This world was different: Davlin could tell as soon as he stepped through the transportal. But though he sensed looming danger, he would not leave until he had completed at least a cursory exploration. The Chairman expected a full report on every new Klikiss planet an explorer visited. Every coordinate tile needed to be documented somehow.
The sky overhead was a bruised purplish-red; a primary element of the atmosphere seemed to be distilled shadow. As he stepped away from the blank trapezoidal rock of the transportal, Davlin took a deep breath and coughed at the sour, sulfurous odor in the air. The Klikiss had similar breathing requirements to humans, but the stench made this world unpleasant. He fumbled in the pockets of his jumpsuit, withdrew a supplemental airmask, and fixed it over his face.
He looked back at the transportal and was surprised to see that the flat wall stood alone at the brink of a canyon’s sheer cliff. In order to return, he would have to step through the transportal as if he were leaping into the chasm itself. Most unsettling . . .
The wind whistled with a strange bottomless moan. On an uneven escarpment of talus boulders, he saw the familiar conical lumps of Klikiss buildings. Some of the ancient hive towers stretched high into the sky; many passages no doubt penetrated deep into caves.
Davlin set off across the rough, uneven ground toward the empty city. In the thousands of years since the Klikiss had disappeared, their roads had eroded away. Even if this world was not a likely candidate for the colonization initiative, he could bring images to archaeological teams for further analysis.
Gravity was rather heavy on this world, and his footsteps became ponderous. Even with supplemental oxygen, he was breathing hard as he trudged up the slope.
Turning back to see how far he had come from the cliff-edge transportal, he spotted strange shapes in the clotted sky. Jagged wings surrounded a body core that trailed twitching tentacles, like a bizarre fusion between a giant jellyfish and a wide-winged pterodactyl.
Davlin instantly recognized the threat. He counted dozens of the things converging toward the transportal from across the canyon, as if its activation had alerted them to the possibility of fresh meat. When the flying jellyfish-creatures drifted closer, Davlin could see that each bulbous body was merely a sack to hold a mouth-ring large enough to engulf its paralyzed prey.
The things would get to the transportal before he could reach it.
Suddenly, the wind whipped up, and the brooding sky spewed sheets of drenching rain. The moisture felt oily and disgusting on his skin; a few seconds later, it began to burn.
When the jellyfish-things spotted him, the pack drew closer from all directions. Cut off from the transportal and his escape, Davlin raced for shelter in a tumble of boulders on the outskirts of the city ruins. His burst of speed made the jellyfish-things move faster. On broad wings, they cruised after him.
He wedged himself into a dark cranny in the misshapen rocks, where at least none of the acidic rain could penetrate. Unfortunately, the cranny also sheltered other creatures. With a glint of bluish metallic carapace, a segmented body as wide as his thigh unwrapped itself, full of sharp legs and clacking claws. The centipede creature sprang out like a jack-in-the-box. Davlin spun just in time so that the scissorlike claws fastened on his pack, ripping the fabric but not touching his skin.
He struggled to shrug off and discard his pack as a second giant centipede crawled out of a different crevice. Drips of venom sparkled on the ends of its upraised clawed feet. Davlin swung the pack, knocking the second creature aside, while the first increased its grip on the fabric, striking and slashing. Medical supplies, cans of rations, and clothes fell out with a clatter on the floor of the little cave. Its belt slashed, the weapon holster on the side of the pack dangled out of reach.
Davlin heard louder clicking and scraping. Apparently he had blundered into a nest of the things. Two more of the centipede creatures sprang at him; Davlin thrust his now-useless pack toward them as a distraction, and the weapon clattered to the floor of the cave. He bolted for the opening. Outside, burning rain continued to splash down. He ran.
Farther down the hill, scores of the winged jellyfish-things surrounded the transportal. Five others drifted over the rock field, poking with their glassy tentacles in search of where he had gone to hide.
Davlin’s only shelter would be the Klikiss ruins themselves. Sparing nothing, he raced forward. As soon as he moved, the flying jellyfish detected him and flapped their razor-edged wings in pursuit. Without the pack, he was lighter, and adrenaline gave him the power to overcome this planet’s increased gravity. He had also lost his only weapon, and he chided himself for his stupidity in entering an unknown new environment without his weapon drawn in the first place. He would have to rely on his wits now.
Panting, he increased the oxygen output in his breathing mask. The slope was steep, the rocky and rain-slick ground treacherous. He scrambled ahead, weaving and stumbling to provide an uncertain target. Just as he had learned in his military survival training, long ago . . .
His eyes burned, but he no longer cared about the stinging chemical rain. Straining to see through irritated tears, he bounded forward in search of openings, low Klikiss doorways or windows. There had to be some way into the ghost city.
