Lt. Leary, Commanding (36 page)

Daniel frowned. "Yes, all right," he said. He locked his visor down so that he could look into the burrow under light enhancement. "Barnes, Dasi. As soon as Sentino is clear, you'll start prying these blocks out so that a larger person—"

He patted his belly deliberately.

"—can get through the opening. And Sun, I'll take the other impeller, please."

"Sir," said the gunner's mate. He handed Daniel the weapon.

When Daniel used that tone, nobody argued—even if they fancied their own marksmanship beyond what they thought their captain was up to. Daniel had more real out-in-the-woods experience than any of the spacers, and he trusted himself
not
to shoot more than he did Sun or even Hogg.

He grinned at Sentino. "Go ahead," he said. "And Jeshonyk, you're probably the next thinnest. Take your gear off and get ready to pull Sentino back by the ankles if she gets stuck."

"Stuck!" Sentino sneered. She squirmed into the opening with as little difficulty as the creature from the night before had shown when it escaped. In truth, there wasn't much difference in weight, and the spacer had more of hers in her legs and arms.

Her boots disappeared down the tunnel. Barnes and Dasi lunged into their work, chopping the shovel blades into the bank and ripping away the dirt. They were used to working together. Even though this task wasn't a familiar one, they didn't get in each other's way.

One slab sagged, then the whole construct collapsed on itself. Barnes thrust his shovel in high, then lowered it and dragged out several feet of rock and dirt with the back edge.

Hogg looked at Daniel and raised an eyebrow in approval. They'd both dug enough holes to appreciate how much strength Barnes's action had required. Dasi leaned forward and cleaned much of the remainder.

"
Unit, I'm through,
" Sentino called over the intercom. "
Holy God, it's a real cavern in here! It opens up just a couple yards in and it's huge!
"

"I'm next," Sun said, stripping off his belt and flexing his shoulders. He grinned apologetically at Daniel. "Get some command authority in there."

Anger and a direct need for him had brought the gunner's mate back from a funk that seemed even more unreal now that it was past. Sun simply wasn't a man you could imagine that happening to.

"Right," said Daniel. "Take a shovel with you. I don't know how far I trust this tunnel now that we've widened it—"

He moved aside. Barnes and Dasi stepped back together with their shovel heads locked, making a final sweep of the debris.

"—and I want us to be able to grub it out from both sides if there's a cave-in."

Sun put his knife in his teeth and took the shovel from Barnes. He thrust it ahead of him as he followed Sentino.

"Barnes," Daniel said, nodding to the man. Anything Barnes's shoulders cleared would probably pass Hogg's belly, so it was a good test. "Miquelon, Jeshonyk, Dasi, Hogg, and me. Hogg, you take your impeller."

Nobody protested at the order of entry, not that a protest was going to change anything. There was a risk to splitting his small force, but Daniel was unwilling to let one or two of his personnel scout a burrow system that held scores or possibly hundreds of the creatures who'd dug it. A team of eight with an impeller could support itself.

"Vesey, you and your section will watch our gear and the entrance from outside," Daniel continued. Barnes had grunted his way into the tunnel and Miquelon was ready to follow; she held her equipment belt ahead of her rather than dropping it on the ground as the others had. "You'll have a shovel and the other impeller. Don't get frozen on the hole. There have to be other entrances, and we don't need whoever's inside—"

He'd meant to say "whatever," not "whoever."

"—to swarm around us from behind, all right? Over."

Vesey and Matahurd stood in sight at the corner of a bush whose tasseled crown fluttered occasionally like a stand of ultramarine flags. The midshipman trotted forward to take the weapon and shovel, speaking briskly. Daniel couldn't hear the words, so she was addressing the members of her section alone over the intercom.

Daniel nodded mentally, though his head didn't really move. She had the makings of a good officer.

"I don't expect you'll have any trouble," Daniel said as he gave Vesey the impeller. "But if I were sure of that, I wouldn't leave a guard to begin with."

