With surveillance robots silently winging overhead, they left the ship and trudged up past what they now called “Boot Hill” to a dome of rough lava that stuck out above the trees. There were plumeria and Wendy flowers about and the smell was heavenly.
From the hilltop they could see “Chip,” the ruddy, pockmarked natural satellite of Griffith’s World cut in half by the sea horizon. It looked like a huge flattened half dome, ten times the apparent radius of Luna from Earth and distorted like a wavering mirage by refraction through the thick atmosphere. A synchronous moon, it would never rise or set, but it always seemed to be doing one or the other, bobbing slightly up and down on the planet’s thirty-four hour diurnal cycle.
Nadine started to undo her suit’s fasteners.
“We’re being watched,” Mike reminded her.
“Good,” she said. “I itch all over. Prickly heat. I feel like one big sweaty itch and I want out.” She gave him a grin. “Mike, there’s not a damn thing out here to worry about. It’s gone now.”
He shrugged his shoulders and glanced at the moon on the sea behind her. The environment was, he thought, almost obscenely erotic. The heat, the odors… Leaves rustled; from the wind or an animal, Mike couldn’t tell. Life all around him. “Are you ready to release the autopsy reports?”
She frowned. “No. It’s been slow—eighty bodies to go yet. One really curious thing.”
“Oh?”
“Endorphins. After seventeen years, in the brains of the ones that weren’t burned, evidence of endorphins. Mike, some of these people died happy. Really happy.”
Mike felt a chill—and not from the slight breeze. Think of something else, he told himself. “Crazy moon. Sits there on the horizon like a big tit. Never goes anywhere.”
Nadine grabbed him, released the fasteners of his suit, and began to take it off.
“Hey,” he laughed. Nudity was no problem; the two people who had brought swimsuits along had quietly abandoned them on reaching the planet. But lovemaking, Mike thought, was a little more private, especially if you’re in charge and didn’t want to look ridiculous. What had gotten into Nadine, he wondered? She’d always been the shy one on public displays of affection.
“Nadine, I feel like someone’s watching us.”
“Please. Shut the surveillance off if it bothers you. But please. The bones, the corpses, the heat, all the bones… Mike, I need you.”
He didn’t resist—in fact he cared too much about his best friend and lover to deny her. His coveralls dropped to the rock as her warm sticky body rubbed against him.
Then she pulled him down on her.
“Your back,” he protested. She was lying on the raw lava of the hilltop.
“It’s OK; it needs scratching. If I get a scrape, I can fix it. I’m the doctor, remember.” She giggled. “I want you, lover. Here and now.”
Then her mouth was on his, precluding further argument.
Nadine’s back, indeed, looked like she’d been lashed when they were done, but she didn’t seem to mind even when they dressed. Mike had to insist that they go to the tiny infirmary. People looked at them as they passed and smiled. Was their recreation that obvious, Mike wondered, or was he just imagining it?
At the infirmary, she gave him a clean towel and disinfectant spray.
“No anesthetic?”
“No. I don’t want it. That’s strange, isn’t it? Some people say sex acts as an anesthetic. An endorphin thing. Ah, rub there.”
The lacerations “there” were deep, with grit still in some of them. “Nadine, that’s raw flesh.”
“Do it,” she demanded.
“Monitor,” he said. “Show Dr. Havel her back.”
The clear space on her wall filled with a picture of her devastated skin.
“Look at that, Nadine. I can’t rub that.”
She looked confused. “No, of course you can’t. But—but I want you to. It would feel good.” She got a strangely puzzled look on her face. “Something’s happening to me, Mike. My sense of pain seems to have been changed. I mean, it’s still there—but I like it. Like a good itch, like I want to rake myself with something sharp and pointy.”
Mike felt a tightness in his gut. “Nadine, when did you start feeling like this?”
“That should be my question.” Her eyes said it all. Despite every test and every reasonable precaution, something was happening. “I don’t know. I was hot, it might have been an immunological reaction. But we re all hot.”
“Scary.”
“I know, Mike. Look, maybe it’s psychological. The people here died happy, and maybe somehow—I’m getting in tune with that. Empathetic.” She laughed brittlely. “But, OK, I’ve got to put myself in the autodoc. Get fixed before this, this empathy gets the best of me.”
Mike kissed her briefly and helped her into the coffin-shaped unit.
Before she lay down, she took his hand. “Mike, about Dena. I wish she were still with us, but whatever it was, I think she didn’t suffer. I think I understand that now. I’m going to put mass hysteria, self-abuse, and sadomasochism on the sleep reader while I’m in here, and study up on it. I didn’t think it could do this, but…” Nadine shook her head. “Maybe something in the environment—a combination of things that are individually benign. See you in the morning.”
We’ve seen the face of the enemy, Mike thought as he watched the autodoc lid slide shut. In a few hours the battle would begin.
Hours turned into days. Nadine identified Dena’s charred remains from bone marrow DNA, ending any hope—or fear—Mike had that she, alone, might somehow have survived.
As it became more and more clear how the colony had met its end, the level of tension had risen among the rescuers. People were looking over their shoulders.
Then they found the horses.
Toward the mountain end of the valley were a dozen waterfalls and sheer lava cliffs that rose vertically out of the alluvial plain. At one of those places, there was a slight basin filled with sand. It looked like a jumble of tree limbs on radar, but there were no trees.
Ian explored the site and found some bleached bones sticking out of the black sand. Excavation revealed dozens of horse skeletons, many with their skulls cracked. It was as if they had charged the wall full-tilt and died trying to butt their way out of the valley.
Dinner had been silent that night. No evidence of an alien presence showed up at all.
Back on the bridge, Mike stared at the holographic image of a very concerned-looking Rodrigo Cruz. He wanted to touch the man, and had to remind himself that Rod was some twenty thousand plus kilometers away, at the L4 point of Chip’s orbit.
“We could bring another shuttle down, within range of the Yeager. In an emergency, we fly it out by infrared data link regardless of crew condition.”
“Or,” Mike said, “we could lose both shuttles. No, stay up there for now.”
“Mike…”
“I mean it, Rod. We have no clue as to how this happened, but Nadine may have it. It seems biological, but all the life-forms we’ve found match their gene patterns stored in the colony’s design plan, so we’re baffled. Until we know more, you are to stay in orbit. Even if we start joyfully blowing ourselves to smithereens, stay up there. Because if you don’t, you might take whatever it is back to Tau Ceti, and we damn well can’t have that. Understand?”
Rodrigo Cruz nodded. “Order received. But Mike, if you go crazy, the discretion is mine.”
“Chaos! I know that. But, Rod, if that happens, use your head. Don’t stick my memory with another thirty lives!”
Or another planet, or a starship bound for Earth, or… Mike didn’t want to complete that worst-case thought.
Rod looked down and brushed a shock of jet black hair from his brow. “Order received.”