It racked its brain to see if the sound was familiar, but that was rather a pointless exercise. After that, it tried the communal memory, but there was nothing there either. This was a mystery.
Precisely what the vundt looked like was also something of a mystery, as most of its body was covered by a domed, oval shaped shell, with only its face and feet protruding. The highest point of the shell, which was about where the middle of the vundt's back was probably located, was about thirty feet above the sand. At its longest point, the shell was about eighty feet across.
Unable to see what was causing the rumbling but still able to hear it, the vundt became curious. It stopped sifting the dirt in search of tasty snacks and began to move.
A short distance away, a dust cloud was rising over the barren, arid surface of the planet. In the midst of the cloud was an exploration tank. It was somewhat smaller than a vundt, though it rather resembled one in shape and color scheme. This was not too surprising if one considered the fact that the tank had been designed specifically to cope with the environment of this particular planet. So had the vundt, of course, though not by the same hand.
Inside the tank were two people. They had, unfortunately, not been chosen for this particular mission with the same care that their vehicle had.
"Five days, seven hours, twenty-three minutes, four seconds." The speaker was a lean, rangy woman with platinum blond hair that had been cut very close to her scalp. The name 'G. Tayler' was stitched across the left breast of her tunic. "That's how long is left until the computer predicts we'll reach the base." She leaned back in her seat and propped her feet up on the control console.
"I know," her companion replied, his voice a monotone. "It has been rather less than two minutes since you last informed me of our ETA." He was as tall as the woman and considerably bulkier. His hair was dark and just as short as hers. He also sported a very closely trimmed beard and mustache. The name stitched to his tunic was 'P. Fetisov.'
"What's the first thing you're going to do when we get back?" the woman asked.
The man shrugged. "A shower, I think," he said. "A month is far too long to go without a proper shower. Then I shall play my flute."
"Your flute?" She pulled her feet down and sat up straight. "I didn't know you played the flute, Petey!"
"Piotr," the man said. The correction was automatic. He had been correcting her for a month (well, a month minus five days, seven hours, twenty-two minutes and twenty-five seconds, give or take a few) and she still didn't get it right. He was beginning to suspect that she wasn't really trying. "The engineer who decreed that our personal cubicles be soundproofed was very wise, Guenevere."
She frowned at him. "You know I hate that," she said. "Call me Gwen." She leaned back in her seat and propped her feet up again. "I think I'll--"
An alarm went off.
"What the--"
"Proximity alert," Piotr said.
"Probably another rock formation," Gwen commented.
"I do not think so," her companion replied, pointing at a monitor. "Whatever it is, it is moving toward us."
"Hot damn! There's something alive on this rock after all. Are the recorders running?"
"The recorders are always running. We should have a visual at any moment."
They stared eagerly at the monitor as an image swam into focus. Gwen groaned. "It's another recon tank," she said. "They've sent out another tank!"
Her companion shook his head. "They did not have another tank. Where would it have come from?"
"Oh, come on. We've been out of touch for a month! Another ship could have come out and made a drop."
"But why would they send it out along our return path?" Piotr persisted. "It makes no sense for them to send it over ground that we are already scheduled to survey."
Gwen shrugged. "So somebody at central screwed up again. What else is...hey, isn't that a...hey! That thing has a head! That's not a tank!"
"An estimable observation."
She started to reach for the controls. "Do you think we ought to go in for a closer look? This is the first living thing we've seen larger than a worm." Piotr frowned and shook his head. "I do not think that will be necessary. It is coming in for a closer look at us."
They watched anxiously as the vundt drew nearer, moving to intercept the tank.
Gwen began to chew her lower lip. "What do you suppose it wants?"
"That I do not know. And I am not certain that I wish to find out. Let us attempt to avoid it."
Gwen turned the tank sharply to one side. The vundt turned with them. It was definitely interested in the tank.
"Still coming," she said.
"This I can see. Perhaps we could outrun it."
Gwen shook her head. "This thing was built for endurance, not speed."
"We do have the emergency booster. One good burst should put us well clear of danger."
"We only have one. What if we need it later?"
"How long until we reach the base?"
Glancing down at a digital display, Gwen said, "Five days, seven hours, seventeen minutes, assuming we go back to our original course."
"We have not used the booster in twenty-five days. Why do you think that we will need it in the next five? Besides, by your logic, we would never use it."