Hogg, wheezing like a rooting sow, thrust himself into the burrow. Daniel waited a comfortable five seconds and followed. It was tight, but never so constricting that he wondered if he was going to be caught. At the far end of a tunnel no longer than the six feet Sentino had estimated was—

Well, was a paradise of pastel light and plants which swooped toward the twenty-foot ceiling like constructions of cast plastic. The spacers wandered among them in amazement. The air was noticeably more humid than that in the ravine outside.

"Don't get out of sight of one another!" Daniel said. Besides humidity, the air was perfumed. Gnatlike insects drifted through the mist of light, and—

"Where's the light coming from?" Daniel called, lifting his visor out of the way. He didn't need its enhancement nor protection from windblown grit. "Hogg, can you tell?"

"Sir, I think it's just blocks of quartz built into the ceiling for light guides," Jeshonyk said, pointing his arm as Daniel joined him under one of the bright patches. It was a good eight feet in diameter, made of quartz wedged into place with other bits of stone. The contruction was similar to that of the entranceway lining.

"Naw, it can't be," Dasi said, prodding one of the gorgeous plants with the point of his knife. "We'd have seen it from up above. Look, you can see a whole line of them down this tunnel. No way we could've missed all of that."

Daniel squinted. There were at least . . . ten bright patches in the ceiling, with more merging into the distance beyond just as Dasi said. The separation between pairs was about thirty feet, making Daniel's estimate of possibly hundreds of creatures in the burrow now seem absurdly low. Besides this central aisle of plantings, narrow passages led off to either side.

Daniel considered the pattern of light and shadow above him. The quartz blocks weren't uniformly translucent, and the faces refracted light so that the composite lens looked as though a giant spiderweb lay across it. Even so, Daniel could see that the western edge was brighter than the east.

"I believe Jeshonyk's right when he says light guides," Daniel said. "Given the depth of the floor here beneath the bottom of the ravine, there's about six feet of roof. If the inlets slant outward, they'll catch some light whenever the sun's up—but there won't be any huge mass of quartz on the surface like there is down here at the outlet."

"What kinda animal does that?" a spacer asked. Nobody replied, perhaps because the answer was too obvious when you thought about it.

Sun dug the shovel into the cavern wall, then withdrew it with a puzzled expression. Only a trickle of dirt followed the blade. "Hey, Captain?" he said. "There's plastic on the walls or something."

Daniel walked over to the petty officer, rounding a plant set into the floor in a stone-lined tub. All the cavern's vegetation was soft-bodied though it was more the size of trees than ordinary plants. The genera were unfamiliar to Daniel; certainly they weren't native to Sexburga's arid surface today.

"I know what it is," offered Dasi, holding up his left index finger. On it gleamed a drop of clear sap from the wound he'd pricked in the plant he was examining. "Hell, they gotta cover the walls with something or it'd all fall in, right?"

"How's chances we find some water and get the hell outa here?" Hogg muttered. He held the impeller across his chest, ready to spin in any direction and throw the weapon to his shoulder. He was perfectly poised, but he was also as uncomfortable as Daniel had ever seen him.

Daniel touched the wall with his bare hand. As Sun had said, there was a clear, slightly resilient, coating over the gritty clay. It felt warm to the touch.

"Yes, we'll do that," Daniel said, but his mind was more on the wonder of this
place
than it was on Hogg's question or the more general business of reaching the beacon to summon help. They wouldn't delay here—they had their duty, after all—but by heaven! what a report Commodore Pettin and the civilized universe would get. "This was perhaps the most scientifically useful piece of make-work and treachery that I've ever heard of."

"Hey, look!" Sentino cried. She darted into the passage.

Daniel heard a
spreek!
that might have been Sentino but probably wasn't. He stabbed his knife into the sidewall to free his hands and ducked to follow the crewman down the passage. He wasn't sure even Sentino would clear the low ceiling if she stood upright.

He supposed she was still carrying her knife in her hand. She almost had to be, since she'd left the sheath with the rest of her belt gear. Grabbing a creature with teeth like the one last night bare-handed was dangerous, but Daniel would just as soon Sentino not stab—

"I got—" she called. There was a tearing-paper sound. Sentino staggered back into Daniel's arms; the knife slipped from her flaccid right hand. Dropping the remains of a fist-sized puffball on the passage floor, the creature she'd grabbed with her left squirmed away. It began to dig furiously in the sidewall with spadelike forepaws.

