Starborne

The egg is waiting, glued to the creature’s underbelly: a many-faceted bluish-purple sphere of goodly size. The hole, it seems, is nearly finished. The insectoid-thing, standing upright and bracing itself by spreading its lowest pair of limbs, bends forward at a sharp angle until its head and the upper half of its thorax disappear within the worm. Rapid drilling movements are apparent, the visible half of the creature rocking in quick rhythms, the hidden head no doubt bobbing furiously below to send that terrible beak deeper and deeper into the soft vulnerable material that makes up the worm. The process goes on for an unpleasantly long time.

Then the creature straightens up. It appears to be satisfied with its labors. Once again it glowers warningly at the two watching humans; then it does an odd little strutting dance atop the worm, which, after a moment, can be seen not to be a dance at all, but simply a procedure by which the thing is pulling its huge egg free of its underbelly and laboriously shoving it downward, moving it from one pair of limbs to another, until the next-to-last pair is holding it. At that point the creature flops forward over its excavation, spearing the point of its beak into the skin of the worm as though to anchor itself, and the legs that grasp the egg plunge fiercely downward, jamming the egg deep into the hole that awaits it.

That is all. The creature extricates itself, throws one more huge-eyed glare at Huw and the year-captain, and goes scuttling off into the darkness beyond.

The worm has not reacted in any visible way to the entire event. The snuffling and chomping sounds, and the accompanying sixty-cycle drone, have continued unabated.

“The worm’s flesh will heal around the egg, I suppose,” the year-captain says. “A cyst will form, and there the egg will stay until it hatches, giving off that lovely yellow light. Then, I would imagine, a cheery little thing much like its mother will come forth and will find all the food it needs close at hand. And the worm will never notice a thing.”

“Lovely. Very lovely,” says Huw.

The year-captain moves forward another couple of paces to have a closer look at the opening in which the insectoid-thing has inserted its egg. Huw does not accompany him. It is necessary, the year-captain finds, to clamber up onto the worm’s back for a proper view of what he wants to see. The year-captain’s heavy boots sink a few millimeters into the worm’s yielding flesh as he mounts, but the worm does not react to the year-captain’s presence. The year-captain stares into the aperture, carefully pulling its edges apart so that he can peer into its interior.

“Watch it!” Huw yells. “Mommy is coming back!”

The year-captain looks up. Indeed the insectoid-thing has reappeared, as though its egg has sounded some sort of alarm that has summoned it back from the darker depths of the tunnel. By the light of his helmet lamp the year-captain can see the creature advancing at a startling pace, mandibles clacking, front claws waving ferociously, eyes bright with rage, clouds of what looks like venom emerging from vents along its thorax.

Hastily the year-captain jumps down from the worm and backs away. But the insectoid-thing keeps coming, and swiftly. It seems quite clear to the year-captain that the infuriated creature intends to hurl itself on him and bite him in half, and it appears quite capable of doing just that.

Both men are armed with energy guns, purely as a precautionary thing. The year-captain draws his now, raises it almost without aiming, and fires one quick bolt.

The insectoid-thing explodes in a burst of yellow flame.

“A damned close thing,” Huw says softly as he comes up beside him. “Hell hath no fury like a giant alien bug whose egg is in danger.”

“It wasn’t in any danger,” the year-captain murmurs.

“The bug didn’t know that.”

“No. No. The bug didn’t know.” The year-captain, shaken, nudges the fragments of the thing with the boot of one toe. “I’ve never killed anything before,” he says. “A mosquito, maybe. A spider. But not something like this.”

“You had no choice,” Huw says. “Two seconds more and it would have been going for your throat.”

The year-captain acknowledges that.

“Anyway, it was very damned ugly, old brother.”

“It may have been an intelligent life-form,” says the year-captain. “At the very least, a highly developed one. In any case, it belongs here and we don’t.” His voice is thick with anger and disgust.

He pauses beside the dead creature a little while longer. Then he turns and walks slowly from the tunnel.

Huw follows him out. For a little while they stand together outside the entrance, saying nothing, watching the viscous rain come down in thick looping sheets.

“Would you like to collect a couple of those eggs to take back to the ship for study?” Huw asks finally, goading just a little, but in what he wants to think is a pleasant way, trying to ease the tension of the moment.

The year-captain does not answer immediately.

“No,” he says at last. “I think not.”