Nigel studies the EM. It sags to the side, catches itself. Finally it begins to walk, legs heavy and ponderous. “It’s moving toward you.”
Damn. Wish I could—
“Have a go at that animal. Get a quick look, up close.”
Okay.
Pause. Sheets of dust drift in a breeze. The EM fades from sight, moving with thick-jointed weariness.
Well I—this is—
“What?”
It’s all black and, and it’s, it looks … burned.
For a moment Nigel doesn’t breathe. Then he nods. “Right. Get straight away from there. The EM hasn’t got much energy left, I expect, but there might be enough.”
Enough to what?
“Not trample you. Not this time, no. It could fry you, though, friend Daffler. With well-focused radio waves.”
Though he cannot see through the rolling mist of fine dust now moving up valley, Nigel watches the EM move on his overlay, and he smiles, thinking of the vast slow creature, exhausted, its capacitors drained and running now an anaerobic stored energy, as it lumbers forward to claim its rightful prey.
Nigel crouches in the shifting murk, watching the finger of orange work its way down the mountain. More lava. The land shrugs and murmurs. He waits.
The EMs are clustered half a klick away and Bob will not allow any closer contact until a larger team comes on duty. There are many other interesting sites scattered around Isis and teams are working them all: digging in the worn old cities; classifying flora and fauna in the downslope passes; dipping into the rust-rich wealth of life beneath the seas; tramping through the arid twilight lands near the terminator.
The entire expedition has now taken on the wide, scattered tone of the fragmented specialties themselves. A busy buzzwork. First they will collect the data, and then they will think. But they do not see that what the data say depends in the end on how you think, and Nigel feels again the strange impatient lust that drives him forward, that always has, that goes through and finally, becomes part of the serenity that sits behind his mental darts and dashes, so that he cannot simply gather facts like wheat, he has to inhale this place and see it whole, become the five blind men and the astrophysical elephant, let the greased pig of this world slip through his arms and yet leave behind on each pass a skimmed lesson, so that by accretion he builds it up, hears the EMs that lie beyond the remorseless hark of the data, the clatter of facts.
Hey they’re moving, comes from Daffler.
“Righto,” Nigel sends merrily in X-band.
Bob says he’s putting afresh team on in an hour. Sylvano and his guys.
“Hell, Sylvano’s a biomech man.”
There will be a communications specialist in the team, don’t worry about that, Daffler says blandly.
Nigel shrugs, realizing that of course Daffler is the communications man for this miniteam, and thus thinks that’s the most important role. The comm people have been riding high lately, sure that understanding EMs rests on knowing how they evolved to see and speak in the radio. Yet they hadn’t a clue about the hunting, and the discovery only two hours ago of the EM ability to burn down prey at hundred-meter range has obviously shaken Daffler and Bob and everyone.
So much for the predictive power of science. Yet they should have guessed something of the sort, Nigel muses.
With Ra fixed in the sky, all regions of the planet would have a steady level of illumination. Only the eccentricity of the Isis orbit would make Ra sway slightly through the year, a mild wobble. In the constant pattern of shadow and light, or amid the dust storms and fine mist, the ability to probe, radarlike, would be valuable to a predator. Ordinary eyes—passive, easily blinded by the dust—would be less useful. And in the wan light of the terminator zone, prey with optically sensitive eyes would be nearly blind, even more vulnerable.
But the crucial ability was, as always, killing. So the logic of evolution has pressed the radio eye into service. With oxygen at a premium, chasing down prey could easily exhaust an EM’s energy reserves, making it vulnerable. Far better to fry a target and approach it cautiously. The radio eye could probe, identify, and kill—and then probe again, listening for telltale signs that the targets nervous system had gone out of business. All this, without coming close enough to risk the prey’s claws or horns or hooves. So with evolution’s marvelous economy, the eye did everything; seeing, talking, killing, even cooking. And the mind behind the eye struggled to improve perception, resolution, accuracy. The eye and the mind must have evolved together, perhaps in a bootstrapping loop like the hand/mind link in man.
Nigel, they’re drifting your way.
“As I expected,” he mutters to himself.
What? What’s that? Look, if you have something in mind, Nigel, I would just as soon not have Bob jumping down our throats about—
“Quite. Worry not, friend Daffler. I’m simply here to see what I can see.”
There will be plenty of guys down here in an hour. You tell them what to look for and—
“I’m not quite sure myself.”
Pebbles rattle against his plates and the land heaves beneath him, an orange flare burst through the shrouding dust, and Nigel sees the descending streams of orange again, bigger now, spilling down the burnished rock faces hundreds of meters above.
Jeez, it’s picking up again. That western face might slip down any moment, I’d say.
“Geology’s not your department, Daffler. You’re the comm man. I’m the jack-of-all-trades.”
Well, yes, but simple—
“Nothing down here is simple. Mind the EMs, eh? They’re having a go.”
What? Oh, I see. They’re heading toward you. Straight for that flank of the ridge.
“Right. You can scarcely ask me to maneuver around them, not since Bob’s warned us off close contact until the big team arrives.”
Uh, yes. But—
“Closing down now, if you don’t mind. I want to be sure I’m not seen.”
Uh-huh, Daffler grunts suspiciously, but his carrier falls silent.
