Dennie shook her head. "I'm glad you didn't tell me you were going, after all. I would have died of worry"
Toshio frowned. Now Dennie was beginning to sound like his mother again. Dennie still wasn't happy about having to leave while he stayed behind. Toshio hoped she wouldn't take this opportunity to bring up the subject again.
She lay down and faced him, using her arm as a pillow. She thought for a moment, then whispered. "What did you find out?"
Toshio closed his eyes. "You might as well know," he said. "I'll want you to tell Gillian in case I can't get through to her in the morning. I found out what Takkata-Jim is doing with those bombs he took from Charlie.
"He's converting them to fuel for the longboat."
Dennie blinked. "But… but what can we do about it?"
"I don't know! I'm not even sure we have to do anything about it. After all, in a couple weeks his accumulators would be recharged enough to lift him off anyway. Maybe Gillian doesn't care.
"On the other hand, it might be darned important. I still haven't figured it all out yet. I may have to do something pretty drastic."
He had seen the partially dismantled bombs through the thick window of the security door to the longboat's specimen lab. Getting to them would be considerably more difficult than simply sneaking back aboard.
"Whatever happens," he tried to reassure her, "I'm sure it will all be all right. You just make certain your notes are all packed properly in the morning. That data on the Kiqui is the second most important thing to come out of this crazy odyssey, and it's got to get back. Okay?"
"Sure, Tosh."
He let gravity pull him over onto his back. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly to feign sleep.
"Toshio?"
The young man sighed. "Yes, Denn…"
"Um, it's about Sah'ot. He's only leaving to escort me. Otherwise I think you'd have a mutiny on your hands."
"I know. He wants to stay and listen to those underground 'voices' of his." Toshio rubbed his eyes, wondering why Dennie was keeping him awake with all this. He already had listened to Sah'ot's importunities.
"Don't shrug them off like that, Tosh. He says Creideiki listened to them, too, and that he had to cut the channel to break the captain out of a listening trance, the sounds were so fascinating."
"The captain is a brain-damaged cripple." The words were bitter. "And Sah'ot is an egocentric, unstable…"
"I used to think so too," Dennie interrupted. "He used to scare me until I learned he was really quite sweet and harmless. But even if we could suppose the two fen were having hallucinations, there's the stuff I've been finding out about the metal-mounds."
"Mmmph," Toshio commented sleepily. "What is it? More about the metal-mounds being alive?"
Dennie winced a little at his mild disparagement. "Yes, and the weird eco-niche of the drill-trees. Toshio, I did an analysis on my pocketcomp, and there's only one possible solution! The drill-tree shafts are part of the life cycle of one organism — an organism that lives part of its life cycle above the surface as a superficially simple coral colony, and later falls into the pit prepared for it…"
"All that clever adaptation and energy expended to dig a grave for itself?" Toshio cut in.
"No! Not a grave! A channel! The metal-mound is only the beginning of this creature's life cycle… the larval stage. Its destiny as an adult form lies below, below the shallow crust of the planet, where convective veins of magma can provide all the energy a metallo-organic life form might ever need!"
Toshio tried earnestly to pay attention, but his thoughts kept drifting — to bombs, to traitors, to worry over Akki, his missing comrade, and to a man somewhere far to the north, who deserved to have someone waiting for him if — when he finally returned to his island launching point.
"… only thing wrong is there's no way I see that such a life form could have evolved! There's no sign of intermediate forms, no mention of any possible precursors in the old Library records on Kithrup… and this is certainly unique enough a life form to merit mention!"
"Mmm-hmmm."
Dennie looked over at Toshio. His arm was over his eyes and he breathed slowly as if drifting off into slumber. But she saw a fine vein on his temple pulse rapidly, and his other fist clenched at even intervals.
She lay there watching him in the dimness. She wanted to shake him and make him listen to her!
Why am I pestering him like this. She suddenly asked herself. Sure, the stuff's important, but it's all intellectual, and Toshio's got our corner of the world on his shoulders. He's so young, yet he's carrying a fighting man's load now.
How do I feel about that?
A queasy stomach told her. I'm pestering him because I want attention.
I want his attention she corrected. In my clumsy way I've been trying to give him opportunities to…
Nervously, she faced her own foolishness.
If I, the older one, can get my signals this crossed, I can hardly expect him to figure out the cues, she realized at last.
Her hand reached out. It stopped just short of the glossy black hair that lay in long, wet strands over his temples. Trembling, she looked again at her feelings, and saw only fear of rejection holding her back.
As if on a will of its own, her hand moved to touch the soft stubble on Toshio's cheek. The youth started and turned to look at her, wide-eyed.
"Toshio," she swallowed. "I'm cold."
78 ::: Tom Orley
When there came a moment of relative calm, Tom made a mental note. Remind me next time, he told himself, not to go around kicking hornets' nests.
He sucked on one end of the makeshift breathing tube. The other end protruded from the surface of a tiny opening in the weedscape. Fortunately, he didn't have to pull in quite so much air this time, to supplement what his mask provided. There was more dissolved oxygen in this area.
Battle beams sizzled overhead again, and weak cries carried to him from the miniature war going on above. Twice, the water trembled from nearby explosions.
At least this time I don't have to worry about being baked by the near misses, he consoled himself. All these stragglers have are hand weapons.
Tom smiled at that irony. All they had were hand weapons.
He had picked off two of the Tandu in that first ambush, before they could snap up their particle guns to fire back.
More importantly, he managed to wing the shaggy Episiarch before diving head-first into a hole in the weeds.
He had cut it close. One near-miss had left second degree burns on the sole of his bare left foot. In that last instant he glimpsed the Episiarch rearing in outrage, a nimbus of unreality coruscating like a fiery halo around its head. Tom thought he momentarily saw stars through that wavering brilliance.
The Tandu flailed to stay upon their wildly bucking causeway. That probably was what spoiled their much vaunted aim, and accounted for his still being alive.
As he had expected, the Tandu's vengeance hunt had led them westward. He popped up, from time to time, to keep their interest keen with brief enfilades of needles.
Then, as he swam between openings in the weedscape, the battle seemed to take off without him. He heard sounds of combat and knew his pursuers had come into contact with another party of ET stragglers.
Tom had left then, underwater, in search of other mischief to do.
The battle noise drifted away from his present position. From his brief glimpse an hour ago, this particular skirmish seemed to involve a half-dozen Gubru and three battered, balloon-tired rover machines of some type. Tom hadn't been able to tell if they were robots or crewed, but they had seemed unable to adapt to the tricky surface, for all of their firepower.