Saturn Rukh (24 page)

~ * ~

“Eeeee ... !”
screamed Sandra. The tops of the feather trees had parted and a huge eye was peering down at her. From her position at the holoviewport high up in the conical tip of
Sexdent,
she could see that the eye was connected to an elongated segmented body, with a pair of clawed feet between each segment. “It’s a giant caterpillar!”

Outside, Rod, Dan, and Chastity looked up. Each quickly ducked behind the nearest quill.

“Don’t move,” said Rod over their helmet radio link. “I don’t think it’s spotted us yet. It seems to be looking at the capsule.”

“What the hell is a giant caterpillar doing on the back of a rukh?” whispered Chastity.

“It’s not a caterpillar,” said Dan. “That’s the head and neck of the rukh itself. I recognize the eye. The neck must be collapsed and hidden when the head is in its normal position near the front.”

“The long neck makes sense,” added Sandra over the radio link. “Since it can never perch and bring its wings up to its head for grooming, the head must be able to reach every part of the body, all the way out to the wingtips. But where’s the other eye? There were two eyes, one on top and one on the bottom.”

“Maybe each eye has its own head and neck,” suggested Dan.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Sandra. “Eyes have to have a large brain right behind them to function at all. If there are two independent eyes, that means two independent brains. Which one controls the body?”

“Maybe they take
turns! Shut up,
so I can think!” said Rod brusquely, annoyed again at the two scientists as they calmly discussed the construction details of a creature that was about to attack them.

The giant eye parted the feathers further, reached down with its two front pairs of two-meter-long claws, and tried to lift the capsule by grasping the habitat cylinders sticking out from the sides of the ship. The claws slipped on the smooth rounded surfaces as they attempted to pick up the heavy metal capsule. Sandra shrieked again as the capsule tilted slightly, but it was soon obvious that the capsule was too heavy for the eye to lift.

“Didn’t even budge it enough to put strain on the tie-down lines,” said Rod with satisfaction. “At least we won’t have problems from that quarter.”

Chastity took advantage of the eye’s preoccupation with the capsule on the other side and tried to clamber up to the safety of the airlock door. The eye, however, saw her neon yellow suit, and with surprising swiftness, Chastity soon found herself in its grasp.

How embarrassing,
she thought to herself, her initial flush of fear dissolving into annoyance as she realized that she was living out a cliche.
Heroine caught in the clutches of a bugeyed monster...

Clinging desperately to the climbing rungs with her knees, she pulled with both hands at the hard inflated hollow claw that had encircled her waist and was trying to pull her off. The claw pinched her waist hard, but couldn’t penetrate the tough yellow fabric of her saturnsuit. She struggled hard, trying to break the grip of the claw, but it was an even match. Rod started forward to help her.

“Stay back, Rod!” shouted Chastity. “We can’t afford to lose both pilots.” Suddenly, there was a short burst of flame from somewhere nearby and she was free.

“I hope I did not singe you,” came the voice of Seichi over the radio link. “I reasoned that a short burst of hot meta from the nose jets might drive the monster away. It seems to have worked.”

The giant eye had reared back in surprise at the flame. One of its neck claws was rubbing the side of one of its neck segments. The creature had obviously felt the effects of the flame. The eye started down again to attack Chastity as she finished her climb into the airlock. Another blast from the nose jets drove it back.

“Just the thing!” exclaimed Sandra. “Now at least we’re communicating with the monster. It’s not much in the way of communication. Simply, ‘If you get anywhere near us you’ll get burnt.’ But at least we’re communicating. Too bad it’s punishment instead of reward. I’ve trained mice to climb ladders using nothing but treats.”

“You’d have a hard time using treats on this thing,” said Rod from behind one of the quill trunks. “No mouth.”

The giant eye circled around the
Sexdent,
looking at it from all angles. It noticed the lines holding the capsule down. It reached a claw toward a line on the other side of the capsule from where the first attitude jet was fired, but Seichi gave a blast from the jet on that side. The big-eyed caterpillar soon got the idea and backed away.

