Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

It was kind of like, well, sand, or very smooth pebbles, rippling along on glass. That was the best way he could think of it. It certainly didn’t seem to be closing on him, but it did appear to be following, perhaps watching. It was possible that the local botanist was indeed in residence.

A true highly advanced alien intellect would in and of itself be something of a breakthrough here. The few sentient creatures discovered in humanity’s expansion had been quite primitive, really. This one, if it indeed was living and not some sort of computer on automatic, would be something else entirely. Something that could grab plant DNA and duplicate, raise, and vary it without compromising it. That would be quite impressive.

The lifeboat sat inert on a meadow floor, looking a bit banged up but hardly crashed. It was a fairly standard unit, which could hold as many as four people in a pinch, and if its cryo units were operable could sustain those four almost indefinitely. Little wonder they chose to land here instead of being frozen, though; this place was almost a golden Christmas tree amongst the terror and gloom of interstellar isolation.

The airlock hatch had been left open; whoever had come down in it had crossed his or her Rubicon when landing here and there was no particular purpose to sealing it off once they’d committed and landed. He looked around for signs of where the inhabitants might have gone, but saw no traces.

“Archangel, any human life signs that aren’t our people?” he called up to the mother ship.

“Affirmative, but it is very difficult to keep them on scope and tracked. There’s an energy field down there that is just unbelievable. Got a fairly good lock on you, though.”

“How many unknowns?”

“We count two. One about a hundred meters northwest of your position, the other less than half that and to the east of you. They fade in and out, almost like ghost images. There is also an indistinct anomalous blob at your back, perhaps thirty meters. We have no correlation for what it is, but it does seem to be able to move.”

Cromwell turned and looked back in that direction but saw nothing. He didn’t expect to. Still, that meant that the unknown crackling sound had corporeal form.

“Entering the lifeboat,” he told them.

The inside wasn’t much, and he spent little time with it. There was probably a log someplace, though, and he tried all the switches and controls to see if he could locate information that would tell him who and what this one had come from. The ship, however, was dead, no power at all. It was as if all the energy cells had been totally depleted, something not normally found outside a service dock. Still, all this thing was now was a lump of metal and synthetics. With no power, the energy-to-matter converter wouldn’t produce food and water, nor much else that was needed. Whoever had come down in this thing was at the mercy of the planet, which was probably why they were out scouting around. Odd, though, that they hadn’t headed for the Olivet scout when it landed. This close, they had to have seen it come in, or at least heard it.

He emerged from the lifeboat, puzzled but confident that the answers weren’t too far away nor terribly exotic. The familiar fruits and such here could easily have been drawn from computer files or an older landing where they might have had samples that could have been copied. These two might well think that they’d be targets of the Olivet crew, since people tended to think that anybody on the other side thought and did just what they thought and did, or they might just be terrified of being trapped for life on a world with hundreds and hundreds of Bible thumpers. Serve ’em right, he thought.

If it wasn’t for that clicking, rustling blob he might not be that concerned about this place at all.

“Is the anomalous life sign still in the same position?” he asked Archangel.

“Affirmative, sir. It came in a bit while you were inside, but backed off to its old spot rather quickly. We should have been able to see it, but all we got was a kind of glassy, reflective distortion. We don’t know what it is, but it is masked in a way that we can’t compensate for. What do you think it is?”

“I think it’s the manager,” he replied, looking out at where it should be but was not. Was there a kind of shimmering distortion there?

“Hello!” he called out, palms out. “Will you speak with me, or communicate with me in some fashion? I mean no harm to anyone or anything that means no harm to me.”

There was that rustling again, only not constant, more like marking a space but unable to keep completely still. This close it reminded him of old-fashioned marbles, only filling and contained in some kind of frame. That was the sound, anyway.

No, you’re not going to show yourself, are you? he thought to himself. You want to wait until we’re all down here and you have the advantage. He couldn’t blame it. He would certainly have done the same thing.

Well, if there wasn’t going to be any first contact today, then maybe the other two, who were undoubtedly human, would suffice.

“One of the human figures is doubling back your way,” Archangel told him. “Watch your back.”

“Oh, I think if he wanted to come up on my back and get the drop on me, we should let him,” Cromwell responded. “Keep the techs away, though. Just me.”

“Affirmative. You’re sure?”

“Just keep an eye on me, that’s all.” He could feel the other person there now, feel the eyes on the back of his neck somehow. He’d always been able to do that.

“Would you prefer I kept my back to you or should I turn around?” he called aloud in a nonthreatening tone of voice.

“You can turn around, but no funny stuff,” a man’s voice responded, the smoothness of his voice masking the fear bordering on terror that Cromwell sensed in him.

The security chief turned and found himself looking at a young bearded man, somewhat Oriental in features but a big man, perhaps physically larger than Cromwell, and aiming a very nasty needler right at the security chief’s head. The body armor was obvious, although there was little to indicate its capabilities, but Cromwell’s head was exposed, at least apparently, to anyone who hadn’t seen a suit in action.

“My name is Thomas Cromwell, son, security team chief of the starship Mountain, or what’s left of it. I believe in self-defense, but I’m not in the business of harming anyone.”

“You have the big ship up there?” the young man asked, sounding increasingly nervous.

“More or less. The interstellar one is shot, bad as yours. We have a fairly large secondary ship in orbit, but it’s strictly interplanetary.”

“You got to get us off of here,” the young man said firmly, the pistol still aimed at Cromwell’s head. “You got to get everybody off this world. I don’t care what happens after that.”

“Well, nobody invited you along. You chose to follow us,” Cromwell replied. “Now we’re all in the same boat. The difference is, wherever we are, we are home.”

“You gotta get us off this place,” the young man repeated, almost as if he were in shock.

“To where, son? Only three places in this system we can live on indefinitely. This one, one that’s cold and barren, and one that’s got far too much lava for my liking and probably stinks to high heaven. And that gun’s no way to welcome the only possible friends and allies you got. What is the matter with you, son? You had the guts to follow us through a wild hole. What’s got you so petrified now?”

The young man’s eyes were wild. “You haven’t seen it, felt it. This may look like Eden but it’s Eden with the snake as boss. We ain’t gonna be no slaves to no thing . It sucked our lifeboat engines dry, and it’ll do the same to you sooner or later. It’s just waiting for you to land the rest of your party and your big ship, that’s all.”