Across the Sea of Suns

by Gregory Benford

  Warren looked out through the mesh on the windows and saw men running. There was no moon but in the starlight he could see they were carrying rifles. A sudden rattling came from the north and west. More crashes and then answering fire from up on the ridge.

  He listened as it got louder and then used the flickering light from the windows to find the map Tseng had given him. He pulled back the sleeping pad to expose the hole he had dug and without hesitation crawled in. He knew the feel of it well and in the complete dark found the stone at the end he used. He had estimated that there was only a foot of dirt left above. Using the pan to scrape away the last few feet of dirt had left him with a feel for how strong the earth was above, but when he hit it with the stone it did not give. There was not much room to swing and three more solid hits did not even shake loose clods of it. Warren was sweating in the closeness of the tunnel and the dirt stuck to his face as he chipped away at the hard soil over him. It was hard-packed and filled with rocks that struck him in the face and rolled onto his chest. His arm started to ache and then tire out but he did not stop. He switched the stone to his left hand and felt a softness give above and then was hitting nothing. The stone broke the crust and he could see stars.

  He studied the area carefully. A soldier ran by carrying a tripod for an automatic rifle. The sharp crackling fire still came from north and west.

  There was a spark of light high up and Warren snapped his head away to keep his night vision. Then the glare was gone and a hollow roar rolled over the camp. Mortars, not far away. He struggled up out of the tunnel and ran for the trees nearby. Halfway there his knee folded under him and he cursed it silently as he went down. It was worse than he had thought and lying on the hard cell floor had made it go stiff. He got up and limped to the trees, each moment feeling a spot between his shoulder blades where the slug would come if any of the running men in the camp behind him saw the shadow making its painful way. The slug did not come but a flare went up as he reached the clump of bushes. He threw himself into them and rolled over so he could see the clearing. The flare had taken away most of his night vision. He waited for it to come back and smelled the wind. There was something heavy and musky in it. It was the easterly trade, blowing steady, which meant the tide was getting ready to shift and it was past midnight. Coming from the east the wind should not have picked up the smell of the firefight, so the musky smell was something else. Warren knew the taste but could not remember what it was and what it might mean about the tide. He squinted, moving back into the bush, and saw a man in the camp coming straight toward him.

  The figure stopped at the door of Warren’s cell. He fumbled at the door and a banging of automatic weapons fire came from the other side of camp. The man jumped back and yelled to someone and then went back to trying to unlock the door. Warren glanced into the distance where sudden flashes lit the camp in pale orange light. The firing got heavier and when he looked back at the cell there were two men there and the first one was opening the door. Warren crawled out of the dry bushes, moving when a burst of machine-gun fire covered any sound he might make. He got to a thin stand of trees and turned. A flare went up, burning yellow. It was the chinless soldier. He had the door open and Gijan was coming out, waving a hand, pointing north. They shouted at each other for a moment. Warren edged back farther into the trees. He was about fifty meters away now and could see each man unshoulder the slim rifles they carried. They held them at the ready. Gijan pointed again and the two men separated, moving apart about thirty meters. They were going to search. They turned and walked into the brush. Gijan came straight at Warren.

  It would be easy to give himself up now. Wait for a flare and come forward with his hands held high. He had counted on getting farther away than this before anyone came after him. Now in the dark and with the fighting going there was a good chance they were jumpy and would shoot him if they saw some movement. But as he thought this Warren moved back, sinking into the shadows. He had faced worse than this on the raft. He limped away, going by feel in the shadows.

  He reached a line of palms and moved along them toward the north. He was still about five hundred meters from the beach but there was a big clearing in the way so he angled in toward the ridge. Muffled thuds from the west told him that the Chinese were using mortars against whoever was coming in on the beaches. Five spaced screeches cut through the deep sounds of distant battle.

