the blood vessels are so small they sure don’t get much oxy to the tissues this way

we’re only a few centimeters in don’t jump to

platelets I mean platelets of silicon migod ’at’s crazy how you going to lay down silicon in a body when

down in the DNA, isn’t that obvious there are lots of ways to transfer nucleic acid information into protein structure and build up inorganic structures in parallel if the code is there

sections of each I’ve got to have sections on each slice get Hendricks he can help, with all this pushing and shoving how’m I supposed to what’s that babble over there anyway we’re supposed to work not talk when

the opportunity I mean

these are electroplaques for sure, boron for p-type transistors, phosphorus for n-type, stimulated by the adjustments in potential in the tissues themselves, same as our nerves only with more control I’d say, like the difference between a semiconductor transistor and a plain wire, you can do a lot more that way than you can with simple nerves like ours, same as difference between those old vacuum tubes and a microchip at least

hold that steady

shit I’d swear that arm moved

they’re pokin’ into it, I don’t wonder

so it’s got both p-type and n-type transistors for different

don’t you think we oughta back offa this till we understan’ whatinhell is

Hendricks give me that bi-clamp I think there’s something else, looks like

here, I’ll help you get it

a myelin sheath sort of but thicker, got silicon plating it too here wait hold it there watch your

yeah okay tissues awful dry here

got to cut through hand me that

okay wonder what

something hard here som—

The fierce, dry snap of it jerked heads up all around the huge carcass, as the man shuddered and shook violently, the voltage shooting through him and wrenching open his mouth, a rattle of breath escaping, and his assistant also shared the current for a moment as it surged, rooting him to the floor, and then the assistant’s hand, arm went into a spasm and slipped from the clamp he held so the current passed from him and he collapsed to the deck, unnoticed, for the first man now jerked and shook so violently everyone watched, frozen, and inside him the central pumping chambers of the heart, which had been starting to relax in their cycle, went into ventricular fibrillation, shaking and banging together and stopping the flow of blood, the man’s eyes rolling up, the current shooting through his arm to his feet and into the mass of the ship, the crowd around him still unmoving, staring, until at last a woman seized a plastform instrument and hit him, hard, freeing the hand, and the man fell loose upon the deck. Nikka dropped the instrument and knelt beside him. The room burst into babble.

He sees there is nothing he can do of course yes as the man falls, puppet with cut strings, eyes rolled back, Nikka following through with the blow, always stroke through the ball his father had said, and Nigel sees what will happen next, the gasps and quaking thin astonishment around the huge body, the sudden clump of humans forming to get the man out and into a vacced-down and retrosterilized environment, so they can split the skinsuits and treat the charred flesh, probably saving the one man yes but not the other, it will take too long and it must have been high current, the most dangerous kind of discharge, it would have been easier if there had been only high voltage, but no that is—

he blinks, sensing his own slow respiration and the rank scent of the shuffling, muttering, frightened people around him, their sudden bitter sweat fouling the air before they sense it themselves

—that is unlikely, it had to be an electrical discharge appropriate to a biological system, low voltage, high current, stored somewhere perhaps in the electrochemical batteries they carried, the metallic salt fluids in insulated sacs, a very compact way to store energy on an oxy-poor, grim, red dust-smothered world, so the thing on the carry cart—

Nigel steps back, letting the others crowd by him to see the similar milling and pointless released tension dissolve into busy action beyond the viewport, feeling in this nostril-flaring surge the human animal as a tribe—the thing is alive, alive but muted, it still must feel the prick of the outside but through a foggy blur of hibernation, a wise, aeon-old tactic, to let the internal furnace ebb, avoid the mammal’s peaks and excesses of hunger-driven desperation, to wait out the world, to subside into long watchful inactivity, that is what cool calculation would teach, not to he of the warm kind like us, not to be a slave to steady metabolism, not when the grinding of history is so slow, so fine

—the crowd now surges back from the port without thinking, round Os of mouths, rasping gasps, a quick heat in the brittle air as Nigel turns, guessing and sees the humans scattering away from the carry cart, Nikka well ahead, helping carry the injured men, glancing back now, eyes big through the helmet bubble, as the EM creature fills the comm lines with a buzzing rattle, a sighing chirrup, and with aching slowness lifts a leg, struggles, finds a purchase, turns the great rectangular head—ah yes, the longest axis can resolve all wavelengths shorter than its length, so to get the best vision, to sharpen the image, you rotate the head until the long edge is aligned with the direction you wish to sense, and by instinct the brain stores the image, clears away the fog of imprecision, and the head—wobbly, weak, roused only by a mortal threat, burning now its anaerobic reserves for a final battle—rotates again, the webbed and waxy skin catching the light, arms flailing for a grip, legs kicking for a fulcrum to tilt itself erect, another angry burst of radio noise through the comm lines

—but this signal must be only for definition, perception, to see, Nigel reminds himself—

it catches the cart’s edge, wrenches itself sideways, arms thrusting, head now tucked down, legs descending to the deck, heavy, soundless but for the hornet hum in the comm lines, and surges swiftly erect, towers in the bay

—Nigel senses what it is like, the metal surfaces everywhere reflecting its pulses back, blinding it with scattered self as the thing sent out radar pulses to sense its world and at the same time named itself, the pulse was its signature, so now the universe so firm underfoot chanted and chattered the name back to him, the name shattered and unfeeling, not the way its fellows would return the song, no, but in the clanging, hard-edged manner of metal flinging the name back in rebuke and indifferent rejection, no sheltering sky silence overhead but instead a screaming piling on of echoes, voices and voices all chattering stuttering mindless chaos, hard and hostile, a shouting blankness

It staggered. Eighteen minutes now, and it was still on its feet. The sticklike legs shook. It took a hesitant step, feeling the smooth stone deck for purchase. Slow, achingly slow. The head turned with the soft jerks, tilting this way and that. It was trying to sharpen its definition of this metal-lined world.

“Look at ’ose knees tremble,” a man said nearby. Nigel eyed the man and his companions. They wore slick suits and carried heavy packs of equipment.

“It’s running out of energy,” Nigel said to Ted, who was standing nearby, listening intently to his earplug comm.

Ted nodded once, twice, and clicked off the comm. “That’s what we believe,” he said.

“It was in some kind of dormant phase,” Nigel said. “It had emergency reserves, though, that’s obvious. Something—”

“We’ll figure it out when we take it apart,” Ted said.

“Take it …?”

“Hendricks and Kafafahin are dead. Electrocuted.”

“Um.”

“Time to stop foolin’ aroun’,” said the red-haired man.

“I say, you can let the thing run down and simply be more careful next time. There’s no reason—”