“Pretty dull as far as looking goes, though,” Roman commented. “Are all the animals and insects naturally color-blind?”
“It’s one of the things we’ll be checking,” Sanderson said. “Though you bring up an interesting point: namely, how pollination takes place without brightly colored flowers to attract the insects.”
“Maybe it’s not done by insects at all,” Roman suggested. “Couldn’t the pollen be airborne, or transmitted by animals that brush by?”
“The anthers of most of these plants are wrong for that,” one of the other scientists put in. Steef Burch, Roman tentatively identified the voice. “Besides which, I can see various insects doing flight patterns through and around clumps of specific plant types.”
“We’re taking some proximity air samples,” Sanderson added. “That should tell us if the flowers are putting out chemical cues.”
“Sounds good.” Roman scanned the multi-split screen that showed all of the lander’s fixed cameras and the landing party’s portable ones, chose one of the two that showed the analysis table that had been set up a dozen meters from the lander’s air lock. He keyed for it, and Sanderson’s close-up of dull gray foliage was replaced by a close-up of a small gray-brown creature that looked like a nightmare blend of aardvark face, turtle shell, short monkey legs, and lobster claws, the whole thing strapped to the table by a covering of mesh net. “Dr. Peyton? How are the animal studies going?”
“Ttra-mii and I are doing just fine,” Mild Peyton said in the vaguely distant voice of someone absorbed in her work. Peyton’s file had put her as marginally anti-Tampy, a fact that had worried Roman more than once as the lander was heading down. The Tampies would be watching this part of the work closely, making sure there was nothing that could be construed as mistreatment, and the last thing Roman wanted was someone who might go all twitchy under the aliens’ lopsided gaze. But Peyton had been the head of the group who’d designed and built this particular analysis table, and she’d made it more than clear that she personally was going to be there for her pet project’s official debut. The risk of friction down on Alpha hadn’t been worth risking civil war on the Amity for, and Roman had reluctantly given in.
But so far it seemed to be working out all right. He just hoped Ttra-mii would have the sense to look but not touch.
“We’ve got the preliminary layer scans done now,” Peyton continued. “Is the data coming through clearly enough up there?’
“Dr. Tenzing?” Roman invited.
“Coming in very clear,” the voice of the survey section’s chief came promptly over the intercom. “We’ve already started sifting through it.”
“Good. Ttra-mii, how’s your hand?”
“The damage is not serious, Rro-maa,” the Tampy whined. “As I said before, the inner skin was not broken.”
Which ought to eliminate any risk of infection or poisoning, even if there was anything in the lobster-clawed creature that could affect Tampy physiology. “Keep the analyzer on it, anyway,” Roman ordered him. “Dr. Peyton, have you figured out yet how the creature did that?”
“You mean how it could pinch Ttra-mii through the net at a distance further than its claw-arm could physically reach?” she asked dryly. “Not yet; but at least I’ve proved that what happened wasn’t actually impossible. This thing has no bones.”
Roman frowned. “None at all?”
“None at all,” she confirmed. “And very little cartilage, either. Most of its skeletal framework seems to be nothing more or less than an organic type of bi-state memory plastic, which can apparently be rigid or flexible as the need arises.”
Roman eyed the creature on his display with new respect. “Interesting. Is this something unique to this particular species, or do you expect it to be the Alphan norm?”
“We’ll know in a minute,” a new voice broke into the conversation. “This is Singh, Captain; Llos-tlaa and I are just about to net you a rabbit.”
Roman scanned the split screen, found Andrey Singh’s chest camera and switched to it. Sitting on its haunches among the squat gray ground shrubbery was a creature that bore not a shred of resemblance to an Earth rabbit. “That’s a rabbit, is it?” he asked Singh.
“Well, it looks like it would fill that niche in the ecosystem, anyway.” A hand clutching a net gun appeared at the edge of the screen as Singh eased toward his prey, and across the way Roman could now see Llos-tlaa, similarly armed, moving in from the opposite direction. “Easy, friend,” Singh murmured soothingly under his breath. “We’re not going to hurt you, just take a painless look at your insides.” He carefully raised the netter—
And the creature abruptly changed into something else and leapt away.
