Quofum by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

better we all of us sleep.”
    Boylan was lying, Tellenberg knew. As captain, commander, and the man in charge of military affairs for the undersized expedition, he very well could have ordered them to help with the work. Sagely, he had phrased the necessity as a request instead of a command. Having been roughly roused from their rest and frontally attacked, the researchers wanted to see the charged barrier erected as quickly as did their leader.
    With all six of them contributing, one post after another was rapidly and efficiently put in place. Even so, securing the camp’s perimeter required them all to work through most of the night. Boylan’s prophecy proved correct, though. As soon as the em-placed defensive system was completed and successfully tested, every one of them promptly retired to their cubicles to sleep the sleep of the exhausted. This included Boylan and Araza. Utterly drained, the lot of them were compelled to rely on the automatics they had set up to warn them if another attack by the natives was imminent.
    Fortunately, nothing came creeping out of the remainder of the night or the early morning to test the newly erected defensive barrier. A couple of small hopping things inadvertently impacted the crisscrossing beams and were promptly flash-fried. The system’s integrated AI was sufficiently sophisticated to analyze these encounters, determine that they did not represent a greater threat to the camp it was charged with protecting, and leave the alarms inert.
    The desire for knowledge being a more powerful motivator even than caffeine and its synthetic derivatives, the following morning saw all four of the xenologists assembled in the camp’s living area. Less driven and perhaps more tired, Boylan and Araza did not join them. Around cups of reinvigorating liquid and self-heating breakfast packs, the expedition’s science team discussed the previous night’s onslaught and the afternoon’s prospects. The two were now unavoidably entwined.
    “I want to get back into that river.” Devoid of the makeup she did not need anyway, Haviti was shoveling down food with energy and an appetite more suited to a burly heavy-lift operator. “The sand and mud shallows alone are swarming with the most incredible assortment of arthropoidal wrigglers and bizarre bivalves I’ve ever seen in one place. And that doesn’t even take into account the big stuff that keeps swimming, paddling, or jetting past.” She paused her rapid-fire speech and consumption long enough to meet each of their gazes in turn. “But we can’t work under conditions like last night.”
    Sipping his breakfast through the spiraling siphon of a distinctive thranx drinking vessel, Valnadireb readily concurred. “The next attack, should there be one, could well occur in the middle of the day in less defensible surroundings.” He gestured in Haviti’s direction. “While one or two of us are working alone at a field site, for example. Under such conditions and given a sufficient disparity in numbers, even modern weaponry might not suffice to hold off an assault by truly determined antagonistic natives.”
    “I don’t understand.” On the other side of the table, Tellenberg was shaking his head. “There was no attempt to communicate, nothing at all. I talked to Boylan. He confirms it. It was a straightforward, headlong charge by the spikers. Fortunately, the external sensors alerted him and Araza in time.” He sipped at his chosen brew. “You’d think that when confronted by something as utterly beyond their experience as this outpost, curious primitives would try to learn something about it before trying to destroy it.”
    N’kosi shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t destruction on their minds. Perhaps it was simple loot and pillage.”
    Tellenberg turned to his colleague. “How do you loot and pillage something the likes of which you’ve never seen before? How do you know if it contains anything worth looting and pillaging? Or that you could