RESEARCH AND RESCUE
Behind the window was a vast area that must have been impressive under any conditions. Always lit by its own glow, the shielding material was actually designed not only to trap radiation but to convert it into harmless light that did good rather than harm.
It was likely that the entire complex had been built into a natural cavern, although there were signs of some enlargement by laser construction trimmers. Still, the opening went down so far that it was only barely possible to see the reflected surface of a relatively warm body of water below, perhaps a vast underground sea. The water almost certainly wasn't that warm, but it was liquid and that was good enough for anybody looking to develop a planet.
Rising up from the ocean to beyond their own viewing level was a huge core complex, roughly cylindrical but with walkways, robotic service tracks, and monitors all about. Catwalks and thin bridges containing magnetic tracks for the robots went in at various levels, allowing for service without obscuring the view of the entire complex. Bumps, hatches, burl-like bulges off and on through the structure, all provided access to various parts of its internal circuitry and systems, and around the outer walls of the cavern were oval dishes that captured output as required and transformed the energy into useful forms and sent them on to storage elsewhere in the complex.
It was a magnificent site, and all they expected to see, but what was about halfway down the center shaft between them and the dark waters below was not. It required magnification to bring into proper view, and, even with that, it wasn't clear what they were looking at.
Both knew, however, that they were observing the most dangerous thing they'd ever seen.
It looked for all the world like some kind of cartoonish mouth, swallowing the shaft at that point like some kind of carnival sword swallower. You had to stare at it for a few seconds to realize that it was actually a mass, much the color of the surrounding limestone, and without much in the way of features, but a mass nonetheless of gigantic size wrapped completely around the shaft at, or perhaps from, that point. It hadn't been immediately clear that it was a living thing rather than some kind of poured support, but the more they looked at it, the more they could determine slight undulations along the outer skin or whatever, and the clammier it appeared.
"Well, you guessed that the last one would eat up all the others," Nagel whispered, although he didn't really know why. They were talking over a radio inside sealed helmets, after all.
"Yes, but why is it still alive, let alone so huge?"
"Maybe it isn't through digesting things yet. After all, it ate all the food for an entire city, plus the plants that grew it and even the people who would have consumed it. You ever seen anything like it?"
"No. Sleeping off a big feed, maybe, but I don't think it ate the place recently. No, it's getting the warmth from the shaft, but it's not feeding on the energy. If it could do that, why attack the colony? There's no sign they even had any big weapons, so it wasn't self-defense. That leaves hibernation. It came up from the sea attracted to the warmth, and after a while it found things it could eat here. When it finished, it went to the warmest point and went to sleep."
"How about letting it stay asleep and getting the hell out of here and back to the ship before it decides it wants a midnight snack?" Nagel said nervously.
"I doubt if we'd be worth much to it. Still, it would be totally instinctual. I agree. I think we ought to get out and leave the power down as it is. In fact, I think we ought to lift off when we get back and wave goodbye as we blast off."
"We'll see about the rest, but I agree about the first. Let's go."
They backed out of the place, and walked briskly down the hallway back towards the corridors to the greenhouses.
"We can't get close enough in to pick you up from there right off," An Li reminded them, "but we think we ought to extract as soon as feasible. At least until we can figure out what to do next. Let me run some figures and we'll see what's possible. In the meantime, get back into the greenhouse area quick so we can get individual tracking. It's a little too hot in the cliffs for what you put out."
They needed little argument, and stepped up the pace.
"Jerry? Are you sure this is the corridor we came in on?" Queson asked him.
"Probably not, but it's to the greenhouses," he responded. "I—"
He stopped abruptly, looking ahead into the darkness. His helmet light streamed ahead and caught what appeared to be several figures standing at one end of the corridor, near the first tube into the greenhouses. He was keyed up enough that it took him a moment before he realized that they were environmental suits quite similar to their own.
"Jerry! They're not empty!" Randi exclaimed, approaching the nearest one.
Sure enough, as her filters popped into place, she could see inside the helmet of the yellow suit in front of her. It was the ghastly face of a partially decomposed human head.
"There's another one like that in this blue one," Nagel told her. "Huh! Looks like all but one of them. Wonder why they weren't consumed?"