“Bloody hell!” Singh gasped, the view swinging dizzyingly as he spun around to watch the new creature’s bounding escape. “It can’t do that.”
His last word was almost swallowed up by the hoarse sputter of a rapid-fire needle gun. Across the field, the creature jerked in mid-jump and slammed unmoving to the ground. “Hold your fire!” Roman barked. “Who was that?”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “It was me, sir—Garin,” the head of the landing party’s four-man guard detail spoke up. “I figured the scientists would want the thing caught for study—ˮ
“There was no need to kill it!”
Roman jumped. The scream was high-pitched, almost shrill, its tones rich with grief and agony and a sense of frustration and reproach. His eyes skated across the split screen, seeking the creature still netted to the analysis table, his first horrible thought that the scream had somehow come from it. “Who said that?” he demanded.
“Forgive me, Rro-maa.” —And in those three words the shrill pitch of the voice dropped down the scale back to the normal Tampy whine. “I was angered.”
“So I gather, Llos-tlaa,” Roman said, his own anger at Garin’s unauthorized killing vanishing in the shiver running up his back. Nowhere in any of the briefings had there been any hint that Tampy voices could do that. “Garin, unless you’re under a deadly and immediate threat, you will not fire again without orders. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Garin growled, his tone just short of surly.
“That goes for the rest of you, too,” Roman reminded the other guards. “Dr. Singh, is there enough of the rabbit left to study?”
Singh was leaning over the creature now, and the close-up view of the needle-riddled body made Roman slightly queasy. “We can try, Captain,” he said, working the edge of his net underneath it. “Interesting—you notice it became a rabbit again when it died?”
“Actually, in a sense it was never anything else,” Ferrol spoke up from across the bridge. “I think the landing party ought to see this.”
“We’ve got something, Dr. Singh,” Roman told him. “Switch for reception from here.”
Ferrol had taken the transmission from Singh’s camera, scrubbed it through the computer, and run it at slow motion. It made the rabbit’s transformation easier to follow…but no less astonishing.
“It’s like the skin is flowing,” Singh muttered. “Like some kind of high-stretch elastic or even a semi-fluid.”
“And you can see the skeletal structure changing beneath it, too,” Peyton put in from the analysis table. “I was right—it’s exactly like a bi-state plastic. The muscles must be doing something similar—if they weren’t, the legs couldn’t lengthen like that without losing strength.”
“Muscles, and organs, too,” Singh pointed out. “Notice how the lung capacity has already nearly doubled?”
“It’s becoming a running machine,” Burch breathed, sounding awed.
It was, too. If the creature’s first appearance had reminded Singh of a rabbit, the new form that leaped slow-motion out of the camera’s range reminded Roman of a racing greyhound. “Opinions? Anybody?” he asked.
“It’s pretty obvious we’ve stumbled on something unique here,” Tenzing said. “We’ll have to do more study to see whether this shape-changing abil
ity is only used for fight/flight situations or whether each creature actually fills two entirely different ecological niches, sharing time between them.”
“Ah, yes,” Burch offered, half under his breath. “A planet called ‘Werewolf.’ ˮ
“Let’s just leave it at ‘Alpha,’ shall we?” Sanderson said shortly. “I think there’s plenty here to occupy our attention without wasting brainpower on names. Especially when that’ll be the Tampies’ job, not ours.”
There was a moment of strained silence, an awkwardness Roman could feel as well on the bridge. Caught up in the excitement, everyone seemed to have forgotten the bottom-line reality of the situation. Four hundred thirty light-years from Earth, Alpha was far outside the range of Mitsuushi-equipped ships. Whatever they found down there—whether a site for a future colony, marketable plant and animal life, or even just exotic and exciting biology—it would be the Tampies, not humanity, who would gain from their work.
“They’re not content with just stealing us blind anymore,” Ferrol muttered, just loudly enough for Roman to hear. “Now they’ve got us delivering the loot for them.”
