Chapter Fourteen
Zebara was right about the level of obligation the EEC felt for the team's actions.
"Policy usually dictates non-stress duty for at least four weeks after a planetary mission, Lunzie," the Chief Missions Officer of the ARCT-10 told her in a private meeting in his office, "but if you want to go out right away, under the circumstances, you have my blessing. You're lucky. There's a three-month mission due for a combined geological-xenobiological mission on Ireta. I'll put you on the roster for Ireta. With the medical berth filled by you, there are only two more berths to assign. It leaves in two weeks. That's not much turnaround time. . . ."
"Thank you, sir. It relieves my mind greatly," Lunzie said sincerely. She had come straight to him after that talk with Zebara. The scout captain had depressed the right toggles.
Then she had to give the Missions Officer her own report on the Ambrosia incident, with full details. He kept the recorder on through the entire interview, often jotting additional notes. She felt quite exhausted when he finally excused her.
She later learned that he had interviewed each member of the team as well as the Zaid-Dayan officers. Apparently the fact that the lugger with its cold sleep would-be invasion force had escaped didn't concern him half as much as he was pleased that the overgunned escort had been destroyed. Most of those ARCT-10 Ship-born felt the same way. "One less of those hyped-up gunships makes space that bit more safe for us."
The rest of Zebara's team was given interim ship assignments until a replacement explorer scout ship was commissioned. Lunzie, waiting out the two weeks before she could depart on the Iretan mission, found herself with one or more of the off-duty team, and usually Zebara himself. To her amusement, a whisper circulated that they were "an item." Neither did anything to dispel the notion. In fact, Lunzie was flattered. Zebara was attractive, intelligent, and honest: three qualities she couldn't help but admire. She was duly informed by "interested" friends that heavyworlder courting, though infrequent, was brutal and exhausting. She wasn't sure she needed to find out firsthand.
During his convalescence, Zebara strained his eyes going through ship records, trying to locate doctored files. The rumor of a bacterium on Ambrosia killing the landing party one by one had indeed made the rounds of the ARCT-10 before any report had come back from the Zaid-Dayan, It was arduously traced back to Chacal, Coe's asocial friend in communications. He was taken in for questioning but died the first night in his cell. Although the official view reported it as a suicide, whisper had it that his injuries couldn't have been self-inflicted. Lunzie felt compassion for Coe, who felt himself compromised by his "friend's" covert activities.
"Which gets us no further than we were before," Bringan remarked at Lunzie's farewell party the night before she embarked on the Iretan mission.
"Somebody's got to do something positive about those fardling pirates," Pollili said, glowering about the room.
Lunzie was beginning to wish that she'd never imposed the Quinada personality on Pollili. Some of it was sticking. She devoutly hoped it would have worn off by the time she returned from her three months on Ireta.
At the docking bay while they were waiting for the ARCT-10 to reach the shuttle's window down to Ireta's surface, she had a moment's anxiety as she saw six heavyworlders filing in. Stop that, she told herself. She'd got on just fine with Zebara's heavyworld crewmen. This lot could be similarly sociable, pleasant and interesting.
She concentrated hard on the activity in the docking area for there were several missions being landed in this system. A party of Theks including the ubiquitous Tor were to be set down on the seventh planet from the sun. A large group of Ryxi were awaiting transport to Arrutan's fifth planet which was to be thoroughly investigated as suitable for colonization by their species. Ireta, the fourth planet of the system's third-generation sun, was a good prospect—some said a textbook example—for transuranic ores since it appeared to have been locked into a Mezozoic age. Xenobiological surveying would investigate the myriad life-forms sensed by the high-altitude probe, but that search was to take second place to mining assay studies.
The teams would contact one another at prearranged intervals, and report to the ARCT on a regular basis by means of a satellite beacon set in a fixed orbit perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. The ARCT-10 itself discovered traces of a huge ion storm between the Arrutan system and the next one over. They intended to track and chart its course.
"We'll be back for you before you know it," the deck officer assured them on his com as the Iretan shuttle lifted off and glided out of the landing bay. "Good hunting, my friends."
Ireta was named for the daughter of an FSP councillor who had been consistently supportive in voting funds to the EEC. At first it seemed that the councillor had been paid a significant compliment. Initial probe readouts suggested that Ireta had great potential. There was a hopeful feeling that if Ambrosia was lucky, Ireta would continue the streak. It possessed an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, indigenous plant life that ingested CO2 and spat out oxygen: probe analysis marked significant transuranic ore deposits and countless interesting life forms on the part surveyed, none of which seemed to be intelligent.
A base camp was erected on a stony height and the shuttle positioned on a massive shelf of the local granite. A force-screen dome enclosed the entire camp and the veil constantly erupted in tiny blue sparks where Ireta's insect life destroyed itself in clouds on the electrical matrix. Sufficient smaller domes were set up to afford privacy, a larger one for the messhall-lounge, while the shuttle was turned into a laboratory and specimen storage.
