Double Contact

CHAPTER 22

At the medical station the routines of the day had proceeded with a similar lack of drama, but the surroundings were beautiful, relaxing, and much too pleasant for boredom to be a consideration. The patients were in satisfactory medical and good psychological shape following their twice-daily immersion in the shallows and subsequent sun-drying, and had been moved indoors. The sun was within an hour of setting, with its close-to-horizontal light reflecting off the reddish-white breakers on a sea that was dark blue. It was the ideal time of day for another walk around the island.

Inevitably accompanied, Murchison thought irritably, by her shape-changing and by now totally redundant guardian angel.

There was no real reason, other than that she had never done so before and the team members and patients might worry, why she should be back inside the station before nightfall. But to reduce the unnecessary worrying all around, she decided not to break with tradition by jogging instead of walking the distance, and to stop only for a brief swim in her favorite beauty spot, a tiny, tree-fringed bay on the opposite side of the island.

She was nearing it, and the station was hidden by the curve of the shoreline behind her, when the sun began to set, although from experience she knew that there would be enough dusk left to see her way back. In the shallows Danalta was keeping pace with her, arrowing through the breaking surf and occasionally leaping into the air as it did its impression of a flying fish. She was running fast over the firm, damp sand with her eyes down so as to avoid the scattered white stones in her path when the shape-changer made a noise that did not translate, and flopped rapidly out of the water and onto the sand beside her. While it was still changing from an aquatic to a land mobile form, what had been one of its fins thickened into a hand and it pointed ahead.

This, Murchison thought as she slowed to a stop under the trees, is certainly an interesting change in the in the usual scenery.

It was a smooth, flattened mound covered with what looked like fibrous, greenish-brown vegetation, or possibly scales or a form of seaweed, that floated in the water with a narrow section of its forward edge projecting a few yards onto the sandy beach. It was large enough to fill a quarter of the tiny inlet and she was reminded of an outsize, beached whale.

“I’d say that this is one of the objects we saw from the high ground that first day,” she said, “and now we’re seeing it close-up. You have better vision than I have. Is it alive?”

Danalta, whose land shape was still indeterminate, enlarged an eye and said, “It has the general appearance of a large sea mammal, although the breathing orifices and fins are concealed from view or underwater. There is a slight overall body movement that is probably due to wave action rather than respiration. It may be alive and close to termination. But there is still a risk. Shall I investigate more closely?”

“We will investigate,” she said, stressing the first word, “after we’ve reported this in. But I’d say the risk is minimal.” She pointed to the sky above the beached creature and laughed quietly. “The vultures are gathering again and that’s always a strong contraindication for casualty survivability.”

The birds were circling stiff-winged as they rode the updrafts

from the sandy beach that was still radiating the day’s heat, and they were lower and closer than she had ever seen them before. Both bodies and their wide-spreading, leathery wings were the same color and seemed to have the same texture as that of the beached creature, and they looked mean. Instinctively she moved back under the concealment of thick, overhanging branches, hoping they hadn’t seen her.

Danalta remained motionless except for lengthening his eye-stalk and bending it up to look at them.

“They aren’t birds,” it said quietly, “they’re flying machines, unpowered gliders. Each one has a pilot.”

For a moment Murchison was too surprised to react, mentally or physically. This was supposed to be an uninhabited world. According to Rhabwar’s sensors it was completely lacking in the signatures of cultivation, roads, electromagnetic radiation, industrial smoke pollution, or any of the signs normally produced by intelligent life, and certainly by an indigenous intelligence capable of building flying machines. It came to her suddenly that the reason why the two gliders were flying so low might be that their pilots wanted the high ground at the center of the island to conceal the operation from the view of the medical station in case someone there decided to look inland.

Fumbling in her haste, Murchison pulled her communicator out of the equipment pouch at her waist and had it almost to her lips when something large and soft and with many hairy legs landed on her back and shoulders. Simultaneously another one of them gripped her legs tightly so that she tripped and fell forwards, dropping the communicator as she instinctively put out both hands to keep her face from hitting the ground.

She was trying to reach for the communicator again when another one landed on her arm before grabbing her by the wrists and pulling them to her sides with small, hard pincers. She was lifted a few feet from the ground and her body was rotated laterally, and she felt her legs being wrapped together tightly in what -1 like very fine rope. The turns continued up and past her hips, pinioning both hands and lower arms to her sides. She was able to get a close if intermittent look at her captor Spiders.

Two of them were holding and rolling her over while a third was producing from a body orifice the continuous, fine white strand that was wrapping her up. Three others were dropping lightly to the ground from overhanging branches on white strands that were almost too thin for her to to see, their brownish-green body coloration making them difficult to see against the vegetation until they landed. Each of them was holding a thick, stubbly crossbow with their bolts notched and bowstrings taut.

She had never had a fear of Earthly spiders, and there were many more visually abhorrent creatures among her friends and colleagues at Sector General, but that didn’t mean that she liked everything that walked on eight hairy legs, especially, as now, when they were placing her life at risk.

Struggling to break free did no good because the thin strands were very tough and she succeeded only in leaving deep indentations and a few shallow cuts on her legs and forearms. She opened her mouth wide and deliberately made loud, whooshing sounds while inflating and deflating her lungs, hoping to demonstrate the need to go on breathing which she would not be able to do if the strands around her chest were too tight.