There was a dry smell in the air, dizzying though not unpleasant. Daniel slapped his visor down with his left hand and felt the filters clamp his nostrils.

The hairless creature looked sideways at him through the spraying dirt and gave a wail of despair. Daniel grabbed Sentino under the arms and backed, pulling her with him. She was a dead weight, but he could feel her heart beating strongly through her coveralls.

Something came around the bend just beyond where the creature was digging into the sidewall. It completely filled the passage, brushing cascades of soil down where its shoulders rubbed. Daniel couldn't get a good look at it since his own body blocked most of the light coming from the main gallery, but he could tell that it was black and bigger than he was.

The smaller creature went "
Wheek!
Wheek!
Wheek!
" and vanished, apparently dropping into an adjacent passage. The newcomer paused, its eyes focused on Daniel and Sentino. Its four canines projected forward to crisscross like paired ice-tongs, perfect tools to take living prey. It hunched like a cat preparing to spring.

Daniel stepped over his crewman's body. "Unit, get Sentino out of here!" he shouted. "Somebody drag her—"

The predator flowed toward him like a snake striking. It pushed off with its spatulate forepaws but folded them back against its sides in the course of the motion.

Daniel caught it by the neck, shoulder-broad and covered with a ruff of bristles. The fangs clashed just in front of his visor. The impact was like that of a charging bull. Daniel had braced himself, but it threw him back anyway.

His right boot tramped something soft—Sentino's outflung hand, but he lifted his foot and felt her snatched back with no more ceremony than a case of rations would get. That was fine: dinner was just what she'd be if they didn't get her back quickly.

Daniel couldn't hold the creature, didn't
want
to hold it, but if he didn't continue fighting it would push him over backward. Then the only question was whether it'd tear his throat out or start by devouring his belly.

"Watch this bastard!" he wheezed. "I don't know how big . . ."

His toes skidded slowly backward down the passage. He felt his left knee start to buckle. He twisted that foot sideways in a desperate attempt to get more traction.

The jaws closed again. This time the tip of one lower fang hit Daniel's visor and slammed his helmet against the passage roof. Despite the shock-absorbant liner, Daniel's consciousness shattered into white light. As he felt himself going over, he kicked out blindly with both feet.

The predator made its first sound, a
whuff
of surprise as Daniel's bootheels hammered its muzzle. It flowed forward again.

Hogg, leaning over his master, socketed the impeller in the predator's right eye and squeezed the trigger. The
whack!
of the weapon's circuitry merged with the
CRASH!
of dense bone disintegrating at the impact of the hypersonic pellet.

The creature lurched into the central gallery and sprawled, its paddlelike hind legs covering Daniel's torso. Its body struck Hogg and sent him spinning away, though he still kept hold of the impeller. Sun drove the shovel into the creature's neck; it skidded off, gouging the floor and narrowly missing Daniel's hand. Other spacers were hacking with their knives.

"Get back!" Daniel shouted. "It's dead! Back away before you hurt somebody!"

He clutched his hands in to his chest, reminded by the comment that "somebody" might very well be him. The creature's head and feet twisted upward in a convulsion; Daniel used the respite to snatch his body clear of a weight that he hadn't been able to shift with his own strength.

He got shakily to his feet. Barnes put an arm around him and lifted him several steps back to where the creature's spastic movements couldn't knock him down again. Its limbs were modified for digging, but claws that cut through rocky clay would be just as destructive if they met human bone and muscle.

The creature flopped over on its spine and finished dying. Hogg's pellet had lifted the back off its skull, but the face wasn't seriously damaged save that one eyesocket was empty.

It weighed half a ton. It was as ugly as anything Daniel had ever seen. The foul breath that had blown from its mouth as it attacked now hung over the body like a miasma.

Apart from the crossed fangs, however, the face was undeniably human.

The
Princess Cecile
's utility aircar was little more than a frame linking a quartet of fan nacelles to the open-topped cabin where Adele, Tovera, and two spacers sat on benches of metal webbing. Adele shifted. The seats weren't as uncomfortable as they looked, but they looked
very
uncomfortable.