Free Brightsuit MacBear by L. Neil Smith

their inside surfaces.
    The monster opened and shut them as it bent closer to Berdan.
    Watch out for the rats?
    Let the rats watch out for themselves!
    For his own part, the frightened boy was hurrying to get his father’s briefcase open, to get at the plasma gun, without losing anything else inside it or his other bag. With panic sweeping through him again, he couldn’t remember whether any charge had been left in the pistol. He didn’t think so. The handle of his zipper bag was looped over his wrist, interfering as he clawed at the lock of the case—until he remembered he must use his thumb to open it.
    The clashing jaws descended.
    The nightmarish thing froze. It seemed to glance up, past its intended victim, out across the Sea of Leaves toward some distant threat. It swayed back and forth as if trying to hear or see better—Berdan hadn’t noticed whether it had eyes or not—whirled about, and left the helpless boy by himself.
    Silence fell once more.
    Berdan tried his best to sit up among the leaves to see what sort of unimaginable, horrible thing it had taken to frighten the first monster away. Whatever it was, he didn’t want anything to do with it! All he accomplished with the effort, however, was to sink deeper into the vegetation surrounding him. Forcing himself to stillness, he began to hear what the monster had heard first, an eerie whistling noise—several eerie whistling noises—far away but coming closer.
    Watch out for the rats.
    Groaning with terror and fatigue, he went on groping, trying to get at his father’s plasma gun, every wasted, useless motion pushing him deeper into the leaves. Something whiplike, and not green at all, slapped across his fingers.
    It felt just like the seminaked tail of a large, energetic rat.
    “Hey!” He still hadn’t managed to open the briefcase. To Berdan, it felt like a nightmare he suffered all the time where he tried to run faster and faster, only to stay in the same place. Before he could unlock it, the case was snatched out of his hand by what appeared to be a small, eyeless blue-gray velvet-covered snake.
    “Hey, cut that out!”
    His other bag was wrenched away.
    Something—some rough pair of somethings—seized him by both smartsuited ankles.
    He’d just become aware of this development, when another pair of blue snakes, identical to the one which had taken his case, wrapped themselves around his wrists, pulling against one another until he was stretched flat on his back again.
    He began to rise out of the leaves.
    In this position, staring, whether he wanted to or not, at the sky overhead, it was difficult to see what sort of thing or things had grabbed him and his possessions. He was grateful that a snakelike object like the ones around his wrists and ankles hadn’t also wrapped itself around his neck. The multiple whistling noises were so loud by now they hurt his ears. They seemed to arise from all around him. With a growl of anger and frustration, he twisted his neck—the attempt was painful—and was rewarded with a peculiar sight.
    Each of his outstretched limbs was being held, four or five feet above the ocean of leaves, by a creature which seemed strange, even to a boy used to associating with aliens (and other nonhumans) every day. While it was their limbs—soft-textured, tapering tentacles which had reminded him of velvet-covered snakes—he was in contact with, the principal thing he noticed about each of them was the eye.
    Each had only one, but, somehow, it was enough.
    It was as if a three-legged starfish had been formed from plasticine modeling clay, the legs stretched as far as the clay could go without tearing, perhaps six or seven feet in total length from tentacle tip to tentacle tip. The imaginary sculptor had sprinkled them with blue-gray flocking and pushed a basketball-sized transparent marble through the center, so it stuck out on both sides.
    Berdan could look straight through the creatures.
    The one thing obstructing this