They synchronized their compasses, inertial rather than magnetic, then spread out in a hundred-meter line, east and west, and started plodding north. Anything that looked interesting they picked up and put in the analysis box. Every hundred or so steps they tossed in a handful of dirt or, more often, mud. In this way they formed a fairly complete profile of the geologic and biological properties of a strip of Groom-bridge one-tenth of a kilometer wide by five long. It wasn’t too impressive in the biological department: various kinds of gray plants that were similar enough to known forms not to be exciting, and dissimilar enough from earth plants to cause geoformy headaches.
After about five kilometers, they found a river. The current was sluggish and the water held a fine suspension of light-colored mud. It looked like dirty milk. Along the bank was a jumble of sticky gossamer, pinkish, that turned out to be a form of plant life.
The other side of the river was lost in the fog; it must have been well over a hundred meters away. “Good time to call the floater,” Tania said. One thing you couldn’t do in a GPEM suit was swim.
A few seconds later she said, “Should be here any-“ and the noise of the explosion and the shock wave hit them at the same time. Jacque saw the milky water flying by under his feet-the stabilizer working overtime, buzzing loudly, to keep him upright-and then he touched the surface and skied backwards for a short distance before the water closed over him.
“See, Ch’ing?” he shouted. “What the fuck did I tell you?”
“What?” Ch’ing said. He had forgotten their difference of opinion about the floater. “What you say, please?”
“You, uh, never mind.” Jacque realized he’d been brooding, like a stubborn boy. And that sneaking spy tapping his bloodstream, ticking off hormones, recording every second of anger and, now, embarrassment.
“Is everybody underwater?” Tania said. There was a jumble of responses. “Wait. Is anybody not underwater?” Everybody was. “Well, let’s take a sample of the water and go back.”
“God. . . damned sample box is under the mud,” Jacque grumbled.
“Then take a sample of the mud,” someone said. Jacque did, tight-lipped, then turned on his headlamp and started working his way due south. He couldn’t see anything, but it was better to move through bright opaque soup than blackness.
His head broke out of the water and he waited for the lenses to clear. Ch’ing’s voice crackled in his ear-plugs, excited for once:
“I think I have found an animal.”
“An animal? How big?”
“Not very big. Fist-sized. It swam in front of me and I caught it.” He laughed. “I thought it was a plant, but it wiggles.”
Some plants wiggle, Jacque thought. Thanotropism.
Ch’ing surfaced a few meters away, the creature gently cradled in both hands. It looked like a sea urchin, or some such creature, black and spiny. Rippling.
The two of them were on the bank before any of the others came out. “Can I see it, Ch’ing?”
“Of course. Just be careful.”
“I’ll be careful.” Ch’ing handed it to him and there was perhaps one-twentieth of a second when the sensors in both of their suits’ “hands” were simultaneously in contact with the animal. During that instant, they heard:
CH’ING JACQUE
“-goddam Chinaman “-everywhere life even
thinks I’ll break his toy, here floating in filth
serve him right, if I in sterile filth
crush, like in diving, like crush? and feed,
crush and feed to the-“ is life, yes.”
“What?” He almost did drop it.
“Did you say something, please?”
“Hmn.” He turned the animal over in his hands. In visible light it was shiny purple, and what had looked like spines were neither stiff nor sharp. They waved with an eery grace that did not suggest panic. “Cilia,” Jacque said. “Some kind of cilia. It probably swims with them.”
“Perhaps,” Ch’ing said. “It does not seem very practical, for locomotion.”
“Maybe it’s not actually a water animal. It doesn’t seem to mind being out of the water.”
“You may be right.” He took the creature back and when they touched they heard: