Chapter Six

Two things struck him forcefully as he emerged: the overpowering brilliance of the daylight reflected from a million silicate forms and a peculiar smell that caused him to inhale sharply. Peculiar, but not bad, the smell was that of fresh air. The first fresh air his lungs had embraced since he'd left Samstead. It was strikingly different from suit air, as sharp and piercing in its own way as the light.

The air gave him no trouble, which allowed him to concentrate on the problem of seeing. In order to see at all he had to squint, and still the tears poured from his outraged eyes. He would need some kind of protection if he expected to go more than a hundred meters from the suit.

Ducking back inside, he worked his way up toward the visor and searched for a release. There was none. The visor was heat-sealed in place and couldn't be removed without the facilities of a fully equipped machine shop. So he would have to improvise.

The food concentrates came in heavy plastic packets. He'd pulled one apart and was studying the material when it occurred to him that he didn't have a single tool; not even a pocketknife. Everything was built into the MHW and secured as tightly as the photochromic visor.

Another foray outside and another search of his immediate surroundings assured him he was in no danger of imminent attack by crystalline carnivores. Crying like a baby, he hunted around the fringe of the suit until he found what he wanted: a section of bubble grass that had been shattered by the suit's fall. One curved edge seemed sharp enough.

The plastic cut more easily than he'd hoped. When he finished he was the owner of a strip five centimeters wide and thirty long. He wrapped it around his head and knotted it in back. He hoped he wouldn't have to do any running.

The next time he stuck his head back out into the light and tentatively opened his eyes he found that he could see without pain, though not very clearly. His first attempt at scavenging had proved more successful than not. He squirmed back into the suit to see what else might be salvageable. It wasn't encouraging.

His leisure duty suit, which he'd expected to wear on the journey home, became a crude pack with the legs knotted and then tied together and the belt secured at the waist. It wouldn't hold much, but so far he'd been unable to find much to carry. He was more concerned about his footgear than anything else. Sunburn he would suffer when his underwear gave out, but his light shoes would have to last or else his feet would be cut to ribbons. Once more he was grateful for all the walking he'd done at home. At least the soles of his feet were tougher than those of the average desk-minder.

He spent a futile half day trying to get at the rest of the food, which was secured within the MHW's dispensers. Without the proper tools he was doomed to failure; but that didn't stop him from cursing the suit's designers fiercely.

One more thing needed to be done before he abandoned the suit permanently; he wrapped one piece of legging over nose and mouth. The air might smell refreshing, but it was full of minute particles of silicon. Silicosis was one disease he intended to avoid at all cost.

Thus garbed and muffled he took a deep breath, thankful that the surface temperature was mild, and stepped clear of the suit. He was standing virtually naked and alone on the surface of a hostile alien world.

He checked his wrist beacon. It came to life immediately, light strong, battery fresh. The light would grow brighter if he came close to another beacon, a feature designed to enable survivors of a disaster to find one another. He was going to use it to find Martine Ophemert's beacon. Its range was short, but he should be close enough for it to be useful.

Eventually it would also guide his rescuers to him. Until that blessed day he had to survive, probably for several weeks or more. It would take that long for the company to get worried enough to send a shuttle after him.

He remembered the line the MHW had been taking prior to its demise: northwest. Orienting himself by the sun, he started off in what he thought was the right direction. If his beacon light did not grow noticeably brighter by the evening, he would backtrack and choose a different tack.

The suit was utterly useless to him now. Still, he abandoned it with reluctance. It was his last real link with Samstead and safety.

The forest closed in around him. Every growth, however innocuous-looking, presented a hostile appearance to Evan. Every one seemed to follow his steps, waiting for just the right moment to explode, or spit acid, or envelop him in some horrible alien web. It took him several hours to realize that not every living thing on Prism was intent on his destruction. So long as he did not threaten them, they were quite indifferent to his presence.

