Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (498 page)

“Who would?” LeCleur’s expression was grim. “We’ll draw a couple of rifles from stores and be ready when the door opens, even though the only thing that might spill in are dead bodies. Remember, the live muffins are all up top, migrating southeastward. They’re traveling atop the ones who’ve been suffocated.”

Bowman nodded. LeCleur was right, of course. They had nothing to fear from the hundreds of compressed muffins that now formed a wall enclosing the outpost. And if anything living presented itself at the open door, the automatic hinges would slam it tight at a word from either man, without them having to go near it.

With a nod, Bowman rose from the table. After months of freely roaming the plains and rivers beyond the outpost, he was sick and tired of being cooped up in the darkened station. “Right. We’ll take it slow and careful, but we have to see what’s going on out there.”

“Migration’s probably been over and done with for days, and we’ve been wasting our time squatting here whining about it.”

The rifles fired needle-packed shells specifically designed to stop dangerous small animals in their tracks. The spray pattern that resulted subsequent to ignition meant that those wielding the weapons did not have to focus precisely on a target. Aiming the muzzles of the guns in the approximate direction would be sufficient to ensure the demise of any creature in the general vicinity of the shot. It was not an elegant weapon, but it was effective. Though they had been carried on field trips away form the outpost by both Bowman and LeCleur as protection against endemic carnivores both known and unknown, neither man had yet been compelled to fire one of the versatile weapons in anger. As they positioned themselves fifteen feet in from the front door, Bowman hoped they would be able to maintain that record of non-use.

Responding to a curt nod from his partner signifying that he was in position and ready, LeCleur gave the command to open the door exactly two inches. Rifles raised, they waited to see what would materialize in response.

Seals releasing, the door swung inward slightly. Spilling into the room came a stench of rotting, decaying flesh that the outpost’s atmospheric scrubbers promptly whirred to life to deal with. A line of solid brown showed itself between door and reinforced jamb. Half a dozen or so crushed muffin corpses tumbled into the room. Several exhibited signs of having been partially consumed.

After a glance at his partner, LeCleur uttered a second command. Neither man had lowered the muzzle of his weapon. The door resumed opening. More tiny, smashed bodies spilled from the dike of tiny carcasses, forming a small, sad mound at its base. The stink grew worse, but not unbearably so. From floor to lintel, the doorway was blocked with dead muffins.

Lowering his rifle, Bowman moved forward, bending to examine several of the bodies that had tumbled into the room. Some had clearly been dead longer than others. Not one so much as twitched a leg.

“Poor little bastards. I wonder how often this migration takes place?”

“Often enough for population control.” LeCleur was standing alongside his partner, the unused rifle now dangling from one hand. “We always wondered why the muffins didn’t overrun the whole planet. Now we know. They regulate their own numbers. Probably store up sufficient fat and energy from cannibalizing themselves during migration for enough to survive until the grasses can regenerate themselves.

“We need to record the full cycle: duration of migration, variation by continent and specific locale, influencing variables such as weather, availability of water, and so on. This is important stuff.” He grinned. “Can you imagine trying to run a grain farm here under these conditions? I know that’s one of the operations the company had in mind for this place.”

Bowman nodded thoughtfully. “It can be done. This is just the primary outpost. Armed with the right information, I don’t see why properly prepared colonists can’t handle something even as far ranging as this migration.”

LeCleur agreed. That was when the wall of cadavers exploded in their faces. Or rather, its center did.

Still sensing the presence of live food beyond the door, the muffins had dug a tunnel through their own dead to get at it. As they came pouring into the room, Bowman and LeCleur commenced firing frantically. Hundreds of tiny needles bloomed from dozens of shells as the rapid-fire rifles took their toll on the rampaging intruders. Dozens, hundreds of red-eyed, onrushing muffins perished in the storm of needles, their diminutive bodies shredded beyond recognition. A frantic LeCleur screamed the command to close the door, and the outpost did its best to comply. Unfortunately, a combination of deceased muffins and live muffins had filled the gap. Many died between the heavy-duty hingers, crushed to death, as the door swung closed. But—it did not, could not, shut all the way.

