As if on cue, he felt, more than heard, a vibration; and moments later a vast cloud of insects came streaming over the horizon, millions of them, forming weird, ever-shifting shapes as they flew, until they almost blotted out the sky above him. Just as quickly they passed, surging toward the far side of the crater — but not before several had dropped to the ground around Pendergast’s feet. Kneeling, he saw they were identical to those he’d seen flying out of the portal.
As he glanced back at the receding cloud, forming and unforming, he spotted a creature flying along the serrated rim of the crater. Huge leathery wings; insectoid head; hairy, swinging dugs... quickly, he pulled a compact Leica monocular from his suit pocket, but he was too late. The creature had dropped down below the rim and disappeared.
Still, he was certain it was of the same species that was at this moment reducing Savannah to a charred ruin in his own universe. Maybe even the actual doppelgänger.
He scanned the sky for others, but it was empty.
In his disorientation and surprise, he’d almost forgotten that time was of the essence. The rim was a half mile away, but in the lower gravity he might be able to get there quickly. He tried running and soon discovered that if he bounded ahead, almost hopping like a kangaroo, he could move rapidly. It took him only a few minutes to reach the spot where the white surface met the black, crusted lava base of the crater rim. He began climbing the slopes, jagged with lava and sliding cinders. But once again, low gravity came to his aid, and he found that as long as he was careful where he landed, he could move up the slope in a series of jumps. He avoided the prickly walking things, which on closer look appeared to be part insect, part plant. In another minute he approached the ridgeline, then crept to the top and peered over the edge.
There, in a rugged landscape of solidified lava a thousand yards below him, was a smooth bowl of red sand: a nest. Along its edges squatted half a dozen of the beasts, wings folded like bats. In the center moved a swollen, bloated creature with shriveled vestigial wings, at least three times the size of the others. It was sitting on what appeared to be the cells of a honeycomb, except — as Pendergast noted when he glassed it with his Leica — the chambers were not six-sided, but octagonal. In every cell, Pendergast could see greasy, wriggling yellow larvae, segmented with wart-like tubercules and thick bristles. Their heads were tiny, ending in sharp, reedlike siphons that stuck straight upward. The puffy creature — perhaps the queen? — was squirting a thick treacle-colored liquid down into each quivering tube, like a mother bird dropping worms into the gaping mouths of her young.
Moving the monocular away from this grotesque sight and glassing the surrounding creatures, Pendergast saw that one of the farthest from the queen had exactly the same scar of a cross on its left wing as did the brute in Savannah. This must be it: the double of the creature attacking Savannah; the one he had come to kill.
Having been a big game hunter in past years, he knew what he had to do. This was going to be a classic big-game-style stalk. But armed with only a handgun, he would have to get close — very close. And he would have to find a way to draw it away from the others: whether he could kill one such creature was debatable, but he had no chance at all against the entire hive.
He returned the monocular to his pocket, tested the direction of the wind with a damp finger, and then began creeping over the ridge.
73
The wind, at least, was in his favor, blowing from the direction of the nest. He didn’t know if the creatures could pick up the scent of a human, but he would not take the chance.
He felt the intense pressure of time. For every minute he spent hunting the beast in this world, people were being killed in his. His watch was useless, but he knew at least half an hour had passed since he’d witnessed the smoking destruction of Savannah on the Times Square news screen. In another thirty minutes, the Savannah he’d seen would have become reality. With this in mind, he redoubled his pace.
Below and to his right, the crater rim graded into hundreds of steep splatter cones — dead volcanic formations created by lava blowing out of a vent. Here and there he could see smoking fumaroles dotting a rough lava plain. This plain offered the best approach to the nest: But there remained the difficult, if not impossible, task of drawing the one creature away from the rest.
Pendergast moved along the slope with exceeding caution, descending into the valley of the cones. The smoke and steam pouring from the fumaroles provided an excellent screen, allowing him to move from one to the next without being observed. The air stank of burnt rubber and sulfur. He moved forward as swiftly as he dared through the forest of outcroppings until he had reached its end. Taking cover behind the cone closest to the nest, he decided to chance climbing it in order to get a better view.
The cone was steep, but the rough lava that formed it offered many hand- and footholds, and he was able to ascend quickly in the lower gravity. At the top was an opening, a narrow chimney of frozen lava about three feet in diameter, a lava pipe or tube in its center widening as it arrowed down into darkness. The cone appeared to be dead, with no smoke or steam rising from it.
He peered over the top. From this vantage point, he had a clear view of the nest, about two hundred yards away. Two hundred yards was, under normal circumstances, the absolute limit of his weapon’s range. He couldn’t get any closer — there was no cover of any sort — and the beasts were sitting around the edges of the nest, looking this way and that, on habitual alert.
He paused to consider the effect of lower gravity and thinner air on the aiming and distance of his 1911. A round would travel farther and have less drop and wind deflection. With the weapon’s seven-plus-one capacity, and a spare mag with another seven, he had fourteen shots to take down the creature and, if absolutely necessary, its nest mates. Those were not good odds.
He briefly considered the possibility that, if he killed the queen, the rest might die. But that was not the case with similar creatures on Earth: kill a queen termite, or bee, and the colony simply bred a new one.
Pendergast wondered how acute their hearing was. Although he couldn’t see anything that looked like ears, he was confident they could make out sounds, given the cries the creature emitted back in Savannah.
He didn’t have much time to work out the problem. He picked up a small rock and threw it far to his right, then quickly peered over the rim with his monocular to observe the effect.
The rock made a small clattering noise about fifty yards away. The effect was dramatic: the brutes suddenly straightened up, their insect heads whipping around in the direction of the sound, bug eyes staring, mouth tubes twitching.
It seemed that their hearing was quite keen indeed.
He noted movement in the distance, coming in over the crater rim. He froze as a shape appeared in the sky. It was much bigger than the others, truly gigantic. He glassed it as it circled for a landing at the nest: it was brawny as well as massive, with a head twice as big as the queen’s, its wicked proboscis slick with grease, the veins in its taloned legs bulging and flexing as it settled in, folding its wings and making soft noises to its nest mates.
This was obviously the male.
Pendergast cursed himself for not realizing sooner the others were all females. Now he’d have to contend with this monster as well. Despite having sworn off hunting, he bitterly missed his Holland & Holland .500/465 royal double rifle, powerful enough to take down anything.