The Mind Pool

Chapter 30

Travancore from five thousand kilometers: it was even better than Travancore from half a million. A dream world, a soft-edged emerald ball, colors muted by a deep atmosphere, outlines touched with a misty impressionist palette. Peaceful. Beautiful.

Dangerous.

In Chan’s opinion, if no one else’s.

He stared down at the endless jungle and wondered what it would take to shake the Lotos-eater calm of the rest of the team. The closer they came to the planet, the more their enthusiasm grew. With S’greela saying that Travancore reminded her of the best Pipe-Rilla abstract paintings, while Shikari babbled of misty mornings on Mercantor, how would Chan ever ruffle that complacency?

They referred to him as the junior member of team. S’greela was ninety Earth-years old, and Angel much more than that; but in some ways they were the innocent babies, and he was the wary oldster.

He turned to the other three. They were preparing to enter the landing capsule — the final step before leaving the massive safety of the Q-ship and beginning the spiralling descent to the planet. “What are your impressions after a closer look?”

“Magnificent!” S’greela spoke first, her voice bubbling with enthusiasm. “This is a beautiful world. We are looking forward to seeing it more closely.”

“Don’t judge by what you see. Team Alpha was destroyed down there.”

The other three exchanged looks — smug looks, Chan felt sure of it. They had not been devastated by the news of the first pursuit team’s fate, as he had. He still found that news hard to believe, still expected to see Leah’s face on the communication channel, still wondered when he would hear her voice again.

“We have to be very careful,” he said. “If we’re not, the same thing can happen to us.”

“But it will not happen to us,” said Shikari. “It cannot. For although we are sure that Team Alpha was composed of beings of exceptional talent and intelligence, they could not have made a complete team, as we are a team.”

And there you had it. Nothing that Chan said could influence the opinions of the other three. They had moved in a few days from nervous diffidence to an unshakable conviction that together they would face any situation — and win!

There had been progress, even Chan admitted that. In communication with each other they were reaching the point where he could read the messages in a single wave of Angel’s side fronds, a ripple in Shikari’s base, or one head movement from S’greela. But what the others didn’t know about was Leah’s message to Chan. She too had spoken of an extraordinary level of communication achieved by Team Alpha. Yet her team had failed, disastrously. Chan had other problems that he had so far not mentioned to the other three. He was having blackout periods, times when he could not recall afterwards where he had been or what he had been doing. The attacks came without warning and lasted anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. So far they seemed to have hit only in leisure spells, when he was relaxing with the other team members. But suppose that one came along at a more critical time — even during their possible clash with Nimrod?.

Chan had sent a message to Kubo Flammarion over the Link connection from the Q-ship. Might he be feeling an after-effect of the Stimulator? Flammarion’s reply was no comfort. No one knew enough about the Tolkov Stimulator to predict the side-effects of a successful treatment on humans.

Ought the others to be told what was happening to Chan? At the very least it might knock a hole in their wall of self-confidence. They were staring down at the approaching orb of Travancore with the cheerful curiosity of vacationing visitors.

He gave it one more try. “That’s not Barchan down there, and a Simmie Artefact isn’t a Morgan Construct. The Construct is smarter, better-armed, and murderous. I know we handled the Simulacrum, but this job will be ten times harder.”

“And we are a hundred times more of a unit than we were then,” replied S’greela. “Chan, it is normally the role of a Pipe-Rilla to be the principal worrier in a group. But now I feel totally at ease. We have become — a team!”

That was the end of it. They would not budge. They imagined the destruction of Nimrod, if they bothered to think of it at all, as some brief, painless encounter. Maybe an actual video scene, showing the first pursuit team as it was blasted or burned to extinction, would have made them think differently. Chan hated the idea of viewing that murderous meeting, yet he would have endured it, if its showing could drag the other team members to some understanding of their coming danger.

