"I can't take the chance," he feebly replied. "It's my career."
"You're kidding me, right? Right now there's more crucial things going on than your little pothouse! Pardon me, but didn't you see the fucking spaceship that just flew over our heads?"
Trent was melting down from the pressure. He was standing right in front of the head shack on the end, which still had Slydes's key in the dead bolt. Just as he raised the gun's sights to Nora's face--
Something thunked on the head shack door.
Something inside.
Trent's eyes widened on her. "What… was that?"
"Who cares?" Nora shrieked, her face red as a cherry. "Let's go!"
"I'll bet it's Jonas," Trent murmured. "Slydes admitted he didn't actually see him die…"
Another thunk on the door. Trent reached out.
When he turned the knob, the bolt clicked, and-
"Holy fucking shit!"
– the door popped open as if hit by a battering ram. Nora saw at once what had been exerting such pressure against the door.-.. and so did Trent:
Hundreds of pink, shining, twenty-foot worms.
The scorching air that gusted from the head shack smacked Nora in the face with a smell like fresh manure. The worms existed as a shivering mass, covering the head shack floor to a depth of several feet until Trent had opened the door. It was a dam break, and Trent found himself instantly standing in the mass that poured out.
Shock and revulsion turned Trent's face white. When he tried to scream, only the most meager gasp escaped his throat. He all but uselessly emptied his magazine into the creatures that quickly coiled up his legs.
Nora moved backward, half paralyzed by the sight herself. She noted that she'd been wrong in her estima tion, as she saw now that some of the worms were stout as firehoses, and much longer than twenty feet. Several reared their eyeless heads above the mass as if to gloat over their catch, while Tent failed very quickly to escape. He was halfway to the knees in shivering worms.
Bugged eyes sought Nora: "Help me!" he begged.
Not a chance, Nora thought.
It was all Trent could do to stay on his feet. Worms coiled up his arms now, and his waist: Soon he was cloaked in them. He tried to wade out of the mass when one fatter worm spun round his neck and shot its head down his throat. The worm's body began to throb in waves as it began to empty its digestive enzymes into Trent's stomach. Two more thinner worms struggled down the back of Trent's shorts, seeking an alternate orifice. Trent's eyes looked on the verge of ejecting from their sockets.
More and more of the mass poured out, making a shivering pink carpet before the head shack. Nora kept stepping backward.
Eventually the largest worm of all emerged, raising above the mass cobralike. It was close to a foot in girth… and God knew how long.
Though its head had no eyes, it seemed to look right at Nora.
Nora ran.
(VIII)
If their vocalizing could be properly converted and heard by a human, it wouldn't sound like "words" at all, but something more like Morse code. They didn't communicate via sonics, in other words, but by fluctuations in ambient pressure transceived by the theta waves in an autonomic cerebral ventricle. When they were out of their own atmosphere, transponders in their masks trafficked their speech back and forth, through pulses of aneroid signals. They spoke in millibars and dynes, not-sounds-.-
But they had words, just like humans or any highly evolved.life form. They even had their own equivalent colloquialisms, profanities, and figures of speech.
"Where's the damn colonel?" the major asked.
The sergeant was wondering that himself as the manometer in his mask relayed his superior's query. "He said he'd meet us at the debark point, sir." He checked the grid readout on his task strip. It read: "And this is the debark point."
The major looked up. "I don't see the LRV. Maybe the regauge system didn't fire."
He's really worrying, isn't he? the sergeant thought, amused. "It's right there, sir."
The shadow roved over their faces. It took some squinting but eventually the major saw it, and sighed in relief. "That's incredible. The obfuscation systems work so well in this atmosphere."
"It's the nitrogen, sir."
The line of the particle synchrotron element glowed faintly above them, extending from one end of the ship to the other. The ship was called a lenticular reentry vehicle, which counterrotated gravity by manipulating nucleons and forcing them to divide and permute their para-atomic particles within a controlled field. It was simple.
Not so simple was the dilemma of the colonel.
"Maybe he was killed," the major said.
"By the humans?"
"Why not? They killed the corporal."
.The corporal wasn't very smart. And our reflexivity is twice as fast as the humans'."
"Do you think one of the specimens in the field got him?"
"Not unless the methoxychlor dispersors in his utility dress malfunctioned. I wouldn't worry about it, sir. The colonel probably wanted to double-check the control station one last time before debarkation."
The major didn't respond. It was clear he was concerned. One troop was already dead.
They remained in the small clearing as the LRV hung silently above them. To the sergeant's side hovered a Class I antigravity pallet, loaded with the specimen samples and prototypes, plus all their data-storage pins. Everything else had been left at the control station and would be destroyed by the blast.
The major was rubbing his gloved hands together. Nervous. He checked his own task strip and shook his head.
He doesn't know what to do, the sergeant realized. They should send field officers on these missions, not science administrators.
The major tried to maintain his acumen of authority, but wasn't doing a good job. "Sergeant… what exactly are the emergency operating instructions for a… situation like this?"
"We must be fully debarked and out of this planet's stratosphere at least ten points before count-off, with or without all personnel."
"When is count-off?"
"Fifteen points from now, sir."
The major stared off.
"Sir, if the colonel doesn't get back here in time, we have to leave him. The data from the mission is far more important than one officer."
"Right," the major said. He sighed again. "Open the egression port, Sergeant. Let's man our stations and prepare to debark."
The sergeant smiled behind his protective mask. It's about time. "Yes, sir," he said and pressed the proper sequence on his task strip. I've had just about enough of this planet.
(IX)
"Push! Push!" Loren yelled.
"What's it look like I'm doing! Playing fucking polo?" Nora pushed for all her adrenaline was worth, her hands pressed up against the aft of the Boston Whaler. When she'd stumbled into Loren back on the trails, she'd followed him to the lagoon he'd promised was there… and the boat.
"It's only midtide!" he fretted. "I don't think we can get it over those rocks!"
"Don't think negative, damn it!" But Nora could easily see the large boulders pocking the shallow water. It's this… or swim, she knew.
The water rose up to Nora's chin as she pushed. The side of the hull scraped some rocks. Water churned around her body, the current at her knees almost strong enough to push her off her feet.
"I don't think it's going to go, Nora!" Loren shrieked.
Nora could see up ahead: two outcroppings of rock sticking out of the water. The grim fact whispered in her ear…
We're going to have to thread this boat between those rocks. Otherwise, we'll have to swim andwouldn't you know it? It's hammerhead season…
"Push! Hard!" Loren wailed.
The hull grated against the rocks. Just as their forward motion would stop, a high swell came in, lifted the hull, and then the boat glided through.
"We did it!"
Loren was taller, but Nora had already submerged. Bubbles erupted from her mouth as her feet were no longer touching bottom. Shit! she thought. I'm too low to grab the rail…