He’d heard about them but he’d never seen one except on the occasional news report dealing with the exploration of a crew world. Certainly he'd never expected to be fitted for one. Yet the MHW standing before him was to be his.
The Mobile hostile world suit, of which his was the latest and by far the most advanced model (or so the engineers who were showing it to him boasted, was designed to provide an explorer on a dangerous world with complete lifesupport and protection. It was solid and stiff instead of flexible like the day work suit he was wearing.
They put him in the MHW, let him get comfortable, seed then ran him through a complete checkout of suit systems. Even that little instruction and preparation was unnecessary, since the suit could instruct its wearer oar how best to utilize it. He had no trouble with the instrumentation, and the majority of controls were operated verbally. The suit was a true marvel of modern engineering, an extension of his own body. Its operator would be well protected on the surface of Prism or :any other world. Isis last concerns about the forthcoming journey vanished.
Another storm was nattering the city as he returned home, but he couldn't see it. He could see only his future expanding before him. A vice-chairmanship perhaps. First company consultant. He might be perceived by some as arrogant (honestly, he would never understand where people acquired such notions!), but that wouldn't slow his climb up the ladder of success. Achievement was what mattered to men like Maehoka, and Evan Orgell would deliver. His twenty-give years with the company were coming to a bead. All he had to do was locate a problem, propose a solution, and file a simple report.
What Machoka didn't know was that Evan would have paid him just for the chance to visit a place that promised to be as fascinating as prism.
Ire made his way home as rapidly as possible, ignoring the rain. The streets were crowded as usual. Several city employees were working nearby to clear a clogged drain. One wore a suit full of plugs through which he delivered power to two coworkers, whose suits were equipped with repairing and reaming arms.
He passed a doctor and nurse. They looked like candy canes in their familiar red-and-white-striped medical suits. The red stripes were softly aglow, indicating both were oil duty. Their suits contained sufficient medical equipment between the two of them to enable them to perform anything up to medium-difficulty surgery on the spot. A more serious operation would require the addition of specialized suited technicians.
Evan had once read about something called a "hospital" in an old history text. Apparently the ancients had actually hauled even the severely injured all the way to factorylike buildings for the purpose of treating them, instead of doing the necessary work on the spot. Imagine, subjecting an accident victim to the trauma of movement!
A civil policeman in his armored pale blue suit stood chatting with a media vendor. The latter's suit boasted several flashing tridee screens, each equipped with a hardcopy printout for those who wanted to purchase. While staring at one screen Evan almost bumped into a woman advertising a forthcoming tridee. The flexible screen she wore from neck to knees wriggled with scenes from the forthcoming play. To ensure that preoccupied passersby looked at the ad, the video playback would disappear at unpredictable intervals and the screen would become completely transparent-but only for a second-before the advertisement resumed.
Three kids had halted outside a confectionery shop. He noticed them only because they were bawling and crying loud enough to drown out everything else coming over his communicator. The adults hurrying by ignored their cries, for the children were already being attended to-by their suits, which wouldn't tolerate unprogrammed or unnecessary digressions. Only a parent or school administrator could alter that programming, and so the children would have to learn to be satisfied with the fruit juice and milk their clothing would readily provide.
Such musings reminded Evan that he was hungry himself. He nudged one of the controls set into the left arm of his suit. The small dispenser mounted on the right shoulder slid forward until it was properly positioned. A few cassava chips were followed by a dose of hot Samsteadyon tea, heavily sugared. The snack was more than enough to put spring in his step for the rest of the walk home.
Naturally he didn't unsuit until he was safe and secure within his apartment. No use courting arrest for outraging public morals.
The spacious rooms were cluttered and disorganized, in sharp contrast to their occupant's mind. Tapes and chip files were piled in corners, on furniture, even in the kitchen. And the books, of course. Evan's few visitors never failed to remark on the presence of the books. Real books, printed on tree shavings.
