“Yeah, but it’s nothing like the density you get in seawater, which is where you usually find electric senses,” Burch pointed out. “Terran sharks, et al.”
“Space horses can also sense electric fields,” Ttra-mu said.
“Interesting,” Burch said, a bit tartly, “but hardly relevant to a discussion of animals that evolved inside atmospheres.”
“Regardless, there’s clear and definite evidence of an electric sense in this animal,”
Peyton said. “Ells? Anything?”
“Looks like you may be right,” Sanderson agreed. “The fields are definitely there, with different intensities and oscillation frequencies for different species.”
“Oscillation frequencies?” Tenzing echoed. “You mean the fields aren’t static?”
“Far from it. The three plants I’ve checked have •jrdes ranging from about nine seconds to nearly 0.”
“Organic electric oscillators,” Singh murmured. “Elegant, indeed.”
“Elegant and a half,” Sanderson agreed. “Not to mention potentially useful, if we can figure out the mechanism.”
“Well, pick out a good sampling and bring them aboard,” Tenzing told him. “Do bear in mind, though, that we’ve only got the one lockbox lab per planet, and you’ll be poking around down there for two more weeks. You fill the lab to the ceiling and those of us who have to work in there will spend the next two months cursing your ancestry.”
Sanderson murmured slightly reluctant-sounding agreement, and Roman suppressed a smile. Just like kids in a toy store, he thought.
“Captain?” Marlowe said abruptly. “I’ve got something.”
His tone… “Got it,” Roman acknowledged, keying for scanner repeater. An infrared view of the landing area taken from Amity’s belly cameras… and in the woods beyond the prairie, circled by flashing markers—
“Dr. Sanderson?—hold it a minute,” he called toward the intercom. “You’ve got what looks like three large animals approaching from almost due west.”
The background conversation abruptly vanished. “Confirmed, Captain,” Garin said a moment later, his voice taut. “Still no visual contact, but we’ve got them on scanner. Bearing… directly toward us.”
He paused, and in the silence the snik of needle guns being put on full automatic was clearly audible. “Alert status is still yellow, Garin,” Roman reminded the guard leader. “Let’s not panic until we see what we’ve got here.”
“Acknowledged, sir,” Garin said, his voice tight but under control.
“The animals have picked up speed,” Marlowe reported. “About a minute to visual contact.”
Across the bridge, Roman heard the hiss of exhaled breath. “Comment, Commander?” he invited, keeping his attention on the view from Garin’s camera.
“Shouldn’t we be getting them out of there?” Ferrol asked, his voice tighter even than Garin’s. “At least have them get into the lander where they’ll be safe?”
“It’s too late for that,” Kennedy spoke up. Her tone, Roman noted, seemed more interested than worried. “They’re too spread out for everyone to get back in time.
Besides, if they have to fight, they’ll do better out in the open where they have a clear field of fire.”
“If the Tampies let them shoot,” Ferrol growled.
“That’s enough,” Roman said, punching for a tactical display. The landscape below appeared, with the lander and each of the eight humans and two Tampies marked with colored crosses. Garin and the other three guards, he saw, had deployed themselves in a rough semicircle facing the point where the three approaching animals would emerge from the woods. Well-trained, armed with probably the deadliest small arms in the Cordonale’s arsenal, Roman had little doubt that they could cut the approaching animals to ribbons if it became necessary.
Which meant the big question would be whether it was necessary… and whether the Tampies would see it the same way he did.
“Ells, the analysis table’s instruments are going crazy,” Peyton spoke up. “I think it’s picking up the animals’ electric fields.”
“Can’t be,” Sanderson said, his voice frowning. “Those instruments are shortrange—
they’re not designed to scan anywhere but the table.”
“I know that,” Peyton snapped. “So argue with the instruments, not me.”
“Perhaps,” Llos-tlaa suggested, “Gga-ru can confirm this with his sensor equipment.”
“Don’t bother me, Tampy,” Garin bit out, and in his camera view Roman could see the tip of the other’s needle gun. “I’ve got more important things to worry about at the moment.”
“Do it, Garin,” Roman ordered. “If those animals are radiating strongly enough to be picked up by the analysis table, it’s something worth knowing.”
For a second the muzzle remained where it was. Then, abruptly, it dropped from view. “Yes, Captain,” Garin said, the words coming through obviously clenched teeth. “Checking now… no, there’s nothing there. Must be a malfunction in the table.”
“It is not a malfunction,” Peyton insisted. “Check again, especially at the highfrequency end—fifty hertz and up. There’s not all that much power to it, I don’t think. Directional, maybe, or else it’s the high ion concentration that lets it penetrate this far.”
She’d barely finished her sentence when there was a sudden crackle of displaced branches from the forest; and even as Garin snapped his needle gun up again the bushes ahead were shoved violently aside and three creatures stepped out onto the plain.
If the small animal that Garin had gunned down earlier had been a rabbit, these new ones were huge dogs. Dogs with hairless, elephantine skin and flat muzzles; with large paws whose curved feline claws were visible even two hundred meters away; with long shark-like mouths full of white teeth.
And even as the landing party froze in silence, the dog in the center took a step forward, paused… and changed.
Slower than the rabbit had, and far more awesome because of that. The chest and flank elongated as first the front legs and then the rear stretched to half-again their original length. The extended legs seemed to thicken, as if new muscle was reforming there, and the belly flattened. The wrinkled skin, stretched over all the expansion, smoothed out, becoming sleek and shimmery. The muzzle remained the same, but the sides of the head swelled outward, in an odd way that reminded Roman of a bird fluffing out its feathers. The whole operation took perhaps ten seconds… and at the end of it the dog had become a wolf.
A wolf the size of a large grizzly bear. Rearing up briefly on its hind legs, it raised its head as if uttering a soundless cry. Then, bringing the front paws back down again, it swung its head around slowly, studying the invaders of its world. Its eyes fell on Peyton and Ttra-mu, still standing beside the analysis table and the dead rabbit awaiting their study. It raised its head again, uttered its soundless cry… And started toward them.
Chapter 6
“Aim for its legs,” Garin snapped, the muzzle of his needle gun tracking the wolfcreature as it loped forward. “We’ll try to cut it down without killing it, if we can.”
“Do not shoot,” Llos-tlaa spoke up.
“Rehfeldt, switch to explosive; backup aim at the head,” Garin continued, ignoring the Tampy’s protest. “Boschelli, Wehrmann—oh, hell”, he interrupted himself as the two remaining dog-creatures started into wolf transformations of their own.
“Gga-ru—” Llos-tlaa tried again.
“Shut up,” Garin snarled. “That tears it—explosive needles, full-auto; legs first, then heads. On my mark—”
“Do not shoot!”
Roman jerked in his chair, swearing under his breath, his ears ringing with the sheer intensity of emotion in the Tampy scream. Not grief and frustration this time, but desperate urgency and an almost overwhelming sense of righteous anger. “Hold your fire, Garin,” he ordered when he’d found his voice again. The wolf-creatures had covered perhaps a quarter of the distance to Peyton and Ttra-mu now, and were coming on at the same casual lope, completely oblivious to both the Tampy scream and the lethal armament pointed their direction. “Llos-tlaa, why shouldn’t they shoot?”