No mistaking what it was now. It was an alien, and there was something about its quick, questing movements that decided Styson that this was not Norbert. This was the real thing.
He tried to get his carbine up, but the sling had somehow gotten tangled around his left arm. And the massive creature was too close to him, anyhow. He closed his eyes and made a quick, fervent prayer.
Moments later he opened his eyes. The alien had walked right past him, brushing against him as it did so. It continued to move away, still looking around as if seeking something.
“Hey, fellas!” Styson called out. “We got company!”
The men ahead of him were aware of this. They had spotted aliens before Styson did, but had kept quiet in order not to alert the creatures. Aliens were primarily visual hunters, but no one knew to what extent they could also use their hearing. This didn't seem the time to find out. Now, as Styson caught up with them, they shushed him into silence.
Morrison continued to lead. The mist thinned, and soon they could see black shapes moving through white cotton. Aliens, moving in the same general direction the men were going, walking singly or in small groups. They passed the men and paid no apparent attention to them. One went by within a foot of Morrison and never turned its head. Morrison was starting to feel a modest confidence…. And then it happened.
The mist closed down again. The men fumbled their way forward, fighting to keep their balance, and then there was a loud gurgling sound followed by silence.
“What was that?” Morrison asked. “Damned if I know,” Larrimer replied.
“Is anyone missing? Call out your names, but not too loud.”
Three men responded to Morrison's request, but the fourth, Skysky, did not answer.
Morrison risked shouting. “Skysky? Are you there, Skysky?”
Nothing.
“Watch yourselves, boys,” Morrison said. “I think we got trouble.”
It made no sense, Morrison thought, but it seemed like an alien must have grabbed Skysky, broken his neck before he could do any more than gurgle, and taken his body away.
The suppressors were supposed to hide them from the aliens.
But Skysky was definitely gone.
So, one of two things. Either Skysky's suppressor had failed, or he had walked right into an alien, and that close, it had been able to figure out what Skysky was.
A six-foot breeding organism.
Don't think about that.
“You gotta really watch hard,” Morrison said, as if the men needed to be told. “Skysky must have gotten careless. The mist is lifting again. Maybe we can find someplace to hide.”
The mist dissipated swiftly. The men could see about fifty yards on all sides of them. The visibility continued to improve, and Morrison told them to fan out. The men complied and, following Morrison's lead, continued to move steadily toward something that looked like a brown breast on the horizon.
They were passing groups of aliens, but now were able to keep a better distance. The aliens continued to ignore them.
Until one alien stopped ignoring them.
It stopped in midstride, swiveled, turning its huge head slowly, and then locked in on something. It turned toward it and began to run.
When Styson looked to his left, he saw an alien coming straight for him — not for anyone else in the group, but him. He threw up his rifle and fired. The caseless round broke through the alien's shoulder, almost severing the arm at the shoulder joint. It just seemed to make the creature angrier than it already was. Aliens start out angry and build from there.
Ignoring the arm dangling from its side, it grabbed Styson around the waist with its good arm. Styson screamed and tried to get the carbine into line. The alien opened its jaws. The secondary jaws looked out for a moment, then rammed into Styson's face.
Styson had tried to duck at the last instant, so the secondary jaw caught him in the left eye rather than the mouth. The tooth-lined mouth punched through to Styson's brain, and when it withdrew, it took a fair amount of gray matter along with it. And then the alien turned away from Styson and revolved its head again.
The other four men had frozen into position, not daring to move while the alien was prowling around Styson, unable to shoot without hitting their comrade.
It turned out that shooting wasn't necessary. Not at that moment, anyhow. The alien turned and loped away, rejoining the group it had left earlier.
Morrison got the men moving again.
51
Their breathing space was short. Aliens continued to stream past the three crewmen. But now, some of those closest to the humans were slowing down, turning their heads this way and that. Morrison prayed that they had stiff necks or something. But no such luck. Two of the aliens turned away from the stream and started toward the group. After a moment a third one joined them.
“Shit!” Morrison said. There was no doubt where that bunch were going. Straight at him. He started firing when they were still thirty yards off, then pushed the selector and fired a grenade. In fact, he fired off all his grenades, something he hadn't meant to do, but he wasn't used to these weapons, which were military style. The grenades went lobbing in the air, and most of them came down behind the aliens. Morrison's last one hit an alien in the chest and, a moment later, exploded in its face. The alien was thrown backward by the force of the explosion. He picked himself up, but his face, such as it was, was ruined. His mouth was gaping open, and through his jaws protruded the smaller secondary jaws. They hung limp at the end of their muscular tube. The tube appeared to have been bitten through. The alien was not out of it yet, though. Shaking its head, it moved again toward Morrison, limping but still deadly.
Morrison didn't have time for that one yet. The two closer ones were coming up fast. He took the one to his left, blasting caseless projectiles into its chest. He could hear firing near him. It was Eka Nu, who had moved up to join him. Farther away, Larrimer tried to join them, but a long black arm came out of nowhere and caught him in midstride. He jerked around like a trout on a hook as the alien brought him close to his face. Then it released the facehugger, and Larrimer fell to the ground, moaning and twitching. The alien hoisted him to his shoulder. Larrimer knew he was going to have the worst death he could have imagined, hanging just barely alive from a wall in the hive while a newborn grew within him, getting ready to eat its way out.
