The spirit wall was more than just a baffle behind the door. It joined the roof low enough to force me into a crouch, forming a circular cross section and becoming two inward-curving passageways, one to either side, that followed the wall of the dome-how far around, I couldn't see; the ends were lost beyond the curve. The passages were ramped upward; the floors were made of the same material as the walls and the roof, only the floors seemed spongier.
I crouch-crawled into the branch on the right; that was the way Duke had gone. The passage led up and around through ninety degrees of arc and opened onto a circular room eight or nine meters in diameter and just tall enough to stand in. The leftward passage opened up in the wall opposite.
I had a flashbeam, but it wasn't necessary here. There was an opening two meters across in the center of the roof. Light streamed in through this, as well as fresh air, but the temperature wasn't as cool as I had thought it would be inside. In fact, it was almost stuffy. There was a strong, stifling smell about the nest, somehow familiar; a sickly sweetish odor, but I couldn't place it easily. . . .
The room seemed smaller than I'd expected and the ceiling was lower than it had appeared from outside-of course, those upward-sloping ramps-this was the top part of the dome.
Was there a bottom section? There had to be. Or was it all foundation? There were several openings in the floor, all of them ominously dark. I stood there, hesitating. I was a scientistsupposed to be a scientist; at least that's what it said on my pay vouchers-but that didn't keep me from being afraid. I stood there indecisively and sniffed-that odd-flavored smell....
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I noticed something about the walls; they had a peculiar way of reflecting the light. I forgot the holes in the floor for the moment and turned off my flashbeam; the walls seemed almost-no, they were-translucent. The glare from outside was forcing its way through the material of the dome.
I inspected closer-and found that it wasn't a hardened wood paste at all, but some kind of dried wood-foam-a much lighter substance, but no less sturdy. Wood chips were suspended in it like raisins. I poked it with my knife and it was like carving hard paperboard. The walls of this dome were actually tiny bubbles of cellulose-based glue. That explained their peculiar light-transmitting properties, and they were probably excellent insulators as well. I sliced off as large a chunk of the wall as I could and dropped it into my sample pouch.
The rest of the room was featureless, except for those holes. There was an absolute lack of artifacts, excepting some chunks of chewed-up something, globs of grayish material like masticated asbestos. Some of the globs were almost a meter in diameter. They were stuck casually to the walls like pieces of chewing gum. I shrugged and cut off a sample and bagged it. If these Chtorrans were truly intelligent creatures, you couldn't prove it by this dwelling.
I wondered-where were the eggs that Duke had seen? Probably down one of the openings. There were three of them spaced equidistantly around the sides of the dome. The largest was against the inner side of the spirit wall. The other two holes were against the outer walls of the dome.
I inspected the largest hole first. I shone the flashbeam down it, but it was only another room like this one, and apparently just as empty. The overripe stench was particularly strong here; I decided not to climb down. Besides, there didn't look to be an easy way to climb back up.
The next hole was some kind of a well. It just went straight down and disappeared in blackness. A toilet, perhaps? Could have been; it smelled like it. I didn't know-what kind of droppings did Chtorrans leave? I was beginning to realize all the things I should have known, but didn't.
The last hole was the one with the eggs.
The hole was against the back wall and it was full of them. They were shiny things, each about the size of a tennis ball, deep red but bathed in a milky white ooze that made them look pearlescent. There must have been hundreds of them-how deep was the hole? It was almost perfectly circular and about two meters wide; it seemed to be as deep as the others, but the level of eggs was almost close enough to touch.
So I did something stupid.
I laid down the torch. I unbuckled the tanks and took them off. Then I sat down on the floor and lowered my feet into the hole and started to climb down.
I miscalculated though, and slipped. I dropped-squish!-into the eggs; it was like tumbling into oyster-flavored Jell-O. For an instant, I thought I was going to lose my footing and topple face first into them, but I caught myself against one wall. Then I thought I was going to be sick. My throat went tight, and I had to swallow quickly-and painfully-to keep from retching.
I was standing in a red and slimy-white mess up to my knees. Thankfully, these eggs were fairly recent. I don't think I could have stood it if I had found myself in embryonic Chtorrans. Carefully-I couldn't move too fast because of my unsure footing-I gathered up as many of the still intact eggs as I could reach, bagged them and stuffed them into my pouch. I tried to lean against the wall as much as possible. The feel of those eggs was ... uneasy.
I was shuddering when I finally braced my hands against each side and levered myself out of that hole. Those eggs were sticky, and they smelled like raw fish left out in the sun too long. If I never saw another one, it would still be too soon.
I was trembling violently as I shrugged back into the tank harness and picked up my torch again. Even if it had been only for a minute, that was still sixty seconds too long to be unarmed in a worm nest.
I looked around then for something else to take samples of. There was nothing. Just the walls and the globs of Chtorran chewing gum, and I already had samples of those. I inspected the other two holes again. The pungent smell from the center one seemed stronger, which surprised me-I should have been used to it by now-but otherwise there was nothing I hadn't seen.
I went out through the left-side passage. It was identical to the right.
Duke was standing there, waiting for me. He glanced at the mess on my legs, but didn't say anything. Instead, he gestured over his shoulder. "Go take a look in the corral. Larry's found something interesting."
I wasn't sure I wanted to. I remembered what had been in that enclosure a week ago. I nodded and kept moving.
The enclosure resembled a large frontier-type stockade about ten meters across, only circular. Its walls were nearly three meters high and slanted inward as if the whole were an incomplete dome. The material was the same as the nest, but thicker and darker. There were the same dark plants around the base-the ivy and the basil stuff. I bagged a couple of smaller ones as specimens; the basil was the one with the cloyingly sweet smell. The leaves of the ivy were waxy and had a sticky feeling to them.
There was no opening in the corral wall. Instead, a steep ramp leaned against the side and up beyond by an equal length; it was rough-hinged to seesaw down into the center. Larry was perched at the top. He waved when he saw me. "Come on up."
The ramp was steep, but ribbed horizontally. It was not quite a ladder and not quite stairs, but something of both. Even though I had to use my hands, the climb was easier than I expected.
"What do you make of that?" said Larry, pointing down inside.
I straightened carefully, making sure I had my balance before I looked. Even so, I was startled, and Larry had to grab my arm to steady me.
The interior of that stockade was a swarming mass of-insects. Or, if not insects, then something very much like them. They were large, most of them almost a half-meter long-although some were longer-and black and shiny. Their bodies were slender and jointed like metal-covered wire. Each was fringed with hundreds of flashing legs. They moved across the shadowed floor, twisting and whirling like an explosion of metal pieces.
"Centipedes," said Larry. "Giant centipedes."
"Millipedes," I corrected. "Thousand- leggers."
He shrugged; it was all the same to him. "You ever seen anything like that before?"