A Day for Damnation

FOURTEEN

-AND THEN Duke appeared in the door behind me. "What do you want, Jim-the torch or the freezer?"

The eyes vanished. I caught a quick glimpse of a furry body and that was all. Something scuttled and there was pink smoke. "Shit!"

"What was that-?" said Duke.

"There was something out there-" I pointed. "Some kind of humanoid!"

"Where-?"

"Over there!" I dropped off the bottom step of the ramp and sank chest deep in the pink powder. A great cloud of it swirled up around me. I ignored it and started pushing toward the bush the creature had been hiding behind. The powder was as light as cotton candy. It pushed aside like cobwebs. It was hardly there at all.

"Jim-wait! It might be a worm!"

"This was no worm! I know a worm when I see one! This was humanoid!"

"Here! Take the freezer!" He came down the ramp after me, but stopped on the bottom step. He was carrying a long nozzled rod and a pair of small tanks. Liquid nitrogen. The rod was almost as tall as I was and connected to the tanks by a stiff silvery hose. I'd used this kind of portable unit before. I grabbed it from Duke and shrugged quickly into the harness. The tanks sat on my back and I could use the rod to direct a soft-pressure spray of instant supercooling. It was a great way to gather specimens

Duke reached up behind him and grabbed the flamethrower. "All right, let's go see-" He jumped into the dust. It came up in a cloud.

Lizard appeared in the doorway carrying a laser-gun. Duke waved her back. "No, you stay with the ship! Get on the radio. This might be something." I knew what he meant by that. We might not come back. But we could leave a clue for the ones who came after us.

Lizard got it; she nodded. "I'll cover you from the turret."

"Good. Let's go, Jim." We pushed off. The dust was almost waist deep.

I glanced back once and waved toward the chopper. I couldn't tell if Lizard waved back. I had to concentrate on my footing.

I was discovering something interesting about the pink powder we were trying to move through. It was only fluffy on the top. The deeper it was, the denser it got. The more I moved, the lower I sank-and I was sinking deeper with every step. It was like the lunar dust that almost killed that astronaut, "Free Fall" Ferris. The similarity was scary. I began to wonder if this was such a good idea. I started to lift the spray nozzle over my head to protect it-and then I had another thought.

I set the nozzle for wide-spray, pointed it forward, and touched the trigger lightly. A cold white cloud whooshed out, putting a sudden chill into the air. The pink powder snapped and sputtered and solidified.

"Hot stuff!" I shouted.

"Huh?" said Duke.

"I said, `Hot stuff!' This liquid nitrogen is hot stuff!" I strode forward over crackling ice.

Duke followed me, grumbling and shaking his head. "Liquid nitrogen is anything but `hot stuff."'

"You know what I mean-"

He grunted something unintelligible in response. I didn't ask him to repeat it.

The liquid nitrogen had frozen a crust in the powder. Where the powder was lightest, it was just cracked and crumbled away, but deeper down, where it was almost dense enough to walk on, the supercold turned the dusty quicksand into a texture more like dry snow-and that we could walk on. There was resistance now. The frozen powder crunched under our feet. Every few steps I stopped and froze another patch ahead of us. We were carving a deep furrow through the high dunes.

We couldn't see anything but powdery drifts all around us. They were piled up like walls. Apparently, we had come down near the center of a large shallow depression-probably an old dry riverbed. We were in the center of it and couldn't see out-assuming, of course, that there was something to see that wasn't pink.

The bush we were heading toward was actually on a high rise of ground. As we climbed up through the dust toward it, we found ourselves climbing out of the powder as well. Toward the top it was only waist deep.

Perhaps this slope was the western shore of the riverbed, but it was hard to tell. Some of these California riverbeds could be as wide as a kilometer across. This felt like being in a deep desert. Or in a lunar crater. Or on another planet. I wondered if they had places like this on Chtorr?

The air around us was pink with smoke. The wind was stirring up small powdery whorls that rose and dissipated into the air. The clouds of it spread out and became a gentle haze. I looked up. The sky was turning rosy.

And it was impossible to see the horizon. Everything just blurred out in the distance. The only difference was that the sky was slightly brighter than the ground, and the sun was a bright pink glow in the middle of everything.

