Toby thought of his mother’s warm breath. So long gone, into that black place where the dead dwell. He had come a long way since then. What would she think of him now? Would she be proud?
“Let’s go see,” he said abruptly.
He glided over to the wall of green skin. With care he drew his knife from its boot sheath. There is nothing in space more dangerous than a sharp edge, and Toby handled the long blade carefully. He measured distances to the skin with his eye and cut one quick stroke—then backed off.
Nothing came rushing out to assault him. Not even a puff of gas, which he had half expected.
<Tiny one, entry might not be advisable—>
“Aw, stuff it. You got us out here. Let’s do the job.”
Toby thumbed his jets on for just an instant, enough to send him directly through the cut.
The beast was complicated. Toby kicked off one of the orange lattice struts of the thing’s skeleton. He pushed aside a tangle of flexible pipes and reached the red fluid sac.
<I regret I cannot follow you.>
“You’re too fat to get in here, eyes-on-sticks. Let me take a sample of this stuff.”
He jabbed a needle probe into the thick-walled sac, let his carrybottle fill with the red liquid, and slapped a patch on the hole. No need to let the thing bleed to death, just because he wanted a drop or two.
He nearly got snarled in the pipes as he made his way out. They seemed to know where he was, and Toby realized this was some slow-moving defense. Tangle up the intruder, and wait for some guard to come round him up. Something told him he didn’t want to be around that long.
Quath took the bottle and quickly reported. <Organics, soluble nutrients, traces of iron and potassium.>
“Can we use it?”
<Your metabolism may welcome it.>
“I can make a passable soup out of anything that won’t kill us.”
Little fuzz-balls were rolling along the jade skin. They were no bigger than his hand but there were lots of them, coming from all along the length of the sail-snake. Several reached the skin just below where Toby hung in free space.
“Come on—we’ve outlasted our welcome.”
Just as he said it two fuzz-balls leaped across the gap. They struck his boots and kept going, sticking lightly and rolling quickly up his skinsuit. He felt a prickly heat, right through his suit.
Quath made a furious buzz. Toby slashed at the fuzz balls with his knife. He got one off him but the other rolled onto his helmet. There it started spreading, like a pool of gray oil.
“It’s eating through!” Toby batted at the stuff, but it wouldn’t come off.
Quath grabbed his boots with one telescoping arm. Then she stuck a tube out of her side and aimed it directly at Toby’s face. A torrent of air blew over him. The gray oil rippled but clung, started to break up into drops—and suddenly was gone.
<The rule of opposites. A creature which lives in vacuum will dislike air.>
Toby gasped in relief. “I’ll have to remember that.”
<Oxygen is corrosive, though we seldom notice. It will eat steel, given time, leaving only rust.>
“I’ll have to swear off the stuff.” He wriggled away from an approaching fuzz-ball. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Quath helped him get free. <I believe considerable liquid can be extracted from this creature without endangering its metabolism.>
“Like a blood transfusion, sort of?”
<Not truly. I believe these fluids do not circulate like blood. They are long-term energy reserves.>
“It’s okay to take them?”
The team assembling in the ship was going to search for plants, or even raid mechs if there were any here—but certainly not slaughter animals. Family Bishop had a deep moral code against using animal products, too, unless the animal cooperated, like dairy cows. To damage living things was to be no better than mechs.
<This creature feeds off others. It cannot object if we do likewise to it, while allowing it to still live.>
“Ummm. So you’re a moral philosopher.”
<All are. It is a condition of living.>
They were halfway back to Argo when Cermo called over comm,—Hey! What in hell are you—
“Got some juice you should look at,” Toby said.
—You got that alien to take you out. That’s direct disobedience of an order.—
“I was hauled along for the ride, Cermo.”
Quath confirmed, <He is truth-filled.>
Quath hardly ever intervened in a human conversation. Toby was surprised and pleased.