A storage chip might hold a hundred, a thousand times as much information, but there was no pleasure to be gained from holding one in the palm of your hand. A real book provided tactile and visual enjoyment as well as information.
One of these days he'd have to get the place cleaned up. He'd been telling himself that for ten years. His lady friends tried to do it for him, without success. Possibly his ferocious response that he wouldn't be able to find anything discouraged them from pursuing the long-range excavation necessary to complete the work. Or maybe it was because none of them hung around for more than a few months. Eventually they all drifted off into the company of less brilliant but more amenable men.
Except Maria. Marla kept coming back. She was a structural designer, and a good one. She was smart enough to understand Evan's profession and hold up her end of a conversation with him. What differentiated her from the others was that she also could see deep enough into his psyche to realize that for all his intelligence he was basically as insecure as everyone else. Their relationship grew slowly and steadily. Each preferred to dance at arm's length from the other, both afraid of commitment while desperately desiring it but wary of making a serious mistake this late in their lives.
Another year, maybe less, and he'd propose. If nothing else, they were, too practical to continue paying for two homes when they spent so much of their free time in each other's company.
The depth of their maturing relationship was defined by Evan's kitchen.
He'd allowed her more leeway than he ever had any of her predecessors in cleaning it up. As a result, it was now possible to use the cooking facilities to prepare a halfway hygienic meal. The bathroom was next on her agenda. When she reached the front door they would get married.
She deserved to know how the meeting had gone, now that he was comfortably ensconced in his apartment. He used the wall relay to call her. She was quietly pleased for him, recognizing how important the assignment could be to his career and their future. She was also as cautious as ever, identifying potential problems and pitfalls he'd overlooked in his first rush of excitement. There was no yelling and shouting; only quiet discussion and thoughtful analysis. That was something else that set Maria apart from the many women who'd visited Evan's apartment. There's much to be said for youthful passion, but when one reaches his forties it's time to consider more than physical abilities. Living with someone is, after all, very different from loving someone, and requires a good deal more patience and understanding.
She promised to look after his collection of tropical fish and other personal matters, wished him success and a speedy return without any display of tearful emotion. She told him how very much she would miss him. He felt very warm and secure inside when the monitor in the wall finally winked off. A couple of touches on the controls filled the room with reassuring Mozart and changing pastel patterns on the screen.
Then he went through the ritual of unsuiting, placing the empty metallic cloth skin in its holding slot in his copious closet and setting the storage unit for a standard clean and check. There were the usual few seconds of discomfort at being unsuited, though of course he was still tightly sealed within the larger inflexible suit that was the apartment. One could buy a bulky life suit, essentially a mobile apartment, but locally they were banned due to the population density of the city. Strictly a novelty for nomads and country folk.
A check of his console revealed a long list of company coded information awaiting his attention. Pulling up a chair, he started running them through the decoder.
He'd only been offworld on two previous occasions. Once to Earth for an important company conference and once to New Riviera for an expensive company-provided vacation. While coordinates for Prism weren't given, time of travel was. It shouldn't have surprised him, not given the dimensions of the Commonwealth, but he was still a bit stunned. It was farther from Samstead than he'd ever expected to travel. He was going to be a long way from home.
With nothing to worry about, he told himself. Not with that advanced MHW surrounding him.
As he stared at the monitor he considered going over to Maria's before he left. He wasn't sure she'd be pleased. Neither of them cared much for unexpected surprises. Both of them were planners. It was another reason they got along so well together.
No, they'd said their good-byes. The next time he spoke to her he would be home, ready to regale her with tales of grand successes on alien worlds. He would attack Prism as he had every other complex problem the company had handed him, solve the research station's troubles, relax until his pickup ship came for him, and work on the presentation speech he would doubtless be asked to make for Machoka and the board of directors.
He was already planning how he and Maria would spend his bonus.
The KK-drive ship which picked him up from the orbital station ran irregular routes. Its passage close to the sun of an unexplored system would cause no comment. His section was heavily populated by company employees being sent hither and yon, to be planted like seeds on this world or that in the hope profit would blossom in their wake.