But that was not an option. All the sounds and images from Team Alpha’s descent to Travancore were tucked away in Angels capacious memory, available for recall and analysis in moments — except that the encounter itself was not there. The final video in the Anabasis files showed Nimrod drifting down the shaft toward the waiting team. It did not appear belligerent, or even particularly powerful.

The fight that had followed was not shown. The transmission equipment must have been destroyed with the team itself. But the disaster on Cobweb Station had proved that the Construct was anything but peaceful, and now it had more battle experience. On Travancore it must have destroyed the first pursuit team in a fraction of a second.

That, at least, was Chan’s own preferred version of the event. He could not bear the idea of the team members — of Leah — lingering on horribly wounded beneath that thatch of vegetation for hours or days.

The Team Alpha recording served one other possible purpose. It indicated the location of Nimrod, during at least the brief period of time of the encounter. When Shikari performed a muon survey from orbit, a nearby site at Travancore’s equator seemed to Chan’s eyes slightly brighter on the images. But there were half a dozen other candidates, and he could not decide among them.

“What do you think, Angel?” Chan indicated his favored bright spot. “Isn’t that the point where we are most likely to find Nimrod?”

“Possibly, possibly.” There was a slow wave of mid-fronds, Angels equivalent of polite skepticism. “But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We must descend before we really know. In the words of the great Sherlock, it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

S’greela and Shikari had done their own analysis of Team Alpha’s descent into the surface shafts. They had concluded that in Travancore’s light gravity the tunnels would be navigable by Angel without assistance, provided that a lift pack could be strapped around the tubby mid-section. And S’greela, unhampered by Angel, would have far better mobility.

That conclusion was the only positive result that Chan could see from two days of analysis from high orbit. He drew a conclusion — reluctantly: they could look down at Travancore from afar forever, and not know much more than they knew now. Like it or not, it was time to stick their necks out and get down to the surface.

As they prepared to enter the landing capsule Chan gave the others one more warning. “Make sure you have everything that you’ll need on Travancore before we leave the Q-ship. We’ve had clear instructions from the Anabasis, we will not be allowed back on board unless we can prove that we’ve destroyed Nimrod. We won’t even be given drop shipments from orbit, unless it’s clear that they can’t be used by Nimrod if things go wrong. We’ll be on our own.”

“Until we return triumphant to the Q-ship…” said S’greela.

“…our team victorious, happy and glorious,” added Angel.

“One for all, and all for one,” added Shikari.

If the Tinker was starting that, too, Chan couldn’t stand it. He went across to the Q-ship communicator one last time and initiated a Link sequence to Anabasis Headquarters on Ceres. Mondrian was alone in the control room. He nodded a greeting, and did not speak.

“A few more minutes, said Chan, “and well be on our way. Do you have any final instructions?”

“Nothing that makes any practical difference to you, but there’s been a slight change at this end. The Stellar Group ambassadors are insisting that the Mattin Link to your Q-ship be made one-way all the time that you are down on the surface. Messages and materials can go from here, but nothing must come back this way. It’s the same worry as before, that somehow Nimrod might destroy the team and then find a way to Link out.”

“But if we can’t send messages, how will you know we’ve done our job and are waiting to come home? How will you know anything of what’s happening?”

“I’ve taken care of that. A monitor team will be shipped from here to the Q-ship, and you’ll be able to talk to the people there.”

“How will the Ambassadors be any more sure of that team, than they are of my team?”

“Because I’ll be on the monitor team, myself.” Mondrian smiled grimly at Chan. “You know what that means, don’t you? So long as Nimrod is still active, I’m going to be stuck on Travancore as much as you are. I’ll be in orbit, and you’ll be down on the ground, but neither one of us will be able to leave. Until Nimrod is out of the way, it’s a one-way trip for all of us. So you know I mean it when I wish you luck. It’s a long walk home.”

A long, long walk. Fifty-six lightyears from Travancore to Earth. Six centuries of sub-lightspeed travel. Chan understood what Mondrian was saying: Destroy Nimrod — or your team will have vanished forever from the known worlds.