"This thing appears to be able to penetrate only organic material," she told him. "Remember how perfect everything else was, even the clothes and boots? These are sealed suits. I bet you'll find a tear or some other failure in the empty suit."
"Yeah, but if that's the case, how come they died?"
"Where do they go? What do they eat when the emergency rations in the suit run out? What about water? Recharge and it's got you. It might even have engulfed them, just waiting for the air to run out or the power pack to run down. God! I don't know how horrible it is to be dissolved, but I'll bet you the ones it got had a cleaner and easier death than these poor people!"
"That's us if that thing wakes up," Nagel reminded her. "Let's save the funeral for another day."
As they went on, Queson commented, "Actually, death by oxygen deprivation's supposed to be kind of peaceful, like drowning without the panic. You hallucinate, you feel you're floating, and you slowly go out like a candle in a gentle breeze."
"At least that solves the mystery of who shut everything down. They knew they had enough protection to be able to handle it. Must've been hell, though. I can't imagine anything close to that size being all that fast. Makes you wonder why they didn't lower the emergency doors, too. There's a set at each entrance and exit and each new corridor or section. You could even seal off a greenhouse and get enough air, water, and, if you're in one with the right stuff growing, even food. Why shut down the control center but not take the time to get people where they had at least a slight chance, maybe keeping the power levels up a bit? It still doesn't make sense."
"It's always a mystery until you know the facts," Queson replied, breathing hard now. At this pace, she was rapidly approaching her own personal limit.
"You okay?"
"No," she admitted. "But I will be once we get out of here."
They went through three greenhouses without any more incidents or discoveries, but then they got a call from On High.
"Hey, you two! Heads up!" An Li called. "We've got you on our tracker now and we're trying to work on as quick an exit as we can. But I have to tell you we're monitoring some movement behind you. It's still inside the cliffs, but we're getting really odd fragmentary radiation readings from there now, distinct from the core."
"That—thing?" Queson asked her, feeling her stomach knot up.
"Nothing that big. Smaller, faster, and somewhat indecisive. Like whatever it is is trying to figure out where you went. Randi, I've got your readings right here and I know what condition you're in, but you've got to keep going and step it up! If you can make another three or four greenhouses and stay roughly in the middle of the complex, we may be able to chance it, come in, and get you off the roof from outside! But you can't stop and you shouldn't stumble! My blips have merged and are now coming down the same exit you used. They finally picked up your scent or whatever they use."
Jerry Nagel unsnapped his pistol and with his thumb set it to maximum power without even stopping. She took hers out but was in no shape to set it. Its average power level would just have to be enough.
"You really think these little pistols can do much?" she asked him.
"Save your breath for moving! I have no idea. I think not, since that window in that far greenhouse was shot out, so they had a few things here and couldn't dent it, but who knows? Better than rocks. Stay along the far wall there. If anything comes close to us we want to be able to get outside and quick. Whatever that thing is, it's carbon based, a child of water, and loves the heat. That's three things that aren't outside."
"Yeah? If that's so, how come these people didn't all get outside?"
"They had sun suits and walking shoes on, not ones like this," he reminded her. "The only ones with these were doing what they could close up. I suspect they were moving to get out but time ran out on them. Let's not make the same mistake!"
An Li broke in. "Whatever it is is now just a greenhouse and a half behind you. You're still at least two, three away from any point where you might be picked up. Any of those isolation doors have a manual trigger? Just a thought."
Nagel cursed, wondering why he hadn't thought of it. The power-down had opened all the doors except ones that would be exempted in the control room or were subject to a manual override, just as the airlock doors on each compartment of the spaceship made said parts little independent biospheres for a while.
Sark's voice came over their intercom now. "Red handle, always to the right of each interconnect, facing the location map," he told them. "We just tried one and it works, but you may have to shoot out the cover. Side angle, low power works fine."
Nagel waited until Queson was through the tube to the next unit, then followed. Immediately he looked for the map, then the opposite wall on the right. The thing was pretty clear; he just hadn't noticed it before. He took his pistol and shot, and there was a tremendous flare and sparks flew everywhere. The emergency switch turned almost molten, but the door didn't drop.
