A Day for Damnation

FOUR

AS SOON as we pulled into position, I took a second reading on the mass of the worms. They were too big. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was making a mistake here. Perhaps I should have said no at the last Go-NoGo point.

I almost turned to Duke then, but I stopped myself. I did this every time. As soon as it was too late, I started second-guessing. It didn't matter any more what I thought. We were committed.

I took a second reading on the mass of the worms, recalculated the gas dosage according to Denver's mass-ratio equations, and detonated another pellet. I wondered if it should have been two. I'd rather kill the worms than have them wake up while we were loading them.

We gave the gas a full ten minutes. I took a final reading-the worms were the most wonderful shade of dark purple I'd ever seen-then brought the spider out.

Then we pulled the dome off its foundations. We anchored grapples in its base, attached tow ropes to a jeep and backed up slowly. The hut ripped off like so much Styrofoam. The worms didn't build for strength. They didn't have to.

We had to do it twice; the dome shredded too easily. I felt like an intruder, a vandal. We had to pull it off in pieces. Then we had to rip off the top floor too.

That job was harder. We had to plant small charges in the floor to break it up. It was made out of the same material as the dome walls, but it was denser and had the strength of industrial Kevlar. It would have to be strong to hold the weight of a healthy worm family.

The worms built their nests by chewing up trees and spitting out foam. Apparently they could vary the mix enough to produce lightweight translucent walls and heavyweight hardwood floors all from the same basic ingredients. A neat trick.

When the lower half of the nest was finally revealed, there was a moment of... hesitation. The teams-men and women alike-gathered in silence around the edge to stare down at the exposed worms.

They were huge. Just knowing they were huge from the readings on the screen was not the same as actually seeing them in the flesh. Even the smallest of them was a meter thick and three meters long. The "adult" was two meters high at its brain case and twice as long as the baby. I wished I'd given them that third pellet.

The worms were coiled around each other like lovers, head to tail, head to tail, in a circular formation. They were shadowed in the lower half of the nest, but even so their fur still shone a brilliant red. It was almost alluring.

Duke came up beside me to look. His expression tightened, but he didn't speak.

"Looks like we interrupted a Chtorran orgy," I said. Duke grunted.

"The baby's about three hundred kilos," I offered. "Papa bear is probably a thousand."

"At least," said Duke. He didn't like it, I could tell. He was too silent.

"Too big?" I asked.

"Too expensive," he grumbled. "You're looking at fifteen cows a week. That's a lot of hamburger." He clicked his tongue and turned away. "All right," he bawled, "let's get down in there and get to work." He pointed to a man with a headset. "Tell that chopper to drop the slings. Now!"

We had one bad moment with the loading.

We started with the baby. One squad dropped into the pit while the other two teams stood above them with flame throwers, bazookas and incendiary bullets. The worm was too big to lift or roll onto a sling-it had to be lifted so the canvas could be pulled beneath it.

The squad in the pit quickly slid a series of stainless-steel rods underneath the smallest worm to form a lattice of crossbars. These were then connected at their ends to two longer bars placed lengthwise against the worm. The baby was now lying on a ladder-shaped bed.

The chopper was already clattering into place overhead, whipping us with wind and noise. Its cables were already lowering. The team didn't try to grab the free-swinging ends-instead they waited until the lines touched ground and there was enough slack. They grabbed the cables and ran to attach them to the ladder under the worm. Beckman gave a thumbs-up signal and the chopper began to raise the cables. They tightened visibly. The ladder shuddered and began to lift

For a moment, the worm resisted-it was just a large limp bag of scarlet pudding-and then the connection with the other worms was broken and it pulled up into the air.

Immediately, every worm in the pit began to stir.

Papa worm grunted uneasily. The other two actually chirruped and rumbled. But baby worm was the worst. It writhed as if in pain, and let loose a plaintive wail of anguish. It curled and looped like an earthworm cut in half. The ladder swung recklessly. The cables groaned-and then its eyes popped open. They were huge and black and round-they slid this way and that, unfocused and unseeing.

The team jumped backwards, flattening themselves against the nest wall

"Hold your fire-!" I was screaming. "Hold your fire, goddammit!" Somehow I made myself heard above the terror. "It's still unconscious! Those are automatic reactions!"

Indeed, the baby was already calming down again. Its eyes slid shut and it curled-tried to curl-into a swollen red ball, still hanging above the floor of the nest.

"Oh, Jesus-" gasped someone. "I don't need this-" He started scrambling out. The two men on either side of him looked uncertain

Duke didn't give the team a chance to be scared. He jumped down into the pit with them and started snapping orders. "Come on-let's get that bastard onto the mat. Come on, move it!" He grabbed the soldier who'd started to panic and pushed him straight at the worm. "You're riding up with it, Gomez. Thanks for volunteering." Gomez kept moving in the direction of Duke's shove. It was safer.

"Come on! Move that mat! Pull it under! Under- goddammit! Under! Good! All right-" Duke pointed up at the communications tech, still bellowing, and waving his arm like a semaphore. "Down-! Bring it down!" And then back to the squad again. "All right! Let's get those bars out! Let's get those cables attached! Now! Goddammit! Now! Let's move!"

The pit squad moved like demons then, detaching the cables from the bars and reattaching them to the canvas faster than Duke could swear. They pulled the bars out from under the worm and backed quickly out of the way. The chopper lifted then-just a bit, to bring the edges of the canvas up-and the worm was strapped into its sling. Two of the bars were slid through the straps then to seal the worm into a steel and canvas cocoon and four more cables were attached to the ends of these. It was for its protection as much as ours. We didn't want the creatures banging loose around the inside of the chopper. The worms would be kept strapped and hanging the whole trip.

"All right! Take it up!" Duke hollered and waved. The clatter of the chopper drowned his words and the wind whipped at his face. He didn't even watch, he was already turning to the next worm. "What are you slobs waiting for? Let's get those bars under-"

The other three worms were easier-but not much.

At least now we knew that when we separated them, they'd react-but they wouldn't wake up. We could handle that. The team worked faster now

The chopper hovered overhead, growling and rumbling, and we lifted the worms one by one into its massive cargo bay. The big creatures sagged ominously in the creaking slings.

It was a terrifying job.

The wind was rising and the chopper began to pitch and slide sideways in the air. I wondered if we were going to have to return without all four-but the pilot turned the ship into the wind and told us to keep going. Whoever she was, she was good.

Once-the worm in the sling was banged against the side of the nest; it moaned in its sleep, a dark purple rumble of despair.

The pit squad turned and looked with wild expressions on their faces. The monster chirruped like a crying woman. The sound of it was devastating. Suddenly, this creature was an object of pity. Then the worm cleared the nest wall and rose swiftly into the air-and Duke was pointing and waving again.

Papa worm was last. As the big creature came rising up out of the ground, the afternoon sun struck highlights off its bright red fur. It shimmered with a thousand flickering colors-it looked like a heavenly pink aura. I couldn't help but marvel-it was the most beautiful color I'd ever seen....

The creature lifted into the sky like a big pink blimp. I followed it all the way up. It disappeared into the belly of the chopper and the giant black doors of the machine slid shut with a whump.

Duke signaled the tech, the tech said something into his microphone, and the chopper whirred noisily off southward.

"All right," he said. "Let's go home and watch TV. Is T. J. going to tell Stephanie about the missing robot or not?"