And Chan understood more, things that Mondrian was not saying. The Stellar Group Ambassadors are insisting …

What did the Angel or Pipe-Rilla or Tinker Ambassadors know of battles, and quarantines, and blockades? Not one thing. It was Mondrian who was deciding the rules and defining the actions. And there was nothing that Chan could do about it.

“We will be on our way within an hour,” he said quietly. “Give us one Earth week, and I hope that we’ll have some results.”

“Don’t set yourself deadlines, Chan. Nimrod will still be there if it takes two weeks. Just make sure you destroy the Morgan Construct. Festina lente.”

Mondrian was still facing the camera, but the display began to exhibit the rainbow fringes of a fading Link communication.

“Festina lente?” said Shikari.

“It is a piece of advice given in an old Earth language. Mondrian took it as the motto for Boundary Security. I believe that it means, hasten slowly .”

“I don’t see why he saw the need to warn us,” said S’greela indignantly. “I am sure that we will not be foolish enough to hurry into trouble.”

“Fools rush in …” said Angel. “Hmm. Enough of that. We believe that we are ready, Chan, to begin our descent.”

Chan’s analysis of Team Alpha data had led him to three conclusions. He explained to the others.

First, and worst, the other team had made one huge mistake. They had been careless in checking the Morgan Constructs current location before they began their descent. Nimrod obviously was able to move about the planet, within or beneath the vegetation canopy, at high speed. Chan would not make the same blunder as Leah. There would be continuous monitoring of the Constructs position as soon as a definite location was confirmed. Second, Team Alpha had not made the best use of the native life forms. At least two of them might be valuable for either information or reconnaissance. There was the long, legless caterpillar-snake that lived in the upper shafts, and the nimble, nervous animal that had been encountered by Team Alpha in the deep jungle. If either one possessed intelligence and could be talked to, it might help to cancel one of Nimrod’s advantages. The Construct had been on Travancore for a long time, and must know it well. Chan’s team had vast numbers of useless facts, but all of them had been acquired from far, far away. What was needed now was knowledge of the planet below the shrouding canopy of vegetation.

Third, the other team had stayed together too much. Chan knew how tempting it was to work as a unit, and how satisfying that could be; but there were some functions that still called for individual actions.

Chan’s third statement produced strong protest from the other three. Shikari was particularly outraged.

“It must not be. We are a team! As a team, we should always work together.”

“Shikari, you haven’t learned anything. You saw how successful the Tinker component sub-assemblies were on Barchan. But you still don’t accept that some things are better done by individuals than groups.” Chan turned away from the Tinker. “As long as I’m in charge, we’ll do things the way I say. Of course, if anyone else wants to take over responsibility for running operations, I’ll be happy to step aside.”

He was both worried and pleased by the horrified reaction, not just of Shikari but of Angel and S’greela. Their immediate acceptance stuck him with a job for which he felt unqualified. Now he had to get on with it.

He took the landing capsule down to Travancore. It hovered at one position on the planet’s daylight side, while the team unloaded and inflated their tent and fitted it into the upper layers of vegetation. As soon as all the equipment was unloaded, the landing capsule took off again under automatic control for synchronous orbit. It would hover above the planet, monitoring the location that Chan had picked out as a probable location for Nimrod. The Q-ship was stationed much farther out, far from any possible danger of Construct weapons.

Once they were settled in, Chan assigned S’greela to a solo mission. The Pipe-Rilla was easily the strongest of the team members. She was to descend the nearest shaft, seek a specimen of the long, snaky life form, and bring it back to the tent. According to Angel there should be considerable diurnal movement of Travancore’s mobile forms. Like- ocean life on Earth, they would take advantage of daylight to feed and sun themselves in the upper levels, and return to the depths at night. Now it was close to midday, and S’greela had a good chance of finding what she wanted close to the surface.

She set off, unarmed at her insistence, on her mission. The others settled for a long, nervous wait.

