Wormholes (29 page)

They tore their way beneath the covering of leaves to find the thick intertwined trunks of the vines with tough roots that searched for a hold in any fissure in the rock. They unearthed small passages burrowed in the thick undergrowth, no doubt the animals’ tunneled side paths leading off the main open trail on which they stood.

As they worked, occasional breaks in the scudding clouds brought the intense sun, with a different angle of shadow each time, reminding them how rapidly the sun was inscribing its arc across the sky. They cursed those moments of sunlight, because the sun’s relentless assault made their profusely sweating bodies even hotter.

Next, they pulled themselves out of the depression of the trail to stumble out across the tangled mass of vegetation to gather more samples. Now, the leathery stalks were popping up curiously everywhere, their goggle-eyes scrutinizing the strange vertical creatures in white suits, the animal’s reflectors gleaming in the light. But the animals didn’t as quickly withdraw now. The grazers were becoming more used to the humans’ lumbering presence.

Cameron felt the yank on his cable first, because he was the farthest from the hole.

“What the hell was that?”

“We’ve got a problem,” came Gerald’s voice. “Get back immediately!”

“What?” asked Dacey, but as she turned toward Cameron, she was dragged off her feet bumping and sliding along the tops of the vegetation.

“The hole’s shifting!” Cameron had grabbed his cable and was trying to pull himself hand over hand toward the sphere. Dacey twisted her body around to see the sphere drifting inexorably away across the landscape. It abruptly dipped into the planet’s surface, gouging out a large chunk of green vegetation and red soil. Dacey and Cameron slammed into one another as they were dragged, trying to grab each other for support. They tumbled into the depression and through the red dirt and were dragged back out again by the moving hole.

“We’ve got a magnetic storm!” shouted Gerald in their helmet radios. “We should’ve known! The planet’s spin! It’s core is unstable, so the magnetic fields change. We can’t—”

But the rest was lost as the sphere swooped upward, wobbling and spiraling, its infinitely sharp edge slicing away the framework and the ladder, which tumbled down onto the mat of vegetation. The severed ends of their cables fell like two long, black, undulating snakes onto the green mass.

Dacey managed to pull herself up, bracing herself against the punishing wind. Cameron followed and they peered through sweat-clouded eyes into the darkening sky for some sign of the hole. They tore away the vines and plants that had tangled themselves around the suits. They looked at each other frightened, their faces in deepening shadow. Each saw in the other’s eyes the realization.

They were marooned.

G
erald didn’t look at Mullins as he asked the engineer. “Can you get back to the planet?” He was afraid that to remove his gaze from the computer screens would somehow allow the hole to close. He simply put away any thought of the consequences. He wanted so badly to run out of the blockhouse, leap into a vehicle, race to the distant chamber and try with some force of will to make the hole return to the planet.

“Got to profile the natural magnetic fields,” said Mullins resolutely. “We get a measure, we can goose the propulsion fields on the hole and fight ’em. It’s like we’re on a sailboat and we hit our first hurricane. We got to learn how to sail in a hurricane.” Mullins tapped out commands on his keyboard and mumbled instructions into his microphone.

Behind him, Megamag engineers crowded together, urgently working out magnetic vectors, power densities, coil strengths. They knew that their calculations would determine whether two people would live or die.

Two of the large video screens were blank where once had been scenes from Dacey’s and Cameron’s helmets. Another showed the inside of the vacuum chamber littered with chunks of alien dirt and vegetation that hadn’t been sucked out when the hole was flung into space by the swirling magnetic storm.

The three metal serpents hovered around the hole, but this time their cylindrical heads were clustered together, the fields they emitted combined to force the hole back toward the planet. The three screens showing the views from their cameras all revealed the same frustrating picture of the small planet, as it continued to recede.

“Do it, Andy,” said Gerald, almost to himself. “Do it.”

• • •

“Night’s gonna be a bitch,” said Cameron, pawing through the contents of the case in the growing gloom. They had dragged it down into the gouge in the earth left by the sphere, to give themselves some shelter from the wind. Several plastic bags caught the wind and sailed away across the low vegetation. “Can’t see shit. There’s no moon.”

“Yeah, it’ll be dark as a wolf’s throat,” said Dacey. “But that’ll be good. We’ve got lights. They’ll be able to find us with no problem. C’mere.” Cameron groped his way over to her and she reached out to his sleeve and clicked on a switch. A small red light on a box strapped to his arm began to blink. “Now we’ve both got our radio beacons on. They’ll be back.”

