by Allen Steele
“How did you know where to find us?” Sean asked as he pulled the rope from around Sandy.
“We met a hjadd who—” D’Anguilo began.
“It’s a long story,” Andromeda interrupted. “I’ll tell you later.” Bending down to pick up the machete she’d dropped next to the pit, she pointed to the tree where D’Anguilo had anchored the rope. “The path we cleared is that way, and we’ve got a boat waiting at the other end.”
Sean nodded, then reached down to help Sandy to her feet. “Let me do that,” D’Anguilo said, moving to the young woman’s side. “You go with your mother.”
Sean hesitated, then moved to join her. Andromeda had an impulse to take him by the hand but restrained herself. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here before your friends find out you’re missing.”
“They’re not our friends,” he muttered, and Andromeda almost laughed out loud at that, but he followed her anyway. Leaving the rope behind, the five of them moved as quickly and quietly as they could for the jungle, with Andromeda and Sean in the lead.
The light was getting dimmer by the minute, but Andromeda could still make out the path. Pushing aside broad-leafed fronds and massive ferns, she hurried as best as she could with an injured person in tow; she didn’t want to use her flashlight unless it was absolutely necessary, for fear that the taaraq might spot its beam. The path took them away from the settlement, but they could still hear the angry voices of its inhabitants; they moved in silence. Every second counted; she knew it was only a matter of time before the taaraq discovered that their captives had escaped.
The path abruptly left solid ground and merged with the floating moss that apparently made up most of the biopod’s interior. Andromeda paused to look back at the others. “We’re going to have to spread out a little,” she whispered, “or else we might break through the moss and get stuck. Go single file, if you can.”
“What about them?” Sean motioned to Sandy and D’Anguilo, who were bringing up the rear. He was right; the floating moss might not support both of them so long as Sandy continued to rely on Tom for support.
“I can make it,” Sandy murmured. “Just cut me a branch or something, and I’ll . . .”
“No time for that.” Andromeda took a deep breath. “We’re just going to have to chance it. You two move as carefully as you can . . . but don’t take too long.”
Sandy and D’Anguilo both nodded, and Andromeda turned and continued forward, with Sean and Kyra not far behind. The ground turned wet and spongy; it felt as if she were walking on a waterbed. Andromeda could barely make out the path; dusk was closing in faster than she’d expected, and it wouldn’t be long before she’d be forced to break out her flashlight. But it looked as if they were getting close to the river. The boat shouldn’t be too far away, perhaps only a few dozen feet . . .
Her headset chirped. “Skipper, are you there?”
She prodded her mike. “We copy, Zeus. What’s up?”
“Bad news. I think they’re onto us. A few of ’em left the waterfront about a minute ago, and now there’s some commotion back a ways from the beach. I can’t see what’s going on, but you might want to hurry.”
Andromeda paused to turn her head and listen. Zeus was right; a few hundred yards behind them, from the other side of the jungle, she heard upraised taaraq voices. No question about it: they’d discovered that their prisoners were gone. No doubt they’d found the rope, and she cursed herself for not removing it. In a few seconds, they’d find the path, too.
“Get the engine started,” she snapped, no longer bothering to keep her voice down. “Wait until you see us, then set off the last bomb.” She didn’t wait for a response before she clicked off the mike and turned to the others. “Run for it!”
The sloppy ground rolled and trembled beneath their boots as they headed for the boat; subterfuge was no longer as important as speed. At one point, D’Anguilo’s left foot broke through the moss; he cursed as he toppled to the ground, but Sandy managed to stay on her feet. D’Anguilo managed to pull his boot out of the muck, and he and Sandy clung to each other as they hurried to catch up with the others.
Just ahead, Andromeda saw a tiny light wink twice, pause, then wink twice again. The boat had returned to where Zeus had dropped off D’Anguilo and her; it appeared to be even closer than she’d thought. “Go, go, go!” she yelled, then reached back to grab Sean’s wrist. “C’mon, you . . . hustle!”