Gwen was still trying to make up her mind when the tank came to a shuddering, grinding halt.
"What in the--"
Both crew members were jolted out of their seats as something struck their vehicle a terrific blow. Clawing his way back to the console, Piotr saw the vundt's face in the side monitor. It was apparently trying to eat the one of the cameras.
Beside him, Gwen flipped up a plastic cover and then twisted and depressed a knob. The tank shook for a moment and then shot forward. Piotr, who was still off balance, was knocked back to the floor.
The vundt watched the tank speed away. Though usually placid, the vundt was capable of sudden bursts of speed, becoming, instead of the slow and stupid beast that it normally was, a fast and stupid beast. It did not do this often. For one thing, it was so tiring, and the vundt did not like to do tiring things. For another, due to its poor vision, a rapidly moving vundt tended to run into things. Every once in awhile it even injured itself this way. Then again, the surface of the planet was mostly devoid of large solid objects, so there weren't that many things for a rapidly moving vundt to collide with except the occasional rock formation. And other rapidly moving vundts, of course.
Gwen and Piotr watched the vundt dwindle in the monitor with some satisfaction.
"Piece of cake," Gwen said casually, propping her feet back up on the console.
"I am not so certain," Piotr corrected her. "Look."
The vundt was visible in the monitor again and was growing rapidly larger.
"How is the booster holding out?" Piotr asked.
"Well..." Gwen began.
They experienced a sudden sense of deceleration.
"It's about finished, I think," she concluded.
"So are we, I think," Piotr said, gesturing at the monitor.
Gwen stared at the monitor open mouthed. "It isn't slowing down," she said.
"Can it not see that we have--"
The vundt discovered that the tank had slowed down immediately before colliding with it. It just had time to pull its head in and take the impact on its shell. Practice had made the vundt remarkably good at this particular maneuver.
The sound of the crash was almost deafening inside the tank. Gwen had thrown herself into her seat and smacked a large red button. A thick, padded web exploded out of the seat and cocooned her. Piotr, who was still staring at the monitor in disbelief, was thrown off his feet. He slammed into the control console head first and sank to the floor unconscious.
The vundt's shell absorbed the impact and the animal, though stunned, was unhurt, and, since a stunned vundt is not much different from a vundt that is in the full possession of its faculties, such as they are, the fact that it was stunned didn't matter much anyway.
Gwen hit the release switch and climbed out of the webbing. Snatching up a first aid kit, she knelt beside Piotr. He had an already swelling lump on his head and a long, shallow cut across his scalp, but his breathing was regular and his pulse seemed fine.
She opened the first aid kit and removed a small container of capsules. She cracked one of the capsules under Piotr's nostrils. His nose twitched a few times, then he moaned and opened his eyes.
"What happened?" he asked in a soft voice.
"It hit us. Are you all right?"
He started to nod but thought better of it as pain lanced through his skull. "I believe so."
Gwen helped him sit up and then glanced at the monitor. The vundt was motionless and was receding into the distance as the tank continued to trundle forward. "Maybe it knocked itself out."
Piotr dragged himself to his seat and scanned the console. "Has the tank sustained any damage?"
Gwen shook her head. "I don't know. But it would take more strength than any animal has to damage this thing. According to the techs, anyway."
"I hope that they are correct." He nodded at one of the monitors.
The vundt was definitely conscious. It was advancing on the tank again.
"What does it want?" Gwen asked.
"We mistook it for another tank," Piotr said. "Perhaps it has mistaken us for...one of whatever it is. I suspect that we have wandered into its territory and that it views us as a threat which must be eliminated."
"Brace yourself," Gwen said. "Whatever it intends to do, it's close enough to do it."
The vundt carefully circled the still moving tank, its head nearly touching the pitted metal surface. The two humans watched the vundt's face move from monitor to monitor as its rambling walk took from one camera to another.
"It looks pretty stupid," Gwen said slowly, after one camera returned a particularly good close- up of the vundt's myopic eyes and large, slack mouth.
On one of the monitors, the vundt could be seen examining a small protrusion near the front of the tank.
"I would not make such hasty judgements, were I you," Piotr said, sinking back into his seat, "especially ones based merely on earthly ideas of physiognomy."
"It's examining the field generator," Gwen said.
"Curiosity is a certain sign of intellect," Protr commented.
