The mouth was the face, and the face was the mouth. Any vestigial eyes were hidden beneath the pure white, long, silken fur against which the black lip lining the mouth stood out starkly. Atop the massive skull, a fan-shaped single ear flexed freely. Flinx wondered if it had evolved that way or if two ears had eventually grown together to form one.
He did not wonder about it long as he threw himself sharply to one side. The irising mouth opened with astonishing speed and snapped at him, the short neck extending slightly. Teeth clashed as the snout-jaw was sucked shut.
Clarity screamed as the monster lunged in her direction, advancing on four heavy legs. Flinx glimpsed the nostrils set just behind the top of the mouth. Jaws, nose, and ear were all set in line, like a multiple sight on a gun, all positioned for maximum hunting ability.
Then he could not see Clarity anymore because her tube went out. Frantically, he tried to set his own safely aside and aim the needler.
Pip and Scrap had both flown into action, but the flying snakes were confused by the sight of a creature with no eyes. While they puzzled over what to attack in the absence of their natural target, the monster was trying to decide which of two potential prey to strike at next. Clarity was moaning and trying to keep a large stalagmite between herself and that singular mouth.
Maddened by the panic she felt in her master’s mind, Pip let loose a stream of venom at the creature’s face. The dense fur absorbed most of the caustic liquid, but a few drops struck the ear membrane. While not as sensitive as an eye, it was certainly delicate.
Instead of roaring or bellowing, the white monstrosity let out a loud, pain-racked moan as it rose on its hind legs and snapped with that slightly extensible mouth in the direction of the minidrag. It was extremely quick for so massive an animal, but not anywhere near as agile as the flying snake. Pip simply backed air and hunted for another opening.
By this time Flinx had the heavy needler aimed. There was no time to fool with the setting. The important thing was to distract the carnivore from Clarity. The gun whined softly as the narrow beam struck its target just behind the head. It uttered another of its oddly muted moans and turned toward him. As it did so he fired again, aiming for the open mouth.
It shuddered and moaned, the circular jaw irising open and shut several times. As it came on, he fired a third time, heedless of the weapon’s rapidly diminishing charge. When it was several meters away, it dropped to its knees and continued to advance in that manner despite having absorbed three shots that would have killed most creatures its size.
Flinx paused long enough to reset the needler. He took enough time to take more careful aim when he fired. This time the shot struck the monster’s spine. It let out a heave and vibrated all over, then halted. The mouth slowly opened halfway and froze in that position. There were no eyes to close.
They were able to tell it was dead because it had stopped breathing. Shaken, Flinx recovered the light tube, listening intently in case the monster had not been alone. The cavern was still alive with noise, but there was no more dangerous mewing.
An agitated Pip was darting like an angry bee around the head of the fallen carnivore while Scrap fluttered anxiously nearby. But there was no need for her to spit again.
Clarity was leaning against her lifesaving stalagmite, breathing hard and staring at the dead mass of fur and flesh. “It’s all right,” she mumbled before he could say anything. “I’m okay. I’m sorry I screamed.” Her anger was directed at herself.
“No matter. I would’ve screamed myself except I didn’t have the time.”
Her eyes met his. “No, you wouldn’t. But thank you for saying so.”
“What is it, anyway?”
“Not a vexfoot.” She let go of the stalagmite and moved hesitantly toward the corpse. It might have been resting instead of stone dead. “Half the requisite number of legs. Maybe a related form. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I don’t think anyone else has, either.”
“I must have surprised it. Otherwise I don’t think it would’ve let me get that close before attacking. Of course, without any eyes it couldn’t be that certain of my position.”
“Don’t bet on it. We’ve been talking for hours. It must’ve heard us.”
“Unless it was listening on a different frequency or tracking something else. If it was stalking us from the beginning, why didn’t it attack from behind?” Suddenly something else came to mind, and he looked back at the stalagmite. “Where’s your light?”
