In the wide, bright sky above them, high-altitude winds pulled a huge green-and-pink cloud into thin streamers. The speculation on Luna was that the strange cloud coloration meant an organism was present in them, something that packed its own minerals up into the sky and used the vapor the way salmon used spawning pools. It was only a hypothesis. The truth could be a thousand times stranger. Or it could be utterly mundane. Elvi watched the bright fleece of cloud stretch, and the sun track a little too slowly past it. Fayez was typing furiously on his hand terminal. Wei drove with a focus and intensity that seemed to be her signature ever since she’d come to the surface. Which meant ever since Reeve and the others had gone missing.
Elvi wondered what it meant that she could go out into the absolute unknown, tracking across a planet with no idea what the local dangers might be, and it was thoughts of the people back in First Landing that frightened her. New Terra was supposed to be dangerous and wild and unknown. It was only living up to expectations. The dangers that the people posed were worse because she hadn’t seen it coming. And so she was afraid she wouldn’t next time either.
She wasn’t aware of drifting into a doze until Fayez put his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently back to herself. He pointed up. A bright spot lit the blue of the sky like Venus seen from Earth. It grew slowly brighter as it tracked west. A thin white contrail formed behind it, the only perfectly straight line in the organically twisting sky. A shuttle. Elvi frowned.
“Were we expecting the shuttle?” she asked.
“That’s not ours,” Fayez said. “That’s the Barbapiccola’s. The mining operation’s under way again.”
Elvi shook her head. It was all one stupid, shortsighted mistake after another, strung together so that each one seemed inevitable. The colony would sell the ore, get lawyers, make deals. The containment dome would never be set up. What should have been clean, solid biology would turn into a salvage job of correcting for this and discarding the impurities that. Fayez seemed to know what she was thinking.
“No research protocol survives contact with the subject population,” he said. “That’s not just this. It’s everything.”
The sun had dipped to half a hand above the horizon when the loader topped another rise like a thousand before it. Wei braked and shut off the engines. Fayez stood up in his seat, his elbows resting on the roll bar. Holden said something obscene under his breath.
“Well,” Fayez said, his voice hushed. “At least it wasn’t hard to find.”
The thing hunkered down in the depression between two hills. Its vast carapace was the nacreous white that she’d seen in the walls of the ruins, but there was nothing architectural about this. It had an insectile form, long articulated limbs like legs pressing weakly out into the hardpack. Two larger appendages emerged from its back, one gray and splintered, the exoskeleton empty of anything but dust, the other swinging awkwardly. Five black circles on its abdomen recalled eyes, but didn’t shift to focus on them. At least not as far as Elvi could tell.
“What is it?” Wei asked. Elvi noticed that the rifle had made its way to the woman’s hands. She hadn’t seen that happen.
“I don’t know,” Elvi said. “I haven’t seen anything like it before.”
“I have,” Holden said. “It’s one of their machines. Whatever designed the protomolecule had… things like this on the station between the rings. They were smaller, though. I saw one of them kill someone.”
“You’re telling me,” Wei said, her voice even and calm, “that thing is a couple billion years old?”
“That would be my guess,” Holden said.
Fayez whistled low. “That is not dead which can eternal lie. Or, y’know, whatever.”
The monster from the desert shifted drunkenly, its legs awkward. Its one functioning arm twisted toward them, then collapsed to the ground. Its body shifted and trembled as it tried to lift it again.
“Look,” Elvi said. “Back there.”
All along the contour line at the bottom of the valley between hills, the stones had been scraped clean. None of the quasi-fungal grasses remained. No lizards or birds. It was like a vast hand had come down with a sponge and wiped the landscape clean. Now that she knew to look, she saw the thing’s legs were pulling the native life up and feeding into tiny, chitinous orifices along its underbelly.
“It’s… eating?” she said.
“On the station,” Holden said, “soldiers tried to kill one with a grenade. The machines killed the man who threw it and used his body. Reprocessed it right there. Turned him into paste and used him to repair the damage.”
“That makes sense,” Elvi said. “The protomolecule repurposed biological systems during the Eros event as well.”
“Glad you approve, Doctor Okoye,” Wei said dryly. “In your scientific opinion, could this pose a threat to the expedition?”
“Sure, maybe,” Elvi said, and Holden made a gurgling sound in the back of his throat. The thing lurched forward, lost its footing, and scrambled back. It was like watching a broken toy or a car-struck dog that hadn’t quite died yet. It was fascinating and frightening, and she couldn’t look away.
“I think we need to leave now,” Holden said, fear making the words come fast. “Like now now. Not later now.”
“Isn’t what we came here for,” Wei said, raising the rifle to her shoulder.
“What are you doing!” Holden shouted. “Did you not hear me about the putty making?”
In reply, Wei opened fire. Tracer rounds drew bright red lines through the air, and small explosions lit every place they struck. The thing staggered back, swinging its arm, but Wei pulled a fresh clip from her pocket when the first one went dry and resumed firing. The thing tried to push in toward Wei, and then to move away from her. A green-gray liquid poured from the wounds in its side. The report of the rifle was deafening.
The thing lurched one last time, and let out a high, teeth-clenching keen. It collapsed, legs splayed, in the pool of liquid. Wei let the gun’s barrel drift down until it pointed at the ground. When she looked at Holden, her eyes were hard. Holden hands were on the loader’s dash, the knuckles white. His face was gray.
“I hope that’s not a problem, sir,” Wei said.
“You are out of your fucking mind?” Holden said, his voice high and tight. “That thing could have killed you!”