"Damn it! I was on high!" he realized. "Come on! I apologize, but we're gonna have to run the length of this thing and through to the next one!"
Randi Queson tried, but her lungs felt like they were about to burst and her back was an increasingly concentrated single mass of severe pain. "I don't think I can make it, Jerry! You go! You can always find another frustrated old professor someplace!"
Jerry stopped, turned, and sighed. "I ain't got time for this, Doc," he said, then he yanked on her arm and began pulling her along. It was sheer agony, but screaming and cursing at him seemed to give her some extra energy.
The places were huge enough as it was; now, like this, it seemed as if the corridor was actually growing longer as they moved towards the far end.
"Guys, if that energy surge was Jerry's gun then they're about to come through the tube into where you are," An Li warned them. "We're picking up the rest of the team now. If you can't make the next greenhouse and close that door behind you in the next five minutes, then get outside and try and climb up on the roof. There are ladders at both ends of the buildings and in the center, both sides. Wind's really bad, but the suits should be able to take it. Once you're up there, keep moving until we can pluck you off. Understand?"
"We're gonna make it through!" Jerry almost yelled to her. "C'mon, Doc! There's the connector! Get on through!"
Somehow, Queson made it, although she felt as if she were going to faint once she reached the other side of the connecting tube. This time Jerry dialed down his charge, angled, and shot the protective cover cleanly off. He then pulled the lever, praying that, somehow, it would work.
It did, and fast. The door shot out with amazing speed and they could hear the building shake as it went chunk! sealing off the other side.
"Well I'll be damned!" he breathed. "The thing was spring loaded!"
Randi Queson was breathing so hard the noise almost blocked off the intercom, and she was partially slumped, but she slowly seemed to be getting her wind back.
He knew that they weren't anywhere near safe yet, but he felt he had to give her a minute or two to catch her breath.
Something went bang! really hard against the metal blast and protective door they'd just triggered.
He jumped. "I thought you said five minutes!"
"That was five minutes ago," An Li pointed out. "Jerry, you've got to keep moving. Get to the far end as quick as you can, then exit and go up the next greenhouse ladder. Understand?"
"But there are doors right there!" Queson protested, pointing. Then, suddenly, she realized just how close things were.
Even a human being wearing very little or nothing at all could stand it long enough to get out one set of doors, pry open another set, and get back inside, and whatever this creature or creatures were, they appeared to be made of much the same stuff as humans, even if put together differently.
Both doors were closed, though, and would require something like Jerry's crowbar assembly to open manually. That thing they'd seen wrapped around the core was more like a giant slug or worm of some kind, though. Not the most likely creature to figure out crowbars, and unlikely to have really great physical strength in any one part of it. Even if it, or something like it, could get outside from the other greenhouse, one with the same door problem, how long could they stand it out there before the sandblasting and cold got them?
There were still noises coming from the other side of the fire door.
"If I didn't know better I'd swear that somebody who knew what they were doing was laying out tools to try and open that door," Jerry muttered.
She nodded. "Too much we don't know yet. I'm better. Let's get going!"
She really did feel a little better, more clear-headed, less in pain right at that moment. Adrenaline and shock, most likely, but she'd take them while they were there and gladly accept the consequences when they wore off. It would mean she was still around to suffer.
They got most of the way to the next interconnect when they heard a major metallic racket at the other end and the sound of something big beginning to move.
"Oh, my god! Those damned things can think!" she shouted, and started running with an energy reserve she would never figure out the source of. Jerry was right behind, and they got into the next greenhouse and he once again triggered the door.
"Now let's go outside," he told her. "I think the odds will be a lot more even there."
An Li couldn't believe her instruments. "Jesus! Whatever those are, they peeled back the door! How come they couldn't do that when they ravaged the colony?"
"Maybe it learns," Randi Queson responded. "Maybe it's been digesting not only their material selves but also whatever information or skills they might have had. I don't know. That's why we call alien lifeforms alien. I only know I want out of here!"
Jerry was at the door. "Ready?" he asked her. "Keep the gun handy and kick yours to high. If they're that bright they might well have figured out this move!"
He pulled on the bar and the door half opened, letting in the fury of shrieking wind and blowing sand and pebbles. He drew his pistol again and stepped out, then she followed.
