As for Ledward, it took all of five minutes for him to become unutterably bored. Unlike the actively engaged Karine, he wasn’t in the least interested in studying trees, water, and dirt. There wasn’t even anything moving that would allow him to practice his aim. Running water and scudding clouds didn’t count as test targets.
At least the stream offered a soothing place to sit. A glance behind him showed the captain’s wife busy filling a small tube with soil. She was wholly oblivious to his presence, as if he had become part of the scenery. That was fine with him. He’d never found scientists’ small talk much of a draw.
She wouldn’t mind, then, if he stepped away and momentarily contaminated a minuscule bit of local atmosphere with a smoke stick. Lighting up, he found a suitable flat rock and took a seat. In the process he disturbed a small area of dark earth. It might have been coated with mold, which would very much have interested the woman he was safeguarding. She would have found the tiny ovoid that crunched under the heel of his boot even more intriguing. Especially the small cloud of motes it released.
Refusing to be swept away by the breeze, they swarmed upward until they were hovering in front of his face.
Irritated, he waved his hand at them, sweeping them back and forth. They still refused to disperse. Inhaling, he blew a smoke ring in their direction. The majority scattered, diffusing into the air.
This might interest the science folk, he mused. Have to remember to tell them about it.
A minority of the black motes did not scatter. Instead, they drew ever closer together, forming a small coherent shape off to one side of his head. The cloud was so small and so diffuse he did not notice it. Unaware, he continued to gaze across the creek, content just to daydream as long as the woman in his charge and the absent Sergeant Lopé permitted it.
As noiseless as the rest of the surroundings, the mote shape hovered near the side of his head. It rose, fell, drew nearer—and extended a portion of itself. The tube was very tiny. So were the eggs it fed into Ledward’s ear.
The slightest itch, infinitely less than what a mosquito bite would have caused, made him rub unconsciously at the side of his head. He didn’t even think about it. There was nothing on this world to worry him. The pathology scans said so.
“Ledward.”
He reacted to the sound of his name by rising and turning too quickly, nearly stumbling into the creek as he did so. The captain’s wife was standing and staring in his direction.
“I need your help over here. And you’d better not be smoking.”
Heedless of what it might do to an otherwise pristine water source, he hastily tossed the smoke stick into the stream and moved to rejoin her. In his haste not to be caught out smoking, he forgot all about what was probably nothing more than a puff of dust.
IX
A chilling mist appeared, until half the jumble of severed trees through which they were now traipsing was obscured. At the same time the terrain grew steep and difficult. The mist slowed their progress further by making everything underfoot treacherously slippery.
Lopé didn’t like it one bit. Always thinking defensively, he hadn’t liked the dense forest, and he liked it even less now that much of it was obscured by fog.
A sound pinged in the mist. It came not from the throat of some unique alien life-form, but from Walter’s multiunit. The synthetic frowned at the readout. An anxious Lopé prodded him.
“Something in front of us?”
“No.” Standing close to Walter, Daniels was studying the same readout. “Not in front of us. Stop.”
The sergeant gestured for his troops to halt. The intermittent breeze stirred the damp atmospheric soup, teasing them now and then with an occasional glimpse of boulders, fallen trees, mountainside. Rosenthal took a step into a puddle of water and immediately froze, fearful she might have disturbed something.
“Not in front of us,” Daniels repeated. She had her head tilted sharply back. “Above us.”
Shrouded by the mist, they hadn’t been able to see it until they were virtually beneath it. Or at least, an awed Lopé thought as he stared upward, beneath part of it. The two gigantic, asymmetrical arms protruded skyward at an angle, as if reaching for something unseen.
They weren’t trees, Daniels told herself. They were part of an artificial construct, gigantic and unfamiliar. But what?
They resumed their advance, everyone occasionally glancing up at the looming, curving sweep of the twin protrusions. They hadn’t gone much further when they found their path blocked by something smooth, striated, almost polished. Tilting back her head again, Daniels found she could not see the top of it. An enormous wall? But if so why here, slapped up against a mountainside?
Coming up alongside her, Walter ran a hand along the facade. Ripples the same color as the main surface indicated the presence of numerous conduits. So tightly integrated were they into the structure that they looked as if they might have grown from it. Or into it. Experimentally, he rapped one with his knuckles, then turned to look back the way they had come.
The arms, the wall, lay in a direct line with the chasm of smashed trees. The crushed growths nearest to the expedition party had been cut off nearly level with the ground. The artificiality of the wall-object combined with the angle of destruction led him to render a preliminary opinion.
“I would say, based on a number of factors, that we have found some kind of vehicle. A ship.”
Lopé grunted. “Goddamn big fucking ship, if it is one.” He mimicked the synthetic’s voice. “I would say, based on a number of factors, that it… didn’t have a very good landing.”
Nearby, Rosenthal started to laugh. It died quickly, smothered by mist and the implications of their find.
As they stood and stared, the fog thinned just enough to see the entirety of one long arm curving overhead. It jutted off the side of the mountain at a sharp angle. The “wall” Daniels had encountered was part of the hull. Much of the vessel—as everyone was starting to think of the artifact—had buried itself in the side of the peak. That, as much as the avenue of downed trees, spoke to the impact with which it had struck.
So overwhelmed was everyone by the discovery that all were startled when Private Cole’s voice sounded sharply over the unified comm.
“Think we found a way in, sir.”
The opening into the ship, if that was indeed what it was, loomed vast, dark, uninviting, and unsettlingly reminiscent of a portion of human female anatomy. The team’s lights probed the gray-black corridor, groping for something solid off which to reflect.
Concentrating on the small circle made by her own beam, Daniels was unable to tell if their surroundings were made of metal, plastic, glass, or something organic in origin. What appeared to be supporting struts could equally well have been the ribs of some gigantic beast through whose viscera they were traveling. Everything visible, which wasn’t much, was tinted with gloom.
Everything looked—wet.
Without hesitating, Lopé led the way, as it was his job. His own light revealed nothing moving: not so much as a worm. There was only a steady drip of water spilling off the edge of the opening that led to the outside world, and the occasional rush of wind. Sometimes the latter blew inward, at other times out. Like a bellows, Daniels mused. Like breathing.