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The bugs appeared.
They hopped from behind boulders and ice banks, twenty or more, soaring toward him. Some thirty
centimeters long, they had ten claw-footed legs each, a tail ending in twin spikes, a head on which half a
dozen antennae moved. Mimir s light shimmered purple off their intricately armored bodies.
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For a second Flandry seriously wondered if he had lost his mind. The old records said Wayland was
barren, always had been,always would be. He had expected nothing else. Life simply did not evolve
where coldwas this deep and permanent, air this tenuous, metal this dominant, background radiation this
high. And supposing a strange version of it could, Mimir was a young star, that had coalesced with its
planets only a few hundred megayears ago from a nebula enriched in heavy atoms by earlier stellar
generations; the system hadn t yet finished condensing, as witness the haze around the sun and the rate of
giant meteorite impacts; there had not been time for life to start.
Thus Flandry s thought flashed. It ended when the shapes were murderously upon him.
Two landed on his helmet. He heard the clicks, felt the astonishing impact. Looking down, he saw others
at his waist, clinging to his legs, swarming around his boots. Jaws champed, claws dug. They found the
joints in his armor and went to work.
No living thing smaller than a Llynathawrian elephant wolf should have been able to make an impression
on the alloys and plastics that encased Flandry. He saw shavings peel off and fall like sparks of glitter.
He saw water vapor puff white from the first pinhole by his left ankle.
The creature that made it gnawed industriously on.
Flandry yelled an obscenity. He shook one loose and managed to kick it. The shock of striking that
mass hurt his toes.The bug didn t arc far, nor was it injured. It sprang back to the fray. Flandry was
trying to pluck another off. It clung too strongly for him.
He drew his blaster, set it to needle beam and low intensity, laid the muzzle against the carapace, and
pulled the trigger.
The creature did not smoke or explode or do whatever else a normal organism would. But after two or
three seconds it let go, dropped to the ground and lay inert.
The rest continued their senseless, furious attack. Flandry cooked them off him and slew those that
hadn t reached him with a series of energy bolts. No organism that size, that powerful, that heavily
shelled, ought to have been that vulnerable to his brief, frugal beams.
The last two were on his back where he couldn t see them. He widened the blaster muzzle and fanned
across the air renewal unit. They dropped off him. The heatskyrocketed the temperature in his suit and
drove gas faster out of the several leaks. Flandry s eardrums popped painfully. His head roared and
whirled.
Training paid off. Scarcely aware of what he did, he slapped sealpatches on the holes and bled the
reserve tank for a fresh atmosphere. Only then did he sit down, gasp, shudder, and finally wet his
mummy-dry mouth from the water tube.
Afterward he was able to examine the dead bugs. Throwing a couple of them into his pack, he resumed
climbing. From the top of the ringwall he discerned the wrecked flyer and slanted across talus and ice
patches to reach it. The crash had pretty well fractured it to bits, which facilitated study. He collected a
few specimen parts and returned to Jake.
The trip was made in a growingly grim silence, which he scarcely broke when he re-entered the boat.
Aloneness and not knowing had ground Djana down. She sped to welcome him. He gave her a
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perfunctory kiss, demanded food and a large pot of coffee, and brushed past her on his way to the
workshop.
VII
They had about 200 kilometers to go. That was the distance, according to the maps Flandry had made
in orbit, from the scoutboat s resting place to a peak so high that a transmission from it would be
line-of-sight with some of the towering radio transceiver masts he had observed at varying separations
from the old computer centrum.
 We don t want to get closer than we must, he explained to the girl.  We want plenty of room for
running, if we find out that operations have been taken over by something that eats people.
She swallowed.  Where could we run to?
 That s a good question. But I won t lie down and die gracefully. I m far too cowardly for that.
She didn t respond to his smile. He hoped she hadn t taken his remark literally, even though it contained
a fair amount of truth.
The trip could be shortened by crossing two interveningmaria . Flandry refused.  I prefer to skulk, he
said, laving out a circuitous path through foothills and a mountain range that offered hiding places. While it
would often make the going tough, and Djana was inexperienced and not in training, and they would be
burdened with Ammon s supplies and planetside gear, he hoped they could average thirty or forty
kilometers per twenty-four hours. A pitiful few factors worked in their favor. There was the mild gravity
and the absence of rivers to ford and brush to struggle through. There was the probably steady weather.
Since Wayland always turned the same face toRegin , there was continuous daylight for the span of their
journey, except at high noon when the planet would eclipse Mimir. There was an ample supply of
stimulants. And, Flandry reflected, it helps to travel scared.
He decreed a final decent meal before departure, and music and lovemaking and a good sleep while the
boat s sensors kept watch. The party fell rather flat; Djana was too conscious that this might be the last
time. Flandry made no reproaches. He did dismiss any vague ideas he might have entertained about
trying for a long-term liaison with her.
They loaded up and marched. More accurately, they scrambled, across the crater wall and into a stretch
of sharp hills and wind-polished slippery glaciers. Flandry allowed ten minutes rest per hour. He spent
most of those periods with map, gyrocompass, and sextant, making sure they were still headed right.
When Djana declared she could do no more, he said calculatedly,  Yes, I understand; you re no use off
your back. She spat her rage and jumped to her feet.
I mustn t drive her too hard, Flandry realized. Gradual strengthening will get us where we re going faster. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]