It was close to sunset when S’greela returned, empty-handed and exasperated. The other three were sitting in the tent, Angel close to Chan and Shikari spread like a thick cloak over both of them. S’greela joined them, and waited for the Tinker components to envelop her also. She sighed.

“You couldn’t find one?” said Angel at last.

The Pipe-Rilla shook her head. “It was not as simple as that. A most frustrating experience! Many times I saw one of the forms, but each time it crawled away through a gap in the wall of the shaft. Finally, I decided to lie in wait in one place. At last one came along. I caught it — but I could not bring it here!”

“It was too strong for you?” asked Shikari. The voice funnel was down on the floor, next to Chan’s legs. These days the Tinker showed less and less interest in assuming any familiar form.

“Not at all. I was stronger. But I was out-legged.” S’greela held up three pairs of wiry limbs. “It is not often that I meet a creature with more legs than I have.”

“But I thought the animal you were after was legless,” said Shikari.

“So did I. Perhaps we need to define a leg. I found that its body is in thirteen separate segments. And on each one there are two gripping attachments — twenty-six in all. When I took hold of its body, each of the twenty-six held tight to the ribs on the wall of the tunnel. I could detach any one of them easily enough. But I could not detach all of them, and I dared not use too much force for fear of harming it.”

“Did it show signs of being intelligent?” asked Angel.

“More perhaps than I did. I am here, and it is there, uncaptured. But the whole episode was most annoying. All the time that I was holding the creature, it made sounds. Very high-pitched, so that although I could hear most of them, I had no way to reproduce them. I suspect that they were in fact some kind of language. Finally I had to release the animal and return here before dare. It wriggled away only a few paces, quite unharmed. And then, as though to mock me, it stopped and calmly began feeding! It seemed to be saying to me, ‘This is my territory, and here I stay.’ I suggest that tomorrow morning Angel and I return to the same place. Angel has our best language ability, and the computer communicator can synthesize anything up to a hundred thousand cycles a second.” S’greela turned to Chan. “But of course, that is your decision. You are the leader for these things.”

Called on for comment, Chan felt a sudden mood change. He had not spoken since S’greela’s return, but he had been following the conversation in a perplexing way, understanding almost without listening. He had been the one preaching the need for action by individuals. Now the proposal that Angel go off with S’greela made him feel uneasy. At his feet the Tinker stirred restlessly, as though Shikari could somehow sense his discomfort.

“I agree, Angel ought to take a look at the animal,” said Chan. “But I think when that happens, I ought to go also. I wanted you to try it alone at first, S’greela, because you are the strongest. But strength does not seem important for what we want to do.”

“Then we should all go?”

“I don’t like that, either. Our communication equipment is here, and we need to be able to stay in contact with the landing capsule and the Q-ship. S’greela, do you feel confident that there was no trap? That the animals in the shafts have nothing to do with Nimrod?”

“I feel sure that they do not — but do not ask me to prove that.”

“Angel?”

“We concur. S’greela is almost certainly correct. The probability of a connection between today’s events and the Morgan Construct is very low.”

“And the animal seems harmless?”

“Despite its size, I judged it to be harmless. All it seemed to want to do was eat. Even when I was trying to dislodge it from the tunnel walls, it kept on chewing at them. It has substantial mandibles, but it never once tried to bite me.”

“Right.” Chan made his decision. “Tomorrow we will all go — except for Shikari.”

“We do not wish to be left alone here!” The Tinker was outraged.

“I know you don’t. Listen to me for a moment, Shikari, and see how this sounds. We must leave someone here, in case we need to communicate with the ship. So half of you goes with us. Half remains here. You’ll know which shaft we are in, and if you had to you could fly all your components down to join us in a couple of minutes. I know you don’t want to do this, but can you do it? Can you operate in two halves?”

The Tinker said nothing, but there was a sudden tremble through the whole mass of the composite. Hundreds of components flew away to cling to the side of the tent. The voice funnel closed abruptly.

