Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (72 page)

The visitor suddenly reappeared in their midst, buzzing a little as it spotted the new species and noted how many of the amorphs had appeared.

“There is no sign of Arcan anywhere,” it said dismally. “I have been right around the lake, and there is nothing to be seen except these strange … things. Of course, I can’t go inside the lake, or see what is under the surface.”

“Are they sentient, do you think?” asked Grace.

The visitor flickered in the dim light. “Definitely, I would say,” it told them. “These creatures are moving through the lake, and in and out of it. They are aware of your presence, and they seem independent units. I can see no sign of quantum traces, though, so I would give them a preliminary classification of 3c – sentient but very limited intelligence. Like the birds here that act like large monkeys and look like dinosaurs …”

“The avifauna,” explained Grace. “And we have called the round creatures amorphs.”

The video camera buzzed. “Noted. What are you going to do now? Arcan has been missing for quite some time.”

Everybody turned to look at Grace. She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly as she thought about it. “I suppose,” she said, “that we have to decide whether to go into the lake to look for him, or give up our search.”

Six looked horrified. “Give up the search? We can’t do that!”

“Then you
are
volunteering to go into the lake, nomus?” asked Diva.

Although the light was very poor in the cavern, they could see that Six had changed colour. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, regarded the lake out of the corner of his eye, and then opened his mouth again. “Yes.”

Diva raised one of her eyebrows in surprise. “Are you? Then I suppose I had better come with you.”

“And me!” piped up Grace.

“NO!” Six, who had already foreseen this possibility, held up his hand. “Grace, you don’t even know how to swim, so your going is out of the question. And as for you, Diva, you know I am a much stronger swimmer than you – I can dive, and you can’t. Apart from anything else, we don’t know what will happen in the lake, and it is pointless for more than one of us to go in. No, you and Grace should stay here.” He looked around at them all, before adding, “And if you want my opinion, the visitor should tell the part of Arcan which is still on board the Independence not to come down here!”

That struck a note with the small globe, which whirred excitedly. “You are right! The last thing we want is for the rest of Arcan to come down and get lost too!”

“Exactly! We could find ourselves stranded for ever here in the Pictoris system.” Six pointed out.

The little machine crackled. “Done,” it said after a few seconds. “He will stay on board the trader until we get back.”

“Just as well you persuaded him to stay mostly up in orbit, Diva,” said Grace with feeling. “Even so, we have to try to get the part of him which was in the bracelets back! We have no idea what can have happened to him!”

Six straightened his shoulders, and stretched, cricking his neck from side to side. “Well, wish me luck!” Then he moved tentatively up to the surface of the underground lake, pointedly avoiding the few amorphs which were moving around in the foreground, and let himself slide under the surface of the ortholiquid.

SIX WAS NOT particularly optimistic about this swim. He thought the chances of finding traces of Arcan in the lake were slim to none, but he also felt that they had to try. It would be terrible if they were to leave part of Arcan trapped down here without trying to rescue him.

He sank down into the watery fluid, and began to swim strongly towards the centre of the lake, taking care to disturb the liquid as little as possible. It was ironic, he thought, that his life would probably come to an end here – 30,000 light years from home, in a dungeon on a windswept planet. He had fully expected to die during the battles for Kwaide, and yet he had come through all that virtually unscathed.

He saw an amorph just in front of him in the liquid and swerved to avoid it. It accelerated suddenly, swept past him at a high speed and disappeared towards the centre of the lake, overtaking him easily. His hand detected a slight wave of heat the amorph had made as it passed, and he drew his arm back, surprised. After a moment, he investigated a little more, and found that it was quite possible to track the little creature, simply by following the flashes of heat which swept through the lake. The amorphs could travel quickly through the fluid, then, but left a distinctive pattern of heat when they did.

As fast as it had started, the heat trail dissipated into the surrounding liquid, leaving no trace. He looked around him, until he spotted another amorph cruising past, and then went quickly over to see if that, too, was leaving a heat signature. It was. Being hyperfluid, the ortholiquid simply transmitted the heat in a wave through the lake, but it was definitely detectable for a short time. Six remembered that the Sellites had called the phenomenon second sound. And the amorphs were moving much more quickly in this medium than they had on land. They were clearly very used to traveling in this way.

