“Headache again?”
Russell nodded. He put his exhaustion down to his advanced age and his increasing physical inactivity. The headaches were probably the result of unsettled sleep the night before.
“You don’t look too great, either,” said Marlene. “Too pale. You should go to Dr. Lindwall for a checkup.”
He waved her suggestion aside. “I’m fine.”
They took the last few curves of the narrow mountain road, which was surrounded on either side by steep cliffs, and then the landscape changed abruptly. The narrow canyon opened out onto a verdant plain where, a few miles in the distance, the broad river delta of the New Mississippi began. Further to the east, the delta flowed through a dense jungle that covered a vast area stretching to the distant ocean, around a hundred miles away. “The view always blows me away,” said Marlene.
“Same here,” replied Russell.
The canyon formed a natural connection between the highlands, where the colony was situated, and the fertile lowlands. The upper end of the pass leading out of the narrow valley was just a few miles from Eridu, their settlement. At the lower end, they had erected a permanently manned observation post. A lookout and a hut had been erected in front of a nine-foot-high fence, because many different animal species populated the lowlands, some of which could only be described as extremely dangerous monsters. In the early days, lone animals or whole herds had come up to the highlands and attacked their colony. They had built the watchtower just a few months after their arrival and the first reconnaissance missions. Since then, there had thankfully not been a single attack on Eridu. There seemed to be no more aggressive animal species left in the highlands anymore.
Russell drove the Jeep up to the little wooden hut that served as sleeping quarters for the two-man lookout team. Chris Neaman came toward them from the door of the hut. He looked bleary-eyed, but cheerful. Russell saw his comrade Ernie Lawrence standing on the watchtower with a sniper rifle. He, too, gave a brief wave and then continued to scan the sweeping grasslands through his binoculars.
“Hey Russell, hi Marlene,” said Chris.
Russell turned off the engine and jumped out of the jeep. He immediately felt dizzy and stumbled forward a few steps. Chris caught him before he fell to the ground.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
Russell gave an impatient wave of the hand. “Yeah, yeah, I’m just out of sorts. Nothing serious. Old age.”
“You’re not that old,” retorted Marlene.
“Someone who was always as fit as you shouldn’t collapse just getting out of a car at the age of sixty. You really need to go to the doc for a checkup.”
“I know, I know. When I get a chance.” Russell quickly changed the subject. “How’s it going?”
Chris shrugged. “Nothing much to report. Killed five wotans and two hyenas.”
Wotans is what they called the monsters that had made life difficult on the first reconnaissance mission to the planet. Hefty and headless, without any visible sensory organs, one of them had stormed at the astronaut Walter Redmont, knocked him over and pinned him to the ground. Russell had had to avert his eyes as the creature secreted acid onto Redmont’s skin and dissolved him alive. The animals often travelled in packs and were immensely dangerous.
The hyenas seemed to be their little brothers. They ran incredibly fast on thin, springy legs, and, in contrast to wotans, had small, knob-like heads from which they could spray acid up to a distance of thirty feet.
“Sounds like a lot,” said Russell. “Since the start of your shift?”
Neaman shook his head. “Since last night.”
Russell raised his eyebrows. “In just one night? We’ve never seen that many.”
Chris shrugged again. “The last shift also mentioned they’d seen more. It’s not a problem—gives us something to do! Five days can really drag.”
“You only have to do three shifts a year,” said Marlene. “And it gets you out of working the fields.”
“I prefer that to hanging around here.”
“I guess everyone has a different opinion on that one,” Russell retorted. “I always prefer . . .”
“There’s another one!” Ernie called down from the watchtower in his throaty voice.
Russell couldn’t see anything beyond the gate with the barbed wire. He ran to the tower and clambered up the ladder, Marlene and Chris hot on his heels.
Russell looked in the direction that Ernie was focused on with his binoculars. Now he could see a blurry, brown dot at the edge of the forest, slowly coming their way. “I can’t see it clearly.”
Ernie handed him the sniper rifle. “Take it.”
“Hey, thanks a lot.”
Russell took the semi-automatic M-110 and lay down on his chest on the wooden floor of the watchtower. He flipped up the lens cap, took a deep breath and put his eye to the scope.
“A sniper,” murmured Russell in alarm. Snipers were another species from the lowlands that could have escaped directly from hell.
The animal was vaguely reminiscent of a dachshund, but suppler and larger. The pointed head moved back and forth, scanning the area. The flexible, thin legs enabled the creature to shoot forward in jolting movements.
“Are you sure?” Marlene whispered, although the animal was still far away.
“Yup, without a doubt,” Ernie confirmed, still looking through his binoculars.
“We’ve never seen one like that here,” said Chris.
“I know. And that worries me.” Russell checked the weapon. There was already a cartridge in the chamber.
“What’s it doing?” asked Marlene.
“No idea,” Ernie replied.
“It’s coming slowly toward us. It seems confused. You can tell this isn’t its territory,” said Russell.
“I’m not surprised. We’ve only ever seen snipers close to the sea.”
“Yeah, and Travis Richards almost died from his wounds.”
