The next island in the loose chain had an oddly leprous appearance. Johnnie thought he saw the shapes of heavy equipment, but there were also patches of vegetation whose green was brighter than that of the other islands.
He squinted. His uncle took a pair of flat electronic binoculars out of the breast pocket and scanned the island.
"We've only cleared three of the islands," Dan explained. "Now that the Blackhorse is expanding—thanks to the Senator—we decided we needed more room for facilities. This latest flap caught us after we'd made an initial pass on Island 4, but long before we'd gotten the soil sterilized. All available personnel are busy bringing ships up to combat standard, so the clearing operation's had to wait."
He handed the binoculars to Johnnie.
Construction equipment including bulldozers, rock plows, and support structures which looked like stranded barges, stood as though choked by the vegetation that crawled over the machines and the ground alike. A sheep's-foot roller had eight-foot trees growing from the soil which clung to its great studded wheels, and another huge device was anonymous within a wrapper of green tentacles.
"How long has the work been abandoned?" Johnnie asked.
"Twenty-seven days," the older man said with grim amusement. "Lets you know why our ancestors decided to colonize the sea floor instead of the land, doesn't it?"
Dan touched the keypad of his helmet and said in a different voice, "L7521 to Base Control. Request permission to engage life forms on Island 4 with the twins. Over."
"Wow!" said Johnnie.
Something had just lifted its head from the prey it was devouring beside a bulldozer. As the actinic radiation bathing Venus mutated the creature's ancestral germ plasm, its legs became shorter and thicker; its body slimmed; and its wing-cases shrank to vestigial nubs to be displayed during courtship rituals.
"Base to L7521," said a bored voice. "Permission denied. We've still got equipment on 4 and it's not for target practice. Over."
The creature's head and great shearing mandibles were still those of a tiger beetle.
"Base, let me rephrase that request," Dan said in a tone that suggested he had a rasp for a tongue. "Director of Planning Cooke aboard L7521 requests permission to engage life forms on Island 4 with the twins. Over."
"Base to L7521," said the voice, no longer bored. "Permission granted. Out."
Johnnie swung the powered mounts and lowered the gun barrels as part of the same movement.
"Wait one," his uncle said as he turned and waved to the hydrofoil's commanding officer in the cockpit.
"Roger, go ahead, sir," Ensign Samuels responded over the com set.
The tiger beetle's head dipped, then rose again. Its jaws were working furiously on the strip of white flesh gripped in its mandibles. The creature's eyes did not shift to follow the vessel, but the sun glinting on different sets of the faceted lenses gave the impression of movement.
Johnnie thumbed his sights to x2, then x5 when he'd acquired the target. He projected a translucent orange ghost ring. At the higher magnification, the broad ring hopped and wobbled with L7521's motion, almost unnoticed until then. Johnnie dialed in mils of elevation until the bottom of the ring no longer skipped down into the bulldozer, then locked the mount's stabilizer—
And pressed the firing tit.
Though the twin-sixties were heavy armament in Johnnie's terms, their use on a torpedoboat was more to disconcert enemies a thousand times larger than in the realistic hope of destroying an opponent. The feed drums were loaded with every other round a tracer. The guns spat a lash of glowing fireballs—a sight to make a hostile gunner flinch, even if he was behind 20-inch armor and watching through a remote pick-up.
The guns belched two solid, pulsing lines of gold which converged at the laser-calculated range to the target. The lining of Johnnie's helmet clamped firmly over his ears like a punch to both sides of his head. The muzzle blasts slapped his face as the guns recoiled alternately.
Blinking with the double shock to his vision and skin, Johnnie lifted his thumb from the trigger.
The tiger beetle charged. It climbed over the bulldozer with a swift fluidity which suggested it had scores of legs instead of six.
The charge was blind reflex. The creature's head had vanished. The short burst of high-explosive .60-caliber bullets had blown eyes and brain to jelly in a dozen red flashes.
All the guns mounted on the starboard rail began firing. Passengers joined in with automatic rifles and even pistols. The beetle's armor sparkled with the dusting of tiny bullets exploding harmlessly across it.
While the others banged ineffectively at the headless creature, Johnnie switched his feed selector from X to S—solids instead of high explosive. He squeezed the trigger again and held it down. His long burst halted the charging beetle, then knocked it backward.