Legs, she reflected, were a poor substitute for a power lifter. There was also the need to keep the components inside the open hatches protected from the occasional wind-driven spray. Having already slipped twice on the water-polished rocks underfoot, she was cold and wet.
In spite of the difficulties she managed to monitor orbit-to-surface communications as she worked. When despite several repeated calls to the Covenant nothing was forthcoming save bursts of static, she switched to ground comm.
“Captain Oram, I think they lost your signal,” she reported. “But if it’s any consolation, I’m reading you fine, darlin’. You happy campers still doin’ all right?”
“Understood, darlin’,” Oram replied, joking right back at her. The captain certainly had loosened up since their arrival, Faris decided. “All quiet here,” he continued. “Thick forest looks like regular woods back home. The woods that remain in protected areas, anyway. Some other familiar sights, too. It’ll all be in the report, and you can ask any of the team members about the details when we get back. Keep your comm open, and keep trying to re-establish with the ship.”
“Aye aye.” Glancing downward, she noted that the water was now lapping over the toes of her boots. Though they were waterproof and insulated, she could still feel the cold through the lightweight synthetic material. “But just to let you know, the tide’s coming in. Not much. Just a few centimeters so far. I imagine the two moons must be lining up.”
“Understood. Stay dry. Oram out.”
Soon the water was sloshing across her boots and threatening to rise toward her ankles.
“Yeah, stay dry. Thanks, fucker.”
* * *
With the climb ahead appearing even steeper than the slope they had already ascended, and worn out from both the enervating drop in the lander and the hike thus far, Karine found a reason to wave the proverbial white flag as she spoke to her husband.
“Christopher, I’d like to stay here,” she announced. “It’s been a hell of a day and I’m tired of walking. I’d like to stop and do some science for a change.” She indicated their present surroundings. “Not only is the stream good company, it might be a source for smaller specimens of local life-forms. Especially since we’re not seeing any big ones. Might be our best chance to do a full ecology workup before dark. I can’t do that effectively while I’m walking. You can pick me up on the way back, okay?”
He considered her request in light of the surrounding forest. Certainly nothing threatening had manifested itself. Actually, he mused, nothing at all had manifested itself. It would certainly be edifying if she could find animal life of any kind, even if it was only at the microscopic level.
He beckoned to Lopé.
“Sergeant? My wife wants to stay here and do some field work.”
That was enough said, as far as the security chief was concerned. He motioned to Ledward. Unslinging his heavy F90 rifle, the private jogged over to join them.
“Looks like the lady wants to do some actual science, Ledward. Stay with her and cover her back.” He checked a wrist readout. “Assuming the preliminary topo charting was accurate, and depending on what we find at our destination, we should be able to meet back here in four hours. Keep your comm and your eyes open.”
Ledward nodded briskly, looking delighted at the opportunity to be the one chosen to take a break from the interminable climb. As the team resumed the hike, Oram passed by and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“Behave yourself with my wife.”
Uncertain how to respond—whether to smile, frown, or attempt to say something clever—Ledward settled for simply nodding.
* * *
As they continued to ascend, the forest grew denser, the trees more imposing. Pine and fir gave way to sequoia, Daniels observed as they climbed. The huge trees were massive, and much too familiar. Size alone indicated their age, suggesting they had been growing here for quite some time. Samples would have to be taken and compared with the relevant genomic database on the Covenant, but some of the trees looked as familiar as, if not downright identical to counterparts she had seen on Earth.
And still the woods were silent, save for an occasional gust of wind that disturbed the thinner branches. When a cone fell from one tree, it had the effect of a firecracker going off. Everyone spun to look, before resuming the march. At that moment she would have given a month’s pay for the sight of an alien squirrel.
The continuing hush made their encounter with the first damaged trunk all the more startling. As she looked up at it, wondering what had caused the destruction, the image was accompanied in her mind by a definite sound.
The broken bole was accompanied by another, and then another, all well above their heads as the expedition maintained its advance. An entire avenue of huge trees, shattered and broken, formed a straight line through the forest. In addition to the downed trunks, a number of growths flanking them on both sides showed signs of having been seared by tremendous heat. Others located deeper in the forest were blistered with knots and burls that had evidently emerged to heal over similar scarring. The further they advanced, the lower became the cuts on the tree trunks.
Something massive had descended from above, coming in at a sharp angle of descent, and cut the swath through the forest.
“An object passed overhead here.” Lopé ran a hand up the side of a massive, seared stump as he studied the uneven cut. “Sliced the tops right off the trees, then cut deeper and deeper as it descended.”
“Must have been a ship.” As she walked, careful to maintain her footing, Daniels’ gaze took in one broken trunk after another.
Ankor frowned. “Why did it have to be a ship? Why not a meteor, or a chunk of asteroid?”
She shook her head. “If that was the case, we’d be walking through a crater. The ground here is level.” She gestured ahead. “Even at the sloping angle of the object’s descent, it would have made a damn big hole when it finally hit. And there wouldn’t be any old growth forest still standing here. It would all be flattened, with the rest of the trees blown down in directions away from the path we’re following now.”
