Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [74]
Though always in view, the upper terminus of the shaft seemed impossibly far away. He elected not to look at it lest the distance he still had to climb discourage him. From the trembling in his legs he knew that he had already passed the point of no return. The top of the shaft was closer than the service hatch through which he had entered. Since it required almost the same energy to rise as to retreat, he clasped his mandibles tightly together and continued his ascent. His thorax pulsed with his hard breathing.
The higher he rose, the stronger became the alien stench from outside. Just when he thought his legs could no longer support him, his head slammed into something unyielding. The pain that raced down his unprotected antennae was intense. Only the shock kept him from losing his grip on the walls of the shaft entirely and plunging to the bottom. If that happened at this height he would not have to worry about rescue. Drawn inward by the suction from below, alien air entering through screened, eye-sized gaps blasted his face and exposed eyes. Ignoring the dust and grit, he reached up with both truhands to feel along the inner edge of the rim. There should be a single latch. In the near darkness he could see very little, and he was constantly having to look down to protect his eyes from the barrage of minuscule debris that threatened to rip the shielding nictitating membranes.
If he failed to locate the latch, or if it refused to open, he would have no choice but to try and work his way all the way back down the shaft to the service hatch. Given how his legs were shaking, he doubted very seriously if he would be able to make it.
He had studied the design of the air shafts closely, but perusing a schematic in the comfort of his quarters was very different from hunting for a tiny component part, trembling and exhausted, while braced only by his legs at the top of a lethally high duct full of incoming air that seemed determined to break his grip and send him hurtling downward. The delicate digits of his left truhand skimmed the place where the upper rim met the top of the shaft. They encountered an immovable obstruction. Raising his head, Desvendapur fought to see clearly in the poor light and softly moaning air. It was the latch. It had to be. Using all four digits, he pressed and twisted according to the schematic he had memorized.
The latch did not respond.
Regulating his breathing as best he could, he tried again. The latch might as well have been welded shut. Refusing to concede, unable to do anything else, he readied himself for a third attempt. But he needed more leverage—or more strength.
Sending his last surge of energy and determination into his lower body, he released his grip on the shaft walls with his upper limbs. Braced now only by his four trulegs, he grasped the latch with all sixteen digits of his foothands and truhands while pressing and twisting. Something unyielding complained. The latch gave.
He was not sure whether his legs lost their brace before he pulled himself out or at the same time. All he knew was that he was hanging on with his upper limbs for what seemed like an eternity before he was able to finally kick, pull, and drag himself out of the shaft. He lay on the ground, breathing hard, his vision unfocused, alongside what looked like the stump of a dead diderocarpus. The last thing he had done before collapsing was to close the top of the shaft. It had snapped shut, automatically resealing.
He was committed now. He could not reopen the shaft and regain access to the hive from outside. He was trapped on the surface of an alien world, the world of the bipeds. Right where he wanted to be.
It had not been difficult to learn where the few fixed monitors were located, or when the mobile scanners passed over their respective sections of the site. Colony-based security was necessarily limited lest it attract the attention of the local human authorities. Of necessity, the majority of it was left to those renegade humans who had assisted in the establishment of the colony,