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of armor
or complete spherical shells. Telisa got a good look at one hanging
from a nearby limb. The creature was a round ball with holes placed
randomly around it, from which tiny green legs poked out and
retracted as needed. Telisa committed some images of the trees and
the creatures to her link memory.
    The hike continued. When Telisa began
to sweat she opened the vents in her camo suit. Her every stride
pumped air over her torso and sent it down to vents at her feet.
Despite the added cooling, she felt the strain of walking on the
uneven ground, pushing through the heavy foliage.
    The hours went by quickly while Telisa
occupied herself with making her way through the alien ecosphere.
She saw several more odd local creatures but nothing larger than a
small dog. They broke for a light lunch at midday, with the alien
sun blazing down directly overhead. The trees afforded some
protection, their spines blocking a great deal of the light. Still,
the humid forest seemed like the inside of an oven during the
middle of the day. Telisa drank a lot of water. She wondered if
they should have taken the trip during the night, but the thought
of trying to make their way in the darkness with all sorts of odd
creatures creeping about was not pleasant either.
    As soon as they had eaten and rested
for half an hour, they returned to the trek with a vengeance.
Telisa had time to think about how close she really was to
discovering new Trilisk artifacts. At one time the Trilisks had
actually lived upon this planet and created installations or even
cities. A race more advanced than mankind, yet strangely absent
from the current galactic stage. What had happened to them? What
could have possibly caused their civilization to be destroyed?
These questions and more drove her forward.
    They forged on for several more hours.
Telisa was glad she had been working out regularly, even if the
exercise was quite different. She wondered how long Thomas and Jack
could continue this level of exertion, although she figured Magnus
could probably outlast them all. Her questions were answered when
Jack spoke up.
    “ Okay, let’s take another
break,” Jack said. “This hiking is killing me.”
    Telisa was exhausted. The sun was no
longer visible above them, although the light level told her that
it hadn’t set.
    “ Are we there yet?” asked
Telisa, smiling at her delivery of the classic question.
    Thomas frowned. “Actually we’re barely
halfway. I underestimated the speed we could make out here. I
suppose we should find a spot to hole up while it’s still
light.”
    Magnus nodded. “We could sleep in the
trees.”
    “ That would be safer on
Earth,” said Jack. “Here, who knows? Maybe the trees are more
dangerous than the ground.”
    “ The ground should be okay,
unless this planet has some particularly nasty nocturnal
predators,” Magnus said. “Unfortunately, we can’t use a campfire
without risking detection.”
    “ How about over there?”
Telisa suggested, pointing to a slight rise in the terrain. They
moved over to the area she had indicated and set their packs on the
ground so they could prepare the makeshift camp.
    Everyone arranged their tiny one-person
sleeping tubes in a circle with the zippered entrances facing
inward towards each other. Magnus and Telisa gathered a bunch of
arm-length needles that had fallen from nearby trees and arranged
them facing outward around the area for defense.
    Telisa looked at the failing light
filtering through the trees. “Only a minute or two to spare, I’d
say.”
    “ Yes, just in time,” Jack
agreed. “Should we have someone awake all the time? Take shifts
staying awake?”
    “ If anything comes around, I
think we’ll hear it,” Magnus said, looking at the camp perimeter.
“I think setting watches at this point would be overly paranoid. We
have the spines, the tents, and a fair amount of
firepower.”
    They each crawled into their sleeping
modules and sought sleep. Telisa opened a vent to let