Victor caught himself on the wall again and froze, hoping it would ignore him.
The bug, seemingly oblivious to him, launched from the nest and flew directly to a small clump of Formic dung in the air. It seized the dung with its legs, tucked it tight to its body, and flew back to the nest.
Curious, Victor drifted closer.
The bug pulsed with light as it fed the dung into a hole in the nest where several larvae lay packed together wiggling.
"It's coprophagic," said Imala.
"Meaning what?" said Victor.
"Meaning it eats dung. Or at least its infants do."
"That's disgusting."
"They have to get minerals from somewhere, Vico. This is its habitat. I don't see any other food source."
"There are minerals in dung?"
"You've never heard of fertilizer?"
"For plants maybe. Feeding it to your babies is something else entirely."
"The nests are probably made of the same material," said Imala.
"Poop nests. I'm liking this ship less and less by the minute."
"That's ecology, Vico. That's how species coexist. Every creature making do with what it's given. Maybe the glow bugs and Formics have a symbiotic relationship. The bugs clear the air and provide light for the tunnels. And the Formics provide them dinner."
"Must we call it dinner?"
He pushed off again, continuing upward, the glow from the bugs behind him slowly fading. After another fifty meters, the external mike on his helmet picked up a faint buzzing noise. As he continued, the buzzing grew louder.
Then he saw the light.
Ahead in the distance were hundreds of glow bugs concentrated in the shaft. They zipped back and forth between nests on the wall, harvesting matter from the air, buzzing and darting about in a frantic flurry of activity.
Victor stopped. "Looks like a swarm, Imala."
"You can't get through there without disturbing them," she said. "It's too tight of a space."
Victor moved closer. "Lem said this suit was tough. Even if they attack, they probably won't penetrate it."
Lem had outfitted them with all of their equipment, including new suits developed by Juke Limited that were designed to withstand the rigors of asteroid mining and yet were sensitive enough to measure all their biometrics.
"You can't be sure of the suit's durability," said Imala. "I say we try the other way."
"We're just as likely to find them in the other direction, Imala. And we've already come this far. If I go slow enough, maybe they won't bother--"
A high-pitched scraping sound echoed through the shaft, like an old rusty gate swinging open. The glow bugs all stopped instantly, a hundred dots of light, coming to rest midflight, wings fluttering, listening.
"What was that?" asked Imala.
Another scraping sound, louder this time. The glow bugs zipped to their nests and clung to the sides, filling the shaft with light and leaving a wide open space in the middle.
"That sound has them spooked," said Imala.
"I've got a hole," said Victor. "I'm going for it."