Great. I really needed that kind of thinking right now. I tried to concentrate on the job.

  This nest was different than the other one.

  For one thing, it had no corral, and for another, the totem, in front was squatter and uglier than the last one we'd seen.

  I swallowed hard.

  I turned around slowly, partly for the camera, partly to reassure myself.

  It wasn't my best idea.

  The gully felt suddenly claustrophobic. The blackened trees looked like claws reaching from the ground.

  The day had turned suddenly gray and colder. The wind was blowing stronger here; it whistled loudly down the canyon.

  The sky was still a hard crystalline blue, but now it seemed more distant than ever. Even though it was still, early, we were already in shadow.

  I turned back to the dome.

  This was different than the last time.

  This time I knew that there were live worms in the nest.

  There was some scrubby black and red stuff—lichen?—around the outside of the nest, but that was all. I didn't bother to take a sample. There'd be time later.

  I ducked my head and stepped into the nest.

  It smelled warm.

  17

  The Dome

  "The boss may not always be right, but he's always the boss."

  —SOLOMON SHORT

  I flipped my goggles down over my eyes and switched them on. We'd agreed that it might be dangerous to use a flashlight. The world looked luminous; everything glowed and sparkled—I knew it was an effect of the image-processing, but the colors still felt unfamiliar. Otherworldly. Alien.

  "All right," I whispered. "I'm in."

  "We copy." Hank's voice was a noncommittal presence.

  "I'm going up the right channel now . . ."

  The goggles made the dome seem bright inside. As bright and orange as daylight. Some of it was the light that filtered through the dome-stuff. Some of it was the goggles' three-scan mapping. And some of it had to be my own imagination.

  "I'm in the top chamber now. It's empty." I turned slowly, so the camera I was wearing could see it all. A couple of globs on the wall, nothing else. As expected, there was one large hole in the center of the floor. I peered down into it. The Mobe was sitting quietly in the center of the room below. Its camera swiveled upward to look at me. "Can you see me?" I asked.

  "I can see you through the Mobe's eyes and I can see it through yours," Hank answered. "You look better than it does."

  "Thanks, I think. Okay, I'm coming down."

  The Mobe rolled back out of the way and I dropped down into the next floor of the dome. Again, I turned around slowly for the camera.

  There was more of that chewing-gum stuff on the walls. Not everywhere, just in a few places; but enough to give the nest that same moist, mildewy smell I recognized from before. The globs were stuck high on the wall, without apparent pattern. The blue fungus hung from the globs in ragged gauzy curtains. There was a lot more of it in this nest; obviously it had been growing longer. And—it looked as if there were things moving around in the fungus, but I couldn't be sure.

  "Can't say I'm thrilled with the decor," I muttered. Hank didn't answer.

  "The stuff that looks like curtains is some kind of fungus," I reported. "It smells kind of . . . I don't know. Sharp. Cheesy. There are things like bugs living in it—unless they're caught and it's feeding on them. I don't know."

  "We copy. Duke says check for eggs."

  "I'm getting there. Don't rush me."

  The next level down was darker. I adjusted the gain on my goggles.

  Duke's voice: "Jim? Eggs?"

  I checked. There was a hole, but there were no eggs in it. The bottom of the hole was only a meter down. "No eggs."

  Ditto the second hole. "None here either."

  The largest hole was the one toward the front of the dome. It looked dark and ominous—even to the goggles. In the last dome, there had been debris at the bottom of this one, but this hole was larger and deeper. I wondered if it led to another room.

  I whispered to Hank, "It smells deep."

  Hank answered with a question: "How's the temperature in there?"

  "Warmer than I expected."

  "Go or no-go?"

  "Go."

  "You sure?"

  "I've come this far—" God, that was a stupid reason for doing anything.

  "We copy." A burst of dropout static. "I repeat. We copy."

  I lay down flat on my belly and peered into the hole. It angled steeply down—I couldn't see the bottom clearly. I pulled myself as far forward as I could and hung my head down into the hole. It was still bottomless.

