Sentenced to Prism

by Alan Dean Foster

  But it couldn't break into the MHW. He was sure of that, though not quite as positive as he'd been a day earlier. And if it couldn't, what then? If it let him go, all well and good. If not— if not, it might choose to keep him for a while. A day, perhaps, down beneath the surface. Or a couple of days. Or more. Until his air began to run out because it couldn't recycle.

  He would be buried alive, entombed within the suit. The impregnable MHW would become an impregnable coffin.

  He had to get out of that inexorable, crawling grip. Reaching down, he used both massive metal hands to dig into the material. There was resistance from the gummy substance and when he tried to pull it away from his hips he found he could not. Worse, his hands were now glued to his sides. The gel continued its uninterrupted progress up his body, flowing outward now to encase his hands and lower arms as well.

  "You know," the suit informed him thoughtfully, "if I were able to synthesize a powerful acid like certain local lifeforms it might be that it would damage this gel. Unfortunately, I was designed to synthesize only foodstuffs."

  Evan ignored the MHW's lament. He wasn't interested in what it couldn't do.

  Think, he shouted at himself. He'd been put down here to find answers and provide solutions to problems. He needed one now. The suit could only do his bidding. Beyond a certain point it could not initiate action, could only respond to his requests. He fought to remember everything he'd learned about Prism since the cursed moment when he'd touched down on its surface.

  At the same time he couldn't help but stare in fascination as the malevolent goo came crawling up his arm, surmounting the elbow and hurrying toward his shoulder. When it reached that point it would start for his neck.

  Something moved, ever so slightly, under the ground.

  Acid might be effective, but the suit couldn't synthesize acid. What else could it do? What else might prove effective against an inanimate assault? What else did the inhabitants of Prism utilize to ... ?

  "You can generate frequencies on every wavelength, can't you?"

  "Yes sir. As part of my internal communications system I am able to— "

  "Try ultrasound. Remember the spiked plants we encountered outside the station? Try that; put all the power into the broadcast that you can! Even if it's potentially harmful to me."

  "Excellent suggestion, sir."

  A slight hum filled the suit. Evan knew he wasn't hearing the sound the MHW was generating but rather the suit's instrumentation operating at far more than communications strength.

  Several minutes passed. Then the gel stopped its advance, centimeters from his visor. It began to solidify, to harden around him.

  "I believe we may have found a possible solution."

  "Don't stop! Pour it on."

  He stood there, listening to the humming from within. If the suit overdid it and burned out a component or two ... But the MHW continued to fill the air with sound waves far above his range of hearing.

  Not Prism's, though. The forest around him was suddenly alive with frantic, outrageous lifeforms fleeing in all directions, a blur of fractal shapes and silhouettes.

  His helmet audio pickup conveyed a new sound to him. It sounded as if someone had dropped a basket of eggs on his head. It was repeated, with increasing frequency.

  All over his body the hardened gel was starting to shatter. Something heaved underfoot and he nearly fell. It was the last time he sensed motion from below. The cracks continued to multiply and widen. Then the solidified gel was flaking off, in tiny chips at first, then in big, waxy chunks, tumbling off his arms and torso. Experimentally, he tried to lift his left leg. It took three tries before he broke free of the weakened casing. Now he was able to use his hands to rip away huge pieces of the encumbering substance.

  When he'd cleaned the last fragments from the exterior of the suit and had climbed to the safety of a large, sloping chunk of schist, he looked back at the place where he'd almost been entombed like a fly in amber. There was nothing to suggest a trap, nothing to hint that something vast and lethal had lain in wait in that spot just under the ground.

  As blowers dried the sweat from his face he relaxed by lambasting the suit for its failure to detect the danger.

  "I am sorry, sir. I was not designed to cope with so subtle an attack. One looks for fang and claw, not ooze. It began so slowly that I was taken by surprise. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between a perfectly natural occurrence and a hostile act. There are those worlds on which rain is lethal to the native lifeforms. I had believed the first secretions to be nothing more than a manifestation of some local climatic or plutonic condition, which I am more than prepared to deal with."

  "Next time jump, then analyze," Evan growled, refusing to be appeased by logic. "Or ask. Maybe I don't have your capability for instantaneous retrieval of information, but my brain is a damn sight better at rapid analysis."

  "Of course, sir." The MHW was appropriately contrite. "I do not wish to burden you with unnecessary queries involving moment-to-moment operation."

  "That's all right. Go ahead and burden me." He surveyed the terrain ahead, trying to see into the depths of the glittering, adamantine silicate forest. The sky overhead was blindingly bright. Crystal shells crunched under­foot as he stepped off the rock and their bright green growths hastened to regenerate the protective transparent bubbles.

  "Let's find that damn beacon."

  "Yes Sir."

  Covering meters with each of the suit's long, tireless strides he resumed the search, the sensors clinging tenaciously to the weak electronic spoor that marked the location of the twenty-fourth and last member of the research station staff— or of her body.

  In the days that followed he had numerous encounters with the lifeforms that swarmed over Prism's surface in fractal profusion. None of them threatened his progress. All were appropriately imaged, digitalized, and locked away in the MHW's memory for future study. Some were more outlandish than believable and a few so outrageous in shape and form Evan wasn't sure he'd be able to convince his colleagues back home that they actually existed.

