Wasteland of flint

supposed to be there. The nauallis slowly unfolded himself from where he'd been sitting cross-legged. As he did, Anderssen realized her skin was soaked with sweat and she felt clammy from head to toe. Oh Sister, why do I feel so scared?

'Well done.' Hummingbird's voice was almost inaudible, tinny in the thin air. Gretchen moved to turn on her comm, but the nauallis shook his head. 'You did well to remain still. But I do not think it is safe to move yet. Stay where you are.'

'Why?' The word came out as a choked whisper. Her throat felt raw. 'What happened?'

'The shape rose up,' he replied after a moment's silence, 'and became aware of you. She cleaned up the camp, as I related before, and turned toward you. For a moment, she seemed to reach out, but then returned to the pattern I saw before.'

'Oh.' Gretchen remembered heat on her face. 'And vanished again.'

Hummingbird nodded. 'I fear,' he said, in a very cautious tone, 'the inhabitants of this world may sometimes express their curiosity through imitation. Those here – and be assured, if you cannot feel them, I can – are not so adept as those who made the Russovsky which came aboard the ship. Perhaps…' He paused. 'Perhaps these ones are immature.'

Gretchen watched the nauallis puzzle over the matter, but soon found her attention drawn to the dusty circle where the shape had appeared. After a moment she frowned. 'Crow? You're thinking the thing we see is the microfauna – grown enormous, assembled into something which can move, which wears the shape of a human? Why would it repeat these actions over and over again? Why vanish?'

The nauallis regarded her. Gretchen saw the corner of his jaw clench, then loosen.

'This cavern,' Anderssen continued, 'the fronds, the moss – it's like a recording mechanism. One that's broken, looping, showing the same 3v over and over again. We know Russovsky was here – she must have taken at least a full day to install the relay, maybe even two – and she killed off most of the blue stuff on the floor. Maybe this particular species is one of the imitators. But this one is injured.'

Now she paused, still staring at the dusty floor. There's something here. 'What does this stuff eat, anyway? It must take a lot of energy to make imitations of things.'

'Does that matter?' Hummingbird sounded sour. 'If you're correct, then destroying the rest of the microfauna here will remove the traces of Russovsky – What are you doing?'

Gretchen ignored the nauallis, stepping carefully into the dead circle. She went down on her hands and knees and began to examine the rumpled, dirty floor centimeter by centimeter.

'Anderssen!' Hummingbird's voice was noticeably strained. 'Can't you feel it? We're being watched.'

There was a queer tension in the air, an almost electric sensation. Gretchen paused, shutting out the sound of the old man's querulous voice. There was something – a presence – around her, but while there was a sense of sharpness, of intent focus, she did not feel threatened. Anderssen resumed her search, wishing she had brought some of the tools from her gear bag. The edge of her hand would have to suffice and she began to brush back the first layer of dust in short arcs.

Her fingertips moved across a lump of dirt and the feeling of tension in the cavern spiked. Gretchen stopped, hand frozen above the dust. Hummingbird made a gargling sound and she heard him moving – away, scuttling back up the passage. The faint blue glow brightened, throwing a steadily sharpening shadow beneath her.

Without looking up – a little afraid of what she might see – Gretchen plucked a smooth, round stone out of the dust. As she did, something flickered in the air – a shadow, a shifting light – and there was a glimpse of another hand – a gloved hand – reaching for the stone as well. Gretchen's fingers curled tight around the stone. The shadowy glove vanished. The light went out, leaving her wrapped in darkness.

'Hummingbird?' Her whisper fell on dead air. Bastard!

Anderssen eased back across the floor, wondering if the tik-tik-tik sound in her ears was the comm channel muttering to itself or something moving in the rubble. Now her heart was hammering, her throat tight. A heavy sense of oppression pressed down on her, inspiring a cold sweat. One of her boots touched stone and she scrambled back into the tunnel mouth. A moment later, Gretchen threw aside the filament screen, bounded across their hasty campsite and out into the midday Ephesian sunlight. Hummingbird's incoherent voice rang painfully loud in the enclosed space.

The horizon was a blue wall rising above the curving white dome of the eastern plains. Jagged mountains tumbled away to her left and right, leaving only empty air and the colossal plunge down the face of Prion before her. Gretchen set herself, swung back one arm and flung the stone out and away into the empty vastness.

Swaying a little, she started with surprise when Hummingbird caught her arm.

'What was that?' His fingers were tight on her bicep.

Gretchen wrenched her arm free of his grip. 'Hands off, crow.'

'Tell me what you found in there. Why did you throw it away?'

Smirking, Anderssen brushed dust from her hands and knees. 'The cave really creeped you out, didn't it? You – the tlamatinime, the all-knowing one – you ran out of there pretty fast for such an old man.'

Hummingbird drew back and the line of his head, the clenched fists and stiff shoulders, told Gretchen she'd scored a hit – a palpable hit, she thought smugly.

'You weren't kidding,' she said after a moment of silent gloating, 'about this male and female business, were you? I thought you were being difficult.'

'No.' The nauallis gave her an inscrutable look. 'I was not.'

'Hmm.' Gretchen looked over the edge of the cliff. Such a long way down. But you'd fly, part of the way at least. 'Russovsky forgot something in the cave, just a round stone she'd picked up somewhere. A native Ephesian stone. I doubt she even noticed she'd forgotten the little thing – there are plenty of wind- smoothed stones to pick up from the ground. But the cave didn't like it. Not at all.'

Among the Broken Mountains

The Cornuelle glided through an inky deep, a matte-black ghost among invisibly tumbling leviathans. Her main engines were at minimal thrust in an attempt to reduce her sensor profile. The sleek hull was in absorptive mode, darkness against darkness, yielding no hint of comm traffic or EM radiation. On her command deck, Hadeishi was keeping one eye on the ship's heat sump and one on the latest personnel reports when Hayes's terse voice drew his attention.

'Outrider Two has lost particle track,' the weapons officer declared, staring intently at his panel.

'Outrider Two, engine full stop,' Hadeishi barked, eyes swinging to the glowing depths of the threat-well. Drone Two was their lead dog at the moment, deployed nearly a thousand kilometers 'inward' of the cruiser. Outrider One was accelerating back toward the cruiser, on the downside of its duty cycle. Three was outbound, snaking its way through the three-dimensional maze of the asteroid field to catch up with Two. The entire area within sensor range was quiet; the bridge displays showed only thousands of dots colored 'navigational hazard' amber. The Cornuelle was a blue spark at the center of the well, with the three drones appearing as miniscule turquoise arrows.

'How long until Three reaches duty station?' The chu-sa leaned back in the shockchair, considering the situation. He wondered if Kosho had gone to sleep yet – she'd gone off-duty an hour ago – and decided not to call her back to the bridge. She needs to sleep sometime.

'Two hundred and thirty minutes, sir.' Hayes turned questioningly to Hadeishi. 'Shall I back Two out of there?'

'No,' Hadeishi said. 'Badger the drone with a nearby rock. Reduce outgoing transmissions to locational data. No broadcast, no highband emission. Switch everything else to record.' Hayes was already at work on his panel, squirting a new set of commands to the drone. 'When Three comes in range, establish a narrow-beam link to Two and relay back to us.'

'Pinhole mode, aye,' Hayes acknowledged absently, his mind entirely on reconfiguring the drone and dumping a new set of engagement and maneuver parameters to Outrider Three. A moment later he punched two glyphs and took a breath. 'Commands away.'

Hadeishi nodded, but his attention was now on the main panel, where ship's comp was replaying the particle trail data. Curse my generosity, he thought with a trace of