He was relaxing in the first-class lounge, watching the antics of the otters and fish in the central tank, when she interrupted his viewing. She was blond, what they called straw blond. Her skin was almost transparent, and her eyes just kissed with blue. As if to belie the delicacy of her coloring she was strappingly built. Feminine for all that, though.
She wore a mauve dress that covered her from ankles to just below her chin. Garnets sparkled around the hem and neckline, worked into the material in a few simple designs. What made the outfit especially interesting was the intermittently variable opacity of the material. It would change from a solid mauve to a kind of red smokiness that concealed while revealing. Evan was reminded of the advertising girl he'd encountered not long ago. He wondered if the degree of opacity could be varied or if it was a fixed attitude of the material itself.
She noticed his attention, smiled, and walked straight toward him.
"Hi." Her voice was surprisingly deep. "First trip out?"
"No. Third. That's a lovely outfit you almost haven't got on."
She giggled. That was unexpected and forced him to revise his initial estimate of her age downward. She'd been walking by herself since she'd entered the lounge. Unmarried, no boyfriend traveling with her. Parents?
Either she read his mind or else his expression was more predatory than he thought. "Don't worry. I'm by myself and I'm of age. You want to see my ident?"
"Why would I want to?" There. That was sufficiently ambiguous so that she could take it any one of several ways.
Her reply was equally duplicitous. She sat down next to him and they chatted like old friends. She seemed content merely to flirt and tease. That suited him well enough. The verbal play was welcome, particularly since the rest of the passengers seemed an unusually dull lot. Interesting conversation can be hard to come by when you're a lot smarter than everyone else. Especially if you tend, as Evan did, to spend most of the time talking about yourself and your own achievements.
The girl, however, seemed more than willing to sit and listen to him for as long as he chose to spin stories of his admirable accomplishments. Her name was Mylith.
"So you're going all the way to Repler?”
He laughed. "Nobody goes that far."
"This ship does."
"Just some of the cargo."
"Oh. I hadn't thought of that." In one hand she held half a dozen glass straws. They were fused together. Each was a different color and each contained a different liqueur. She would sip from one straw and then move on to another as he talked.
The dress never became more than milkily translucent. Never transparent. The guessing game it forced on his eyes was still intriguing.
"Where are you getting off?" she asked.
"Inter-Kansastan. Genetics conference."
She made a face. "Sounds dull."
"It probably will be. Ours not to reason why, though. Just to do what the company tells us to."
"I suppose. I'm not quite so enthusiastic." She put a hand on his knee. "Where else have you been? You said this was your third trip out."
He told her about the conference on Earth and the vacation on New Riviera, and she didn't ask him about his destination again, but for some reason he still felt uncomfortable. No reason to. He was just nervous. Asking a fellow traveler his destination was perfectly normal shipboard conversation.
Eventually they returned to the subject of her unique attire. With a sophistication that belied her age and which he found slightly offputting, she allowed as how since he found it so interesting, he might lice to see the rest of her wardrobe. He thought about the invitation long and hard before explaining that he was really very tired and had a lot of reading to catch up on before retiring. If she was disappointed she didn't show it, but she didn't approach him again. From time to time over the next few days he saw her talking to other passengers and occasionally a crew member. He wondered if she'd made any successful assignations since he'd turned her down.
By the time she departed on an intersystem shuttle he was mad at himself for having passed on what might have been a memorable opportunity. He'd always been overcautious. His mind assured him he'd done the right thing. It was not the time for extracurricular involvements. Secrecy and a low profile at all costs. But the rest of his body was pretty uppset at the decision.
The great slip drove on through space-plus, following a course through a region of abstruse mathematics only advanced computers could understand, passengers and crew confident that they would emerge in the right place relative to the rest of the universe when they dropped below light speed and back into normal space. Two more such jumps relieved the ship of all its passengers save one.
A last jump put them in orbit around an unnamed world.