I glanced back at the chopper. It had carved a long uneven furrow through the pink dunes-I could see where we'd bounced. Already the sides of the soft pink scar were collapsing and sliding inward. The aircraft itself was canted gently forward, its nose halfway buried in one of the highest of the dunes. The silken shroud of the parafoil had draped itself across the slope ahead of the ship. Already, the pink dust was sweeping over it, burying it from view. Its lines were barely visible now.

And beyond the chopper-there was only more pink. Pink whipped cream dunes and rosy pink sky, all fading off into an oppressive, bright pink blur. Everything was pink.

We crested the slope-the powder was only knee deep here and moved around to the other side of the bush. "Look-there're its tracks."

"Looks like some kind of paddlefoot," Duke said. "Four toes. The center two are the longest." He spread out the fingers of his hand and held it over the closest footprint for comparison. "He's a little fellow, whatever he is. My hand just covers this print."

"He went down that way," I pointed. I followed the tracks toward the trees.

"Jim-I don't think that's such a good idea-"

"Why not?" I paused and looked back.

"We'd better not get too far from the chopper," said Duke. "If we lose our way, we'll never get back."

"We'll follow our own path," I said.

Duke shook his head and pointed back the way we'd come. "Look-" Already the dust was filling in our trough. "It's still coming down. We're not aware of it, because we're stirring up so much of it, but if you watch something that isn't moving, you can see this crap is getting deeper. That cloud-" he gestured at the sky, "-is dumping most of its load right here. This stuff can't get past the Sierras. The wind can only carry so much of it. It's got to drop somewhere. This is the place."

"Damn," I said. "We'll have to hurry. Come on."

"That thing could be anywhere by now," Duke said.

"We've got to take the chance. We've got to see what that critter was! You can go back if you want-" I was already heading deeper into the pink forest. The creature had plowed a furrow through the dust, just like us. It zigzagged back and forth through the bushes.

Duke grumbled; but he shrugged, sighed, and followed. There are disadvantages to having a headstrong science officer. We twisted through the frosty trees, Duke muttering quiet obscenities.

"This is what I get for letting them assign you to me," he said.

"You asked for me." We'd had this argument before.

He waved it off. "You were the lesser of two evils. The alternative was a morally retarded sociopath who had fragged his commanding officer. The only reason they didn't shoot him was they couldn't prove he had actually tossed the grenade. Frankly, I just don't care to have that kind of man in my command." Duke changed his tone then; he became more serious. "Listen-whatever it was, it'll turn up again. Someone else will spot one. You don't have to be the guy who brings in all the animals. Besides, it's probably terrified of us and heading for the hills as fast as its fat little feet can carry it."

"I don't think so," I said, following the next turn. "It was studying us. That wasn't just an animal I saw. There was intelligence in those eyes. And where there's one, there're probably many. We're probably being watched from all sides right now." I stopped and pointed. "Look-I was right. There's another track-" A second line of paddlefoot tracks crossed the first. The dustfall indicated we were following the older set of prints. I turned to follow the newer furrow. It twisted and turned like the first.

"Don't these creatures believe in straight lines?" I asked.

"They must be descended from politicians," Duke replied.

"Or comedians," I said.

I came around what might have been a pine tree and stopped. Duke came up beside me. The furrow we were following headed straight into the center of a wide clearing

-and into a whole switchyard of crisscrossing paths! It was impossible to tell one from another.

"Damn!" said Duke. "I knew it."

I looked at him. His expression was impossible to read behind the goggles and O-mask. I said, "What are you talking about? This is incredible! There must be a whole colony of these creatures."

"-Unless your critter doubled back over his own path."

"Why would he do that?"

"To confuse us," Duke said. "Are you confused?"

"Uh... I don't think so."

"Uh huh." Duke looked at me funny. "Then which way is back?"

I pointed past his shoulder. "That way."

"You sure?"

I looked at him curiously. "Do you know something I don't?"

