Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (31 page)

“Well, do you?” she asked.

“I don’t think it’s such a good idea to go into that thing,” he
said.

It was her turn to put hands on hips.

“I do. Get me the rope.”

“That thing is designed to trap animals
—
just like you.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Who’s the biologist here? I’m a human for God’s sake. I’m not
about to fall in any goddamned digestive organ. I’m not stupid.”

He thought about it some more.

“I’d better go with you.”

“Suit yourself. Get the rope.”

He disappeared and reappeared a moment later with a coil of black
zylon rope. He peeled off a few meters of it, then underhanded the remainder out
to her. She caught it and waited for him to tie it off. He tied the rope off to
a handhold on the side of the shuttle then hopped down into the suspensor field
and waded across it, squinting against the rain. She didn’t notice the huge
pistol at his side until he was almost across.

“It’s a plant,” she said. “You can’t kill a plant with a gun.”

“How do you know?”

She rolled her eyes.

A flash of lightning strobed them with white light. A moment
later the thunder boomed over them.

“This is getting bad,” he said.

“I told you it would be drier inside. You sure you want to go
along?”

Her clothes and hair were soaking wet. Water dripped off her
coarse hair and streamed down her face. He wanted to feel her wet cotton
against his skin. He would have gone anywhere with her at that moment.

“Sure.”

She tossed the rope over the side and tested its strength against
the hold it was tied to. It felt secure.

“Will the shuttle be okay?”

“You mean will it fall off or something?”

“Yeah.”

“No way. Nothing can move that thing with the suspensors on hold.”

She turned around and lowered herself down the rope; hand over
hand, until gravity pulled her into the arm. She slid the rest of the way down.
John was down in half the time.

There was a large opening just a meter away, and she moved over to
it. She noticed that the ground in front of the opening was almost devoid of
plant life as if something had been moving in and out of the hole, dragging
itself along. She stuck her head in the hole and sniffed the air. There was a
faint acrid twang on the air, and the smell of something she rarely ate.

“There’s, uh, something alive in here that’s
not
the plant thing.”

“How do you know?”

“I can smell it. It smells like—fish.”

“Fish?”

He stuck his head in and sniffed twice long and loud.” I don’t
smell any fish,” he said.

“Men’s noses aren’t as sensitive as women’s. Believe me; it’s
there.”

She stuck her head in further and looked both ways then crawled
through the hole. John followed after her.

Illuminating the interior quite well, light streamed in from the
holes spaced at regular intervals along the arm. Rachel ran her boot over the
curved floor once or twice to test it, then squatted down and ran her hand over
it.

“It’s slick. Feel it.”

When he squatted down, his knee bumped into her taut thigh. He ran
his hand over the floor’s surface.

“Yeah. It’s not like the dead one.”

“It has a slippery, waxy feel like a flower petal. Feel that?”

His libido was in just the right state. The innocent mix of those
words generated a sexual throb that ran down his midline like warm syrup.

She moved off down the tube, using the uprights for support.

“These are odd,” she said testing the strength of one.” I can’t
figure the purpose. Very strange.”

“Maybe they add support, reinforce the arm,” he offered.

“Doubtful but unknown. The arm seems to have plenty of vertical
support.”

Rachel sped up a little, sometimes sliding her feet from pole to
pole. When they turned a corner, John could see the end of the tentacle where
it emptied into the central chamber about twenty meters ahead.

She stopped and sniffed. “It’s stronger here. Smell it?”

He sniffed. “Nope.”

She made a face and continued on. When she reached the juncture of
arm and chamber, she stopped.

The light was dim, but they could see them. They were impossible
to miss.

“Wow . . .” she whispered.

“What the hell are those?” he asked.

She shot him a look, her eyes as big as saucers.

The tall poles in the chamber were covered with what looked like irregular
growths from floor to ceiling. Bulbous and dark, they were tightly packed like
lumps of clay fused together on sticks.

He could see the bowl-shaped depression in the center of the
chamber, and the enormous root-ball hanging over it was choked with more of the
same growths. Many of the masses seemed to have long straight roots that hung
down into the bowl.

“Camera . . .” she whispered.

He slipped it out of her pack and handed it to her. She immediately
began recording, panning back and forth, up and down.

“What is it?” he said close to her ear.

“Shhhh . . .” she warned.

As he watched, one of the strands hanging into the bowl retracted
into the cluster above. Then another descended until its tip vanished into the
soup below.

Rachel pointed the camera at one of the poles and gently jabbed
him in the side to get his attention.