They weren't outside yet, or at least they weren't in the four- or five-meter range of visibility the blowing crud allowed them.
"Here's the ladder!" Nagel called, pointing.
"You go up first and I'll watch your back," she told him. "Then you watch while I come up slower." She sensed his hesitation. "Go ahead! I have no intention of being a martyr, and I intend to be around to razz you for years about the time you turned into Sir Galahad."
"Just for that, I am going up," he told her. "Don't watch me, though. Watch those doors!"
She waited, gun in hand, until she heard him call, "On the roof! Easy climb up, but watch it once you're here. There's a pitch and the small rails here are pretty damned short."
She could hear noises inside even through the storm and the helmet insulation, and she needed no further urging to get the hell up on top.
It would have been easy in a lesser wind and without the bulk of the e-suit, but it really wasn't that hard, it just took longer than she thought. Everything's longer than I think now, it seems, she reflected, but she soon had his hand to help her the rest of the way up.
"Slow and steady down the catwalk," he told her. "Can't see much or hear much, but what's inside has to come out here to get us, and I don't think they like that idea very much."
She sighed, but decided to walk sideways so she could see both out and back while keeping her balance. Speed wasn't the overriding factor here now, just keeping from falling off while making forward progress.
"If I could be absolutely sure that they couldn't get to me, I'd sure love to see what was chasing us, though," she told him. "This place is getting creepier and creepier and we still don't know a damned thing!"
"I know it's dangerous, it's smart, and it's not alone, somehow," Nagel said. "That's more than enough for me. Li, what's the plan?"
"It's tricky, but on manual Cross thinks she can hover the shuttle off the back end of the unit you're on and hold it steady long enough for you to at least get a handhold if not aboard. If you can only get a hold, hang on, she'll fly you back a ways from all this, then you can get in from the ground. Best we can do. Clear?"
"Clear," Nagel responded. "Keep the weapons armed on that thing, too! Our company's not that far away and it's suddenly grown a whole set of smarts."
"Cross, you got that?" An Li called.
"Got it," the pilot responded.
Gail "Lucky" Cross was a very good pilot in an era when human beings didn't have to be any such thing. She enjoyed it, practiced it, played with it, and that ability had paid off more than once. How could you figure out just how to tell a robotic pilot what they were proposing to do here? Or trust it to do it right?
Cross was actually a robotic engineer, the chief of salvage operations for the Stanley, and the one who would do the instructions and supervise the salvage operation once it was crunched and the method determined. She had hair so short she sometimes seemed bald, was twenty kilos overweight and had a voice that was almost dead even between a very low soprano and a foghorn, and swore like a sailor. She was a Character with a capital "C" and she loved it.
Still, this would be as close and exacting a job of piloting as she'd ever done, and nothing for which she or anyone could have practiced. With the wind and minimal clearances it would be a job nobody else would consider doing, too.
Which was, of course, why she was clearly having the time of her life.
"Move on back, you mothers!" she shouted, taking over com control. "Ease back! I'm totally manual here and it's bucking like two dogs in heat!"
"Moving back towards you," Nagel told her. "Sounds like our friends are right below us inside the greenhouse, so we've got to do this on one pass."
"You got it. I won't be there when you arrive, but you tell me when you pass the last ladder and hold up there. I'll have two hooks out and it's gotta be fast and dirty!"
There were noises below, as if something was pacing them and pushing things out of the way to make sure they kept up. They couldn't be part of the slug or whatever it was; too small and too independent, Randi reasoned as they made their way back along the roof catwalk. And they had some use of tools. Whatever had consumed the others here couldn't have imagined tools; otherwise they would have had no problems penetrating the full body suits of those others. A third player? Something else as well? Something that survived, perhaps, or was working with the slug? It made no sense, but this job had gone sour from the start and all she wanted now was out of it. Later, in safety, she'd worry about the questions and look for answers. The crew wasn't about to abandon this mother lode of salvage unless they were forced to; they would address the questions when circumstances allowed. Most jobs had to be financed with mortgages on the ship and ground-based prior salvage in the yards left back home. Come home empty, and you lost both.
"We've passed the last ladder," Nagel reported. "Now, come and get us!"