Russell remembered it well. It had been on an expedition to the lowlands, during which they’d come across some unfamiliar and frightening animal species. Unawares, Travis had gotten too close to one of the lurking snipers. Suddenly, he had collapsed, and thin fountains of his blood spurted several feet into the air. Russell had shot the sniper dead. When they did an autopsy on the creature, they discovered that it had a stomach-like organ from which it could emit crystals under high pressure at supersonic speed. Snipers were even more dangerous than wotans.
“Holy shit! There come another two!”
Ernie was right. Two more of the sinister creatures flitted out of the forest and followed the trail of the first one.
Russell noticed some shuffling going on beside him, and became aware that Marlene and Chris were also reaching for weapons and getting into position. He didn’t let himself be distracted and continued to keep his eye on the scope. Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. He knew that the animals were damn quick and veered one way and then the other as they ran. It would be difficult to hit one if they decided to run toward them. But at least the snipers were still a good way off. He judged the distance to be around half a mile. That was the furthest distance at which you could aim reliably with an M-110. If the target was standing still.
“What should we do?” asked Neaman. “Should we fire?”
The leader of the beasts kept turning its head to the side as if it were looking for something. Russell reckoned that the creatures might start running at any moment. But they weren’t moving directly toward them. “We’ll wait until they’re a bit closer.”
“Maybe they’ll move away again,” murmured Ernie.
“I don’t think so,” Russell replied. “They’re carnivores. Hunters. They don’t come out of cover unless they’re planning something. I think they’ve caught our scent but don’t know exactly where we are. When they’re only a third of a mile away, we’ll shoot. I’ll take the one in the middle. Marlene, you take the one on the left and the other one is yours, Chris.”
> “Okay.”
Fascinated, Russell watched his target through the lens. The slim, long body with the springy little legs looked utterly alien. There was no fur covering its thick, gray-brown skin. The wide mouth on the tiny head resembled a thin, jagged line. The tiny eyes were no more than dots, and the creature had no discernible nose or ears—but Russell was sure that it had highly developed sensory organs.
The two at the back had caught up and were trotting a few feet behind the leader.
“Another two thousand feet,” whispered Ernie.
“Get ready,” growled Russell hoarsely.
Slowly, the snipers moved in their direction.
“One thousand five hundred feet,” hissed Ernie.
“On my command, in three, two, . . .” Russell didn’t get any further. As if on command, the monsters ran off. “Shit! Fire! Kill them!” Russell struggled to keep his target in view. The monsters were fast. Damn fast. The ones on the edge ran off to the side before returning to their original course in a wide curve.
Russell fired.
As if the animal had known what was coming, it changed direction at lightning speed, taking a zigzag course before heading toward them in a straight line.
“Six hundred feet,” bellowed Ernie.
Russell heard the shot. “Fuck,” hissed Marlene.
Several hundred feet away, the monsters stopped for a moment, swerved to the side, stopped again and ran in the opposite direction. But their heads remained facing the watchtower. Just as Russell fired again, missing his target, he heard a buzzing noise.
“They’re shooting at us!” shouted Chris. A piece of the wooden railing splintered into hundreds of pieces that flew off in every which direction.
A bang. Marlene had fired again. “One down,” she hissed.
Russell tried to get his target back in view. He waited for that split second when the creature stopped before changing direction. There was that hollow buzzing sound again. Splinters of wood rained down on him from the roof. He concentrated on his target, which was dancing around the center of the viewfinder. The forelegs of the sniper came to a sudden stop, while the hind legs slipped out to the side. Now was the moment. Time seemed to stand still as Russell shifted slightly to take aim at the tiny head. He had stopped breathing many seconds ago. He crooked his finger pull the trigger. The head of the animal exploded in a fountain of red and yellow.
Got it!
What was the last one up to?
Another buzzing noise. Marlene suppressed a scream.
Don’t let it distract you. Eliminate the danger first!
Just as his new target came into view, it slumped down. Chris lowered his gun.
“We’ve taken care of those pieces of shit,” bellowed Ernie. Russell turned around. Marlene was clutching her lower leg and pushing up the green cotton pant leg.
“Are you badly hurt?” He saw red marks on her pants.
“Just a graze. I was lucky.” She was pale, but Russell knew the feeling and the shock of being injured in battle and not knowing in the first instance if it was bad or not.
Russell propped himself up on the floor and stood up. The snipers were lying lifeless in pools of blood some distance from the barbed wire fence. They hadn’t even got close to the landmines in front of the gate. Russell looked around. The shelter was riddled with holes. He shook his head. It was sheer luck that none of them had been seriously hurt or even killed. In the past, they had been able to keep the beasts at bay with ultrasound, but that had only worked for a short time.
“That was fucking close,” Chris wiped his brow.
Ernie grinned. He was addicted to adrenalin kicks like this. Russell had never understood why Lawrence had joined the Special Engineers unit. He would have been better off in an infantry unit.
“I just don’t get it,” said Russell.
“What do you mean?” asked Marlene, who had taken a first-aid kit from the wall and was wrapping gauze around her wound.
