Jack Chalker - Melchior's Fire

The board showed that the shuttle had detached from shadowing the smelter and was now circling the base unit.

Good for you, Lucky. So where’s the critters?

The radio suddenly came to life. “Doc? What the hell happened to you?” An Li’s voice came to her. “Why aren’t you over on the security channel?”

She had never felt so relieved in her life. “Li! You bitch! Nobody ever showed me how to switch it!”

There was a sigh on the other end, then, “Well, screw it now. Are you locked down?”

“Yes, yes! I’m just waiting for company!”

“Stay there. No sign of our friends yet, and I’m getting signs of your big, big worm just about surrounding the plateau. Wait until they’re inside and you get an all-clear from them on the internal intercom. The aliens won’t be able to tap that. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep the others on the secure channel so nobody’s hand is tipped. Just stand by. I don’t want to broadcast anything useful.”

It sounded sensible, even reassuring. Why the hell did she have this paranoid feeling in her belly, then?

Maybe it was the absence of a sign of those three colorful suits. That and the extreme intelligence the aliens had shown up to now.

“Li, tell me how to dial up the security channel from here. I want to coordinate with them.”

“That’s kind of moot right now. Just sit tight.”

“ Li, tell me the way to dial in! Now! ”

“I said—”

“You’re not An Li, are you? That’s an excellent imitation.”

“Don’t go nutty on me now! We’re almost home!” the voice said, sounding exactly right.

“I want you to do it before either of the units docks with this base. If you don’t, then I will know it’s fake. Then I will have to use the panic button and create a near instant vacuum in the rest of the base, which, if it doesn’t finish you off, will at least seal the entry ports so that the others will be protected. You understand me? I’m not going to be absorbed.”

“You’re crazy, Doc! You know who this is!”

“If you can’t tell me the procedure, then, yes, I know exactly who this is.”

There was dead silence, and she could understand why. The creature had never absorbed one of the crew. As smart as it was, by hook or crook, it had never been in this control room before and thus had very little idea what it actually looked like, much less of the commands needed to switch to an unknown proprietary digital frequency.

It wouldn’t even know that there wasn’t any such thing as a panic button creating such a vacuum.

“So long as the truth is out,” she said slowly, sitting down in one of the command chairs, her stomach almost in convulsions, “would you like to talk?”

For another moment there was silence, and then An Li’s voice asked, “To what purpose?”

“You’re highly intelligent. Probably a lot smarter than any of us. Did your kind evolve here or just become stranded here until those unfortunates landed and built their colony and somehow woke you up? Were you this smart before or only after you killed them all and stole their knowledge?”

“Dialogue is irrelevant. No one is dead. All have become part of us. The many have merely become one. You will know this when you are a part of us, and we will know you, and you will become immortal with us.”

She started to protest, but then realized that, from the thing’s point of view, it probably was right. From its vantage point, it simply incorporated their minds and mass into its own, and this was the proper way of things. To her, the colonists were dead. To it, the colonists were all right there.

The base gave a shudder, then came a series of vibrations that shook the entire control room.

She thought for a moment that the alien was doing something, then she turned and looked at the scanning screen, amazed at her own composure at this point.

The smelter! Achmed was sliding the thing back into its grooves on the base unit and then locking it down. Next he’d be opening the hatch from up top. If they’d managed to ooze in through the air vents, then he’d get a sudden and dramatic welcoming committee!

She didn’t know much about the settings, but the small cameras showing the entire perimeter of the base, so useless in trying to find the suits, now showed the shuttle. It hadn’t docked as yet; Cross seemed wary, and was checking over the entire structure from stem to stern.

Suddenly a heavy bolt of energy shot out from the shuttle to a blind spot between two ground-level cameras and something jerked and then dropped into view on the ground itself under the base, writhing and smoking. A second expertly placed bolt caught the blue environmental suit full. It shimmered, glowed white, and for just a moment there was the sense of a human or humanoid body shape in the midst, then it winked out, leaving only white powder that was quickly picked up and dissipated by the wind.

Damn! Lucky had caught onto that one, but where were the other two? Their colors should really stand out if they were hovering in the blind spots, so obviously they weren’t. They also had clearly turned off and adjusted every element to be as invisible to sensors as possible. So where were they? Even if the creatures had gotten inside somehow, it was very unlikely that they could have brought their suits in with them without access to the controls in this room, and that she was going to deny them.

An alarm sounded behind her, and she turned, startled, to see the diagram on the main screen showing a complete dock and lockdown of the smelter unit and the opening of the topmost hatch. That meant Achmed was coming inside. If the things weren’t already here then he was safe, but if they’d somehow gotten in he wouldn’t last long at all.

Outside, Cross was laying down a weak fire field around the entire base unit and under it as well. That was what was causing the slight vibration she felt now, and it puzzled her. As it reached a stronger level, though, two suits popped out from under the base in one of those spots a scanning camera would leave blind for a few minutes, and she realized that they’d somehow dug a shallow pit in that time and covered themselves with the fine dust. Cross saw them, too, and came around near ground level and sprayed them with a series of bolts just strong enough to blow the suits but not strong enough to threaten the ground on which the base stood nor the base itself.

“Still there? How do you like it now?” she asked the thing.

There was no reply, but she wished she had better control of the cameras and a better understanding of the master board now. She needed a closeup on those two suits, or at least a second look, for she’d sworn that one of them, at least, had its helmet blown clear off and that there was nothing in it.

Cross angled a burn on the side and Queson realized that one of the things, now in its flowing, plastic state, was crawling up the side of the base. From being open to exposure of the hostile elements, the thing suddenly found it very hot as Lucky Cross fried it with a heat ray, the safest powerful weapon she could use directly against the side of the base. An outer skin designed for atmospheric entry would not find even a full-power heat ray much of a jolt, but anything open and exposed on the skin would find it a different story.

Still, was that the one from the empty suit or from the other one?

Damn! she swore to herself in frustration at the lack of communications. These things could split. Who said one had to be the size of a person? There could be one sitting right there on the shuttle dock airlock or even inside via the air vents and if they zap a third creature out there they won’t know it. They’ll feel safe to come in. Hell, if it was already inside it would already be Achmed, and would know everything about internal operations anyway.