As to which were actually dangerous he couldn't have said. Slick growths which appeared unyielding proved to be soft and flexible when he accidentally brushed up against them, while those which looked cuddly turned out to be full of barbed hooks. He spent half an hour pulling the curved objects of that lesson out of his left leg and resolved to avoid contact with everything, even if it meant deviating from his chosen path and going the long way around.

On the plus side, his shoes were holding up well. The soles were thin but tough, a quality common to the majority of modem footwear. Also, most of the silicate growths that filled the ecological niche for ground cover were softer than their spiky, larger cousins. On some, like the bubble-encased chlorophyllic growths, the danger was not cutting himself so much as it was slipping on the slick glassy curves and breaking his neck. He found he had to skate as much as walk across them.

Water was no problem. If anything, there was too much of it. Late afternoon found him taking shelter beneath a condarite. The big growth reminded him of several dozen glass umbrellas growing one inside the other. Each shell was a different color, but all were tinted green by symbiotic bacteria. Small six-legged creatures with triple light absorbing back plates lived between the umbrella shells. They crawled out to peep curiously down at him, vanished instantly if they caught him looking at them.

He wondered if growths like the condarite made any use of the water. It seemed likely they would need it to transport salts and minerals for growth and health throughout their structure, but they were devoid of the woody pulp which formed the body of normal trees. Perhaps they made use of some kind of porous silicate membrane. Another question best left to the botanists-or the geologists.

It rained all the rest of that day and through the night. He was up before dawn and on his way again. It would take his system a while to get used to the longer days and nights. Still, he felt refreshed and almost confident as he approached a small pool for a drink the following morning.

He hesitated only because something-it looked like a glass centipede-had chosen the best place for drinking. The thing had just shuffled to the pool's edge and dipped its mouthparts into the water.

As Evan stared, crouched among a soft clump of what looked like steel-wool cactus, the worm began to sizzle. Startled, he jumped backward. The reaction did not spread, however, and he slowly resumed his vantage point.

The water parted and something like a giant amoeba emerged. Slowly and patiently, a gel enveloped the dead worm and sucked it down into the pond. Evan moved forward cautiously and stared downward, risked a peek beneath his plastic eye-shield. Except that the bubble grass grew only to within two meters of the water's edge and then halted abruptly, there was nothing to indicate that the "pond" was actually filled by something powerful, dangerous, and perfectly transparent.

Nearby grew a variety of thin photovore that flourished in thick stands like pale yellow bamboo. An intricate internal structure of struts and braces enabled some of the canes to climb to forty meters or more despite their narrow diameters and apparent fragility. Feeling a little shaky, Evan snapped off a three-meter length and tucked it under one arm. As a weapon it was next to useless, but it would make a serviceable probe.

He used it on the next waterhole, but only after something bright purple and beige rolled out of the undergrowth on four ball bearings to sip at the water's edge. It extended a coiled yellow snout, inhaled its fill, and rolled noiselessly off into the forest. Evan assumed its place by the pool, jabbed repeatedly at the water with his newly acquired staff, and prepared to jump or run as circumstances dictated. He was required to do neither. Nothing grabbed the pole; nothing dissolved it. There was nothing in the pool but water. Then and only then did he bend to drink.

The bail-bearing drinker had been an organosilicate, a protein lifeform shielded by a silicate shell. He found himself wondering how it would taste if cooked over a slow fire. No, not yet. He hadn't been out of the MHW that long. He made a meal of concentrates, added appropriate vitamins, and continued on.

His-close escape at the hands of the pool-dweller was forgotten when he noticed a perceptible strengthening of his beacon's light. He was still on course, then, and would not have to waste valuable time by returning to the suit and seeking a different direction. As the long evening set in, the brilliance of his surroundings was minimized. When he was able to see without his crude sunshades, he stowed them carefully in his pack, then reviewed his limited stock of food. He had enough to get him back to the station, but no guarantee that he would find untouched stores of food once he returned. He'd seen how easily the local lifeforms could break into and devour the materials used to manufacture electronic components, witnessed their taste for the basic elements that comprised the human body. He might return in high spirits only to find an empty larder.

