"Something special, isn't she?" The note of pride in Garrett's voice took Evan by surprise.
"Are you one of the designers?" The two technicians ignored them, intent on their work.
"Who, me?" Garrett laughed. "No, I'm just a field rep. I had a chance to do some work with the prototypes for this beauty. It's nice to be in on the first use of the first fully operational model."
Evan admired the smooth exterior lines. "You have to admit it doesn't look like much."
"Not from the outside, no," Garrett agreed. "I think the appearance is intentionally deceptive. This suit will take care of you and comfort you, provide for you, and even entertain you in everything from near absolute zero to a few thousand degrees above. I won't list her tolerances for you because you're probably familiar with them already and it would take too long to read them off."
"They didn't tell me anything on Samstead about maintenance."
"No need to. The suit can take care of itself for a full year, and you'll be down below a lot less than that."
"I hope so. Surely it doesn't stock enough food and water for that long?"
"Power yes, food no. It's packed with concentrates and it can synthesize plenty more. Flavor the stuff, too, I'm told. As for your defense systems, the suit will explain everything to you."
"So I was told. There wasn't time for much in the way of hands‑on instruction."
"Not needed. A six‑year‑old could run this suit. Once you get inside and key it, it'll fill you in on anything you need to know. Once keyed it will respond only to your voice and your body's signature. It's damn discerning. Wait till you have a chance to use the chameleonics. Not true invisibility, but the closest we've come."
Evan nodded absently, took a last look at the interior of the ship. Ire was anxious to be on his way. Triumph and glory awaited. Well, a commendation and promotion, anyway. The company didn't go in for the flashy stuff.
"Might as well get on with it."
Garrett nodded and spoke briefly to the pair of technicians. They lingered over a last check, reluctantly moved aside. Evan stepped up to the ladder which protruded from the belly of the suit.
"Key activation MHW eight oh six."
"Activation key," the suit replied in a pleasantly modulated voice. "Welcome, wearer."
Garrett nudged Evan in the ribs, grinned proudly.
" Ray name is Evan Orgell. I will be inhabiting you during the visit to and exploration of the planet below. What further identification do you require?"
"None, Mr. Orgell. Recognition and key complete." With a whirr, the suit knelt, rendering the ladder superfluous. One of the technicians removed it. "Come aboard."
"Thank you." Ignoring the two female techs, Evan removed his leisure suit and stowed it in the appropriate compartment inside the right leg of the MHW. Clad only in his underwear, he bent and entered.
There was enough room inside for him to stand up and turn if he wished to, but he was content to settle himself into the snug, thickly padded operator's chair high up in the chest. His arms and legs slid neatly into the waldo sockets provided for them.
The suit was now tuned to his own muscular system. Experimentally he tried his limbs. The far more powerful limbs of the suit responded accordingly. If he desired he could tear the starship apart piece by piece.
A voice reached him from outside, picked up by the suit's aural receptors. "Everything look okay, Orgell?"
"Outstanding. I take it you're going to put me down close to the station?"
"As close as we can. The drop coordinates are programmed into the suit and it will handle any necessary adjustments of the parasail."
"Something I've been curious about from the beginning. Why don't we use the ship's shuttle?"
"You ought to be able to guess the answer to that one," Garrett said somberly. "We've taken every precaution, but there's still no way of telling for certain if we're being shadowed or not. If we are, long‑range scanners could pick up the movement of a shuttle. No way can your suit's drop be detected. Too small and no power output to show up. It's a passive drop. Don't worry. She'll get you down."
"I wasn't worried. Just curious." Evan wondered how much he believed his own disclaimer.
One of the technicians finally spoke un. "We're positioned. Lock's over there." She pointed, as if Evan could muss seeing the gaping opening in the side of the hold.
He nodded, was delighted when the suit nodded with him. He walked toward the big cargo lock and the suit moved obediently in tandem with his legs. Once inside, he turned to look back as the door closed behind him. He could watch the gauge set in the door go from green to red as the air inside was exhausted.
"Nervous, sir?"
"What?" It took him a second to realize it was the suit itself which had addressed him. "No, not at all."
"Your pulse is racing."
"Excitement and anticipation, that's all."
The suit accepted this explanation without rejoinder. Evan glanced down at his immense metal frame. This is how Goliath must have felt, he told himself. Invulnerable. Omnipotent.
The lock lights went out. Garrett wished him good luck. Then the outer door was sliding past, revealing the black void beyond. Knowing it was unnecessary but feeling the need anyway, Evan took a deep breath.
Then he stepped out into nothingness.
He felt a slight jolt as the ship's tractor beam took hold of him. He was turned, properly oriented, and shoved planetward. At first it didn't even feel as if he was moving, though he knew better. The suit told him as much, providing facts and figures, relative velocities, and all mariner of physical confirmation.
Soon instrumental proof was unnecessary; the curvature of the world below swallowed space until all he could see was Prism. Then the huge parasail deployed, its engines reversing thrust and slowing his descent. He began to glow, descending feet‑first. The visor automatically darkened to protect his eyes from the light. Moments later he began to bounce, like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond, as Prism's atmosphere thickened around him. Throughout the drop, the suit kept him cool and comfortable.