  He was particularly taken with the needlepuffs.

  They filled an entire arroyo, almost hiding the small stream that ran through its center. Each was a different color. They varied in size from tiny globular structures no bigger than his fist to giants four meters in circumference. They were pure silicate forms and they filled the little canyon with frozen fireworks.

  From each hidden nucleus a thousand spines radiated outward in every direction. Each spine was lined with additional thousands of smaller spines, and these in turn boasted thousands more, the duplication repeating itself down to the submicroscopic level.

  Only his Hausdorf lenses brought order out of this prickly chaos. Blue and carnelian, onyx and amber yellow and metallic green, the needlepuffs displayed a false fragility that didn't fool him for a minute. Safe within his suit he could stride through them with indifference, leaving a carpet of glittering color in his wake, but anything not similarly defended would have been cut by a billion tiny knives.

  Instead of turning constantly to keep themselves facing always toward the sun, the needlepuffs remained immobile. Hundreds of light-sensitive surfaces would always be in position to gulp a few billion photons no matter where the sun hung in the sky.

  As for the valuable salts and minerals their hidden bodies contained, that remained safe from any predator. The smallest needlepuff made the most intimidating terrestrial cactus appear defenseless by comparison.

  On the fourth day he was stopped by the hedge.

  Actually, "hedge" was something of an understatement, wholly inadequate to describe the barrier which confronted him. He found himself facing a solid silicate wall which varied in height from four to ten meters and stretched from horizon to horizon. Each of the growths comprising the hedge was more than a meter thick at its base. They clustered so tightly together that nothing larger than a glass mouse could slip between them.

  Two
thirds of the way up its trunk, each "tree" was pierced by three or four thick, girderlike branches. The outer surfaces of these projections were highly polished and rotated about a common axis to reflect as much light as possible onto the light-gathering upper portion of the trunk. The rest of the organism had the color and sheen of pink chrome.

  The hedge had crowded out all vegetation from its immediate vicinity. The suit estimated the wall to be some five meters thick. They were less than a day's run from the location of the beacon.

  "No telling where it stops," Evan muttered, glancing first to his deft and then right. "Can we cut through?"

  "I can try, sir."

  Evan approached the nearest tree and studied the smooth, unbroken surface appraisingly. Then he made a fist and hammered down. A big chunk of pink silicate— (lithium aluminate, no doubt, he mused)— broke free, fell to the ground. For an instant he thought the parent growth might have shuddered slightly, but that had to be an illusion. Surely a plant analog like this one was incapable of generating so visual a reaction to minor destruction. He struck again. The fragment that crumbled under his armored hand this time was smaller than the first.

  "Take too long and it's energy-wasteful," he muttered. "Burn through."

  "I am not sure that will be any more efficient, sir. A laser is not as effective on highly reflective forms, and from what I can see of their internal structure they are highly dispersive as well."

  "Try it anyway. I'm not interested in spending hours punching my way through like a demented boxer."

  His arm rose and the laser began to cut. The silicate surface in front of him reacted by bubbling and melting away. The suit's concern seemed unfounded.

  Evan waited impatiently while the suit cut a gap wide enough to pass through in the first row of growths and went to work on the second. Work there proceeded a little more slowly, but soon the second row too had been breached. The suit began on the third. Evan could see daylight beyond.

  A single tree more than a meter thick was cut clean through and he had to step aside as it fell backward toward him. It shattered when it struck the ground, sending splinters flying. Casually he straddled it as the laser went to work on the last pair of trunks blocking their path.

  In the center of the cut-through stump was a darker material the color of morion, an almost black quartz. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the heartwood of a normal tree.

  Perhaps the darker material served as the conduit for raw silica drawn from the soil which the tree utilized for growth. Fertile ground for speculation outside his own field.

  Then he was through the last barrier. At the same time, a small nova went off in front of his eyes.

  Fortunately his vision darkened quickly enough to save him from permanent blindness, but the flare still hurt. Tears streamed from his eyes, trickled down his cheeks despite the efforts of the suit's humidity control to soak them up. The visor was black and he couldn't see what was happening. Occasionally the blackness was marred by a brief silvery cloud, evidence of new flashes.

  The suit reminded him of his position. "We must move forward, sir."

  He nodded absently, staggered through the gap the laser had cut. The silvery mists grew fainter as he moved away from the hedge. Soon the visor began to lighten. After a while he could see again. Forest ahead, sky above. He turned and looked back toward the barrier recently breached.

  Flashes continued to fill the gap, but they were greatly lessened in intensity and frequency. The energy required to generate the bursts must be considerable.

  "Interesting." He turned to continue on. Neither leg responded.

  "I fear I have sustained some damage, sir."

  "Damage?" That word wasn't supposed to be in the MHW's vocabulary. "From what? A little light? What kind of damage?"

  "The growths which form the line behind us are slow to react to attack, sir. Perhaps because they rarely are attacked. As a result they have evolved a unique method of defending themselves. Unique and yet obvious. It is quite remarkable."