Slowly Six began to approach the centre of the lake. The roof of the cavern lowered at this point, almost touching the surface of the liquid, so it was relatively easy to see where to go. As he got nearer, he found more and more of the amorphs, until he was touching them as he swam. These, however, were barely moving, though they seemed hotter to the touch, leaving a strong residual heat signature in the lake. Nowhere was there any sign of Arcan, or of the bracelets. He began to lose hope of ever finding the orthogel entity in this enormous area. The lake itself covered macrocubits; there was simply no way he could hope to explore all of it. And he had already dived beneath the surface a couple of times, to find that the lake was too deep for him to be able to touch bottom.

Just swimming in the ortholiquid was a strange experience. It felt almost as if he were swimming through air, due to the lack of friction. Yet for some reason, there was buoyancy, and if he rested his arms momentarily he found himself floating. It was strange.
 

Well. At least it hadn’t ejected him – yet. He rested for a few moments to catch his breath, and then swam on firmly, pushing the amorphs aside, and hoping that they wouldn’t burn him.

Finally he reached the lowest point of the roof, at the centre of the lake. He found to his surprise that, instead of being deeper here, it was more shallow, and close to where the ceiling dipped into the ortholiquid of the lake he was able to stand, although his head almost touched the smooth rock above him. He relaxed slightly, and took stock of his surroundings.

The amorphs were thickly congregated here in the middle of the lake. There must have been hundreds of them, and they seemed not to want to notice his presence. And yet … Six blinked. There
were
three of the creatures right in front of him that seemed to be trying to get his attention. He blinked again. No, he wasn’t imagining it. Three amorphs in particular were bobbing under his hands, trying to encourage him to move. They were quite insistent; the pressure they were putting on him was enough to make him lose his footing on the floor of the lake, and he found his legs beginning to float to the surface again.

As he did so, the three friendly amorphs began to push him along. How they did it, he couldn’t tell, but there was no doubt that they did. They were trying to move him away from the centre of the lake, out into the deeper waters. Just as they did so, he became aware of a loud humming behind him, and turned his head just in time to see the most peculiar thing he had ever seen.

Behind him the thick mass of amorphs seemed to have coagulated into one solid lump, and inside the lump he thought he could see a pattern of holes forming a latticework. Then there was a high-pitched sound of vibration and he had the strong impression of something spinning, yet the group of amorphs apparently remained stationary. Even so, there was a thin throbbing noise which seemed to come from the cluster.

He rubbed his eyes, and peered again. There seemed to be a massive wave running right through the pile of amorphs, starting in the centre like a volcano, and then spreading out in a concentric wave through the bodies of the amassed amorphs and disappearing into the ortholiquid of the lake. There was an orange light coming from the centre of the lake, but as he watched this turned to white, and then a brilliant white flash covered him with light, leaving him almost blind.

At about the same time he became aware of the increase in the waves of heat which were pulsing through the lake. They were rising in intensity, and becoming highly uncomfortable. If he had been any closer he would have been burnt.

Now he realized that the three amorphs had been trying to help him, and he started to swim back in the direction of the shore. There seemed no point doing anything further to help Arcan – it was an impossible task. He concentrated on getting back to the group without having to be shoved along by his self-appointed guard of honour.
 

As soon as he got into earshot he asked the visitor to take a quick trip to the centre of the lake, and to record what was happening there. The sphere whirred its acceptance, though Six didn’t see it go since it was still blended.

The girls pulled him bodily out of the lake with relief.

“Are you all right?” asked Grace, worriedly.

“Phew! Glad to be back!”

“Arcan?”

“No sign. But those amorph things are truly weird!” He told them what he had seen.

The video camera came back. “
Most
interesting,” it said. “We should take a couple of specimens back to the ship for study.”

Grace frowned. “Is that wise?” she asked. “I mean – if they can create that much heat then they could be dangerous, couldn’t they?”

Diva nodded. “You’re right. We shouldn’t take them up in orbit, however harmless they look. Perhaps we could do some limited experiments here, on the surface?”

Six agreed. “
Nothing
is going back to the binary system,” he declared. “There is no way we can risk some kind of epidemic there. Not unless everything has been checked and double-checked a million times.”

“We’ll take a couple to the surface with us then,” Diva decided. “—If we can find any that are prepared to come, that is. They only seem to live down here, so it will be no good looking for any when we get out.”