If he was going to have to dine on the wildlife, now was as good a time to try it as any, while he still had some regular food to tide him over the inevitable stomach upsets. He would have to hunt carefully among the organosilicates for something palatable.

Might as well take a stab at hunting and gathering now, during the one time of day when he could see without his encumbering plastic eyewrap. He would improvise. Mankind had progressed somewhat beyond the skills necessary for hunting and gathering, and the citizens of Samstead had progressed rather farther than most. Which was another way of saying Evan was acutely aware of his ignorance.

Still another in the chain of ponds lay ahead, sheltered beneath a grove of what looked like glass poles topped by abandoned birds' nests. The nests were actually clumps of delicate fibers that strained to catch the rays of the slowly setting sun. Evan could see them moving, following the shrinking light, drinking in the photons. In the center of each pole was a greenish vein as thick as his leg. It was impossible to tell where silicate life ended and carbonbased began.

Piles of shattered trunks and broken fibers provided good cover, but try as he might, he couldn't locate anything small and edible. Everything was encased in a silicate shell or was composed entirely of inedible silicate materials.

Disgusted, he gave up before nightfall and lay down to watch the fibers atop the pole-trees slump against their trunks. Once more the decreasing light brought forth a multitude of night sounds prodigious in their inventiveness. Constrained screams, shrill whistles, buzzes, and peeps were familiar to him by now. In addition he knew that the air waves were alive with an alien cacophony pitched well above his hearing range.

Of more concern was the awakening of nocturnal carnivores, though so far he hadn't been disturbed after dark. That was fortunate, since the only weapons he possessed were a fragile silicate staff and a fragment of broken bubble grass. He strove to lie as still as possible.

Like the day, the night was comfortably warm, a real blessing considering his meager attire. Hadn't his ancestors made do with nothing at all? But they had been covered with fur.

Well, he wasn't dead yet, and with each hour of continued survival his confidence increased, if not his realistic prospects. Hadn't he survived most of a whole day outside on an alien world without a suit? It was a talent the citizens of Samstead had forgone long ago, resurrected by one Evan Orgell out of necessity. He had traversed a respectable number of kilometers by the power of his own muscles, avoided several dangerous lifeforms, and made an attempt, albeit an unsuccessful one, to obtain local food. He had much, he was convinced, to be proud of.

In fact, it seemed that he had been pretty much left alone by Prism's inhabitants, an observation which led him to consider a radical possibility. If the staff of the research station had not tried to defend their post but instead had abandoned it to the catastrophe which had in the end overwhelmed it, would they too have been left alone? On a world as unpredictable and unexplored as Prism, was passivity better than an active defense in the face of alien attack?

It took his mind off the night sounds as he sat there, scrunched in between two glassy trees as the stars replaced the sun with their wholly inadequate light. When the rush of adrenaline through his system lessened, exhaustion began to creep in and he became aware of how tired he really was.

He didn't know when he fell asleep, but he did not expect to awaken until morning. As worn out as he was, it took something spectacular to wake him in the middle of the night.

What happened was that a star tried to get into his eye.

It was bright blue and it tickled. He twisted and jerked his head violently. Aware that something had settled on his face, he sat up fast and brushed sharply at the star with his right hand. It flew away as he opened his eyes.

Until then he'd slept within the womb of the MHW, the visor darkened to shut out any external sights which might have disturbed his rest. No visor stood between him and the night sights of Prism now. One of them had landed on his cheek and tickled him awake.

The night was alive with dancing jewels. His first thoughts were of the fireflies of Earth or the pinmotes of Hivehom, but it quickly became apparent that the phenomenon he was observing was no kin to those familiar luciferase-producing lifeforms. They were something different, strikingly different.

They were much brighter than their purely carbonbased analogs and they exhibited every imaginable color of the rainbow as they swarmed in the thousands above the pond. As he stared, two more darted close to his face and hovered there. They were bright red, crimson. A third and fourth joined them, one green, the other an extraordinary lavender color, all hanging in the night air in front of him like hummingbirds. Their tiny, delicate silicate wings generated a gentle whirring noise instead of a harsh insectoid buzz. They did not blink but glowed steadily, their lights, like their colors, intense and unvarying.

