Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series)

by Coy, David

  He wasn’t supposed to do it, but it wasn’t like he was breaking any law or anything. Besides, he could get back in a matter of minutes if he had to. It was just so damned boring sitting around with nothing to do for most of the day.

  Nobody would mind anyway.

  He banked in a hard right turn, leaving the relative safety of the clearing behind. In a matter of seconds he was half a kilometer into the green.

  He set the ship’s guidance to pick up the route he’d followed yesterday. He’d try to go a little farther this time, maybe far enough to get a look at that valley over the range of hills to the northwest.

  How could they expect a pilot to sit all day anyway?

  He lit a smoke. He wasn’t supposed to do that either.

  Everybody he came in contact with complained about this project. He heard the contractors bitching and moaning about it when they got on board in the morning and when they left in the evening. They bitched about the heat, they bitched about the rain, they bitched about the bugs, they bitched and they bitched.

  He didn’t mind any of that. In fact, he liked it. He liked the richness and diversity of the plant life, especially the scent of the flowers once you got away from the installation with its huge mounds of rotting plant stuff. He’d set down in a dozen places over the last week, and each one seemed more beautiful than the last. Just yesterday, he’d found an incredible sparkling stream running through a deep green grotto. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful place. The stream plummeted over a fall of perhaps ten meters into a crystalline pool. He’d been tempted to strip and jump into it; but since he didn’t know what was in the pool, he decided against it. He’d taken pictures for most of the morning; and when he left, he marked it on his map so he could find it again. He planned to go back many times.

  He watched the sea of green roll pass under the shuttle like waves and delighted in the excitement and promise of discovery. This was what piloting was all about, going into the unknown; seeing and experiencing new things. He wasn’t just an airbus driver—he was a pilot for God's sake. One of these days he was going to snag the shuttle on his day off and fly it all the way to the sea and back. Now that would be a trip.

  He rounded “Soledad Spires” and headed down “Soledad Canyon” for about ten kilometers. He could see the range of hills now dead ahead. He had to guess at his ETA since the shuttle had no distancing radar. Fifteen minutes, tops.

  This section was one of the most scenic he’d seen and much of the forest was broken by sharp rock outcroppings the color of rust and soft green oxide. The plant life clung to all but the most unforgiving rock facings. Some were fairly flat on top and were covered with only sparse vegetation; suitable for an easy landing. He marked the area on the map.

  One of the enormous flying things he’d been seeing almost daily passed under at a tangent, then vanished into the treetops as if swallowed. He estimated their wingspans at about three meters or greater. They seemed to exist only in the deeper canyons. He’d once flown toward a flock of them; and when he got too close, they vanished into the canopy as if they’d never existed. He wanted to get close enough to one for a picture, but didn’t think that would be possible in the shuttle.

  So much life.

  He buzzed another hillside, half of it seemingly cleft by a chisel, then straightened and swung back on course. He brought his elevation down to within a few meters of the canopy and raised his speed to seventy knots, just a percentage or two from the craft’s maximum speed. The ship wasn’t fast, but being that close to the treetops increased the sense of speed.

  He wasn’t supposed to do that, either.

  There was an enormous outcropping ahead and, to the west, jutting up out of the basin like a fist. He just had to buzz that one. He banked toward it and lit another cigarette.

  He approached wide and banked hard around it, keeping his eyes out the side port. He would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking.

  “What the hell is this?”

  It was there just at the base of the outcropping.

  The structure reminded him of an old scar at the base of the hill, fused and melded to it. The arms seemed to radiate from a central hub roughly like the spokes of a wheel and bent snakelike around the larger obstructions. The jungle had encroached over and through the thing, trying to reclaim its space.

  He pulled up, hovered, and then lowered the craft to get a closer look.

  The tentacles seemed to be made of a polished material that still shone where the plant life hadn’t dulled or obscured those sections. He realized when he got closer that the tube-like structures were actually made of individual hexagonal pieces, like tiles, carefully laid in, each beside the next, perfectly arched, to form the tentacle shapes.

  Some of the pieces had fallen in, leaving gaping black holes and cracks in the hollow structures. Other fissures were choked with erupting vines and plant growth. A large section of one tentacle was completely collapsed.

  He estimated that each tentacle was approximately five hundred meters long and three or four meters in diameter. He counted ten of them running like black snakes from the hub through the jungle. The ends of the ones he could see were tapered, adding to the reptilian impression.

  He took some pictures from that angle.

  The hub itself formed a nearly perfect hemispherical dome. A ragged hole gaped like a black mouth in the dead center of it.

  When the thought took final shape in his mind, he was surprised it hadn’t come sooner.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Of course.”

  It was a skeleton; the shell of something that had once been alive—some huge plant or plant-like animal that had grown out from the central hub, snaking into the surrounding jungle as it grew.

  “I gotta get a better look at this.”

  He looked for a place to set down and found it about a hundred meters from the hub in a spot where the jungle thinned.

