“Naw, it can’t be,” Dasi said, prodding one of the gorgeous plants with the point of his knife. “We’d have seen it from up above. Look, you can see a whole line of them down this tunnel. No way we could’ve missed all of that.”
Daniel squinted. There were at least . . . ten bright patches in the ceiling, with more merging into the distance beyond just as Dasi said. The separation between pairs was about thirty feet, making Daniel’s estimate of possibly hundreds of creatures in the burrow now seem absurdly low. Besides this central aisle of plantings, narrow passages led off to either side.
Daniel considered the pattern of light and shadow above him. The quartz blocks weren’t uniformly translucent, and the faces refracted light so that the composite lens looked as though a giant spiderweb lay across it. Even so, Daniel could see that the western edge was brighter than the east.
“I believe Jeshonyk’s right when he says light guides,” Daniel said. “Given the depth of the floor here beneath the bottom of the ravine, there’s about six feet of roof. If the inlets slant outward, they’ll catch some light whenever the sun’s up—but there won’t be any huge mass of quartz on the surface like there is down here at the outlet.”
“What kinda animal does that?” a spacer asked. Nobody replied, perhaps because the answer was too obvious when you thought about it.
Sun dug the shovel into the cavern wall, then withdrew it with a puzzled expression. Only a trickle of dirt followed the blade. “Hey, Captain?” he said. “There’s plastic on the walls or something.”
Daniel walked over to the petty officer, rounding a plant set into the floor in a stone-lined tub. All the cavern’s vegetation was soft-bodied though it was more the size of trees than ordinary plants. The genera were unfamiliar to Daniel; certainly they weren’t native to Sexburga’s arid surface today.
“I know what it is,” offered Dasi, holding up his left index finger. On it gleamed a drop of clear sap from the wound he’d pricked in the plant he was examining. “Hell, they gotta cover the walls with something or it’d all fall in, right?”
“How’s chances we find some water and get the hell outa here?” Hogg muttered. He held the impeller across his chest, ready to spin in any direction and throw the weapon to his shoulder. He was perfectly poised, but he was also as uncomfortable as Daniel had ever seen him.
Daniel touched the wall with his bare hand. As Sun had said, there was a clear, slightly resilient, coating over the gritty clay. It felt warm to the touch.
“Yes, we’ll do that,” Daniel said, but his mind was more on the wonder of this place than it was on Hogg’s question or the more general business of reaching the beacon to summon help. They wouldn’t delay here—they had their duty, after all—but by heaven! what a report Commodore Pettin and the civilized universe would get. “This is perhaps the most scientifically useful piece of make-work and treachery that I’ve ever heard of.”
“Hey, look!” Sentino cried. She darted into the passage.
Daniel heard a spreek! that might have been Sentino but probably wasn’t. He stabbed his knife into the sidewall to free his hands and ducked to follow the crewman down the passage. He wasn’t sure even Sentino would clear the low ceiling if she stood upright.
He supposed she was still carrying her knife in her hand. She almost had to be, since she’d left the sheath with the rest of her belt gear. Grabbing a creature with teeth like the one last night bare-handed was dangerous, but Daniel would just as soon Sentino not stab—
“I got—” she called. There was a tearing-paper sound. Sentino staggered back into Daniel’s arms; the knife slipped from her flaccid right hand. Dropping the remains of a fist-sized puffball on the passage floor, the creature she’d grabbed with her left squirmed away. It began to dig furiously in the sidewall with spadelike forepaws.
There was a dry smell in the air, dizzying though not unpleasant. Daniel slapped his visor down with his left hand and felt the filters clamp his nostrils.