Fiasco (48 page)

He had left the shovel stuck near the hole that he dug. No point looking for the thing now, in this maze.

He swung the biosensor with both hands and hit the rough crust, hit it and hit it until it broke, and from that rent burst a yellow-white dust as from a puffball, revealing not the eyes of beings hidden in an inner chamber but the sheer surfaces of a deep cleft with thousands of tiny pores—like a loaf of bread cut in two by an ax, with ropy, raw dough at the center. He froze, his arms raised for the next blow, and the sky above him filled with an awful light. The
Hermes,
opening fire on the antenna masts outside the spaceport, pierced straight through the clouds. The rain instantly evaporated in white steam. A laser sun rose. In a wide radius a thermal blast swept the entire upland slope free of mist and clouds. As far as the eye could see, the slope was covered with throngs of naked, defenseless warts, and as the towering spiderweb and the antennas, breaking, fell upon him in flames, he realized that he had seen the Quintans.