Zeus was kneeling in the back of the inflatable Corps boat, one hand on the throttle of its idling outboard motor. “Hurry up!” he hissed loudly when he saw Andromeda and Sean break from cover. “I think they’re putting their own boats into the water!”
“Blow the last one!” she yelled.
Zeus reached to the seatboard in front of him, snatched up the detonator. Andromeda was in the act of shoving Sean ahead of her when the last charge went off. Following her instructions, Zeus had planted it beside a tree near the trail about a hundred yards back the way they’d just come. It was the smallest of the charges, less than a quarter of a pound, and was meant to deter rather than kill. Or at least so she hoped; the danui would not look kindly upon their human visitors if they took taaraq lives during the rescue attempt.
As the blast briefly turned dusk into dawn, Andromeda caught a glimpse of a huge weed-tree becoming a whirlwind of flying splinters. They were well ahead of the explosion; nonetheless, the ground was rocked by its violence. It seemed to leap beneath their feet, causing all four of them to fall to their knees. Struggling to their feet again, they lurched the rest of the way to the boat, their boots making sucking noises as they plunged deep into the floating moss at the river’s edge.
Andromeda could no longer hear any taaraq voices. If any of the inhabitants were still behind them, they’d just been given a reason to keep their distance. Or so she hoped.
Andromeda waited until everyone else had climbed aboard, then she brought her machete down on the nylon cord Zeus had lashed to a tree. The mooring line snapped like a severed guitar string, and she threw herself into the boat, practically landing in Tom’s lap.
“Go!” she shouted. “Get the hell out of here!”
Zeus revved the engine, and the boat roared away from the shore. As the chief petty officer made the 180-degree turn that would take them back toward the escalator, Andromeda looked to the left and spotted what he’d seen a few minutes earlier. A half dozen or more taaraq boats had left the waterfront and were heading up the narrow river, the taaraq in them lashing at the dark brown water with their long-handled paddles.
Obviously, they’d figured out that their captives couldn’t have escaped without help and their rescuers must have come from the river. The intruders had a head start, but not much; only about a couple of hundred feet or so, Andromeda figured.
“They can’t catch us.” D’Anguilo calmly gazed back at the taaraq boats as Zeus came out of the turn to send the boat straight down the river. “We’ve got an engine, and they . . .”
“There’s six of us aboard,” Zeus said, “and our engine doesn’t have much horsepower.” He darted a glance over his shoulder, then looked at Andromeda. “They can still catch up with us, skipper . . . or at least get close enough to nail us with those spears they’re carrying.”
Andromeda nodded. Zeus was right. That last bomb might have put off the taaraq following their path, but there was little they could do about the ones pursuing them on the water. With the inflatable filled to capacity, its small engine might not be able to keep them ahead of a half dozen boats with enraged taaraq paddling as hard as they could. And she wasn’t inclined to test their accuracy with their javelins. Even a near miss would be enough to puncture their craft’s skin and bring the chase to an end.
“If anyone has any ideas,” she said, “I’m only too willing to . . .”
“I do.” Sean was sitting in front of the boat, Kyra huddled beside him. He turned to look back at her. “Give me your flashlight.”
“What are you . . . ?”
“I’ll show you.” He held out his hand. “Your flashlight . . . please.”
Don’t argue with him, she thought. Just do it. Andromeda unclipped the flashlight from her belt, gave it to him. Pointing it straight ahead of them, Sean switched it on and moved its luminescent oval across the shadowed shoreline to their right. Apparently he was searching for something, but Andromeda didn’t know what...
“There,” he said. “Those eggs? See ’em?”
About seventy feet away, the flashlight’s beam had settled upon several white ovoids floating in a cluster near the base of some enormous trees. Andromeda had noticed the eggs earlier but hadn’t paid much attention to them. “Yeah? So?”
He didn’t reply, but instead gazed past her at Zeus. “Bring us near those eggs . . . but not too near. Just close enough that our wake will hit ’em when we pass.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Sandy stared at him in horror. “They’re . . .”