He waved at them and they retreated a few centimeters. The swarm produced more than enough light for him to see by. He tried to imagine what kind of system could produce such a creature, theorized that they must spend every daylight hour soaking up the sun's energy in order to be able to fly and glow at night.

Surrounded now, he waved both hands to shoo them away and watched as they scattered, like gemstones tossed from a rajah's hand. Rising, he saw that they rested in the trees and bushes, conserving their stored energy for the production of light. The silicate forest, which had been so intimidating by day, was now transformed into a dazzling display of living light.

All was not innocent beauty, however. Something moved in the dim, multicolored light, and Evan ducked back between his protective boles. It sounded like a small machine. In a way, it was.

It was composed entirely of black borosilicates, tough and unyielding, save for a trio of bright pink eyes. With an inflexible, gaping mouth it inhaled the flying jewels, darting and swooping among the dancing clouds on stiff, curved wings. Fingerlike scoops on the end of each wing curled and twisted, blowing still more unfortunate prey into the open maw while driving the predator through the air. Evan had not delved sufficiently into ancient history to recognize such devices as propellers but he admired their efficiency nonetheless. The single predator had little impact on the thousands of dancing jewels, which, oblivious to the havoc it was wreaking among them, continued with their nocturnal ballet.

He watched until his stomach began to complain. He was tempted to dip into his store of concentrates, forced himself not to. Better to continue to ration himself. However, his stomach demanded something, so he left his resting place and strolled to the edge of the pond, confident that the black flier would ignore him.

He tested the water with the tip of his staff. While the silica was neither dissolved by acids nor attacked by some unsuspected subsurface carnivore, it did attract some attention in the form of a knot of round little water striders. They were not sharp and slim like the snowflakes who lived on the water tension during the day. They were much plumper, but most of that consisted of a silicate honeycomb that was more air than solid. Like the jewels, they also proclaimed their presence to the night by generating light. They were either blue or blue-gray, however, disdaining the intense displays of their aerial relations. The presence of the staff in the water seemed to confuse them. They kept bumping into it and swirling away dazedly.

Picking one out for closer observation was a simple matter. Evan dropped to his knees and scooped one up in his palm. The honeycombed body boasted a long, screwlike tail, a kind of corkscrew flagellum. Beneath the lightly glowing blue shell was a small knot of pink protoplasm. The tail pushed weakly at his palm, unable to propel its owner out of Evan's hand.

After a moment's hesitation, he set it down on the sandy shore, where it twisted and humped about helplessly. Utilizing a fist-size rock, he smashed the shell. There was no audible response to this destruction, but the pale blue glow vanished instantly and the creature ceased its thrashing. He was able to pick off the remainder of the honeycomb shell with his fingers. This left him with a lump of pink flesh that lay motionless in his palm. The light of the jewel dancers revealed nothing resembling organs; no mouth, eyes, heart, or anything familiar. Just firm meat and a purely silicate tail.

Holding his breath and closing his eyes, Evan held it over his lips and bit it off clean at the tail joint.

The flesh was firm but not tough, with a rubbery consistency and practically no flavor at all. There was no blood, only a thin transparent fluid that was salty to the taste. He washed it down with some fresh water, inserted his staff into the pond, and fished out a second honeycomb strider, killed it instantly in the same fashion as the first. After several minutes passed, during which time he had not thrown up, he downed the next course of what was to become a filling late-night snack.

He found that the pale-blue striders went down easiest, while the blue-grays made him slightly queasy. Therefore he stuck with the pure blues, throwing the grays back, fishing for the diatomous forms with mounting enthusiasm.

By the time he finished, sated, he had accumulated a small mountain of cracked shells and discarded tails and a minor bellyache due more to overeating than the inedibility of his chosen prey. Wishing for a soft cushion but settling for a pile of shed pole-tree fibers, he leaned back and rested his crossed hands over his full belly. As he did so several brownish shapes descended from above and began to pick noisily at the pile of scraps he'd left behind. If they had eyes he couldn't see them. They seemed to be all teeth and claws.

