There was silence while the scout ship leveled off on a course which would take it back to the mother ship, then Harrison said, “We haven’t made direct contact, then-we’ve just put squiggles on a vegetable radar screen? But it is still a big step forward.”
“As I see it,” said Conway, “if tools were being used to bring us to them, they must be a fair distance from the surface-perhaps they can’t exist on the surface. And don’t forget they would use the carpet exactly as we use vegetable and mineral resources. How would they analyze life samples? Would they be able to see them at all down there? They use plants for eyes but I can’t imagine a vegetable microscope. Perhaps they would use the big beastie’s digestive juices in certain stages of the analysis .
Harrison was beginning to look a little green around the gills. He said, “Let’s send down a robot sensor first, to see what they do, eh?”
Conway began, “This is all theory. .
He broke off as the ship’s radio hummed, cleared its throat and said
briskly, “Scout ship Nine. Mother here. I have an urgent signal for Doctor
Conway. The being Camsaug has gone on vacation wearing the tracer the
Doctor gave it. It is heading for the active stretch of shore in area
H-Twelve. Harrison, have you anything to report?”
“Yes, indeed,” replied the Lieutenant, glancing at Conway. “But first I think the Doctor wants to speak to you.”
Conway spoke briefly and a few minutes later the scout ship leaped ahead under emergency thrust, ripping through the sky too fast for even the leaves to react to its shadow and trailing an unending shock wave which would have deafened anything on the surface with ears to hear. But the great carpet slipping past them might well number deafness among its many other infirmities which now, Conway thought angrily, included a number of well-developed and extensive skin cancers and God alone knew what else.
He wondered if a great, slow-moving creature like this could feel pain, and if so, how much? Was the condition he could see confined to hundreds of acres of “skin” or did it go much deeper? What would happen to the beings living in or under it if too many of the carpets died, decomposed? Even the rollers with their offshore culture would be affected-the ecology of the whole planet would be wrecked! Somebody was going to have to talk to the rollers, politely but very, very firmly, if it wasn’t already too late.
All at once the horse-trading aspect of his assignment, the swapping of tools for medical assistance, was no longer important. Conway was beginning to think like a doctor again, a doctor with a desperately ill patient.
At Descartes the copter he had requested was waiting. Conway changed into a lightweight suit with a propulsion motor strapped onto his back and extra air tanks on his chest. Camsaug had too great a lead for him to follow on foot, so Conway would fly out to the being’s present position by helicopter. Harrison was at the controls.
“You again,” said Edwards.
The Lieutenant smiled. “This is where the action is. Hold tight.”
After the mad dash to the mother ship the helicopter trip seemed incredibly slow. Conway felt that he would fall flat on his face if it did not speed up and Edwards assured him that the feeling was mutual and that they would have made better time swimming. They watched Camsaug’s trace grow larger in the search screen while Harrison cursed the birds and flying lizards diving for fish and suiciding on his rotor blades.
They flew low over the settled stretch of coast where the shallows were protected from the large predators of the sea by a string of offshore islands and reefs. To this natural protection the rollers had added a landward barrier of dead land-beast by detonating a series of low-power nuclear devices inside the vast creature’s body. The area was now so settled that doughnuts could roll with very little danger far inside the beast’s cavernous mouths and prestomachs and out again.
But Camsaug was ignoring the safe area. It was rolling steadily toward the gap in the reef leading to the active stretch of coast where predators large, medium and small ate and eroded the living shore.