“That’s enough, Commander,” Roman growled…but the damage was already done. “Dr. Singh, I’ll want you to do a complete microbe check on the rabbit, with an eye toward whether it’ll be safe to bring it back to the Amity. As long as it’s already dead,” he added, to forestall any potential argument from the Tampies, “we might as well make full use of it.”
“If our pre-exit air and soil checks didn’t show anything dangerous, the rabbit isn’t likely to be carrying anything,” Sanderson reminded him.
“I know that,” Roman said. “Do the checks anyway.”
“A-ha,” Peyton cut in abruptly. “Got it, I think. Ells, do a quick electric field reading on a couple of the plants out there, will you?”
“Okay,” Sanderson said, his part of the split screen tilting abruptly as he and his chest camera knelt down.
“What, you suggesting an electric sense?” Burch asked, sounding doubtful.
“Why not? You were the one who commented on the high density of ions in the air when we took the first readings, if you’ll remember.”
“Yeah, but it’s nothing like the density you get in seawater, which is where you usually find electric senses,” Burch pointed out. “Terran sharks, et al.”
“Space horses can also sense electric fields,” Ttra-mii said.
“Interesting,” Burch said, a bit tartly, “but hardly relevant to a discussion of animals that evolved inside atmospheres.”
“Regardless, there’s clear and definite evidence of an electric sense in this animal,” Peyton said. “Ells? Anything?”
“Looks like you may be right,” Sanderson agreed. “The fields are definitely there, with different intensities and oscillation frequencies for different species.”
“Oscillation frequencies?” Tenzing echoed. “You mean the fields aren’t static?”
“Far from it. The three plants I’ve checked have cycles ranging from about nine seconds to nearly a minute.”
“Organic electric oscillators,” Singh murmured. “Elegant, indeed.”
“Elegant and a half,” Sanderson agreed. “Not to mention potentially useful, if we can figure out the mechanism.”
“Well, pick out a good sampling and bring them aboard,” Tenzing told him. “Do bear in mind, though, that we’ve only got the one lockbox lab per planet, and you’ll be poking around down there for two more weeks. You fill the lab to the ceiling and those of us who have to work in there will spend the next two months cursing your ancestry.”
Sanderson murmured slightly reluctant-sounding agreement, and Roman suppressed a smile. Just like kids in a toy store, he thought.
“Captain?” Marlowe said abruptly. “I’ve got something.”
His tone… “Got it,” Roman acknowledged, keying for scanner repeater. An infrared view of the landing area taken from Amity’s belly cameras…and in the woods beyond the prairie, circled by flashing markers—
“Dr. Sanderson?—hold it a minute,” he called toward the intercom. “You’ve got what looks like three large animals approaching from almost due west.”
The background conversation abruptly vanished. “Confirmed, Captain,” Garin said a moment later, his voice taut. “Still no visual contact, but we’ve got them on scanner. Bearing…directly toward us.”
He paused, and in the silence the snik of needle guns being put on full automatic was clearly audible. “Alert status is still yellow, Garin,” Roman reminded the guard leader. “Let’s not panic until we see what we’ve got here.”
“Acknowledged, sir,” Garin said, his voice tight but under control.
“The animals have picked up speed,” Marlowe reported. “About a minute to visual contact.”
Across the bridge, Roman heard the hiss of exhaled breath. “Comment, Commander?” he invited, keeping his attention on the view from Garin’s camera.
“Shouldn’t we be getting them out of there?” Ferrol asked, his voice tighter even than Garin’s. “At least have them get into the lander where they’ll be safe?”
“It’s too late for that,” Kennedy spoke up. Her tone, Roman noted, seemed more interested than worried. “They’re too spread out for everyone to get back in time. Besides, if they have to fight, they’ll do better out in the open where they have a clear field of fire.”
“If the Tampies let them shoot,” Ferrol growled.
“That’s enough,” Roman said, punching for a tactical display. The landscape below appeared, with the lander and each of the eight humans and two Tampies marked with colored crosses. Garin and the other three guards, he saw, had deployed themselves in a rough semicircle facing the point where the three approaching animals would emerge from the woods. Well-trained, armed with probably the deadliest small arms in the Cordonale’s arsenal, Roman had little doubt that they could cut the approaching animals to ribbons if it became necessary.