She set her jaw and intently scanned the alien landscape, memorizing it for later recall when they needed food, water or shelter. Just this kind of possibility was a big reason she’d insisted that she be the one who made this exploration. She’d been in field situations before where her life was on the line. Certainly she’d encountered nothing so deeply frightening as this alien jungle, and she could feel herself on the edge of panic. But she was certain she had enough courage in her to get through this. She knew Cameron did, too. He was irreverent, but she knew that the attitude was protective. He’d grown up where toughness was necessary and it was necessary here.

“Yeah, they’ll be back,” was all Cameron said, as he dug the two flashlights out of the case and handed one to Dacey.

Both decided privately that they would avoid any thought that the hole would not return; that they would be stuck here until they died or went mad. They busily tried out the flashlights, but decided to save the batteries until it was really dark.

The darkness came, falling like some immense black weight, and they sat in the depression, holding onto one another in the gale. They heard a vaguely familiar low rumble; then a flash of light from the sky. For an instant, Dacey thought it might be the hole returning, but a jagged brilliant lightning bolt slashed across the sky.

“Might as well save the lights now, too,” said Cameron. “Looks like rain.”

Another blinding flash of lightning was followed by a massive, shuddering jolt of thunder, and sheets of rain pummeled them, blown by the unrelenting winds. They huddled together, peering at the sky as a lightning bolt struck a nearby peak, dancing around it like an incandescent demon.

A beeping rose in Dacey’s helmet. At first, its meaning didn’t register, she was so overwhelmed by the tumult around her. Then she realized.

“We’re out of oxygen!” In the flash of a lightning bolt, she saw Cameron’s helmet nod in agreement. “We gotta take these helmets off.”

“Oh, hell no!” exclaimed Cameron. “We don’t know about viruses, bacteria—”

“
AHHH SCREW IT!
” shouted Dacey over the howling wind and crash of thunder. In the silver-white light from another lightning flash, Cameron saw her unlatch her helmet, twist it a quarter-turn and yank it off. He switched on his flashlight and aimed it at her face, to detect any reaction to toxic air. As the blinding rain pelted her skin, she registered nothing at first. She took a deep breath, and tried to clear her eyes of water. Cameron stared at her. Was this a last breath? For him, too?

Finally, she gave a thumbs-up. “Wind’s taking my breath away. Rain’s a killer. But I can breathe!” she shouted, rainwater spewing off her lips as she talked. “I figured as much. We knew there was oxygen. The animals can breathe.”

Cameron jerked off his own helmet and immediately suffered the painful sting of the wind-driven rain. He could barely see through the gush of warm water cascading down his face. He breathed in a wet, rich, organic smell.

They sat for a while blinded, gasping for breath. The rain made them realize that they were dehydrated from the hours in the suits. So they turned their faces into the wind and opened their mouths, blindly trying to gulp in as much of it as they could.

“Know what?” Cameron managed to shout over the deluge, between drinks.

“What?”

“Nature sucks, don’t matter what universe you’re in!”

She took his arm and managed a smile. The rain let up after a while, only occasional drops striking their skin like liquid bullets. Then the storm was gone and only the wind remained tearing at them. But now the steamy, smothering heat reasserted itself, and they realized that, even with the gulps of water from the rain, their bodies were still badly dehydrated and becoming more so with the heat. They shone the lights into the bottom of the depression, but the rainwater there was scummy and full of vegetation. Dacey waved her hand in rejection.

“Let’s go find a stream,” she shouted. “Gotta be streams here. We just follow the trail. They’ll see us by our lights and trace the beacons, no matter where we go.” Her field experience told her, whether it was Earth or an alien planet, to listen to her body and to take in the information from the terrain. They both stood up out of the depression, squinting into the distance.

“Well, shit!” said Cameron in amazement. “So much for the flashlights.”

They looked out across a landscape of glimmering, weaving points of incandescent color that reached as far as they could see. The lights cast a pale glow that lit the foliage of the low alien jungle.

“What do you think it is?” panted Cameron in the wind. “Christmas?”

Despite the suffocating heat enwrapping them, Dacey forgot their plight for a moment, mesmerized by the stunning otherworldly beauty.

“Bioluminescence.”

“Like fireflies?”

“Yeah, only these aren’t insects.”

“They’re signaling.”

“Right. Like mating calls, territorial calls, whatever. I guess sound won’t work for communicating because of the winds. Smell won’t work either because of the winds. So they evolved this.” After a while, she could distinguish two different kinds of light. One seemed to be elaborately blinking lights coming from the stalks of the grazing animals, specifically from the silvery structures above their eyes. The other source was the centers of the cylindrical leaves, which emitted a steady colored glow that seemed to be the equivalent of colored pigments in flowers.