The company officer who carne for Evan as he was using his window scanner to examine the cloud-shrouded world below looked like a gnome misplaced in time. A tall gnome. Save for a few lingering brown patches, his hair was pure white. He wore a neatly pointed beard and walked with a slight stoop, further enhancing his fairytale appearance. That is an impolite analogy, Evan told himself. There is nothing fairy-tailish about a spinal defect modern medicine couldn't fix.
He looked to be in his late seventies and his voice was strong and sure. A man accustomed to giving orders. He was polite to Evan but not deferential.
"So you are the one they selected."
"Yes, I'm the one they selected. Time to go?"
The older man nodded. "You've seen the MHW? Fine. Let's get you suited up. I'm not supposed to linger in this vicinity any longer than necessary."
Evan indicated the light green comfort suit he was wearing. "What about this one and the rest of my personal belongings?„
"That looks suitable for an inferior lining. Light and smooth. We'll see to the rest of your stuff. You won't need what you've got on now inside the MHW, but you'll want to have something more comfortable to wear around the station."
"Then what I've got on will do. You're sure I won't need anything else down below?"
The older man grinned. Evan couldn't tell the prosthetic teeth from the real ones. "The suit will take care of all your needs, including those you haven't thought of yet. I've been well briefed on this mission. That's quite a toy you're going to have to play with. I'm Garrett, by the way."
"First name or last?"
"Middle."
Evan smiled back at him. If the company wanted to play coy with a semilegal visit to a semilegal project, that was okay by him. He could understand the need.
Garrett led him back through the ship, past the now deserted passenger lounge with its glowing otter tank, through the communal dining parlor, back into a world of conduits and throbbing machinery.
They passed though a security door into a small holding area. Two women were swarming over the MHW, passing instruments over and through the hollow shell. Final checkout, Evan mused.
It was good to see the suit again, an old friend from home. Nearly three meters tall and broad in proportion, it towered above the humans working around it. The flat gray duralloy exterior was unmarred, as was the transparent plexalloy bubble that would allow him a three hundred-and-sixty-degree range of vision. The entry door in the belly stood open.
"Something special, isn't she?" The note of pride in Garrett's voice took Evan by surprise.
"Are you one of the designers?" The two technicians ignored them, intent on their work.
"Who, me?" Garrett laughed. "No, I'm just a field rep. I had a chance to do some work with the prototypes for this beauty. It's nice to be in on the first use of the first fully operational model."
Evan admired the smooth exterior lines. "You have to admit it doesn't look like much."
"Not from the outside, no," Garrett agreed. "I think the appearance is intentionally deceptive. This suit will take care of you and comfort you, provide for you, and even entertain you in everything from near absolute zero to a few thousand degrees above. I won't list her tolerances for you because you're probably familiar with them already and it would take too long to read them off."
"They didn't tell me anything on Samstead about maintenance."
"No need to. The suit can take care of itself for a full year, and you'll be down below a lot less than that."
"I hope so. Surely it doesn't stock enough food and water for that long?"
"Power yes, food no. It's packed with concentrates and it can synthesize plenty more. Flavor the stuff, too, I'm told. As for your defense systems, the suit will explain everything to you."
"So I was told. There wasn't time for much in the way of hands-on instruction."
"Not needed. A six-year-old could run this suit. Once you get inside and key it, it'll fill you in on anything you need to know. Once keyed it will respond only to your voice and your body's signature. It's damn discerning. Wait till you have a chance to use the chameleonics. Not true invisibility, but the closest we've come."
Evan nodded absently, took a last look at the interior of the ship. Ire was anxious to be on his way. Triumph and glory awaited. Well, a commendation and promotion, anyway. The company didn't go in for the flashy stuff.
"Might as well get on with it."
Garrett nodded and spoke briefly to the pair of technicians. They lingered over a last check, reluctantly moved aside. Evan stepped up to the ladder which protruded from the belly of the suit.
"Key activation MHW eight oh six."
"Activation key," the suit replied in a pleasantly modulated voice. "Welcome, wearer."
