With help from their gene smiths, Vonnie and Ash had grafted synthetic blubber and skin onto the probes’ exteriors. Naked metal wouldn’t sound like a living creature, nor smell like one. Metzler was certain that the hundreds of tube feet commingled with the sunfishes’ pedicellaria were a sensitive scent-and-taste organ. Even in areas where there was no atmosphere, the sunfish must be attuned to each other’s smell, the mineral content in the rock, toxins, moisture, and the tracks of anything that had passed before them.
“The probe’s skin wasn’t the problem,” Metzler said.
“What about its density?” Vonnie said. “We can’t make a probe as light as a sunfish unless we dump most of the hardware. If we—”
An alert chimed on the display. Frerotte rose to his feet, ducking through the hatch into data/comm.
“What’s up?” Ash said.
“Our probes are on the move,” Metzler said. “The sunfish just reentered the catacombs.”
“Contact in three minutes,” Frerotte called. “Pärnits and O’Neal are coming online. Koebsch is signed in, too. They need us in one.”
“Got it.” Metzler looked at Vonnie and said, “Can you redesign the probes if we have to?”
“Yes.” She stood up, eager to join Frerotte in data/comm. “We’d need to leave most of the data gathering to the spies. That’s worked pretty well so far, but it’ll be an issue if the probes move out of range. What if we’re lucky enough to be invited into the sunfishes’ homes?”
“We can send down ten thousand spies,” Ash said. “In another year, they’ll be everywhere.”
“That doesn’t help us now.”
As the three of them walked toward the hatch together, Vonnie caught Metzler’s elbow, letting Ash move ahead of them. She drew Metzler away from the hatch. Then she reached her arms around his neck and kissed him.
32.
He ran his hands down Vonnie’s ribs to her waist. She pressed herself against him. Her lips parted, and she chuckled at the simple pleasure of touching each other.
Her laughter was a low, wanting sound. It invited more. His hands slid to the small of her back.
Frerotte shouted, “Ben! Fifteen seconds!”
“Oh, hell,” Vonnie said as they broke their embrace. Metzler looked into her eyes, checking to see if she was okay. She nodded. Then he moved past.
Vonnie lingered behind, hugging her arms across her breasts to fill the void he’d left. Her mouth worked with a grin that she couldn’t control.
A kiss was an odd thing. In most cultures, kissing had come to have many meanings — affection, sympathy, friendship — but it had originated as a trick of reproduction. By sharing saliva, the man transferred testosterone to the woman, increasing her boldness and her arousal. The emotional component was harder to decipher. There were undertones of devotion and ownership.
The sunfish will have their own tricks, Vonnie thought, trying to cool off. She’d been celibate since leaving Earth. Her body ached and burned.
She must have moved differently as she stepped through the hatch into data/comm, because Ash looked at her sharply. Vonnie grinned again without meaning to.
“Sign in,” Frerotte said.
Frerotte, Metzler, and Ash stood in virtual stations, each of them enveloped in a shaft of holo imagery. Frerotte had prepped a fourth station. Vonnie walked into it, donning mesh gloves as she activated her temp files and preferences with a voice key. “Vonderach,” she said.
Her display included a group feed for most of the crew. A few people were too busy with their own projects to join in. Everyone else wanted to observe their next encounter.
Probes 112 and 113 had squirmed into a new section of catacombs above the tunnel where they’d met Tom. The rock was less dense here. It had bubbled. Most of the openings were scrawny, lopsided pockets. The probes’ line-of-sight never stretched more than twenty meters, although their radar signals bounced as far as three hundred meters before the catacombs slumped over a precipice, creating a blind spot.
Hidden beyond the obstruction were sunfish. The rock echoed with their shrieks, which grew louder and louder.
Vonnie grimaced. The reality was that mecha were ideal for this world. She couldn’t have fit into those holes even if she’d had the guts to try, and, worse, she expected the sunfish to greet the probes with violence. They all did.
“How far away is our next team?” Koebsch asked.
“110 and 111 are five kilometers out,” Frerotte said. “114 and 115 are even further. I didn’t want to pull them from their grids.”
The sunfishes’ screaming resolved into a physical presence. Radar identified three contacts — then four — seven — eight. Tom and Jill led the pack. They fluttered through the jagged rock, their voices flooding every crevice.
112 and 113 answered them. If Pärnits was right, the probes’ tone was welcoming, but the voices of the sunfish increased in pitch, exceeding frequencies over 100,000 Hertz. Their screams became a war cry.
“Here we go,” Koebsch said.
Four sunfish spun out of a gap in the ceiling and latched onto the rock above the probes, clenching their arms, their bodies poised to leap again. It was the same menacing pose Tom had assumed in the tunnel.
“They’re going to attack,” Frerotte said, but Vonnie said, “No, they always display aggression. You need to do the same.”
“She’s right. I can improvise those body shapes,” Metzler said. At his command, 112 and 113 mimicked the sunfish, drawing themselves into predatory, piston-like shapes.
Four more sunfish emerged from a hole in the wall. Tom was among this group. They seized positions on the rock overhead. The probes were surrounded.
From this position of strength, four sunfish showed the undersides of their arms — two arms each — two sunfish from each quartet. Intricate patterns rippled through their pedicellaria and tube feet.
“They’re emitting scent!” Metzler said. “Frerotte, take over 113. Talk to them. I want 112 working on sample capture and analysis.”
“Roger that,” Frerotte said. Sweeping his gloves into his display, he led 113 through a new dance. The probe lifted two of its arms like the sunfish.
“We’re not going to be able to match their scents,” Pärnits said. “They’ll realize something’s wrong.”
“They know the probes are different,” Vonnie said. “Don’t run. If we try to get away, they’ll catch us. Let’s see what happens. Keep talking.”
Beside her, Metzler flashed a smile.
Did he like hearing her argue with Pärnits? There wasn’t time to read his expression. This close to the sunfish, every second was a gold mine. The probes’ telemetry filled with X-rays, linguistic algorithms, and 112’s first chem reports.
“Wow!” Metzler said, laughing.
Everyone was entranced. They were spellbound, even Koebsch. The moment was so exceptional he’d forgotten himself and his prudent nature.
“I think they’re accepting us,” Metzler said.
“The computers think so, too,” Pärnits said, highlighting ten clips on the group feed.
He ran an overlay of four different sunfish repeating the same wriggles through their pedicellaria. It was a contracting motion. It looked like a circle closing into a dot.
“That could mean ’Come with us’ or ’Go inside,’” Pärnits said.
“Tell them ’Yes,’” Koebsch said.
Frerotte ordered both probes to spread their arms and curl each tip upward. Like Metzler, he was smiling. Everyone was talking too loudly now, sharing the same electricity.
Vonnie turned at the chime of an alarm. “Wait. There’s movement back where we left our spies.”