It didn't take the creatures long to clean up the afterthoughts of his meal and return to the sky on parafoil wings. They left only pure silicate structures in their wake. Carbon-consumers, like the scavengers feeding on the bodies of the unlucky station staff. Contented or not, he would do well to find a safer place in which to sleep off his repast.

He rose and began searching, grateful for the clouds of dancing jewels and for their light, which was beginning to fade as their stored solar energy started to run down. He needed a refuge fast, before total darkness reclaimed Prism's surface. A tree would be good, if he could find something climbable that would support his weight.

As it turned out he found something much more accessible: a place where flood waters from the stream which fed the chain of ponds had gouged out a cave in a soft bank. Crawling in, he found that the cave floor was smooth and dry. Blocking the entrance as best as he was able with rocks, he piled cool sand beneath his head and instantly went to sleep . . .

Sunlight streaming through the opening finally forced him awake. He twisted onto his side, reluctant to part with the last lingering shreds of reassuring sleep. He was stiff and slightly damp but not cold. The sun was insistent.

He rolled over. As he did so his right hand contacted something hard and slick. It moved, the reaction bringing him to full wakefulness much faster than the intruding sunlight. He had company in the cave! Whatever it was lay between him and the entrance, so he scuttled frantically back against the rear wall of his refuge, clutching his pitiful shard of bubble grass in one hand and waiting for what seemed like the inevitable attack.

The other occupant of the cave watched this activity blandly out of olive green eyes. There were only two of them, but that was all that was reassuring about the alien. It was less than a meter in length and resembled a loaf of french bread baked in dark blue glass. This body was supported by ten canary yellow legs. Body and legs were opaque, so Evan couldn't tell by looking at it if it was an organosilicate or purely silicate lifeform.

As he eyed it warily it did something no other creature he'd previously encountered had done: it blinked, both green eyes being temporarily covered and then exposed again by a pair of black silicate shades that closed over them from the sides. His gaze moved to the forest of cilia that covered the creature's back. At first he'd thought the yellow growths were some kind of fur. Now he could make out the miniature dish-shape that tipped each strand. All of them were straining toward the sunlight flooding the outer part of the cave, the tiny silicate cups drinking in the brightness. Another photovore, he decided.

His suppositions were confirmed when it retreated a few steps in order to place its receptors fully in the light. It kept its gaze on him all the time and the thought occurred to him it might be as fearful of him as he was of it. He relaxed somewhat.

The cilia receptors fluttered as they were placed in direct sunlight. Not only was the alien charging its system; it was enjoying the early morning heat as well, since the conductivity of silicon increased with the temperature. It leaned forward to nibble at the sand with half a dozen small pincers arranged around its mouth.

As he watched it eat, his initial panic dissipated. Evan grew aware of a soft, steady humming noise. It emanated from somewhere inside his visitor and sounded much like a small motor set on idle. At first he thought the sound unvarying, but the longer he listened the more he became aware of subtle modulations. It was a disarming sound, soothing, relaxing, almost a mechanical purr.

He forced himself to concentrate on those crunching mouthparts. How long before the alien came to the conclusion that the cave contained a more accessible concentration of useful minerals than raw sand?

Keeping as much distance between himself and the creature as possible, Evan started crawling around the inner rim of the cave, making for the entrance. As he moved, the alien continued with its breakfast. It also moved its head to watch him. The cilia on its back rose to track the rising sun.

He was very near the cave opening when the steady hum from the alien suddenly rose in volume. Evan fairly jumped for the outside, scrambling on hands and knees, and promptly bashed his head against something unseen. Dazed, he sat back, gingerly felt his forehead, and waited for his vision to clear. Could he have misjudged his sprint for safety so badly?

He had not. During the night, a transparent window had been placed over the cave entrance.