  He took a locator from the rack, put it in his pocket then switched on the shuttle’s transponder. It was a policy he followed religiously every time he planned on being out of sight of the shuttle. He knew you could get hopelessly lost in terrain like this without even trying. Then, he slipped into the second most important piece of equipment: a net suit. The insect life was primarily nocturnal, and it was mid-morning, but he’d seen some nasty bugs that didn’t seem to care what time of day it was when they got active. Betting it could be dark in the tentacle, he pulled a lamp out its rack and put the strap over his shoulder.

  The last two items were his pistol, a 12mm Arabian Falcon, and his survival knife. He strapped them around his waist and cinched the belt tight.

  He marched in the direction of the nearest arm, spreading vines and branches out of the way as he went. He started to sweat and wished there was an easy way to wipe his face with the net suit covering it.

  When he got out of sight of the shuttle, he tuned the locator to the shuttle’s transponder frequency and turned it on just to see the familiar and comforting indicator come on as he swept the device toward the shuttle.

  The arm was right about where he thought it should be. He walked along it for some distance until he found a good-sized breech in it.

  The walls of the structure were thicker than he’d expected. He pressed against a ragged edge with both hands then leaned and pressed hard until one of the tiles came loose with a crunch. It was light and porous but strong and tough. He worked a few more pieces free until he thought he could easily slide through the hole.

  He went inside.

  The holes in the sides and top of the structure let in plenty of light, and he was tempted to leave the bulky lamp where it was, but decided against it.

  The arm was nearly cylindrical and the curved floor gave him the feeling of walking through an enormous conduit or pipe. A few plants and vines grew up through the floor then snaked out through the top or sides. He noticed that there were circular openings along the arm on each side spaced every ten or fifteen meters, just
where the inside wall of the tentacle met the ground. These openings varied in size from half a meter to well over two meters.

  The tube was lined with straight pole-like vertical supports that ran from the ceiling to the floor. They were evenly spaced, the texture of gnarled and polished roots and very strong.

  About fifty meters in, he rounded a bend and could see where the arm emptied into the hub ahead.

  Fascinated, he moved faster.

  When he walked into the dome, it felt as if he’d walked into a dark cathedral. The orange light from the sun poured in through the ragged tear above, giving the chamber a strange and solemn cast. A swarm of insects spun brightly in the light high, near the top.

  It was quiet as death.

  The other arms meshed smoothly with the hub, each gaping tunnel entering at perfectly spaced intervals. The interior walls were virtually featureless, but the same twisted, vertical supports, taller and thicker, were scattered around the chamber, running from the top of the dome to the floor. Some had smaller branches near the base that ran into the floor like roots. The chamber was dominated by a large pit, some four or five meters across, directly in the center of it. Shaped like a deep bowl, its rim was perfectly flush with the floor. Above the pit was a tangle of what looked like thick roots that seemed to have grown out of the wall as single shoots from several locations, then opened out into a mass of smaller, intertwined vines like a nest directly over the pit.

  A heavy and sweet scent filled the air.

  He moved to the edge.

  The pit was filled to within two meters of the top with what, at first, looked like thousands upon thousands of sticks mixed up in thick dark mud. Over the mud was a thin layer of water, perhaps rained in from above. He sensed immediately that the sticks and whiter shapes were bones, but his mind balked at the sheer number and variety of them.

  “What the hell . . . ?”

  He raised his camera and leaned down to get a little closer. When he did, one foot came in contact with the rim and slipped out from under him as if on ice.

  Trying to keep from falling in, he twisted and the other foot came down on the slippery rim, and he fell in, sliding down the inside of the bowl without a sound.

  When his feet hit the mass of stuff at the bottom, they broke through a thin leathery skin on the surface of the mud then sank with a gush into an orange gelatinous mass underneath it.

  “Christ!”

  He was on his back and his feet kicked at the mass of jelly and bones as he tried to keep from sinking farther down. With each kick, he could feel his boots slipping and twisting off the slick bones buried in the goop. He twisted around and scratched and clawed at the side of the bowl. The surface of it, he could see now, was covered with what looked like stiff, hard hair pointing downwards. Slick and providing no purchase, it kept him moving down with each struggling movement.

  Kicking and twisting, one foot finally stomped down on something solid and stopped. By that time, he was on his belly and almost to his hips in the goo. He could feel the stiff hair holding him in place, snagging against the surface of his net suit and his clothing and pushing him relentlessly down. Each time he moved, he could feel himself pushed a millimeter farther down into the muck.

  A perfect trap.

  The purpose of the pit was now clear. An unsuspecting animal would come to the edge, drawn to the scent, and would slip into the bowl. Unable to climb out, it would be digested in the juice at the bottom, a little at a time.

  He felt a slight burning sensation on his legs. It was starting. Panic churned his guts.

  He reached down and unsnapped the strap on his knife and pulled it slowly and carefully out of its scabbard. He knew that if he dropped that knife, he’d stand no chance of getting out. His hand clamped on the handle like a vise.

  He picked a spot just under an arm’s length in front of his face and stabbed in. The surface was hard but the blade sank deep. He sawed back and forth then stabbed again, digging and cutting at the spot. A few whacks later he’d cut a suitable hand-hold. He dug the fingers of his left hand into the slit then stabbed down hard with the knife with his right, driving it in almost halfway.

