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everything regardless of shape or size, and the harder it was to mimic, the
better it liked it.
"Fine," said Murchison. "But in case we're needed urgently I want to stay as
close as possible to our patients. There's a stream that runs past the med
station into the sea. We'll go back and follow it inland to its source, which
should be on high ground. Do you agree?"
It was a rhetorical question, and even though she wasn't in the habit of
pushing her rank, they both knew it. For the first hundred meters or so, the
nearby environment could have been that found on any sun-drenched, tropical
island on her home world. The stream was less than two meters wide but
fast-flowing so that the stones on its bed were washed clean and showed many
different colors
file:///F|/rah/James%20White/White,%20James%...or%20General%2012%20-%20Double%
20Contact.txt (60 of 144) [5/21/03 10:31:16 PM]
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Double%20Contact.txt and patterns of veining. It was only when her walk, and
Danalta's roll, took them inland and under the trees that the differences
began to show. The chlorophyll-green of the leaves looked the same but the
shapes were subtly different as was the soft carpet which was not of grass
that grew along the banks of the stream from damp earth that was not of Earth.
A little shiver of pure wonder made her twitch her shoulders, as it always did
when she encountered a com-pletely alien planet that looked and felt so
entirely familiar. Then as they moved deeper under the trees, the amount of
vegetation bearing large, sunflower-like blooms increased. The petals on many
of them had dropped away to reveal clusters of pale green . fruit buds. There
would be no problem with cross-pollination here, she thought as the insects
began to swarm.
Very definitely they were like nothing on Earth. They ranged in size from the
virtually invisible to several stick-insect varieties whose bodies were nearly
six inches long. A few of them were rounded, black and shiny, with wings that
beat so rapidly that they seemed to be surrounded by a grey fog, but majority
were brightly colored in concentric circles of yellow and red with multiple
sets of wide, slower-beating gossamer wings that threw back constantly
changing, iridescent highlights.
They were gorgeous, she thought, and some of them made even Prilicla look
dowdy.
Most of them were heading towards Danalta, obviously at-tracted by the
garishly colored beach-ball body it had adopted.
"They seem to be curious rather than hungry," said the shape-changer. "None of
them has tried to bite me."
"That's sensible of them," said Murchison nervously as they lost interest in
Danalta and began moving towards her. "Maybe they've realized that you're
indigestible."
"Or I have the wrong smell," it replied. "I've just now ex-truded an olfactory
sensor pad. There are a lot of strange smells in this area."
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Smells, Murchison thought, was not the word she would have used to describe
them. The subtle combination of scents being given off by the aromatic
vegetation around them was something that the fashion perfume houses on Earth
would have sold their souls for. But the insects were now homing in on her.
Instinctively she wanted to swat them aside, but knew that might make them
excited and hostile. Instead she raised one hand very slowly to her opened
helmet visor so that she could snap it dosed at the first sign of an attack.
Her hand remained there, tense and motionless, for several minutes while the
insects large and small swarmed around her head without actually touching her
race, until they lost interest and returned to their own con-cerns.
Relieved, she lowered her hand and said, "Apparently they're non-hostile, They
don't want to bite Earth-human DBDGs, either."
Which meant that, should their stay on this island paradise be delayed for any
reason, the Terragar casualties could be moved outside for a few hours every [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]