Garrett nudged Evan in the ribs, grinned proudly.
" Ray name is Evan Orgell. I will be inhabiting you during the visit to and exploration of the planet below. What further identification do you require?"
"None, Mr. Orgell. Recognition and key complete." With a whirr, the suit knelt, rendering the ladder superfluous. One of the technicians removed it. "Come aboard."
"Thank you." Ignoring the two female techs, Evan removed his leisure suit and stowed it in the appropriate compartment inside the right leg of the MHW. Clad only in his underwear, he bent and entered.
There was enough room inside for him to stand up and turn if he wished to, but he was content to settle himself into the snug, thickly padded operator's chair high up in the chest. His arms and legs slid neatly into the waldo sockets provided for them.
The suit was now tuned to his own muscular system. Experimentally he tried his limbs. The far more powerful limbs of the suit responded accordingly. If he desired he could tear the starship apart piece by piece.
A voice reached him from outside, picked up by the suit's aural receptors. "Everything look okay, Orgell?"
"Outstanding. I take it you're going to put me down close to the station?"
"As close as we can. The drop coordinates are programmed into the suit and it will handle any necessary adjustments of the parasail."
"Something I've been curious about from the beginning. Why don't we use the ship's shuttle?"
"You ought to be able to guess the answer to that one," Garrett said somberly. "We've taken every precaution, but there's still no way of telling for certain if we're being shadowed or not. If we are, long-range scanners could pick up the movement of a shuttle. No way can your suit's drop be detected. Too small and no power output to show up. It's a passive drop. Don't worry. She'll get you down."
"I wasn't worried. Just curious." Evan wondered how much he believed his own disclaimer.
One of the technicians finally spoke un. "We're positioned. Lock's over there." She pointed, as if Evan could muss seeing the gaping opening in the side of the hold.
He nodded, was delighted when the suit nodded with him. He walked toward the big cargo lock and the suit moved obediently in tandem with his legs. Once inside, he turned to look back as the door closed behind him. He could watch the gauge set in the door go from green to red as the air inside was exhausted.
"Nervous, sir?"
"What?" It took him a second to realize it was the suit itself which had addressed him. "No, not at all."
"Your pulse is racing."
"Excitement and anticipation, that's all."
The suit accepted this explanation without rejoinder. Evan glanced down at his immense metal frame. This is how Goliath must have felt, he told himself. Invulnerable. Omnipotent.
The lock lights went out. Garrett wished him good luck. Then the outer door was sliding past, revealing the black void beyond. Knowing it was unnecessary but feeling the need anyway, Evan took a deep breath.
Then he stepped out into nothingness.
He felt a slight jolt as the ship's tractor beam took hold of him. He was turned, properly oriented, and shoved planetward. At first it didn't even feel as if he was moving, though he knew better. The suit told him as much, providing facts and figures, relative velocities, and all mariner of physical confirmation.
Soon instrumental proof was unnecessary; the curvature of the world below swallowed space until all he could see was Prism. Then the huge parasail deployed, its engines reversing thrust and slowing his descent. He began to glow, descending feet-first. The visor automatically darkened to protect his eyes from the light. Moments later he began to bounce, like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond, as Prism's atmosphere thickened around him. Throughout the drop, the suit kept him cool and comfortable.
Gradually he began to make out shapes, land masses, below and ahead. Then he was dropping over water, a lot of water, and he had a few anxious moments while he wondered just how accurate the suit's programming had been. But he underestimated his rate of descent as well as the angle, and he was soon back over land again. That was better. The suit would keep him alive in any environment, but he didn't relish the thought of walking to his destination through several hundred kilometers of deep ocean.
Soon he was close to ground and slowing rapidly as the parasail worked hard against gravity. His visor lightened, but not completely. He wondered aloud what the problem was. The problem, as the suit told him, was Prism itself. It demonstrated by returning visor shading and polarization to normal. The surface below was so bright, so full of blinding lights and colors, that he couldn't look at it. He acknowledged the success of the demonstration and permitted the suit to darken the visor again.