  Warren guessed the Japanese or the Americans had decided to take the island and try to speak to the Skimmers themselves. Maybe they would try their own machines and codes. They might know about him though. The Chinese wanted to keep him or else Gijan would not have come with the soldier. Warren stumbled and slammed his knee into a tree. He paused, panting and trying to see if the men were within sight. With a moment to think he saw that Gijan might want to kill him to keep him out of the hands of the others. He could not be sure that giving himself up was safe anymore.

  The five shrill notes came again and he recognized them as an emergency signal, blown on a whistle. They were from close by. Gijan was calling for help. With the Chinese fighting other troops on the other side of the island, Gijan might not get a quick answer. But help would come and then they would box him in.

  Warren turned toward the beach. He moved as fast as he could without making a lot of noise. His knee went out from under him again, and as he got up he realized he was not going to give them much trouble. They had him bracketed already, they had good knees, and help was coming. He could not outrun them. The only chance he had was to circle around and ambush one of them, ambush an armed, well-trained man using his bare hands. Then get away before the other one found out.

  He picked up a rock and put it in his pocket. It banged against his leg with each step. A rustling came from behind him and he hurried and stumbled at the edge of a gully.

  A shout. He jumped down into the gully. As he landed there was a sharp crack and something zipped by overhead. It chunked into a tree on the other bank. Warren knew there was no point in going back now.

  He trotted down the deepening water-carved wash. It was too narrow for two men. He tried to think how Gijan would figure it. The smartest thing was to wait for the other troops and then comb the area.

  But Warren might reach the beach by then. Better to send one man down the gully and another through the trees, to cut him off.

  Warren went what felt like a hundred meters before he stopped to listen. A crack of a twig snapping came from far back in the blackness. To the left? He could not be sure. The gully was rocky and it slowed him down. There were some good places to hide in the shadows and then try to hit the following man as he came by. Better than in the scrub above, anyway. But by then the other man would have gotten between him and the beach.

  A pebble rattled faintly behind him. He stopped. The hard clay of the gully was three meters high here and steep. He found some thick roots sticking out and carefully pulled himself up. He stuck his head above the edge and looked around. Nothing moving. He crawled over the lip and a rock came loose under his foot. He lunged and caught it. A stabbing pain came in his knee, and he bit his tongue to keep from making a noise.

  The scrub was thicker here. He rolled into a stand of trees, keeping down and out of the starlight. Twigs snagged at his clothes.

  There was an even chance the man would come on this side of the gully. If he didn’t Warren could slip off to the north. But Gijan had probably guessed where he was headed and he would not have much of a lead when he reached the beach. On the open sand he would be exposed, easy to pick off.

  Warren crawled into the dark patches under the trees and waited, rubbing his leg. The wind smelled bad here, damp and heavy. He wondered if the tide had changed.

  He leaned his head on his hands to rest and felt a muscle jump in his face. It startled him. He could not feel it unless he put his hand to it. So Tseng had been right and he did have a spasm without knowing it. Warren frowned. He did not know what to think about that. It was a fact he would have to under
stand. For now, though, he put the thought away from him and watched the darkness.

  He pulled the rock out of his pocket and hefted it and a pale form moved in the trees forty meters inland. It was a short soldier, the chinless one. Warren crouched low to follow. The pain that shot through his knee reminded him of how the chinless man had kicked him but the memory did not make him feel anything about what he was going to do. He moved forward.

  In the dry brush he kept as quiet as he could. The dull claps and crashes that came over the ridge were muffled now, just when he needed them to be loud. Under the trees it was quieter and he was surprised to hear the rasping of the soldier breathing. The man moved slowly, rifle at the ready, the weapon looking big in the starlight. The man kept in the starlight and watched the shadows. That was smart.

  The breathing got louder. Warren moved, favoring his knee. He would have to jump up fast and take the soldier from behind.

  The figure came closer. Suddenly Warren saw that the man wore a helmet. To use the rock now he would have to hit him in the face. That made the odds a lot worse. But he would have to try. The man stopped, turned, looked around. Warren froze and waited. The head turned away and Warren eased forward, closing, the pain shooting in his knee. The leg would try to give way when he came up for the rush. He would watch for that and force it to hold. The air was still and heavy under the trees and the smell was worse, something from the beach. The soldier was the only visible movement.

