"Sonic scan..." I said, and turned my attention into the dome. The large blue mass was clearer here. I could almost make out the shape of four huge worms. They were intertwined in a circular formation, if I was reading the image correctly. And they were still cold.
"Well?" asked Duke at my shoulder.
"They're an awfully pretty shade of blue," I replied. "It's go." I gave the command, "Forward."
The spider entered the dome.
Turn right, go up and around and enter the central chamber. Go to the center hole. Squat over the hole. Look down. Nothing in the lower chamber?
Look again.
I made that mistake once. I won't make it again.
The worms are huge. It's hard to see them as worms. They look like a huge furry carpet.
Scan.... Still blue.
I wonder what it looks like when they wake up-but I'm not going to wait to find out.
Lower the nozzle.
And ... give the command, "Gas." There is a hissing noise.
The color of the worms goes darker.
I slipped my hands out of the gloves and pulled the goggles off my eyes. I looked at Duke. "Done," I said.
Duke grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. "Good job." He turned to the communications technician. "All right, bring the chopper down. We'll be ready to start loading in thirty minutes. Move the 'dozer unit into position and tell them to fix grapples and stand by for detox. Have everybody else move in to the primary perimeter. "
The rollagon lurched forward again and Duke gave me a cheerful thumbs-up signal. He started to say something, but I didn't hear it. A second huge cargo chopper was just clattering in overhead. It sounded like a cosmic jackhammer-the one God uses for starting earthquakes.
This was the machine that would carry the worms back to Denver.
I wondered if it would be big enough.
FOUR
AS SOON as we pulled into position, I took a second reading on the mass of the worms. They were too big. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was making a mistake here. Perhaps I should have said no at the last Go-NoGo point.
I almost turned to Duke then, but I stopped myself. I did this every time. As soon as it was too late, I started second-guessing. It didn't matter any more what I thought. We were committed.
I took a second reading on the mass of the worms, recalculated the gas dosage according to Denver's mass-ratio equations, and detonated another pellet. I wondered if it should have been two. I'd rather kill the worms than have them wake up while we were loading them.
We gave the gas a full ten minutes. I took a final reading-the worms were the most wonderful shade of dark purple I'd ever seen-then brought the spider out.
Then we pulled the dome off its foundations. We anchored grapples in its base, attached tow ropes to a jeep and backed up slowly. The hut ripped off like so much Styrofoam. The worms didn't build for strength. They didn't have to.
We had to do it twice; the dome shredded too easily. I felt like an intruder, a vandal. We had to pull it off in pieces. Then we had to rip off the top floor too.
That job was harder. We had to plant small charges in the floor to break it up. It was made out of the same material as the dome walls, but it was denser and had the strength of industrial Kevlar. It would have to be strong to hold the weight of a healthy worm family.
The worms built their nests by chewing up trees and spitting out foam. Apparently they could vary the mix enough to produce lightweight translucent walls and heavyweight hardwood floors all from the same basic ingredients. A neat trick.
When the lower half of the nest was finally revealed, there was a moment of... hesitation. The teams-men and women alike-gathered in silence around the edge to stare down at the exposed worms.
They were huge. Just knowing they were huge from the readings on the screen was not the same as actually seeing them in the flesh. Even the smallest of them was a meter thick and three meters long. The "adult" was two meters high at its brain case and twice as long as the baby. I wished I'd given them that third pellet.
The worms were coiled around each other like lovers, head to tail, head to tail, in a circular formation. They were shadowed in the lower half of the nest, but even so their fur still shone a brilliant red. It was almost alluring.
Duke came up beside me to look. His expression tightened, but he didn't speak.
"Looks like we interrupted a Chtorran orgy," I said. Duke grunted.
"The baby's about three hundred kilos," I offered. "Papa bear is probably a thousand."
"At least," said Duke. He didn't like it, I could tell. He was too silent.
"Too big?" I asked.
"Too expensive," he grumbled. "You're looking at fifteen cows a week. That's a lot of hamburger." He clicked his tongue and turned away. "All right," he bawled, "let's get down in there and get to work." He pointed to a man with a headset. "Tell that chopper to drop the slings. Now!"
We had one bad moment with the loading.
We started with the baby. One squad dropped into the pit while the other two teams stood above them with flame throwers, bazookas and incendiary bullets. The worm was too big to lift or roll onto a sling-it had to be lifted so the canvas could be pulled beneath it.
The squad in the pit quickly slid a series of stainless-steel rods underneath the smallest worm to form a lattice of crossbars. These were then connected at their ends to two longer bars placed lengthwise against the worm. The baby was now lying on a ladder-shaped bed.
The chopper was already clattering into place overhead, whipping us with wind and noise. Its cables were already lowering. The team didn't try to grab the free-swinging ends-instead they waited until the lines touched ground and there was enough slack. They grabbed the cables and ran to attach them to the ladder under the worm. Beckman gave a thumbs-up signal and the chopper began to raise the cables. They tightened visibly. The ladder shuddered and began to lift
For a moment, the worm resisted-it was just a large limp bag of scarlet pudding-and then the connection with the other worms was broken and it pulled up into the air.
Immediately, every worm in the pit began to stir.
Papa worm grunted uneasily. The other two actually chirruped and rumbled. But baby worm was the worst. It writhed as if in pain, and let loose a plaintive wail of anguish. It curled and looped like an earthworm cut in half. The ladder swung recklessly. The cables groaned-and then its eyes popped open. They were huge and black and round-they slid this way and that, unfocused and unseeing.
The team jumped backwards, flattening themselves against the nest wall
"Hold your fire-!" I was screaming. "Hold your fire, goddammit!" Somehow I made myself heard above the terror. "It's still unconscious! Those are automatic reactions!"
Indeed, the baby was already calming down again. Its eyes slid shut and it curled-tried to curl-into a swollen red ball, still hanging above the floor of the nest.
"Oh, Jesus-" gasped someone. "I don't need this-" He started scrambling out. The two men on either side of him looked uncertain
Duke didn't give the team a chance to be scared. He jumped down into the pit with them and started snapping orders. "Come on-let's get that bastard onto the mat. Come on, move it!" He grabbed the soldier who'd started to panic and pushed him straight at the worm. "You're riding up with it, Gomez. Thanks for volunteering." Gomez kept moving in the direction of Duke's shove. It was safer.
"Come on! Move that mat! Pull it under! Under- goddammit! Under! Good! All right-" Duke pointed up at the communications tech, still bellowing, and waving his arm like a semaphore. "Down-! Bring it down!" And then back to the squad again. "All right! Let's get those bars out! Let's get those cables attached! Now! Goddammit! Now! Let's move!"