“Come on, Shikari,” coaxed S’greela. “If you can do this, it will be wonderful. We can explore with you, and still know that you will have contact with the capsule if we need it. And it will only be for a little while.

“Divide and conquer,” added Angel. “You alone can do this.”

The voice funnel remained closed, but individual components slowly came back to join the assembly. Shikari gradually flattened to form a low and miserable heap around the other team members.

It was agreement; or at least, acceptance.

Angel had used the mobility pack during training, but only for a few minutes. S’greela fixed it now around Angel’s tubby blue-green middle section, and tightened the straps.

“All ready. If you would care to try it out …”

Angel made a few tentative back-and-forth movements along the lip of the tent. Then suddenly it was darting off on a complex three-dimensional pattern of zig-zags, racing back and forth over the uneven uppermost layer of the vegetation like a water skier.

“Stop playing around, Angel,” said Chan over his communications pack. “We have to be on our way.”

He was beginning to feel like the disciplinarian of the group, the one who always had to say no. The others didn’t seem to worry at all! Maybe that was the real difference between humans and the rest of the Stellar Group — if history was anything to go by, humans had always had plenty to worry about.

Angel came skimming and diving back to the side of the tent, executing a final mid-air roll and loop before landing. The others were ready and waiting. As they set out for the shaft one half of Shikari bade a solemn farewell to the part that would remain behind. Chan felt sure that the Tinker was doing it for his benefit. Shikari explained that although there were seldom more than a quarter of the total number of components clumped to form a single body at any one time, the point was that they were always there, always available to attach whenever they were needed. This physical separation into two major pieces would be a unique and unpleasant event.

“Imagine going off on a journey without your legs or your arms,” said Shikari. “Or imagine Angel being separated into the Chassel-Rose and the Singer. Well, it’s just as bad for us to be split like this.”

Chan was not persuaded, particularly since once they were on the way the Tinker seemed in excellent spirits. A steady two-way stream of individual components moved along the tunnel, providing a continuous link between the two halves of the composite. Chan began to wonder how long a connected chain of single components could be. With, say, ten thousand components, each ten centimeters long … that would stretch for a kilometer. But the neuronal inter-connections in such a linear array would be minimal. Chan doubted that a Tinker would actually be able to think much in such a mode.

Angel was leading the way, gliding silently along the curved tunnel with all sensors operating. After about twenty minutes the green bulk stopped and turned back to the others. “Something moves in the tunnel ahead,” said Angel softly. “We are very close to the location that S’greela described.”

A handful of Tinker components separated and winged their way down the tunnel past Angel. They returned a few seconds later, and attached to form a chain between Angel and Shikari.

“It is the form,” said Angel. “The same form that S’greela saw. A long body and no real legs, feeding at the tunnel wall.”

“Allow me,” said S’greela. The Pipe-Rilla eased past Angel and went bounding forward down the spiral tunnel. The others heard a thresh of limbs and a high-pitched squeak. Chan led the way down the shaft, pointing his light ahead. He found S’greela holding something firmly around its middle section, while all the rest of the animal clung firmly to the tunnel wall.

Chan walked forward along the full length of the body. It was enormous, a straw-colored multi-segment monster over a meter across and better than ten meters long. No wonder S’greela had not been able to bring it back to the tent!

Despite its size the animal made no attempt to attack, or even to defend itself. The head was eyeless and dark-red, equipped with a broad slash of a mouth big enough to bite Chan in two. It was still eating steadily, chomping on vegetation that it clipped from sprouting sections of the tunnel walls. As Chan came close to it the big head turned slowly towards him. He heard a shrill series of squeaks and whistles, so high and loud that they hurt his ears. They came from a second broad slit set a few inches above the mouth.

Angel advanced to Chan’s side, and the communicator attached to its mid-section gave out an experimental series of similar squawks and squeaks.

