None of these things mattered. So far as he was concerned, he was the Drake Merlin, the one and only. He suited this body and this world exactly.
“In your case,” Milton continued. “I could not employ an exact clone. Your body would not have survived here without modification. It was necessary to download your somatic DNA, perform certain changes to it, then download your acquired database only after body growth was complete. So, even though I suspect that you would have preferred your own original body, as it was on Earth—”
“You can stop apologizing.” Drake felt euphoric — dangerously so. Was it possible that Milton had slightly misjudged his body’s required gaseous balance? He scratched at his scaly side. “Let’s get down to business. Where’s the alien?”
“Aliens. Many of them. Far from here. We landed in the equatorial region, and they reside on an isolated continent near the south pole. I wanted to be sure that you were fully operational and adjusted before you were exposed to danger.”
“That bad?”
“Or good. It is a matter of definition. Let me say this: I have examined more than fourteen thousand other alien life-forms that fulfill some or all of the qualifications for sentience. Never, however, have I encountered one so feral and vicious.”
“And intelligent?”
“Not in technological terms. The Snarks use no tools. They have not mastered fire. They modify their environment only in the simplest ways. They seem to possess no language.”
“But you still say they are dangerous?”
“I know that they are.” Milton led the way from the main ship to a smaller, wingless vehicle that rested on the glittering and shaking surface. “This is your third embodiment on this planet.”
“What happened to the other two?”
It was a stupid question, and one that Milton was not supposed to answer. It was a rule that Drake himself had set up: each of his encounters with an alien would be judged on its own merits. Milton would be fully aware of the prior failed experiences, but Drake would not. It had been the same with the fourteen thousand cases. Drake — or one of his embodiments — must have met each of them, but apart from generalities all he knew was that none was useful against the Shiva.
Now the Servitor said only, “This time we are taking special precautions. They included landing far from the polar continent and all Snarks, until I was sure that you were totally at home with your embodiment.”
No more information; except that a knowledge of two prior failures was itself information. On the twenty-minute suborbital flight toward Graybill’s pole, Drake sat and wondered. What had he done the previous times to get himself killed? Would he be killed again? If so, it would be no less painful, merely because it had happened before.
The ship landed on a coastline that crawled with warm-blooded and active plants. Drake could feel a sharp drop in temperature, but his body remained quite comfortable. He merely felt a tightening in his outer layers as improved thermal insulation went into action. He walked to the waterline, knowing that it was not actually water. Any water was in solid form, lying on the bottom. This was some mix of alcohols and hydrocarbons, heptane and ether and propanol, all lighter than water ice.
He bent and scooped up a handful to his tendril-fringed mouth. It tasted fine.
“That way.” Milton was pointing as Drake straightened up. “About seven kilometers inland you will find the first
Snark nests. Do you wish me to accompany you?”
Milton’s voice was hopeful. Drake shook his scaled , and snouted head. The Servitor was smart, but some things it would never learn. There was no way that Milton could remain quiet if Drake was moving into danger. Not only that, no matter how much Drake discouraged it, the Servitor could not help giving hints designed to keep Drake out of danger. It was not Milton’s fault. The Servitor was designed to protect and safeguard Drake Merlin. Its present role of bystander was more than it could stand.
Drake reinforced his gesture with words. “You stay right here until I come back. Don’t leave the flier.”
The wiry whisk broom contorted and turned uneasily. “That is what you said on the last occasion we were here.”
More information that Drake was not supposed to have. “So I’m saying it again. If I am not back by dark, you can come looking for me.”
“That will be a very long time. We are in the polar regions, and this is summer.”
“One quarter of a planetary revolution period, then. If I’m not back in that time, come and pick up the pieces. But not before. I don’t want you around when I’m at the nests. Remember, they also serve who only stand and wait.” Drake headed inland. Milton was tireless and careful and conscientious, but sometimes the Servitor could be a real pain.
Seven kilometers: it sounded like a reasonable safety margin; except that he had no idea what senses were available to the Snarks. Vision by short wavelength light was the most commonly used sense in the Galaxy, evidence of the fact that the average main sequence star emits peak energy at a wavelength between one-half and one micron. However, a dozen other senses were in general use wherever there was an atmosphere: hearing, thermal infrared detection, direct monitoring of magnetic and electric fields, echo location, smell — the Snarks might use any or all of these. Back on ancient Earth, a polar bear could sniff a dead whale thirty kilometers away. A mating moth could identify its distant partner from a single molecule of pheromone. The Snarks might already be aware of Drake.
The ground was becoming increasingly rock strewn and broken, large boulders separated by stretches of flat gravel covered with slow-moving blue ferns. Drake reduced his pace at the two-kilometer mark and again as he caught his first glimpse of what must be the nests. They were well separated, each one long and thin and hollow, like a section of wide clay pipe laid on its side. He could see no sign of life there, but he stopped, crouched down onto his thick haunches, and waited. As soon as he was stationary, the warm-blooded vegetation crawled doggedly to his feet and around them. Tendrils like gentle blue fingers reached up, touched his legs, and apparently decided that he had no potential as a nutrient source. The warm fingers dropped back. The plants crept away.
At last, Drake could see something moving near the clay pipes. Would he have been so patient, without Milton’s warning of earlier problems? Surely not. He would have kept going, because the things that he could see ahead moved not much faster than the plants.
There were scores of them. The Snarks were fat white segmented cylinders, supported by scores of slender white pseudopods. The bodies were about five feet long and a foot and a half wide. The head end, as judged from the direction that they moved, lacked all distinguishing marks. A curving tail of darker creamy-white arched up over the back to direct its sharp tip forward. The pointed end moved slowly from side to side. Did it, rather than the “head,” house the sense organs? Perhaps that was the head, and a Snark walked backward.
The Snarks seemed to take no notice of each other or of their surroundings, but as he watched, four of them reared up slowly from their horizontal positions. Each blind head curved back until it met the tail and formed a complete loop. The tail stopped its slow oscillation. They held this position like statues for several minutes, then unwound to lie once more on the soggy ground. After that they did not move at all. The brief effort to defy gravity seemed to have exhausted them.
Drake drifted closer. He could see that each of the long brown cylinders of the nests curved down at one end to become a tunnel into the spongy surface. Tall stacks of uprooted plants stood next to each pipe. The top plants of the heap were still wriggling feebly, trying to find their way back to ground level.