Something huge and yellow darted toward him suddenly, hurtling from a thick cloud. A burst from the suit's needler sent it hurrying away before he had a chance to get a good look at it. One quick comparison showed how alien was the world beneath him: the attacker had looked more like the parasail than a bird.
More interesting still was the ground below. It was covered in forest, but a forest like none he'd ever seen. It was green, yes. Also purple and vermilion, royal blue and a deep emerald green, and a hundred shades in between. Some shapes were broad and expansive, others tall and thin as fairy towers.
"Organosilicate growths," the suit explained, drawing upon its programming. "Some contain symbiotic or parasitic chlorophyllic forms. Others do not and rely on other means of sustaining life."
"Like the photovores," Evan murmured.
"Yes, like the photovores." A small corner of the suit visor became a miniature tridee screen and Evan was given a quick refresher course in what was known of the unique world of Prismatic botany.
"There are true carbon-based lifeforms on Prism," the unknown narrator declaimed drily, "as well as purely silicon varieties. There are also the organosilicate hybrids. These seem to be among the most successful types, drawing as they do on the strengths of both molecular structures for greater flexibility. In particular, the organosilicate plant types appear to dominate their respective ecological niches, the organic carbon structures being capable of photosynthesis which is enhanced by silicate forms which serve to protect the more vulnerable woody growths while concentrating sunlight upon them."
Evan continued to listen to the lecture, but with only half his attention. The rest was devoted to the white sausage-shape buildings which had suddenly appeared beneath him. They occupied a clearing in the forest. Several smaller secondary structures had been erected nearby. A long straight, cleared area could only be a shuttle runway.
He stared hard as the parasail carried him over the station, but even with the visor's magnifiers on he saw no sign of anyone moving between the buildings.
"Company frequencies. Let them know we're dropping in."
"That was attempted from the ship, sir, without success."
"I know, but just because their long-range communications are out doesn't mean that nothing's working on the local bands."
"As you wish, sir." Several minutes passed as they cleared the station perimeter. "Nothing, sir. No response at all."
Not encouraging, Evan thought. Something pretty bad must have happened here to obviate even suit-to-suit communications. He was reminded that he wasn't on Prism simply to say hello and shake hands. He was also beginning to believe that Prism station had experienced more than a mere breakdown of communications.
Surely if any of their equipment was functioning they would have detected his presence by now and come out to wave at him. But the station grounds remained deserted. Nor had anyone appeared by the time he touched down a couple of hundred meters outside the station perimeter. The cautious approach had been preprogrammed into the suit, an apologetic voice explained when he asked why they hadn't set down inside the station itself. If some unknown catastrophe had overwhelmed the station's staff, it would better to come up on it gradually instead of dropping down in the middle of it. Evan had to concur, mildly mortified that his clothing was acting more sensibly than he.
The suit disconnected itself from the now useless parasail. Evan took a few experimental steps, jumped five meters into the air, and assured himself all suit systems were functioning properly. Then he turned a slow circle to study the remarkable forest surrounding the station.
He was a well-read man with a voracious interest in natural science, but nothing he'd encountered in the literature of the real or the imaginary had prepared him for the environment in which he now found himself. The first thing he noticed was that despite the extraordinary clarity and intensity of the sunlight, it was difficult to isolate individual growths. Not only because the Prismatic flora grew in nonsymmetrical fractal shapes, but also because so many of them were highly reflective. While much of the reflectivity was a natural consequence of the silicate composition of the growths, some of it was intentional. Reflectivity can become an efficient defense against predators. It's hard to attack something when all you see is what it reflects. The research complex had been constructed in the middle of a forest of warped mirrors.