“The plant lights maybe attract the equivalent of bees,” said Cameron. He paused and pointed out across the landscape. “Like them.” Sure enough, even in the high winds, dark flickers of wings hovered around the glowing plants, clinging to them, entering them to feed.

Dacey suddenly slumped down on a mat of vegetation, keeling forward. “We’ve got to get these suits off,” she gasped. “We’ll die from the heat.”

She recovered and helped Cameron unfasten his space suit and shed it. Then he turned and did the same for her, and they sat panting in the lashing winds, in shorts, t-shirts and socks, the pale light revealing their exhausted faces. They removed the suits’ homing beacons and strapped them around their wrists.

“Hell, I figured this would be a nice little walk, a couple of hours in the suit,” said Cameron. “We’d pick up dirt samples, never have to deal with the outside.”

“Guess you figured wrong, Jimmy. Think of it as something you’ll tell your grandchildren.”

“I’d rather tell them about a good meal in a nice restaurant.”

“Now, we need water,” Dacey managed to whisper hoarsely over the roar. The hot steamy blast of the wind was so unrelenting, so mind-numbing. It tore at her will.

But she took a deep breath and hauled herself up, helping Cameron. Holding hands, they picked their way over the thicket, which caught at their legs and gave only precarious, ankle-twisting footing. They reached one of the sunken animal paths and stumbled down into it.

Seeking a stream, they started along the path, lit by the surrounding glow of the plants and animals. The path skirted a low hill and seemed to head downward toward one of the gullies. Periodically, a gust of wind would tear at them, throwing them off balance, but it offered no relief. Dacey felt the dry mouth of heat prostration overcoming her. Dark shapes would suddenly appear out of the bush, only to skitter away at their approach. They rounded a bend to see one of the grazers holding its proboscis high, the structures above its eyes glowing with light, waving the appendage back and forth in some semaphore of its species.

Abruptly, the lights all extinguished, leaving them in total darkness.

“Jesus, now what?” asked Cameron.

“Let’s put the lights on,” said Dacey.

“Wait a second. Something don’t feel right.”

Even over the deafening hiss of the winds through the foliage, they could hear the high-pitched squeaking ahead. A roiling mass of dark forms cascaded toward them, and suddenly they were covered in small, wiry creatures with sharp claws digging into their skin, tearing at their faces, drawing blood.

Dacey screamed and flailed at them, but they clung fast, wrapping themselves around her neck and clinging to her arms. They burrowed beneath her clothes and she could feel them pulling themselves up between her legs and into her armpits. They were like spiders or insects, but they had small dark eyes that seemed like those of a rat. She smelled a kind of musky odor from their fetid little bodies.

“
MOTHERFUCKER!
” she heard Cameron yell and glimpsed him flailing at the creatures.

A light appeared, like a spotlight, bathing them in radiance. She frantically pulled one of the creatures away from her face, to try and see. The beam came from some animal, large and hulking and low to the ground, that had appeared on the trail advancing toward them. It swung its light beam back and forth on the ground.

“
JESUS!
” Cameron was still tearing at the creatures. His body now a writhing mass of the dark leathery animals. He staggered back, trying to hold his balance, not wanting to go down. “
PULL THEM OFF! PULL THE GODDAMNED THINGS OFF!
”

“No! Wait a minute! Lay down!” shouted Dacey.

“What? We do that, we’re dead!”

“No. Lay down! Watch!” With some difficulty because of the welter of clinging animals, she knelt, then lay down across the trail. The creatures abruptly began to disengage themselves and skitter away. The predator pinpointed one with its light, snatching it up in powerful jaws and tearing its body apart with its claws, devouring it. Dark blood ran down the mouth, which it licked with a long curling tongue.

Cameron quickly lay down himself, and the animals began to desert his body, bolting down the trail and into the underbrush.

The predator approached Dacey’s prone body, playing its light over her scratched and bleeding skin. Turning her head to peer up at the animal, she could see that the creature’s light was mounted on the end of a stubby appendage right behind the one that supported its large eyes. She remained absolutely still. It sniffed her and backed away snorting, as if it had smelled something repulsive. It swung its light toward the bush, where one of the small creatures was searching frantically for an entrance into the safe undergrowth. It lunged, and there was a frightened squeal. Chewing away at the struggling prey, the predator scuttled away after the others.

“What was that …” Cameron couldn’t finish. He tried again. “… what the hell was
that
about?”

“They didn’t want to hurt us. They wanted to get away. We were like a big tall tree. That thing was after them. We were just convenient.”

“And the light. The thing had a natural searchlight.”

“Yeah, that’s what made me realize what was happening. When I was doing field work in Louisiana, we went out frog gigging along a bayou. We used a searchlight. Just like it did.”