Nesting materials or food? If the Snarks were herbivores, the source of possible danger to Drake became harder to explain. One of the Snarks had just ripped a plant out of the gritty surface with a pair of its front pseudopods. It was facing right toward Drake, and at last he could see a narrow horizontal slit like a dark gash across the whole lower edge of the face.
Drake moved closer yet. He itched to see just what the Snark was doing with that wriggling fern. It was not eating it. The pseudopods seemed to be peeling off an outer layer, but they were not moving it to the face slit. They were
passing it backward, to other pairs of stubby feet. Again he wondered, Had he confused front and back? The curved tail was slowly swinging back and forth, like a lazy radar antenna.
He had been concentrating hard on the one Snark, ignoring the plants at his feet. His attention was brought back to them only when warm fingers reached up his legs.
It was because he had not been moving, He glanced down and scuffled his feet, encouraging the tendrils to fall away.
“Shoo!” he hissed under his breath. The plants were warm-blooded, regulating their own temperature. They were mobile. Was there a chance that they would someday achieve sentience? Spaceflight? He shook his foot. “Go on, there’s nothing for you. Get out of here!”
When they finally gave up and dropped away, he looked up again at the nests. Everything was the same as before. The Snark was still fiddling lethargically with its fern.
Then he realized that no other Snark was visible. While he had been watching one, all the rest had quietly vanished.
They must have crept into the nests, to the pipes and then maybe underground. He could go closer, or move around so that he could look into the open end of one of the pipes.
As other versions of Drake had done twice before? And never made it back to where Milton was waiting.
Drake decided that he had seen enough for one day. He could always return tomorrow. He turned and started back across the boulder-strewn landscape. The bright green sun was just as high in the sky, but he felt a colder breeze at his back. It encouraged him to hurry. By the time that he was halfway to the shore, he was loping along as fast as his stocky legs would carry him.
It seemed like gross overreaction — until he came to a place where a rock-free stretch of graveled surface made it safe to quickly turn his head.
The rocky surface behind him was clear. But to each side, converging on his path, he saw a dozen pale shapes. They were arranged in a fan-shaped pattern with him as its center. The closest Snarks were at the edge of the fan. They must have been setting up a wide circle, all the time that he was observing the nests. He had been lucky enough to leave when the encircling operation was only half-done.
He had time for no more than a quick look, then he had to turn his attention back to the boulder-strewn ground across which he was running. That one glance was enough to force him to seek more speed. The Snarks, slow as snails when he had first encountered them, were transformed. The pseudopods moved too fast to be seen, except as a pale blur beneath the segmented bodies. The Snarks themselves had become longer and thinner. The curved tail no longer swung from side to side but was flattened along the back.
The worst news was that they were gaining. He was sure of it, even though he dared not look around again. He took more risks, hurdling midsized boulders instead of going around them. He cursed his stumpy and heavyset body. He was low to the ground. That made it harder to see what lay on the other side. If he landed on a rock and fell over, or broke a leg…
The flier was visible ahead. Less than a kilometer. Where were the Snarks? He had to know.
Don’t do it. Remember the runner who loses a race because he turns his head to see how big a lead he has.
It didn’t matter. He had to know. He turned and saw two Snarks no more than twenty steps behind him.
He looked straight ahead and made a desperate final effort. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. Only another couple of hundred meters, but he would need at least a second when he reached the flier. It would take time to jump in and slam the door closed. That’s when the Snarks would get him. They would catch him and bring him down in the moment when he stopped to open the flier door.
“Milton!” He screamed the name, expecting nothing. He had told the Servitor to stay with the flier. Even if Milton heard him, the response would come too late.
But the little wheeled sphere was suddenly where it was not supposed to be — right in front of him. It made a quick sideways zigzag out of Drake’s path, then veered in behind him. He heard the thump of a solid collision.
The flier was a dozen steps away, door open and waiting. Drake jumped and in the same movement grabbed the handle, swung inside, and dropped the latch into position. There was a loud splat as something large and rubbery and
moving at high speed hit the outside of the door.
The sound came again, and then again. Drake looked out of the flier window. A dozen Snarks were hurling themselves in mad succession against the closed door. The car was rocking with their impacts.
Beyond them, twenty meters away, another Snark reared high on its hindmost pseudopods. It had gone through a dramatic change of size and shape. It was about seven feet tall, swollen at the lower end like a giant pear. The white skin was stretched tight. As Drake watched, the skin undulated and bulged and squirmed. There was no sign of Milton.
Drake knew now what his own fate would have been. If the Servitor had not intercepted the Snarks and drawn their attention, he would be that great bulge. He might be wriggling, but not for long.
After another thirty seconds the bloated Snark toppled from its upright position. The slit on the blind face remained closed, but that dark gash stretched longer and longer. The Snark was changing shape again. Its broadest section was moving from one end to the other, traveling like a wave of obesity from tail to head.
The white skin dimpled and swelled and thrust out every few seconds at isolated points, randomly and erratically. The other Snarks one by one abandoned their attack on the flier and eased forward to form a circle around their bloated nestmate.
The featureless face could show no expression, but the squirming and wriggling suggested that the Snark was not enjoying itself. More waves of muscular contraction were running from front to back. Finally, slowly, reluctantly, the slit of a mouth began to alter in shape. It went from a single line to a narrow ellipse, then steadily expanded until it was a round hole three feet across. There was one final heave of peristalsis. Milton suddenly popped out, whisk broom first.
The Servitor was coated with dark-green slime. Milton started to roll upright, but before the move was complete another Snark had dived in. Pseudopods gripped the whisk-broom head and drew it toward a mouth that leered wider and wider.
Milton offered no resistance. Within a minute the Servitor was ingested, while the body of the Snark stretched to accommodate something wider than its usual dimension.
This time Drake was able to watch the whole process. It took about four minutes, from Milton’s disappearance to his rebirth. The Snarks did not give up easily. Five more of them had a go at Milton. Five more times the Servitor was swallowed and regurgitated, before finally rolling unimpeded out of the waiting circle.
The little wheeled form moved to the aircar, and the wired head stared up at Drake. Let me in. The message did not need words. But Drake in the past half hour had acquired lots of respect for the Snarks.
“Just a minute.”
He extended a cargo flap from the base of the car and waited as Milton rolled onto it. Once the Servitor was in position, Drake raised them a hundred feet into the air. That should be more than enough to foil the Snarks, leaping alone or working in concert. Even so, he moved the car sideways, out over the brooding blue sea, before he finally opened the door and allowed Milton to climb inside.