He turned slowly, studying the dunes. "Remember Shorty? He and I were in Pakistan together. The black pajama boys used to do this exact same trick. They'd let one of their number be seen. As soon as he was spotted he'd take off into the trees. There was always at least one jackass stupid enough to chase after him, so he'd leave the most complicated, zigzag, twisty, serpentine trail he could-but he always made sure it was clear enough to follow. As soon as you were deep enough to be confused about the way back, the trail would stop. That's when his friends would come out to play. We lost an awful lot of jackasses that way."

I glanced around nervously. A steady breeze rustled the surface of the dust, stirring pink wraiths into the air. Everything looked pink. There was no horizon any more, no sky, no ground-just a fine pink haze. We had some bleak-looking bushes and dunes. Nothing else.

I shuddered. For some reason, frosty pink things weren't charming any more. I looked back to Duke. "Do you think that's what's happening here?"

Duke looked grim. "I don't know. I didn't see your creature and I can't guess what he wants or how his mind works. And this isn't Pakistan. But that's what I keep thinking of. Sorry, son-that's the only thing I have to compare it to-Pakistani Poker."

I considered it. Duke only called me "son" when he thought something was important and he wanted me to listen harder than usual.

"Let's head back," I said.

"I thought you'd agree." He pointed. "It's that way."

"You lead," I said. I fell in behind him.

Our path wound back through the bushes. I didn't remember making this many twists and turns

Suddenly, Duke stopped and pointed ahead. "Look-"

Our path had been crisscrossed again and again by paddlefoot tracks, until our original prints were no longer visible. Something had been following behind us. "Urk-" I said.

Duke swung the torch around slowly, covering the bushes on all sides. "Well... now they know that we know." His eyes narrowed behind his goggles. "If they're going to attack, now's the time. "

"Well let's not stand here talking about it. Let's keep going!"

"Just a minute-" Duke pulled a small plastic disc off his belt. "We're going to need the beeper." He studied it for half a second, then pushed off at a new angle. "Follow me."

The dust was coming down heavier now. We could see it floating in like snowflakes. The particles were bigger now-big pink clumps, turning as they drifted. They looked like dandelions. I reached out to catch one as it floated down. It disappeared when it touched my hand-it puffed into dust and was gone, it was that light.

"We're in the thick of the storm," I said.

"Uh huh-and the wind is rising. We'd better hurry. We'll be at the limit of our masks soon."

I nodded and followed him. The visibility was getting worse. I couldn't see more than twenty yards ahead of us.

"Jim, it's getting deeper. You'd better start freezing again."

"Right." I came up even with Duke and sprayed a quick cold cloud of chill ahead. The liquid nitrogen looked like steam when it hissed into the air. The dust crackled and broke as we moved through it. The frozen crust beneath crunched.

Duke checked his beeper and pointed. I moved ahead and sprayed again. We moved forward cautiously.

"You think they can attack in this dust?" I asked.

"It's their natural element," Duke said. "And they don't seem to have any trouble moving around in it. I won't feel safe till we're back in the chopper." He checked his beeper. "More to the left, Jim. We should be almost to the slope-"

"Urk-"

"What's that?"

I stopped and pointed. Duke came up behind me and peered through the pink gloom.

There were three of them.

They looked like flop-eared bunnies. Or puppydogs. They had little squat bodies covered with frosty pink fur. I couldn't tell if that was just the dust or if it was their natural color.

They seemed to have large round faces and short, blunt muzzles. The pink frosting that covered everything made it hard to tell. Their noses and mouths were invisible, and their eyes were narrowly slitted against the powdery dust. They were thoroughly covered with it; they stood waist deep in the bright powder. They looked like little Chinese bunnies in a cotton candy factory.

Bunny ears. Puppy faces. Not my idea of aliens from space. Certainly not my idea of a Chtorran intelligence.

I couldn't tell if they were friendly, hostile, or just curious. But they were staring at us. There was no question that we were the focus of their attention.

I looked at Duke-and then looked past Duke in horror. Five more of the little bunnydogs were just creeping up behind us.

I whirled around-there were more of them just coming out of the bushes behind me. They were coming out on all sides of us, too many to count.

There were bunnydogs to the left of us, bunnydogs to the right of us-

We were surrounded.