“Do you have your finger above the icon for the nose jets, Seichi?” said Dan from behind another quill trunk.

“Yes,” replied Seichi.

“Then I’m coming out,” said Dan. He stepped forward and started walking slowly across the bouncy “ground” toward the capsule. The eye started down again, but another short burst by Seichi drove it back again. Dan slowly climbed the outside rungs up to the airlock door and joined Chastity inside.

“You may come out now, Rod,” said Seichi. “My finger is poised.”

Rod stepped out hesitantly. Now, instead of reaching down for him, the eye actually backed off slightly, its large foreclaws closed and folded up out of the way.

“I do believe it’s
got
it,” said Sandra excitedly. “It’s learned to leave humans alone after just a few training sessions. I wonder how intelligent it is.”

~ * ~

When Petra parted the feathers over the place where Petru felt something heavy sitting on its skin, she hadn’t really thought about what kind of animal she would find there. The last thing that she would have guessed, however, would have been an animal in the shape of a mathematically perfect truncated cone with six obliquely truncated cylinders sticking out from its side. The creature had three large eyes near the top of the conical body, with additional eyes at the ends of each of the six cylinders. The mouth of the creature hung open. The large lower jaw was not moving and the creature didn’t try to fly away, so it was probably dead. There were also some bright yellow vermin there, hiding behind the featherroots, but she would take care of those later. Right now she needed to take this dead animal off Petra’s back and put it in Petra’s mouth where it belonged. She attempted to pick up the cone by grabbing four of the cylinders with her foreclaws, but the cone was heavy and the surfaces of the cylinders were hard and slippery. Try as she could, her claws kept slipping off and she was unable to budge the conical creature.

One of the vermin tried to climb up the cone to go into the cone’s mouth. Petra reached for the four-legged pest, intending to burst its body with her sharp claws and then toss the deflated remains to the winds, but the vermin proved to be solid and also heavy for its size. The body of the vermin was resilient instead of hard like the body of the cone, but although resilient, its yellow skin was very tough and her sharp-pointed claws were unable to puncture it. She pulled at the pest, trying to dislodge it from its perch on the cone so she could toss it away, but it clung to the cone with two of its legs and fought Petra’s claws with the other two.

Suddenly, a bright flash of light came from the tip of the cone, and Petra felt a stinging sensation on her third segment. She quickly let go of the vermin and backed off to safety, rubbing the hurt spot with one of her segment feet. She started to reach down again, but another burst of light warned her away. The light had a unique reddish-purple color. The last time she had seen that color was many Largemoons ago when she had seen a long-lasting meteor passing through the upper skies just under the Arcs. She had long wondered if there were strange creatures that lived on the other globes in the sky. Perhaps this creature came from one of those globes and had flown here to visit.

A moment’s thought rejected that conclusion. The creature had no wings and no flotation bladders. It obviously couldn’t fly in the clouds of Air, so it certainly would not able to fly above the clouds where the air became thin, or between the globes where there was no air. This was obviously a specialized kind of vermin—a nonflying parasite that rode on true animals that had their own means to maintain themselves afloat.

Petra next noticed the fine tendrils coming from the nose and base of the conical creature, somewhat like the tendrils hanging down from a roundfloater or a ringgulper. The creature had fastened its tendrils firmly to the base of the many featherroots surrounding it. Petra now understood why the creature had been so hard to lift. She bent down to cut away the tendrils with her foreclaws, but another burst of light from the tip of the cone drove her back.

Another of the small vermin moved toward the cone. It moved on its hind legs only. The front legs were not up in a defensive posture, but swung loosely at its sides. Petra bent down to grasp the brightly colored creature before it could reach the cone. Although Petra’s interaction with the first of the vermin had convinced her that her claws could not burst the strange dense pest, she knew that she was strong enough to lift the creatures bodily and toss them over Petru’s trailing edge into the hot depths of hell below. As she reached for the vermin, a blaze of light and heat came again from the cone. Petra reared back, convinced now that for some reason the conical creature was protecting the four-legged yellow vermin. When the last of the three vermin ventured forth, Petra left it alone.

