Part 5 (1/2)
They forged on for several more hours. Telisa was glad she had been working out regularly, even if the exercise was quite different. She wondered how long Thomas and Jack could continue this level of exertion, although she figured Magnus could probably outlast them all. Her questions were answered when Jack spoke up.
”Okay, let's take another break,” Jack said. ”This hiking is killing me.”
Telisa was exhausted. The sun was no longer visible above them, although the light level told her that it hadn't set.
”Are we there yet?” asked Telisa, smiling at her delivery of the cla.s.sic question.
Thomas frowned. ”Actually we're barely halfway. I underestimated the speed we could make out here. I suppose we should find a spot to hole up while it's still light.”
Magnus nodded. ”We could sleep in the trees.”
”That would be safer on Earth,” said Jack. ”Here, who knows? Maybe the trees are more dangerous than the ground.”
”The ground should be okay, unless this planet has some particularly nasty nocturnal predators,” Magnus said. ”Unfortunately, we can't use a campfire without risking detection.”
”How about over there?” Telisa suggested, pointing to a slight rise in the terrain. They moved over to the area she had indicated and set their packs on the ground so they could prepare the makes.h.i.+ft camp.
Everyone arranged their tiny one-person sleeping tubes in a circle with the zippered entrances facing inward towards each other. Magnus and Telisa gathered a bunch of arm-length needles that had fallen from nearby trees and arranged them facing outward around the area for defense.
Telisa looked at the failing light filtering through the trees. ”Only a minute or two to spare, I'd say.”
”Yes, just in time,” Jack agreed. ”Should we have someone awake all the time? Take s.h.i.+fts staying awake?”
”If anything comes around, I think we'll hear it,” Magnus said, looking at the camp perimeter. ”I think setting watches at this point would be overly paranoid. We have the spines, the tents, and a fair amount of firepower.”
They each crawled into their sleeping modules and sought sleep. Telisa opened a vent to let fresh air in and then sprawled out, resting her aching muscles. She fell asleep quickly.
At some point later, Telisa bolted instantly awake. Something was wrong. She listened for a moment and realized that something moved towards their camp, breaking branches and rustling in the leaves of the forest floor. She sat upright, reaching for her pack. She brought out her stunner and unzipped the opening of her tiny sleeping tube.
Magnus stood in the center of their little clearing, holding a flashlight pointed out into the forest. His slug thrower was level with the ground, the barrel pointed out into the darkness towards the noises. Jack and Thomas seemed content to watch from their tent flaps. Telisa scrambled to find her own flashlight. The noises outside were getting closer. She forced herself to calm and found the light.
Telisa clambered out of her tube and stood to Magnus's right, clutching her stunner. She added her light to Magnus's and saw some kind of bluish tentacle waving through the brush at the height of her chest. She took a deep breath and forced herself not to shoot.
The thing pushed aside Magnus's sleeping tube with another blue tentacle. A huge sh.e.l.l pushed through the spiny branches, revealing the rest of the creature. It had spiny legs and about a dozen tentacles. It moved slowly out into the clearing, its tentacles wavering as it searched for the next shrub.
Suddenly Magnus yelled maniacally and kicked the ground in front of him, sending a bit of forest floor debris flying at the creature. The thing flinched away, moving in slow motion, and then it altered its course. It pushed its way though the spines on the perimeter and crawled away.
Everyone let their tension drop. Then Thomas started to laugh. The laughter spread. Even Magnus started to chuckle.
”Well, I guess we showed it,” Thomas said. ”That'll teach it to disturb us.”
”I don't think I can go back to sleep after that,” Telisa said.
Magnus nodded. ”I probably can't either, but I don't want to try and walk in the dark. Let's just try our best.”
Telisa crawled back into her tent. She could still hear the giant sh.e.l.led thing moving away through the brush. She tried to go back to sleep. She tossed and turned for a while. Her legs itched. Telisa scratched, then she felt a small b.u.mp on her leg. She dug out the flashlight and examined herself in the tent. Her legs were covered in welts. Some of them had tiny splinters in them.
