cover the roof to keep the rain out? Zach, come up with some sort of plan to protect Hoover and his data if they do manage to break through the metal around the command center. The rest of us are on bucket brigade. You also might want to check your hutches, folks."

  Emma and Lani split up the work. Emma quickly confirmed that the insecticide was partially effective against the flutterby larvae, killing over ninety percent of them within an hour, assuming there was direct contact with the larvae. Mumson came up with a flexible applicator that could be inserted down each hole. He also had a few tubes of a polymer to plug the holes. They could quickly synthesize more since they had plenty of the raw chemicals that went into the polymer, unlike a few critical ingredients that they needed to replenish their diminishing fuel for the flame throwers and the All-Clear volatiles. The trouble was they could not install the plugs until they were sure the larvae were dead, otherwise the surviving larvae would keep eating and even ten percent could cause a lot of damage. Lani had Hoover running through their library of molecular compounds that they had identified on the planet so far, looking for similarities with the insecticide or anything that looked remotely like it might be lethal. Hours later she still had not had any successful tests and she and Hoover were back at square zero.

  She was about ready to give up when she had a sudden realization. She looked again at a couple of her test chambers. "No, no, no, you idiot!" she pounded her forehead in frustration.

  Bax poked his head around her door bearing the gift of caffeine. "Hey, easy there. You might want to use that brain again sometime in the future."

  She turned to him. "How could I be so stupid?" she demanded.

  "Um, is this a trick question?"

  "No. Yes. I mean, here I was so focused on trying to kill the little buggers that I never thought to just cripple their gut. The answer was right in front of me, sample 84J. It interferes with their digestive enzymes. It doesn't kill them outright; oh, they'll eventually starve, but it keeps them from eating our walls. Good enough, right?" She didn't wait for an answer, but went running down the corridor to let Jonze know.

  As it turned out, Bax's hutch was one of those that had leaked. That was the bad news. The worse news was that Lani's hutch remained water tight, so they had to move in there, which meant Lani had to clean up her room first. Bax stood in the doorway and looked over her shoulder. "Maybe we should camp out in the common room instead," he suggested.

  "Oh, shut up. Do you want to shovel or haul?"