"Stay close, arms up!" Cross ordered. "We may not get two passes! If anything, this damned wind is kicking up more! Just listen to my count! I have you on my scope. Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Now!"
Out of the swirling dust cloud came a dark but familiar shape, an egglike oval with a ring around its center and an aircraftlike tail rising seamlessly out of its back. It was going to and fro so much it almost disoriented the two stranded on the roof; even with the help of the entire system, Lucky Cross was having a really rough time, now even rougher as she came in low enough to the greenhouses that a severe downdraft might well bring the shuttle crashing into one of the roofs.
She stopped about three meters over the edge of the rooftop, two cables dangling from one side. The cables, with large mechanical hooks, whipped about like snakes in the wind, and threatened to either not come close enough for them to grab or, worse, to suddenly whip into them and knock one or both off the roof.
"Grab the nearest one!" Nagel shouted to Queson, although both were on intercom and shouting wasn't physically necessary. "Go ahead! I have a better shot at either! I need you to go first! Now!"
"Gang, I think that'd be a neat idea," Cross said to them. "I'm battling this son of a bitch with everything I got, and on top of that it seems like something's outside and slowly climbing up that ladder!"
That did it. As one of the cables whipped around, Randi Queson grabbed it and suddenly found herself flying in air, in a big and not fully controlled circle, holding on dearly with both gloves.
"Jerry! Hurry up!" she screamed. "I can't get the hook on, and I'm not sure how much longer I can hold on!"
"Coming as soon as I can get a line, Doc!" Nagel responded. "I don't want to take you out when I leap! Here we go! There you go! C'mon, c'mon. . . . Holy shit!" Nagel turned and jumped at that, got the cable, and tried to just hang on. "Lift off! Lift! Go! Go!" he shouted.
They felt themselves suddenly yanked backward, and Randi almost lost her grip, but managed somehow to twist some of the cable around her arms and hold on. Cross quickly moved out from the greenhouses and towards the rocky desert beyond before slowing to a near stop and lowering down.
"Get off on the ground, both of you!" the pilot ordered. "Then I'll put down on the surface just long enough to allow you both to get in the hatch. You hear me?"
"Yeah, yeah," Nagel managed. "You far enough from those buildings?"
"I'm already five kilometers out. That should be more than enough."
"Yeah, well, you didn't see what I saw. Okay! Let's do it!"
The shuttle dipped to only a few meters above the ground and first Randi and then Jerry dropped onto the surface, fell, rolled, and managed to get back up. The shuttle seemed to rise and vanish for a moment in the rapidly building storm, but managed to come back around and put down about forty meters from them. With their last strength, both rushed for the shuttle, and Jerry Nagel beat his partner into the open hatch by only a few seconds. They tumbled on top of one another as the hatch closed and sealed.
Cross didn't wait for anything more than confirmation they were inside and then lifted straight up, then out at a steep angle, trying to get above the storm.
"Back on automatic now. You two okay?"
"Yeah, I think so," Queson responded.
"Well, get out of those suits and into the inner chamber as soon as you can. 'Scuse me, but I have you on deep disinfection just in case. The suits, too."
Jerry was already deactivating his suit and there was the hiss of air as the helmet seal was broken. He lifted it off, put it down, and then began to climb out of the rest. Randi felt drained, sick, every combination of misery, but she managed to start the same process. He helped her with the last of it, seeing her distress.
She couldn't help but notice, though, that there was something different about him. The cockiness was gone, the cool confidence, the boyish sense of adventure. He looked scared.
"What did you see back there, Jerry?" she asked him, stretching to try and get her back in place and swiveling her neck to try and ease the pain and strain.
"I—I'm not sure," he told her. "Maybe when we look at the video we can see if it was my imagination or what. If it wasn't . . . I don't even want to think of what we'll do next. C'mon, let's go into the decontamination chamber. I need to lie down badly."
"You aren't the only one," she sighed.
She really didn't want to get out of the chamber, which had her lying, naked, on a specially contoured bedlike couch while all sorts of radiation and diagnostic streams and such were played all over her to determine any alien or unusual organisms not present before and, if found, to try and deal with them. It meant lying there, only turning on one side, then the other, then on her stomach and then on her back, but mostly just lying there in a nice, warm, safe cocoon.