“In twenty years, we’ve never experienced an attack like that. And we’ve never seen any snipers here. I don’t like it.”
“Maybe they just happened to be in the area and picked up our scent,” suggested Chris.
“In wotan territory? I doubt it. And the fact that more and more creatures are appearing in the area around the watchtower seems to suggest something else,” said Russell.
“And what would that be?” asked Marlene.
“I have no idea. Perhaps a natural migration. I really don’t know. We should talk about it with Jenny. Maybe our biologist has an idea. In the meantime I suggest doubling the number of people on watch.”
“Oh no!” groaned Chris. “That would mean being on duty six times a year.”
“Tough shit!” said Marlene. “Russell’s right. Imagine if a group of those creatures broke through and got into the colony. If they surprise us at night, we’re dead meat.”
Russell, Chris, and Marlene climbed back down the ladder and returned to the jeep. Ernie continued to survey the area beyond the gate through his binoculars.
Marlene opened a box on the truck bed and handed Chris a clunky-looking field telephone.
“This is the actual reason we came here,” said Russell. “Be more careful next time, we’ve got hardly any spare parts left.”
“Okay, Okay. Pretty stupid we can’t use the radios.”
Russell nodded. The narrow canyons made radio contact with Eridu impossible. So they had pulled a copper cable through the valley, using up half of their cable supply in the process.
“When we’re back at camp, I’ll send back-up right away. We need four people here. We’re not taking any risks,” said Marlene.
“Sounds good.” Chris turned around and took the field telephone with him to the wooden barrack.
Russell climbed into the driver’s seat. After Marlene had swung herself into the passenger seat, he started the motor and reversed with a judder.
“I don’t like it,” he murmured.
“I agree. Something’s going on.”
“I’m worried about the next supply run to the refinery. It’s nearly time to go again.”
Marlene grunted. “In any case, we should increase the number of lookouts.”
Russell pursed his lips. The nearest oil reserves lay about six miles away, in the jungle. Years before, Albert, Dr. Cashmore, and Lee Shanker had erected an improvised refinery right next to the oil spring. It was fully automatic, and provided the expanding colony with valuable raw materials for producing petrol, benzine, and lubricating oil. They had even been able to produce rudimentary plastic from the hydrocarbon compounds, although only in small quantities. In any case, the tanks of the refinery had to be emptied every few months and brought back to Eridu. More than once they had been attacked by wotans on one of their regular trips.
“Yeah, we’ll definitely need more lookouts.”
Wistfully, Russell thought about the plan to build a pipeline from the oil springs to the edge of the colony. Then they could erect the refinery directly next to their colony, and spare themselves the dangerous trips into the jungle. But they didn’t have enough resources. Like so many other plans, the pipeline idea had slipped right to the bottom of the pile. It would be a project for a future generation.
Russell took the curves fast. He liked it when the rear axle skidded through the gravel on sharp curves. Suddenly he slammed on the breaks and swore. Something was lying in the middle of the road.
“Jesus Christ!” He jumped out of the vehicle and ran toward Drew Potter. She was kneeling on the ground holding a flat stone in her hand. She had frozen to the spot when the jeep skidded to a halt just a few feet away from her.
“I nearly ran you over.”
The geologist rose to her feet. “Jesus! You scared me to death racing round the bend like that.”
“And why on earth are you kneeling in the middle of the road?” asked Marlene, who had come up beside Russell, arms folded.
Drew stood up and laughed. “Road
? What road? I don’t see a road here, just the natural floor of the canyon. And anyway, there isn’t exactly much traffic here, so I wasn’t reckoning with a crazy boy racer!”
“Sorry. What are you doing here, anyway?” asked Russell.
Drew took his hand and placed something in it.
“Pebbles?” he asked.
“That’s evaporite. With deposits of sodium chloride,” said the geologist, as if that explained everything.
Russell exchanged a quick glance with Marlene and stared at Drew in silence.
“Alright, I’ll explain. This stone is formed through contact with water. The salt crust is not very pronounced, which means that the contact can’t have been very long ago. On Earth, you only find these stones near the coast.”
“But the coast is hundreds of miles away from here,” Russell pointed out.
“Right. And that’s not the only unusual thing. You would only expect to find these stones below this point, in the lowlands, at most half-way up the pass. In Eridu and the highlands above it, erosion is caused primarily by wind and precipitation, as you would expect.”
“You mean storms and rain?” Russell asked.
“Right. Both of them wear away the stones and both erosion processes can be recognized by the patterns on the surface of the stones.”
“Is this of any practical importance to us?” asked Marlene.
Drew rolled her eyes. “We should find out as much as we can about our new home. Up to now, I’ve spent all my time searching for natural resources and raw materials for you. Now the time has come to find out more about the geology of this planet.”
“I don’t dispute that. But will what you just told us affect us in any direct way?”
The geologist looked up at the precipitous, bleak walls of the canyon. “I don’t know. Probably not. But it’s very unusual. Do you see these horizontal grooves in the stone?”
“Yes, on Earth I remember seeing that kind of thing by the sea. On rocks that waves broke against all the time,” said Russell.
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