Summary

The biologist strikes out for the lighthouse. As she walks she forces herself to set aside her emotions to focus on the known facts. She concludes that what she knows is this: some living organism is writing words on a wall using technology far more advanced than her own species is capable of, she has also inhaled the spores of an unidentifiable species which has caused her to see things more clearly than the rest of her team, that the anthropologist was sacrificed for a greater mission that neither she nor the surveyor are aware of, and that they are isolated and alone in this beautiful, yet savage, environment.

She decides to give the unknown tower writer a name. She calls it the Crawler. What was the Crawler's purpose in writing on the walls? Maybe it was a form of symbiotic communication between...