"Um," I said. "Hey! There's a Pentax-Pro in here! With eighty gigs of Zilog layered memory!" I held it up to show her. The batteries were fresh. "It's brand-new. You know, I used to dream about equipment like this."
"Help yourself. There's more where that came from."
"Huh?"
"The army wants you to have that equipment, McCarthy. Remember? There's a war on."
I grabbed the lantern and came back forward. "Here, hang this up somewhere so the light slants sideways. I'll get better contrast." I started shooting micro-closeups. The details visible just on the camera's preview screen were startling. "Are there any more of those little naked men?"
"Here's a couple-oops, you don't want to see what they're doing!"
"Yes, I do! No, I don't." I took their picture anyway.
"Voyeur," said Lizard.
"They're just licking the powder off each other," I said. "Besides, they might be female." I kept taking pictures. There was a thing that looked like a tiny pink cauliflower-or a walking brain. It was a gnarly little lump with red veins all over its surface. It looked dreadful. I noticed even the other creatures thought so-they kept out of its way too.
"This is incredible!" I said. I was probably repeating myself. I didn't care. I was too excited. "We're seeing things no other human being has ever seen! This is extraordinary! This must be the day everything hatches at once and feeds on everything else. This is wonderful. I don't think we've seen half of these life-forms before!"
Lizard said, "If that's true, then the joke's on you."
"Huh?"
"You just finished postulating that the Chtorrans would probably bring only their essential support species. Look at this zoo on the window! Do you still believe that?"
I lowered the camera for a second and looked. The window was totally covered with swarming Chtorran bugs and beasties. Long ones. Thin ones. Short fat juicy ones. Pink and black and purpleand red, all shades of red. They glistened in the reflected light of the chopper. Beyond was only darkness. It was already night outside. When had that happened? I'd been so entranced, I hadn't even noticed when the sun set. This closer spectacle was too overwhelming. The bugs were glittering little bodies now. The window fairly sparkled.
"Yeah," I said. "I do. This is still only a very narrow slice of an ecology. A planet might host a billion different species. We're seeing only a few hundred here. The Chtorrans probably haven't brought more than a few thousand altogether. Just what they need." I started to lift the camera to my eye again, then looked at it, stopped, lowered the camera and looked at Lizard again. Grinning.
"What?" she said.
"I take it all back," I said. "Well, part of it anyway. The Chtorrans haven't traveled any lighter than we did. We didn't pack just the bare essentials for this mission. We took everything we might conceivably need." I hefted the camera. "And so far, we've needed everything we've brought. They did the same."
Lizard laughed with me. She opened the last two beers and passed me one. She lifted hers high and toasted me. "Well, here's to the bugs. Here's to you."
I returned the toast. "It's a great show." We watched in silence for a while.
I tried to imagine what the ground outside must look like. If the moon was bright enough, it would be covered by a shimmering carpet of night creatures and insects. I wondered if any Earth lifeforms were part of that feast out there, and if they were diners or dinners.
Probably dinners. This was a feeding frenzy. These creatures were all so busy eating that they didn't even notice when something else came along and started eating them. I watched as new creatures kept landing on the windshield and joining the orgy. Where were they all coming from?
Lizard decided to call the little naked men "finger-babies." They reminded her of a set of tiny dolls she had owned a long time ago. The creatures had pale, nearly transparent skin, and they crawled along the window with slow deliberate motions. They had big bug eyes. It made them look expressionless-or perpetually frightened. It depended on your mood. They would open their tiny wide mouths and touch their tiny red tongues to the pink powder or the baby pipe cleaner bugs. Then they'd lift their heads while they swallowed and look slowly from side to side, before returning to their feast.
For a while, there were a lot of them. Many of them were licking the powder off each other. The window was covered with naked, squirming pink bodies. "It looks like you got your Blue Mass after all."
"There's something disturbing about the comparison," she responded. "Is that what human beings look like from above?"
As the night grew darker, more of the nightwalkers began to arrive. The little vampire creatures had pale faces and large mandibles. They grabbed the finger-babies with their upper pair of arms and pulled them into a disturbingly erotic embrace. The finger-babies didn't fight-not even when the vampires opened their mandibles and started eating. The vampires ate them like little plump sausages. They bit and chewed, bit and chewed, and the finger-babies died. They waved their little pink arms and kicked their little pink legs, but the nightwalkers kept eating. The finger-babies had bright red blood.
For a while, the window was covered with carnage. "I think I hate them," Lizard said.
"Careful," I said.
"Huh?"
"You're anthropomorphizing. You're making judgments about these creatures. Your species prejudice is showing. What if the finger-babies are really embryonic worms?"
She looked at me, startled. "You don't really think so?"
"No, I don't-but I just wanted to caution you not to make assumptions. I already made one mis-assumption about the bunnydogs. I don't want to make any more. These things are probably some kind of newt-like organism with a coincidental resemblance. In their adult form, they could be vicious serpents. Or maybe not. Don't make hasty judgments."
Lizard grunted. That was her only answer. We both fell silent again.
Something snake-like with a red belly slithered across my side of the window. It had a thousand flashing legs, and it plowed through the other life-forms like a vacuum cleaner. Oh no. "Lizard," I said.
"Yes?"
"You'd better call for help."
"Huh?" She looked at me. "I thought you said we were safe."
"I may have to revise that estimate. You were wondering what comes next?" I pointed. "See that? That's a Chtorran millipede. If that's what comes next, we'd better get out of here. I don't think the shelterfoam will stop them."
TWENTY-THREE
WE GOT the call at twenty-two hundred hours.
The radio beeped. Lizard leaned forward and flicked it on. "This is ELDAVO."
"All right, here's the scoop. The blimp is on its way. They left Portland an hour ago. They've got a full rescue and medical team aboard. They should be over you by midnight. They're homing in on your beam."
"What about the dust?"
"They're aware of the problem. We all are. There isn't an engine running in the Sacramento Valley today-at least none that were left exposed. But Portland has the most experience with this kind of problem-you can thank Mount Saint Helens for that. They've already got the necessary technology on the shelf."
"I'll send a thank-you note to the volcano," Lizard said.
"They'll be monitoring the air all the way in. When they start hitting ten particles per million, they'll shut down the jets and drift with the wind till they're overhead."
"Drift?" asked Lizard skeptically.
"That's right. But they've jury-rigged a cold-rocket assist for local guidance. They can maneuver, and you won't have to worry about the fire danger. If they have to, they can fly on canned air for a short distance-at least far enough to get out of the pink if they head out over the ocean. It's all been thought out."