  "Are you picking up anything?" I asked.

  "No more than you."

  I unclipped my helmet camera and hung it down into the hole as far as my arm would stretch, turning it slowly. "How about now?"

  "Nope. Still nothing." Hank added, "Just a lot of dark."

  I pulled the camera out of the hole and looked at it. "Can you see me?"

  "As ugly as life."

  "I want to try something. I'm switching on the light now—lowest setting." The lux-pipe just above the camera lens glowed softly. I hung the camera back into the hole again—as far as I could reach.

  "A little better. It goes down and then it bends, levels off a little. But it's still dark at the end of the tunnel. Sorry, Jim."

  "No worms?"

  "No worms. Wait a minute. Let me try some enhancement on this—" A heartbeat passed. "—Nope. Can't really see beyond the bend. Maybe it's another room." Hank added, "Real sorry about that."

  I didn't reply.

  I sat up and clipped the camera back on. I began unpacking the "rope ladder." It was a crescent shape that unfolded into a ceramic chain of elliptical rings, three to a meter. The material was supposed to be non-magnetic, non-conducting, non-abrasive, non-corroding, and self-damping—meaning it wouldn't ring if you hit it with the Liberty Bell.

  I popped the grapples and shoved them hard into the floor of the dome. It felt stiffer than industrial shelterfoam, but how it felt was no guarantee that it would hold my weight. On the other hand, this dome was built to support the weight of Chtorrans . . .

  I dropped the ladder down into the hole. It made a soft flopping noise all the way down as it fell—I couldn't tell if it hit bottom or not. I tested the grapple by pulling on it hard. The floor stuff squeaked like Styrofoam, but the grapple held.

  "Okay, the ladder's good. I'm going down."

  "We copy."

  My hands were sweating. Whoever had designed the ladder must have been thinking of me. The surface of the rings was rough enough to provide a comfortable grip—and porous enough not to get slippery.

  The hole was tight. It was probably exactly one worm thick. It seemed to be angled at forty-five degrees; it was hard to tell. Maybe it was more.

  I climbed down slowly. One step at a time. One careful step at a time. This would be a hell of a place to fall and break a leg.

  The thought was hardly formed when I almost did. My foot hit the angle where the wall turned into floor and I slipped in my surprise—"Shit!" I caught myself almost immediately, grabbing the ladder and swinging wildly for a second, terrified that the next voice I heard would be bright red and purple.

  As soon as I had steadied myself, I looked down. The tunnel leveled off sharply. It still continued downward, but no longer as steeply. I would have to back down the rest of the tunnel on my belly.

  Terrific.

  "Jim?" That was Duke.

  "Yeah—?"

  "I don't like this."

  "I'm none too fond of it myself, Boss."

  "I think I'm gonna pull you out. Let's flash the EMP and then we'll all go in and take a look."

  I didn't answer immediately. I was still backing down the tunnel.

  "Jim?"

  I snipped just long enough to whisper, "Why didn't you think of this brilliant idea before I got this far?" I kept on inching backwards.

  Duke didn't reply.

  I said, "Tell me again why you wanted me to crawl down here."

  "I'm changing my mind. Let's just find out where they hide. Next time, we can—"

  "Shut up, Duke."

  And then I blinked. Had I just told Duke to shut up? Yes, I had. Oh, well. If I didn't survive this, I wouldn't to worry about Duke's disapproval.

  A few feet more—and then suddenly there was open space behind me. I scrambled backward and up onto my hands and knees.

  It was a tiny chamber, too small even to stand up in. And it was empty.

  Where the hell were the worms?

  I sat back against one wall and caught my breath. The sweat was running down my neck, my forehead, my sides—I could feel my heart pounding like a kettle drum. I began to look around.

  "You okay?"