“A ship.” Oram looked over at her. “Had to be huge.”
Without fanfare, Lopé slipped the safety off his rifle. The action was sufficient to tell his troops to do likewise. A gesture was enough to move them into better defensive positions. Of course, there was nothing to defend against, except intermittent breezes and the occasional falling branch, but the sergeant didn’t like to take chances, didn’t like to assume. It was a major reason why he was still alive.
Now that the mountainside had leveled out somewhat, a relief to all concerned, Oram and Daniels allowed themselves to relax a little. Lopé did not. As for Walter— Walter looked upon relaxation as one of many human attributes he could conceptualize but not share.
There had to be something out there. Daniels felt it as she once again scanned their surroundings. This world was too accommodating, too fecund—at least in the botanical sense—to be so utterly devoid of animal life of any kind. For a wild moment she thought the local fauna might all be invisible, but quickly cast such craziness aside. Even invisible creatures, she told herself with a nervous laugh, would make sounds.
* * *
Well behind the rest of the expedition, Karine was happily filling sample bags and tubes with examples of soil, water, and plant life. Still awaiting her attention, the geology sample bags lay open on the bank of the stream. Yet to encounter any living thing large enough to be visible to the naked eye, she told Ledward she was anxious to get the samples back to the Covenant, and a proper lab where they could be studied in depth.
As for Ledward, it took all of five minutes for him to become unutterably bored. Unlike the actively engaged Karine, he wasn’t in the least interested in studying trees, water, and dirt. There wasn’t even anything moving that would allow him to practice his aim. Running water and scudding clouds didn’t count as test targets.
At least the stream off
ered a soothing place to sit. A glance behind him showed the captain’s wife busy filling a small tube with soil. She was wholly oblivious to his presence, as if he had become part of the scenery. That was fine with him. He’d never found scientists’ small talk much of a draw.
She wouldn’t mind, then, if he stepped away and momentarily contaminated a minuscule bit of local atmosphere with a smoke stick. Lighting up, he found a suitable flat rock and took a seat. In the process he disturbed a small area of dark earth. It might have been coated with mold, which would very much have interested the woman he was safeguarding. She would have found the tiny ovoid that crunched under the heel of his boot even more intriguing. Especially the small cloud of motes it released.
Refusing to be swept away by the breeze, they swarmed upward until they were hovering in front of his face.
Irritated, he waved his hand at them, sweeping them back and forth. They still refused to disperse. Inhaling, he blew a smoke ring in their direction. The majority scattered, diffusing into the air.
This might interest the science folk, he mused. Have to remember to tell them about it.
A minority of the black motes did not scatter. Instead, they drew ever closer together, forming a small coherent shape off to one side of his head. The cloud was so small and so diffuse he did not notice it. Unaware, he continued to gaze across the creek, content just to daydream as long as the woman in his charge and the absent Sergeant Lopé permitted it.
As noiseless as the rest of the surroundings, the mote shape hovered near the side of his head. It rose, fell, drew nearer—and extended a portion of itself. The tube was very tiny. So were the eggs it fed into Ledward’s ear.
The slightest itch, infinitely less than what a mosquito bite would have caused, made him rub unconsciously at the side of his head. He didn’t even think about it. There was nothing on this world to worry him. The pathology scans said so.
“Ledward.”
He reacted to the sound of his name by rising and turning too quickly, nearly stumbling into the creek as he did so. The captain’s wife was standing and staring in his direction.
“I need your help over here. And you’d better not be smoking.”
Heedless of what it might do to an otherwise pristine water source, he hastily tossed the smoke stick into the stream and moved to rejoin her. In his haste not to be caught out smoking, he forgot all about what was probably nothing more than a puff of dust.
IX
A chilling mist appeared, until half the jumble of severed trees through which they were now traipsing was obscured. At the same time the terrain grew steep and difficult. The mist slowed their progress further by making everything underfoot treacherously slippery.
Lopé didn’t like it one bit. Always thinking defensively, he hadn’t liked the dense forest, and he liked it even less now that much of it was obscured by fog.
A sound pinged in the mist. It came not from the throat of some unique alien life-form, but from Walter’s multiunit. The synthetic frowned at the readout. An anxious Lopé prodded him.
“Something in front of us?”
“No.” Standing close to Walter, Daniels was studying the same readout. “Not in front of us. Stop.”
The sergeant gestured for his troops to halt. The intermittent breeze stirred the damp atmospheric soup, teasing them now and then with an occasional glimpse of boulders, fallen trees, mountainside. Rosenthal took a step into a puddle of water and immediately froze, fearful she might have disturbed something.
“Not in front of us,” Daniels repeated. She had her head tilted sharply back. “Above us.”
Shrouded by the mist, they hadn’t been able to see it until they were virtually beneath it. Or at least, an awed Lopé thought as he stared upward, beneath part of it. The two gigantic, asymmetrical arms protruded skyward at an angle, as if reaching for something unseen.
They weren’t trees, Daniels told herself. They were part of an artificial construct, gigantic and unfamiliar. But what?