Slowly, the vundt extended a long, iridescent purple tongue. There was a loud crackle and a fat blue spark leapt from the generator to the vundt's tongue. Its build prevented it from leaping backward, but the vundt pulled its head back into its shell and gave off a piercing yelp that the external speakers transmitted nicely to the tank's occupants.
Gwen winced in sympathy and shook her head. "That had to hurt."
Piotr nodded. "There is more than enough voltage there to have killed an elephant."
After a moment, the vundt's head reappeared. It squinted at the field generator and then cocked its head to one side.
"Curiosity," Piotr said again. "As I said, a sign of intellect."
On the monitor, the vundt could clearly be seen extending its tongue again. The same electric crackle was followed by the same shrill yelp.
"A certain sign of intellect?" Gwen asked.
Piotr frowned. "My assessment may be open to revision," he admitted.
The two watched as the vundt repeated the performance a third time.
"That thing is too stupid to live," Gwen said in amazement.
Piotr opened his mouth and then closed it again as the vundt's tongue put in another appearance.
"This could take all day," Gwen said. "Why don't we--"
"Wait," Piotr said. "It seems to be doing something different."
He was right. The vundt, appearing to forget about the field generator, was backing away from the tank, making a series of low pitched rumbling sounds. In actual fact, it had forgotten about the field generator. A vundt's memory is so poor that it finds the world a place of continual wonder. You'll have to decide for yourself whether that's a good thing or not.
"What's it doing?" Gwen asked with a frown.
"Perhaps it is attempting to communicate!" Piotr said excitedly.
"Don't tell me you still think that thing might be intelligent!"
Piotr thought for a moment and then his excitement evaporated. "No," he said.
The tank continued moving forward steadily and the vundt continued to keep up with it.
"What shall we do?" Piotr asked finally.
"We might as well head directly back toward the base," Gwen said with a shrug.
"But we cannot risk leading this animal there."
"Why not? It's too stupid to be a threat."
"We cannot know what it is truly capable of," Piotr protested.
"We're still five days away. You can't seriously think it'll still be following us after five days?"
Piotr shrugged. "I do not know. But I suppose that we have no other real option."
"You got that right!" Gwen said firmly. "I'm looking forward to getting back to base and getting out of this tank, and no idiot animal is going to stop me!"
The tank continued forward, and the vundt continued to tag along. The tank apparently interested it greatly. The vundt had never been so interested in anything in its entire life. It had never managed to keep a single object in its thoughts for so long in its entire life. Normally it was too busy trying to retain such important facts as where it was and what it was that it had been planning to do next.
Time passed. Gwen doggedly ignored the vundt while Piotr studied it carefully.
"Ah," he said once.
"What?"
"Do you recall those odd mineral specimens that you gathered?"
"The big lumpy ones? Yeah. What about them?"
"They are not rocks."
Gwen twisted around in her seat to look at him. "What do you mean?"
Piotr tried to suppress a smile as he pointed at the vundt who had just finished producing one of the items.
"Oh, that's disgusting," Gwen snapped. "How many of those things did I collect?"
"Six or seven, I think."
Gwen's expletive was particularly appropriate, given the subject that was under discussion.
The vundt stuck with them through the entire day. It was still tagging along when Gwen said, "I am not gonna sit up all night and watch that thing. I'm going to my cubicle."
"I think that I will sleep down here tonight. If something happens, I would prefer to be near the controls."
"Better than you than me, pal. Good night."
Piotr found the cabin refreshingly quiet after Gwen's departure. He liked it quiet.
He checked to make certain that the computer was keeping the tank on course for the base, checked that the data recorders were still functioning properly and generally fidgeted aimlessly. He eventually settled himself into one of the well padded chairs and slowly drifted off.
When he fell asleep, all the monitors showed an imperfectly darkened landscape speckled with stars. Well, except for the monitor that displayed a closeup of a very large uvula. Apparently the animal that was traveling with them had gotten hungry again and had forgotten that the cameras weren't edible. Either that or it was just stubborn.
When he woke the next morning, the monitors showed the harshly lit barren landscape that he had at first thought starkly beautiful but which he was now heartily sick of. But it looked somehow strange. Something was missing. It took him a moment to realize what it was.
He checked the proximity scanner, altered magnifications and switched between cameras, but they all spread the same joyful message: their companion of the day before had abandoned the chase.