And then there was the extraordinary stench. The air was permeated with hydro-telluride, a fiendish odor like rotting vegetation. One source was a small plant, which grew everywhere, that smelled like garlic gone berserk. No one could escape it. After one good whiff when the shuttle doors had opened on their home for the next three months, everyone dove for nose filters, by no means the most comfortable appliance in a hot, steamy environment. Soiled work clothes were left outside the sleeping quarters. After a while, no amount of cleansing completely removed the stench of Ireta from clothes or boots.
The stink bothered Lunzie for less than the feeling that she was being covertly watched. This began on their third day dirtside when the two co-leaders, Kai on the geological side and her young acquaintance Varian as xeno, passed out assignments.
The remainder of the team was a mixed bag. Lunzie knew no one else well but several of the others by sight. Zebara had personally checked the records of everyone assigned to that mission and she'd been delighted to learn that Kai as well as Varian and a man named Triv were Disciples. She was as surprised as Kai and Varian when three children had been included for dirtside experience on this mission. Bonnard, an active ten-year-old, was the son of the ARCT-10's third officer. The gen was that she was probably glad to have him out of her hair while the ARCT explored the ion storm. Cleiti and Terilla, two girls a year younger than Bonnard, were more docile and proved eager to help.
Kai and Varian had both tried to set the children aside.
"That's an unexplored planet," Kai had protested to the mission officer. "This mission could be dangerous. It's no place for children."
Lunzie was not proof against the crushing disappointment in the young faces. There would be a force-shielded camp: there were plenty of adults to supervise their activities. "Oh, why not? Ireta's been benchmarked. No planet is ever completely safe but it shouldn't be too dangerous for a short term."
"If," Kai had emphasized that, holding up a warning finger at the children, "they act responsibly! Most important of all, never go outside the camp without an adult."
"We won't!" the youngsters chorused.
"We'll count on that promise," Kai told them, adult to adult. "It isn't uncommon for children to join a mission," he said to the others. "We can use the extra hands if we're to get everything done."
"We'll help, we'll help!" the girls had chorused. "We've never been on a planet before," Bonnard had added wistfully.
The last-minute inclusion of the children was curiously comforting to Lunzie: she'd missed so much of Fiona's childhood that she looked forward to their company. Lunzie preferred making new acquaintances, for strangers wouldn't know any details of her life. The team leaders, of course, knew that she had experienced cold sleep lags, for those were on her file. Varian considered her somewhat mysterious.
Gaber was the team cartographer and endlessly complained about the primitive facilities and noxious conditions. Lunzie usually greeted these outpourings with raised eyebrows. After the scout ship on Ambrosia, their quarters, not to mention the privacy of a separate small dwelling, seemed positively elaborate. However, Lunzie was willing to tolerate Gaber because he had been able to achieve long-term (for an ephemeral) friendships with the oldest Theks on the ARCT-10 and she would divert his complaints to the relationships which fascinated her. She assisted Kai in making certain that the cartographer remembered to wear his force-belt and other safety equipment. That much was out of pure selfishness on Lunzie's part, for Gaber had to be constantly treated for insect bites and minor lacerations.
Trizein was a xenobiologist whose infectious enthusiasm made him popular with everyone, especially the youngsters, as he would patiently answer their many questions. Trizein applied the same amazing energy to his work though he was absentminded about safety precautions. Lunzie would be assisting him from time to time and had no problem with that duty.
Dimenon and Margit were Kai's senior geologists who would locate Ireta's deposits of useful minerals. They were specifically hoping for transuranics like plutonium which paid the biggest bonuses. Ireta's preliminary scan clearly displayed large deposits of radioactivity. Dimenon's crew was eager to get to work laying detective cores. Triv and Aulia and three of the heavyworlders, Bakkun, Berru and Tanegli, completed the geologists, while Portegin would set up the core-receiver screen and computer analysis.
Lunzie made no immediate efforts to approach the six heavyworlders. They didn't seem to mix with the lightweighters as easily as Zebara, Dondara and Pollili. The captain had instilled his team with his own democratic, bootstrapping ideals and, while on the ARCT-10, they had not limited their acquaintances to heavyworlders.
Paskutti, the security officer, was of the sullen, chip-on-the-shoulder type who would prefer a ghetto in the midst of an otherwise tolerant society. Lunzie wasn't sure if he was just sullen or stupid, but he ruled the female Tardma's every action. Lunzie refused to let him worry her. Her time with Zebara had shown that the attitude problem was theirs, not hers. Fortunately, as time passed Tanegli and another heavyworlder named Divisti became more sociable though they remained more distant with lightweights than Lunzie's comrades on Zebara's team had been. Bakkun and Berru were a recent pairing and it was understandable if they were much engrossed in each other.
Lunzie could not quite dismiss her lingering anxieties: Orlig's death still haunted her. Chacal, who had proved to be a spy, could never have strangled the heavyworlder. Knoradel and Birra, the Ryxi, when questioned, had both adamantly insisted that Lunzie had insulted Birra and then attacked Knoradel, who had gone to her assistance. Birra had left with the Ryxi settlers and Knoradel transferred off the ARCT-10.
Far from being a wonderland, Ireta's landscape became downright depressing after the novelty of it wore off. The purple-green and blue-green growth overhung the camp on every side. What looked like a flat, grassy meadow beckoning to the explorer usually turned out to be a miry swamp. The fauna was far more dangerous than any Lunzie had seen on Ambrosia or on any of the planets she had so far visited. Some of the life-forms were monstrous.
