The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [221]
"...impossible...nothing green, no photosynthesis, no energy for our kind of life...we've got to know..."
I caught no more till at last Tanya was back at the mike.
"Something swimming!" Her voice was quick and breathless. "Swimming at the surface. We can't see much except the splashing, but it must have descended from something that survived the impact. Pepe doubts that any large creature could live with so little oxygen, but anaerobic life did evolve on the old ocean floors. The black plumes, the giant tube worms, the bacteria that fed them—"
I heard Pepe's muted voice. The mike clicked, went dead, stayed dead while Dian and Arne came up to listen with me.
"Something has cut them off!" Dian shudderend. "An attack by those swimming things?"
"No way to know, but I did try to warn them." Arne must have repeated that a dozen times as the hours went by. "The planet simply isn't ready for us. It may never be."
In the hangars we had a dozen spare space planes that had ferried freight or workmen to the Moon. I suggested that we should think of a rescue flight.
"We'd be fools to go." Arne shook his head. "If they need help, they need it now, not next week. Our duty is to stay here, gather the data we can, record it for a generation that may have a better chance."
"I'm afraid," Dian whispered. "I wish—"
"Wish for what?" Arne snapped. "There's nothing we can do. Nothing but wait."
We waited forever, till the mike clicked at last and we heard Pepe.
"Navarro here, on board alone. Tanya's been off the plane for hours. In her breathing mask, collecting whatever she can. I've begged her to come back before her air runs out, but she's fascinated with those swimmers. We watched one crawling up out of the water. Something like a red octopus, though she says it looks no kin to any octopus that ever existed before the impact. A mass of thick, blood-red coils. It splayed itself on the beach and lay still in the sun.
"She wondered if it might have some kind of photosynthetic symbiote in its blood. Something red instead of green, that feeds it on solar energy. I don't see any way for her to tell, but she's still out there with her binoculars and her video and her sample bucket.
"I've begged her to get back with what she has, but she always needs a few more minutes. She keeps working towards the beach. The red things are amphibians, she says. A dozen of them out there now. An unexpected life form that she thinks could be a problem later. Leave that for later, I told her, but she keeps slogging on. The beach is mud, silt washed down off the hills in the west. She says the things are digging in it, maybe for something they eat. She wants to see. "But now—"
His voice lifted and stopped while he must have been watching. I heard no more till it came back, still begging her. She had gone too far. The mud was deeper than it looked. Her air had run low. She could watch the creatures from the cockpit till she knew them better. Faintly, I caught her answer.
"Just one more minute."
For a long-seeming time I heard nothing at all.
'"One more minute.' He echoed her words.
"It's close to night. That storm's rolling down on us. The wind's getting up. A few raindrops already - Stop, Tanny! Stop!" His voice went high. "Mind the mud."
"Give me just another minute." Her radio voice, so faint I hardly heard it. "These creatures - they're a new evolution. We've got to know what they are. Never mind the risk."
"I mind it," he called again to her. "Tanny, please—"
He stopped to hear something from her that I failed to catch. For a time he was silent again, except for the rush of his rapid breath.
"Navarro again." His voice was back, bitterly resigned. "She can't resist those red monsters. At first they sprawled flat, soaking up the sun, but now they're moving. One jumped at another. The other dodged and sprang to meet it. Now-"
He stopped to watch and shout another warning.
"The things are really quite a show. They look legless, maybe boneless, but amazingly active and quick.