The alien root was having a larger combined effect on the ground and atmosphere. Layla decided that now would be a good time to check out the chocolate factory. Dawn was breaking, and the croatoans didn’t usually start work for another hour. She could slip inside the warehouse and have a good look around their equipment, check their latest charts, and maybe even try and make sense of their computers. It wasn’t worth risking before, but things were moving, and she wanted to know the direction.
She slipped on a black sweater and carefully opened the door, trying not to make a sound.
Thunder rumbled in the distance as she neared the chocolate factory. The last thing she needed. It was like an alarm for the aliens to go outside and revere the adverse weather. Layla tried to appear as casual as possible as she walked around the side of the building toward the front entrance.
Thin light shone out of the barrack buildings into the quiet main square, reflecting off the hover-bikes parked in the middle. Some aliens were busy. Layla could hear faint sounds of clanking and humming, nothing really unusual.
She reached for the chocolate factory door. It flew open, striking her hand as she attempted to pull it away.
A croatoan surveyor stood in the entrance and looked up. It carried a shoebox-sized device under its right arm, not one of croatoan computers; this had a luminous green display and several circular blue buttons. A transparent pipe curled around the box like a vacuum cleaner hose.
The croatoan clicked a few times and held its free arm to one side in a gesturing motion.
“Good morning. You’re starting early today,” Layla said.
The alien shuffled past her, followed by four of its colleagues, each carrying the same thing.
Layla stood on her tiptoes and peered into the gloom behind the outgoing procession. The place was a hive of activity. Nothing like she’d ever seen before.
Two more aliens filed past, carrying the large object on a stretcher. It was the first time she’d observed the back of the glowing sea-green piece of equipment. Five circular holes ran along the side, funneling into the internal machinery.
She stepped inside and walked past the croatoan worktable. A group of eight surveyors stood around it, busily communicating with each other, holding up their tablets, pointing. They stopped and turned as she passed. Layla pointed toward the back of the room where Vlad sat gazing at the screens, dutifully monitoring the harvesters.
Vlad remained transfixed on the screens as Layla approached. She said, “People are going to start to think you’re a chocolate factory ornament.”
Vlad twisted in his chair. “I’m not the only one who works here.”
“You are for at least sixteen hours a day.”
He grunted and spun back to face the screens. Layla remembered him close to breakdown when he worked with the livestock, turning up increasingly drunk for work, losing his temper before sobbing in open view. Vlad was the one member of the gang that didn’t seem to be able to simply brush things under the carpet for the sake of survival; he had little choice but to go along so he carved out a niche in the most bearable work. Layla got it; Gregor didn’t. He called Vlad the wet lettuce.
“How’s the conversion rate since the change last night?” Layla said.
Vlad twisted his chair around. “Seems to be doing the trick. I’ll have a better idea in a few hours, but the early signs are good.”
Layla glanced back to the croatoans. “How long have they been here?”
“About three hours. Came in the middle of the night. I’ve never seen so many of the little freaks buzzing around. One of them brought over a tray of food,” Vlad said, twisting his face into a grimace.
“You’ll let me know if you see anything strange?”
“Look around you,” he replied, and started writing something on a notepad.
Layla decided to follow the croatoans as they left the chocolate factory in a busy gaggle. She shadowed them left, into the eight-foot gap between the factory and training building toward the paddocks.
A loud, short electric buzz echoed ahead. The warning sound before the paddock gates were opened. She reached the other side and saw red lights spinning on either side of the entrance.
Two surveyors pulled the tall mesh gates open.
Humans remained at the opposite end of the paddock huddled under the shelter, staring over with blank faces at the croatoan activity.
To Layla’s right, the gravity trailer drifted past across open ground.
Four croatoans kept it on course at each corner. A large transparent structure, about the size of a single decker bus and split into five sections, balanced on top. Each section had a small, circular hole at one side and a door on the other. It must have been assembled in one of the warehouses. To her knowledge, nothing that size had come off a shuttle. That’s the way croatoans did things, assembling their equipment like hi-tech, flat-packed furniture.
The croatoans pushed the trailer through the gate and brought it down in a clear grassed area. They slid the structure off the trailer and moved it to one side. Other aliens joined them, carrying over their pieces of electronic equipment.
Layla crouched by the electric fence and observed their movements. Another roll of thunder boomed in the distance; the aliens collectively looked up for a moment before carrying on.
Each of the five devices was twisted in place around the holes of the large structure, one for every compartment. Two croatoans attached the hoses from the devices to the larger one that was carried over on a stretcher. It took on the appearance of a control panel once the whole thing was interconnected. Most croatoans gathered around the glowing, coffin-sized device, fifteen of them.
The remaining five made their way toward the far end of the paddock. Each pulled a single human out of the flock and led them at gunpoint back toward the main group and lined them up outside each individual compartment, all dressed in dirty sheets tied around their bodies.
A croatoan approached the back of the first compartment and knelt by the attached device. A series of lights started winking on it. A whirring noise drifted over to Layla.
As the alien moved along each compartment, the noise became gradually louder. It sounded like being next to a bank of servers with multiple running fans. All five shoeboxes collectively winked and hummed.
The left hand compartment started to fill with dark orange smoke. Its neighbor took on a lighter tone. The middle compartment was slightly more transparent. The one after that was only tinged with orange. The left-hand compartment remained clear.
Croatoans moved all around the structure, investigating it, checking the shoeboxes probably for readings, and pressing their gloved hands against the plastic-looking shell.
It looked to Layla like they were creating different types of atmosphere pressurized in individual compartments.
The aliens stood in a circle for a few moments before one broke from the group and opened the individual doors to each compartment. Puffs of orange smoke drifted into the cloudy sky after the last three doors were released.
Layla edged behind a tree stump and peered over. She was starting to feel that this was an experiment she needed to see and didn’t want to be chaperoned away by a paranoid alien.
A croatoan guarding the man outside the left-hand compartment opened its door by raising a lever, then cajoled the confused-looking man inside at gunpoint. It slammed the door behind him and secured the lever downwards.
The same thing happened in turn to all four humans outside the other compartments until all five sections were occupied. It looked like a strange zoo as the croatoans stood around the structure, checking the smaller devices and crowding around the larger console. The humans looked around, pressed against the interior. One sat cross-legged on the floor. A croatoan approached and ushered him up with a gun.