The first sled reconnaissance flights sighted large bodies crashing through the thick green jungle growth but, at first, no images were recorded, just vast shadowy forms. When at last Varian's team saw examples of Ireta's native life, they got quite a shock. The creatures were huge, ranging from a mere four meters to over thirty meters in length. One long-necked, slow-moving swamp herbivore was probably longer, but it hardly ever emerged from the marsh where it fed, so that the length of its tail was still in dispute.
Lunzie watched the xenob films with disbelief. Nothing real could be that big. It could squash a human being in passing, even a heavyworlder, and never notice. Small life there was in plenty, too. Lunzie held morning and evening surgeries to treat insect bites. The worst of them was a stinging insect which left huge welts but the most insidious was a leechlike bloodsucker. Everyone activated their personal force-screens outside the camp compound.
Instead of a second balmy paradise like Ambrosia, Ireta had more nasty surprises and anomalies than Purgatory. Stunners were issued to the geology and xeno teams although Varian made far more use of telltale taggers, marking the native life-forms with paint guns trying to amass population figures. Anyone out on foot wore his lift-belt, to remove himself quickly from the scene of trouble.
Lunzie found it curious that there were so many parasites with a taste for red, iron-based blood, when the first specimens of the marine life forms which Varian or Divisti brought in to be examined proved to have a much thinner, watery fluid in their systems. To test the planet for viability, foragers were sent out for specimens of fruits and plants to test and catalog. More than curiosity prompted that for it was always wise to supplement food stocks from indigenous sources in case the EV ship didn't get back on time. In this task, the children were useful, though they were always accompanied by an adult, often Lunzie, frequently Divisti who was a horticulturist. Whenever she thought about the ion storm which the ARCT-10 was chasing, Lunzie pressed herself to find safe sources of indigenous foodstuffs. Then she chided herself for half believing her "Jonah" reputation. That had been broken by the fortuitous outcome of the Ambrosia incident.
Because her skills did not include mapping or prospecting, Lunzie took up the duties of camp quartermaster. She spent hours experimenting with the local foods when she wasn't overseeing the children's lessons or doing her Discipline exercises. She didn't mind being the camp cook for it was her first opportunity to prepare food by hand since she had left Tee. Making tempting meals out of synth-swill and the malodorous native plants provided her with quite a challenge.
Lunzie and Trizein also combined their skills to create a nutritious green pulp from local vines that filled all the basic daily requirements. On the one hand, the pulp was an extremely healthful meal. On the other, it tasted horrible. Since she had concocted it, Lunzie bravely ate her share but after the first sampling no one else would eat it except the heavy-worlders.
"They," Varian declared, "would eat anything."
Lunzie managed a chagrined smile. "My future efforts will be better, I promise. Just getting the hang of it."
"If you could just neutralize the hydro-telluride," Varian said. "Of course, we can always eat grass like the herbivores. D'you know, it doesn't stink?"
"Humans can't digest that much grass fiber."
On one of their supervised "foragings," the children had spotted a shy, hip-high, brown-furred beast in the ferny peat bogs. All their efforts to capture one of the "cute" animals before an adult could follow the active children, were circumvented by the quadrupeds' native caution. Varian found that odd since there was no reason for the little animals to fear bipeds. Then a wounded herbivore too slow to escape with the others was captured. A pen was constructed outside the camp for Varian to tend and observe the creature. On the next trip, Varian brought back one very small specimen of a furry quadruped breed. It had been orphaned and would have fallen prey to the larger carnivores.
The two creatures proved to compound Ireta's anomalies. Trizein had been dissecting clear-ichored marine creatures, styled fringes because of their shape. The large herbivore, savagely gouged in the flank, was red-blooded. Trizein was amazed that two such diverse species would have evolved on the same planet. Trizein could find no precedents to explain red-blooded, pentadactyl animals and ichor-circulating marine creatures cohabiting. The anomaly didn't fit the genetic blueprint for the planet. He spent hours trying to reconcile the diversities. He requested tissue samples from any big creature Varian's team could catch, both carnivore and herbivore, and he wanted specimens of marine and insect life. He seemed to be constantly in the shuttle lab, except when Lunzie hauled him out to eat his meals. He'd have forgotten that minor human requirement if she'd let him.
Meanwhile, the little creature now named Dandy and the wounded female adult herbivore called Mabel had to be tended and fed: the children assumed the first chore. Lunzie had synthesized a lactose formula for the orphan and put the energetic Bonnard in charge of its feeding, with Cleiti and Terilla to assist.
"Now you kids can't neglect Dandy," Lunzie told them. "I don't mind if you treat it as a pet but once you take responsibility for it, you'd better not forget that obligation. Understand me? Especially you, Bonnard. If you're interested in becoming a planetary surveyor, you must prove to be trustworthy. All this goes down on your file, remember!"
"I will, Lunzie, I will!" And Bonnard began issuing orders to the two girls.
Varian chuckled as she watched him grooming Dandy and fussing over the security of his pen while the girls refilled its water bucket. "He's making progress, isn't he?"