She swallowed hard, turned, and pointed. “Over there.”
He raised his tube and saw where she had flung hers. It had shattered against a cluster of small stalagmites. Like a phosphorescent worm, the liquid light that had been contained within was running away in several directions, disappearing into cracks and holes in the floor.
“Never mind. We still have mine.” He did not offer to let her carry it.
“It startled me. I panicked, and I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to do.”
“You’re right. It was a dumb thing to do. I’ve been known to do one or two dumb things in my life, too. Well, it can’t be helped and it probably doesn’t matter. Chances are both tubes would have gone out at the same time. We’ll have light for as long as we would have, anyway. We just won’t have as much of it.” He frowned suddenly. “Where’s Pip?”
She looked past him. “Scrap’s gone, too. They were here just a minute ago.”
“Pip?” He raised his voice and the light tube. Brown and white flashed back at him from the ceiling, but there was no familiar darting pink and blue diamondback pattern.
“She’s over there.” Clarity pointed to where the flying snake was hovering, staring back at them out of slitted eyes.
“Let’s go.” Flinx gestured with his chin. “We have to keep moving.”
Instead of complying with her master’s command, the minidrag whirled and sped off into the darkness, returning briefly only to vanish a second time.
“She’s found something.”
“Not another of those round-mouthed carnivores?”
“Think straight. If she had, would she be trying to lead us toward it?”
“No, but what else would make her act this way?”
“Strong emotional reaction, but that doesn’t make any sense since you and I are the only ones down here.” He hesitated, watching his anxious pet. “Or are we?”
The thranx lay on his side, an unnatural and uncomfortable position for one of his race. A light harness was strapped to his thorax and was surmounted by an oddlooking double-barreled instrument slung crossways. As they drew near, Flinx saw that the device was a shoulder light. It was not working. Small picks and other duralloy instruments dangled from the pack and abdominal belt, the latter fashioned of yellow leather that was gouged and scratched from heavy use.
He held his light close. By the absence of ovipositors he knew the injured thranx was male. His chiton shone deep blue with only slight purpling on the dorsal plates. Middle-aged, then, and apparently otherwise healthy. Brilliant orange and yellow ommatidia formed the large compound eyes. The feathery antennae hung limp and collapsed on the thranx’s face.
Flinx edged a little closer and then stopped, his expression changing to one of disgust. “Deity! What’s that thing that has him?”
The thranx walked on four trulegs. The right front limb was shriveled and distorted by a dense growth of slimy glistening tendrils that extended from the middle part of the leg back to a huge wet mass that filled most of a hollow beneath a drapery of flowstone.
“Careful.” Clarity put a hand on Flinx’s arm and drew him back. He kept his eyes on the wounded thranx as he retreated, feeling the gorge rise in his throat. “It’s a necromarium. A scavenging carnivorous fungus. It shoots those tendrils at its prey, though like the photomorphs it’s not hard to avoid them.”
“I doubt he’d agree with you.” Flinx indicated the inert form of the thranx.
“Is he still alive?”
“Here.” He
passed her the light tube. “Bang your head against the wall if you want, but not that.”
“Don’t worry.” She accepted the admonishment without comment. “I’ll break an arm before I lose this one.”
Dropping to hands and knees, he pressed his middle three fingers against the b-thorax. Because of the unyielding outer exoskeleton it was difficult to take a thranx’s pulse. The b-thorax, which corresponded to the neck in humans, was the best place to try. Instead of the rhythmic pounding a human being would produce, he felt a warm pulsing, as if he had laid his fingertips against a concealed stream. The circulatory system was still functional, which meant the heart was still working, which meant . . .
Something brushed lightly against the back of his hand. One of the long antennae was stroking him. The head moved next, slowly and painfully, and the four opposing mandibles parted. Flinx leaned close, trying to make out broken words in low thranx. Not an easy language but simpler than high thranx. Thranx spoke Terranglo better than humans spoke their language, and there was always symbospeech, but in his pain and distress this one was understandably resorting to his native language.
