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little encouraged to see his
heart rate had increased 20 percent. Telisa’s had increased a bit more, while
her own had skyrocketed along with her adrenal spike.
    He’s
human, at least.
    “A
scout found something interesting,” Magnus announced.
    Cilreth
had access to the many roving eyes of the scouts, but she found it hard to
concentrate on her own movements across the rough terrain and watch the scout
feeds at the same time. Cilreth loved the machines intellectually, though the
way they moved creeped her out. She did not much care for Magnus’s PV interface
to them either, though that was hardly surprising given that Magnus was not as
experienced with software as she was.
    Magnus
led them toward another ancient building. The structure looked to be in better
shape than the outlying ruins. They walked up to an intact reddish wall. One of
the scout robots crawled nearby.
    The
stone wall held a thick ceramic grille or window at the level of Cilreth’s
stomach. She estimated it to be a little over a meter square. Its color looked
slightly more brownish than the red rock surrounding it.
    “So
what is it?” Cilreth asked. “A vent, I think.”
    Telisa
took out a light and shined it through. “There’s a room beyond. Mostly empty
from what little I can see. There’s another vent like this on the far wall, but
that one doesn’t look like it could lead directly outside.”
    “I don’t
see any other entrances. We can skip it and check another spot.”
    “But
this building is intact,” Telisa persisted. “Maybe this is a door. It looks
like a vent to us.”
    “Great
door it must have been. It’s full of holes.”
    “Maybe
they needed ventilation. Maybe the weather is always good.”
    Magnus
checked the grille for opening mechanisms. His hands went around the perimeter
of the vent, pressing and prodding.
    “It
feels solid,” he said. He took out his own light and checked beyond, then
grabbed the ceramic lattice and pulled.
    “Either
wedged or solid as designed,” he said. “This wall is old, though. I think we
could force our way in.”
    The
scout robot approached. Magnus stood back, so Cilreth backed away, too. The
spider robot started to attack the wall with the sharp tips of its front legs.
Each time it whipped a leg into the wall, a chunk of material fell away. The
little craters accumulated until a deep, crumbling hole grew at one corner of
the grille. Cilreth was impressed at the strength of the Vovokan-designed legs.
The scout robot was strong.
    “Something
odd is happening around the corner here,” Magnus said. He held his rifle ready
in his hands, though his voice was calm.
    “What?”
Telisa asked. Cilreth followed them to the corner of the building with Magnus
in the lead. When she turned the corner, Cilreth saw the red rocks on the
ground were covered with creeping green worms. Hundreds of them.
    “Whoa!
What are those?”
    “They’re
coming from that tree thing,” Telisa observed. Cilreth followed the same visual
trail as Telisa. More of the green, caterpillar-like bugs were running down a
stalk from the dissolving green blob at the top of the stalk.
    “Wait a
sec, are they coming from the plant—or maybe they are the plant!”
Cilreth said. The creatures were exactly the same color as the green pom-pom–like
mass of the leaves. She looked closer. The entire mass left at the end of the
stalk writhed.
    “Well,
I guess our assumptions that these are like Earth plants is off,” Magnus said.
    “Yes,
neither plant nor animal, the distinction may be irrelevant here,” said Telisa.
    Magnus
kicked one away as it neared his foot. The green worm did not appear to have
any legs, though it reminded her of a furry caterpillar.
    “Dangerous?”
asked Cilreth. We walked right by dozens of those green clumps. I walked
under several.
    “Doesn’t
look bad,” Telisa said.
    “Neither
do army ants, at first,” Magnus said. “Besides, it’s alien and we have no idea.
Let’s head back to the