The thin layer had spider-veined like a split egg and Yul peeled away the pieces. The water rippled below. The spaceman weakly struggled out of the water and Yul and Cloye grabbed him and hauled him to the chalky soil while Hresh hitched in closer to gawk.
Almost instantly, a multi-legged thing jumped out of the water, a knee-high crab-like squid. It hooked onto Hresh’s leg and cut a hole into his suit with its proboscis. The thin cold atmosphere of the planet whooshed into his suit.
Hresh screamed, backpedalling, kicking to get the shelled mutant off him, as it struggled to burrow into his suit to get to his flesh.
Yul fired at it, sizzling its coral-like carapace. The creature gave a whistling screech and scuttled away toward the boulders. Cloye aimed a series of blasts which nipped at its legs, crablike and spindly and grazed off its gleaming white shell. The creature strayed off its course—tracing slow circles now as it scuttled to find a hidey hole, out of range.
Hresh was howling a high-pitched wail, slapping hands over the tattered liner at his knee. Yul swore. He fiddled with his emergency pack, trying to tear off a great length of adhesive from the suit repair roll to slap the polyethylene over Hresh’s rip. Covering the fluttering fabric, he heard air begin to return to Hresh’s suit. But not fast enough. The man’s face was contorted, blueish.
“What the fuck was that?” Cloye cried.
“I d-don’t know,” gasped Hresh, his teeth chattering. “I’m not waiting around to find out.” His breath fogged his faceplate.
“What about this guy?”
“What about him?” Hresh wheezed. “The man can’t be saved. Some primitive colony, as I said.” His eyes rolled as if even in his delirium he were analyzing a weird science experiment. “That thing was more crab-squid than insect.”
“Whatever,” grunted Cloye. “What about our pale-faced diver?”
Yul turned his attention back to the convulsing man. With speed, he twisted off the cracked helmet. “Help me pry his jaws open. Quick! I don’t want the man choking on his own tongue.”
Water had gushed into the victim’s suit. What had put him there? Yul reeled at the possibilities. How was he alive? Like those freaks on the Orb? The man would freeze, if the temperature got lower. He guessed it would within the hour, as the sun sank. Luckily the man’s suit seemed intact, except for the filmy faceplate which remained spidered with cracks and sported a large hole in the centre. The man’s dead comrade near the other pool was not so lucky.
The suited man went into deeper convulsions, choking out mouthfuls of foul water. Yul pushed palms on the victim’s chest, applying CPR, giving him a chance at life. The man began to gulp the thin air, his chest heaving.
Yul cursed, fumbling for the extra outtake valve on his own suit, forced open the frozen lips, shoving the valve into the man’s mouth. He adjusted it to allow a graduated stream of oxygen to flow out. The man’s eyes dilated, rolled in wild abandon. His face was utterly drained of colour, pure white with an even whiter sucker mark arching from cheek to cheek. It was the same colour as the crab-like thing that had raced off to the rocks. Yul shuddered. The man’s nose looked flattened, as well as his left ear mangled, as if something had half chewed it off—no doubt that crab thing that had scuttled away.
The figure began to shiver uncontrollably.
“Quick,” snarled Yul, “the man’s freezing on contact with the air and going into shock. We’ve got to drain his suit, otherwise he’ll die of exposure.”
Why the water didn’t freeze earlier Yul could not guess, but with the Mentera and Zikri around anything was possible. He’d seen enough weirdness to last a lifetime. The locust tanks, Hresh’s horrors... He didn’t doubt these pools were something of the same breed.
Yul barked an order to Hresh and Hresh switched his own extra regulator with Yul’s. Yul and Cloye lifted the shivering man by the heels and let the water drain past his neck.
They set him down and Yul motioned a hand to Cloye. She hopped over and twisted the helmet off the dead astronaut, which seemed intact. She gave it to Yul, who screwed it onto the gasping man’s suit. Yul flicked the regulators at the back. A green light came to life. There came the familiar whish of oxygen in the pipes and a slight bulge to the suit. The man roused. He blinked his eyes in rapid succession.
“Who are you?” whispered Yul. He brought his ear close to the man’s receiver.
The man’s pale tongue slipped between parted lips and he hissed. “I’m F-Fenli. F-First officer...of the Jakru invasion. Reporting for duty, sir!” He managed the last words with a crooked grin, then he quickly passed out.
Chapter 10
Back in the abandoned lab room, Krin managed to chew through his tentacle where the human had looped and tied it around the bar. He slumped with a thud onto the wreckage and bloody ruin of his comrade’s body.
Bral gazed out from sightless eyes. His polyp of a mouth gaped open, dripping pungent black fluid, now pooling at Krin’s side. How lucky the warrior was to have met his death in combat, as it should be for a warrior of his caste, thought Krin. Death soon would be his release as well. His hours were numbered.
For his main motilator had been mutilated beyond repair and he was barely able to drag himself out of the lab along the mirror-smooth corridor. The sucker pads on his working appendage allowed that agonizing locomotion at least. The rest of his body was smashed in multiple places. Four tentacles trailed behind, crushed or severed
