Starborne (39 page)

“
Internal organs?”
Huw asks. “
Elements of its nervous system, could they be?”

“
I don
’
t thin
k so,”
the year-captain says. “
I think they may belong to
this
.”

Once more he points, jabbing his finger urgently forward two or three times into the pinkish gloom, and turns the beam of his helmet lamp up to its highest level.

Another creature has appeare
d from somewhere, a creature far smaller than the worm, and has taken up a perch atop the worm
’
s back just about at the farthest distance where they are able to see anything. It is a thing about the size of a large dog, vaguely insectoidal in form, with j
o
inted pipestem legs, eight or maybe ten of them, and a narrow body made up of several segments. It has a savage-looking beak and a pair of huge glittering golden-green eyes like great jewels, which it turns on them for a moment in a long, baleful stare as
the light of the year-captain
’
s lamp comes to rest on it. Then it returns to its work.

Its work consists of digging a hole deep down in the worm
’
s flesh and laying an egg in it.

The egg is waiting, glued to the creature
’
s underbelly: a many-faceted bluish-
purple sphere of goodly size. The hole, it seems, is nearly finished. The insectoid-thing, standing upright and bracing itself by spreading its lowest pair of limbs, bends forward at a sharp angle u
n
til its head and the upper half of its thorax disappear w
ithin the worm. Rapid drilling movements are apparent, the visible half of the creature rocking in quick rhythms, the hidden head no doubt bobbing furiously below to send that terrible beak deeper and deeper into the soft vulner
a
ble material that makes up
the worm. The process goes on for an u
n
pleasantly long time.

Then the creature straightens up. It appears to be satisfied with its labors. Once again it glowers warningly at the two watching humans; then it does an odd little strutting dance atop the worm,
which, after a moment, can be seen not to be a dance at all, but simply a procedure by which the thing is pulling its huge egg free of its underbelly and labor
i
ously shoving it downward, moving it from one pair of limbs to another, until the next-to-last
pair is holding it. At that point the creature flops forward over its excavation, spearing the point of its beak into the skin of the worm as though to anchor itself, and the legs that grasp the egg plunge fiercely downward, jamming the egg deep into the
h
ole that awaits it.

That is all. The creature extricates itself, throws one more huge-eyed glare at Huw and the year-captain, and goes scuttling off into the dar
k
ness beyond.

The worm has not reacted in any visible way to the entire event. The snuffling an
d chomping sounds, and the accompanying sixty-cycle drone, have continued unabated.

“
The worm
’
s flesh will heal around the egg, I suppose,”
the year-captain says. “
A cyst will form, and there the egg will stay until it hatches, giving off that lovely yello
w light. Then, I would imagine, a cheery little thing much like its mother will come forth and will find all the food it needs close at hand. And the worm will never notice a thing.”

“
Lovely. Very lovely,”
says Huw.

The year-captain moves forward another c
ouple of paces to have a closer look at the opening in which the insectoid-thing has inserted its egg. Huw does not accompany him. It is necessary, the year-captain finds, to clamber up onto the worm
’
s back for a proper view of what he wants to see. The y
e
ar-captain
’
s heavy boots sink a few millimeters into the worm
’
s yielding flesh as he mounts, but the worm does not react to the year-captain
’
s presence. The year-captain stares into the aperture, carefully pulling its edges apart so that he can peer into
i
ts interior.

“
Watch it!”
Huw yells. “
Mommy is coming back!”

The year-captain looks up. Indeed the insectoid-thing has reappeared, as though its egg has sounded some sort of alarm that has summoned it back from the darker depths of the tunnel. By the light
of his helmet lamp the year-captain can see the creature advancing at a startling pace, mandibles clacking, front claws waving ferociously, eyes bright with rage, clouds of what looks like venom emerging from vents along its thorax.

Hastily the year-captain jumps down from the worm and backs away. But the insectoid-thing keeps coming, and swiftly. It seems quite clear to the year-captain that the infuriated creature intends to hurl itself on him and bite him in half, and it appears q
u
ite capable of doing just that.

Both men are armed with energy guns, purely as a precautionary thing. The year-captain draws his now, raises it almost without aiming, and fires one quick bolt.

The insectoid-thing explodes in a burst of yellow flame.

“
A dam
ned close thing,”
Huw says softly as he comes up beside him. “
Hell hath no fury like a giant alien bug whose egg is in danger.”

“
It wasn
’
t in any danger,”
the year-captain murmurs.

“
The bug didn
’
t know that.”

“
No. No. The bug didn
’
t know.”
The year-captain
, shaken, nudges the fragments of the thing with the boot of one toe. “
I
’
ve never killed anything before,”
he says. “
A mosquito, maybe. A spider. But not something like this.”

“
You had no choice,”
Huw says. “
Two seconds more and it would have been going fo
r your throat.”

The year-captain acknowledges that.

