SECOND NATURE by Chad Oliver
The rain came down, hard. It was an earthlike rain, a tropical rain: fat and heavy drops that fell almost in solid sheets, splashing into the muddy ground and forming shallow puddles and sudden, tiny streams. The rain was warm, if you monitored it from the ship and believed your instruments.
Paid Edmondson stood outside in that rain, his hands on his hips, and he didn’t like it. His screen protected him but the water poured down the edges of his field and he could feel the damp chill. His boots were thick with mud.
Behind him towered the ship, an immense metallic cylinder that thrust with featureless precision upward into the gloom. The ship was a gigantic thing, dwarfing the rain-soaked plain on which it stood. Even shielded as it was, with only bright yellow beams of floodlights stabbing from its glistening hide, it hummed with power. There was more available energy in that ship, Paul knew, than could be mustered by the entire planet that provided its temporary resting place.
. . .