All three vermin were soon inside the mouth of the conical creature, obviously unafraid that the mouth would swallow them. The vermin took turns coming to the entrance of the mouth and peering up at Petra with their single large eye at the top end of their bodies. It was now obvious to Petra that the smaller vermin somehow belonged to the larger conical parasite. Perhaps the conical parasite had parasites of its own!

Petra was trying to figure out what to do next when a think-link call came from Petro.

“I have found the thing that injured Petru’s airtube. It is too heavy for me. If you come and help, together we may be able to remove it.”

“I’ll be there soon,” Petra thinklinked back.

Leaving the dense vermin as a problem to be dealt with later, she raised up her head and crawled back over the feathertops to Petru’s left mouth.

~ * ~

Over a hot lunch of instant soup and noodles, the crew made plans to recover the reactor and get it operational again.

“The reactor is somewhere inside the rukh’s mouth,” started Rod. “Exactly where, we don’t know. Although we can’t see it, we have contact with it through the control and power lines built into the Hoytether and we know it’s still operational. My plan is to hike to the leading edge of the rukh by following under the Hoytether lying on top of the feathers overhead. We then move along the leading edge of the wing until we find the loop of the Hoytether that leads to the reactor. Then, standing just behind the leading edge of the wing, we use the Hoytether to haul the reactor back out of the rukh’s mouth. We then lower the reactor down until it’s hanging over the front edge of the wing, turn it on, make meta for a few months, and then leave.”

“Sounds simple,” remarked Dan. “Unless the rukh objects to having heavy objects hanging from it on lengths of line.”

“Hmmm ...” said Rod with a nod of his head, agreeing with Dan. “We may have to set up guard on the Hoytether until Sandra trains it to leave the tether alone. If she could train a tiny mouse to climb a ladder, she should be able to train a giant bird to leave a Hoytether alone.”

Sandra didn’t look perturbed at Rod’s assumption. “My classmate taught her mouse to sweep the floor with a tiny push-broom,” she said. “Should be a snap to teach the rukh to leave the Hoytether alone. After all, we have already taught it to leave humans alone using the meta jets on
Sexdent.
“ She thought for a bit. “We’ll need a portable meta jet, though.”

“We already have such an instrument,” said Seichi. “It is a meta-energized welding torch. Very simple. If needed, I could easily make a number of copies using the three-D mechfab in the engineering sector.”

“How much does the nuclear reactor weigh, Seichi?” asked Rod. “I’ll need to take along enough hands for the task of hauling it out and lowering it down.”

“The reactor proper masses only one hundred kilograms,” replied Seichi. “The thermophotovoltaic converter that surrounds it to produce the electricity is another fifty kilograms, while the heat radiators are another fifty kilograms, for a total of two hundred kilograms mass or four hundred forty pounds weight.”

“Need at least four people then,” said Rod.

“Unfortunately,” continued Seichi. “The reactor-converter-radiator system is quite firmly connected to the large electrically powered flexfans. They mass well over a metric ton. They will need to be cut loose from the reactor before you can pull it out. Fortunately, I have confirmed that the mechbot Tabby is still with the reactor-flexfan complex and operational,” reported Seichi. “Given a meta torch, it is capable of disconnecting the flexfans from the reactor.”

“Good!” said Rod. “It would be instant death for any person to get anywhere near the reactor. Even though it’s turned off, it’s still radioactive.”

“It would not be an instant death,” Seichi corrected him. “Although the radiation dose received after only a few minutes of work would be fatal, actual death takes a number of days.”

“Bleeding from every organ in your body,” grimaced Dan. “Not a pleasant way to go.”

“I’m concerned about the poor rukh,” said Sandra. “The radiation dose it’s getting can’t be any good for it.”