  "I'm sure it is. This world is one remarkable discovery after another. You can detail it for me later." He tried to walk again, with the same ineffectual result.

  "I am very much afraid, sir, that my lower motor drive has been burnt out."

  Evan sensed the short hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stiffen. "What do you mean, 'burnt out'?"

  "If you care to look down, sir."

  Evan did so. It took an effort because the suit servos were not responding smoothly. Behind him, the hedge was now putting forth only intermittent, feeble flashes that were somehow familiar.

  Black scars ran the length of the MHW. In a few places the supposedly invulnerable duralloy exterior had been melted completely away, revealing smoking components and circuitry. The area around the suit's right knee was gone entirely. Thin wires and connectors hung from the hole. Wisps of gas drifted out, showing where the super­cooling insulators had been violated. He was leaking liquid nitrogen from several joints. No wonder he couldn't move.

  Anxiously, he looked back at the hedge. Another burst of light, a long pause, and then a last. At the same time it struck him. What he was seeing in action was an ultra­violet laser.

  But that was insane. People used lasers against hostile primitive lifeforms. Primitive lifeforms didn't use lasers against people.

  The suit confirmed the impossible. "Remarkable, sir, most remarkable. There are no previous records from anywhere in the Commonwealth of a living form lasing naturally. Perhaps such an evolutionary development here should have been anticipated."

  "It's not possible— no," he hastily corrected himself, "obviously it is possible."

  "It is fortunate that we are no longer perceived as a danger. I reacted as quickly as possible, sir. I was barely able to recognize the threat in time to protect you from serious harm."

  "I still don't see how one or two plants could generate enough energy to cut through duralloy."

  "One or two could not. However, we were not attacked just by those growths we were cutting through. Apparently a danger to one is perceived as danger to all. It took a while for the hedge to mount a collective response to our penetration. On Earth, trees under attack warn one another by chemical means. Here the method must be different, but it is no less efficient, and the response considerably more so.

  "These growths are photovores, like many we have seen. Unlike those encountered previously, however, these apparently have developed the ability to concentrate enormous amounts of energy within themselves and then to release it all at once, in powerful bursts. As each growth adds its own quota of energy to the pulse, the effect is magnified repeatedly. We were attacked by a single entity ten meters in depth and five in height and at least several kilometers in length, that constitutes a laser of considerable potential. Strong enough even to penetrate duralloy.

  "I am sorry, sir. I was designed to cope with assaults from unexpected nonsentient alien lifeforms, but as nothing like this has ever been encountered before it could not possibly have been foreseen. Prior experience on new worlds suggests an explorer needs to be ready to fend off tooth and claw, venom, or sheer muscle. I am capable of dealing efficiently with infinite variations of same, including such unlikely forms of attack as ultrasound and acid, which we have already encountered. I was designed to defend against hostiles which can bite, cut, bludgeon, spit, secrete, or vibrate. I was not designed to cope with a lifeform which can lase."

  Evan considered this while he watched the hedge begin to repair itself. He wasn't overly concerned. The suit had suffered some damage, that was all.

  "How long will it take you to fix the trouble?"

  "It is true that I am self-repairing, but only to a degree. Even I have limits." A pause. "It appears on introspection that the damage extends to internal functions more complex than motor drives. I am attempting to isolate the fire—"

  "Fire?" Evan's eyes widened slightly.

  "— and prevent its spread to more sensitive components
. It is not easy. Integration precludes much isolation without compounding— "

  "How long will at take you to fix it?" He was growing warmer.

  "You do not understand the extent of the damage, sir. It is not as if something broke. I carry ample spares for replacement where required. But entire integrated blocks have been vaporized, along with their connections. The cooling unit has also been affected and this compounds the problem."

  So I'm not the only one who's sweating, Evan thought anxiously.

  "I am sorry that I have not been able to live up to my designers' expectations, but they could not have anticipated, a n t i c i p a t e d, a n t i c i ..."

  As he sat in his seat the voice of the MHW, the strong, reassuring voice that had comforted him from the moment he'd stepped out of the ship high in orbit above Prism, the voice of knowledge and infinite resourcefulness, the voice of Commonwealth technology, died.

  "We have to find a place where you can shut down nonessential functions while you repair yourself. That means we have to move." The faint siren call of the beacon was forgotten now. Everything else was forgotten. He tried to take a step. This time not even a complaining whine greeted his efforts. He jammed his leg viciously against the sensors. He might as well have been kicking granite.

  "Come on, suit," he whispered nervously, "respond." He nudged switches on a panel near his belly. "Manual emergency override. Basic systems functions, respond. Come on, damn you, respond!"

  Only the echoing silence of dead metal, loud in his ears.

  The audio membranes filled the suit with the unshielded sounds of Prism: electronic whispers and buzzes, harsh whistles and ratcheting growls. Unsettling sounds, alien sounds, suddenly much closer than they'd been before. Behind him the trees rose immobile, drained and drinking in the sunlight, a tall pink wall separating him from the ruins of the station. They took no interest in the tall, immobilized metal shape standing not far away. They weren't interested in him anymore. He was no longer perceived as a threat. And rightly so.