"Considerable. If we could only stop him bellowing like a bosun."
"You should hear his mother," Varian replied, grinning broadly. "I don't blame her for dumping him with us. I wouldn't want him underfoot if I was charting an ion storm."
"How's your Mabel?" Lunzie asked casually although she had another motive for asking.
"Oh, I think we can release her soon. Good clean tissue around the scar once we got rid of all the parasites. I wouldn't want to keep her in a pen much longer or she'll become tame, used to being given food instead of doing her own foraging."
"Mabel? Tame?" Lunzie rolled her eyes, remembering that it had taken all the heavyworlders to rope and secure the beast for the initial surgery.
"Odd, that injury," Varian went on, frowning. "All the adults of her herd had similar bite marks on their haunches. That would suggest that their predator doesn't kill!" Her frown deepened. "And that's rather odd behavior, too."
"You didn't by any chance notice the heavyworlders' reaction?"
Varian regarded Lunzie for a long moment. "I don't think I did but then I was far too busy keeping away from Mabel's tail, legs and teeth. Why? What did you notice?"
"They had looked . . ."—Lunzie paused, trying to find exactly the right adjective—"hungry!"
"Come on now, Lunzie!"
"I'm not kidding, Varian. They looked hungry at the sight of all that raw red meat. They weren't disgusted. They were fascinated. Tardma was all but salivating." Lunzie felt sick at the memory of the scene.
"There have always been rumors that heavyworlders eat animal flesh on their home planets," Varian said thoughtfully, giving a little squeamish shudder. "But that group have all served with FSP teams. They know the rules."
"It's not a rumor, Varian. They do eat animal protein on their homeworlds," Lunzie replied, recalling long serious talks she'd had with Zebara. "This is a very primitive environment, predators hunting constantly. There's something called the 'desert island syndrome.'" She sighed but made eye contact with the young leader. "And ethnic compulsions can cause the most civilized personality to revert, given the stimulus."
"Is that why you keep experimenting to improve the quality of available foodstuffs?" Lunzie nodded. "Keep up the good work, then. Last night's meal was rather savory. I'll keep an eye out for a hint of reversion."
A few days later Lunzie entered the shuttle laboratory to find Trizein combining a mass of vegetable protein with an ARCT-grown nut paste. She swiped her finger through the mess and licked thoughtfully.
"We're getting there, but you know, Tri, we're not real explorers yet. I'm sort of disappointed."
Trizein looked up, startled. "I think we've accomplished rather a lot in the limited time with so much to analyze and investigate. We're the first beings on this planet. How much more explorer can we be?"
Lunzie let the grin she'd been hiding show. "We're not considered true explorers until we have made a spiritous beverage from indigenous products."
Trizein blinked, totally baffled.
"Drink, Trizein. Quickal, spirits, booze, liquor, alcohol. What have you analyzed that's non-toxic with a sufficient sugar content to ferment? I think we should have a chemical relaxant. It'd do everyone good."
Trizein peered shortsightedly at her, a grin tugging at his lips. "In point of fact, I have got something. They brought it in from that foraging expedition that was attacked. I ran a sample of it. I think it's very good but I can't get anyone else to try it. We'll need a still."
"Nothing we can't build." Lunzie grinned. "I've been anticipating your cooperation, Tri, and I've got the necessary components out of stores. I rather thought you'd assist in this worthy project for the benefit of team morale."
"Morale's so important," Trizein agreed, exhibiting a droll manner which he'd had little occasion to display. "I do miss wine, both for drinking and cooking. Not that anything is likely to improve the pervasive flavor of Iretan food. A little something after supper is a sure specific against insomnia."
"I didn't think anyone suffered that here," Lunzie remarked, and then they set to work to construct a simple distillation system, complete with several filters. "We'll have to remove all traces of the hydro-telluride without cooking off the alcohol."
"A pity acclimatization is taking so long," Trizein said, easing a glass pipe into a joint. "We'll probably get used to the stench the day before the ARCT comes for us."
They set the still up, out of the way, in a corner of Lunzie's sleeping dome. With a sense of achievement, they watched the apparatus bubble gently for a time and then left it to do its job.
"It's going to be days before there's enough for the whole team to drink," Trizein said in gentle complaint.
"I'll keep watch on it," she said, her eyes crinkling merrily, "but feel perfectly free to pop in and sample its progress."
"Oh, yes, we should periodically sample it," Trizein replied gravely. "Can't have an inferior product."
They shut the seal on Lunzie's dome just as Kai and Gaber burst excitedly into the camp.
"We've got films of the monster who's been taking bites out of the herbivores," Kai announced, waving the cassette jubilantly above his head.
The lightweights watched the footage of toothy monsters with horrified interest. Varian dubbed the carnivores "fang-faces" for the prominent fangs and rows of sharp teeth. They were terrifyingly powerful specimens, walking upright on huge haunches with a reptilian tail like a third leg that flew behind them when they ran. The much smaller forepaws might look like a humorous afterthought of genetic inadequacy but they were strong enough to hold a victim still while the animal chewed on the living prey. Fortunately the fang-faces on film were not savaging herbivores in this scene. They were greedily eating clumps of a bright green grass, tearing them up by those very useful forelimbs, stuffing them into toothy maws.