Flinx kept his comforting hand on the b-thorax. “Just take it easy. We’re friends.” The antenna withdrew, and the mandibles relaxed. Though he was a mature adult, if the thranx had been standing on all four trulegs his head would not have come up to Clarity’s. Flinx would have towered over him.
Something lightly stung the back of his other hand. Looking down, he was horrified to see a thin silvery tendril protruding from the skin. Instinctively he pulled away, but the stuff was stronger than spider silk.
Pip was there in a second, responding to his distress. But this time there was no enemy to spit at, nothing except a large mass of glistening brown and silver that looked like a disintegrating pillow.
Flinx rose to his knees. A second tendril exploded from the cushiony mass beneath the flowstone curtain and just missed his flailing fingers. It landed instead on the thranx’s b-thorax and began spinning and convulsing. Flinx could see the tiny pinprick of a hook at the tip, spiraled like a drill point as it tried to work its way into the softer flesh underneath. It could not penetrate the tough exoskeleton. Flinx assumed the other tendrils must have infested the thranx through a leg joint.
He could feel the one that had hooked his hand worming its way deeper into the muscle. The pain was severe, barely tolerable. Forcing down the nausea he felt, he used his free hand to pull the needler, reduce the setting, and fire at the main body of the abomination, spraying the beam methodically back and forth across its surface.
It was almost too primitive to kill. It had to be slain one part at a time and absorbed more charge than they could afford to expend, but he was in no mood to be logical. He persisted until the entire organism had been reduced to a steaming, smoky mass. It smelled of ooze and carbonized corruption.
The tendril still clung to his hand. A minuscule burst from the needler severed it a dozen centimeters from his wrist.
Clarity carefully inspected the skin. The tendril was losing its healthy silvery sheen, turning a dull gray. “Not toxic or you’d be feeling the effects by now.”
“It hurt real bad when it was digging in. Now that it’s not moving anymore, it just stings.”
Aiming the needler precisely, he sliced away the ankle-thick cables that clung to the thranx’s shriveled truleg. “Can we do anything for him?”
She checked the pocket on her left pants leg and removed a small packet. “Omnifungicide,” she explained. “You don’t go anywhere on Longtunnel without it. Comes with the clothing.”
He was staring at the thin tendril that hung limply from the back of his hand. “Do you know what this thing is?”
“No. The species is new to me. That’s not surprising. I told you how little we know about Longtunnel.”
She pressed the applicator to the back of his palm. Immediately the lingering burning sensation went away, replaced by a soothing coolness. Several minutes went by before the tendril fell to the floor, no more dangerous now than a cotton thread.
Bringing his hand up to his face, he inspected the tiny wound the drilling tendril had left. A single drop of blood had emerged and was already beginning to coagulate. He flexed his fingers.
“No pain. You’re sure it’s not poisonous?”
“I’m not sure of anything. I’m no mycologist, Flinx. But most of the venomous flora and fauna we’ve cataloged so far possess toxins that are fast-acting. You’re still walking and talking, so if it is poisonous, it didn’t have sufficient time to work on you.” She nodded at the motionless thranx. “Unlike him.”
He kicked the smoking ends of the tendrils that had enveloped the thranx’s truleg. “What is this stuff, anyway?”
“Haustorium. A hyphae network. The fungus you fried puts them out, and they keep subdividing and subdividing until there’s one to penetrate each cell of the host. That’s how it eats. It started to eat you.” She nodded at the unlucky thranx. “It looks like it’s been eating him for a while.”
“I couldn’t break it with my hands,” he murmured. “It’s thinner than most wire, and I couldn’t snap it.” He indicated her pants. “Any wakearounds in those pockets?”
“Ought to be.” She felt her pants. “Do you think they’ll work on him?”
“They should work on any oxygen breather. We’ll find out.”