“We are only imitating at the moment,” said Angel. “But we think that it is a language, even if a primitive one. We assume that it arises as a modulation of ultrasonic navigation signals employed within the deep tunnels — a natural development for creatures that live mostly in darkness. But before we can be sure we must have more samples of its sounds. Hold it tightly, S’greela. This may take some time.”

Angel moved closer to the head, reached out a lower frond, and poked the creature gently. The monstrous caterpillar body struggled harder, and the head turned to face Angel. There was a longer series of squeaks, this time with a different emphasis and cadence. Angel responded with a succession of similar sounds. They gradually ascended in pitch until they were inaudible to Chan’s ears. The great body ceased to squirm in S’greela’s grasp, and the Pipe-Rilla leaned closer to follow the interaction. Chan knew that both Angel and S’greela could hear frequencies well outside the human range. He would have to let them work in peace now, and receive his briefing when the initial communication attempt was finished. He stepped away from the others and stared around him at the tunnel walls.

They were close to a branch point where the descending shaft split and continued down as two separate paths. He had not seen that before, nor heard of it in any of the records left by Team Alpha. It suggested a possible system of pathways through Travancore’s jungle more complicated than they had realized.

Chan glanced back at Shikari and S’greela. He was tempted to call to them, but they were both engrossed in Angel’s efforts at talking with the giant native animal. He walked a little farther down the sloping tunnel, and shone his light along each branch in turn.

They were obviously quite different. One continued steadily down toward the distant surface of Travancore, five kilometers below. The other was narrower and less steep. It curved off slowly to the left with hardly any gradient at all. If it went on like that, it would form a horizontal road through the high forest.

Chan went that way and took a few paces along it. He had no intention of losing sight or sound of the other team members.

After only three steps he paused. It was very confusing. There seemed to be something like a dark mist obscuring the more distant parts of the corridor. When he shone his light that way there was no answering reflection.

He hesitated, but after a moment or two he turned to start back the way that he had come. Whatever that might be in front of him, he was not going to face it alone. He had weapons on him, but more man that he wanted the support of the other team members — S’greela’s strength, Shikari’s mobility, and Angel’s cool reasoning.

As he was turning he heard a whisper behind him.

“Chan!”

He looked back. Something had stepped forward from the dark mist, and was standing now in the middle of the narrow pathway.

It had the shape of a human. Chan took another step back toward the other team members as he shone his light at the figure in the tunnel.

And then he could not move at all.

It was Leah.

Chan was ready to call out to her when he remembered Mondrian’s warning. Leah was dead, and what Chan had to be seeing was an illusion — something created in his mind by the Morgan Construct.

As though to confirm his fear, the figure of Leah drifted upward like a pale ghost. It hung unsupported, a couple of feet above the floor of the tunnel. The shape raised one pale arm and waved in greeting. “Chan!”

“Leah?” He fought back the urge to run forward and embrace the form hovering in front of him.

“No, Chan.” The dark head moved from side to side. “Not now. It would be too dangerous now. Say goodbye to me. But don’t stop loving me, Chan. Love is the secret.”

Ignoring all the warnings of common sense, Chan found that he was taking another step along the tunnel towards her. He paused, dizzy and shaking.

The figure held her arms palms-out toward him, as though pushing him away. “Go back, Chan. Not now. It would be dangerous.” ;

She waved farewell. The slim figure stepped sharply backward and was swallowed up in the dark cloud. The apparition was gone.

Chan was too stunned to move, until suddenly a sense of his own danger overcame inertia. He turned and staggered back along the tunnel.

Nimrod. The Construct cannot be far away from here. It can produce delusions within organic brains, change what you hear and see. Are the others safe? Chan was running. In just a second or two he was back to the place where he had left the team members.

The tunnel was deserted. He paused, and stared along it in both directions. There was no sign of S’greela, Shikari, or Angel. No sign of the great caterpillar-snake that they had been holding.

Where was the team?

Chan began to run again, back up the spiraling tunnel, back to the sunlight, back to the doubtful safety of the tent in the upper layers. As he ran the face and form of dead Leah hovered always in front of his eyes.