Gradually he began to make out shapes, land masses, below and ahead. Then he was dropping over water, a lot of water, and he had a few anxious moments while he wondered just how accurate the suit's programming had been. But he underestimated his rate of descent as well as the angle, and he was soon back over land again. That was better. The suit would keep him alive in any environment, but he didn't relish the thought of walking to his destination through several hundred kilometers of deep ocean.
Soon he was close to ground and slowing rapidly as the parasail worked hard against gravity. His visor lightened, but not completely. He wondered aloud what the problem was. The problem, as the suit told him, was Prism itself. It demonstrated by returning visor shading and polarization to normal. The surface below was so bright, so full of blinding lights and colors, that he couldn't look at it. He acknowledged the success of the demonstration and permitted the suit to darken the visor again.
Something huge and yellow darted toward him suddenly, hurtling from a thick cloud. A burst from the suit's needler sent it hurrying away before he had a chance to get a good look at it. One quick comparison showed how alien was the world beneath him: the attacker had looked more like the parasail than a bird.
More interesting still was the ground below. It was covered in forest, but a forest like none he'd ever seen. It was green, yes. Also purple and vermilion, royal blue and a deep emerald green, and a hundred shades in between. Some shapes were broad and expansive, others tall and thin as fairy towers.
"Organosilicate growths," the suit explained, drawing upon its programming. "Some contain symbiotic or parasitic chlorophyllic forms. Others do not and rely on other means of sustaining life."
"Like the photovores," Evan murmured.
"Yes, like the photovores." A small corner of the suit visor became a miniature tridee screen and Evan was given a quick r
efresher course in what was known of the unique world of Prismatic botany.
"There are true carbon‑based lifeforms on Prism," the unknown narrator declaimed drily, "as well as purely silicon varieties. There are also the organosilicate hybrids. These seem to be among the most successful types, drawing as they do on the strengths of both molecular structures for greater flexibility. In particular, the organosilicate plant types appear to dominate their respective ecological niches, the organic carbon structures being capable of photosynthesis which is enhanced by silicate forms which serve to protect the more vulnerable woody growths while concentrating sunlight upon them."
Evan continued to listen to the lecture, but with only half his attention. The rest was devoted to the white sausage‑shape buildings which had suddenly appeared beneath him. They occupied a clearing in the forest. Several smaller secondary structures had been erected nearby. A long straight, cleared area could only be a shuttle runway.
He stared hard as the parasail carried him over the station, but even with the visor's magnifiers on he saw no sign of anyone moving between the buildings.
"Company frequencies. Let them know we're dropping in."
"That was attempted from the ship, sir, without success."
"I know, but just because their long‑range communications are out doesn't mean that nothing's working on the local bands."
"As you wish, sir." Several minutes passed as they cleared the station perimeter. "Nothing, sir. No response at all."
Not encouraging, Evan thought. Something pretty bad must have happened here to obviate even suit‑to‑suit communications. He was reminded that he wasn't on Prism simply to say hello and shake hands. He was also beginning to believe that Prism station had experienced more than a mere breakdown of communications.
Surely if any of their equipment was functioning they would have detected his presence by now and come out to wave at him. But the station grounds remained deserted. Nor had anyone appeared by the time he touched down a couple of hundred meters outside the station perimeter. The cautious approach had been preprogrammed into the suit, an apologetic voice explained when he asked why they hadn't set down inside the station itself. If some unknown catastrophe had overwhelmed the station's staff, it would better to come up on it gradually instead of dropping down in the middle of it. Evan had to concur, mildly mortified that his clothing was acting more sensibly than he.
The suit disconnected itself from the now useless parasail. Evan took a few experimental steps, jumped five meters into the air, and assured himself all suit systems were functioning properly. Then he turned a slow circle to study the remarkable forest surrounding the station.
He was a well‑read man with a voracious interest in natural science, but nothing he'd encountered in the literature of the real or the imaginary had prepared him for the environment in which he now found himself. The first thing he noticed was that despite the extraordinary clarity and intensity of the sunlight, it was difficult to isolate individual growths. Not only because the Prismatic flora grew in nonsymmetrical fractal shapes, but also because so many of them were highly reflective. While much of the reflectivity was a natural consequence of the silicate composition of the growths, some of it was intentional. Reflectivity can become an efficient defense against predators. It's hard to attack something when all you see is what it reflects. The research complex had been constructed in the middle of a forest of warped mirrors.
In place of trees there were the gigantic cascalarians, whose solid transparent toruses of silicon dioxide were alive with miniature ecologies of their own. Tall thin towers of copper‑ and iron‑colored silicates grew twenty meters high. Each was no bigger around than a soda straw, but the whole grove was given support by a subterranean network of glass fibers that spread through the sandy soil. Evan was particularly taken with a bright yellow aluminosilicate bush that resembled four interlocking helixes. The bright colors were due to the presence in each growth of trace minerals extracted from a soil that was more akin to the sand of a deserted beach than a healthy black loam. Instead of rotting, decomposing organics, the earth of Prism was rich in silicates.