  He pulled.

  The hair tried to keep him down, gripping tight to his clothing; but by rocking back and forth to lessen the surface contact, he was able to gain some distance.

  He held tight with his left hand and chopped another hole.

  By the time he was able to get his left hand up over the rim, he was thoroughly exhausted. One last stab far out into the floor and he was able to pull, first one, then the other leg up out of the trap.

  He rolled away from it, and slumped face-down, gasping for air. The fingers of his left hand were cramped in a permanent hook shape.

  The slight burning sensation on his legs was no worse than when it started, suggesting that whatever potency there was in the sludge in the trap had long since paled after the organism died.

  He cleaned off his camera, took a step closer—but not too close—and took a few more pictures.

  “Sonofabitch . . . that was close.”

  On the way back through the tunnel he realized that the circular openings along the cove were how the prey entered, drawn no doubt, by the promise of an easy meal.

  Clever bastard.

  Standing on the shuttle’s ramp, he pulled off his clothes and used some of the on-board water to rinse the goo from his lower body. The stuff left red patches on his skin that stung when he touched them.

  He put on a dirty jumpsuit and his old spare boots from the locker. When he kicked the gooped-up clothing off the ramp and into the foliage, the cotton material split to pieces as if rotten.

  “Damn . . .”

  He wondered how potent the sludge in the trap would be if the organism was alive.

  He fired the shuttle up and rose slowly through the canopy, letting the shuttle push the branches and vines away as it climbed. When he got completely out, he set his bearing for the valley to the west and accelerated, climbing as he went.

  He’d gone no more than a few kilometers when he saw it. It was another tentacled organism, this one bright green, and alive. It was barely visible through the foliage and had his eyes not been used to the shape, he would have missed it.

  He circled until he found the central hub then dropped down to get some pictures.

  It was alive all right. In sharp contrast to the blackened skeleton he’d just visited, this one’s dome was covered with a short nap of bright and vivid green material, something like moss. There was a round, translucent panel directly in the center of the dome. It looked like an enormous green breast.

  The things were probably quite common. He got his pictures and marked the organism’s location on the map.

  God, I love it here.

  He didn’t see the flurry of dark and frenzied motion near the arm below.

  He flew on, over the green hills that rose and fell like endless waves.

  9

  She sprang up from her terminal with the text of the confirmation still etched in her head. Everyone said Rachel was lucky. Now she believed it.

  What a dream come true.

  Richthaus-Alvarez Mining had taken her contract. She would be Biologist Grade III on Verde’s Revenge. With an addendum: Biologist in Charge; in charge of the biological inventory—her, Rachel Sanders.

  She wanted to jump up and down and scream just for the sheer joy of it, so she did just that.

  Her roommate looked up and eyed Rachel as if she’d gone mad. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m going to that Verde project!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes!”

  “Stop.”

  “Yes!”

  “No—stop jumping, Rachel.”

  She stopped and sat down, then buried her face in her hands. A second later she peeked out through them.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I thought that project paid peanuts.”

  “It does!
It doesn’t matter! I’d go for free! I can’t believe it.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow! Shit, I’ve got to pack.”

  She bounced up again and turned in a circle.

  “Clothes. Hot clothes. Clothes for hot weather, I mean. No, all my clothes. Let’s see. They supply the equipment. That’s common practice. Leave mine here. Take my scopes, though. What else? Clothes. Got that . . .”

  “Rachel, will you please stop?” Jodi laughed.

  “I’m fine. Really, I am.”

  “Relax. Go make yourself some tea and relax.”

  Rachel groaned. “I can’t! Jodi, do you know what this means?”

  “Well, I know it’s important to you. I can tell . . .”

  “See? You don’t know—you don’t. This is a chance of a lifetime. If I never got another deal, I could die happy. I’ll have my own team and call all the shots. I’d say that I’ve waited my whole life for something like this, but I can’t, ‘cuz it’s never happened before. There’s never been anything like this to wait for." See?”

  “That big a deal, huh?”

  “Bigger. The reports say the entire planet is . . . is . . . teeming with life. It’s one enormous rainforest, thicker and richer than what the Congo or the Amazon used to be. It’s one big jungle.”

  “Sounds inhospitable to me.”

  “Oh, shit. There’s not an ounce of hospitality on it. That’s the beauty of it. It’s pure primal . . . something . . . Eden . . . no wait—it’s before Eden. Prehistoric. No, not even that. It’s Mesozoic. It’s a cauldron for new life.”

  “Cauldron?”

  “Yeah. A cauldron—a boiling cauldron.”

  “Like a witch’s cauldron?”

  Rachel made a face.

  “They say there are millions of insect-like species alone. There could be ten times that many plant species—and who knows what else? There’s no telling. No telling . . .” Her voice trailed off as the possibilities sank in.

  “It sounds dangerous to me.”

  “Well, it can be. It sure can be,” Rachel said knowingly.

  “I suppose you’ve got your work cut out for you, then.”