"Is it gone?"
Piotr turned at the sound of Gwen's voice. "It is."
"Good riddance." She dropped into a seat, adding, "You look like crap."
"Festive morning greetings to you, as well," he answered sourly, standing up and stretching. "I am going to clean up and have breakfast. I leave things in your capable hands."
She leaned back and propped her feet up on the console, waving a hand in acknowledgment as he shook his head and vanished through a doorway.
He was relieved that the creature had gone its own way, but, at the same time, he couldn't help feeling slightly regretful, though he wasn't quite certain why. He had finished his ablutions and his breakfast and was heading back down to the control cabin when Gwen yelled, "Brace yourself!"
Piotr stopped and opened his mouth to ask her what she was talking about, then something slammed into the tank hard enough to jar him off of his feet. He just had time to think that the feeling was slightly familiar before his head slammed into a wall and he lost consciousness for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
He woke with an acrid smell in his nostrils and Gwen hovering over him.
"Are you all right?" she asked. Did she actually look concerned? Or had he hit his head harder than he'd thought?
"Yes, I believe so. But my head hurts."
"I can imagine."
"What happened?"
"Can't you guess? Our friend is back." She peered down at him as he struggled to sit up while keeping the top of his head from flying off. "And I think you hit your head in the exact same spot as yesterday. If you keep this up, even your thick skull is bound to crack."
He climbed to his feet with a groan and staggered into the control cabin, sinking gratefully into his seat.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
He started to nod and then felt better of it. "My head feels like there is a moose parade going on inside of it, but I am otherwise fine."
"What?" Gwen asked with a laugh. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"What is what supposed to mean?"
"Never mind. Maybe you'd better take a pain killer."
"I think that I will."
After medicating himself, Piotr looked at the monitors. A giant eye was staring back at him from one of the screens. As he watched, the eye pulled away from the camera and he found himself looking at the vapid features of their companion of the day before.
Gwen gestured at the screen. "I guess he fell asleep somewhere and, when he woke up, found himself feeling lonely without us. So he took off after us at top speed. And we know how fast that is."
"And I suppose that it hit us again?"
"You have to ask?"
He gingerly touched the swelling on his forehead. "I withdraw the question."
She paused for thought while she stared at the creature's image on the screen and then said, "Either he doesn't see too well or he doesn't pay attention to where he's going. Or maybe he's just mind numbingly stupid." She paused thoughtfully again. "I think I'm leaning toward the last one."
Things quickly fell into something of a routine. The tank continued on its way, all recorders running, back toward the base. The vundt continued to tag along after the tank, occasionally moving ahead of it and, apparently just to vary the routine, occasionally moving in circles around it. It was impossible for something with the build of some kind of prehistoric turtle to actually gambol, but the vundt seemed to come as close as it could.
Midmorning of their third day in the vundt's company found Piotr staring morosely at a monitor which showed the animal scooping up great mouthfuls of sand. He was staring morosely because he was feeling morose. This was probably due to the yellow, green and purple lump on his forehead. It had been sore when he woke up, but it was considerably more painful now.
"You know," Gwen said casually, looking at her companion's head, "Maybe you'd like to try not bouncing off the walls when that thing runs into us tomorrow. You've done it three times now."
Piotr's reply was in Russian, a language in which Gwen was not well versed, but she felt certain that she got the gist of his comments.
"Three days in a row," she said musingly. "What do you suppose the record for that sort of thing is?"
Once again, a difference in language failed to be a barrier to communication, and Gwen, smiling, looked at the monitor.
"Is that thing eating sand?" she asked.
"No," Piotr said grimly. "I have been watching it for some time. It takes in a mouthful of sand and then sprays most of the sand back out again."
"Why?"
"Perhaps sand is not to its taste."
"Then why does it keep eating it? No, never mind. I don't think I need an answer to that one."
"It is possible that it may be filtering the sand. We know that this planet teems with small organisms. Perhaps it sprays out the sand and lives off of the invertebrates that it retains."
"Better it than me." She stretched and then asked, "Look, what are we going to do if this thing wants to stick with us all the way back to the base?"
Piotr shook his head and then wished he hadn't. "I do not know. I do not think that there is anything that we can do to prevent it from following us if it so chooses."
"I've always said that they should equip these things with weapons," Gwen said, slapping the panel in front of her.
