"God help us!" blurted Caffey.
There was a swollen line across the torpedoman's neck, but he was enough himself again to push his way to the head of the column. He shifted the machine-gun to his left hand and snatched the cutting bar from where Wilding must have dropped it.
"Not that," snapped Brainard. "D'ye want to take his leg off?"
He knelt and began to pry the bamboo upward with one hand and the muzzle of his rifle. The laser communicator flopped awkwardly against his knees. With Wilding alive, they had a chance.
The desiccated stems splintered without resistance. Wilding could save them. . . .
Wilding was able to sit up by himself when they cleared the bamboo from his chest. Fresh growth, protected like the officer-trainee by the insulating mat, left nasty sores where it had begun to suck at his back.
"Is he okay?" Bozman called from the back of the line.
Leaf and the cautiously-used blade of his multitool worked Wilding's boots free.
"He's all right," Brainard said. A prayer of exultation danced in his mind as he heard his own flat statement.
"No," said Wilding. "I've sprained my ankle. You're going to have to leave me."
Brainard raised his eyes to the terrain ahead of them. It seemed to plateau, but they would have more climbing to do shortly.
"Who's got the first-aid kit?" he demanded. "Get a pressure bandage on the XO's ankle."
"You can't carry a cripple along with you," Wilding sneered. "Take what you need from my pack and get moving before something worse comes along."
Awareness that the officer-trainee might be right froze Brainard's heart. "Shut up," he snarled.
Wilding's face went blank. Leaf and Caffey, at the edge of Brainard's focused vision, stiffened.
Wheelwright said, "I got the kit," breaking the pulsing silence. "Lemme up to the front."
Men shifted. There was plenty of room in the broader pathway which the grasshopper had chewed through the jointed tangle. Caffey looked at the cutting bar in his hand and said, "Ah, I'll cut him a crutch, okay?"
Yee's rifle lay a few feet away. Brainard picked it up. Shreds of bamboo fiber were stuck to the plastic stock where the barakite had softened it.
"No," said Wilding. He looked at Caffey, purposefully avoiding eye contact with the ensign. "That won't work. The bamboo—any surface vegetation. It'll keep growing after it's cut, and. . . ."
He made a negligent gesture toward the sores on his back. Wheelwright coated them with a clear antiseptic, but the edges were already puckering upward.
The scorpion's pincers had cut the rifle's beryllium receiver almost in half. There were bright gouges through the barrel's weatherproofing and into the steel beneath.
"Right," said Brainard. "We'll use this for a crutch. It's not good for much else." He handed the rifle to Wilding.
Wilding's tongue touched his lips. He looked at the ensign. "Sir?" he said. "I still can't march—"
"I'll help him, sir," said Leaf.
"The junior personnel will assist Mr Wilding in rotation," Brainard said as his mind clicked through the minuscule tasks that he could understand, could deal with. "Newton, Bozman, Wheelwright. Thirty-minute watches."
He'd almost assigned Yee a place in the watch list.
"Leaf, I want you at the end of the column," he continued. He held out his rifle to the motorman. "Take this. Caffey, give me the cutting bar. I'll lead, and I want you and the big gun right behind me."
Leaf turned his head as though he had not seen the proffered weapon. "I don't want a fucking gun," he snarled. "Why'n't you let me help the XO? I can do it."
"Newton's carrying the other bar, sir," Wilding said quietly. "You'd better use it. The charge on this one is almost flat."
Brainard slung his rifle. "All right," he said. "Newton, give me the other bar. Wheelwright, take the end slot. Watch yourself. Leaf, help Mr Wilding. Stay close. There's a lot of this place that I don't know anything about."
There was damn-all about this place that he did know anything about.
"Sir," offered Caffey. "Ah, d'ye want me to carry the communicator? It'll get in the way if there's much cutting to do."
Brainard looked at the torpedoman with a flat expression which he hoped hid the sudden terror in his mind. "We'll be following the grasshopper's path," he said coldly. "I'll keep the communicator."
The laser communicator was Brainard's lifeline. Its hard outlines were all that kept him sane. If he was still sane. . . .
* * *
July 23, 381 AS. 0301 hours.
The twenty-seven islands on Brainard's navigation display ranged from mere fangs of rock to a ridged mass rising to a thousand feet, worthy of a name.