“Do as I say.” Sean ignored her as he kept the flashlight beam on the eggs. “Keep the throttle all the way up. I’ll let you know if you’re too close.”
Zeus gave Andromeda an uncertain glance. She quietly nodded, and he took a shallow starboard turn that moved the boat closer toward the eggs. “Good, very good,” Sean said. “Keep your distance, but . . .”
Something sliced into the water a few yards from the boat: a javelin, hurled by one of the taaraq. Andromeda looked back; sure enough, the taaraq were rapidly closing the distance between them. It seemed impossible that they could paddle so fast that they could catch up with the humans, but the inflatable wasn’t built for speed.
“Sean,” she began, “I hope you know what you’re . . .”
“Okay, that’s it!” he snapped. “Cut to the left! Fast!”
Zeus twisted the rudder to the right, and the boat made a sharp turn to port. Tepid water sloshed over the gunnels as the inflatable veered away from the shore, heading again up the middle of the river. Andromeda caught a brief glimpse of the eggs as the boat swept past them; Sean used his flashlight to track their wake’s leading edge as it hit the eggs, causing them to bob up and down like buoys. Why would Sean care about . . . ?
The answer came an instant later as something huge moved on the shore just past the eggs. Andromeda watched in astonishment as one of the giant trees suddenly came to life; an upper branch came down with terrifying force, plunging into the river where the boat had been just a few seconds earlier.
No, she thought. That’s not a tree. That’s a creature. And it wasn’t attacking their boat, but their wake instead and the flashlight beam that illuminated it. It thinks the wake is alive, and it’s defending its eggs . . .
The taaraq knew all about the walking trees, of course, and had been careful to stay away from them. But their shallow-hulled boats didn’t produce waves strong enough to disturb the eggs, so they’d apparently believed that they could move past the giant predators without alerting them. Their intended prey, though, had changed all that.
Andromeda looked back just in time to see one of the walking trees attack the closest of the taaraq boats. Its upper branch—which she now realized was an immense beak—came down out of the darkness to crash down into the center of the small wooden craft. A horrific screech, and the beak lifted again, a taaraq flailing helplessly within it. The boat itself was already gone, its other passengers nowhere to be seen. The beak rose upward and opened wide, and the screaming taaraq vanished into its maw.
That’ll teach ’em to be nice to tourists, she thought. The rest of the taaraq boats were falling back, trying to avoid the monster that had unexpectedly charged one of their own. I just hope the danui didn’t see this.
Sandy was cheering at the top of her lungs, and Andromeda looked around to see Sean receive a long, passionate hug from his girlfriend. D’Anguilo was uncharacteristically speechless; he stared at the walking tree, apparently mortified that he hadn’t recognized it for what it really was. Zeus hunched over the throttle bar, grimly determined to put as much distance between them and the denizens of this biopod as he could.
Andromeda cleared her throat and waited until Sean broke free from Kyra. “How did you know?” she asked.
Sean turned to look back at her, but didn’t immediately respond. “How did you know?” he said at last, repeating her own question.
“It’s a long story.”
“Really? Mine is, too.” A slow nod; it was impossible to tell for sure, but she thought he might be smiling behind his airmask. “Maybe we should talk about it sometime.”
“I think we should, yeah . . . later.” Andromeda glanced over her shoulder again. The remaining taaraq boats were nowhere in sight, but it was too dark to know for certain whether they’d given up pursuit. In any case, all she wanted to do was get the hell out of there.
Lifting her hand to her headset, she prodded its mike. “Survey Two to Base One. Rolf, do you copy? Over.”
The chief engineer’s voice immediately came over the comlink. “Affirmative. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got everyone, safe and sound. Where are you now?”
“Waiting for you at the escalator. Mel’s standing by at the tram station.”
“I’m here, skipper,” Melpomene’s voice cut in. “Good to hear you again. You say you have everyone with you?”
“Roger that. We should be there in five or ten minutes. Soon as Rolf tells you that he has us in sight, I want you to call for a tram. I’d like to get out of here pronto.”