"I do not agree. The purpose of this vehicle is the gathering of data, not the killing of indigenous life forms."
"Gathering data isn't much use if you end up as the main course for some giant radioactive slug."
"A question which intrigues me more is that of why, in a month, we saw only one of these creatures."
"Maybe it's the only one there is."
"Perhaps."
"And that doesn't answer the question of what we're going to do if the thing is still with us when we get back to base."
"No. But we still have some time to come up with an answer."
"Yeah. 3 days, six hours and two minutes."
The time passed quickly. Another fifteen hours had slipped seamlessly by when, the next morning, Piotr found himself waking up for the fourth time with a familiar acrid smell in his nostrils, Gwen bending over him, and a pounding in his head as if he'd taken up a job in the testing room of a bass drum factory.
"Wha...?" he asked dimly.
Gwen shook her head and helped him gently to his feet. "Look, Pete, you may have as hard a head as ever graced the shoulders of any man, but if you don't stop bouncing it off the walls every time that thing runs into us in the morning, you're gonna crack it wide open."
He reached up a shaking hand and touched the puffy skin just above his eyes. "Are you certain that I have not done so already?" he asked faintly.
She put an arm around his waist and led him carefully to a chair. "Not really, but at least nothing's leaked out so far except a little blood."
The vundt itself knew little, if anything, of what was going on within the tank. All it knew was that, each night when it settled in to sleep the sleep of the just, that it had been a good day well spent. When the vundt woke up the next morning, it quickly spotted a strange series of marks in the sand. These marks seemed to form a line that extended off toward the horizon. That is to say, they extended to the limit of the vundt's vision some thirty feet away, but why quibble?
Each day, its curiosity aroused, the vundt examined these marks in the sand. They were quite unlike anything that it could recall having seen before and it set out to follow them. Should it put these marks in the communal memory? It could do that, then it would remember them if it ever encountered them again. In fact, everyone could remember them, but it was so much trouble to put stuff in the communal memory. And it was so tiring. Well, it could always do it later. It was sure it would remember.
At some point, after following the tracks for a while, the vundt generally decided that this was taking rather a long time, and it was a busy vundt who couldn't spend all day following odd marks in the sand. Its solution to this difficulty was generally to follow the tracks faster. After a while, it would hear a rumbling sound. This rumbling sound was quite unlike anything that it could recall having heard before. Forgetting about the strange marks in the sand, it would take off after the rumbling sound. It also tended to forget that it was moving at a fairly high rate of speed. It would generally realize this immediately before plowing full tilt into the tank, which was fortunate as it gave the vundt just enough time to pull in its head and take the impact on its shell. The clanging sound of the impact in the relatively confined space within the vundt's shell was wonderfully bracing and helped to give the vundt a cheerful outlook on the day which lay ahead.
It was a pity that similar experiences didn't have a similar effect on Piotr, given the frequency with which they had been occurring recently. A frequency which, by the way, Piotr considered far too high. He decided that the next morning would not find him unprepared.
He rose early and then settled himself into a chair in his cubicle. The chair was oriented in such a manner that, should the vundt slam into the tank from what had become the customary direction, the impact would merely drive Piotr deeper into the chair which, like all the other seats in the tank, was heavily padded. However, given that his luck lately had not been running well, Piotr took the extra precaution of activating the safety web. That way if the vundt, perhaps feeling, like so many of us, that it had fallen into a rut, decided to bounce off the tank from a different direction, Piotr still wouldn't go flying.
The customary time arrived...and passed. Previously, the vundt had been quite punctual, a remarkable achievement considering its rather obvious mental limitations, but Piotr was determined not to run any risks and remained firmly ensconced in his seat.
After a considerable time had passed, Gwen called, "When are you coming down?"
"When I am certain that the creature is not coming!" he retorted.
"And what if it never comes back?"
"Then perhaps I will remain here until we reach the base again!"
"Oops! You won't have to! Here it comes!"
"I am ready. I am not moving this time!"
Which was quite true. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the small bronze statuette on the shelf in front of him. It was a lovely statuette, a prized possession that Piotr had carried with him on the mission as a reminder that there was a world beyond the world that he was currently on. He was looking at it as the vundt hit the tank. He was still looking at it as it flew off of the shelf, and he continued to look at it as it grew larger and larger and larger and then suddenly he wasn't looking at anything at all.
