Rini quickly discovered what his main contribution to T’sss’lisss’
assignment would be. The desert around them was very flat, with the only tall plants too slender and spiny for even a snake to climb. Any time the reptilian contact specialist wanted to see far, she asked Rini to stand still with his arms over his head. She slithered up his body, wrapped her tail firmly — but not too firmly — around his neck, placed her middle in his elevated hands, and stretched herself another meter straight up into the air. From that vantage point, nearly three meters up, she turned her head slowly, scanning the wide desert.
They slithered and walked for hours, occasionally pausing to look at animal tracks, examine a rusting piece of old mining equipment, or scan the distance. The sun slowly passed its high point and began to creep toward the western horizon.
As the full heat of afternoon came and went, T’sss’lisss became interested in some low barren hills to the north. Signs and traces left by large reptiles were getting more frequent as they went that way, she explained.
Rini trusted her completely. He had no idea how to find what they were looking for.
T’sss’lisss writhed with excitement when they got close enough to the hills to see, from her perch atop Rini, holes in the eroded sides of a dry wash, twenty or thirty of them, all arranged in a very regular pattern.
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After the contact specialist slithered down, Rini shaded his eyes and scanned in all directions. “No roads or other monkey-mammal signs.”
“I didn’t see any either. Let’s go closer.”
They covered most of the distance on the upper rim of the dry wash, but as they came near the hills, boulders and spiny cactus plants forced them into the wash itself.
Rini felt a little nervous about the situation, but T’sss’lisss slithered ahead like she was going to a party, so he ignored his discomfort. The going would have been much harder in the boulders and cacti, he admitted to himself.
“Oh, yesss. Sssee how regular and organizzzed thossse holesss are?
Sssomeone here isss getting near sssapienccce, ssseemsss to me.”
“Okay . . . but who?”
T’sss’lisss didn’t seem to hear Rini’s question, and was already moving forward at a good pace.
A quarter hour later, the little caves high up on both sides of the dry wash
— forty, fifty, maybe a hundred in all — towered over the pair of visitors.
Completely regular in their arrangement, the holes only broke the pattern when forced by a large rock imbedded in the dirt.
Rini was sweating, even though the evening had become pleasantly cool.
T’sss’lisss hissed a greeting in the most basic, universal reptilian language.
The regular caves on the sides of the wash remained silent, but a scaly head emerged from a random hole lower down. It looked at the approaching pair for a moment, then disappeared back out of sight.
Rini caught a glimpse of wild, hungry eyes just before the scaly head vanished.
T’sss’lisss called a greeting again.
“I don’t think . . .” Rini began, but his thought was cut off as heads emerged from several holes near the floor of the wash. Thick snake bodies followed and began slithering across the sand toward the two visitors.
T’sss’lisss called one more time, but was becoming worried. She wasn’t getting any response from the native reptiles, other than their rapid approach from all directions with the lust of the hunt in their eyes.
“I think we found the wrong . . .” was all T’sss’lisss was able to say before
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the first snake struck at her, grabbing her tail in its mouth and quickly wrapping coils tightly around her lower body.
Another lunged at her middle, missed, but quickly found her neck and a second later was squeezing the life out of her.
Rini dove into the fray to help T’sss’lisss, but quickly realized his mistake as a powerful snake wrapped itself around his neck. He tore at it, but his slender hands were no match for its wiry strength.
Manessa knew the moment T’sss’lisss and Rini lost consciousness, and sounded an alarm.
Ilika wasted no time checking the landing site or waiting for engines to warm up. Ashley, busy in the galley cutting clusters of fruit into manageable chunks, was amazed at how few seconds passed between the alarm and the ship streaking away from the island at ion three. Although she didn’t realize it until they returned, several trees were uprooted by the sudden departure.
Ilika focused his mind on covering nearly two thousand kilometers in the shortest time possible.
Snake blood was everywhere.
But it wasn’t hers, T’sss’lisss slowly realized as she struggled to breathe.
Her entire body felt bruised, maybe broken in some places, and her breath was still coming in labored gasps. Every bit of air she could suck into her lungs was a precious gift, after being without any for . . . she had no idea how long, but it must have been just a few minutes, for she felt alive, if in terrible pain.
Eventually she remembered Rini, and tried to turn her head to look for him, but her neck wouldn’t go that way and screamed at her with more pain.
She relaxed and the screaming pain passed, leaving only the terrible pain in the rest of her body. After a few breaths, she tried turning her head the other direction.
That worked better, and she glimpsed Rini lying on his back. Bite marks on his arms and face still oozed blood, but his chest was rising and falling.
Then T’sss’lisss began to see something else. On the rim of the wash, or poking their heads out of the regular holes, reptile faces peered down at them.
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But, she slowly realized as she struggled to focus, they weren’t snake faces.
They were something else. Front feet began to appear beside the faces. Eyes swiveled in a way that snake eyes could not. Those eyes held a gleam of something T’sss’lisss had been looking for — sapience.
And she began to understand where all the snake blood was from.
Less than a minute after T’sss’lisss regained consciousness, the Manessa Kwi swooped down, the hatch flew open, and both Ilika and Ashley jumped out, mission bracelets ready to deal with anything and everything.
The lizards backed into their holes.
The new arrivals quickly took in the dead or dying snakes, sometimes in several pieces, that littered the floor of the wash. They spotted their friends, and Ilika went to Rini while Ashley knelt beside T’sss’lisss.
“Don’t try to move me yet!” T’sss’lisss hissed, even though the effort caused her more pain. “Rini may alssso have broken bonesss!”
Ashley, fighting back tears, nodded and relayed the warning to Ilika.
“But our misssion was a successs, even more than I had hoped!” T’sss’lisss went on. “I believe we may have found sssapient reptilesss!”
Ashley looked around at the dead and dying snakes, and frowned.
“No, not thossse!”