She looked around. Six pointed to the three which had escorted him out of the lake, still close by. “Those are the ones that seem to have been assigned to my safety,” he told her. “Try those.”

Diva scooped down and grabbed the three he had indicated, and put them hastily into a bag. This she held at some distance from her body until she had determined that they were not about to escape or burn her again. “All right, they seem happy to stay in there, at least for the time being.”

“There is nothing more we can do,” Six told them rather sadly. “I think they must have killed those parts of Arcan which came with us as bracelets. I just hope that this is not an insurmountable loss, that he can function without them. We have to find a way out of here.” He turned to the video camera, which whirred rather uncomfortably.

“
I
can’t help you get out,” it said hastily. “This machine can’t carry weight.”

“Right,” said Six. “Then we will just have to do it by ourselves. Girls!” He pointed eloquently up the rock face.

Grace’s stomach sank. “Isn’t there any other way?” she asked hopefully.

Six grinned at her. “We could always lasso a few of these booby birds and ask them to pull us out.”

Diva opened her eyes. “They are not booby birds! They are very clever!” That made her think of something. “Maybe they could fly us out?”

“Sure. And then they could build us a spaceport before breakfast!”

“Seriously. I could try to establish communication.”

“You are joking, aren’t you?”

“No! It worked before!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Diva, you know these things can’t fly!”

“Of course they can! They are birds, aren’t they?”

“They are still dinosaurs. I told you. They will be gliders, not fliers. They wouldn’t be climbers if they could fly well.”

“They are NOT dinosaurs. They are birds!”

“Dinosaurs. Their claws all face forwards.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it. They’re birds!”

“Dinosaurs!”

“Err … I don’t know how to climb!” Grace’s small voice interrupted them.

Six turned to her immediately. “It isn’t going to be too bad, Grace. It is only this beginning stage that is so vertical. The visitor says the rest is just like walking up a slope.” This was not exactly true, but he needed to make her feel she could cope. “And I will go first so that you can see exactly where to put your hands and feet. You went up and down those ladders on the skyrises on Valhai, so you won’t have any trouble here!” He was wishing to himself that they had thought to bring a rope. He would have been much happier if he could have secured the girls. He knew there were two 60 metre ropes in the shuttle. He would have to get the girls most of the way up on their own.

Grace gave a gulp. “I suppose.” She looked up at the cliff above her, spotted a couple of large insects moving industriously across it, and swallowed. “I’ll try,” she said, in a small voice.

Six gave her a hug. “Well done! You’ll be fine. Diva? Think you can do it?”

“I bet I could beat you to the top, any day!”

Six grinned. “I’d like to see you try!”

Grace made a face. “Isn’t there any other way?”

Six shook his head. “Not unless we want to starve to death in here.” He called the visitor, which indicated its presence with a soft crackle. “Are there any overhangs on the way up?”

“Several. Why?”

Six just looked at it. “Because we won’t be able to get past them?” he pointed out, obviously thinking that a couple of strings of neurons had left the creature under severe brain strain.

“Oh. I will have no problem at all.”

“No.” Six waved both his hands in a how-obvious-can-you-get signal. “You are a machine.”

“I must say, I think you three are very substandard. You don’t seem able to do the least little thing. I honestly don’t know what the orthogel entity sees in all of you.”

“Thank you. The feeling is mutual.”

The machine gave a furious whirr. “I hope you are not suggesting that a 2a category life form is sub-standard? Because if you were, then you might find that this 2a life form might just go away and refuse to help you.”

Six stared in disbelief. “What help are you anyway? You can’t help us get out of this cavern, can you?”

It clicked. “No. But I can accompany you.”

“That’s going to be a big help!”

Grace put up a soft hand. “Six, the visitor will be able to tell us where handholds are, and which the best path is. He will be of great help.”

“There!” said the machine. “At least somebody appreciates me!”

Six glared at Grace. “Spoilsport!”

She tried to raise a grin. “I … I suppose we should get started?” She wondered if the way her hands were shaking would affect her ability to climb.

Six looked up at the forbidding wall of rock that seemed to tower off to infinity above them. “Yes.” He gave a heavy sigh and then exhaled again. “I will go first, then Diva, then you, Grace. Please watch carefully where I put hands and feet, will you? And
try
not to fall off!”

“Speak for yourself, no-name,” said Diva crossly.