When he regained consciousness, Gwen was tenderly wrapping a bandage around his head.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"I would...ugh...hesitate to render an opinion at this time."
She smiled slightly and said, "What happened?"
Without moving his head, Piotr looked toward the floor where the statuette was lying.
Following his eyes, Gwen bent down and picked the statuette up. She weighed it thoughtfully in one hand. "This thing is pretty heavy," she said.
"I am aware of that," Piotr groaned.
"Did you see it coming?"
"I did."
"Well, why didn't you get out of the way?"
"I had activated the safety web so that nothing could throw me out of the chair, just as a precaution."
"A precaution," she repeated.
"Yes."
"A precaution that meant you couldn't move."
"Yes."
Startling him immensely, she leaned forward and gently kissed his forehead. "You really are an idiot, you know," she told him.
And, speaking of idiots, the vundt had resumed its normal place alongside the tank. Periodically it would circle the tank or make odd crooning noises in the tank's general direction. Piotr no longer displayed his previous interest in the animal however. In fact, he was now utterly ignoring it. He continued to do so throughout the remainder of the day and was still doing so the next day when they sighted the first position marker.
"There it is!" Gwen said happily. "Five kilometers from the base." She glanced at the monitor. "And our friend is still with us."
"I do not care," Piotr said. "I do not think that it will harm the base in any way." He raised a hand to his head. "At least, not intentionally."
"How are you feeling?" Gwen asked.
"Not well," he said after a long moment. "My head hurts abominably."
She nodded sympathetically. "Doc Hansen'll probably be able to give you something that'll really take care of the pain."
"I hope so."
The vundt lifted its head and frowned in thought. Well, no. Not in thought. That would, after all, be expecting rather a lot.
The vundt lifted its head in and frowned in increased mental activity. Um...no, not really.
The vundt lifted its head and frowned. Actually, its face didn't have the muscles for frowning. Let's start again.
The vundt lifted its head.
Despite the fact that its companion was making quite a bit of noise, it was still detecting the vibrations of some large thing somewhere in front of it. It couldn't recall ever encountering sounds quite like these before. Lifting its head didn't help, since the whatever-it-is was quite definitely out of sight, but the exercise was probably good for its neck muscles, anyway.
There being nothing about this noise in its own mind (and not much about anything else, for that matter) the vundt reached out to the communal memory. Oh, there was something there! This noise was...uh-oh...this was bad...
As they sighted the base, Gwen opened her mouth to let out a shout of delight, but a violent piercing squeal cut through the tank instead. Startled, Gwen leapt six inches into the air, which was quite a trick considering that she was sitting down.
Piotr merely held his head and groaned. The sound had done a wonderful job of making it hurt worse, a thing which he wouldn't have thought possible.
The squeal was rapidly followed by a second noise. On one of the monitors, the vundt could be seen looking at the tank and moving its front feet in an odd way. It opened its mouth and made the noise a third time. Then it pulled its feet and head in and out of sight, leaving nothing visible but its shell.
As Gwen stared at the image of the vundt on the screen, the vundt itself seemed to sink into the sand somehow.
Gwen tried to call Piotr's attention to the image, but Piotr, who was quite certain that the only thing stopping his skull from flying apart was the fact that he was holding it together with his hands, was sitting with his eyes shut hoping that the noises had all stopped.
Gwen couldn't quite see how the vundt was doing it, but it was still sinking into the sand. As it disappeared, a long flexible tube came out from under the shell and was extended upward. Quite quickly the vundt's entire shell was covered with sand. The tip of the tube was resting on top of the sand, just barely visible. If Gwen hadn't been watching as it had appeared, she would never have noticed it.
"What is that?" she asked, leaning forward toward the monitor. The tank was continuing to move, so the image was getting smaller and smaller. "A snorkel?" she wondered aloud.
She stopped the tank. The base was a short distance in front of them and wasn't going to go anywhere. She could afford to wait a few minutes. As it turned out, she didn't have to wait that long.
The sand where the vundt had disappeared seemed to shiver and run and the vundt suddenly reappeared. It gestured at the tank and squealed again, then it sank into the sand again.
"What the..."
"Perhaps," Piotr said weakly, "It is frightened of the base and is trying to warn us about it."
"That's a pretty good alarm sound," Gwen said.
Piotr made some additional comments about the sound. These comments weren't really either relevant or informative, but they did make him feel a little better.