Chan arrived at the tent convinced of every form of disaster. Nimrod had destroyed the others, and somehow overlooked him. Or the others had known that Nimrod was present, and they had retreated, leaving Chan to fend for himself. At the very least, if they had managed to make it back to the tent they would be frantic with alarm at his absence. They would be terrified and disorganized, not sure how to organize themselves to go off again and search for him in the tunnels.

The atmosphere in the tent was certainly tense. But no one was worrying about Chan — they hardly seemed to notice his arrival! He grabbed S’greela by one of her forelimbs. She turned and gave him a little nod of acknowledgement.

“It is good that you have returned. We are not sure what to do next. There has been a bad — a bad misunderstanding — ”

“Misunderstanding!” growled Angel’s communications box.

“—a misunderstanding with the Coromar.” S’greela motioned toward the side of the tent, where the great caterpillar creature was stretching its length along the flexible wall. “That seems to be the group name that these beings give to themselves.”

The animal did not react to its name, but it seemed quite at home in the tent. It was free to move, but making no attempt to escape. Instead, the long mouth was chomping contentedly on a great bale of vegetation.

Chan was totally confused. The scene was so peaceful, the very opposite of what he had imagined. “A misunderstanding?”

“I am afraid so. The animal is not very smart. As soon as Angel was able to speak with it, it agreed to come along with us provided that we would feed it when we got here.” The Pipe-Rilla shook her head testily. “Really, food seems to be the only thing it cares about at all. Naturally we agreed, since we have ample provisions with us.”

“So what’s the problem?” Chan took a closer look at the Coromar, contentedly browsing. “You gave it plenty of food, didn’t you?”

“Well, now it has all it wants. But when we first arrived here, Vayvay — that is the name of this Coromar — did not seem to understand that we would have to bring food to it from storage. It did not want to wait.”

“It tried to leave?’

“No. It tried to eat Angel.”

Chan stared at Angel, sitting motionless at the other side of the tent, as far away as possible from the Coromar. The side fronds were all lying limp against the barrel body, and the head fronds were tightly closed. Angel was sulking.

“Surely the rest of you tried to stop it?”

“We did stop it. All that happened was that Vayvay took a bite at Angel’s middle section — one little bite.”

“It was quite understandable,” added Shikari. The Tinker, its parts reunited, sounded in excellent spirits. It came rustling across to Chan’s side. “After all, even Angel will not deny that the Chassel-Rose is a vegetable. And the real confusion was the fault of the communicator that Angel wears. As S’greela says, Vayvay is not very smart. It apparently assumed that the communicator was the intelligent being, since that was the part that did all the talking. Vayvay thought that the rest of Angel must be some sort of mobile food supply.”

“A perfectly natural assumption, actually,” said S’greela. “To put it as Angel might have put it,” concluded Shikari, “one man’s meat is another man’s mid-section.”

There was an outraged crackle from Angel’s communicator. “We are not amused. This is no matter for joking. If we had not moved quickly, it would have been far more than one bite.”

“All right, that’s enough.” Chan went across to sit down wearily next to Angel. “Cut out the bickering. We have far more important things to worry about.” Chan ignored the cry of protest. “We are supposed to be a pursuit team. Remember? We are tackling the most dangerous creature in the universe. When you looked around the tunnel and found that I was gone, didn’t it occur to you that I might be in trouble? Didn’t one of you think, wait a minute, now, maybe we ought to take a look and see what has happened to Chan. No. Instead, you just headed back here without giving me a thought.’

There was an embarrassed silence. “We were preoccupied with the Coromar,” said Shikari at last. “The tunnel was quite safe, and the part of me that had remained here was reporting no trouble anywhere on the surface. There was no cause for worry about you.”

“And you did return unharmed,” added S’greela. “Why are you so upset? Were you afraid?”