One of the dark masses had started downward like a huge drop of
tar. It appeared to have appendages, soft and elastic, like an octopus from
which it hung then sagged, hung then sagged, as it moved downward. When it got
to the bottom, it slid off the pile and onto the floor like a rubber sack
filled with water. It raised itself up until it looked like a spider on thick,
soft legs. Then it began to move in a clay-legged parody of walking. A flash of
lightning illuminated the interior for a second. Through the viewfinder, she
could see that its body wasn’t a uniform color but mottled, a speckled
greenish
on dark gray. She could see
clusters of glossy specks on the side of the body up front that she took for
eyes. She hoped the thing’s visual system keyed on movement, because it was
looking right at them.

Suddenly, one of those appendages shot out and wrapped around the
base of another pole, and the organism shot forward as if catapulted. No sooner
did it reach that pole when another appendage shot out and attached to the
next. The thing vaulted like that, pole to pole, until it stopped at the rim.

It covered the five meters distance in a flash.

“What is
that
?”

“Shh . . .” she whispered back.

The creature slumped, and the appendages seemed to collapse and
shrink. From some part of its body, it extended a tube-like apparatus, shiny
and dark, that snaked over the rim of the pit and disappeared. She panned
around the rim and noticed several other organisms on the far side with tubes
extended.

“They’re feeding . . .” she whispered, keeping her eye in the
viewfinder.

“What?”

“They’re feeding . . .” she said a little louder.

“Feeding?”

“Yes. They’re sucking up that stuff from the pit. This is
amazing.”

Rachel panned the chamber, her brow tight. And as she did, the
pieces fell into place. They fell into place perfectly; the holes in the arms,
the slippery surfaces, the poles, the pit, the creatures—all those drag marks outside
the hole. One of the things on the far side of the pit seemed to stiffen and
raised up on its putty legs. She was sure it had seen them. John started to
speak, but she raised her hand to halt him, to halt his movement, his sound—to
stop him completely.

Rachel put down the camera and moving backwards slowly, pushed him
back into the arm.

“Get out . . . we have to get out . . .”

“Why?”

“Go . . . just get out . . . get out now.”

She shoved him until he was forced to trot on the slick surface.
They’d just gone a few strides when the air was suddenly filled with a hideous,
high-pitched clicking that crested, rose and fell with a gut-turning
oscillation.

“What’s
that
?"

“Go!”

They ran down the arm, struggling for balance on the waxy floor.
Suddenly, John slipped and fell. Rachel was too close and tumbled over him then
slid head first into the smooth base of a pole. Stars flashed in her head.

“C’mon, Rachel, get up!”

John yanked her to her feet. She turned her head and saw the first
creature flying at them from pole to pole as if thrown.

Such
speed.

In her dazed state she wanted to smile. She’d never dreamed an
organism could move like that.”Imposs . . .”

The air was torn with a flash and a blast of sound that thumped
her chest and rang her ears. A section of the creature exploded in a splash of
red and gray. It fell to the floor like a wet, heavy sack.

John pushed her down the tube, keeping his pistol pointed at their
rear.

“Here’s another one!”

The creature catapulted toward them, its elastic arms reaching
and snagging pole after pole. He waited until it was just two meters away.

He fired and the blast turned the air bright and almost solid for
a microsecond. The projectile passed through the thing at its center leaving a
spray of stuff behind it. It fell in a wet heap and squirmed aimlessly.

Rachel scooted through the hole and into the pouring rain, found
the rope and started up it. A third muffled shot sounded from inside.

She pulled herself with all her might, but the pack slowed
her.

“Hurry!” John’s voice said behind her. “Go!”

Her hands slipped on the wet rope, but her feet found purchase on
holds on the slope of the arm. She wasn’t going fast enough and she knew
it—felt it like a nightmare.

“Move!” he bellowed.

Another blast, this one outside and she struggled against the
rope, moving up by centimeters; hand over hand.

“Hurry, Rachel!”

Finally, she was up high enough to get her feet under her. She
scrambled up to the arm’s crest. When she turned she saw that John was already
halfway up, straining against the rain and gravity.

He was nearly at the top when he felt the strong, rubbery grip on
his ankle then the sting in his calf and thought at first he had torn
something. The fiery flow that rushed up his leg didn’t stop until it had
flowed through his spine and up over his head as if he’d been submerged in hot
water. The poison dulled his senses and softened his muscles. He didn’t even
feel it when he hit the ground.

“John!”

She could see him lying below, face up, his eyes wide open. She
had the feeling he could see her.

“John!”

Several creatures gathered at his feet and wrapped their dark
appendages around his legs. They were joined by several others that poured
through the hole and intertwined with the ones there until they’d formed a dark
and horrid chain. Acting in unison, they jerked him inside like a toy. She
didn’t have to see to know they were sliding him almost effortlessly along that
waxy floor to the pit.

“Oh, God . . .”

One remained below, looking up at her. It started up the rope but
seemed unable to achieve the required grip on it where the rope met the side of
the arm. It came up a few feet then fell to the ground. It seemed to look, to
think, then it shot up a tree next to the arm. Almost before she had time to
turn, it had launched itself from the tree straight at her.