"Trying to make a decision," Reilly said.

"Siegel?" I called quietly. "Did you send that Mayday?"

"Sent, but not acknowledged."

"Right. Keep the channel open."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

"Oops," said Reilly. "There they go. They made a decision." There was silence in the cabin. The screens told it all. The worms were heading straight for us.

Chapter 23

In Deeper

The dust rose around them in clouds.

The worms came sliding through the bright pink drifts like snowplows, throwing billows of rosy powder to either side. The clouds of it fluffed up into the air, leaving a hazy slow-motion tail behind each of the creatures.

They spread out as they approached the van, circling it cautiously. The three beasts went around and around the vehicle, until they had flattened most of the drifts into a dirty red sludge. We could hear the ground crunching wetly under their immense weight. Already the dust was collapsing into a gummy muck. Soon it would harden to a brick-like surface. Shortly, they were rubbing up against the vehicle itself, tasting it with their fur.

"They've brushed a lot of the dust off the sides," reported Reilly.

"Tell 'em not to forget the windshields," called Siegel.

"What are the chances of getting unstuck?" I asked.

Reilly studied an ancillary display. He looked unhappy. "Does the word adobe mean anything to you?"

I scratched my ear. I was beginning to itch for a bath. Soon I would start to ache.

Reilly looked up at me. "What? No funny answer?"

I shook my head. "I guess I'm not in a funny mood."

I sat down at the rearmost work station and tapped the screens to life. The worms had stopped circling the van. They were staring at it curiously. One of them, the largest, slid up to the starboard side and began running its claws up and down the surface of the metal. The raspy, scraping sound echoed loudly in the cabin. Willig looked at me with wide eyes.

"Not as much fun as you thought, is it?" I asked.

She didn't answer-and I resisted pointing out that the repartee shortage in here was becoming critical.

The scraping continued. The sound was slow and painfully drawn out, as if the creature wasn't quite sure what it was feeling. Uncertain, it kept scratching. Inside the van, we stared at each other's faces. The noise was abrading our nerves like aural sandpaper.

"Everybody keep calm," I whispered. I noticed that Reilly had popped the red cover off the arming switch for the guns. I reached past his shoulder and carefully removed his finger from the switch, and closed the safety cover again. "It's just being curious. We're not in any danger."

Reilly didn't look convinced, but he acknowledged me with a nod. He deliberately folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. Outside, the worm kept probing-only now, it expanded its repertoire of funny noises to include a rapping, tapping sound. It seemed to come from almost directly above us.

"What the hell is that-?" Lopez asked, turning to stare at the ceiling.

"Reilly, roof camera," I said.

He brought it up on his main display; the view was awkward, but we could see the worm flicking at the top of the van with the tips of its claws. They stretched up and around like the necks of disjointed birds. Between them, the worm's eyes were goggled upward, like a muppet peeking over the edge of a table.

"Kilroy was here," I whispered. Willig giggled-it had to be nervous tension; the joke wasn't that funny.

At last-finally-the worm lost interest and slid back down the side, of the tank. It backed away, puffing up the dust behind it in a ruffled drift, then turned and approached its companions. The three of them exchanged muffled purple sounds, then angled back up the slope toward the grove of shamblers.

The exhalations of relief within the van were tremendous; it was as if the entire crew had sprung simultaneous leaks.

"Okay, okay," I said. "Don't get confident. We're not out of the woods yet-"

"Cap'n? Look at this-"

Reilly was pointing to his screen. The worms were investigating the track of our prowler. Sher Khan had left a clean-edged furrow through the delicate powder, and the three creatures were studying it with intense interest. Now they began following it across the slope of the hill toward the shambler grove.

"What do you think?" asked Willig.

"I dunno. They seem agitated."

"Do you think they're smelling the prowler's scent?"

"No," I said, realizing the truth even as I spoke. "I think they're smelling the scent of the nest on the prowler's track."

"They don't look happy," Willig said.

"Maybe they're guardians of the grove?" Reilly suggested.

I thought about it. "If that's so, then Sher Khan is in big trouble. These fellows aren't likely to appreciate any interlopers, are they?" I called forward, "Siegel, put the prowler on standby alert. If the worms head down the hole, go to red. But don't take them down unless Sher Khan is specifically attacked."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Siegel acknowledged.

Reilly was busy at his keyboard. The screens in front of us began popping up new pictures of the worms. We'd planted a full set of probes above-ground. Most of them were up in the branches looking for tenants, but we'd put a few at eye level and ground level too.

The screens showed the worms moving out of the dazzling pink sunlight into the glowing magenta shadows of the grove. The dappled light of morning gave them an enchanted appearance. Their fur sparkled with pink frost and silvery highlights. Their large black eyes swiveled this way and that, squinting against the glare-sput-phwut-peering inquisitively into the dark blue gloom of the twisted shambler roots.

One of the worms paused abruptly, its eyes turning around and around, as if trying to pinpoint the location of something, a sound or a smell or a niggling pinpoint of light. Abruptly, it focused, and peered directly up at one of our probes. The unit was anchored only halfway up a shambler trunk; the worm was able to approach it quite closely; the view was horrifying. It stared at us, directly into the eyes of the remote for a long excruciating moment; then, its curiosity still unsatisfied, it slid half its bulk up the columnar trunk of the tree to bring its curious gaze even closer to the remote camera. Its huge eyes filled the screen. The view from a second unit mounted high on a tree on the opposite side of the grove showed a fat pink worm blinking at a tiny dull gray nugget.

"Why is it so curious?" Lopez asked. "Those units are supposed to be inconspicuous."

"It must be seeing into the infra-red-or worse, maybe it's seeing the radio emissions."

"Want me to shut it down?"

"No, let's see what it does. Maybe we'll learn something." Abruptly, the worm lost interest in the probe and hurried to join its colleagues. The other two gastropedes were far more interested in the track of the prowler. Reilly glanced up at me with a questioning look.

"Well-" I said. "We just learned that this worm has a very short attention span."

"Look. They're going into the roots." Willig pointed.

"Well, we left a clear enough trail-"

The three Chtorrans moved single-file into the purple shadows and the maze of sprawling shambler roots. They proceeded slowly, but without visible effort. It was as if this twisted mass was the most natural of all Chtorran environments.