In place of trees there were the gigantic cascalarians, whose solid transparent toruses of silicon dioxide were alive with miniature ecologies of their own. Tall thin towers of copper- and iron-colored silicates grew twenty meters high. Each was no bigger around than a soda straw, but the whole grove was given support by a subterranean network of glass fibers that spread through the sandy soil. Evan was particularly taken with a bright yellow aluminosilicate bush that resembled four interlocking helixes. The bright colors were due to the presence in each growth of trace minerals extracted from a soil that was more akin to the sand of a deserted beach than a healthy black loam. Instead of rotting, decomposing organics, the earth of Prism was rich in silicates.
Set amid the taller "trees" were open glades of intensely hued smaller growths. One such field was filled from side to side with small silvery rotors mounted on stems. Breezes set the whole field to spinning, like a floor lined with children's toys.
Evan bent to study them. The suit took all the strain off his back and would hold him in that position permanently, if he so commanded. His visor was centimeters from the tiny spinning flowers. Not all were silver. A few showed touches of tangerine-orange and pink. In the entire steadily spinning meadow there was not a suggestion of green.
Pure photovores then, every one of them. He wondered if the rotors served a function. Perhaps the winds on Prism blew out of the sun and the miniature propellers kept each growth oriented toward the light. Something new caught his eye: places where the rotor blades had been eaten away.
A short search turned up several of the grazers; tiny black-and-white-spotted beetle shapes equipped with mouthparts like a belt sander. Simultaneous with their discovery was the explanation for the rotors themselves. His guess about sun orientation had been way off. Each stiff breeze caused the. rotors to turn, which threw the grazing bugs to the ground. They would have to climb the stems to resume eating. So the rotor design was intended to keep the grazing to a tolerable level.
"Why are they eating?" he wondered aloud. "If these growths are pure photovores, there's no organic matter in them."
"The grazers are also photovores," the suit informed him. "They are after the mineral salts which are concentrated within the small growths. Such salts are necessary for proper body development and functioning. I do not have details on the chemistry yet. They were not included in my programming."
Doubtless because the research team hadn't gone into such details yet, Evan mused. He began to wonder how the "bugs" reproduced. Did they lay eggs, or glass beads, or what? The possibilities were endless and unnerving. He was thankful he wasn't a biologist assigned to this world.
He straightened and started toward the camp.
A wall of rainbows blocked his path, a curving latticework of pale green crystals too beautiful to trample; he took care to edge around them. As he drew near, the bladelike shapes quivered visibly. He checked an internal readout. There was no wind. But the blades were definitely in motion. His helmet was also picking up a high pitched whine.
"What are they doing?" he inquired warily.
"You are a motile form which has entered their growth space. As such, you represent a threat. The plant is responding. Look down to your right. Another motile is also within the prohibited area."
Evan hunted through the lesser growths around the base of the rainbow cluster until he located something that looked like a slug enveloped in an amethyst shell. It was very close to the pink and rainbow blades. Abruptly it halted and began to quiver. As Evan stared in fascination the purple outer shell shattered. The carbon-based slug tried to retreat to cover but was immediately set upon by half a dozen long wormlike forms that erupted from below the sandy surface and began to tear at its unprotected flesh, quivering amid the fragments of purple silica that lay glittering on the ground.
Evan took a couple of steps backward. Instantly the whining faded away. The rainbow hedge ceased moving.
"Ultrasound," the suit said. "A useful defensive mechanism on a world of silicates."
Giving the hedge a wide berth, Evan continued toward the station perimeter, his mechanical legs eating up the ground in huge strides.
It was impossible to take a step without destroying something. Transparent babbles no more than three centimeters in diameter, which held in their centers individual blobs of chlorophyllic material, covered the ground. The bubbles served to intensify the sunlight falling on the energy-producing organic matter within.
With each step Evan smashed dozens of them underfoot, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Fortunately, the ground cover was exceptionally resilient. Looking back, he could see the bubbles began to re-form soon after they'd been broken. Even so, despite the reassurance of this rapid regeneration, the constant crunching noise in his ears was disconcerting.
He was beginning to think that nothing bigger than the unfortunate slug moved about freely on the planet's surface when something that wasn't a member of the station staff interposed itself between him and the nearest building.