Morrison and Eka Nu had their hands full with the two aliens, who were coming at them at a full charge. Morrison saw his projectiles slam into the alien, and still it kept coming. He fired until the magazine was empty. He fired the last rounds with his eyes closed. When he opened them, the alien was dead at his feet. Eka Nu hadn't been so lucky, however. The alien on his side had kept on coming on all fours, had grabbed Eka Nu around the shoulders, hugged the crewman to him, then turned him. The two stared face-to-face for a moment, then the facehugger hit and Eka Nu knew no more.
Morrison found himself alone. He was panting, exhausted, trembling. The guys were all gone. He looked around. He didn't see any aliens. Maybe they had left Maybe he could still find …
Then something moved on the ground. It was the alien he had winged. He was still coming, crawling. And behind him, half a dozen others were starting over.
Yes, Morrison thought, I guess you could say the suppressors had failed. No other explanation.
I did the best I could, he thought as he turned the carbine so its muzzle faced him. He preferred a slug in the mouth to a facehugger.
The harvester's entry lock gave way under repeated blows from the outside. The door flew open. Big-bodied, ghastly, and weird, three aliens crowded into it, their eager, evil faces turning at all angles on short powerful necks, checking out the place, alert for danger. They ignored Norbert, protected by his suppressor. The dead crewmen from the harvester required no attention.
Stan, watching from the lander, said, “All right, Norbert. Do it now.”
Norbert lifted Mac, removed his collar into which a suppressor was built,
and handed him to one of the aliens. The alien showed no surprise, quietly accepted Mac from Norbert's arms.
Handling the dog carefully, the alien turned, left the ship, and joined the others outside. Then, as if in response to an inaudible signal, they all started marching across the plain. Stan, Gill, and Julie watched on their screen as Norbert fell into line behind the group of aliens carrying Mac. Watching from the lander through Norbert's vision sensors was uncannily like being within the robot alien himself, feeling his body sway and move as it negotiated the uneven ground. Stan had to adjust the audio because the wind out there on AR-32's plain had risen swiftly after the mist dissipated and now was shrieking like a banshee, pushing and pulling against the line of aliens, slowing but not stopping them as sand was alternately pushed into mounds in front of them and then suddenly scoured away.
They were moving toward the hive, which was now and then revealed as Norbert changed the angle of his vision from the ground immediately in front of him to the hazy horizon line. The hive was still quite a long way away, perhaps a hundred yards, when the aliens stopped and began looking around.
Stan leaned close to the screen and stared but he couldn't tell what they were looking for. A specially coded pheromone signal, perhaps, because they fanned out and continued searching, their heads turning back and forth like hounds following a scent.
At last one of them found something. A silent signal seemed to pass between him and the others, and they all moved together to a piece of ground that looked no different to Stan's eyes than any other. Rooting in the soil, the leading alien dislodged a large flat piece of stone, revealing a shallow tunnel leading into the earth.
The tunnel sloped downward for perhaps twenty feet, then leveled out. It had been made with some care. The light, friable soil was held in by flat rocks, some of which were highly phosphorescent.
“Look at how the roof is shored up,” Stan remarked to Gill. “That's more technical skill than we ever gave the aliens credit for.”
“It is possible, sir,” said Gill, “that their tunnel-building abilities are genetic, as is the case with the ants you have studied.
“Yes,” Stan said. “Can you see what they're doing, Ari?” He lifted the cybernetic ant on his fingertip and moved his hand toward the screen. “These are like big cousins of yours, aren't they?”
Ari raised his head, but it was impossible to tell whether or not he was thinking anything.
Down in the tunnel, Norbert was reporting that the passageway was widening as they moved closer to the hive. Soon other branchings appeared as the aliens moved; as if by instinct, making their way through the increasingly complex maze without hesitation.
“Norbert, you've been laying down an electronic trail, haven't you?” Stan asked.
“Yes, Doctor. Ever since we were on the outside of this tunnel. But I'm not completely sure the job is getting done.”
“I hope it is. It could come in handy. Don't you think so, Julie?”
“Sure, Stan,” Julie concurred. “But I don't understand why you're sending Norbert in there. We've already got what we came for.”
“You mean the harvester full of royal jelly? Yes, that was the purpose of our mission, and we have accomplished it. But we still have some time on our hands until Captain Hoban gets back into communication. So why not choose this moment for the advancement of science? It will profit all of mankind to know what the inside of a hive really looks like.”
“That's true enough, Stan,” Julie said. “I didn't know you cared that much about science, though.”
“Julie, there's a lot I care for that I don't put into words. You ought to know that.”
“I guess I do, Stan. You're not really interested in getting rich from this mission, are you?”
“Not as interested as you, my dear. But that is because I may not have much tiempo para gastarlo, as the Spanish say. But doing this is better than staying home trying to argue the doctors into giving me a better prognosis. At least here I can be with you, and I can't tell you how much that means to me.”
