It amazed Mazer to think that all of this had been built in the last ten days or so. And by the looks of it, the Formics weren’t finished building. Construction crews were everywhere, adding piping, assembling machines, extending structures. Skimmers carried building materials to the crews. Clawlike cranes held pipes in place as Formic workers welded them to the other structures.
Yet as vast and impressive a site as it was, Mazer had never seen anything so disorganized and unattractive. There was no order to the construction at all. Everything looked slapped together haphazardly without any regard to uniformity or design. The metals were all red and gray and rough and rusting, as if they had been used a hundred times previously for other purposes and never once cleaned or cared for.
Nor were the Formics concerned about cleanliness. Filth covered everything. The ground was littered with trash and discarded building materials. And everywhere Mazer looked he saw Formic feces. He knew with certainty what the black substance was because he witnessed a few Formics defecating as they labored, showing no regard for those around them, simply dropping it where they stood. It covered the ground and pipes and the Formics’ feet. The stench was not only from the biomass apparently.
Mazer pointed the binoculars back at the mist-raining skimmers, zooming in as far as the lenses would go and having the computer take scans and run an analysis. The results didn’t tell him much: The mists were a microbe solution of unknown composition.
“It’s breaking down the biota,” Bingwen said, who had crawled up beside and watched as he worked. “What are they using it for? Fuel?”
“That, or food,” said Mazer. “Or maybe both.”
Bingwen grew quiet, staring at the biomass. His parents are in there somewhere, Mazer thought.
“Here,” Mazer said, offering Bingwen the binocs and hoping to direct his thoughts elsewhere. “Earn your keep. Check out the lander. Tell me if you see anything interesting.”
Bingwen took the binocs and pressed the eyepieces against the visor of the gas mask. “This would be a lot easier if I could take this mask off.” He glanced thoughtfully at Mazer. “But considering the green, sickly look on your face, I think I’ll keep it on.”
“Wise choice.”
Bingwen adjusted the focus and gazed down at the lander. “For an advanced alien species, they’re not too concerned about housekeeping. The metal is all gross and rusted looking.”
“And covered in Formic dung, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Yes, thanks for pointing that out.”
“At least you’re not smelling it.”
Bingwen slowly panned the binocs across the lander then stopped when something caught his eye. “Okay, this is interesting. Near the base of the lander there’s a hole in the ground. Maybe a meter in diameter. I just saw a Formic crawl into it. And there’s another hole about four meters away from the first one, closer to the lander. A Formic crawled out of the second hole, and at first I thought it was a different Formic. But it wasn’t. It was the same one. I could tell because it had a limp in one of his legs. He crawled into the first hole, went underground for about four meters, and then came up through the second hole and moved on toward the lander. That’s strange, isn’t it? If he was heading for the lander, why not walk straight to it? Why bother going underground?”
“Unless he can’t walk straight to it,” Mazer said.
“Exactly. There must be something there in his way, something invisible, which forces him to crawl under it to get through.”
“A shield.” Mazer gestured for the binocs, and Bingwen passed them to him. Mazer focused the lenses and looked where Bingwen was pointing.
“You see that big red metal thing that looks like a water tower?” said Bingwen. “There’s a pipe at its base. Follow that west for about fifty meters, and there’s the hole.”
“I see it.” Mazer watched the hole. In time, a pair of Formics came carrying a beam of metal between them. They crawled into the hole, dragging the pipe behind them, and disappeared. A moment later, they emerged through the second hole. Once on their feet, they shouldered the beam and moved on toward the lander.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” said Bingwen. “It means the shield doesn’t go underground. It’s only covering what’s above the surface.”
“Did you see any other holes?”
“No, but it can’t be the only one. There are hundreds of workers down there. If they sleep in the lander, that one hole would bottleneck at the beginning and end of every shift. There have to be others.”
Mazer scanned for several minutes. “I’ve counted three other sets of holes, all of them like the set you found. One hole outside the shield, one inside.”
“And those are just the ones we can see from here,” said Bingwen. “There are probably dozens of these holes all around the lander. This is it. This is the answer. We have to tell the army. They can send in soldiers through the holes to take the lander.”