She found two of the thin tubes, one in each side pocket. Flinx bent over the thranx and snapped one above the nearest quartet of breathing spicules. The powerful chemical made the thorax jump.
The insectoid moaned, an eerie inhuman noise. With Flinx’s help, he managed to roll onto his front, gathering his trulegs and foothands beneath him. The valentineshaped skull looked up at Flinx, mandibles trembling. A sure sign of discomfort and pain. The inflexible face was capable of little in the way of expression, so the thranx relied on movements of the entire head, the antennae, and the delicate fingers of the uppermost set of limbs, the truhands. These were working tightly against each other.
“Try to relax.”
The endless weaving of tiny stiff digits slowed. When he spoke this time, the words were soft but comprehensible.
“You aren’t with them? The mad humans who attacked the outpost?”
“No. We’re refugees ourselves.”
Clarity moved nearer. “I’m Clarity Held. I was chief gengineer for Coldstripe. Who are you?”
“Sowelmanu. I am with the research team from Willowane studying geofood sources.” The blue head swiveled to gaze at the smoking mass of tendrils beneath the flowstone curtain. “It would appear that is an interest which works both ways. A fair turnabout, though one I could have done without.” He dropped his eyes to the remnant of truleg still encased in the severed haustorium.
“I have consumed my share of the local flora. I suppose it only fair that they enjoy their meal in turn.” The trembling in his voice belied the humor he was struggling to put on the situation. “It hurts rather extensively.”
“What’s he saying now?” Clarity asked. “My low thranx is pretty bad.”
“He’s hurting,” Flinx told her. “The thing’s been eating his leg.”
“Damn. I hope it hasn’t worked its way up inside the abdomen.”
Flinx put the question to their new friend and explained about Clarity’s linguistic deficiencies.
“No,” he replied in perfect Terranglo. “I think the infestation was confined to the leg.” He gazed curiously at Flinx. “You speak the finest low thranx of any human I have ever met. Are you a linguist?”
“No.” Flinx looked away. “I had an excellent thranx instructor. We can chat about my expertise another time. Right now we’ve got to do something about your leg.”
“Ah, yes. My leg.” He studied himself thoughtfully. “I fear that is a lost cause. Little appears to remain of the original limb. I am sure if you had not come along that thing would eventually have consumed all of me, leaving the head for last. An unpleasant
way to die.”
“We could try to carry you,” Flinx suggested.
“That will not be necessary, as I think you well know, but I acknowledge your courtesy. Truly you understand the ways of the Hive. I could limp along on my three remaining trulegs, but I think I would prefer to suffer the indignity of utilizing my foothands and enjoy easier if less dignified locomotion. My posture will be servile, but I will be able to keep up quite well, thank you.”
Flinx had suspected the thranx would choose that option, but Hive courtesy required that he make the offer to carry the thranx in a proper upright position. In addition to their four trulegs and two small truhands, the insectoids had a fourth set of limbs located at the base of the thorax between truhands and fore trulegs. These could be employed either as a second set of hands, as was usually the case, or as an extra set of legs with the individual walking with its body parallel to the ground. The thranx preferred not to walk in that manner since it reminded them of their primitive insect ancestry.
“I look for rock-borne food sources,” he said. “You have told me what you are,” he said to Clarity. He looked expectantly at Flinx.
“I study things,” he said tersely. “Look, if you can move, I’d like to leave this place. There aren’t many dangerous lifeforms that frighten me, but I have fears of creatures that parasitize.”
“I comprehend. I can walk. You are a student?”
Clarity explained everything, including how Flinx had come to share their predicament because of the help he had given her.
“I am sorry for you to be involved,” Sowelmanu told him, “but then, I am sorry to be involved myself. The problem is not my leg. If you worked here, you would realize that to leave an open wound unattended for very long is to invite the worst sort of certain death. That must be taken care of, somehow, before I can attempt to travel.”
“What’s he talking about?” Flinx asked Clarity.