“Sandy!” He touched her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She froze, sensing the warning in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing – but stay here with me.” He waited until she had positioned herself slightly behind him, then pointed out the three circles. “Those are what we’ve come to film.”
She stared at the flat ground, uncomprehending, for almost a minute before – guided by his gyrating index finger – she picked out the loose patterns among the natural scatter of rocks. Her pallor grew more pronounced, but he was glad to see that she held her ground without flinching.
“I thought they’d look more like spiders,” she said. “Or octopuses.”
He shook his head. “If they looked like anything but ordinary rock formations they’d starve to death. Their whole survival plan depends on suitable prey walking straight into their arms.”
“Then… those rocks aren’t real.”
“No. They’re arms in which most of the power of movement has been traded off against the ability to simulate stone. I suspect you could even tap them with a hammer and not know any difference – as long as you were standing outside the circle.”
“What would happen if you were inside it?”
“The eighth arm would probably get you.” Harben continued the impromptu lesson in extraterrestrial zoology by pointing out the shallow depression at the ‘entrance’ to each circle. It was there, under a camouflage of pebbles and grass, that the whip-like eighth arm was coiled in readiness to snap itself around any creature unwary enough to enter the circle.
Sandy was quiet for a moment. “What happens then?”
“That’s what we’re here to check out and put on film,” Harben said. “Petraform seems to have the same body plan as an ordinary cephalopod, which means the mouth is in the centre of the circle, but we don’t know how long the processes of killing and ingestion actually take. For all we know, when it gets hold of an animal it simply waits until the beast has died of fright or starvation, and then absorbs it.” Harben paused for breath, his eyes still assessing the photographic potentialities and limitations of the scene.
“You know, Sandy, this is the big one I’ve been looking for – the one that’ll set me up for life. I can see it going out on every TV network there is.”
“I’d like a hot drink now,” Sandy said. “Can we put up the shelter?”
“Sure.” Harben led the way to a suitable spot, spread out the shelter’s base sheet and triggered a built-in gas cartridge to erect the pliant hemispherical roof. He was an exceptionally tall man, with a long back and slightly stiff limbs which did not readily fold into cramped spaces, but he was undisturbed by the prospect of six nights in the tiny inflatable. The rewards promised to be so great that his next field trip, assuming he chose to go out again, would be made in ostentatious luxury. He took twelve flat autotherm trays – guarantee of two hot meals a day – and handed them to Sandy, who stacked them in the shelter with her own supplies. While she was heating cans of coffee he moved off to an appropriate distance and manually dug a latrine, an ancient procedure still in favour because of its superb cost-effectiveness.
He was folding up the lightweight spade when a wisp of sound reached him. With a tingling sense of shock he realized that Sandy, who was a good fifty metres away from him, was speaking to someone in normal conversational tones. Harben ran a short way towards her, then stopped as he saw that – as had to be the case – she was completely alone. She was kneeling with her back to him, apparently opening the coffee cans.
“Sandy,” he shouted, not sure of why he was alarmed, “are you all right?”
She turned and he saw the look of surprise on her face. “Bernard? What are you doing over there? I thought you were…” Sandy stood up, looked all around her and began to laugh.
He crossed the intervening space and accepted a coffee. “Most people take years of this sort of life before they go crazy.”
“I thought you were right behind me.” She sipped her drink, somehow managing to look feminine, even fashionable, in the silver-grey quilting of a field suit, and her eyes steadied on the flat space dominated by the stone circles. ’Bernard, why are there no animal bones over there?”
“They get eaten. If they were left sitting about they might scare off other prey, but it’s most likely that they get absorbed for the mineral content. Hassan IV has some funny gaps in its geochemistry, especially where metals are concerned.”
“What a place!”
“All part of nature’s rich tapestry, lover.” Harben finished his coffee, appreciating its warmth, and put the can down. “I’m going to set up the auto-cameras in case there’s some action soon.”
“I’ll stay here and put some notes together for an article.” Sandy gave him a wry smile. “I might as well make some money, too.”
Harben nodded. “I’d want you to stay here anyway. It’s best to leave as little spoor and scent as possible around the place.”
He took the four automatic cameras from his pack, slung the rifle on to his shoulder and walked towards the circles. The cloud ceiling had come down low enough to hide the tops of the tallest trees, but close to the ground the air had the clarity of glass. He kept his gaze fixed on the innocuous-looking rock formations, wondering if the bizarre creatures waiting below ground could feel the vibrations of his footsteps and were preparing themselves in anticipation of his walking into a trap. Tough luck, rocktopus, he thought. I’m not going to feed you – you’re going to feed me.
There were two trees conveniently positioned on each side of the subject area, and he clamped cameras to their trunks, checking the coverage they provided as he did so. The small monolith to the north was easy to climb by the outer face and he installed a third camera on top of it. Two largish boulders were available on the south side as camera mounts. He chose one which was beside a deep-looking pool, hoping that some of the quasi-gnu would be attracted towards the water, thus providing extra film sequences he could use. An advantage of the holofilm system he employed was that it had unlimited depth of focus and a very wide recording angle, which meant that long shots, close-ups, panoramas and framed sequences could be prepared afterwards, at will, through selective processing of one roll of film. Harben was leaning on the boulder and smoothing out the plastic dough of a mounting pad when he became aware of Sandy standing behind him.
“What do you want, Sandy?” he said, not hiding his annoyance. There was no reply. He turned to remind her that she should have kept away from the area, but there was nobody near him. A sudden heightening of his senses made the moisture-laden breeze cooler and the murmur of streams louder. He allowed the strap of his rifle to slip from his shoulder, transferring the weight of the weapon to his hand, and at the same time he scanned the vicinity, satisfying himself there were no places of concealment. A full minute dragged by while he held the defensive pose, but there was no movement except for the slow drift of downward-reaching fingers of mist.
Finally, with the clamour in his nerves gradually abating, he turned back to the camera and completed the task of setting it up. When he had finished he checked the operation of the hand-held remote controller and walked thoughtfully back to the shelter. One explanation for what had happened was that Sandy and he were more jumpy than they realized – walking the face of an alien world was a supremely unnatural experience; another was the possible presence of hallucinogens in the atmosphere. Official survey samplings had indicated a standard mixture of gases, but that did not exclude local or temporary variations. He decided to monitor the performance of his own sensory apparatus for a few hours before saying anything to Sandy.