The driver yelled and veered. The truck teetered for a moment on two wheels. With a groan of metal, it slammed onto its side and skidded. Aldus fell hard on his shoulder. The engine roared and died. For a moment, all he heard was the tap of falling pebbles. Then one of the field workers kicked open the back doors. Hazy light broke over him.
“Get up, Mr. Hanson,” Cole said in his ear. “Sir, we have to get out of this truck.”
“I’m all right.” Aldus wheezed.
He leaned heavily on his assistant as he clambered out of the vehicle. A blaze of color dazzled him—bright purple puffballs, stringy orange vines. The toppled truck had dug a trench through the thick undergrowth. To the side, three men and a woman huddled together.
The woman wept. “Is that thing gone? Did you see where it went?”
“With any luck, it’s buried,” said a man.
Then a sound met them—like wind whistling through pine boughs. The howl of the monster.
Aldus licked his lips. “How far are we from camp?”
“Too far,” said Cole. He kicked at a vine reaching toward his ankle.
The driver leaped from the cab, his face streaming with blood, and waved a resonator in the air. “This way. Let’s go!”
The group followed without question. They stumbled over rocklike toadstools and slipped on slime mold. The driver followed the constantly changing topography grid on the resonator with his face furrowed in concentration. All around them, vegetation leaned away from the sonic waves the resonator emitted. Throbbing puffballs sent runners to trip them. Garish flowers spat pollen at their heads. Vines swung from towering black-capped mushrooms to snag their arms, their shoulders, reaching for them as if directed by a group mind.
Aldus panted in shallow gasps. One hand clasped a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. He held his other arm tight to protect his injured shoulder. Cole trotted at his side. Aldus glanced at him. Cole had been his assistant for over fifteen years, and in all that time, they had never had a disagreement.
Until now. Cole insisted upon calling for help. He said he could send a message through an Impellic ring and communicate with the authorities. Impellic rings created space-time tunnels used to carry one or two people to distant planets. This latest application into off-world communication was revolutionary.
The problem was that the only organization currently using Impellic rings was the Colonial Scouts, and Aldus couldn’t bring himself to ask for their help.
The Scouts were teenagers who used the rings to transport to obscure worlds and report their conclusions to the Colonization Bureau. It was a game to them—a dangerous, presumptuous game.
Besides, twelve years ago, the Scouts who had found this world said it was innocuous. No intelligent life forms at all. They said nothing about moss creatures.
Aldus’ team had been attacked since the moment they’d set up camp. Equipment was smashed or stolen. Now, five of his employees had disappeared from Beta Camp.
He gave an involuntary shudder as he relived his first view of the ruined site. When he’d left the crew two days ago, they had erected interlinking bubble tents and had already cleared the field for its first planting of grain. When he returned to check on them, he found the site all but erased and most of the crew missing. The survivors claimed they’d been ambushed despite the precautions they’d put in place.
He’d searched in vain for bodies. It was as if the jungle had absorbed them, as if the world were alive and taking offense. And he was responsible for bringing them there. Aldus forced the guilt away.
No, he wouldn’t ask the Scouts for help. He was not yet ready to concede.
A mossy hillock rose ahead. Reeds sprouted from its top like antennae, and brilliant meter-wide flowers drooped from its sides. But as Aldus approached, he noticed that the hill stood on stilts. He saw the occasional glint of glass.
“It’s the Lander,” he cried with sudden recognition.
“Looks even worse than the last time we saw it,” Cole said.
“Oh, God, let the airlock work,” moaned the woman.
Aldus glowered at her. He didn’t know her name—Cole had handled personnel. He was certain she was good at whatever job she’d been hired to do, but right then she was worthless. He muttered, “First we have to find the hatch.”
He stepped to the saucer-shaped craft and dug his fingers into the thick growth, searching for the airlock. The others did the same.
“Here!” cried the truck driver.
Aldus hurried to his side. They clawed at the fibrous moss and finally revealed a door. Aldus keyed the entry code upon a control pad. A light blinked. The lock cycled.
Then a reedy whistle filled the air, like wind through pine needles.
“It sees us,” the woman hissed.
The door opened.
“All right, three at a time,” Aldus said.
“You should go, sir,” Cole told him.
Aldus motioned to the woman and two men. “These three. Hurry up.”
Wide-eyed, the field workers crammed into the narrow compartment. The hatch closed, and the airlock started its slow cycle.
Aldus tapped the side of the Lander. He heard another windy whistle, heard the clack of reeds on top of the ship. He looked at the driver’s blood-streaked face, at Cole’s patient façade. Then the airlock opened, and they piled inside.
Oxygen whistled, and his ears popped as the lock pressurized. An inner door opened. Aldus walked into the dim interior. He glanced up at windows girding the ship, surprised to see light filter through the hoops of purple mold.
The Lander had brought them down to the planet from a transport ship—a ship that was no longer in orbit. The circular vehicle had seats along the walls and a control hub in the center. A few lights glowed with lock-down.
He said, “See if you can rig enough power to contact Alpha Camp.”
Cole nodded and sat behind the communications console.
“There should be a first-aid kit in the supply cabinet,” he told the driver. Then he looked at the field workers, their torn and moss-stained clothing, their fear-spent eyes, and he growled, “I want an accounting. Why didn’t the barriers hold?”
If possible, they looked even more alarmed.
“Y-you must understand, Mr. Hanson, those energy grids were n-never meant to be used as electric blockades,” one man stammered. “W-we were told there were no life forms. We never expected to need—”
“There’s nothing wrong with the fences,” said the other. “The moment we started plowing the fields, those monsters walked right on through. Nothing stops them.”
“Fire does,” said the woman.
“Fire just slows them down a bit while they re-grow,” said the truck driver. He dabbed his forehead with a gauze pad.
“Sir,” Cole called. “I have the camp.”
“Good,” Aldus said. “Tell them we need to be picked up. Seven of us.”
“I count only six,” the driver said in a hushed voice.
The woman shrieked. “Bentley! Where’s Bentley? Oh, God!” She ran to the airlock.
Aldus rushed to intercept her. He grasped her wrist before she could activate the controls. “What do you think you are doing?”
“We can’t leave him out there!” she cried.
He shook her shoulders then leaned until his face was level with hers. “He’s gone!”
A loud bang at the door made them all jump. Aldus looked up. Several mossy, eyeless faces pressed against the windows.
His stomach fell. “They found us.”
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Alien Worlds Page 17