  In the quilted pattern of shadows and light it was hard to follow the silhouette. Warren put his hand out and gathered his feet under him and felt something wet and slick ahead and suddenly knew that the slow rasping laboring breath did not come from the chinless soldier but from something between them.

  He felt the ground, brought his hand up to his face and smelled the strong reek he had tasted on the wind. Ahead in the faint light that fell between two palms he saw the long form struggling, pulling itself forward on blunt legs. It sucked in the air with each step. It was thick and heavy and the skin was a gunmetal gray, pocked with inch-wide round holes. Warren felt a whirring in the air and something brushed against his face, lingered, and was gone. Another whirring followed, so quiet he could barely hear it.

  The stubby fin-legs of the Swarmer went mechanically forward and back, dragging its bloated body. In the starlight he could see the glistening where fluid seeped from the moist holes. THE YOUNG RUN WITH SORES. Another small whirring sound came and he saw from one of the dark openings a thing as big as a finger spring out, slick with moisture, and spread its wings. It beat against the thick and reeking air and then lifted its heavy body, coming free of its hole, wings fluttering. It lifted into the air and hovered, seeking. It darted away, missing Warren, passing on into the night. He did not move. The Swarmer pulled itself forward. Its dry, rattling gasps caught the attention of the soldier. The man turned, took a step. The Swarmer gathered itself and sprang.

  It reached the man’s leg and the massive head turned to take the calf between its jaws. It seized and twisted and Warren heard the sharp intake of breath before the soldier went down. He screamed and the Swarmer turned itself and rolled over the man. The long blunt head came up and nuzzled down into the belly of the man and the sharp, shrill scream cut off suddenly.

  Warren stood, the smell stronger now, and watched the two forms struggle on the open sand. The man pawed for his rifle where it had fallen and the thick leg of the Swarmer pinned his arm. They rolled to the side. The thing wallowed on him, covering him with a slick sheen, cutting off the low moans he made. Warren ran toward them and picked up the rifle. He backed away, thumbing off the safety. The man went limp and the air rushed out of him as the alien settled into place. Its head turned toward Warren and held there for a moment and then it turned back and dipped down to the belly of the man. It began feeding.

  Gijan had heard the screams and would be here soon. There was no point in shooting the Swarmer and giving Gijan a sound to follow. Warren turned and limped away from the licking and chewing sounds.

  He walked silently through brush, hobbling. The rifle had a bayonet on the muzzle. If a Swarmer came at him he would use that instead of firing. He stayed in the open, watching the shadows.

  Abruptly from behind him came a loud hammering of automatic fire. Warren dodged to the side and then realized that no rounds were thumping into the trees near him. It was Gijan, killing the Swarmer a hundred meters or more away.

  Warren was sure the Chinese did not know the Swarmers were crawling ashore or else they would have come after him in a group. Now Gijan would be shaken and uncertain. But in a few minutes he would recover and know what he had to do. Gijan would run to the beach, moving faster than Warren could, and try to cut him off.

  Warren heard a light humming. He looked up between the trees where the sound came and could see nothing against the stars.

  THE WORLD THAT WAS FALSE WORLD MADE THEM THIS WAY NOT AS THEY WERE WHEN WE KNEW THEM IN THE WORLD THAT WAS OURS THEY CANNOT SING BUT KNOW OF THE PLACES WHERE YOU SING TO EACH OTHER AND SOME NOW GO THERE WITH THEIR SORES THEY MAY BE CHEWED BY YOU BUT THERE ARE MANY MANY

  Something smacked into his throat.

  It was wet and it attached itself with a sudden clenching thrust like a ball of needles. Warren snatched at it. He stopped an inch short of grabbing at the thing when he caught the musty sea stench full in his nostrils. The moist lump dripped something down his neck.

  He brought the rifle up quickly and pointed the bayonet at his throat and jabbed, aiming by instinct in the dark. He felt the tip go into the thing and he turned the blade so it scraped, pulling the wet centimeter-long larva out. It came away before the spines had sunk in. Blood seeped out and trickled down his neck.