“We copy, Captain,” Rolf said. “And congratulations.”
“Thanks. Survey Two over and out.” Andromeda clicked off the mike, let out her breath. “Okay, Chief . . . take us home.”
As she’d figured, it took only a few minutes for them to return to the place where she, Zeus, and D’Anguilo had inflated the Corps boat and put it in the water. Rolf was waiting for them on the shore, holding a lamp above his head to guide them in. They abandoned their craft near the same tree where Sean had stolen the taaraq boat, despite D’Anguilo’s misgivings about leaving advanced technology in the hands of primitives.
“Let ’em have it,” Andromeda said as she helped Sean carry Sandy to the nearby escalator. “They probably won’t know what to do with it anyway.” She glanced over her shoulder at the darkened river. “Besides, they may still be after us. I don’t want to give’em another chance to catch up.”
It didn’t take long for the lift to ascend to the tram station, just enough time for Rolf to break out the first-aid kit he’d brought with him and use it to tend to the deep wound in Sandy’s thigh and the small cut in Sean’s side. Melpomene was waiting for them at the top of the escalator. She’d moved the Corps team’s belongings from the veranda to the platform just before she used the station control panel to summon a tram.
“Don’t worry, skipper,” she said, as Andromeda closely inspected the panel. “I made sure that I entered the coordinates the right way.”
Andromeda gave her a wry smile. “The left way, you mean.”
“Trust me. I’m a navigator, remember?” Melpomene pointed to the node at the upper right corner of the taaraq hexagon. “That’s our next stop, I promise.”
On the other side of the platform’s transparent barrier, a tram was already waiting for them. The station scanned everyone in the group, then the barrier slid up into the ceiling, allowing them to enter the vehicle. Once its doors shut behind them, Andromeda pulled off her airmask and let it fall to the floor. Then she collapsed on a bench, exhausted as she’d ever been.
It’s over, she thought. Thank God, it’s over.
She was wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SEAN’S PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE WITH HEX’S TRAM SYSTEM had been the journey from the arsashi habitat to the one occupied by the taaraq, so he braced himself for another long ride. But it took only a few minutes for the tram to make the short trip from the biopod to its adjacent node; it felt as if he’d just pulled off his airmask when the vehicl
e began to decelerate.
Not that he was about to complain. All he wanted to do, really, was get out of the stinking, ripped clothes he’d been wearing the last few days, take a hot shower, have a meal that didn’t come out of a wrapper, maybe even catch a nap. Once all that was done, he might feel civilized again.
And then he’d have a long talk with his mother.
Andromeda sat across from him, slouched in her seat, with her arms limp at her sides, staring at nothing in particular. Sean had never seen her that way before; she looked as if she’d just come through an ordeal even though the physical hardships she’d endured were nothing compared to his own. So it couldn’t be fatigue. It had to be something else.
Oh, man, he thought, she really was worried about me, wasn’t she?
Perhaps she’d made the mistake that had gotten his team into a mess, but she’d also risked her life, not to mention those of her crew, to get them out of it. Sean still didn’t know exactly how she’d managed to find him and the others—everyone was too tired for explanations—but he had a feeling that she’d put a lot on the line to do so.
She wouldn’t have done that unless she loved you. The notion wasn’t something he particularly welcomed; he had spent the last few years learning how to despise her. But that was for what she’d done to Dad, and that was a long time ago. This time, it’s just about you. And this time, she didn’t . . .
Through the window beside him, the tunnel’s rock walls abruptly disappeared, to be replaced by what appeared to be another platform. Andromeda seemed to wake up a little; gazing past him out the window, she sighed with relief.
“We’re here,” she said, her voice a little more than a hoarse croak.
“That was fast.” Sean forced a smile. “You did enter the right coordinates this time, didn’t you?”
He meant it to be a joke, but it didn’t come off that way. Melpomene cast him an arctic glare while his mother closed her eyes with weary resignation. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “It was a . . . a dumb mistake, and I shouldn’t have . . .”