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21 ::: De
De
She called upward. "Are you almost finished, Toshio?"
He was planting his explosives in the upper section, near the surface of the metal-mound.
"Yeah, De
She couldn't even see his flippered feet above her. His voice was distorted in the narrow, water-filled thicket. It was a relief to be allowed to leave.
She picked her way downward carefully, fighting back waves of claustrophobia. This was no job De
Halfway down, she snagged herself on a strand of creeper. It didn't let go when she tugged. Thrashing only entangled her further, and she vividly recalled Toshio's story of the killer weed. Panic almost closed in, but she forced herself to stop kicking, to take a deep breath and study the snare.
It was just a dead vine wrapped around one leg. The strand parted easily under her knife. She continued her descent more cautiously and escaped at last into the grotto beneath the metal-mound.
Keepiru and Sah'ot waited below. Hose-like breathers covered their blowmouths and wrapped around their torsos. The headlights of the two sleds diffracted through thousands of tiny threads that seemed to fill the chamber in a drifting fog. A dim light filtered into the grotto from the cave mouth through which they had entered.
* Echoes sounding, in this rock-cage
Will not be those of happy fishing *
De
"Oh! Yes. When Toshio sets the fuses, we'd better get outside. The explosion will reverberate in this chamber. I don't suppose that would be healthful."
Keepiru nodded in agreement. The expedition's military commander had been mostly silent all the way here from the ship.
De
That plant somehow pierced the mound's metal core and penetrated to the organically useful layer beneath the island. Minerals were drawn up and deposited above. A cavity grew below, which would eventually accept the metal-mound into the crust again.
Something struck the ecologist in De
It was hard to believe the drill-tree could evolve into its niche in a gradual way, as most species did. For the tree to succeed was an all-or-nothing proposition, requiring great power and perseverance. How did it get that way? De
And what happened to the mounds after they fell into the cavities the drill-trees prepared for them? She had seen some pits which had swallowed their mounds. Their depths were cloudy and obscure, and apparently far deeper than she would have expected.
She shone her beam on the bottom of the mound. The reflections were really quite startling. De
She swam to one of the larger depressions, bringing up her camera. Charlie Dart would like to get pictures and samples from this trip. She knew better than to expect thanks. More likely each tantalizing photo or rock would send him into exasperated sighs over her failure to follow up obvious leads.
Deep within one of the pits something moved, a twisting and slow turning. De
"Let's go, De
"Okay, okay," she said. "Give me a minute." Professional curiosity momentarily overwhelmed other thoughts. De
At first the springy root was adamant, and seemed even to pull back. The possibility that she had trapped herself vividly occurred to De
The root tore free suddenly. De
Keepiru looked at her reproachfully as she grabbed the sled. He gu
They waited an hour, then re-entered the grotto.
The charges had shattered the drill-tree trunk where it pierced the bottom side of the metal-mound. The severed shaft canted at an angle below, continuing down into murky depths. Bits of debris still fell from the opening in the mound's bottom. The chamber below the island was thick with swirling shreds of vegetation.
They approached the opening cautiously. "I'd better check it out with a robot first," Toshio said. "There may be unstable chunks left in the shaft."
* I will do this — ladder ru
* Robots heed my — close nerve socket *
Toshio nodded. "Yeah, you're right. You do it, Keepiru." The pilot, with his direct machine-nerve interface, would be able to control the probe better than Toshio could. Of the humans aboard, only Emerson D'Anite and Thomas Orley had such cyborg links. It would be a long time before most humans could deal with the side effects of socket implantation as well as dolphins, who had needed the interface far more and had been bred for it.
Under Keepiru's direction, a small probe detached itself from the rear of the sled. It jetted of toward the hole and disappeared within.
Toshio had never expected to be sent right back out again with Keepiru — to a site where, in his opinion, neither of them had behaved particularly well. The importance of their mission, to serve and protect two important scientists, confused him even further. Why didn't Creideiki assign someone else? Someone more reliable?
Of course, the captain might have ordered all four of them out of the ship to get them out of his way. But that didn't seem to fit either.
Toshio decided not to try to pierce Creideiki's logic. Inscrutability seemed to be at the heart of it. Perhaps that was what it was to be a captain. Toshio only knew that he and Keepiru were both determined to do a good job on this mission.
As a midshipman he officially outranked Keepiru. But tradition made warrant officers and pilots masters of middies unless otherwise decided by higher authority. Toshio would be assisting De
Toshio was still surprised to find that others stopped and listened when he made suggestions; his opinions had been routinely solicited. That alone would take some getting used to.