UNIVERSAL TURBULENT

XXXIII - SOMEWHERE ON THE GALAXY

Jyro felt his heart thump against his chest. Were aliens waiting? How would they react? What should he say to them? Something moved. The dart thrower came up; his finger tightened on the trigger, and then came off again.

Nano! A long silvery stream of the silvery stuff had entered the ship and oozed in his direction.

The human watched the pseudopod split into three separate rivulets. Two turned and slithered down side passageways, while the third probed the main corridor.

The nano were assessing how much damage the ship had suffered. That's the way it appeared, anyway, which suggested that they were external to the ship. Afterall, if the ship had the ability to repair itself, why wait until now?

Thus encouraged, the prospector followed the pulsating stream back toward its source. He passed through one of the more damaged sections, saw light through a ragged hole, and was struck by how strange they were, like luminescent dandelion seeds floating on the wind.

The nano were thicker now, and more plentiful, branching in every direction, oozing their way through seemingly solid bulkheads, crisscrossing the overhead and covering the deck. It was difficult to walk without stepping on one or more of the silvery threads, and Jyro found himself tiptoeing down the corridor, lest he crush one of the tiny machines and elicit who knew what kind of response.

Light spilled through an open hatch. The human high-stepped through an obstacle course of intertwined nano, peered around the corner, and looked out onto an amazing scene.

The landing bay was enormous, so large that Jyro could see dozens of vessels the size of the one he was standing on, all parked in carefully aligned rows.

There might have been more, and the prospector suspected that there were, but he couldn't see them due to thousands of nano vines that dangled from above, squirmed up through the deck, and wrapped the ships in metallic cocoons.

But there were other entities as well, machines of every conceivable size and shape, rolling, crawling, and walking through the nano jungle. Their skins shimmered like that of the vessels they served. There was no sign of their creators, however - not that the human was especially eager to encounter them.

Some of the larger machines were possessed of ovoid heads, narrow shoulders, two arms, featureless torsos, and long, slim legs. A reflection of those who conceived them? Form that followed function? There was no way to be sure.

Jyro knew he should resist such impulses, but found himself imposing a possibly fallacious hierarchy on the alien machines. A robotic ecosystem with the bipeds at the top, the rollers, crawlers, and wigglers somewhere in the middle, and the nano at the bottom.

The decision to leave the ship seemed to make itself. One moment Jyro was there, peeking out through the open hatch, and the next he was down on the deck, picking his way through the nano maze.

Robots were everywhere. They saw him, had to see him, but made no response. Not so long as he stayed out of their way. The consequence for not doing so could be severe, however, as the prospector discovered when he tried to force his way through a curtain of nano and received a sharp blow to the head, a blow that made him swear and raised a lump.

The human backed away, wondered which one is the snake-like pseudopods had attacked him, and chose another path.

He understood that the robots knew he was there, but allowed him to exist. It was as though he was an insect, buzzing through the house but too insignificant to chase. Unless he landed on some food, annoyed the home owner, or otherwise placed himself in harm's way. That's when the machines will deal with him, and in no uncertain fashion.

Determined to be innocuous, the prospector zigzagged across the enormous deck. Puffs of light floated above his head. One adopted the human and followed him all the way to a sizable lock. Like everything else about the ship, it was large. The human figured it could of at least fifty humans.

Jyro regarded the chamber with a good deal of interest. There it was again, a clear indicator that the mother ship was equipped to support biologicals, but no sign of the beings themselves.

He stepped inside, palmed the now familiar controls, and waited for the hatch to close. There, on the far side of the bay, beyond the heavily cocooned ships, Jyro saw an enormous and presumably blast-proof door.

Three machines, none of which looked humanoid, joined Jyro for the trip through the lock. The trip looks less than three minutes, but seemed to last forever.

* * *

The jungle was green, damp from the morning rain, and lit by filtered sunshine. The air was warm, delightfully warm, and heavy with the scent of rose flowers.

Like all of its kind, the Worgan ran low, it's six legged body sliding through clumps of foliage, flowing over green clad logs, and slipping through a crystal-clear stream.

The jungle beckoned, and the Worgan nosed it's way in, found the scent, and uttered a deep, chesty growl.

Foliage swayed, and the Worgan felt a momentary downdraft as the master's aircar passed over some nearby trees. Though not fully sentient, not yet anyway, Worgans were highly evolved animals. Horth knew the master liked to be in on the kill and slowed his pace accordingly. There was no need for concern. Like all such prey, the female had expanded most of her strength during the early stages of the hunt. The animal could take her whenever he chose.

Like most of her peers, the female had been raised in one of the planet's cities and feared the thick green maze. That being the case, the clearing seemed like a gift from the gods, a place where she could escape the jungle and plan her next move. The concubine's scales shimmered in the sun, her chest heaved from exertion, and her clothes hung in tatters. A rock offered a place to sit.

That was when the Worgan emerged from the tree line and an aircar appeared above. Had Horth been whelped ten thousand years later, he might have wondered why the female had been slated for death, and questioned his role as executioner.

But that time was a long way off, and the only thing the Worgan could feel was his hunger, and the need to kill. He launched himself out of the undergrowth, lopped across the clearing, and sprang for her throat. The prey saw the movement, raised her hands, and started to scream.

That was when the Worgan awoke. The dream had been so real he could still smell the concubine's fear. Or could he? That was when it occurred to Horth that this particular odor was different, a sort of musky smell that continued to waft past his super-sensitive nostrils.

The Worgan, who possessed the capability to hibernate for a hundred sunsets of necessary, had fastened itself to the overhead, an excellent location where nothing was likely to stumble on him. His skin, which could replicate nearly any background he chose to place himself against, was metallic gray. He sniffed, sniffed again, and felt hunger flood his body.

Finally! Something to hunt. It had been so long since his last meal that Horth could barely remember what he had eaten. The short one? With all the bones? Or the long slithery thing? It hardly mattered. The metal world was different, but food was food, and he would hunt.