A river of ravenous brown poured into the room, swarming over chairs and tables, knocking over equipment, snapping and biting at everything and anything within reach. Above the fermenting chaos rose a single horrific, repetitive, incessant sound.

“
PEEP PEEP PEEP PEEP
…!”

“The storeroom!” Firing as fast as he could pull the trigger, heedless of the damage to the installation stray needle-shells might be doing, Bowman retreated as fast as he could. He glanced down repeatedly. Trip here, now, and he would go down beneath a wave of teeth and tiny, stamping feet. LeCleur was right behind him.

Stumbling into the storeroom, they shut the door manually, neither man wanting to take the time to issue the necessary command to the omnipresent outpost pickups. Besides, they didn’t know if the station voice would respond anymore. In their swarming, the muffins had already shorted out a brace of unshielded, sensitive equipment. The agents backed away from the door as dozens of tiny thudding sounds reached them from the other side. The storeroom was the most solidly built internal component of the station, but its door was not made of duralloy like the exterior walls. Would it hold up against the remorseless, concerted assault? And if so, for how long?

Then the lights went out.

“They’ve cut or shorted internal connectors,” Bowman commented unnecessarily. Being forced to listen to the rapid-fire pounding on the other side of the door and not being able to do anything about it was nerve-wracking enough. Having to endure it in the dark was ten times worse.

There was food in the storeroom in the form of concentrates, and bottled water to drink. They would live, LeCleur reflected—at least until the air was cut off, or the climate control shut down.

Bowman was contemplating similar possibilities. “How many shells you have left, Gerard?”

The other man checked the illuminated readout on the side of the rifle that provided the only light in the sealed storeroom. “Five. “ When preparing to open the front door, neither man had, reasonably enough at the time, considered it necessary to pocket extra ammunition. “You?”

His partner’s reply was glum. “Three. We’re not going to shoot our way out of here.”

Trying to find some additional light in the darkness, LeCleur commented as calmly as he could manage, “The door seems to be holding.”

“Small teeth.” Bowman was surprised to note that his voice was trembling slightly.

“Too many teeth,” LeCleur responded. Feeling around in the darkness, he found a solid container and sat down, cradling the rifle across his legs. He discovered that he was really thirsty, and tried not to think about it. They would feel around for the food and water containers later, after the thudding against the door had stopped. Assuming it would.

“Maybe they’ll get bored and go away,” he ventured hopefully.

Bowman tried to find some confidence in the darkness. “Maybe instinct will overpower hunger and they’ll resume the migration. All we have to do is wait them out.”

“Yeah.” LeCleur grunted softly. “That’s all.” After several moments of silence broken only by the steady thump-thumping against the door, he added, “Opening up was a dumb idea.”

“No it wasn’t,” Bowman contended. “We just didn’t execute smartly. After the first minute, we assumed everything was all right and relaxed.”

LeCleur shifted his position on his container. “It won’t be repeated, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what the situation: I’ll never be able to relax on this world again.”

“I hope we’ll both have the opportunity not to.” Bowman’s fingers fidgeted against the trigger of the rifle.

Eventually they found the water, and the food. The latter tasted awful without machine pre-prep, but the powder was filling, and nourishing. Unwilling to go to sleep and unable to stay awake, their exhausted bodies finally forced them into unconsciousness.

LeCleur sat up sharply in the darkness, the hard length of the rifle threatening to slip off his chest until he grabbed it to keep it from falling. He listened intently for a long, long moment before whispering loudly.

“Jamie. Jamie, wake up!”

“Huh? Wuzzat…?” In the dim light provided by the illuminated rifle gauges, the other man bestirred himself.

“Listen.” Licking his lips, LeCleur slid off the pile of containers on which he had been sleeping. His field shorts squeaked sharply against the smooth polyastic.

Bowman said nothing. It was silent in the storeroom. More significantly, it was equally silent on the other side of the door. The two men huddled together, the faces barely discernible in the feeble glow of the gauge-lights.

“What do we do now?” LeCleur kept glancing at the darkened door.