"Quite a predator," Lunzie murmured to Varian. She ought to have hauled Trizein away from his beloved electro-microscope. He needed to have the contrast of the macrocosm to round out the pathology of his biological profiles.
"Yes, but this is very uncharacteristic behavior for a carnivore," Varian remarked, watching intently. "Its teeth are suitable for a carnivorous diet. Why is it eating grass like there's no tomorrow?"
As the camera panned past the fang-face, it rested on a golden-furred flying creature, eating grass almost alongside the predator. It had a long sharp beak and wing-hands like the Ryxi but there the resemblance ended.
"We've seen avian nests but they're always near water, preferably large lakes or rivers," Gaber told Lunzie. "That creature is nearly two hundred kilometers from the nearest water. They would have to have deliberately sought out this vegetation."
"They're an interesting species, too," Kai remarked. "They were curious enough to follow our sled and they're capable of fantastic speed."
Varian let out a crow. "I want to be there when we tell that to the Ryxi! They want to be the only intelligent avians in the galaxy even if they have to deny the existence of others by main strength of will."
"Why weren't these species seen on the initial flyby of Ireta?" Divisti asked in her deep slow voice.
"With the dense jungle vegetation a super cover? Not surprising that the report only registered life-forms. Think of all the trouble we've had getting pictures with them scooting into the underbrush."
"I wish the ARCT wasn't out of range," Kai remarked, not for the first time. "I'd like to order a galaxy search on EV files. I keep feeling that this planet has to have been surveyed before."
Dimenon, as chief geologist, was of the same opinion. He was getting peculiar echoes from signalling cores all over the continental shield. Kai managed to disinter an old core from the site of one of the echoes. Its discovery proved to the geologists that their equipment was functioning properly but the existence of an unsuspected core also caused consternation.
"This core is not only old, it's ancient," Kai said. "Millions of years old."
"Looks just like the ones you're using," Lunzie remarked, handling the tube-shaped core.
"That's true enough, but it suggests that the planet has been surveyed before, which is why no deposits of transuranics have been found in an area that should be rich with them."
"Then why no report in the EV files?" Dimenon asked.
Kai shrugged, taking the core back from Lunzie. "This is slightly more bulky but otherwise identical."
"Could it be the Others?" Dimenon asked in a hushed voice.
Lunzie shook her head, chuckling at that old childish nightmare.
"Not unless the Others know the Theks," Kai replied. "They make all the cores we use."
"What if the Theks are copying the science of the older technology?" Dimenon argued defensively.
While it was hard to imagine anything older than Theks, Lunzie looked at Kai who knew more about them than she did.
"Then the ancient core has to mean that Ireta was previously surveyed? Only who did it? What do the Theks say?"
"I intend to ask them," Kai replied grimly.
A few days later, Varian sought Lunzie out in her dome. The young leader was shaking and very disturbed. Lunzie made her sit and gave her a mug of pepper.
"What's wrong?"
The girl took a deep sip of the restorative drink before she spoke.
"You were right," Varian said. "The heavyworlders are reverting to savagery. I had two of them out on a survey. Paskutti was flying the sled as we tracked a fang-face. It chased down one of the herbivores and gouged bites out of its flank. It made me sick, but Paskutti and Tardma exhibited a grotesque fascination at the sight. I insisted that we save the poor herbivore before it was killed. Paskutti promptly blasted the fang-face with the sled exhaust, showing his superiority like an alpha animal. He did drive it off but not before wounding it cruelly. Its hide was a mass of char."
Lunzie swallowed her disgust. As surrogate mother-confessor and psychologist for the team, she knew that a confrontation with the heavyworlders was required to discover exactly what was going on in their minds, but she didn't look forward to the experience. Right now she needed to refocus Varian on her mission, to take her mind off the horror.
"The predator just took the animal's flesh," she asked, "leaving a wound like Mabel's? That's interesting. A fang-face has a tremendous appetite. One little chunk of herbivore oughtn't to satisfy it."
"They certainly couldn't sustain themselves just by eating grass. Even though they do eat tons of it in the truce-patch."
Lunzie stroked the back of her neck thoughtfully. "That grass is more likely to provide a nutrient they're missing. We'll analyze anything you bring us."
Varian managed a laugh. "That's a request for samples?"
"Yes, indeed. Trizein is right. There are anomalies here, puzzles left from eons past. I'd like to solve the mystery before we leave Ireta."
"If we leave," Gaber said irritably later that day when Lunzie invited him to share a pot of her brew of synthesized coffee. "I don't intend ever signing up for a planetary mission again. It's my opinion that we've been planted. We're here to provide the core of a planetary population. We'll never get off."
"Nonsense," Lunzie returned sharply, ignoring his basic self-contradiction to concentrate on reducing a new rumor. "The transuranics of this planet alone are enough to supply ten star systems for a century. The FSP is far more desperate for mineral wealth than starting colonies. Now that Dimenon is prospecting beyond the continental shield, he's finding significant deposits of transuranics every day."
"Significant?" Gaber was skeptical.