“
Anyway, it was very damned ugly, old brother.”

“
It may have been an intelligent life-form,”
says the year-captain. “
At the very least, a highly developed one. In any case, it belongs here and we don
’
t.”
His voice is thick with anger and disgust.

He pauses beside the dead creature a little while longer. Then he turns and walks slowly from the tunnel.

Huw follows him out. For a little while they stand together outside the entrance, saying nothing, watching
the viscous rain come down in thick looping sheets.

“
Would you like to collect a couple of those eggs to take back to the ship for study?”
Huw asks finally, goading just a little, but in what he wants to think is a pleasant way, trying to ease the tension
of the m
o
ment.

The year-captain does not answer immediately.

“
No,”
he says, at last. “
I think not.”

“
But the eternal quest of science, old brother, does it not require us to
—”

“
Let the eternal quest of science be damned, just this once,”
the year-captain t
ells him sharply. There is a sudden explosive note of anger just barely under control in his voice. “
I don
’
t want to talk about this. Let
’
s just get ourselves back to the ship.”

This heat, this tone of fury being held in check with great difficulty, is alt
ogether out of character for him. Huw gives him a quick look of surprise verging on alarm. Then, by way of defusing the situation, he lets out a long comic exhalation of relief. “
And are we truly going from here, then? Oh, praises be to all the gods! I th
o
ught you would keep us poking about in this filthy place forever, my friend.”

***

Zed Hesper, of course, has the tempting Planet C to propose to them, and plenty of others beyond that. The sky is full of worlds, Hesper
’
s i
n
struments indicate, and he is as
eager as ever for them to go zooming off in quest of them.

But the first two adventures in planetary exploration have been less than rewarding, in fact have been a bit on the crushing side
—
one world sending out a broadcast in the psychotic part of the spec
trum and the next one populated entirely by loathsome monsters
—
and in the afte
r
math of the most recent landing a strange dark mood of negativity is emerging for the first time aboard the
Wotan
. The loss of contact with Earth
—
those chatty little bulletins f
rom home, those trifling reminders that they once had
had
a home other than this wandering starship
—
has had something to do with that. And the voyagers have seen Huw and Giovanna come back pale and shaken from one planet, and Huw and the year-captain equal
ly shaken from another. The effect on the year-captain in particular of the visit to the appalling Planet B is only too apparent even several days after his return, and it disturbs everyone to see that normally impassive man looking so rattled.

The horror
that Planet B has turned out to be, after the great expect
a
tions that they had all allowed themselves to foster for it, has indeed taken a terrible toll, and not just on the two men who experienced that horror at close range.

It is suddenly occurring to th
ose on the
Wotan
—
many of them, at any rate
—
that after having left the predictability and comfort of Earth b
e
hind for the sake of undertaking a great exploit, they are faced now
with the possibility of touring the galaxy forever without ever finding a world that can become a tolerable home for them. And the wildness of the thing they have volunteered to do, the utter fantastic gamble that it is, has begun to oppress their souls.
T
hey are afraid now, many of them, that they have simply thrown away their lives.

The year-captain struggles to transcend this bleak mood in himself, so that he will be better able to purge it from the others. But the sights and sounds of Planet B haunt him
day and night, and they engulf him in a dire morass of melancholy. An entire world so hopelessly dismal: it is enough to make one deny the existence of the Creator, assuming one believed in Him in the first place. What divine purpose could have been serv
e
d by the creation of a planet of endless rain, of titanic vines that constrict and strangle every hectare of the place, colossal brainless worms that feed on the vines, diabolic parasitic bugs that feed on the worms? No doubt it is the best of all possibl
e
worlds for the vines and the worms and the jewel-eyed bugs. But such objectivity is beyond him just now. He feels as though he has made a little excursion into some hitherto unrecorded subsidiary circle of Dante
’
s own Hell.

He yearns to speak with the Abb
ot about Planet B, if only he could. He hungers for the few quick acerbic sentences that would demolish all the darkness that clings to him now.

But the Abbot is beyond his reach. And so, very gradually, over a p
e
riod of days, the year-captain manages to p
ull himself up out of the slough of despond without the aid of the Abbot
’
s direct intervention. There is no other course that he can allow himself to take.

Some of the others, primarily Hesper and Paco and Julia and Huw and even Sieglinde, have been able t
o retain their optimistic outlook t
o
ward the expedition despite the sobering outcome of the Planet B event. “
The remarkable thing isn
’
t that the first two landings failed,”
Julia says. “
The remarkable thing is that we found two worlds that were worth check
ing out within the first couple of years of the voyage.”

“
Hear, hear,”
Huw bellows, as Huw likes to do. Huw knows that much depends now on his show of hearty high spirits and indomitable will, and he makes sure that he is never seen to be anything but his
usual stalwart self, even after all that he has observed and felt on Planet A and the very different but equally oppressive Planet B. There is a price for this. He is willing to pay it.