Jack Mcdeviit - Deepsix

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Deepsix

Jack McDevitt is the multi-award winning author of The Engines of God and Moonfall. He has served

as an officer in the U.S. Navy, taught English and literature, and worked for the U.S. Customs Service in

North Dakota and Georgia. He lives in Georgia.

BY JACK McDEVITT

The Engines of God

Ancient Shores

Eternity Road

Moonfall

Slow Lightning (published in the USA as Infinity Beach)

Deepsix

JACK McDEVITT

Deepsix

HarperCollinsPublishers

Voyager An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.voyager-books.com

This paperback edition 2001 135798642

First published in the USA by EOS, an imprint o/HarperCollinsPublishers 2001

Jack McDevitt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 0 00 710879 6 Set in Melior

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,

hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other

than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on

the subsequent purchaser.

For Walter Cuirle who continues to provide the special effects

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'm indebted to John Spencer of the Lowell Observatory for collision data; to science fiction writer Sage

Walker for dietary assistance; to Les Johnson of NASA for showing me how it could be done; to Ralph

Vicinanza, for timely help; to EOS editor Caitlin Blasdell, who seems to have all the right instincts. To

Maureen, for infinite patience. To Sara and Bob Schwager for their work with the manuscript. To Brian A.

Hopkins for his suggestions. And special appreciation to Henry Mencken, for a glorious half century.

On that final day, we stood bent against the wind at world's end, and watched the churning hell-lit clouds.

Somewhere out there, over the eastern peaks we could no longer see, dawn was breaking. But it was a terrifying

dawn, cold and lethal and black.

— Gregory MacAllister, Deepsix Diary

D E E P S I X

PROLOGUE

October 2204

"They went in there." Sherry pointed.

The afternoon was quiet and deadly still The sun rode in a cloudless sky, It was not, of course, a bright

sun. The dusty Quiveras Cloud, within which this system had drifted for three thousand years, prevented

that. Randall Nightingale looked around at the trees and the river and the plain behind him, and considered

how rare, in this equatorial place, was a summer's day.

In his mind, he replayed the screams. And the staccato sounds of the stinger blasts.

His pilot. Cookie, was checking his weapon. Tatia shook her head, wondering how Gappy could have

been so dumb as to wander off. She was redheaded, young, quiet. Her usually congenial expression was

bleak.

Andi watched the line of trees the way one might watch a prowling tiger.

Capanelli and his two colleagues had started just after dawn, Sherry explained again. They'd entered the

forest despite the prohibition against getting out of sight of the lander. And they hadn't come out.

"But you must have heard what happened," said Nightingale. The three members of the party had been

wearing e-suits and talking to each other on the allcom.

She looked, embarrassed. "I went in the washroom. Tess called me when it started to happen." Tess was

the AI. "When I got out, it was over. There was nothing." Her lip trembled, and she looked on the edge of

hysteria. Tess had recorded a few seconds of screams. And that was all they had.

Nightingale tried calling them, and heard only a carrier wave. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."

"All of us?" asked Andi. She was blond, chunky, usually full of wisecracks. One of the boys. At the

moment, she was strictly business.

"Strength in numbers," he said.

They spread out across the hardscrabble grass, glanced at one another for mutual support, and started

toward the tree line. "There," Sherry said. "They went in there."

Nightingale led the way. They proceeded cautiously, drawing together again, weapons at the ready. But

these were researchers, not trained military types. To his knowledge, none had ever fired a stinger in anger.

Seeing how nervous they were, he wondered whether they didn't have as much to fear from themselves as

from the local wildlife.

The sunlight dimmed beneath the canopy, and the air temperature dropped a few degrees. The trees

were tall and fleshy, their upper branches tangled in a canopy of vines and large spade-shaped leaves. Thick

cactuslike growths were everywhere. The ground was covered with vegetable debris. Overhead, an army of

unseen creatures screeched, scratched, ran, and flapped. As was the case in forests everywhere, he knew,

the majority of animals would be found living in the canopy and not on the ground.

The e-suit reduced his olfactory sense, but imagination came to his rescue, even in this curious

woodland, and he could smell the pines and mint of his native Georgia.

Biney Coldfield, the starship's captain and pilot of the third lander, broke in to inform him she was

approaching and would join the search as soon as she was down.

He acknowledged, letting his irritation show in his voice. Cap-naelli had embarrassed him, ignoring the

established guidelines and plunging into an area with such limited visibility. It made them all look like rank

amateurs. And had probably gotten him killed.

Nightingale scanned the ground, trying to spot footprints, or any sign Gappy's group might have left in

passing. But he saw nothing. At last he turned to the others in his party. "Do we have a woodsman, by any

chance?"

They looked at one another.

"Where were they going?" he asked Sherry.

"Nowhere in particular. Straight ahead, I guess. Following the trail."

Nightingale sighed. Straight ahead it was.

Something raced up a tree. At first glimpse he thought it resembled a squirrel, but then he saw it had

extra legs. It was their first day on Maleiva III.

A couple of birds circled them and settled onto a branch. Red-birds. They looked like cardinals, except

that they had long beaks and turquoise crests. The colors clashed.

"Wait a minute," Sherry said.

"What?" demanded Nightingale.

She raised her hand for quiet. "There's something behind us." They whirled as one and weapons came

up. In their rear, a tree limb fell. Nightingale backed into something with spines.

Cookie and Tatia went back and looked. "Nothing here," they reported.

They moved out again.

There was little space for walking. They were constantly pushing through bushes and fighting their way

past brambles. He pointed out a couple of broken stalks that suggested something had come this way.

Then he stepped into a glade and saw them.

All three were lying still. Their force-field envelopes were filled with blood. Their faces were frozen in

expressions of terror and agony.

Sherry came out behind him, gasped, and started forward.

He stopped her and held her until she calmed down a bit. The others scanned the trees for the attacker.

"Whatever it was," said Tatia, "it's not here now."

Sherry freed herself from him, approached the bodies, moving progressively more slowly, and finally

dropped to her knees beside them. He watched her whisper something. Watched her rock back on her

haunches and stare into the trees.

He joined her, put a hand on her shoulder, and stood wordlessly, looking down at the carnage.

Andi came up beside him. She'd been a close friend of Al White's for years. She sighed and began

quietly to sob.

Tatia remained at the edge of the glade, glancing first at the bodies and then hardening her gaze and

surveying the ring of trees.

Biney, listening from the third lander, broke in: "What's going on, Randy?"

All the Wood was trapped inside the Flickinger fields, so it was difficult to make out details of the

wounds. But each of the three looked as if he'd been jabbed, bitten, gouged, whatever, numerous times. The

wounds looked small, he thought. The attacker had been small. Attackers. There had certainly been more

than one.

He must have said it aloud. "Small?"said Biney. "How small?"

"Rat size, maybe. Maybe a little bigger."

Whatever they had been, they'd succeeded in tearing off a few pieces of meat, although they hadn't been

able to eat any of it because they couldn't extract it from the e-suits.

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摘要：

DeepsixJackMcDevittisthemulti-awardwinningauthorofTheEnginesofGodandMoonfall.HehasservedasanofficerintheU.S.Navy,taughtEnglishandliterature,andworkedfortheU.S.CustomsServiceinNorthDakotaandGeorgia.HelivesinGeorgia.BYJACKMcDEVITTTheEnginesofGodAncientShoresEternityRoadMoonfallSlowLightning(publishedi...

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