He ran his fingers along the smooth barrier, glanced sharply back at his unexpected roommate. Some kind of protective secretion, he decided. There was no other explanation for the construction. The alien had wandered into the cave sometime during the night, lead ignored or not noticed its other occupant, and had pest the shield in place to keep out undesirables while it slept.

Unfortunately, in sealing intruders out, it had also sealed Evan in. The humming lessened in intensity. Keeping his attention fixed on the creature, which was eying his own movements with equal alacrity, Evan made a fist and slammed it against the transparency. It didn't look especially thick, and it was riddled with tiny holes, but as with so much he'd already encountered on this world, appearances proved deceiving. Despite his efforts, it did not respond to the attentions of mere human muscles.

He turned away and began looking for a good-sized rock. As he turned, the alien moved toward him. Scrambling backward on hands and knees, he backed into a small alcove, determined to defend himself for as long as he was able.

Except there was nothing to defend against. Ignoring him, the alien approached the barrier. It glanced back once to assure itself of his position, then turned its head to face the glassy wall. A tiny hypodermiclike tube emerged from beneath its mouth, jetted a stream of odorless liquid onto the barrier. Evan stiffened, remembering previously observed secreters of dangerous acids, but this one didn't act like a corrosive. There was no hissing and steaming and the barrier didn't melt into a puddle of silicate slag.

The stream ceased. The alien settled back and waited. While it did so Evan found himself a rock with some heft. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it made him feel better. The creature continued to ignore him.

There was a loud cracking sound. As Evan stared, a jagged line appeared in the barrier. It was followed by another crack, then a third. The cracks began to run together and the transparency started to fall apart, crumbling like spun sugar. In a couple of minutes the wall he'd been unable to dent was a pile of powder on the cave floor. Enzymes or acids, the only difference was one of perspective, he thought.

But the alien still stood between him and the exit. While he watched, it consumed the silicate powder, much like a spider consuming the fragments of its own web, and then nudged a couple of rocks out of its way. The cilia on its back pointed toward the sun regardless of the position of the body.

Apparently satisfied with the exit it had created, it crawled over the few remaining stones and out onto the sandy beach outside. Then it turned to face him. Frowning and keeping his eyes on it, Evan crawled out after it. As he emerged, it backed away from him.

Its gait was more of a waddle than a walk and he almost smiled. Sharp mouthparts or not, it was hard to take anything with so comical a method of locomotion too seriously. Besides, if it harbored any malign intentions toward him, surely they would have manifested themselves by now.

He stood and stretched, trying to unbind his cramped muscles. He still held tight to the rock he'd picked up, in case the creature exhibited an abrupt shift in temperament. But he felt fairly confident now that he was outside. The alien had been far more threatening when Evan was reduced to moving on hands and knees. Outside the cave, he towered over it. He could step over it without straining.

He felt confident enough, in fact, to return to the cave long enough to gather up his few belongings. Rack outside, he removed his broken bubble-grass cup and used it to scoop water from the pond. As he drank, he tried to pretend he was swallowing the cold fruit juice his suit used to provide on demand.

When he'd sipped his fill he splashed the cool water on his face, wiped off with a sleeve of his underwear. A series of erratic beeps made him turn.

He'd half expected the alien to be gone by now, to have waddled off into the underbrush in search of a better place to sun itself. Instead, it had moved a little closer. It stopped when he turned to look back at it, but did not retreat. Instead, it squatted on its ten legs and continued to stare at him while emitting a remarkable sequence of electronic squirps and moans.

"You're even weirder than the rest of the fractal fauna, aren't you?" Evan said to it. "You're not after my bones, but you're not in any particular hurry to leave either."

Surely there must be variations in intelligence among the local lifeforms, he mused as he continued drying himself. Perhaps this one stood at the pinnacle of Prismatic evolution. It might even approach the domestic dog in intelligence and reasoning power. Lingering in his vicinity implied territoriality, or curiosity, or both. Could it be tamed? It would be nice to have some sort of companion for the duration of his stay, assuming that Martine Ophemert had gone the way of the rest of the research staff. And if he could tame it, it would make a wonderful presentation when he returned home and gave his first report to the company. It would certainly put Machoka's living bracelet to shame.

