“Salvation lies not in solipsisms,” riposted those who throve on doubt.
“Is there life here?” A substantial number of active onlookers posed the relevant interrogatory, which resulted in the vast majority drifting off into elaborate but wholly spurious discourse.
Only the tenacious remained proximate, following the visitors’ progress with unflagging interest. “First we became irrelevant to our dimension, then we became irrelevant to this one. Now we risk becoming irrelevant to ourselves.” The first was adamant. “Something must be done, or consciousness will go the way of our physical forms.”
But having tried and failed to break through, there was little they could do. Philosophy was a poor weapon with which to confront muscle and sinew. As it was, they could not even assist the bipeds with a lingering notion, much less a complete thought.
“Down this way.” Continuously monitoring the readout on the communicator, Low turned to his left. There was no telling how deeply they had gone, nor how far out under the seabed. Pipes and tubes, conduits and siphons snaked everywhere. Low felt as if they were descending into a bottomless bowl of steel spaghetti. No stylish use of metallic glass here, he saw. Only straightforward, prosaic metal and plastics, with hints of some dark ceramic alloy.
Water was everywhere; trickling from elderly leaks, condensing off the cold pipes, running in foreboding rivulets along the floor. He tried not to think of the millions of tons of rock hanging over his head, or the billions of gallons of seawater it was holding back.
Brink turned sharply to his right. “I thought I heard something.”
Low nodded. “I heard it too.” Turning in the direction of the noise, they resumed their cautious advance. Their boots splashed aside water several inches deep. Long black wriggling things squirmed away from their approach, seeking safety in the dark places.
“Watch it.” Aiming his beam downward to illuminate the source of his concern, Low took a long stride forward. “There’s some sticky stuff here. Mucus or something.”
Brink used his own light to scrutinize the disgusting mass as he followed Low’s lead, carefully stepping around the glistening heap. In appearance it had the look of glue-slathered television cable that had lain too long in the sun.
It wasn’t cable.
Proof came when they turned a corner and came face-to-face with the long-absent Maggie Robbins. Unable to move, she stood facing them, wrapped up in more of the same stringy gook as neatly as a Christmas turkey. Slime was still congealing around her limbs as they rushed to free her.
Imprisoned in length after length of the gummy material, she didn’t look very professional. She looked, in fact, utterly terrified. Her face was drawn, and the dark circles under her eyes hadn’t been there the last time Low had seen her. They were not the result of an absence of makeup. Something had left her not only entrapped but scared out of her wits.
As they struggled to free her, her eyes kept darting in all directions. “Get away! Get out while you can.” She hesitated a moment, blinking hard, before continuing. “No! What am I saying! Get me out of this gunk before it comes back!” She stared at Brink. “Nothing personal, Ludger, but aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“I was. Now I am not. It will be explained to you later.” He tore at her bindings.
“Man, I sure hope so.” Low had her upper arms and head free, but she still couldn’t move. Her legs were pinned to the wall and to each other.
“Before what comes back?” Brink inquired.
“Do you think I did this to myself? For a supposed scientist you sure overlook a lot of the obvious. Before the—” She stopped in midsentence and did something very unprofessional, though perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Her eyes grew wide and she screamed.
Both men whirled, and there it was: a disjointed, chitinous, crablike hulk. Ominously it had scuttled around in the darkness to interpose itself between them and the exit.
Despite the danger, Low was fascinated by the monstrosity. He could clearly see where the silken glue-saturated fibers emerged: not from spinnerets at the base of some bulbous abdomen but from specialized organs at the tips of two forward-facing legs. As it studied them, the creature rocked slowly back and forth on multiple jointed limbs. The local underground life here, Low decided, was all spasms and twitches.
That the gargoylish head was fully aware of them he did not doubt, despite the absence of visible eyes. The guardians he had left battling each other in the tomb spire were first cousins to this ambulatory nightmare. All clearly belonged to the same taxonomic family: the one you’d never invite home.
The principal differences between this beast and the tomb guardians were that this one was bigger, uglier and equipped with weaponry much more sophisticated than mere tooth and claw. It was a thoroughly revolting entity that hovered near the bottom of Mother Nature’s beauty list.
“Don’t just stand there gawking.” Robbins would have kicked him if she could have freed a leg. “Get me out of this!”
“I am open to suggestions, Maggie.” Brink was remarkably calm. Probably too busy trying to assign the creature a classification to be properly frightened, Low thought. That would come later, when it was sinking its fangs into his chest.
He wished fervently for some kind of weapon. Even a kitchen knife would have been welcome. But they had nothing, sidearms not being deemed essential equipment for spacewalks. He would gladly have traded his pension for the digger they had used to bore the original blast holes in the surface of the asteroid. Everything attached to his service belt was necessarily small and inoffensive. He supposed that Robbins carried something like pepper spray in her purse, but for some reason she had neglected to bring that along on her EVA.
All he had on him were the communicator, some generic medicinal tablets, a few food concentrates and their lights. With nothing else to point, he aimed the bright, narrow beam at the creature. Without knowing where the sight organs were located, or even what range of the spectrum they could detect, he couldn’t very well blind it.
But when he shifted the circle of illumination to one side, the monster’s head swiveled to follow it. Again he flashed the head and then let the beam drift to the right. Once more the bony skull turned to follow. He felt an entirely irrational surge of hope.
“The beam distracts it! Use your flashlight, Ludger.” The admonition was unnecessary, as Brink had already noted Low’s success.
But while it readily followed the dancing lights with whatever organs it used for sight, it would not move from its position.
Similarly, it did not advance. They had achieved no better than a standoff.
“This isn’t working,” Low remarked.
“I commend your powers of observation, Commander.” Brink favored his companion with a dry smile. “There is no point in continuing this. Eventually our batteries will be drained and the creature will have us. It is distracted by the lights but not overcome by them. Perhaps a combination of light and motion will prove more effective.”
So saying, and before Low could divine his intent, the scientist splashed forward. Waving his arms, he yelled as loudly as he could. The assortment of English, German and Russian curses, not to mention a few in Latin, made no impression on the monster. But all the noise and moving light did. Sputtering ferociously, it lurched in Brink’s direction.
“Ludger, no!” Low started toward him, but Brink wasn’t to be dissuaded. Whether his newfound bravery was prompted by unnatural impulse or a desire to experiment, Low didn’t know. More likely he just wanted to get his life crystals back.
Crabbing forward but never falling, the monster pursued the source of sound and light. Brink led it away from the imprisoned journalist. If he fell, Low knew the creature would be on him in an instant.
“Never mind him now!” Robbins shouted to get Low’s attention. “If he wants to be a hero, let him. Just don’t let it go to waste.”
Brink was of like mind. “This reminds me of my student days, Commander, but I can’t keep it up forever. No lolly-choking!”
“Lolly-gagging,” Low corrected him as he turned back to Robbins. Clipping his light onto his belt, he started tearing at the sticky shackles. Robbins helped as best she could.
“I couldn’t get away.” Straining, she succeeded in pulling one leg free. “It was too quick for me. I couldn’t—”
“It’s all right,” he told her. “It doesn’t matter. All that’s important now is getting you out of this and making it out of here.”
“Okay, I’ll go with that.”
For all her wry commentary, Low could see that she was on the verge of hysteria. Only a lifetime of difficult experiences had kept her from losing it completely. Working his way down her legs, he almost entangled himself in the incredibly adhesive mess.