"It may not be as dangerous as you think," said Bingwen. "Have you noticed that the closer we get to the lander, the fewer transports and skimmers and Formics we see? Maybe the ships and infantry are all moving away from here, pushing outward, expanding the Formics' territory. If it's an invasion force, they're going to keep invading. They might not even be guarding the lander. Why would they? It's indestructible. It has shields. Why waste men and ships defending something that doesn't need defending? It's probably the safest place within a hundred kilometers of here."
Mazer smiled. "I'll put you through school when this is over, but not law school. You're too dangerous."
Bingwen gave him a wide toothy grin.
They pushed on, crossing wide, muddy fields, with stagnant pools of water that smelled of rot and death. Bingwen pointed out a hillside where a small village had once stood. All that remained of it was scorched earth and a single sheet of metal roofing, rattling softly in the wind like thunder.
They reached the base of the hill an hour before sunrise. Beyond it was the lander and the biomass. Scaling the hill wouldn't be easy, Mazer could see. The Formics had stripped it of vegetation, and the heavy rains had softened and eroded the exposed earth, leaving steep muddy slopes that threatened to give way beneath their feet and slide downward like an avalanche. Mazer showed Bingwen how to take sideways steps up the steepest parts to more evenly distribute the surface area of their boot soles, but even with that approach they fell often and slipped constantly and had to painstakingly claw their way up to the summit. By the time they reached it, the sun was up, and they were covered head to foot in muck, their bodies cold and wet and spent.
Mazer took the binoculars from the pack and crawled forward in the mud to a small outcrop of rock overlooking the valley below. The lander was as he remembered it: impossibly large and completely unscathed, sunk into the ground like a giant unearthed landmine. The biomass stood beside it, a mountain of rotting biota as wide and as tall as the lander had been before it had spun itself into the earth. Mazer had expected to be able to identify the various objects in the biomass--a tree here, a water buffalo there--and perhaps at one time that had been possible. But not anymore. Everything ran together like melting wax as cell walls broke down and the biota disintegrated into a thick viscous liquid.
Above the biomass, a cluster of six Formic aircraft of a design Mazer had never seen before were spraying a mist onto the biomass as dense as a rainstorm.
Mazer watched through the binocs as the mist fell and reacted to the biota, dissolving it into thin trails of goop that rolled down the side and gathered into dark pools at the mountain's base. A metal wall had been built there, surrounding the mountain of biomass like a circular dam and feeding the goop runoff into pipes that extended outward to processing machines and small structures spread out over the valley floor like a massive industrial complex.
It amazed Mazer to think that all of this had been built in the last ten days or so. And by the looks of it, the Formics weren't finished building. Construction crews were everywhere, adding piping, assembling machines, extending structures. Skimmers carried building materials to the crews. Clawlike cranes held pipes in place as Formic workers welded them to the other structures.
Yet as vast and impressive a site as it was, Mazer had never seen anything so disorganized and unattractive. There was no order to the construction at all. Everything looked slapped together haphazardly without any regard to uniformity or design. The metals were all red and gray and rough and rusting, as if they had been used a hundred times previously for other purposes and never once cleaned or cared for.
Nor were the Formics concerned about cleanliness. Filth covered everything. The ground was littered with trash and discarded building materials. And everywhere Mazer looked he saw Formic feces. He knew with certainty what the black substance was because he witnessed a few Formics defecating as they labored, showing no regard for those around them, simply dropping it where they stood. It covered the ground and pipes and the Formics' feet. The stench was not only from the biomass apparently.
Mazer pointed the binoculars back at the mist-raining skimmers, zooming in as far as the lenses would go and having the computer take scans and run an analysis. The results didn't tell him much: The mists were a microbe solution of unknown composition.
"It's breaking down the biota," Bingwen said, who had crawled up beside and watched as he worked. "What are they using it for? Fuel?"
"That, or food," said Mazer. "Or maybe both."
Bingwen grew quiet, staring at the biomass. His parents are in there somew
here, Mazer thought.
"Here," Mazer said, offering Bingwen the binocs and hoping to direct his thoughts elsewhere. "Earn your keep. Check out the lander. Tell me if you see anything interesting."
Bingwen took the binocs and pressed the eyepieces against the visor of the gas mask. "This would be a lot easier if I could take this mask off." He glanced thoughtfully at Mazer. "But considering the green, sickly look on your face, I think I'll keep it on."
"Wise choice."
Bingwen adjusted the focus and gazed down at the lander. "For an advanced alien species, they're not too concerned about housekeeping. The metal is all gross and rusted looking."
"And covered in Formic dung, if you haven't noticed."
"Yes, thanks for pointing that out."
"At least you're not smelling it."
Bingwen slowly panned the binocs across the lander then stopped when something caught his eye. "Okay, this is interesting. Near the base of the lander there's a hole in the ground. Maybe a meter in diameter. I just saw a Formic crawl into it. And there's another hole about four meters away from the first one, closer to the lander. A Formic crawled out of the second hole, and at first I thought it was a different Formic. But it wasn't. It was the same one. I could tell because it had a limp in one of his legs. He crawled into the first hole, went underground for about four meters, and then came up through the second hole and moved on toward the lander. That's strange, isn't it? If he was heading for the lander, why not walk straight to it? Why bother going underground?"
"Unless he can't walk straight to it," Mazer said.
"Exactly. There must be something there in his way, something invisible, which forces him to crawl under it to get through."
"A shield." Mazer gestured for the binocs, and Bingwen passed them to him. Mazer focused the lenses and looked where Bingwen was pointing.
"You see that big red metal thing that looks like a water tower?" said Bingwen. "There's a pipe at its base. Follow that west for about fifty meters, and there's the hole."
"I see it." Mazer watched the hole. In time, a pair of Formics came carrying a beam of metal between them. They crawled into the hole, dragging the pipe behind them, and disappeared. A moment later, they emerged through the second hole. Once on their feet, they shouldered the beam and moved on toward the lander.
"You know what this means, don't you?" said Bingwen. "It means the shield doesn't go underground. It's only covering what's above the surface."