Whether they understood her body language or that had been their original intention she didn’t know, but the white strands were exerting minimum compression on her rib cage. She could breathe comfortably but not too deeply unless she wanted to risk cutting herself. She could turn her head freely and even bend a little at the waist. One of them took an interest in her translator pack and tried to tug it free, but it and the medical pouch were an integral part of the equipment belt so the creature didn’t succeed. When it persisted she made a noise to indicate that it was hurting her and it desisted. Then they rolled her face-upwards onto a hammock made from woven plant fiber of some kind and four of them each lifted a corner and began carrying her towards the beach while the other two followed. One of them, the one who had tried to get her translator, picked up her communicator from the ground and began poking at it curiously. There was no sign of Danalta.

She didn’t know what the shape-changer could do, but it should be able to think of something. So, Murchison thought angrily, should she. For a moment she wondered if she was generating her anger just to keep her growing fear at bay.

The sun had set but there was still enough light to see the beach clearly, and the object she had thought was a sea mammal. The smooth, outer covering was opening up to become a series of low, triangular sails resembling those of an old-time Earth felucca, and their supporting masts and rigging were still being raised, and the two flyers had landed and were half carrying, half dragging their gliders towards it. But her party, being closer, would board first. Plainly the spiders were excited because they were making low, cheeping and chittering sounds to each other or calling more loudly to the glider pilots and others on the ship. Suddenly there was an interruption, a sound that had not come from any local throat.

“Speak, Pathologist Murchison,” said the loud, irritated voice of Charge Nurse Naydrad. “If you don’t want to say something, why are you using your communicator? I have work to do. Stop wasting my time.”

Her bearers stopped so quickly that she almost rolled out of the litter, and the spider with her communicator dropped it onto the sand and backed away, chittering shrilly in alarm. Murchison laughed in spite of her problems. It was obvious what had happened because she could see the two indicator lights glowing. The spider who had been fiddling with it had inadvertently turned the reception volume to full as well as switching on the device. But the communicator was active and, even though it was lying in the sand several meters away and at extreme distance for a handset, Naydrad was listening.

The spiders were used to her making loud noises at them, but only when she was communicating discomfort, and now she had to talk loudly to Naydrad. But there was the danger of arousing their suspicions by making noises without a reason, when none of them was touching or therefore hurting her. If they were to get the idea that a conversation was going on, that she was calling for help, then they would immediately silence her or the communicator. They were already trying to do the latter by standing well back from it and pelting it with stones from the beach rather than shooting their crossbow bolts at it. Luckily they had missed it so far, but communicators were not robust instruments.

In an undertone Murchison used language that was unladylike — her only unfeminine trait, according to her life-mate— and thought quickly. There was very little time to send a message, and none at all if one of those rocks connected. She took the deepest breath she could without cutting herself and spoke slowly and clearly while hoping that the excited chittering of the spiders all around her would keep them from noticing the strange noises she was making.

“Naydrad, Murchison here. Listen, don’t talk, and copy. We have been captured by indigenous intelligent life-forms, tentative classification GKSD…”

The spiders weren’t paying any attention to her and were concentrating on their stone-throwing, which wasn’t accurate because the communicator continued to survive and show its indicator lights.

“They appear to be sea raiders of some kind,” she went on more calmly. “They use large sailing ships, unpowered aircraft, crossbows, and there is no evidence of metal weapons. I’ve been tightly restrained but not hurt and am unable to see Danalta…”

She broke off, realizing that her last few words might have been a lie. It was hard to be sure in the dimming twilight, but it seemed that the sand on one side of the communicator was showing wind ripples. Then, suddenly, they were all around it as Danalta did its impression of a patch of sandy beach. A moment later the device and its indicator lights disappeared from sight.

The spiders threw a few more stones, their voices sounding surprised and uneasy rather than angry at this apparent display of magic, but with no target to aim at they were beginning to lose interest. But a few stones would not bother Danalta, whose hide, regardless of the shape it was covering, was impermeable to most classes of low-velocity missiles. The important part was that it had rescued and was protecting the communicator and, when the spiders left the scene, it would be able to contact the medical station which would relay its report to Rhabwar.

Murchison was still feeling anxious about her immediate future, but more hopeful than she had been a few minutes earlier, when a loud, authoritative, chittering sound coming from the spiders’ vessel drew her attention towards it.

Several of the triangular openings in the hull were open and emitting a dim yellow flickering glow which, Murchison felt sure, had to be coming from oil lamps or candles. High on the prow of the vessel and silhouetted against the darkening sky she could dimly see the spider who seemed to be making all the noise. It was holding a tapering black cone to its head that had to be a speaking trumpet. Beyond the beached vessel and perhaps half a mile out to sea there was another vessel, identical in size and shape and also showing a few patches of dim illumination. The view of it was cut off by the body of one ofthe four spiders who raised her litter and resumed their journey towards the beached ship.

They had not reacted adversely while she had been speaking earlier, possibly because they had been too busy stoning and talk-mg among themselves to notice orcare, so she decided to pass on the latest information before they all moved too far from the capture point.

“Danalta,” she said, “the indications are that the GKSDs do not have electric power or radio communication. Another vessel of the same size and shape is entering the bay and a third is on the horizon…”

Murchison broke off as the escort halted. One of them chit-tered loudly at her and began inserting a claw between her body and the strands binding her, possibly checking on their tightness. It was making her very uncomfortable so she shut up.

She didn’t know if her words had been heard, but she hoped that the small patch of beach that was Danalta included a sandy ear.