Bowman considered the situation as purposefully as his sore back and unsatisfied belly would permit. “We can’t stay cooped up in here forever.” He hesitated. “Anyway, I’d rather go down fighting than suffocate when the air goes out or is cut off.”

LeCleur nodded reluctantly. “Who’s first?”

“I’ll do it.” Bowman took a deep breath, the soft wheeze of inbound air sounding abnormally loud in the darkness. “Cover me as best you can.”

His partner nodded and raised the rifle. Positioning himself at the most efficacious angle to the door, he waited silently. In the darkness, he could hear his own heart pounding.

Holding his own weapon tightly in his left hand, Bowman undid the seals. They clicked like the final ticks of his own internal clock counting down the remainder of his life. Light and fresher air entered the room as the door swung inward. Exhaling softly, Bowman opened it further. No miniscule brown demons flew at his face, no nipping tiny teeth assailed his ankles. Taking a deep breath, he wrenched sharply on the door and leaped back, raising the muzzle of his weapon as the badly dented barrier pivoted inward. Light from the interior of the station made him blink repeatedly.

It was silent inside the outpost. A ridge of dead muffins two feet high was piled up against the door. None of the little horrors moved. Together, the two men emerged from the storeroom.

Light poured down from the overheads. They still had power. The interior of the outpost was heaped high with tiny cadavers. There were dead muffins everywhere: on the dining table, in opened storage cabinets, under benches, beneath exposed supplies, and all over the kitchen area. They were crammed impossibly tight together in corners, in the living quarters, on shelves. Their flattened, furry, motionless bodies had clogged the food prep area and the toilets, filled the showers and every empty container and tube.

Bright daylight poured through the still open front door. Scavengers, or wind, or marauding muffins had reduced the avalanche of dead muffins on the porch to the same height of two feet that had accumulated against the storeroom portal. The wasted agents could go outside, if they wished. After weeks of unending peep-peeping, the ensuing silence was loud enough to hurt Bowman’s ears.

“It’s over.” LeCleur was brushing dead muffins off the kitchen table. “How about some tea and coffee? If I can get any of the appliances to work, that is.”

Setting his rifle aside , Bowman slumped into a chair and dropped his head onto his crossed forearms. “I don’t give a damn what it is or if it’s ice cold. Right now my throat will take anything.”

Nodding, LeCleur waded through dunes comprised of dead muffins and began a struggle to coax the beverage maker to life. Every so often, he would pause to shove or throw dead muffins out of his way, not caring where they landed. The awful smell was no better, but by now their stressed bodies had come to tolerate it without comment.

A large, mobile shape came gliding through the gaping front door.

Forgetting the beverage maker, LeCleur threw himself toward where he had left his rifle standing against a counter. Bowman reached for his own weapon, caught one leg against the chair on which he was sitting, and crashed to the floor with the chair tangled up in his legs.

Gripping his staff, Old Malakotee paused to stare at them both. “You alive. I surprised.” His alien gaze swept the room, taking in the thousands of deceased muffins, the destruction of property, and the stench. “Very surprised. But glad.”

“So are we.” Untangling himself from the chair, a chagrined Bowman rose to greet their visitor. “Both of those things. What are you doing back here?”

“I know!” A wide smile broke out on the jubilant LeCleur’s face: the first smile of any kind he had shown for days. “It’s over. The migration’s over, and the Akoe have come back!”

Old Malakotee regarded the exultant human somberly. “The migration is not over, skyman Le’leur. It still continue.” He turned to regard the uncertain Bowman. “But we like you people. I tell my tribe: we must try to help.” He gestured outside. Leaning to look, both men could see a small knot of Akoe males standing and waiting in the stinking sunshine. They looked competent, but uneasy. Their postures were alert, their gazes wary.

“You come with us now.” The elder gestured energetically. “Not much time. Akoe help you.”

“It’s okay.” Bowman gestured to take in their surroundings. “We’ll clear all this out. We have machines to help us. You’ll see. In a week or two everything here will be cleaned up and back to normal. Then you can visit us again, and try our food and drink as you did before, and we can talk.”