“I find myself more preoccupied with whether white meat makes up a portion of their diet,” The newspaperman admitted.
Lamont was frozen with uncertainty, unable to draw on any experience that could give him a hint of what to do. Captain Carter was standing straight-backed and rigid, his eyes gazing outward and unfocused as the creature’s tendril’s wove like creeping vines over the back of his hand and beneath the sleeve of his coat. Was it a form of attack? Were they communicating? Was it the prelude to a meal? Lamont had no way of knowing.
While he was still considering a course of action, Carter’s eyes blinked and began to focus once again on their surroundings. A moment later, the creature retracted its limb and scuttled backward a pace. Francis lifted his hand and gazed at it with an expression of amazement.
“What was that, then?” Lamont asked.
“I believe it was a palaver,” The captain answered, his voice hushed. “If I were to venture a guess, she was attempting to ascertain whether our intentions are hostile.”
“She?” Lamont asked?
As they were speaking, the creatures began descending once again into the pit from which they had emerged, their middle segments lowering smoothly into a horizontal position. They did not turn around; as far as Lamont could tell, they simply moved backward as easily as forward.
“We’re expected to follow,” Carter said confidently.
Lamont fell into step beside the captain. Arriving at the side of the irregularly shaped pit, he saw that it was quite deep, at least 10 yards, and was accessed by way of a ramp that followed the shape of its edge. Aside from the ramp, the sides of the excavation were almost perfectly smooth and vertical. The ramp, and the creatures who were beetling down it, quickly disappeared into deep shadow in the barely-lit chamber. The spots on their shells remained just visible as moving constellations of ghostly violet.
“Let’s go,” Francis ordered as his long legs carried him down the steep slope.
Lamont took a deep breath and followed. “They don’t seem to need light,” He observed as the beam of his lamp reflected unsteadily off the silver shoulders of the captain’s coat and the dark gray of his hair.
Carter grunted in agreement. “It makes sense that for subterranean creatures, other senses would take precedence. Perhaps senses for which we don’t even have names.”
“Why do you say that?” Lamont asked, bracing himself with one hand against the cold stone as the heels of his boots caught the ridges shaped at regular intervals along the ramp.
“If what happened back there tells me anything,” The captain replied, “It’s that sound only makes up a fraction of their language.”
“I find myself more preoccupied with whether white meat makes up a portion of their diet,” The newspaperman admitted.
Francis glanced up at him, his blue eyes flashing in the beam of Lamont’s lamp. “I’m quite certain of one thing,” he said. “The weapon that was used against Rex was not wielded by these beings.”
Next: A Settling Dread
Another significant departure from WTOS.