Peter Hamilton - Pandora's Star

But this time the chilly red and blue terrain could have been a painting it was so still. There were no Silfen here.

He wasn’t the only one waiting, anticipating. A number of sighs were released around the control center.

Oscar went around the loop again, confirming every station was stable. “Forward crew, initiate contact,” he said.

The floor of the confinement chamber rose up into a ramp. Airlock two irised open. McClain Gilbert and the four members of his first contact team were standing just inside. They wore their magenta insulation suits, a close-fitting onepiece with a flexible hood that clung to the skull; a broad transparent visor dominated the front. The backpack was slim, containing a lightweight air recycling unit and the superconductor batteries for the force field armor they wore unseen underneath the fabric. It was a precaution against any newfound native animal that was hostile enough to try to find out what the invaders tasted like.

Cameras mounted on the sides of their hoods relayed images to the big screens above the windows. A quick check showed Oscar that several hundred million people were accessing this moment through the unisphere. They would be exploration addicts, the stay-at-homes who couldn’t get enough of alien worlds and the expanding human frontier.

“Out you go, Mac,” Oscar told the heroic-looking figures as they stood at the bottom of the ramp.

McClain Gilbert nodded briefly, and strode forward. The force field over the gateway exit slipped around him as he stepped through. His booted foot came down on the feathery leaves of the ground cover plant.

“I name this planet Chelva,” McClain Gilbert intoned solemnly, reading from CST’s approved list. “May those who come here find the life they search for.”

“Amen,” Oscar muttered quietly. “Right, people, to work, please.”

Procedure meant they acquired immediate soil and plant samples that were quickly taken back through the gateway. Once that was done, the team began a more elaborate investigation of the area around the wormhole exit.

“The grass-equivalent is spongy,” McClain Gilbert said. “Similar to moss but with much longer leaves, and they’re kind of glossy, like they have a wax coating. From what I can see the ground next to the stream has a high shingle content. Looks like flint, same gray-brown coloration. Possibly good for fossils.”

The forward crew was heading toward the water. Streams, lakes, even seas, always provided a rich variety of native life.

“Okay, we have company,” McClain Gilbert announced.

Oscar glanced up from the console portals. The forward crew were about a hundred meters from the exit, he could only see three of them directly now, and two of them were pointing at something. His eyes flicked up to the screens. The small squirrel-rodent creatures had appeared; helmet-mounted cameras were following them as they hopped around on the flat rocks beside the stream. Now he could see them properly, his first equivalence naming was becoming more and more inaccurate. They were nothing like squirrels. A rounded conical body, thirty centimeters long, was covered in lead-gray scales, with a texture astonishingly similar to stone. There were three powerful limbs at the rear, one directly underneath the body, and two, slightly longer, on either side. Where they connected to the main body they were shaped like chicken thighs, except there was no mid-joint, the lower half was a simple pole. It was as if they walked on miniature stilts, which made their motions fast and jerky. The head was a giant snout, with segmented ring scales allowing it to bend in every direction. Its tip was a triple-pincer claw arranged around a mouth-inlet. Two-thirds of the way along the snout, three black eyes were set deep into folds that creased the scales.

“Ugly-looking critters,” McClain Gilbert said. “They seem, I don’t know, primitive.”

“We think they’re quite evolved,” xenobiology said. “They obviously have a good sense of balance, and the limb arrangement provides a sophisticated locomotive ability.”

They didn’t bound about, Oscar saw, it was more like a kangaroo jump. Watching them, he worried that the forward team were scaring them, they were never still. One of them darted forward, its pincers splashing into the water. When it brought its snout out, the claws were gripping a tuft of lavender foliage. It moved with incredible speed, shoveling the dripping morsel back into its mouth-inlet.

His virtual vision brought up an amber warning over a section of McClain Gilbert’s insulation suit’s telemetry. The cautions were repeated on the other forward crew. “Mac, what are you standing on?”

In unison, the helmet camera images on the screens tipped down. The feathery grass was slowly curling over to embrace their boots. A thin mist was leaking out from the onion-shaped tips of every blade.

“Hell!” McClain Gilbert exclaimed. He quickly lifted one foot. The grass wasn’t strong enough to stop him. Blisters and bubbles were erupting on the top of the boot. The rest of the crew shouted in alarm, and began to pull their own boots clear.

“That’s some kind of acid,” Planetary Science said.

Oscar noticed all the creatures were hopping away from the humans at quite a speed.

“What sort of plant has acid for sap?” McClain Gilbert asked.

“Not a good one,” xenobiology said. “Sir, I recommend bringing them back in.”

“I concur,” emergency defense said. “If nothing else, we need to wash that acid off them before it eats through their soles.”

“I think they’re right, Mac,” Oscar said. “Get back into the environment chamber.”

“We’re coming.”

“Xenobiology, talk to me,” Oscar said.

“Interesting. The plants didn’t move until our team had been standing still for a little while, so I’m guessing they probably operate off a time/pressure trigger. I’m reminded of a Venus flytrap, except this is a lot more unpleasant, and the scale is larger. Any small animal that stops moving is likely to be trapped and dissolved.”

Oscar glanced back through the oval gateway. McClain Gilbert and his team had almost reached the rim. Behind them, there was no sign of the small not-squirrel creatures. “Those native animals never stood still,” he murmured.

“No, sir,” xenobiology said. “And their leg structure would be difficult for the grass to capture. I’d love to know what their scales are made of, it looked pretty tough. Anything that evolves here must be relatively acid resistant.”

“How widespread is this plant?” Oscar asked. “And is the rest of the vegetation going to be similar?”

“The images we’re getting from the low-orbit satellites indicate a comprehensive ground plant coverage,” sensors said. “If it’s not this particular grass-equivalent, it’s a close cousin.”

“Damnit,” Oscar hissed.

The forward crew hurried back into the alien environment confinement chamber. At the bottom of the ramp, decontamination shower cubicles had risen up out of the floor. They were designed to wash away spores or dangerous particles. But they’d be just as effective for this. The team members stood underneath the nozzles as the water jetted down.

“All right,” Oscar announced to everyone on the loop. “Our priority is to establish how widespread this grass variety is, and if the other plants are related. Sensors, get a marque 8 samplebot out there. I want to check out the nearest trees, and there are a few other kinds of plants in that grass-stuff. Mac, go through a complete decontamination, and desuit, I don’t think we’ll need you again today.”

Everyone in the control center watched anxiously as the samplebot trundled out across the red grass. It stopped several times to snip sections of leaf from clumps of other plants, then headed for the nearest tree a hundred fifty meters away. As it got closer, they could all see the jagged pattern of the branches as they forked at acute angles. There weren’t many leaves, just a few slender beige triangles clumped around the end of each twig. Black kernels similar to walnuts dangled down from almost every joint on every branch.