Set amid the taller "trees" were open glades of intensely hued smaller growths. One such field was filled from side to side with small silvery rotors mounted on stems. Breezes set the whole field to spinning, like a floor lined with children's toys.
Evan bent to study them. The suit took all the strain off his back and would hold him in that position permanently, if he so commanded. His visor was centimeters from the tiny spinning flowers. Not all were silver. A few showed touches of tangerine‑orange and pink. In the entire steadily spinning meadow there was not a suggestion of green.
Pure photovores then, every one of them. He wondered if the rotors served a function. Perhaps the winds on Prism blew out of the sun and the miniature propellers kept each growth oriented toward the light. Something new caught his eye: places where the rotor blades had been eaten away.
A short search turned up several of the grazers; tiny black‑and‑white‑spotted beetle shapes equipped with mouthparts like a belt sander. Simultaneous with their discovery was the explanation for the rotors themselves. His guess about sun orientation had been way off. Each stiff breeze caused the. rotors to turn, which threw the grazing bugs to the ground. They would have to climb the stems to resume eating. So the rotor design was intended to keep the grazing to a tolerable level.
"Why are they eating?" he wondered aloud. "If these growths are pure photovores, there's no organic matter in them."
"The grazers are also photovores," the suit informed him. "They are after the mineral salts which are concentrated within the small growths. Such salts are necessary for proper body development and functioning. I do not have details on the chemistry yet. They were not included in my programming."
Doubtless because the research team hadn't gone into such details yet, Evan mused. He began to wonder how the "bugs" reproduced. Did they lay eggs, or glass beads, or what? The possibilities were endless and unnerving. He was thankful he wasn't a biologist assigned to this world.
He straightened and started toward the camp.
A wall of rainbows blocked his path, a curving latticework of pale green crystals too beautiful to trample; he took care to edge around them. As he drew near, the bladelike shapes quivered visibly. He checked an internal readout. There was no wind. But the blades were definitely in motion. His helmet was also picking up a high pitched whine.
"What are they doing?" he inquired warily.
"You are a motile form which has entered their growth space. As such, you represent a threat. The plant is responding. Look down to your right. Another motile is also within the prohibited area."
Evan hunted through the lesser growths around the base of the rainbow cluster until he located something that looked like a slug enveloped in an amethyst shell. It was very close to the pink and rainbow blades. Abruptly it halted and began to quiver. As Evan stared in fascination the purple outer shell shattered. The carbon‑based slug tried to retreat to cover but was immediately set upon by half a dozen long wormlike forms that erupted from below the sandy surface and began to tear at its unprotected flesh, quivering amid the fragments of purple silica that lay glittering on the ground.
Evan took a couple of steps backward. Instantly the whining faded away. The rainbow hedge ceased moving.
"Ultrasound," the suit said. "A useful defensive mechanism on a world of silicates."
Giving the hedge a wide berth, Evan continued toward the station perimeter, his mechanical legs eating up the ground in huge strides.
It was impossible to take a step without destroying something. Transparent babbles no more than three centimeters in diameter, which held in their centers individual blobs of chlorophyllic material, covered the ground. The bubbles served to intensify the sunlight falling on the energy‑producing organic matter within.
With each step Evan smashed doze
ns of them underfoot, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Fortunately, the ground cover was exceptionally resilient. Looking back, he could see the bubbles began to re‑form soon after they'd been broken. Even so, despite the reassurance of this rapid regeneration, the constant crunching noise in his ears was disconcerting.
He was beginning to think that nothing bigger than the unfortunate slug moved about freely on the planet's surface when something that wasn't a member of the station staff interposed itself between him and the nearest building.
Chapter Four
Despite the confidence he had in the MHW, Evan was still intimidated. The creature was twice the size of the suit. Its body oozed around a single rotating globe lubricated with what looked like glycerine. The globe fitted neatly into a huge socket in the creature's underside. Using the globe like a ball bearing, the Prismite could pivot and turn with astounding agility. The globe was translucent, and Evan could clearly make out the dendritic inclusions within.
Four dark red eyes like enormous rubies were glaring at him. They surrounded a twisting, powerful silicate trunk. The tip of the thick protuberance was lined with sawlike blades.
"Local carnivore or the food‑chain equivalent," Evan observed with forced calm. "I presume it can't hurt us?"
"Naturally not. It apparently intends to try, however. The action should be instructive."
The suit was correct in its assumption. The globe spun, kicking up sand and bits of ground cover as the rotund killer charged. At the same time the flexible trunk snapped out straight as a lance and all the saw blades at the tip lined up. It also demonstrated another neat trick which took Evan completely by surprise.
Half a dozen glassy cables emerged from the body and shot out to lasso the MHW
"Your vital signs are racing," the suit admonished. "There is no need for concern as long as you are secured inside me."