"Triv is doing assays. We'll have evaluations shortly," Lunzie said in a no-nonsense tone. Gaber responded to firmness. "Add to that, look at all the equipment we have with us. The EEC can't afford to plant such expensive machinery. They need it too badly for ongoing exploration."
"They'd have to make it look like a normal drop, or we all would have opted out." Gaber could be obstinate in his whimsies.
Lunzie was exasperated by the cartographer's paranoia. "But why plant us? We're the wrong age mix and too few in number to provide any viable generations beyond grandchildren."
Gaber sat gloomily over his mug of coffee. "Perhaps they're trying to get rid of us and this was the surest way."
Lunzie was momentarily stunned into silence. Gaber had to be grousing. If there was the least byte of truth to his appalling notion, she was a prime candidate for the tactic. If eighteen people had been put in jeopardy just to remove her, she would never forgive herself. Common sense took hold. Zebara had checked the files on the entire mission personnel; she had been a late addition to the team and, by the time she was included, it would have been far too late for even a highly organized pirate network to have maneuvered a planting!
"Sometimes, Gaber," she said with as light a tone as she could manage, "you can be totally absurd! The mission planted? Highly unlikely."
However, when Dimenon returned from the northeast edge of the shield with his news of a major strike, Lunzie decided that tonight was a very good occasion to break out the quickal. There was enough to provide two decent tots for each adult to celebrate the discovery of the saddle of pitchblende. The up-thrust strike would provide all the geologists with such assay bonuses they might never have to work again. A percentage was customarily shared out to other members of an exploratory team. Even the children.
They had to be content with riches in their majority, and fruit juice now in their glasses. However, they were soon merry enough, for Dimenon brought out the thumb piano he never travelled without and played while everyone danced.
If the heavyworlders had to be summoned from their quarters by Kai to join in, they did so with more enthusiasm than Lunzie would have believed of the dour race. They also appeared to get drunker on the two servings than anyone else did.
The next day they were surly and clumsy, more of a distraction to the survey teams than a functioning part. There was physical evidence that the alcohol had stimulated a mating frenzy. Some of the males sported bruises, Tardma cradled one arm and Divisti walked in a measured way that suggested to Lunzie that she was covering a limp.
Lunzie spent hours over comparative chemical analysis and called the heavyworlders in one at a time that evening for physical examinations, trying to determine if their mutation was adversely affected by the native quickal. To be on the safe side, she added one more filter to the still. Nothing else which could be construed as harmful was left in the mixture. She took a taste of the new distillate and made a face. It was potent, but not potent enough to account for the heavyworlder behavior.
Lunzie lay in bed late that night staring up at the top of the dome and listening to the bubbling of the still.
If, she mused, aware that the quickal had loosened a few inhibitions, Gaber should be correct, I might be planted but I haven't lost anything. I've nothing left of my past except that hologram of Fiona in the bottom of my bag. I started my travels with that: it is proper for it to be with me now.
I wonder how Fiona is, on that remote colony of hers. What would she say if she could see me now, in an equally remote location, escaping yet another life-threatening situation, complete with fanged predators? Lunzie sighed. Why would Fiona care? She knew that when she had escaped from Ireta back to the ARCT-10, she'd join Zebara's team, stop running away, and have an interesting life. No big nasty pervert has dumped nineteen people on a substandard planet just to dispose of one time-lagged ex-Jonah medic.
Which brought her right back to the underlying motivation. The planet pirates. They were to blame for everything that had happened to her since her first cold sleep. They had unsettled her life time and again: first by robbing her of her daughter, trying to kill her and making her live in fear of her life. Somehow, even if it meant turning down a place on Zebara's team, she was going to turn matters around, and start interfering with the pirates, instead of them messing up her life all the time. She'd managed to do a little along those lines already: she just had to improve her efficiency. She grinned to herself. That could be fun now that she had learned to be vigilant. The Ireta mission had a few more weeks to run.
With a sigh, she started the Discipline for putting herself to sleep. In the morning, she kept her mind busy with inventorying the supply dome. As she checked through, small discrepancies began to show up in a variety of items, including some she had had occasion to draw from only the day before. She turned over piles of dome covers, and restacked boxes, but there was no doubt about it. Force-belts, chargers, portable disk reader/writers were missing. Stock had also been moved around, partly to conceal withdrawals. Quickly, she went over the foodstuffs. None of the all-important protein stores were gone, but quantities of the mineral supplements had vanished as well as a lot of vegetable carbohydrates.
The missing items could be quite legitimate, with secondary camps being established for the geology teams. There was no reason they couldn't just help themselves. She would ask one of the leaders later on.
From the hatch of the dome, Lunzie saw Kai coming down the hill from the shuttle and met him at the veil lock. "You look tired."
"Thek contact," Kai said, feigning total exhaustion. "I wish Varian would do some of the contacts but she just hasn't the patience to talk to Theks."
"Gaber likes talking with Theks."
"Gaber wouldn't stick to the subject under discussion."
"Such as the ancient cores?"
"Right."
"What did they say?"
Kai shrugged. "I asked my questions. Now they will consider them. Eventually I'll get answers."
Varian joined them as they walked to the dome. "What word from the Theks?"
"I expect a definite yes or no my next contact. But what in the raking hells could they tell me after all this time? Even Theks don't live as long as those cores have been buried."