She picked at the wounds for a short while, convincing herself that they were nothing but a minor irritation. Apparently some of the plant's spines were able to penetrate the chameleon suit. By this time Telisa became groggy again, and she turned off the flashlight and went back to sleep.
In the morning they repacked everything and moved out about fifteen minutes after sunrise. Telisa's legs were stiff, and walking sent shooting pains through them for the first few minutes. Her pain must have been minor compared to Jack and Thomas, who were complaining loudly.
”Oh, my legs! They're gonna fall off!” Thomas groaned.
”Mine too. And be careful, some of these spines can go through our suits,” Jack said.
”Yes, my legs are full of them,” Telisa agreed.
Thomas nodded. ”Me too,” he said.
”How bad is it? Do you feel sick?” Magnus asked.
”They just seem like splinters I got on Earth,” Telisa said. ”What, you didn't even get one?”
Magnus shook his head. ”Momma Veer...”
”Argh! I should have known.”
Not only did he seem unaffected by yesterday's hike, but he had been spared the needling as well. Telisa shook her head. Somehow none of it surprised her. In the short time since she had met him, he had given her the impression of invulnerability. It wasn't the kind of bragging, pretend-out-loud sort of toughness, but a quiet, understated acceptance of the world's problems without slowing down. Telisa found herself attracted by it, but she put those thoughts aside again. There were the artifacts and getting back alive...
They spent more hours moving through the forest as in the previous day. Telisa tried to stay alert through it all, even though the constant scanning became tedious as they moved through the forest. She challenged herself to spot as many of the local creatures as she could. Sometimes the things would ignore the intruders, other times they flashed into their sh.e.l.ls, falling back onto a lower branch or even to the ground.
For the first time Telisa found a disastrous-looking arrangement of the trees that grew atop each other. A single strong specimen drooped under the weight of two piggybackers. It seemed that the behavior didn't always work as planned. Telisa wondered if somewhere, a chain of three or four of them stacked on each other extended high above the surrounding forest. At least until the whole arrangement came cras.h.i.+ng down like a house of cards.
Telisa almost asked about their progress but realized that she could check for herself. She examined the map in her mind, her current position indicated by Thomas's navigation equipment. She could see that they were almost upon the site of the unusual power emanations. Magnus must have been cognizant of the same thing, as he slowed their progress, scanning the area ahead carefully.
”I can see a ruin directly ahead,” he reported.
Everyone followed him closely, eager to see for themselves. Telisa made out a large gray building overgrown with the local trees and shrubs. Telisa couldn't tell what it was made of. It surface remained smooth despite its age. She guessed it could be constructed of some metal or ceramic.
They approached one seamless wall and then paralleled its course. When they turned the corner, Telisa saw that the wall had been breached. Some kind of root system or underground plant had shattered the wall long ago. The hole was large enough to climb through.
Magnus fished out his flashlight and peeked inside. He turned around and shrugged.
”Looks alien to me. Maybe Telisa should take a look.”
Telisa took her own flashlight and stepped up to the opening.
The disc of light fell upon dusty pieces of equipment larger than a human. The materials and angles looked right for Trilisk origin, but the dust was too thick and she was too far away to be sure.
”I'm getting a closer look,” she said, and without waiting for a reply, she switched the flashlight to her left hand, unclipped her stunner with her right, and went in.
Jack and Thomas walked up to her as she brushed the dust off the nearest device. It didn't seem to have any levers or b.u.t.tons, which was a good sign right off. Trilisk artifacts never did. Most human theories on the subject indicated that they were used through mental interfaces. There were flat black plates built into the gray metal surface. That was another good sign. The plates were display ports, made to show information about the state of the device, like the front panel of a chronometer. Presumably the readouts could provide their information via a mental interface as well, but the Trilisks seemed to prefer having the panels on their equipment too. No one really knew why.
It looked dead. Perhaps all she had to do was find out how to activate it. Unfortunately, Trilisk devices never had anything as simple and primitive as a power switch.
”Amazing. We're the first humans to look at this. Real Trilisk artifacts.”