1n1REzE

Peter Watts 279 Blindsight
the sweep of his headlight. "I'm almost—"
Something that wasn't static moved in his headlight. Something
uncoiled, just at the edge of the camera's view.
The feed died.
Suddenly Bates and Sarasti were shouting in my helmet. I tried
to brake. My stupid useless legs kicked against vacuum, obeying
some ancient brainstem override from a time when all monsters
were earthbound, but by the time I remembered to use my trigger
finger the labhab was already looming before me. Rorschach
reared up behind it in the near distance, vast and malign. Dim
green auroras writhed across its twisted surface like sheet
lightning. Mouths opened and closed by the hundreds, viscous as
bubbling volcanic mud, any one of them large enough to swallow
Theseus whole. I barely noticed the flicker of motion just ahead of
me, the silent eruption of dark mass from the collapsed inflatable.
By the time Cunningham caught my eye he was already on his way,
backlit against the ghastly corpselight flickering on Rorschach's
skin.
I thought I saw him waving, but I was wrong. It was only the
scrambler wrapped around his body like a desperate lover, moving
his arm back and forth while it ran the thrust pistol tethered to his
wrist. Bye-bye, that arm seemed to say, and fuck you, Keeton.
I watched for what seemed like forever, but no other part of him
moved at all.
Voices, shouting, ordering me back inside. I hardly heard them.
I was too dumbfounded by the basic math, trying to make sense of
the simplest subtraction.
Two scramblers. Stretch and Clench. Both accounted for, shot
to pieces before my eyes.
"Keeton, do you read Get back here! Acknowledge!"
"I—it can't be," I heard myself say. "There were only two—"
"Return to the ship immediately. Acknowledge."
"I—acknowledged..."
Rorschach's mouths snapped shut at once, as though holding a
deep breath. The artefact began to turn, ponderously, a continent
changing course. It receded, slowly at first, picking up speed,
turning tail and running. How odd, I thought. Maybe it's more