"Kai, I've been talking to Gaber." Lunzie took the co-leaders aside. "He's heard a rumor about planting. He swears he has kept his notion to himself, but if he has reached that conclusion on his own, you may assume that others have, too."
"You're smarter than that," Kai snapped. "We haven't been planted."
"You know how Gaber complains, Lunzie," Varian added, "It's more of his usual."
"Then there's nothing wrong in the lack of messages from the ARCT-10, is there?" Lunzie asked bluntly. "There's really been no more news from our wandering ship in several weeks. The kids especially miss word from their parents."
Kai and Varian exchanged worried glances. "There's been nothing on the beacon since they closed with the storm."
"That long?" Lunzie asked, taken aback. "They couldn't have gotten that far out of range since we were dropped off. Had the Theks heard?"
"No, but that doesn't worry me. What does is that our messages haven't been stripped from the beacon since the first week. Look, Lunzie," Kai said when she whistled at that news, "morale will deteriorate if people learn that. It would give credence to that ridiculous notion that we've been planted. I give you my word that the ARCT means to come back for us. The Ryxi intend to stay on Arrutan-5 but the Theks don't want to remain on the seventh planet forever."
"And even though the Theks wouldn't care if they were left through the next geologic age," Varian said firmly, "this is not the place I intend to spend the rest of my life."
"Nor I," was Lunzie's fervent second.
"Oh, there can't be anything really wrong," Varian went on blithely. "Perhaps the raking storm bollixed up the big receivers or something equally frustrating. Or," and now her eyes twinkled with pure mischief, "maybe the Others got them."
"Not on my first assignment as a leader," Kai said, making a valiant attempt to respond.
"By the way," Lunzie began, "since I've got the two of you at once, did you authorize some fairly hefty withdrawals from stores?"
"No," Varian and Kai chorused. "What's missing?" Kai asked.
"I did an inventory today and we're missing tools, mineral supplements, some light equipment, and a lot of oddments that were there yesterday."
"I'll ask my teams," Kai said and looked at Varian,
She was reviewing the problem. "You know, there have been a few funny things happening with supplies. The power pack in my sled was run down and I recharged it only yesterday morning. I know I haven't used up twelve hours' worth of power already."
"Well, I'll just institute a job for the girls," Lunzie said. "They can do their studies at the stores' dome and check supplies and equipment in and out. All part of their education in planetary management."
"Nice thought," Varian said, grinning.
Dimenon and his crew returned from their explorations with evidence of another notable strike. Gold nuggets glittering in a streambed had led them to a rich vein of ore. The heavy hunks were passed from hand to hand that evening at another celebration. Morale lifted as Ireta once again proved to be a virgin source of mineral wealth.
A lot of the evening was spent in good-natured speculation as to the disposition of yet another hefty bonus. Lunzie dispensed copious draughts of fruit ale, keeping a careful eye on the heavyworlders although she was careful not to stint their portions.
In the morning, everyone seemed normal. In contrast to the drunken incompetence they had displayed the last time, the heavyworlders were in excellent spirits.
A different kind of emergency faced Lunzie as she emerged from her dome.
"I can't take it! I can't take it!" Dimenon cried, clutching first his head and then falling on his knees in front of them.
"What's the matter?" she demanded, alarmed by the distortion of his features. What on Earth sort of disease had he contracted? She fumbled for her bod bird.
"That won't help," Kai said, shaking his head sadly.
"Why not?" she said, her hand closing on the bod bird.
"Nothing can cure him."
"Tell me I'm not a goner, Lunzie, Tell me." He waved his hands so wildy that she couldn't get the bod bird into position.
"He doesn't smell Ireta any more," Kai said, still shaking his head but smiling wryly at his friend's histrionics.
"He what?" Lunzie stopped trying to scope Dimenon and then realized that she hadn't had time to put in her own nose filters. And she didn't smell Ireta either. "Krims!" She closed her eyes and gave a long sigh. "It has to come to this, huh?"
Dimenon wrapped his arms about her knees. "Oh, Lunzie, I'm so sorry for both of us. Please, my smeller will come back, won't it? Once I'm back in real air again. Oh, don't tell me I'll never be able to smell nothing in the air again . . ."
"An Ambrosian shadow crab by another name will still get you wet," Lunzie muttered under her breath. Nothing for it but to play out the scene. She picked up Dimenon's wrist and took his pulse, shone the bod bird in first one eye, then the other. "If the acclimatization should just happen to be permanent, you could install an Iretan air-conditioner for your shipboard quarters. The ARCT-10 engineers are very solicitous about special atmospheres for the odd human mutation."
Dimenon looked as if he believed her for a long, woeful moment but the others were laughing so hard that he took it in good part.
Despite the installation of Cleiti and Terilla as requisitions clerks, the depletion of supplies did not cease. More items than those checked out by the girls continued to go missing: some were vital and irreplaceable pieces of equipment.
Coupling that with the increasingly aberrant behavior of the heavyworlders, Lunzie pegged them as the pilferers. At the rate supplies were being raided, they must be getting ready to strike off on their own. They were physically well adapted for the dangers inherent on Ireta. This wasn't, she admitted to herself, the usual way in which heavyworlders usurped a full planet. Perhaps her imagination was going wild. There were only six heavyworlders, not enough to colonize a planet.
