Where…?
Once past them, it soon reached the pile of corpses. With a crackle of breaking flesh, it hoisted one of the corpses onto its shoulder as if it was made of thin balsa, then turned and began to trudge back again.
'It has no radio, then,' said Cormac.
'What the hell was that?' asked Gant. A genuine question this time.
Cormac tried to track down an aberrant memory. Where had he seen a creature that walked like that? 'I don't know, but it's a sure bet it had something to do with the runcible breakdown. We'll follow it. Try not to make too much noise. It might not have a radio, but it's probably got ears.'
They moved after the creature once it was twenty metres ahead of them.
'A description would be nice,' said Jane.
Mika replied, 'Manlike, but with lower inverted knee-joints.'
'What are they doing with the bodies?' asked Chaline.
Cormac glanced in her direction. She had not figured it out, and he was not about to start spouting theories just yet. He wondered what it was like to have that kind of naivety.
They followed the creature to an area where any troughs had been pushed back against the walls. There it dropped the corpse to the ground. Chaline gagged when an arm flew off and its fingers shattered like porcelain. The creature squatted down and picked up a device with the appearance of a builder's trowel. A high-pitched whining came over their comunits as it used the device to cut the arm into sections.
'Oh my God,' said Chaline, and was ignored.
'Appears to be some kind of electric shear,' said Thorn, then he pointed to the row of black cubes to which the shear was wired. 'Homemade cells. God knows what they're made of.'
'And that is a microwave oven, if I'm not mistaken,' said Cormac, indicating a cylindrical canister on the floor.
The creature opened the canister and dropped the sections of human arm inside.
'They're… they're cooking…' Chaline could not goon.
'More like softening, at these temperatures,' said Thorn. He did not seem the slightest bit bothered by what he was seeing. 'Human flesh is about the only form of protein and fat around, here on the perimeter. Most supplies were probably destroyed and whatever was left they probably used up long ago.'
Cormac surveyed the plants all around them. Thorn looked as well.
'Not wordi them diawing vegetable matter either. That would be a waste of energy. Just not wordi the effort with all this flesh about/ the agent said.
'Yeah,' said Gant, 'but what kind of creature can survive on radioactive human flesh?'
Cormac had a horrible suspicion he might know.
'Oh God.'
Cormac glanced at Chaline with irritation. But she was not viewing the scene before them, but was looking behind her. Cormac turned fractionally before Gant did. Behind them stood a second creature, as if it had been there for some time, watching them. Gant raised his gun, but Cormac had his shuriken to hand before him. It flashed through the air with its chainglass blades retracted. There was a crack. Gant swore as his gun clattered on the floor. Cormac laid a restraining hand on Thorn as the shuriken hovered in the air above him. Thorn lowered his gun. Cormac hit the recall on its holster and it shot home, glad to be out of the cold.
'No violence,' he said, then put some lightness in his voice. 'They're only eating dead people, not killing live ones.'
They all slowly stood up. Cormac glanced behind and saw diat the other creature had seen them too, and was also standing. 'Right, we'll head back for the shuttie. They'll eidier follow us or they won't; we cannot compel them. But if they do come, we'll allow them aboard.'
'What are they, Cormac?' asked Chaline.
Now she had asked, Cormac wanted to answer her -but he had to be sure. If they were what he diought they were, then that meant there would be an awful lot more questions - like, where now was a certain extragalactic creature? A creature with a body consisting of four kilometre-wide spheres of flesh joined in a row, and how had it survived an antimatter explosion? But that was another story, one he suspected he would have to be telling soon enough.
'I cannot be sure of what they are. We'll see back at the shuttle, if they come along.'
The five of them moved back down the aisle. Gant retrieved his gun and holstered it. As they neared the second creature, it moved aside to allow them past. Once they were past, it turned to watch them. Its fellow joined it. Cormac gestured for them to follow. They immediately did so.
'How dangerous are diey?' asked Gant.
'They haven't attacked, diat's all I can say. Whatever their reason for being here, they are survivors. We came here to rescue any survivors…'
They soon reached the open door to the facility, and began fighting their way dirough a worsening blizzard to the shuttle.
'Quickly,' said Jane. 'Some fallout.'
Cormac glanced back and saw the two creatures hesitating at the door. Perhaps they were at their limit there. Perhaps it was too cold out here for them. He again gestured for them to follow, and pointed over at the shuttle. They followed again. The storm made no difference to their plodding gait. In a moment all five were beside the shuttie and Jane opened the door and helped them inside. Cormac waited with her at the door for the two creatures to arrive. They climbed inside also. The door closed. The creatures stood there waiting.
As the temperature rose, the shuttle filled with carbon-dioxide vapour that slowly cleared. Soon the floor around the creatures was peppered with water-ice splinters that had flaked from their plastimesh clothing. When the temperature reached 250 Kelvin, minus twenty-three Celsius, Cormac removed his mask and gloves. The creatures copied him, the plastic mesh that covered them breaking like wet blotting paper at this higher temperature.
'No coldsuit underneath. Must have antifreeze for blood,' observed Thorn.
Everyone else was silent as the creatures revealed themselves, and finally stood naked before them. Cormac nodded to himself, all his recent suspicions confirmed, and new ones taking their place. Had Blegg known? The old bastard had said Cormac was just right for this mission.
These creatures looked like men, only their skin was green, fading to yellow around their stomachs, inside their legs and under their chins, and it was tegulated with fingernail-sized scales. They were hairless, and their eyes were about three times the size of a man's. They had no ears, only holes set in the requisite positions. The shape of their heads was toadlike, with muzzles rather man human noses and mouths. Their hands were three-fingered and bearing claws. Tentatively, Mika stepped closer and scanned them with her diagnosticer. After that she studied her readings for a long time before saying anything.
'I can't get a proper reading from them. We'll need the lab on the Hubris.'
'Doesn't surprise me,' said Cormac. 'And it wouldn't surprise me if you get some strange readings there, too. You see, I don't think they are really alive.'
Mika looked at him and waited.
Cormac glanced at Jane, who was keeping a wary eye on their two visitors, then turned to Mika, his tone acid. 'You asked what they are. Well, a very long time ago a palaeontologist by the name of Dale Russell followed up on a little thought-experiment of his. He was wondering what dinosaurs might have evolved into, had not mammals displaced them. For his basic model he took a dinosaur called stenonychosaurus, and from that he developed what he called a dinosauroid. These are something like his model.'
'But they are not dinosauroids,' Mika stated.
'Oh no,' said Cormac, 'I think these were made as a taunt, or a lesson, or for some other unfathomable reason. I've only ever seen one before now, and I assumed it was unique. I christened it dracoman.' Cormac rubbed a hand across his eyes. Suddenly he felt very tired. 'You see, these were made by an extragalactic dragon that might or might not have died a quarter of a century ago.'