“Not as much as I ought to have been.” Chan was beginning to have second thoughts about what he was going to tell the others. Suppose everything was part of his own mental instability? Suppose that he had imagined the whole thing? “I encountered Nimrod down there. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

Now I’m not so sure. But I’m amazed that I’m here to tell you about it.”

He summarized his experiences in the horizontal tunnel, keeping his account as matter-of-fact as possible. When he finished there was a strange and non-committal silence. It ended when Angel exchanged a long sequence of shrill squeaks with the Coromar.

“Leah Rainbow was your friend, and she is dead,” said Angel at last. The topmost fronds waved towards Chan. “But Vayvay has never heard of Nimrod. Of course, although the Coromar exist planet-wide, they are not very intelligent. Perhaps they do not travel far from their usual haunts, and perhaps they do not speak much one to another.”

“Don’t spare my feelings. If you don’t believe me, you might as well say so.”

The human mind has processes that we cannot begin to emulate.” Angel turned to Vayvay, as the Coromar produced another series of squeaks. “Ah, and not before time! Vayvay says that it is most sorry that it tried to eat us. But it points out that we look delicious.”

Chan glanced at Shikari and S’greela. It was not just Angel. They were all too diplomatic to say so, but not one of them believed his story. The worst thing was that Chan now doubted it himself.

“Can you ask the Coromar general questions?” he said to Angel.

“That depends on the subject. It is not a complex language, but over half the words seem to concern only eating, or looking for food.”

“Can you ask what Vayvay knows about the other species — say, the agile ones that live in the deep forest? See if they, or any others, sometimes generate a sort of dark mist. Also, see if we are likely to be able to get any help from them when we go deeper towards the forest floor.”

Chan waited impatiently, through an exchange that went on and on. Angel seemed less sure of the replies this time, and many strings of sounds had to be repeated. At last Angel turned again to Chan.

“According to Vayvay, we will obtain no help from the agile creatures. They are named the Maricore. I am sorry that we spoke for so long, but Vayvay was very confused by my questions. You see, both the Coromar and the Maricore are the same species. The Coromar are the feeding, intelligent — just — stage of the life cycle. They live for twelve to fifteen earth years, after which they encyst and undergo a complete metamorphosis. Before the change a Coromar is asexual, and therefore naturally has no sex drives. After metamorphosis a Coromar becomes a Maricore and thinks of little else. In this stage they live only one year. They mate, eat very little, and during this part of life they actually shrink in size. According to Vayvay they never exhibit the least sign of intelligence. They also have poor survival skills. For safety they dwell in the deep forest, and never approach the surface layers. It is one duty of the young Coromar to descend, guard the mature Maricore, and assure their survival until they can give birth to another litter of Coromar. Without that aid, most Maricore would not live long enough to breed.” Angel paused. “An inversion of the familiar theme. The child is father to the man — but in this case the expression proves to be literally true.”

“What about the mist?” Chan didn’t want to hear philosophy. He was suddenly absolutely exhausted, with a return of the dizziness that he had felt in the tunnels. He wanted Shikari warm about him, and then sleep. “Do the Coromar know anything about that?”

“Vayvay has never heard of any such thing.” Angel began to extend its adventitious base stems and crept toward the Chassel-Rose’s preferred rooting spot near the exit to the tent. The top fronds were slowly tightening in on themselves. Shikari and S’greela were already silent. The only sound was Vayvay’s steady and single-minded munching.

“The Coromar will help,” said Angel. “Vayvay will stay with us and go anywhere in exchange for plentiful food. But we fear that every real responsibility for decision and action must remain with us.”

The roots of the Chassel-Rose began to settle, probing down into the patch of dark, rich earth that had been brought all the way from the home planet of Sellora.

Angel sighed in dreamy pleasure. “Chan, we do not know if your encounter with Nimrod was reality, or, as Shikari and S’greela believe, pure delusion. But this we do know: together, we form as good a pursuit team as the Stellar Group will ever find.

“Together, we will defeat the Morgan Construct … or no group ever will.”