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She'd seen specimens more alien than this one; creatures more bizarre and certainly more disturbing, biologically speaking. But she wasn't sure she'd ever seen a more fitting representative of a planet's predominate life forms than this one. It clung to the waxy petal as if it were an integral part of it. It wasn't particularly well camouflaged color-wise, but had she not been sensitive to where things dwelled, she might have missed it anyway, so well did it bond with its substrate. |
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Bailey put the pupae under the corner of her sleeping bag. Then, after the men had moved away from the opening, she lifted the corner back up and took a long look at the horrible little doohickey again. The longer she looked at, though, the more interesting its appearance became. She took another glance at the vacated opening to be sure they were gone, then picked it back up and held it closer to the light. It was translucent like the coating on a candy apple and was slightly streamlined being tapered at one end. Under the translucent coating she could make out the larval form of a wasp and the shell followed its form exactly, smoothly, as if it had been dipped in thick syrup. |
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The creature had been oddly familiar to her, and when she was at a right angle to it, and enough of its form was showing, the fact of it occurred to her like a bird tweet over the pounding din of her fear: the thing was a construction, it was a living thing that had been fabricated somehow, like the tractor. |
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The incline at the cave's entrance was slippery and he slid and skied his way down, holding the lamp in one hand and grabbing at the plants with the other to keep his balance. The floor of the cave had puddled with water and he had to slosh through it to get to the drums. The drums were in the deepest part of the chamber, sitting in a pool of water. If the water had been just a little deeper, he was sure the drums would have been floating. He was beginning to think the cave wasn't such a good idea after all. He could feel the water squeezing through the seams of his soaked boots. |
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The human arms protruded out of its chest from the same point like strange, thick antennae. Its flesh was mottled gray and pink, the color of sick and sunburned skin. She could make out an expression of dim loathing that chilled her. |
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Upside down in a small cardboard box, the creature arched its flexible thorax and righted itself with a quick flutter of its short hard legs making a brief drumming sound against the hollow container. It raised its pointed head on its slender neck and rocked it back and forth, and aiming itself at the edge of the box, took its exact distance. |
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She'd just started to dig in the pile of vegetation when she unearthed the worm. It was long, almost as long as her boot, and as thick as her thumb. It resembled a centipede and had the same hook-like pinching mandibles. It was a shiny and reddish-brown with a single bright yellow strip running its length. |
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She thought it was a shadow at first but that impression vanished as it moved. It was a monstrous humped thing that seemed to glide over the ground, one end swinging back and forth as if on a scent trail. She tried to retrace her steps, praying that if it was on a trail, it wasn't hers. She glared wide-eyed at it, praying it would just go away. |
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The sound was a phoop sound like a child's pneumatic toy. It came from the rocks to the west. The projectile was slow, because he remembered having time to turn his head fully toward the sound before it hit him. It had come within a hair of striking the truck's door and whacked him right in the midsection, just under his sternum. He remembered thinking what a nice shot it was. |
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When he walked into the dome, it felt as if he'd walked into a dark cathedral. The orange light from the sun poured in through the ragged tear above, giving the chamber a strange and solemn cast. A swarm of insects spun brightly in the light high up near the top. |
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