It was a short jump to the ground. My boots sank two inches into the mud. I aimed around for targets of opportunity, a cheerful and optimistic phrase. None appeared, so I pulled the rain hat down tight and made a careful circle around the ship.
It didn’t appear to be greatly damaged. The leading edge of its wings had a couple of dents, which would limit reentry speed for atmospheric braking, but once I got off this blasted planet, I didn’t really plan on returning. When I got back to Earth, I’d just take the elevator down. Leave this tub in orbit for Solar System Enterprises to sell for salvage.
A snake I hadn’t seen reared up to about belt level. I fired reflexively and it flew away. A flying snake? Maybe it was just gliding, technically. Bad enough.
The snake had a face, sort of smiling, and bright yellow antennae, or horns. What a charming planet.
I hadn’t hit it, but the noise made my ears ring and the pistol’s recoil had smacked my palm like a baseball bat. I wasn’t going to be blasting away like some hero in a cowboy movie.
I almost didn’t hear the girls’ answering shot, surely less than a mile away. I fired again, and listened carefully while I reloaded two fat cartridges. I yelled “Hello?” a couple of times at the top of my lungs.
I went back to the shuttle’s stern. The primary blast nozzle was wider than I am tall, so nothing was likely to sneak up behind me. It was still radiating heat and creaking as it cooled, which might also discourage animals.
Unless they thought That thing is lying still and squeaking helplessly …
A voice I almost recognized shouted hello back to me. “Gloria?”
She came out of the jungle and I stepped toward her and stopped.
She looked like a very accurate cartoon. Sexy short-shorts and a halter top and bare feet. Bare feet? Walking in this jungle?
Her clothes looked painted on and her hair was perfect, solid.
“Gloria?”
She repeated “Hello.” But her grinning mouth was full of long yellow spikes. Her muscles bunched to spring, and I fired twice.
One bullet hit her knee, and the leap turned into a sprawl, that covered half the distance. She snarled at me, a hair-raising sound like a sheet being torn, and staggered back into the jungle—changing, as she went, into a creature that looked like a large cat crossed with an armadillo, armored shoulders and back. She left behind a spatter trail of bright blue blood.
The xenobiologists were going to love this. Of course there were Terran animals that used mimicry, but I think in a more timid way, trying not to be eaten. I don’t think any of them try to talk.
Getting back inside the shuttle sounded like a really good idea. Not an easy one to accomplish, though, without a ladder. The bottom of the door was almost at eye level, and I had last done gymnastics about thirty years ago. But with the help of healthy fear, I did manage on the second try to swing my right leg up high enough to hook a heel around the corner of the door and scramble up gracelessly, pulling a big muscle on the inside of my thigh.
I limped straight back to the survival-gear bin and hauled out the big machine gun. Four heavy magazines that held fifty rounds each. It was set up to fire bursts of four. So I could tap the trigger fifty times. Or just hose it around until the noise stopped. Reload and hose some more.
Up in the temperate-zone base, they had a noisemaker that made loud random bangs every minute or so, which kept the fauna away from the perimeter pretty well. Should I do that here? It might have the opposite effect, attracting curious flesh-eaters.
I sat there listening to the jungle and trying to access the young and foolish man I had been thirty years ago. Man-eating creatures with big yellow teeth? Hey, just give me a gun.
Now it’s sort of “give me a transfer.” We grow too soon old, my grandmother used to say, and too late smart.
There was a noise at the edge of the clearing. I raised the weapon and realized that I didn’t know what the drop was set for. Aim high or low? Well, I wasn’t that good a shot anyhow.
The woman who came out was not half-naked and was not Gloria. She took one look at me and screamed.
I lowered the rifle. “Sorry!” Waved at her. “Get in the ship! There’s a wounded animal out there.”
Three of them followed her, sprinting across the sand; the others hobbling along as one five-legged limping beast. Gloria was trying to hop on one good leg, supported by two other women. Her leg gave out while I was watching.
I slid down, keeping the rifle pointed at the jungle. “What happened?” Gloria didn’t respond.
“Some goddamned thing bit her,” another of the women said. Gloria was barely conscious, pale as snow except for the leg, angry red up past the knee, puffy with streaks of black. “Is it gangrene?” the woman whispered. She had a Texas accent and her name patch said LARAMIE.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Gangrene was just a word to me, something that happened to people in old novels. This was probably something worse, something Venusian.
In novels, the choice was always between amputation and death.
“I have a diagnostic suite,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t designed to survive a crash landing.”
“You weren’t, either,” a tiny woman said, “but here you are. Let’s get her up there.”
It was a clumsy business, me hauling from above while the two taller women pushed from below. She cried out, then moaned and passed out, her eyes rolling up.
Laramie was tall enough to lever herself aboard the way I had, and together we laid Gloria down gently on the cot that unfolded under the diagnostic machine. She was some sort of medical specialist, a caduceus patch on her blouse. She rapped on the two output screens and they stayed dark, ignoring her authority.
Its ON switch didn’t do anything, even though it was properly set in the auxiliary-power position. Well, the lights on the same circuit were dim. Maybe the machine required full power or nothing would happen.
I got a neomorphine pad out of the kit, but the nurse Laramie stopped me from tearing it open. “Better not,” the short one said. “She’s had more than a double dose already. Doesn’t seem to do anything.”
They tried to undress her, but the swelling made it impossible. I found some shears in the toolbox that could just barely cut through her suit fabric, which was reinforced by some strong plastic thread.
Taking turns, the three of us managed to cut a ragged line around the leg of her suit just below the crotch, and then snip down from there to the swelling. She woke enough to moan, shaking her head from side to side. I tried to say reassuring things, but she wasn’t hearing them.
Her jaws clenched against screaming, she squeezed my hand hard enough to make the knuckles pop.
We snipped down far enough to relieve the local swelling, but that didn’t seem to reduce the pain.
“She’s fighting something our bodies have no defense against,” the medic said. “I don’t know …”
Gloria cried out, back arched, then her body suddenly relaxed. Her eyes closed and she sagged into stillness.
“Shit,” the medic said quietly. She pressed two fingers under Gloria’s chin. “She does have a pulse.” She rapped the machine again, harder.
I got a multimeter out of the tool kit and checked a couple of connections. Exactly half of the power-cell elements were dead. I unscrewed the top of the battery box and ducked away from the sharp smell of formic acid.
“Here’s the problem.” I pointed to where the bottom three elements shared a wide crack, which oozed purple solute.
“You can’t fix them?” the small woman said.
“Not even in a shop, no,” I said. “On Earth, you’d just switch out the ruined elements. Even on Mars.” I picked up a dirty shirt and wiped the acid away from the crack with it and stared and thought. “Your own electrical system is out, completely out?”