But the Theks were still in the system, and the Ryxi. So the system was already opened up in the conventional way. The ARCT-10 would soon be back to collect them, and if the heavyworlders wished to indulge in their baser instincts until that time, they were no real loss. There were still five qualified geologists and she, Trizein, Portegin and the kids could help Varian complete her part of the survey.
With Bonnard as Varian's record taper and with the possible alteration of the camp in mind, Lunzie assisted Trizein in his studies of the now-obsessive anomalies of Iretan life-forms.
Today's first task was to lure Dandy into the biologist's lab so he could take measurements of its head and limbs, and samples of hair and skin from the shy little animal. The beast kicked and whistled when Trizein scraped cells from inside its furry ears. Lunzie took it back to its pen and rewarded it with a sweet vegetable. She stayed a moment calming and caressing it before returning to Trizein, who was peering into the eyepiece of a scanner. He gestured her over in excitement.
"There is something very irregular about this planet," he said. "You just compare these two slides: one from the marine fringes and the other fresh from the little herbivore." Obediently Lunzie looked and he was right; the structures represented radically differing biologies. "Judging by the eating and ingesting habits, I have no doubt that the square marine fringes are native to this planet but Dandy and his friends don't belong here.
"I have a theory about the primitive yeasts we've been documenting," Trizein went on in a semi-lecturing mode. "It's been plaguing me all along that there was something familiar about the configuration."
"How can that be?" Lunzie asked, racking her brains. "I'll grant you that the Ssli are a tad like the fringes but I've never seen anything like Dandy before."
"That's because Dandy is the primitive form of an animal you're used to in its evolved state: the horse. The Earth horse. The species is not only pentadactyl, it is perissodactyl."
"That's impossible!"
"I'm afraid there's no other explanation though it doesn't explain how the creatures got here—he couldn't have evolved on this planet, but here he is."
"Someone had to have conveyed the stock here," Lunzie mused.
"Precisely," the biologist said. "If I were to ignore the context and study only the data I've been given, first by Bakkun, and now from this little fellow's living tissue, I would have to say that he is a hyracotherium, a life-form which became extinct on old Earth millions of years ago!"
The sound of the sled interrupted them. Lunzie hurried to the shield controls to admit Varian and Bonnard. She informed them that Trizein had news that he wanted to share with them. It was his triumph and he should be allowed to enjoy it by himself. The absentminded biologist was seldom outside his laboratory except to eat or to visit with Lunzie or Kai and had been largely unaware of the other facets of the team.
To the amazement of his small audience, he displayed the disk showing an archival drawing of a hyracotherium from his collection of paleontological files. There was no doubt about it: Dandy was unquestionably a replica of an ancient Earth breed from the Oligocene era.
"Let's see if there's more alike than just the furred beasts," Varian said, leading Trizein to the viewscreen. Varian promptly sat the bemused biologist down to watch her tapes of the golden fliers. Trizein launched into raptures as the graceful creatures performed their aerial acrobatics.
"No way to be certain, of course, without complete analysis, but this unquestionably resembles a pteranodon!"
"Pteranodon?" Bonnard made a face.
"Yes, a pteranodon, a form of dinosaur, misnamed, of course, since patently this creature is warmblooded. . . ." One by one, he identified the genotypes of the beasts Varian and the others had recorded. Each of the Iretan samples could be matched to a holo and description from Trizein's paleontological files. He did point to some minor evolutionary details but they were negligible alterations.
Fang-face was a Tyrannosaurus rex; Mabel and her breed were crested hadrosaurs; the weed-eating swamp dwellers were stegosauri and brontosauri. The biologist became more and more disturbed. He could not believe that they existed just on the other side of the veil which he himself never crossed. When Varian gave him the survey tapes she'd compiled, he shook an accusatory finger at the screen.
"Those animals were planted here."
"By who?" gasped Bonnard, wide-eyed. "The Others?"
"The Theks planted them, of course," Trizein assured the boy.
"Gaber says we're planted," Bonnard added.
Trizein, in his mild way, was more saddened than disturbed by the suggestion. He looked to Varian.
"We're not planted, Trizein," the young co-leader assured him and gave Bonnard a very intense and disapproving glare.
Kai was urgently summoned back from the edge of the continental shield to hear Trizein's conclusions, leaving Bakkun alone on the ridge. Varian particularly wanted Kai separated from the heavyworlders, for by the time he returned, Trizein had given her even more disturbing news.
Paskutti had asked Trizein to test the toxicity of the fang-face flesh and hide, a question which was not mere idle curiosity. Varian now had films of a startling atrocity. That day, Bonnard had led her to Bakkun's "special place." It proved to be a rough campground where five skulls and blackened bones of some of the fang-faces lay among the stones.
Lunzie knew how quickly the parasites of Ireta disposed of carrion. That meant these were very recent. There could be little doubt that the heavyworlders had killed and eaten animal flesh. The situation narrowed down to how well Kai, and Varian, could control the heavyworlders until the ARCT-10 retrieved them.