Keryleyn was waiting for me in the three small chambers we called home. So was Rudy, bouncing up and down at the fact that we were there unexpectedly. I took a few moments to pick him up and let him give me an enthusiastic licking, the dachshund equivalent of kisses.
Then I set Rudy down and turned to Keryleyn, since she was the meteorologist. “How long will this flare last?”
“At least a day and a half, but that depends on whether there’s more than one coronal mass ejection. Every once in a while there is, like the historic Carrington Event. This looks to be worse than that.”
I took her word for it, although I had no idea what the Carrington Event was or when it had occurred.
Then, as we knew would happen, almost all the power was cut off and the block-points opened to reduce, if not eliminate, damaging induced current flows. That left the limited, and highly shielded, basic emergency power.
We sat down on the floor cushions and spent an hour playing with Rudy, who was confused, because when he went to the door, one of us said, “No.” Quietly, but firmly.
His whine was inquisitive.
“Because it’s not safe out there, or it won’t be shortly,” Keryleyn told him.
Rudy looked at me questioningly, then whined again, meaning that we always took him out when we came home. He’d use his sand and gravel box, if he had to, but he much preferred the outside, as did we, because it meant much less cleaning.
“As your mistress said,” I told him, “it’s not safe for us…or for dachshunds.” Or in his case, for the only soft-coat wire-haired dachshund on Nieuwhuis, or possibly anywhere off Old Earth.
Later, in early evening, Arlena and Pietro came by, since they had quarters in our dome, if on the other side. He had a deck of old-style pasteboard cards—useful indeed when power was limited. Thankfully, his cards were nearly indestructible, some sort of plastex, kevlex, and synth mix that was also resistant to Rudy’s teeth on the occasions when he could grab a card; not an impossible feat, given we were sitting on the floor, under the dim glow of the single emergency lamp, and using my equipment case for a table.
Rudy would watch for an opportunity to seize a card, after which he’d prance around so proud of himself. So, in a way, we all were playing two games at once—cards and get the card back from Rudy.
We laughed a lot…and tried not to think about how much damage the geomag storm might be causing around the domes, but finally Arlena and Pietro left. It was fairly late, and the three of us went to bed, with Rudy ending up next to Keryleyn. It got cool enough I almost wished Rudy were between the two of us.
Almost two days passed before full power came back…if two hours before dawn. I couldn’t get back to sleep and finally dressed and got ready to go to work. When Rudy saw me put on my work jacket, even though I hadn’t planned to leave for almost an hour, he raced to the door, tail wagging furiously, and offered a series of inquisitive whines that quickly turned to verging on demands.
“Rudy, it’s not even that light out yet.”
The whines and tail-wagging continued unabated.
Keryleyn looked from Rudy to me, grinned, and then said, “Dom…you’ve got more than a little time…and he has been very good. Just stay away from the jangle.”
With her expression and Rudy’s enthusiasm, I didn’t see that I could do much else, nor did I really want to. So, we stepped out into the corridor, and Rudy hurried toward the outer door, his short legs moving swiftly. I checked the monitor beside the door but didn’t notice anything unusual.
When I opened the dome door, and Rudy and I stepped out onto the walkway, I could see that it was far hazier outside than it had looked through the monitor. Not only that, but there were fire-spider webs all along the edge of the jangle, and silvery lines running from the jangle across the mossgrass and the still-struggling crabgrass, and even across the walkways. Except the lines weren’t lines; they were bands, more than five centimeters wide. I’d never seen anything like it, and no one had ever mentioned such a display.
I couldn’t help frowning because the monitor hadn’t picked up any of that. Or maybe the webs were so fine it couldn’t show them. But they didn’t look that fine. Both the webs and the bands looked almost solid, with a greenish-silver light of their own in the dimness before dawn.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something moving, moving fast. I turned to see the largest molecat I’d ever seen—a giant molecat, the size of a cougar, with fangs that would have been right at home on an ancient sabre-tooth tiger, bounding toward us, somehow avoiding the fire-spider webs and the green-tinged, silver-banded paths that wound everywhere.
Before I could say a word, or even move, Rudy barked! Really barked, the way only a determined dachshund can bark.
That one series of barks echoed through the stillness like shots from an antique rifle and seemed to strike the mole-cougar physically—enough that it lost concentration and focus—and one forefoot landed in the middle of one of the silver-banded lines.
Green aurora-like fire flared from the silver banded lines and enveloped the mole-cougar with the sizzling of an electric current jolting through the beast. Even before the dead body stopped twitching, hundreds, no, thousands, of tiny fire spiders appeared out of the mossgrass and converged on the corpse like a silver tide.
I could have hugged Rudy, but I was too worried. I just wanted to get the two of us safely back inside without touching any of those shimmering lines, or before any of the silvery fire-spiders could get inside the dome. Since Rudy had planted himself firmly at my feet, I just scooped him up and withdrew.
Withdrew? Hell… I fled and closed the dome door.
Once inside, I grabbed the emergency comm by the door and immediately broadcast a warning.
Danger! Danger! Shimmering silver lines and webs carry high-energy charges…
I’m not sure I was even that coherent, but I did get the word out, and no one got jolted or irradiated.
The biologic types are still investigating how the local eco-system stores the mag-flux energy, but early indications are that their communications are more electronic rather than sonic. It seems the fire-spiders lay down those bands and lines after large magnetic events, and the mole-cougars have always been around—but they’re rare because most prey is small.
Although the techs theorize that the sonic energy of Rudy’s bark disoriented the mole-cougar, I still don’t know why Rudy barked, But whatever the reason, I’m still alive because a miniature, cream, soft-coat, wire-haired dachshund didn’t turn out the way he was expected. And, to this day, how he knew or felt what to do, I haven’t the faintest idea.
And I don’t care. I’m just grateful…and so are a lot of other people.
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. is the bestselling author of over seventy novels encompassing two science fiction series and four fantasy series, as well as several other novels in the science fiction genre.
Mr. Modesitt has been a delivery boy; a lifeguard; an unpaid radio disc jockey; a U.S. Navy pilot; a market research analyst; a real estate agent; a director of research for a political campaign; legislative assistant and staff director for a U.S. Congressman; Director of Legislation and Congressional Relations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; a consultant on environmental, regulatory, and communications issues; and a college lecturer and writer in residence. In addition to his novels, Mr. Modesitt has published technical studies and articles, columns, poetry, and a number of science fiction stories. His first story was published in 1973. He lives in Cedar City, Utah.