They resumed their advance, everyone occasionally glancing up at the looming, curving sweep of the twin protrusions. They hadn’t gone much further when they found their path blocked by something smooth, striated, almost polished. Tilting back her head again, Daniels found she could not see the top of it. An enormous wall? But if so why here, slapped up against a mountainside?
Coming up alongside her, Walter ran a hand along the facade. Ripples the same color as the main surface indicated the presence of numerous conduits. So tightly integrated were they into the structure that they looked as if they might have grown from it. Or into it. Experimentally, he rapped one with his knuckles, then turned to look back the way they had come.
The arms, the wall, lay in a direct line with the chasm of smashed trees. The crushed growths nearest to the expedition party had been cut off nearly level with the ground. The artificiality of the wall-object combined with the angle of destruction led him to render a preliminary opinion.
“I would say, based on a number of factors, that we have found some kind of vehicle. A ship.”
Lopé grunted. “Goddamn big fucking ship, if it is one.” He mimicked the synthetic’s voice. “I would say, based on a number of factors, that it… didn’t have a very good landing.”
Nearby, Rosenthal started to laugh. It died quickly, smothered by mist and the implications of their find.
As they stood and stared, the fog thinned just enough to see the entirety of one long arm curving overhead. It jutted off the side of the mountain at a sharp angle. The “wall” Daniels had encountered was part of the hull. Much of the vessel—as everyone was starting to think of the artifact—had buried itself in the side of the peak. That, as much as the avenue of downed trees, spoke to the impact with which it had struck.
So overwhelmed was everyone by the discovery that all were startled when Private Cole’s voice sounded sharply over the unified comm.
“Think we found a way in, sir.”
* * *
The opening into the ship, if that was indeed what it was, loomed vast, dark, uninviting, and unsettlingly reminiscent of a portion of human female anatomy. The team’s lights probed the gray-black corridor, groping for something solid off which to reflect.
Concentrating on the small circle made by her own beam, Daniels was unable to tell if their surroundings were made of metal, plastic, glass, or something organic in origin. What appeared to be supporting struts could equally well have been the ribs of some gigantic beast through whose viscera they were traveling. Everything visible, which wasn’t much, was tinted with gloom.
Everything looked—wet.
Without hesitating, Lopé led the way, as it was his job. His own light revealed nothing moving: not so much as a worm. There was only a steady drip of water spilling off the edge of the opening that led to the outside world, and the occasional rush of wind. Sometimes the latter blew inward, at other times out. Like a bellows, Daniels mused. Like breathing.
“Ankor, Cole,” Lopé snapped. “Stay on watch here at the entry. Don’t come in, and don’t leave. Anything out of the ordinary shows itself—I mean anything else out of the ordinary—you tell us pronto.”
No argument was forthcoming from the two privates, who were more than happy to be ordered to remain outside. Raising his carbine, the sergeant clicked on its laser sight and moved inward, letting the red beam dictate their path.
Reaching an even larger open chamber, they paused to examine their surroundings. Laser scopes and lights cut through the darkness to reveal the extent of the room. Stepping on something that moved slightly, a startled Daniels let out a small gasp and drew her foot back. Shining her light on the floor revealed fragments of broken material. Raising the beam showed that the shards had once formed some kind of black urn.
Others stood upright nearby. Not all had fallen over or been shattered. Some remained intact. Nor was all the detritus in the room hard and unyielding. Some of it had turned soft with age. Spread out among the desolation were carpets
of what appeared to be black mold. Embedded in the moldy masses were tiny clusters of larger, more solid objects.
Extending a finger, a curious Hallet bent toward one. He was immediately enjoined by a stern Lopé.
“Hey.” The sergeant shook his head slowly. “Don’t. Touch.” Having delivered the order, he moved on.
* * *
Hallet straightened to follow when… movement caught his eye. Had one of the tiny ovoids stirred slightly on its own? Or was it just the wind rippling through the chamber? He hesitated. This could be significant. He might even get credited with an important discovery.
“Guys…”
Everyone else had moved on, following Lopé’s lead. Still, Hallet lingered, debating what to do. Surely something so small couldn’t present much of a danger. The thought of being the first one to make a major discovery on this new world, beating out even the scientists, was seriously tempting.
His companions were out of sight now, but their lights were still visible, probing walls and floor. Easy to follow.
He leaned down anew, crouching…
* * *
The murky interior of the ship was devoid of internal illumination, but not of water. It ran down the uneven levels in thin, almost silent rivulets. In places it gathered to form shallow pools. The team ignored them, splashing occasionally through deeper accumulations.
In another corridor they came upon a row of what Daniels at first thought were sculptures. Closer inspection revealed them to be suits. At first glance there was no way to tell if they were space suits, survival suits, suits for carrying out daily activities, or suits for performing actions she could not imagine. What was more intriguing than their function was the inescapable fact that the bodies they were manufactured to fit were far larger than those intended for humans. The shapes were generally humanoid. Bisymmetrical: two arms, two legs, a skull, and generally human proportions.