It was at that moment that they heard a loud shrieking noise rising in the distance.
"What is that?" Gwen asked. "Do you hear that?"
"Yes. Unfortunately."
The sound rose rapidly in volume and a large flat disk came skimming in from above them. The disk flew past, curved in a tight arc and came sweeping back. As it did so, several projectiles shot from the center of its underside. Most of them hit the ground around the tank and sank into the sand with a hissing sound, but one of them struck the tank and an alarm went off. It was followed by a high pitched whining sound from outside.
"What the--" Gwen yelled. "What's going on?"
Piotr examined a scanner and a series of monitors. "That projectile is attempting to bore through the hull!" he said, slapping a large red button. "I have activated the defensive systems. Get us to the base quickly."
Gwen started the tank moving again. The base, which had seemed so close a few minutes ago, now seemed uncomfortably far away. The disk was going to get several more passes at them before they could get under shelter.
Below ground, the vundt was puzzled. It could hear the sound of the hunting vessel, which was unwelcome but not all that unusual, but it could also hear the sound of its companion still moving around instead of hiding. Was the thing stupid or what? No, nothing could be that stupid. All it had to do was reach into the communal memory, then even an idiot would know that you hid when the hunters came.
"How's the hull?" Gwen asked as the disk screamed past them again.
"Three more hits," Piotr said. "We are not breached yet, but every projectile which has hit us is still trying to bore in. I do not know whether they can penetrate the cabin or not, but they may have the potential to disable us."
"Then we'll be sitting ducks!" Gwen said. She looked into the forward monitor which showed an image of the base. "Why don't they do something to help us out?!"
"What do you suggest that they do? They have no weapons."
"I don't know, but something!"
Well, this was all really very puzzling. For some reason, the stranger was staying up and fighting. What in the world was the point of that? And why would it want to? That would be so tiring.
The vundt poked its head up through the sand. No, the stranger wasn't really fighting, it was trying to run away. The vundt watched the hunter score several direct hits with the diggers. Then it saw its companion stop moving. Now that, it reflected, was really very stupid. Perhaps, since it was obviously the smarter of the pair, it should go and help.
"What happened?! Why aren't we moving?" Gwen asked, slamming her hand into one of the control panels in frustration.
"Some of the linkages embedded in the hull must have been damaged."
"So what do we do now?"
"That is a very good question."
The vundt rose up out of the sand. A series of small openings appeared in its shell. The openings ran in a ring around the shell. The vundt sat, motionless, while a hissing sound filled the air. It didn't really like to do this, partly because it couldn't move while it was preparing and partly because the effort always made it so tired afterward, but even a vundt knows that there is a time when you have to make that little extra effort which means so much.
"It's coming back!" Gwen said.
"Yes."
The disk skimmed past them, and they heard the sound of several more projectiles striking the outer hull of the tank. The whining sound intensified with each hit.
"What if some of those things make it all the way through the hull?" Gwen asked, looking nervously around.
Piotr shook his. "I do not know. But I do not imagine that it will be very pleasant."
"Any last wishes?" Gwen asked him.
"Yes," he assured her. "I wish that I had majored in renaissance literature instead of xenoecology. That way I would not be here right now."
"Nice."
The vundt heard the hunter make two more passes and heard several more hits. There was a good chance that the stranger was already either dead or wounded beyond repair, but the vundt was just about ready now.
The disk arced around and began to make another pass. Since the original target was remaining motionless, the disk turned its attention to the second animal. It was difficult enough to find one, and finding two on the same trip, much less in the same place, was almost unheard of. What a lucky break.
The vundt listened to the sound of the hunter approaching. A large opening appeared in the center of the top of its shell. At just the right moment, a stream of sand, absorbed through the bottom of the shell and saturated with a mixture of chemicals produced within vesicles inside the body, shot out of the central opening in the shell and struck the disk.
The disk had fired a barrage of projectiles. Most of them passed through the stream of sand and simply melted away. The others hit the sand around the vundt and disappeared into the ground.
The stream of saturated sand hit the disk and clung, and the disk began to disintegrate. An opening appeared in its surface, and the disk suddenly imploded, collapsing in on itself and then slamming into the ground, a misshapen and crumpled ball that plowed a long furrow in the sand and sent a massive dust cloud into the air before coming to a very final rest.
