Each of the myriad little flecks was a shining black node, surrounded by pale fibrous sheets that uncurled outward and faded into the distance. We moved in closer, and we could see that many of the black flecks were surrounded by the faintest hints of shells, outlines that intimated the existence of dividing membranes.
As we watched, the enveloping suspension pulsed. A wave of movement swept through the gelatinous mass. Fifteen seconds later, another wave passed through the ocean of tiny objects. What were we looking at here? Seeds? Eggs? What kind of horrors grew here? How long before these tiny flecks produced a host of new monsters, breaking free and rising open-eyed into the world, black and raw and hungry?
"Wow," said Siegel.
"Yeah," I agreed.
Siegel told the processing engine to try several other enhancement patterns, and we examined the minuscale structures through a series of shifted spectrum and false-color images. Their structures grew clearer and clearer.
"Do you think the whole blob is full of these things?" Siegel asked.
"Let's take a look-" I whispered another command, and suddenly our point of view was moving forward, flying steadily across an immense red seascape. Islands and mountains swam past us in schools. Bubbles the size of asteroids hung suspended in the scarlet air. Endless arterial nets, held it all together. The patterns repeated over and over, familiar in their essence, but different in the details. Every black fleck was the center of its own fragile universe, a gathering of materials in a delicate sac. A distinction was being made, an act of separation from the suspension was occurring within each. The structure was almost cellular, but not quite. Not yet.
"My God." The words fell out of my mouth simultaneous with the realization. A chill crawled slowly up my spine, causing the tiny hairs on the back of my neck to rise uncomfortably.
I checked the readouts at the bottom of my vision. The van's LI engine wasn't as powerful as the Harlie units in Atlanta and Houston, but it was still smart enough to recognize the patterns within this fractal landscape. But hell, I didn't need the van's opinion. It was obvious. I knew what these formations were, and what they were becoming. Even a lay person would have recognized it.
The black flecks were seeds. Or eggs. Or cells. Or even raw cellular material, caught in the process of becoming a seed or an egg or a cell. No question. Things were forming inside this red blubbery sap. Things were growing here. Not the things that we would meet outside, perhaps, but certainly the things that would eventually give birth to them.
I knew this was big. I hadn't known it was this big.
One of the most significant questions of the war was being answered here. All we had to do was get these pictures back to Houston Center. My throat was suddenly dry. I allowed myself a deep drink of water. "Siegel," I said abruptly. "Let's get our samples."
"Okay. How do you want to proceed with the red stuff?"
"Carefully."
"Can you be more specific than that?"
"Just a minute, I'm still looking." I was studying the recommendations of the LI engine. "Okay," I said at last. "Sher Khan's readouts suggest that it's pretty thick stuff. It's got the consistency of phlegm. It's also proto-cellular; lots of tiny little structures all bunched together like grapes inside a plastic bag-only more than that. I think we're seeing multiple redundancy here, the same kind of recursion we saw on the way down. It's lots of little bags of stuff, clustered inside middle-sized bags, and lots of middle-sized bags clustered inside even bigger bags, etcetera, etcetera, all the way up to the largest size. The same pattern of protection must hold throughout the whole nest. If Willig's map is correct, there are at least twenty more structures like this one spread around the edges of the chamber.
"All right-" I made a decision. "Pull out as large a chunk of it as you can, cut it, and bag it. I'm going to bet that this thing is self-healing and that you won't see a lot of bleeding."
Siegel grunted and went to work. I watched him for a moment, then popped out of the cyberspace reality and looked at Willig. "How's the weather?"
"Light to moderate candy, with flurries of spun sugar expected momentarily. Have a look yourself."
"I'm going to. Reilly, out of the bubble. Let me up."
Reilly lowered himself down from the turret and stood aside while I pulled myself up into the swiveled seat to look around. There was a light cover of dust already apparent on the top of the bubble, but I could still see clearly out the sides.
All across the roof of the van was a light frosting of pink. As I watched, delicate fluffballs of all sizes came bouncing across the panels. They looked like pale smudges in the air. Sometimes when they hit the surface of the van or the side of the bubble, they powdered into nothingness; most of the time they just bounced away.
The fluffballs were both amazingly strong and curiously fragile-they were dandelions with a hair trigger. They could sail across the countryside for hundreds of klicks without shattering; but then, abruptly, for almost no reason at all, the whole structure would just go brittle, and at the first disturbance the whole delicate structure would just come apart. Even a sudden breeze might do it, shattering the fluffballs into a bright powdery haze. The billions of minuscule pink particles could hang in the air for hours, a stifling sweet fog; or they could just as easily settle out, clumping into flakes like snow and piling up in enormous billowy drifts. The landscape around us was already turning into a frothy whipped meringue.
Without appropriate breathing gear, a human being would suffocate in that cloying miasma. Smaller animals would choke. Insects would be unable to move, their body parts clogged with tiny sticky particles. Plants would be unable to grow, their leaves frosted with residue. The dying would be enormous. A month from now, this land would stink with decay. A year from now, it would stink with Chtorrans.
Our more immediate concern, however, would be the events of the next few days. The pink snow would trigger a feeding frenzy of Chtorran life forms. They were probably hatching even now, eating their way out of their shells, eating as fast as they could in a frenzied desperate rush before the next link in the food chain arrived. There was no difference here between diner and dinner. It was the breakdown of order; eat and be eaten. The last time I had been caught in one of these storms, I had seen the whole thing from the underside, looking out of a bubble just like this one. I still had nightmares sometimes
Even as I watched, the pinkness in the air was thickening. The horizon disappeared into the haze, and the field of vision shrank visibly as the thickest part of the storm began rolling over us. Up the slope, the shambler grove stood tall and ominous; their black shaggy presence became softened in the feathery blur. While I watched, the looming shapes faded into the background of the bright pink sky. My imagination filled in the details. The whole intricate structure of each tree would be delicately iced; the grove would be etched in pink magic like a sweet winterland fantasy. What did the tenants do during a pink storm? Did they feed? Would they swarm? Could they function in this haze? It wasn't something I wanted to test personally.
I shuddered and dropped down out of the turret. Below again, the inside of the van was reassuringly dark and gray. Screens and panels glowed with readouts and projections. Even so, the bright pink gloom cast an eerie glow from above.
"Okay, Reilly, it's all yours again." I patted him on the back as he climbed back up. "Try not to go snowblind. Put your goggles on. If it gets too much for you, shutter the bubble and come on down."
"How bad is it?" Willig asked.
"There's no way to tell. It's all pink. You can't see how thick it is, you can't see how densely packed the dust is, you can't tell how hard it's coming down-it's just there. The stuff doesn't even show up on radar; it just soaks it up like a sponge. Satellite pictures can tell you how wide the storm is, but not how deep."