He sat down by the water's edge and stirred the surface with his staff. None of the organosilicates which had provided his previous night's supper appeared. Apparently they were nocturnal. Probably stayed buried safely in the soft sand that lined the bottom of the pool.

His stomach would not leave him alone, so he reluctantly dug into a pack of concentrated food. A tug on the tab opened it and he waited for the contents to cook themselves. While the food began to steam, he settled back against a comfortable boulder and regarded his beeping, humming companion thoughtfully.

"I wish you'd announced yourself." He spoke for the pleasure of hearing his own voice rise above the alien cacophony of the forest. "You scared the crap out of me." The creature's head dipped and bobbed several times, like that of a lizard surveying its surroundings. It continued to emit its amazing variety of sounds.

Evan recalled his earlier thought, about heat raising the conductivity of silicon. "Is that why you joined me? Not for the protection of the cave but for my body heat? Did I enable you to stay powered up for an extra hour or two?"

He shrugged, ate his breakfast, and then carefully washed out the foil packet it had come in. The foil would make a serviceable cup to complement his broken piece of bubble grass. After stowing the makeshift utensils in his pack, he donned his crude sunshade. The throbbing which the rising sun had induced behind his eyes began to fade as the reflective glare from the surrounding growth was reduced.

Odd, but he felt he could see the bizarre shapes a little more clearly now, could perceive the fractal surfaces in greater detail-though he still had trouble telling where some ended and others began.

Throughout his breakfast his alien companion had neither moved nor displayed anything resembling intelligence. Idiot, he chided himself. If anything on Prism had the brains of a rat it would be a scientific revelation. His desires and emotions had momentarily overcome his good sense. There was nothing on this sterile world to keep him company, even inadvertently. Out of a desire for companionship he was ascribing characteristics to this particular creature which it did not possess. The inhabitants of this world were as much machine as animal.

You couldn't even say that such an automaton was alive, in the normal sense of the term. Was a solar-powered surveyor alive? Did it have a soul? True, other worlds had provided some extreme examples of divergent intelligent evolution, but however outre their basic design, all such examples of known lifeforms were fashioned of flesh and blood.

Time enough for such speculation when he'd completed his current search. If he located the Ophemert beacon within the next couple of days, all well and good. if not, he intended to start back toward the station to begin the serious business of somehow getting in touch with his rescue team.

Checking his position by the sun, he chose a course and started off into the fantastically colored forest. As he did so the giant blue caterpillar behind him generated a series of loud buzzes and ambled off in his wake. After walking a dozen meters or so and noting that this peculiar silicate shadow was no coincidence, Evan halted. So did the caterpillar. Raised up off its first two pairs of legs, it regarded him out of cold glass eyes, apparently waiting for him to resume his march. The yellow cilia on its back swung around to face the sun.

Was it following him because it was attracted to him, or in hopes he would die and provide it with a harmless source of rare minerals? He shrugged. "All right, tag along if you want, but give me my room." It pleased him to talk at the creature if not to it. Understanding was a moot point. The caterpillar had no ears.

It couldn't match his stride, but with five times as many legs it managed to keep up with him. Gradually it drew nearer, until it was paralleling instead of following him. Most of the time it kept its gaze fastened to its own course, but from time to time it would glance up and over to check his position to make sure he was still there.

It occurred to Evan that it might be waiting for nightfall again, and the comfort of his body heat. Well, he had no objection to sharing his sleep with the creature. By now he was pretty much convinced of its harmlessness.

A bed warmer, he mused. That's what my status has been reduced to on this crazy world. A simple heat engine.

Any kind of benign company was welcome. Besides, if something dangerous prowled these glass woods at night, perhaps his new companion would react to its presence and awaken him.

The heat engine and the caterpillar alarm. Better material for a poem than a dissertation on xenobiology.