Redliners(60)

A man inside a null sack could breathe normally for a day and a half without changing the CO2 balance of the air around him. He had no heat signature and active electro-optical sensors would not show his outline. The sack blurred but couldn't completely defeat sound ranging, but that was almost valueless in a breathable atmosphere to begin with.

The sacks could be operated in either completely buttoned-up mode, or with a one-way RF window that permitted a striker to receive data from an external source. That could be a spy cell clipped to a tree, for example; or in this case, the helmet of a striker who wasn't in a null sack himself.

Blohm sighed and let the soul of the forest sweep around him like slow green surf. Water reflected the canopy in near perfection. The ripples from Gabe's stone had died away, but here and there insects skated in dimples of surface tension.

The scouts had come this far without cutting or blowing the jungle out of their way. That was partly standard operating procedure—you didn't want to leave a trail for enemy patrols to track you by—but Blohm had carried it to an extreme his sergeant found unreasonable. He'd even insisted that they go around the curtain of moss tendrils hanging from a branch instead of shearing through with their knives.

There was a slap and patter in the foliage nearby. A broad leaf had suddenly everted, dumping a pint of water stored from the evening's rain. The dripping continued almost a minute, from one layer to another and finally to the soil.

None of the drops landed directly on the surface of the pond. It was a pond. It had no current at all. The ends were concealed in forest, the banks only six feet apart—not quite close enough for a burdened striker to leap.

But it had to be a pond; or a moat. A moat only inches deep, because Blohm could see the pebble bottom through the black water. There were no twigs or decaying leaves among the stones, and no animal life.

The broad, round plants floating on the surface looked like water lilies, but flat stems anchored them to the bank. A flying insect buzzed to the miniature pink flowers, then dipped to the pond. Its wings riffled the water as it drank through its proboscis before flying off.

Blohm chuckled softly. There were two ways to deal with this forest. Brute force would work if you had enough force. Perhaps two bulldozers and the firepower of C41 were enough.

The other method was to treat the contest as a chess game. Blohm wasn't sure he was going to win the game; but he might, he just might.

He walked to a tree five yards from the edge of the pond. Thorns as long as a man's hand lay flat in recesses along the trunk, almost invisible against the speckled bark. Blohm switched on his powerknife. He advanced the point cautiously and cut off a thorn at the base.

As the spike dropped away, a hydrostatic mechanism in the wood snapped viciously, rotating the base. Body heat would have released every spike within range to rip like tiger claws if the scouts had brushed the trunk as they passed.

Blohm's left hand was gloved. The garment was part of the body sock worn with a hard suit in extreme temperatures. He carried the thorn with that hand to the edge of the pond where he probed at the bottom, shifting pebbles. There was a stiff surface beneath; perhaps clay, perhaps some rubbery plant excretion.

"Okay, Gabe," Blohm said. "We've got to go around this pond. We'll try the right side. Watch out for the white-barked tree twenty feet on. It's got seeds that look like spears up where the fronds flare, and they weigh a couple pounds each."

Gabrilovitch slipped out of his null sack with itchy speed. "Why don't we just cross?" he asked, not arguing. "Afraid of getting your feet wet?"

"The top inch or two is water," Blohm said, holding up the thorn. The point was black and already shrivelling. "Underneath it's something else heavy enough that the water just floats on it. Concentrated sulfuric acid is my guess, but I don't suppose we need to know for sure."

Gabrilovitch stared at the black water. "God damn," he whispered.

"Come on, Gabe," Blohm said mildly. "That vine you saw across the pond's going to have us for breakfast if we stay much longer. You did a good job to notice it."



The rain had brought out fresh foliage on the young trees growing in place of the giants killed when the asteroid hit. The leaf flushes were of brilliant hues: reds, maroons, and poisonous, metallic greens which seemed to have nothing to do with life or growing things.

A civilian started to cry. He was a middle-aged man whose tight, youthful face had profited from cosmetic shaping and whose pudgy body had not. "They're going to kill us," he whimpered. "They hate us and they're going to kill us all."

Abbado cleared his throat. He'd been about to give the civilians a pep talk before the lead tractor moved past and took a bite out of the jungle, but he thought he ought to do something about the crying man first.