"I think it's been glued," said Po. "I think it's organic."
Po took the stick back and held the flame of the lamp under an elbow of one of the twistiest columns. The substance did not catch fire, but it did begin to sweat and drip.
"Stop," said Sel. "Let's not bring the thing down on us!"
Now that they could walk upright, they moved forward into the cavern. It was Po who thought of marking their path by cutting off bits of his blanket and dropping them. He looked back from time to time to make sure they were following a straight line. Sel looked back, too, and saw how impossible it would be to find the entrance they had come through, if the path were not marked.
"So tell me how this was made," said Sel. "No toolmarks on the ceiling or floor. These columns, made from ground-up stone with added glue. A kind of paste, yet strong enough to support the roof of a chamber this size. Yet no grinding equipment left behind, no buckets to carry the glue."
"Giant rock-eating worms," said Po.
/> "That's what I was thinking, too," said Sel.
Po laughed. "I was joking."
"I wasn't," said Sel.
"How could worms eat rock?"
"Very sharp teeth that regrow quickly. Grinding their way through. The fine gravel bonds with some kind of gluey mucus and they extrude these columns, then bind them to the ceiling."
"But how could such a creature evolve?" said Po. "There's no nutrition in the rock. And it would take enormous energy to do all this. Not to mention whatever their teeth were made of."
"Maybe they didn't evolve," said Sel. "Look--what's that?"
There was something shiny ahead. Reflecting the lamplight.
As they got closer, they saw reflections from spots on the columns, too. Even the ceiling.
But nothing else was as bright as the thing lying on the floor.
"A glue bucket?" asked Po.
"No," said Sel. "It's a giant bug. Beetle. Ant. Something like--look at this, Po."
They were close enough now to see that it was six-legged, though the middle pair of limbs seemed more designed for clinging than walking or grasping. The front ones were for grasping and tearing. The hind ones, for digging and running.
"What do you think? Bipedal?" asked Sel.
"Six or four, and bipedal at need." Po nudged it with his foot. No response. The thing was definitely dead. He bent over and flexed and rotated the hind limbs. Then the front ones. "Climb, crawl, walk, run, all equally well, I think."
"Not a likely evolutionary path," said Sel. "Anatomy tends to commit one way or the other."
"Like you said. Not evolved, bred."
"For what?"
"For mining," said Po. He rolled the thing over onto its belly. It was very heavy; it took several tries. But now they could see much better what it was that caught the light. The thing's back was a solid sheet of gold. As smooth as a beetle's carapace, but so thick with gold that the thing must weigh ten kilos at least.
Twenty-five, maybe thirty centimeters long, thick and stubby. And its entire exoskeleton thinly gilt, with the back heavily armored in gold.
"Do you think these things were mining for gold?" asked Po.
"Not with that mouth," said Sel. "Not with those hands."
"But the gold got inside it somehow. To be deposited in the shell."
"I think you're right," said Sel. "But this is the adult. The harvest. I think the formics carried these things out of the mine and took them off to be purified. Burn off the organics and leave the pure metal behind."