  "I'm about as fine as a man can be who's sitting at the bottom of a Chtorran pantry. At least I think that's what this is. I don't know." The floor of the chamber was littered with debris. Some of it looked like pieces of shells. I grabbed some of the debris and shoved it into a bag. This wasn't a collection trip, but what the hell—

  Duke again: "Come on, Jim. Catch your breath and get out of there. It's starting to smell like rain."

  Rain? "How long have I been down here?"

  "Forty-five minutes. You're one careful son of a bitch, you know that?"

  "All right. I give up. I'm coming out—"

  18

  The Song of the Worms

  "What do you mean, 'There's no such thing as a free lunch?' You are the free lunch!"

  —SOLOMON SHORT

  The trip back up the tunnel was more terrifying than the trip down.

  What if I were to meet one of the rightful occupants of this nest on its way home?

  It was not a comforting thought.

  When I finally climbed back into the lower chamber of the tunnel, I was sweating harder than before. In fact—I was trembling.

  An active imagination is not always an asset.

  "Y'know, I have an idea—"

  "Uh-oh," said Hank.

  "No, listen. Why don't I leave the camera here? And then we all wait—and watch from the outside?"

  "Next time," said Duke. "You'll take a couple of cameras for just that purpose. This time, I want you to keep that one on your head."

  "Ten-four," I said. "Just a thought—"

  "And a good one. We'll do it next time. Now come on out."

  "Okay—"

  I didn't start up the ramp. Not yet.

  For some reason, I was stalling.

  I knew why.

  I wanted to find those goddamn worms. I wanted to be the one.

  "Jim—are you coming?"

  "Uh—half a second. I'm resetting my goggles. I want to look for infra-red traces. Something. Anything."

  "As long as you're coming out while you look—"

  "I'm on my way—oh, shit."

  "Jim?!!" The earphone screamed. "Jim! Are you all right?"

  "I'm okay, I'm okay—"

  "What happened?"

  "I just put my hand in some of that glop on the walls. Ick." I looked for a place to wipe my hand. I wiped it across a drier part of the tunnel wall, but all the walls were furry down here.

  "Jesus! Don't do that. You scared the hell out of us."

  "Sorry." I was staring at something on the wall ahead. Part of it didn't match.

  It was the wrong color.

  It was the goggles. They were picking something up—a subtle difference in temperature or texture or maybe something else—but there was a large circular patch of wall that didn't quite match its surroundings. In the half-world of the goggles' image processing, it looked like it was matted in—and badly.

  I stepped forward and touched the section of wall. It was furry with blue fungus, but underneath the fungus, the wall stuff felt the same as the rest of the tunnel.

  I pressed at it; the sides, the center—

  The doorway flubbered open. Like a heart valve. Mine nearly stopped.

  There was another tunnel. It spiraled off in the opposite direction.

  "Duke—?"

  "We see it." A heartbeat, then he answered my question before I could ask it. "All right, but take it slowly."

  I stepped through and the door plopped shut behind me.

  The panicky thought rose instantly in me: would I be able to get out? I turned and pressed on the door quickly. It popped open again at my touch. Whew.

  I studied the door opening—to satisfy my own curiosity as well as for the camera. The door valve had collapsed into some kind wrinkled material, like a curtain—or maybe some kind of air bladders. Yes, that made sense. Inflatable bladders would provide the strength and stiffness and some kind of internal musculature could control the opening and closing of the valve. But it was all just a guess. I wasn't sure. And I wasn't going to take the time to investigate, right now.

  This tunnel curved down and to the left.

  McCarthy's first hypothesis: Chtorran tunnels always spiral.

  Maybe.

  But think about it. The main entrance to the tunnel complex has a clockwise spiral. Obvious corallary: The secondary tunnels would all have to spiral off with a counter-clockwise rotation.

  Interesting.

  Not the spirals, but what they implied. A much larger tunnel complex than we had believed. And if that was so, it'd be additional proof of the Chtorrans' intelligence.

  But then, we were already assuming that the worms were intelligent.

  What if they weren't?

