Li had set down on a small creek overgrown with Cashling soak-grass: a frost green reed that could grow profusely in shallow streams, forming deceptive "lawns" that hid the water beneath. A childish part of me wanted the diplomats to step out for a stroll in the "meadow." There was no real danger, since the stream was only knee deep, but I would have liked to see Li and Ubatu cursing at sloshy shoes. Instead, they both stayed in their plush swivel seats, not even glancing toward the door as I slipped out into the creek.
Water surged up my calves, but didn’t penetrate the hermetically sealed fabric of my suit — not the tiniest sense of dampness. This particular suit could cope with temperatures from -100° to +100° Celsius, had a six-hour air supply, and was tough enough to withstand low-caliber gunfire. I felt foolish hiding inside such extreme protection when Li and Ubatu just wore conventional clothes. However, tightsuits were compulsory for Explorers in uncontrolled situations, and our foray into Zoonau definitely counted as uncontrolled. Besides, without the suit I wouldn’t have had storage space for all the gear I wanted to carry. The suit’s belt pouches and backpack let me bring every Exploration essentiaclass="underline" my Bumbler, a first-aid kit, a few emergency supplies (light-wands, rope, food rations, a compass)… and my stun-pistol.
Many Explorers despised stun-pistols. The guns emitted hypersonic blasts, supposedly strong enough to knock out attacking predators on worlds where such predators lived; but the pistols often had no effect, since alien carnivores frequently didn’t possess the sort of nervous system that could be frazzled by hypersonics. On the other hand, I didn’t have to worry about dangerous animals on Cashleen. I did have to worry about Tut doing something irrational, and the gun would work fine on him. One shot, and he’d be unconscious for six hours.
By which time, the Balrog situation would be resolved, one way or another.
Tut did a few dozen stride-jumps on the riverbank. This was and wasn’t a sign of derangement. Explorer policy strongly recommended loosening-up exercises at the start of mission: getting used to the feel of your tightsuit. However, stride-jumps weren’t nearly as useful as slow stretches and rotating the joints (arm circles, hip circles, knee circles). Jumping around wildly just raised your body temperature and made your suit’s air-conditioning work harder.
So I did some squats and extensions as I took stock of our situation. Zoonau’s dome dominated the skyline fifty paces away. It rose more than a hundred stories high, a great glass hemisphere that sparkled in the midday sun. The sparkles were all blood red — the interior of the dome had clotted solid with spores, blocking any view of events inside.
The entry tube stood out from the rest of the dome, mostly because of its construction materiaclass="underline" a gray pseudoconcrete that contrasted dully with the dome’s glinting glass. I recognized the concrete look-alike as chintah — a Cashling word that meant "garden." Though it seemed like plain cement, chintah was a complex ecology of minerals, plants, and bacteria. Under normal conditions, chintah’s living components did little but hibernate, keeping themselves alive through photosynthesis or by eating dust from the air. However, any damage to chintah set off a frenzied round of growth, like the scrub vegetation that rushes to fill gaps caused by forest fires. Within days, any gouges would be covered over with rapid response microorganisms. Then the microbes themselves would gradually be replaced by more solid growth, the way trees slowly reclaim land clogged with underbrush. Chintah’s complete healing process took a Cashling year… by which time all trace of the original damage would vanish.
So I wasn’t surprised the chintah entry tube looked perfectly intact, despite centuries of wind, rain, and snow. What did surprise me was the door on the end: a flat slab of metal that should have rusted in place long ago. As I watched, the door swung open without a creak, exposing shadowy darkness beyond.
"Hey look, Mom!" Tut said. "Like a haunted house. Last one in is a zombie!"
He ran for the opening. I took a second too long debating whether to shoot him in the back with my stunner. By the time I unholstered my gun, Tut was out of range. Three seconds later, he reached the entry tube and disappeared inside.
I had no chance of catching him — I was a strong runner, but Tut was good too and his legs were longer than mine. When I reached the mouth of the tube, I found myself hoping he’d been stopped by a solid wall of moss closing off the tube’s other end… but there were no spores in sight, and no Tut either. He must have sprinted straight through the passage, into the streets of Zoonau; and the Balrog had let him go.
Did that mean the Balrog approved of whatever scheme my crazy partner intended? Or was it possible the Balrog hadn’t expected what Tut would do? The moss could predict the actions of normal humans; but what about the insane? Even the Balrog wasn’t infallible — somehow, for example, those Fasskisters had caught the Balrog unawares, captured some spores, and used them in ways that made the Balrog furious. The Fasskisters had suffered for their presumption… but the incident showed the Balrog didn’t anticipate everything. Sometimes lesser beings could still manage surprises.
"What are you up to, Tut?" I muttered.
As I entered the tube myself, I got out my Bumbler. It was a stocky cylindrical machine about the size of my head; in fact, two weeks earlier, Tut had painted eyes, nose, and mouth on both his Bumbler and mine. (I’d stopped him from smearing mayonnaise on the left sensor ports to simulate the goo on my cheek.) Naturally, Tut had used paint that withstood every solvent Pistachio kept in its storerooms… so Tut’s portrait of my face stared back at me as I powered up the tracking unit.
The top surface of the Bumbler — the "scalp" area, if you’re still picturing the machine as a head — was a flat vidscreen for displaying data. I keyed it to show where Tut was, as determined by a radio beacon I’d planted in his backpack when he wasn’t looking. Generally, Explorers didn’t use homing transmitters; they could be deadly on survey missions, especially if you were investigating a planet where carnivorous lifeforms could "hear" radio waves and use them to hunt prey. (Explorers found it unhealthy to be flashing a big loud "Come eat me" signal.) But that didn’t matter on a tame planet like Cashleen… which is why I’d hidden a beeper in Tut’s gear for exactly this kind of emergency.
A blip flashed on the Bumbler’s screen: Tut, still running, heading deeper into the city. But the knotted nature of Zoonau’s streets made it impossible to tell if he had a goal in mind or was just turning at random whenever he reached a corner. Either way, his path was a sequence of zigzags, loops, and switchbacks, reflected by the blip on my screen.
A voice yelled in my ear. "What’s going on, Explorer?"
Ambassador Li. Who’d cranked up the volume on our shared comm link, either because he didn’t know better or didn’t care. I almost did the same with my own end of the link, but decided not to be petty.
"My partner," I said, "has proceeded ahead to reconnoiter. I’ll be joining him in a moment."
"What’s the Balrog doing?" That was Ubatu. Her voice sounded strangely eager… but I put that down to more ghoulish fascination with aliens that ate people.
"I don’t have visual contact yet," I said. "Just a second."
I’d stopped halfway down the entry tube in order to use my Bumbler. Now I walked the rest of the way forward, feeling my heart thud in my chest. There were no Balrog spores directly in sight, but a dim ruby glow shone through the door in front of me, as if a bonfire burned just around the corner. I paused before the doorway, took a long slow breath, then peeked around the frame.