She didn't bring up what Jerry might have seen again, or anything else. She was just too damned tired to care now that she felt safe.
A soft bell sounded, and Cross's voice said over the internal intercom, "Okay, you two. You're as clean as you usually are, for whatever that's worth. Come on in and join the crowd."
She groaned. "Do I have to?"
"Yeah, you have to. We're waiting for Li and the Captain to decide what the hell to do next. We've set back down on the Salvage One central complex, but we'll have to see how long or if we stay here. In the meantime, you're free to go to your quarters, take a shower if you want, get a change of clothes, then join us in the conference room."
"I just want to take some painkiller and sleep for a week," she groaned.
"Yeah, well, you might get a nap, but we got some real work ahead of us now. There's too much money lying out there to just leave it, but you ain't gonna believe what we got to do to get it now. Nice, easy pickings! Hah!"
Now she really was curious, but still not curious enough to override the thought that whatever they had seen or discovered would be just as valid after twelve hours of sleep as it would be now.
Still, she welcomed the respite, and she certainly could use the shower, she thought. At least they didn't seem to think that this complex was in any danger. Otherwise, the whole thing would have lifted off the moment they were all safely docked.
Still, as she made her way to her quarters, she couldn't help but wonder how safe those colonists had felt where they were, apparently until the very last minutes.
Maybe, she thought, I'm not going to be able to sleep all that well after all. . . .
Later, a bit refreshed, having eaten something, sitting there with a cup of coffee and under some powerful muscle relaxers from the dispensary, she was better prepared to at least join with the rest of the team in deciding that came next.
The entire ground party was there, which was most of the salvage crew. There was Jerry, smoking one of those foul things he liked without regard for who else had to breathe it; Achmed, eating a pastry; and Sark, looking like he'd just climbed out of his suit and with a three-day growth of beard, slumped in a big oval chair with his eyes closed. Lucky Cross had on nothing more than a robe and sandals and was drinking very strong-looking stuff. Cross was the only person Queson had ever known who mixed powerful alcoholic drinks by color. This one was a pastel blue. It was in a beer mug, and she wasn't exactly sipping it when she drank, either.
Five people in the whole ground salvage crew, but this five was all that was needed to handle even a major demolition and recovery like the colony back over the desert and against the cliffs. Once these big machines went to work, you only had to make sure they were doing what they were told to do.
Randi looked over at Cross. "Okay, Lucky, did you see what Jerry thinks he might have seen but won't tell us about?"
"Nope. Too busy battling those fucking winds to pay much attention to suit monitors. What did he think he saw, anyway?"
"As I said, he wouldn't tell me. There's no playback here?"
"Nope. It's all up top at that moment. So, Jerry, you want to tell us about it or keep us in suspense?"
"Yeah, Nagel," Achmed rumbled. "What the devil could scare you, anyway?"
Nagel reached over, picked up his beer, and swigged it, downing maybe half a liter before he paused. Then he gave a loud, ugly belch.
"Oh, Jerry! If you can't mind your manners go outside and play!" Randi told him, not really grossed out but knowing that Jerry was putting on a performance, either to deflect questions or to show he wasn't as frightened as she'd seen him. She wondered about that most of all. Was it unusual, or had she simply seen him for the first time with his guard down? It sure wasn't down now.
"All right, Jerry, if that's how comfortable you are, want to tell me what you saw when I was being lifted off?" she asked him.
He shrugged. "I still want to see the video, considering the situation and the visibility," he replied, "but, if you must know, I thought I saw a kind of man climbing up the last part of that ladder."
"A man? And that scared you?"
"Well, it didn't make me feel great," he told them. "I said it was a kind of man. All I saw was an arm and a head, but it had the usual requirements. Except that it wasn't right. You remember the texture of that worm thing, whatever it was? Kind of an icky translucent character, like clear glues?"
"Yes. You mean—"
He nodded. "Yep. It was a man made out of that stuff. Not covered by it, made of it. Kind of like a man sculpted out of stiff water or fluid ice."
The ship-to-surface intercom opened at that. "Hello, everybody," An Li's voice came to them. "I just overheard the description and it's basically what we saw and what he said in the debriefing. Take a look. First, real time. Look real sharp!"
