Venom by The Venom of Argus (2014)

Author:The Venom of Argus (2014) [Argus, The Venom of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Phase Six Piranha Bug City

During the next few days, all the Expendables worked very hard—as did the robots. But the robots were not subject to fatigue, the Expendables were. And when human beings are overtired, they are apt to get careless. That was the point at which one of the Expendables died in a strange and gruesome fashion. But before tragedy struck, much had been accomplished.

The local water supply proved, not only to be harmless, but extremely beneficial. Maeve O'Brien's analysis showed that it contained trace minerals in similar proportions to those of the most noted spa waters of Earth. When drunk cold—as cold as it was when it gushed from deep below the planetary surface—the water was semi-sparkling and produced a heady sense of well-being. Better than Perrier water, or Vichy water, or the waters of Malvern or Buxton.

The Santa Maria's, recycling system was closed down. Good local water was available in abundant supply, meat was available—the rhinocerotic quadrupeds that Conrad had discovered yielded steak of excellent quality, and gazelle-like creatures whose meat was like venison had been observed to exist in abundance. Five edible plants had been discovered, analyzed and proved. They were like mushrooms, carrots, kale, apricots and blackberries. But not quite the same. There was a subtle difference. An Argus difference. It was intriguing.

Maleter and Norstedt constructed the menagerie and its compound from timber that had to be hauled more than thirty kilometres. The entire operation took more than two full days. Using the exos, it was easy enough to pull up young trees, snap off the root section and the top to the required length, and strip off the branches. The real problem was transporting them back to the Santa Maria. Gunnar Norstedt solved it by laser-felling a tree that was like a small sequoia and that had a trunk more than two metres in diameter near its base. Having dropped the tree, he expertly laser-sliced four sections from the trunk, each section approximately fifty centimetres thick. Using these sections as huge wheels, he and Maleter were able to construct a large cart or wagon capable of hauling more than fifty trimmed tree-trunks at a time. It was an impressive sight for whoever was on duty at the command screens when a wagonload of timber, pushed with little apparent effort by Norstedt and Maleter in their exos, came rolling across the grassy plain at 15 k.p.h.

While Kwango and Mirlena Robinson were investigating the piranha bugs, Conrad and Lieutenant Smith used the hovercar alternately for detailed ground exploration. Conrad worked to the north and Lieutenant Smith to the south. Between them, they made some interesting discoveries. Apart from the two-tonne rhinotypes, already encountered, they found game in abundance—small, furry creatures like hares or rabbits; swift, graceful animals like deer; creatures that were remarkably similar to the terrestrial giraffe; a kind of wild pig; massive animals of about one tonne that had all the characteristics of the lowly hedgehog, including great timidity; even shaggy, miniture kangaroos and something that was three mitres tall, could ran at 60 k.

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