For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [84]
“I’m ready to begin.” Brora smiled thinly across at Nyassa-lee, who nodded. He looked to his other colleague. “Haithness?” She answered him with her eyes as she readied the syringe.
“A last instrument check, then,” he murmured, turning his attention to the raised platform containing the microsurgical instruments. Overhead, the jellyfish hummed expectantly.
“Now that’s funny.” He paused, frowning. “Look here.” Both women leaned toward him. The instruments, the tiny boxes with their frozen contents, even the platform itself, seemed to be vibrating.
“Trouble over at power?” ventured Nyassa-lee. She glanced upward and saw that the central support globe was swaying slightly.
“I don’t know. Surely if it was anything serious, we would have been told by now,” Brora muttered. The vibration intensified. One of the probes tumbled from the holding table and clattered across the plastic floor. “It’s getting worse, I think.” A faint rumble reached them from, somewhere outside. Brora thought it arose somewhere off to the west.
“Storm coming?” Nyassa-lee asked, frowning.
Brora shook his head. “Thunder wouldn’t make the table shake, and Weather didn’t say anything about an early storm watch. No quake, either. This region is seismically stable.”
The thunder that continued to grow in their ears did not come down out of a distant sky but up out of the disturbed earth itself. Abruptly, the alarm system came to life all around the camp. The three surgeons stared in confusion at one another as the rumbling shook not only tables and instruments but the whole building.
The warning sirens howled mournfully. There came a ripping, tearing noise as something poured through the far end of the conference room, missing the surgery by an appreciable margin. It was visible only for seconds, though in that time it filled the entire chamber. Then it moved on, trailing sections of false log and plastic stone in its wake, letting in sky and mist and leaving behind a wide depression in the stelacrete foundation beneath the floor. Haithness had the best view as debris fell slowly from the roof to cover the mark: it was a footprint.
Nyassa-lee tore off her surgical mask and raced for the nearest doorway. Brora and Haithness were not far behind. At their departure, Mother Mastiff, who had quietly consigned that portion of herself that was independent to oblivion, suddenly found her voice again and began screaming for help.
Dust and insulation began to sift from the ceiling as the violent shaking and rumbling continued to echo around her. The multiarmed surgical sphere above the operating table was now swinging dangerously back and forth and threatening, with each successive vibration, to tear free of its mounting.
Mother Mastiff did not waste her energy in a futile attempt to break the straps that bound her. She knew her limits. Instead, she devoted her remaining strength to yelling at the top of her lungs.
As soon as they had entered the monitored border surrounding the camp, Lauren had accelerated and charged at dangerously high speed right past the central tower. Someone had had the presence of mind to respond to the frantic alarm siren by reaching for a weapon, but the hastily aimed and fired energy rifle missed well aft of the already fleeing skimmer.
At the same time, the wielder of the rifle had seen something flung from the rear of the intruder. He had flinched, and when no explosion had followed, leaned out of the third-story window to stare curiously at the broken glass and green-red liquid trickling down the side of the structure. He did not puzzle over it for very long because his attention—and that of his companions in the tower—was soon occupied by the black tidal wave that thundered out of the forest.
The frustrated, enraged herd concentrated all its attention on the strongest source of the infuriating odor. The central tower, which contained the main communications