The holographic projector over the table in the center of the room showed some static, then suddenly became a three-dimensional replay, without sound, of those last awful moments on the roof, all from Jerry's point of view. He was watching the shape of the shuttle emerge from the storm, then helping Randi position herself to grab the first cable. At that moment he seemed to hear or sense something and turned, and he looked back at the ladder. A right hand, then more of an arm came up as something was climbing the last rungs of the ladder. Then, quickly, there was a figure partially visible, and then Jerry turned and took a running leap and grabbed the second cable even though he wasn't fully in position for it.
"Oooowee! Superman!" Cross noted approvingly. "That's one hell of a leap, there!"
The video cut out at that point. "Any more and you'd get very dizzy very fast," An Li warned them. "Did you see it?"
"Yeah, we all saw it," Sark commented. "Not much to see, though. So fast I dunno if I was seeing what I thought or what he told me to look for."
"Okay, here we go again, only this time we'll hold each frame for one second."
At sixty frames a second, that gave them a good five minutes to look at the very short video, more than enough. In fact, it was almost maddening waiting for that hand to appear, then slowly, ever so slowly, advance, exposing a little more of the person or thing behind it as it climbed the ladder. Jerry had been a good observer, though. It was a very human hand and arm made of something no human had ever been made of.
Now, with agonizing slowness, the head began to emerge, and Randi Queson was suddenly aware that it had become so quiet in the room she could hear her own breathing.
The picture was grainy; the sandstorm wasn't the best environment for clear pictures, but it wasn't so bad that the details couldn't be made out, particularly when isolated and enlarged as An Li had done.
You could see the hair almost to individual strands in some frames, yet there was one thing about it that was very unusual.
"That hair's fixed, like a sculpture," Randi noted, breaking the silence.
"Yeah, or more like gelatin, some kind of clear gelatin," Lucky Cross added. "Weird, 'cause the figure's animated just like a human. Look at how the hand grabs and the muscles implied on the arm flex."
The living sculpture, as they began to think of it, continued to slowly emerge, until they finally saw the full face and part of a shoulder. The other hand was just about to come up to grab the other side of the ladder nearer the top; you could tell that by the very natural climbing motion it was making, much like any of them would look climbing a ladder.
The face was also a living sculpture; the eyes were made of the same stuff, but did give some odd sense of looking around, and the lips parted a bit, revealing some teeth. But that was all they got before it suddenly ended.
Everybody sat back in their chairs. Sark looked over at Cross, grabbed the glass with some of the pastel blue stuff, and took a swig.
"Back home, my people would have considered that a demonic being," Achmed said. "Although I am a rational and logical man and well traveled, at the moment I can think of no other explanation myself."
"Well?" An Li prompted. "It's not like we can take samples and do analysis of this. We need some input, people!"
Jerry shrugged. "Nice to see I'm not nuts or given to panicky hallucinations. I have to assume that if the whole thing climbed up on the roof it would be a copy of a human being in full, probably including his dick and pubic hair. That's what it is, though. There was no muscle inside that stuff. It just knew exactly what a man looked like and was copying everything but the coloration. Since there was more than one, I'm sure of that, we got to assume that the second one was either below or climbing up behind him. I have to admit that it was the teeth that shook me. I mean, why bother?"
"Because whatever it is knew precisely how the human body worked and should look," Randi said, thinking. "I think whatever is required for consistency simply is made, maybe faster than the eye can see, as required. Did you notice the features on him?"
Nagel nodded. "Yeah. Kind of east Indian or South Asian, like the people who built this place. It was copying one of them for sure, as close as it could, but it just doesn't have any pigment. Or, at least, it doesn't have any way to color the various parts of people."
"Okay, so they're alien organisms who can mimic humans," Randi said. "So the next question is, why?"
"Huh?"
"Why mimic us if you can't fool us? They're absolutely related to that worm or whatever. Extensions of it, maybe, or offspring, or maybe just smaller relatives."
"Yeah, but, if they can do that, how come the scenes all over the colony?" An Li put in. "How come they couldn't get through any inorganic substances before and now they know how to throw the switches and force doors open?"
