Sergeant Britten had risen to his knees. He crawled some distance away from the crumpled fruiting body before he got fully to his feet.
"Force Prime," Johnnie wheezed, "this is Lead Prime. Hold in place for a few minutes. We're ahead of schedule. Just keep off our backs for a while, okay?"
His filters opened so that he could breathe freely again. He didn't stand up until he'd finished reloading his pistol.
The expedition's twenty-two survivors set up a tight perimeter, just within the strand of Paradise Harbor. By extending a fiber-optics periscope through the jungle, Commander Cooke and Ensign Gordon could view their target and the remainder of the Angel installations without risk of being observed themselves.
Shortly after dusk, the boom of gunfire from the Azrael and Holy Trinity ceased. Either the jungle had gone to sleep when the high-energy actinics no longer drove its motion, or the perimeter guards had drawn back for their own safety until daybreak.
The expedition members were physically and mentally exhausted. Half of them at any one time were detailed to watch, but the off-duty men were permitted to sleep if they could manage it.
Johnnie wondered if any of them really slept. For his own part, he found he was afraid to close his eyes.
18
Then honor, my Jeany, must plead my excuse;
Since honor commands me, how can I refuse?
—Allan Ramsay
"Hold it," said Johnnie, poised in the lead with a power saw in his hands. The clear patch of beach was the obvious point from which to launch the boats—
But there was a reason for the mud to be clear.
The image intensifier in his visor caught the ripple an instant before the anemone broke surface. Johnnie lunged, his finger on the saw's trigger, trusting that no one on the ships could hear the high-pitched whine over the night-sounds of the jungle and the vessels' own mechanical systems.
The cutting-bar sparked on the anemone's sting-clad arms before squelching through the support tube. Bits splashed Johnnie and an arc twenty feet out in the harbor.
The tube, now harmless, sucked back under the water. The head and fragments of severed arms writhed on the mud—still dangerous to a bare hand but unable to crawl high enough to strike above boot level.
"Is it safe now?" demanded a tech, understandably nervous with both hands gripping the boat.
"It's safe," snapped Uncle Dan, "unless you wait long enough for something to move into the area that the worm—"
It was an anemone, not a worm, Johnnie thought—
"—kept clear for you!"
The techs set the first collapsible boat into the harbor strand and hooked up its pump and generator. Sergeant Britten marshalled the squad of men who waded gingerly to the edge of the shore and knelt, knives out and peering through visors to spot any serious threat moving toward them through the water.
Johnnie, holding his saw, stepped onto the end of the line opposite Britten. The water was too good a heat conductor for thermal imaging to be of much use, but color-highlighted ripple patterns would/might be enough warning.
The boat made a slurping sound, then clicked as the segments locked into place. The inner material became a colloid and expanded 300-fold when it contacted water. The colloid provided the core and stiffening for the boat, while microns-thick panels of vitril hardened the surfaces to create a practical vessel.
One of the nervous men on guard gasped and stamped his feet. What he'd thought was an attacker was only the sucking mud. "Wish we were bloody aboard!" he grunted.
"I wish we were back in Wenceslas Dome for the victory celebration," said Britten. The sergeant had a concussion grenade in either hand for an emergency. No one else was permitted to use explosives at this stage of the operation. "But we ain't."
"Boat's ready," murmured the tech.
There was a general sloshing movement as most of the men in the water and a few of those watching the jungle behind started to slide the boat deeper into the harbor. The man beside Johnnie tried to clamber over the gunwales. Johnnie grabbed him by the shoulder and held him till the moment of panic had passed.
Men from the rear guard boarded, according to the plan. Uncle Dan was the last aboard.
"Sorry, sir," muttered the sailor.
The first boat moved a few feet out from the shore with a muted burble from its underwater thruster. More techs dropped the second boat into the place of the first and got quickly to work. The last of the little vessels had been abandoned when it became obvious that there wouldn't be enough survivors to require all three.
"We're not exactly headed for a tea party, you know," Johnnie said to the man beside him as they both looked for trouble. Years of human occupation and entrance nets must have thinned out—maybe eliminated—really large forms from the harbor.