The predatory jellyfish were eerily silent above and around him, but he knew they were closing in for the kill. When one of the glassy, needle-filled tentacles brushed his shoulder, a fiery agony ripped through his muscles.
Davlin slipped in the muck and sprawled, glancing up as one of the huge jellyfish-things drifted overhead. He could see its rippled mouth, a wide opening of questing, hungry lips. The thing had no obvious eyes, but it seemed to sense where he was.
Lurching forward as it swooped back for him, Davlin dove inside the first opening he found. His burning arm was nearly useless, but he hauled himself in with his other hand. Curling, poisonous tentacles brushed the wall, leaving a trail of toxin that smoked on the hard surface.
He crawled along until he reached a widening tunnel where he could finally get to his feet. When he looked back, he saw a crowd of the jellyfish-things clustered at the window through which he had entered. They pulled their pterodactyl wings tight, extending tentacles and trying to force their bodies into the ruins after him.
Davlin fled deeper into the abandoned city. Despite his years of ser- vice to the Hansa, acting as a cultural spy, infiltrating settlements and investigating Ildiran relics, it had been a long time since he’d faced such imminent danger. Fortunately, he’d had years of secret training. The most sophisticated military exercises had supposedly prepared him for any scenario, but if he ever escaped from this, he would have to write them a whole new training module.
The Klikiss ruins were dark and the tunnels oppressive. Though he had lost his pack among the giant centipede creatures, he kept a small handlight in his pocket. The minimal illumination was enough for him.
Fearing what might lurk in the shadows ahead, Davlin used the light to see each curving tunnel, though he knew its illumination might attract something even worse than what he had encountered so far.
Down another branch he saw a distant doorway that led back outside. More winged jellyfish were there, blocking his escape. With their ability to track him over here, the things showed a sinister intelligence and a determination that chilled his blood.
For now, he had no way of getting back to the transportal.
Not exactly the way Davlin had imagined his end. A statistic. Another vanished explorer. The coordinate tile for this world would be marked black, indicating a dangerous place; it would be a long time before any human visited it again, if ever.
Though his chances didn’t look good, he did not succumb to despair. Giving up was not in his nature, so he pushed forward, intent on finding a way out. There would be enough time for dying later on.
From side tunnels came loud skittering movements, as if his passage had awakened other things. Even with the airmask, his breathing came in hard and heavy gasps. He shone the handlight around him in search of an empty passage, careful not to trap himself.
Then, unexpectedly, he stumbled on a pile of loose debris on the floor, noticing dark metal in the dim illumination of his handlight. He found a flat angular plate that looked oddly familiar. He bent to get a closer look and was surprised to find the scratched and battered components of what had obviously been a Klikiss robot.
Something had torn it to pieces, destroyed it utterly.
Davlin paused, astonished at the implications. The hulking, beetlelike machines were powerful, seemingly indestructible. Though the alien race itself had vanished, no one had ever seen a damaged or destroyed robot. Their black exoskeletons were so tough that the alien machines had survived for more than ten thousand years, physically unscathed.
But something—something—had been strong enough and dangerous enough to have smashed one of the robots to pieces. Something here.
Davlin swallowed hard. Sinister monsters were already following him in the dark, and now the sight of the dismembered Klikiss robot made him put on another burst of speed, though he did not know where he was going.
Close behind him, he heard a sound of cracking stone, and part of the wall crumbled away. Sharp, furry arachnid legs pushed forward, questing, widening the hole.
He rushed into the next opening, trying to put distance between himself and the pursuing things. To his dismay, the new chamber was a dead end, a large room with no exits.
He skidded to a halt, turned to see if he could run back into another passage, but the predatory creatures were closing in. From a nearby tunnel came the odd shuffling, clumping sounds of winged jellyfish-things dragging themselves along the floor. Other creatures clattered and hissed from the shadows.
Davlin shone his light around the enclosed chamber, looking for some exit hole. There was no place to run.
Then, like a magician’s trick revealing a surprise, the handlight shone upon another flat stone surface and a trapezoidal ring of controls. A second transportal! Many Klikiss cities had more than one of the instantaneous transportation gates. He only hoped this one was still functional.
Davlin hurried through the familiar activation sequence. His eyes skimmed the icons on the tiles and rapidly identified the one he recognized as the address for Rheindic Co.
Sluggishly, as if crawling to wakefulness, the ancient Klikiss machinery began to hum. Davlin tried to concentrate.
At the chamber doorway, one of the jellyfish-things hauled itself forward on the elbows of bent wings, reaching out with glassy tentacles.
Davlin heard the familiar buzz of transportal machinery, and his knees went weak with relief as the flat stone turned fuzzy. Four of the winged jellyfish had crawled into the chamber now, trailing slime. Whiplike tentacles quested across the stone floor.
But Davlin gave them only a cursory backward glance before he jumped through the transportal—back to a world he could understand.