  He sopped it up with his sleeve and held the bayonet up in the starlight. The larva was white as a maggot and twisted feebly on the blade. One wing fluttered. The other was gone. The skin of it peeled back some more and the wing fell off. He stuck the blade into the sand to clean it and stepped on the thing that moved in spasms on the ground. Something still stuck on his neck. He scraped it off. The other wing was on the blade and some thin dark needles. He wiped them on the sand and with a sudden rushing roar slammed his heel down on them again and again.

  He was breathing hard by the time he reached the beach. The fear had gone away when he had concentrated on staying away from the shadows, not thinking about what could be in them. The stabbing pain in his knee helped. He listened for the deep rasping and the humming and tasted the wind for their smell.

  He hobbled out from the last line of palms and onto the white glow of the beach beneath the stars. He could see maybe fifty meters and there were no dark forms struggling up from the water. To the north he could hear faint shouts. That did not bother him because he did not have far to go. He stumbled toward the shouts, ignoring the quick, rippling flashes of yellow light from a mortar barrage and the long crump that came after them. There were motorboats moored in the shallows with the big reels in the stern, but no one in them. He took an oar out of one.

  He came around the last horn of a crescent beach and saw ahead the dark blotch of the raft far up on the sand. He threw his rifle aboard and began dragging the raft toward the water. Big combers boomed on the reef.

  He got it into the shallows and rolled aboard without looking back. He pushed off with the oar and kept pushing until he felt the current catch him. Speed, now. Speed.

  The tide had just turned. It was slow but it would pick up in a few minutes and take him toward the pass in the reef. When he was sure of that he sat down and felt for the rifle. Sitting, he would be harder to see and he could steady the rifle against his good knee. His throat had nearly stopped bleeding but his shirt was heavy with blood. He wondered if the flying things would smell it and find him. The Skimmers had never said anything about the things like maggots with wings and he was sure now it was because they did not know about them. There was no reason the Swarmers would have evolved a thing like that to help them live on
the land. And with the Skimmers driven from the lagoon by the men there was nothing to keep the Swarmers from bringing the things ashore.

  He saw something move on the land and he lay down on the raft and Gijan came out onto the sand, running. Gijan stopped and looked straight out at Warren and then turned and ran north.

  Warren picked up his rifle. Gijan was carrying his weapon at the ready. Was the man trying to cut him off but keep him alive? Then he should have run south, toward the motorboats. But there might be boats to the north, too. Maybe Gijan had heard the shouts in that direction and was running for help.

  Warren thumbed off the safety on his rifle and put it on automatic fire. He would know what to do if Gijan would tell him by some action what the man intended to do. If he could just shout to the man, ask him — But maybe Gijan had not seen him after all. And the man might lie even if he answered, Warren knew he could not trust words from Gijan or even silence from him; they were all the same.

  Suddenly the running figure dropped his rifle and slapped at his neck and then fell heavily on the sand. He twisted and brought both hands to his neck and struggled for a moment. Then he brought something out from his neck and threw it into the water and made a sound of fear. Gijan lurched up and staggered. He still clutched his neck with one hand but turned and looked for his weapon. He seemed dazed. His head came up and his gaze swept past Warren and then came back again. Gijan had seen the raft for sure this time.

  Warren wished he could read the man’s face. Gijan hesitated only a moment. Then he picked up his weapon and turned to the north. He took some steps and Warren relaxed and then there was something about the way Gijan moved his arm. Warren aimed quickly, with no pause for conscious thought, and Gijan was bringing the rifle around. It made a bright yellow flash, firing on automatic, as Gijan swept the muzzle, fanning, and Warren fired a burst. It took Gijan high in the shoulder and then in the chest, spinning him. The flashes stopped coming from Gijan’s rifle and Warren was startled by the loud chatter of his weapon but kept it on the toppling figure, rolling him over and over until he was a loose bunch of rags and blood.