Which meant the big question would be whether it was necessary…and whether the Tampies would see it the same way he did.
“Ells, the analysis table’s instruments are going crazy,” Peyton spoke up. “I think it’s picking up the animals’ electric fields.”
“Can’t be,” Sanderson said, his voice frowning. “Those instruments are short-range—they’re not designed to scan anywhere but the table.”
“I know that,” Peyton snapped. “So argue with the instruments, not me.”
“Perhaps,” Llos-tlaa suggested, “Gga-rii can confirm this with his sensor equipment.”
“Don’t bother me, Tampy,” Garin bit out, and in his camera view Roman could see the tip of the other’s needle gun. “I’ve got more important things to worry about at the moment.”
“Do it, Garin,” Roman ordered. “If those animals are radiating strongly enough to be picked up by the analysis table, it’s something worth knowing.”
For a second the muzzle remained where it was. Then, abruptly, it dropped from view. “Yes, Captain,” Garin said, the words coming through obviously clenched teeth. “Checking now…no, there’s nothing there. Must be a malfunction in the table.”
“It is not a malfunction,” Peyton insisted. “Check again, especially at the high-frequency end—fifty hertz and up. There’s not all that much power to it, I don’t think. Directional, maybe, or else it’s the high ion concentration that lets it penetrate this far.”
She’d barely finished her sentence when there was a sudden crackle of displaced branches from the forest; and even as Garin snapped his needle gun up again the bushes ahead were shoved violently aside and three creatures stepped out onto the plain.
If the small animal that Garin had gunned down earlier had been a rabbit, these new ones were huge dogs. Dogs with hairless, elephantine skin and flat muzzles; with large paws whose curved feline claws were visible even two hundred meters away; with long sharklike mouths full of white teeth.
And even as the landing party froze in sil
ence, the dog in the center took a step forward, paused…and changed.
Slower than the rabbit had, and far more awesome because of that. The chest and flank elongated as first the front legs and then the rear stretched to half-again their original length. The extended legs seemed to thicken, as if new muscle was reforming there, and the belly flattened. The wrinkled skin, stretched over all the expansion, smoothed out, becoming sleek and shimmery. The muzzle remained the same, but the sides of the head swelled outward, in an odd way that reminded Roman of a bird fluffing out its feathers. The whole operation took perhaps ten seconds…and at the end of it the dog had become a wolf.
A wolf the size of a large grizzly bear. Rearing up briefly on its hind legs, it raised its head as if uttering a soundless cry. Then, bringing the front paws back down again, it swung its head around slowly, studying the invaders of its world. Its eyes fell on Peyton and Ttra-mii, still standing beside the analysis table and the dead rabbit awaiting their study. It raised its head again, uttered its soundless cry…And started toward them.
Chapter 6
“AIM FOR ITS LEGS,” Garin snapped, the muzzle of his needle gun tracking the wolf-creature as it loped forward. “We’ll try to cut it down without killing it, if we can.”
“Do not shoot,” Llos-tlaa spoke up.
“Rehfeldt, switch to explosive; backup aim at the head,” Garin continued, ignoring the Tampy’s protest. “Boschelli, Wehrmann—oh, hell,” he interrupted himself as the two remaining dog-creatures started into wolf transformations of their own.
“Gga-rii—” Llos-tlaa tried again.
“Shut up,” Garin snarled. “That tears it—explosive needles, full-auto; legs first, then heads. On my mark—”
“Do not shoot!”
Roman jerked in his chair, swearing under his breath, his ears ringing with the sheer intensity of emotion in the Tampy scream. Not grief and frustration this time, but desperate urgency and an almost overwhelming sense of righteous anger. “Hold your fire, Garin,” he ordered when he’d found his voice again. The wolf-creatures had covered perhaps a quarter of the distance to Peyton and Ttra-mii now, and were coming on at the same casual lope, completely oblivious to both the Tampy scream and the lethal armament pointed their direction. “Llos-tlaa, why shouldn’t they shoot?”