The vundt watched in some surprise as an opening appeared in an unusual place in the stranger's shell and two other creatures walked out. How odd.
Gwen and Piotr squinted into the sun toward the wreck of the disk.
"What was that thing?" Gwen asked.
"I do not know, and, at just this moment, I do not entirely care."
Gwen looked toward the vundt. "Thanks, big guy," she said with a wave, then she and Piotr began to walk toward the base.
The vundt remained near the damaged tank, waiting patiently. It had been a little puzzled when Gwen and Piotr had come out from inside the thing, but it wasn't particularly worried about that. It was just going to wait and see what happened. That was a lot easier than actually trying to figure things out. Besides, it was really tired.
What happened, however, was a little surprising. Two more of the small creatures came hesitantly out from a large shell in the distance and hooked a series of items onto the stranger. Then they dragged it across the sand and into a large opening in the bigger shell. Soon after, they did the same with the remains of the hunter.
This puzzled the vundt. It had never seen anything quite like this before, and there was nothing at all in the communal memory, so it decided to actually think about it. Its head hurt with the unaccustomed effort, but then it had a breakthrough. What did you do when you were in danger? You pulled yourself into your shell for protection. But the diggers could get through your shell and hurt you...so what if you put your shell inside a bigger shell for more protection? Maybe the diggers couldn't get you then. It would be like hiding from the hunters under the sand, only better!
You couldn't precisely say that, with the vundt, to think was to act, particularly since reaching these conclusions had taken about four hours, but it did eventually begin to move. It was still very tired, and it wanted a nice safe place to sleep.
A day later, when Piotr was released from sick bay, he and Gwen found themselves in the office of the base commander.
"Let's take a walk," Commander Grayson suggested.
Puzzled, they fell in beside him.
"I have a few questions for the two of you," he said.
"Yes, sir?"
Grayson shook his head and sighed. "You are aware, I presume, that the two of you managed to destroy a recon tank that the techs assured me was pretty much indestructible."
"It wasn't our fault!" Gwen said quickly.
"Any foundation property that you take into the field is your responsibility, right?" Grayson asked.
"Well, technically, yes..." Gwen agreed.
"But there were unforeseen complications," Piotr put in.
"Unforeseen," Grayson echoed. "Yes, I've seen the tech report. Holes drilled partway through the hull, several linkages destroyed, and a series of rather large dents. Almost as if you had repeatedly run the tank into something very large."
"Or the other way around," Piotr said, lightly touching his forehead.
"Would you say that was the lot?" Grayson asked.
"Um...Yes, sir," Gwen said.
"More or less," Piotr agreed.
"It will all be explained in our field report."
"All of it?" Grayson asked. "I don't think you quite know all of it."
"Sir?" Gwen asked puzzled.
They had reached the repair bay by this time, and Grayson gestured toward it. They looked.
"I don't see the problem," Gwen said.
"Look more closely," Grayson told her.
She looked. The repair bay looked pretty much normal. There were two tanks in it, and... "Oh, dear..."
"Oh, dear," Grayson agreed.
"That's not a second tank."
"No. It would appear to be some kind of indigenous life form. A very large indigenous life form. It appears to have moved into our repair bay."
"It is a good thing that the repair bay is so large," Piotr said.
"Well, there seems to be only one question to ask," Gwen said.
"Really?" Grayson asked drily. "I can think of several. What's the one you have in mind?"
Smiling brightly, she said, "Since it followed us home, can we keep it?"
Grayson closed his eyes slowly. "It would appear that, for the moment at least, we don't have much choice. I want that report ready first thing in the morning."
"Yes, sir."
The vundt slept on, undisturbed by the conversation, or, for that matter by the sound of the technicians working on the damaged tank. When a vundt does something, it tends to concentrate on doing just that one thing to the exclusion of everything else.
It slept on through the night. The next morning it woke up and looked around. It didn't know where it was. It seemed to be quite unlike anyplace the vundt could ever recall seeing before, but it liked it. It was comfy.
Perhaps it should tell the others, and they could all live there. This was going into the communal memory right now.
Bio:"I am a college biology teacher living in the southeastern US with my wife, one dog, and one cat, which is plenty of cats but several dogs too few. All in all, I think the universe is a lot sillier than we can possibly imagine, which won't stop me from trying."
E-mail: benedete@esn.net
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