Edward Lee - Slither

"It's the nitrogen, sir."

The line of the particle synchrotron element glowed faintly above them, extending from one end of the ship to the other. The ship was called a lenticular reentry vehicle, which counterrotated gravity by manipulating nucleons and forcing them to divide and permute their para-atomic particles within a controlled field. It was simple.

Not so simple was the dilemma of the colonel.

"Maybe he was killed," the major said.

"By the humans?"

"Why not? They killed the corporal."

.The corporal wasn't very smart. And our reflexivity is twice as fast as the humans'."

"Do you think one of the specimens in the field got him?"

"Not unless the methoxychlor dispersors in his utility dress malfunctioned. I wouldn't worry about it, sir. The colonel probably wanted to double-check the control station one last time before debarkation."

The major didn't respond. It was clear he was concerned. One troop was already dead.

They remained in the small clearing as the LRV hung silently above them. To the sergeant's side hovered a Class I antigravity pallet, loaded with the specimen samples and prototypes, plus all their data-storage pins. Everything else had been left at the control station and would be destroyed by the blast.

The major was rubbing his gloved hands together. Nervous. He checked his own task strip and shook his head.

He doesn't know what to do, the sergeant realized. They should send field officers on these missions, not science administrators.

The major tried to maintain his acumen of authority, but wasn't doing a good job. "Sergeant… what exactly are the emergency operating instructions for a… situation like this?"

"We must be fully debarked and out of this planet's stratosphere at least ten points before count-off, with or without all personnel."

"When is count-off?"

"Fifteen points from now, sir."

The major stared off.

"Sir, if the colonel doesn't get back here in time, we have to leave him. The data from the mission is far more important than one officer."

"Right," the major said. He sighed again. "Open the egression port, Sergeant. Let's man our stations and prepare to debark."

The sergeant smiled behind his protective mask. It's about time. "Yes, sir," he said and pressed the proper sequence on his task strip. I've had just about enough of this planet.

(IX)

"Push! Push!" Loren yelled.

"What's it look like I'm doing! Playing fucking polo?" Nora pushed for all her adrenaline was worth, her hands pressed up against the aft of the Boston Whaler. When she'd stumbled into Loren back on the trails, she'd followed him to the lagoon he'd promised was there… and the boat.

"It's only midtide!" he fretted. "I don't think we can get it over those rocks!"

"Don't think negative, damn it!" But Nora could easily see the large boulders pocking the shallow water. It's this… or swim, she knew.

The water rose up to Nora's chin as she pushed. The side of the hull scraped some rocks. Water churned around her body, the current at her knees almost strong enough to push her off her feet.

"I don't think it's going to go, Nora!" Loren shrieked.

Nora could see up ahead: two outcroppings of rock sticking out of the water. The grim fact whispered in her ear…

We're going to have to thread this boat between those rocks. Otherwise, we'll have to swim andwouldn't you know it? It's hammerhead season…

"Push! Hard!" Loren wailed.

The hull grated against the rocks. Just as their forward motion would stop, a high swell came in, lifted the hull, and then the boat glided through.

"We did it!"

Loren was taller, but Nora had already submerged. Bubbles erupted from her mouth as her feet were no longer touching bottom. Shit! she thought. I'm too low to grab the rail…

Water splashed; Nora was jerked by one hand out of the water. She flopped over on the deck, dripping.

"Can you believe that shit? We did it! We're clear!"

Nora leaned up and looked ahead. The current was sucking the boat out of the lagoon now, and sending it straight into the seemingly limitless Gulf of Mexico.

We made it, Nora thought, a tear in her eye.

"Looks like something's finally going our way," Loren said, flopping down on the deck. The current was taking them fast. "In ten minutes we'll be a mile or two out."

Safe from the bombs, she hoped.

The sun blazed overhead, welcome sea breezes drying their faces. Loren stood back up and grabbed the wheel at the console. They didn't have power, but he could rudder with the current to get them out faster. He held the wheel with one hand but was looking back.

"What are you looking for?" Nora asked. She helped herself to her feet by a gin-pole. "The ship?"

Loren squinted hard. "There it is. See it?"

Nora shielded her eyes to cut the glare. It looked like a slightly darker piece of the skyline but, yes, after a few moments she could make out its long cylindrical configuration. It was hovering about thirty feet up, near the beach at the far end of the island.

"Those guys," Loren said next, in a lower tone.

Nora could see them, too. Two of the men-or whatever they were-in the black suits and masks. They were both standing immediately below the almost invisible craft. Something bulky stood next to them-a cart full of boxes?

Then the cart levitated upward and disappeared into the ship.

"Jesus," Loren muttered. "Those guys really are aliens, aren't they?"

"What else could they be?" Then she thought, Oh my God, at what they saw next.

A hatch of some sort seemed to cant out of the bottom of the craft. One of the masked men had something in his gloved fist. When he raised his fist overhead… he, too, began to levitate up to the craft, as if he'd been hauled up on a winch.

But there was no winch.

Then the second crewman rose into the craft the same way.

"I've seen everything now," Loren said, eyes peeled.

As the boat coursed farther away, they stared another few minutes at the spectacle they were certain no one would believe: the otherworldly vehicle hovering in midair.

Then-

"This is it!" Loren said.

– the vehicle began to rise, very slowly at first, and then-

It seemed that in the course of two or three seconds, the craft launched straight into the air so quickly it didn't even blur in their eyes. It was gone in a blink.

There were no exhaust gasses, no shuttlelike roars of burning propellents, no expected blastoff.

The ship simply darted upward and was gone.

"At least we were right about one thing-they were getting ready to leave just about the same time we found out about them."

"Yeah, but you know what that means…"

Nora did indeed. "Now that they're gone, the bombs will go off. And we know there are at least two."

"TWO?"

"Yeah, after you left the station, one of them came back and activated one of the disks in the room with all the monitors. But-shit!" She'd forgotten to tell him. "I hit the guy in the head and knocked him out, and when I went looking for you, I passed the RTG. And guess what?"

"The bomb we saw the guy plant there was gone," Loren said smugly.

Nora's jaw dropped. "How did you know?"

"I'm the one who took it off the slab."

"How?"

Loren shrugged as though it were nothing. "I killed a thirty-foot worm and melted the connector with its digestive enzymes. The stuff turned the cement to butter, so all I had to do was pull the bomb out."

"Loren! That's fantastic! That bomb would've ruptured the RTG's core and blown radioactive fallout halfway across Florida!"

"Sure it would've. But I took care of it, no problem."

Nora gave him a giant hug. "Loren, you're the world's first polychaetologist hero!"

"It was nothing."