Stan coughed, self-conscious for a moment, then glanced again at the screen. “Norbert is getting deeper into the hive and we still haven't heard from Captain Hoban. I think this might be a good moment for me to take a brief nap.” Without further ado, he got up and went to the cot in the lander's rearmost living area.
Julie and Gill watched for a while in silence as Norbert, on the screen, continued to penetrate deeper into the hive. At last Julie said, “What did it mean, that thing he said in Spanish?”
”Tiempo para gastarlo,” said Gill. “It means time to enjoy it.”
Julie shook her head. “Stan's got a lot of knowledge.”
“Yes,” Gill said. “But perhaps not much time.”
There were four crew members with Red Badger as he set up his next plan. Walter Glint was there, of course, and Connie Mindanao, limping from a beamer scorch in the side, and Andy Groggins and Min Dwin, both unwounded. That was a pretty good force to match against the five or six loyal men Captain Hoban probably had available.
That was the good news. On the bad side, they had been forced back to a rear area of the ship. It would be difficult to mount an attack through the corridors, with Hoban and his officers now armed and ready for them. And probably the rest of the crew would come in on Hoban's side, now that the first attempt at a takeover had failed. Things might have been different if Hoban hadn't responded so quickly. Badger, who had thought the captain to be a burned-out case, had to reevaluate the situation now.
Red was annoyed that his first plan hadn't succeeded. His people hadn't moved fast enough, and Hoban had been unexpectedly decisive. Now the best move was to get off the Dolomite and plan to contact Potter on the Lancet. Trouble was, getting off the ship wasn't going to be quite as simple as he'd like it to be.
There was just one lander left, the backup, now that Myakovsky and his people had gone to the surface of AR-32. It was sure to be guarded. Captain Hoban would have radioed the crew guarding the rear facilities, putting them on the alert. How many were there? Two or three, including the sergeant of the guards? Badger knew they'd have to get around or through them somehow.
“When we reach the storage bay, no firing until I say so,” Badger told the others. “I've got a little plan that just might work.”
“Whatever you say, Red,” said Glint.
Badger led them down the gleaming aluminum corridor, over deep-piled carpeting that seemed to soak up sound, past flickering lighting fixtures. The everpresent hum of the ship's machinery sounded in the walls like somnolent wasps. The only thing that told of the recent action was a faint smell of propellant and burned insulation in the otherwise antiseptic air, that and the labored sound of Connie Mindanao's breathing as she waited for the antipain shot to take effect.
At last they reached the transverse corridor that led to the pod bay. A faint hum warned Badger that all was not well here. He looked carefully and noted the violet-edged nimbus that extended from the walls.
“They've turned on the beam restraints,” Badger said.
Glint came up from the rear and examined the situation.
“They sure did, Red, but they don't have them on full.”
Badger looked again. “You're right, Walt. They must not be running full power through the ship's net. Probably because of the damage we caused in the control room. Those beams should be visible to a distance of six inches from the side of the wall.”
Min Dwin looked the situation over and reported, “Their circle of interdiction will extend beyond their visible range.”
“Sure it will,” Badger said. “But there'll still be a hole we can get through.”
The entrance to the corridor was like a tall O. The violet flame burned on all sides of it, surrounding it entirely, but leaving the middle of the hole open.
“Well have to dive through,” Glint said. “Make sure not to touch the sides or the bottom.”
“Shouldn't be too difficult,” Badger said
.
“Maybe not for you,” Connie Mindanao said. “But I've been wounded. How am I going to take a good jump through?”
A cruel little light glittered in Red Badger's eyes. “Well take care of it for you, won't we, Glint? Grab her other arm.”
Although she protested, the two big crewmen grabbed Connie. They swung her back and forth and, on the command from Badger, threw her headfirst through the corridor. Connie gave a shriek of protest as her foot trailed in the violet glow, but landed safe on the far side.
“Now the rest of us,” Badger said. “The lander is just around the next bend. We're almost there!”
52
“Do you ever get sick of us so-called real people?” Julie asked suddenly.
Gill looked up, startled. He had been intent on the screen, watching as Norbert followed the group of aliens through the tunnels. Gill wanted to be ready to report to Dr. Myakovsky when the doctor awoke from his nap. But Julie's question seemed worthy of serious thought and he gave it, though not taking his eyes off the screen that showed Norbert's progress.
“I'm afraid,” Gill said at last, “that I do not understand the question. It implies a precondition: that there is something in human behavior that I might get sick of. To what are you referring, Julie?”
“Wow!” Julie laughed. “I didn't expect to get that much out of you. But it isn't an answer.”
“I am asking you to define your question, Miss Lish.”
“You know very well what I mean,” Julie said.
Gill found himself caught up and bewildered by the complexities of human thinking. It seemed to him that Julie was saying one thing and meaning another. The technical semanticists who had programmed his response bank had not given sufficient attention to the problem of ambiguity. Perhaps they couldn't solve it. Gill and Julie looked at each other for a few moments in silence. Then Gill spoke. “You are referring, perhaps, to the fact that human actions are not always logical in terms of advantage? That they sometimes appear to be downright self-defeating?”
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