Randi Queson was thinking. "Maybe they didn't know when they attacked the colony. Maybe they learned. Unless we can access the records from the control room we'll probably never know for sure, but I've got a scenario in mind that fits. Maybe it's all wrong, but it's at least a working hypothesis."
"Shoot."
"Suppose those new greenhouses were just being put on line. Until then, this creature, whatever it was, was happy and dumb and living somewhere in that sea down there eating who knows what? Then they ramped up the reactor power to power up the new complex, and test things all out, and that was enough of a jolt or enough warmth that it got attracted to the core. Who knows if it was that big or lots of little ones or whatever? It probably bided its time. Maybe it ate one of the service supervisors in there, at a quiet time, night shift, or whatever, when it might be assumed that he or she fell in. Maybe somebody did fall in by accident. Anyway, it got a sample, and somehow this thing used that sample to adapt to consuming and converting our organic tissue. Little by little, it figured a way in. That buckling was probably some kind of structural mistake or sloppiness that developed over time, but the settlers hadn't bothered to fix it because the radiation levels weren't triggering any dangers and they had other things to do. Heck, replacing some of it might have caused a temporary shutdown, so the maintenance boys went against the political boys and you know who always wins those arguments."
"So far so good," An Li replied.
"Well, it used that to extrude into the control room. I think that, once it came out, it did it with as much speed as it could muster. It simply consumed everything and everybody who fit this new food model."
"You said `extrude,' " Cross noted. "You think it's able to come through the keyhole?"
"Probably, yes. It's certainly a shape changer or it wouldn't have that human copy ability. I don't know what stiffens it, what powers it, or whatever, but I think it can flow almost like a thick liquid. Probably not a keyhole, but those buckled plates in the floor didn't allow all that much room. But they didn't have much time to do anything, and they had no real defense. I think we're dealing with a big single organism, but one that can spin off parts of itself and, although unconnected, use them just like we use arms, legs, whatever."
"But how does it learn?" Sark wondered. "And where's its brain since it does? And why did it take so long to learn stuff?"
"Maybe it didn't," the anthropologist replied. "If it, and lots of extensions of it, wiped out this colony in a matter of a day or so, a colony that had no heavy defenses or even a lot of light arms, it had a ton of experiences and new knowledge. But think of how that must have been incredibly confusing to it, even bewildering. This thing adapts. It's the most adaptable creature I've ever heard of, just judging from what we've seen. But `alien' is a very good term to remember. We don't know its evolution, we don't know its composition, origins, or makeup. Does it reason or just copy?"
"It figured out how to override the fire doors," Nagel pointed out. "I'd call that some good measure of reasoning, particularly since the fire doors weren't tripped in the first place. How could they have seen that? They had to figure it out."
"A point, but we don't know how they did it. Still, I'm willing to admit to a level of reasoning here. They didn't come for us when we were well in and exposed. They had to know that we were part of a larger group, and they held back and followed us. Only when it looked like we were on to them, or were going to get out fast and clean, did they try for us. That shows cunning. Also, we ran ferrets through every square millimeter of that place before we went down, yet they showed nothing organic, no life, and nothing moving. That meant that they were all within the control room area, maybe inside, where our instruments and ferrets wouldn't be able to tell them from the residual radiation."
"Yeah, we didn't send any ferrets into the core area because of the reception problems and the fact that it seemed normal," An Li agreed. "So, it hid. It watched our little toys scramble around, then it watched you two without showing itself even after you found the main body of the thing. It's smart and it's sneaky. But if you look close at one side of the face, it also has problems with the sandstorm. Otherwise, it would just have gone out the side door and waited for you. It came through the fire door rather than going around, so we know it has weaknesses."
"The question is," said Randi Queson, "did it learn what it did by observing and then over years digesting and correlating and meditating on all that it saw, or does it, somehow, have some or much of the knowledge of those it consumed? Even if the former this thing is one of the most dangerous organisms ever found. If the latter, it's the most dangerous organism."
"You know, according to our charter, if this is a reasoning, sentient organism previously unknown we can't disturb it, let alone hurt it, so long as it stays on its own planet," An Li pointed out. "This can make salvage really sticky in a legal sense."
"Okay," Achmed growled. "So how do we kill it?"