The Captain watched the gob of saliva sizzle and vanish. He looked across into Hogan's red-veined eyes, then down into Spencer's wide gray ones. Spencer's cheeks were puffed, flaming red. His lips were puffed, cracked and quivering slightly as though he was getting ready to laugh or cry. He shivered when the Captain squeezed his shoulder.
Too young, the Captain thought. I shouldn't have brought him out here. But he didn't say anything, just squeezed Spencer's shoulder again and trotted back to the head of the worm.
The monster had a million legs and it was shiny blue. A smooth hemisphere, it squatted on the hub cap of the city, holding the dead lifelines, the puppet strings of the city, python-thick electrical conduits that radiated out in all directions to tie the city together, to integrate the myriad mechanisms of the ultra-technical city, to bleed the streams of electrons that were the life blood to the city. There was life in the old boy yet.
When the Captain stepped too near a conduit, lightning knocked him down. When Spencer started to help the Captain up, a four-inch spark bit his finger. Hogan hee-hawed. But when the Captain jumped up and, grinning, poked his finger an inch from Hogan's dished-in nose Hogan yelped with pain.
"Yes, Hogan," the Captain laughed, "if you had gone back you'd of missed this. Here is the brain of the city, perhaps of the planet. If there is life on this planet we should find it here."
"Check this!" Spencer shouted. He had backed away to include the entire monster in camera focus. Now he was running toward them waving a print.
While the Captain examined it, Spencer turned the pointer-knob on the back of the camera, watched the needle creep across the dial, then opened the back and removed a second print. But the Captain was still staring at the first one. He turned it upside down, held it to the light, looked at the back. Hogan elbowed between the two men and poked a black-rimmed fingernail at the top of the print.
"When did you climb on top, Spencer? I never saw you."
"I didn't."
Hogan hee-hawed. "Then how'd this picture show you standing up there? You were up there and the Captain took the picture. Come on, quit kidding, my eyes don't fool."