  What if they were merely some kind of biological tools developed by the real Chtorran intelligence?

  Maybe that's what I would find at the bottom of this nest.

  Maybe—

  The tunnel opened out onto a chamber, the largest chamber yet. It was bowl-shaped and the walls were reinforced with thick, organic-looking, rib-like structures. This was the most furnished room in the complex. The chamber had a warm, sweet, yeasty odor.

  But I wasn't looking at the decor. And I wasn't smelling the smell.

  There were four worms in the center of the room. In the unreal world of the goggles, they glowed a hot pink, and they had patterns of orange fire rippling on their sides.

  They were motionless.

  Unca Donald. Huey. Dewey. Louie.

  The big one lay in a great curving arc. The three smaller ones were piled up, one on top of the other, in the sheltered center of the curve. It looked as if they were all trying to cuddle up as close to each other as possible.

  They were . . . purring.

  Their eyes were closed. And they were crooning softly to each other.

  When I was eleven, my cat had six kittens. They slept in a box under my bed. At night, the kittens would start nursing. Momma would start purring. Then the kittens would start purring. Seven little motors all going at once. That was what I thought of, looking at the worms.

  Were the little ones nursing? Could they be mammals?

  No—this wasn't that. This was something else. Maybe there weren't any mammalian references for this at all—

  Alien. I was beginning to realize the real horror of the word. Something beyond any human ability to comprehend.

  —but the sound of them was so intoxicating. It had a gentle vibrato; it warbled between three of the oddest harmonics I'd ever heard. The hair on the back of my neck stood up—and not completely from fear. They were beautiful.

  After a moment, I asked, "Duke?"

  "Shh," said Duke. "We're recording."

  I took a careful step forward, then another. The worms had that musky smell that all large animals have; but this was sweeter—and, like the music, it was intoxicating. For some reason, I thought of fresh cherries and ripe apricots and juicy peaches and sweet honeysuckle and—

  Whoa! What kind of long-chain pheromones might be floating in this atmosphere? I unstoppered a vial, waved it around for a moment, then resealed it and dropped it into a pocket.

  I took another step forward. I was almost close enough to touch the worms now. They still hadn't moved. I wondered if they were aware of my presence down here—

  As if to answer my unspoken question, one of the smaller worms opened its eyes. Fwut. And looked at me.

  It was the topmost worm on the pile. It lay sprawled across the others, facing me almost directly—a giant pink worm, burning with orange fire. Its eyes were as large as spotlights. They were black and bottomless and without expression. They swiveled and focused and stared without blinking.

  Oh, shit.

  I didn't move.

  Were they waking up—?

  Suddenly, they all moved. All at once. Over and under, around and around, in and out. Like a dance. Like an intricate machine. Like lovers shifting to a new position—

  And just as suddenly, they stopped.

  I was certain that this new position was not a casual one, but had somehow been arrived at.

  The same worm—or was it a different one? I couldn't tell—had ended up still looking at me.

  "Hi," I said. I held up my right hand, palm open to the worm. "We come in peace—"

  And realized how stupid—and how wrong—that sounded.

  The worm didn't react.

  It just continued to watch me. The moment stretched out and out—into a long painful eternity—but neither of us moved.

  And then . . . the worm closed its eyes again and resumed purring.

  Wow.

  It knew I was here. And it didn't care.

  "Duke," I whispered. "Did you see that?"

  "Son . . . if anyone ever tells you there ain't no Santa Claus, spit in their eye."

  The worms were purring louder now. There was a rapturous, enchanting quality to the sound—

  I took the last step forward.

  I reached out.

  My fingers brushed the Chtorran's fur. The one that had looked at me.

  It tingled. The fur tingled.

  I took another step forward and let my hand rest on its flank.

  It felt like cat fur. Like electric cat fur. Incredibly soft and tingly. It felt—like nothing on this Earth.

  I stroked the worm.

  I let my hands move across its flank. So smooth . . .

 

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