“I think … I’ll need it …” he panted.
Swooping. Flying. A grain in the deep clotted darkness, insect flying into the harsh glare of the bulb.
The mouth swallowed him.
SEVEN
Nigel woke as they docked.
Sleep had helped. His vision was nearly right now; quick turns of his head brought only momentary confusion.
Nikka had gotten him to a bunk and he had waved aside all talk. There was more to come, he could sense that in the scattershot babble over the comm lines. So in the long journey floating up through the vent, he had slept. Now he lay resting and listened to the Lancer line.
Goddammit we’ve got to move
Yeah no telling what that thing will do to us if we try to leave after this
Hell yes that Watcher’s got word from Earth sure as we have
Look at it, things moving on its surface again
Just lights looks like to me
Bob you want to send some servo’d squad down there have a look
Naw can’t you get it straight this is no time for half measures
Ted! I say we shouldn’t try anything so dangerous, I mean the Watcher around Isis let us go
Lissen to him crawlin’ on his belly about how the damn thing might let us go if we’re good boys don’t make trouble Jesus
There was no point in trying to intervene in the hubbub aboard Lancer. His stock was at an all-time low, even though Walmsley’s Rule had turned out true.
They left the submersible and crossed the bleak purple ice. Carlos rattled on about the Lancer concensus, the rage, the horror, but the words went by Nigel without stirring him.
He leaned on Nikka for support as they shuffled away from the lake, boots crunching on ice. A finegrained fatigue laced through him, bringing a giddy clarity.
His suit had burnished marks where the big creature had apparently tried to hold onto him. He had never noticed.
Near the fissures something a curious pale gray covered the ice. It stretched across the plain in long fingers. In places it seemed to seek the full sunlight glare from Ross.
“What’s that?” Nigel gestured.
“Some kind of plant that can grow in vacuum, I’d guess,” Nikka said.
Nigel paused to look at the stuff. It was crusty on top. He thumped it with a fist. It clenched. “Grips the ice, looks like,” he said. “Marvelous.”
This thin remnant cheered him. Life had crawled out onto even this blasted, hostile place. Life simply kept on. Blindly, yes, but undefeated.
“Looks a bit like algae,” he said, squatting. “See how it holds onto the ice?” He tried to pry up the edge. With considerable effort he managed to lift an inch-thick slab the size of his fist. The ice under it was pitted. It oozed a filmy liquid. When he let go the pancakelike algae flopped back down onto the ice.
“Come on,” Nikka said, ever the efficient, careful worker. “Let’s get to shelter.”
“Comin’, luv,” Nigel said in a parody of a British accent.
He felt oddly elated. Emotional currents moved in him.
He watched the crews laboring on the plain, beneath a black sky. For an instant he tried to see them as the Watcher would: Bags of ropy guts, skin shiny with grease, food stuck between their teeth, scaly with constantly decaying cells that fell from them as they walked, moving garbage, yellow fat caught between brittle white bones, stringy muscles clenching and stretching to move a cage of calcium rods around, oozing and stinking and—
He shook himself. The machine cultures had been in the galaxy a long time, since the first inhabited world committed nuclear suicide. They were an accidental fact of the universe, arising from the inappropriate response of the organic beings. But that did not mean they would reign supreme, that their vision was any more true than his own oblique perspective.
Earth needs all the information it can get
With nine years’ time delay?
You heard that message they picked up from the Pacific. People out there afloat, workin’ with the Skimmers, talkin’ to ’em, waitin’ for those gray amphibious things to come up to the surface after they landed—
He’s right, we got-to get information, figure out what’s goin’ on, how these Watchers work, send it Earthside to help them
Damn right Ted we got to
Now listen, I’m as brassed off as any of you at all this delay but believe me I want us to have a full consensus here
What the hell you saying?
You don’t act, Ted, we can replace you last, real fast—
Plenty of people can step right in, take over
