Delta Pavonis (4 page)

Dierdre followed, back out into the light and heat. She admired Barbara's easy, long-legged gait and glossy, golden skin. She wondered whether the skin was a derm treatment or the natural effect of sunlight. She had always felt her own body to be, at best, sturdily functional. Her height of 1.6 meters made her feel small in a gravity environment. It occurred to her that her stature, an irrelevancy in space, might be a handicap in exploring a planet.

The buildings were situated on a shelf of harder ground above the shifting sand that felt, to Dierdre, dangerously unstable. Barbara stopped before a long, low-roofed structure that was little more than a ragged half-cylinder of extruded foam. Its dingy brown color blended well enough with the nearby dirt, but that was its only saving grace. There was no sign or marking of any kind, so Dierdre figured that everyone just had to memorize where everybody else was. They ducked through the low doorway.

The interior was dim and relatively cool. The translucent foam and the small windows permitted enough light to make artificial illumination unnecessary. The building was lined with a double row of bunks, some of them occupied. Faces blinked toward the bright light of the doorway. On the first right-hand bunk, a man sat doing something with a pair of boots.

He set the boots on the floor. "Morning, Barb." One eyebrow went up at the sight of a second entrant.

"Kay, this is Dierdre. She'll be joining your team."

"I have a full team now. We jump off for unknown territory the day after tomorrow and we don't have time to break in a replacement just off the shuttle." He picked up his boots and with a look of profound disgust went back to whatever he was doing. "Find something for her to do at HQ where she can keep out of the way until she knows which way the gravity pulls."

"Kurz assigned her to you," Barbara said. "You want to give someone a hard time, go give it to Kurz." She turned to Dierdre. "I'll see you later. You'll do all right here."

When she was gone, Forrest glared at Dierdre. "What do you do?"

"Topographical analysis, and don't bother telling me it's no use down here; I already know. What was your specialty when you arrived?"

He hesitated a moment before answering. "Biology."

"And that's done you a hell of a lot of good, hasn't it?"

"Look, the rest of us were sent down to one of the big bases and we worked on safe operations until we knew the ropes. The dangerous operations are supposed to be handled only by experienced people."

She looked around at the ramshackle interior of the barracks. "That's not how I heard it. I've been told that people ended up here by screwing up."

He said, grudgingly, "Usually, it's just a personality clash."

"I'll believe that if you'll believe I won't be a drag on your team."

He sighed. "Hell, it's too early to argue. You're on. That last bunk on the end is unoccupied. Go on down and set up housekeeping." He returned his attention to his boots. To her admittedly inexperienced eye, they looked good for about another half-kilometer before utter disintegration.

Dierdre dragged her gear the length of the barracks, deciding that she had handled the interview rather well. She had always been good at projecting a confidence she didn't feel. There seemed to be twelve people in the team, which meant that she made it thirteen. She remembered that there was supposed to be something unlucky about that, but she didn't know why.

The bunk was a tubular metal frame with plastic webbing slung between the upper rods. She untied her sleeping bag from her pack and tossed it onto the bunk, where it unrolled and inflated. Her tent unit she left in its undeployed state, where it made a passable pillow. With unutterable relief, she sat on the bag and leaned back.

"New team member?" The speaker sat on the next bunk. "I'm Colin. Glad to have you here. Now somebody else gets to be the new member." Colin was even smaller than Dierdre, fair and apparently, although not necessarily, male.

She took his hand. "Dierdre Jamail. Does everybody get the leper treatment when they first arrive?"

"It depends on how badly they need manpower. Also whether they come from another expedition or right off the shuttle like you. That shiny new gear gives you away." Colin wore a tight-fitting blue coverall complete with a hood that covered everything but his round face. He looked about fourteen years old, but she knew he had to be older. The outfit looked stifling.

"Where are you from?" It was a standard conversation opener, but she was trying, obliquely, to discover the reason for his odd appearance.

"I was born on Malta, before the beginning of the Jump. I was born with some defective genes; that's why I wear this suit. It regulates my body temperature. I know, there aren't supposed to be birth defects anymore, but they figure it was caused by some sort of solar radiation prior to the Jump phase. There were some others, but no one like me."

"It looks hot." She wasn't sure how sensitive he might be. She had never met a defective and wasn't certain how to talk to one without being offensive.

He smiled at her. "I'll bet I'm a lot more comfortable than you. I don't feel the heat here like everyone else."

"What's the routine here? Things look pretty relaxed, not quite what I'd expected an expedition base camp to look like." She didn't add that it was about what she had expected from an outfit of misfits and probable incompetents.

"Right now we're resting up for the next stage. We've been exploring the Suleiman Peninsula for three ship-months. Still plenty of work to be done here—species classification, detailed geological study—stuff like that. That can wait for the scientific teams, maybe years from now. We do the first-in surveys, mapping, rough study; especially we're here to find out what's dangerous."

"We're the expendable ones," she said.

"Now you're catching on. Anyway, to get back to your question, the next stage in our routine is breakfast. It's not much, but you get appetite suppressants to keep you from suffering too badly."

"I guess this is the part of the great adventure they didn't tell us about in school. Where do we eat?"

"If you're up to it, I'll show you."

"Fine. I didn't get much sleep flying down here but now I'm too jittery to sleep anyway." She clipped her medkit and comm unit onto her belt and followed Colin. The only acknowledgements she got from the other team members were a few grunts and nods. It looked as if Colin had represented the epitome of outgoing friendliness in this group.

They walked to a shanty that served the purpose of supply room-cum-mess hall. Breakfast was not served, it was issued. A bored-looking woman handed Dierdre a packet wrapped in thin plastic and pointed to an ID unit. Dierdre pressed her thumb against the unit's plate, acknowledging receipt of rations. They drew large tumblers of weak tea from a bulky, transparent bladder.

"Do they ration this, too?" she asked.

"Fluids are about the only thing that's not rationed," Colin said. "In fact, they encourage us to drink as much as we can hold. There's no sense dying of dehydration when we can drink the water here. So far, we haven't found any parasites or microorganisms that can harm us, but we sterilize it just in case."

She unwrapped the food packet, exposing a sickly-gray bar of concentrate the size of her hand. Resignedly, she bit into it. It had the consistency of a stiff paste and tasted of salt, sugar, vitamin and soy protein powder. She choked the mouthful down with the aid of some tea and made a disgusted face. "We've been in space for almost two centuries. At home, our synthesizers can make wood pulp taste like bouillabaisse. Why do we have to eat this stuff?"

"Synthesizers need too much energy. The best they can do down here is primitive recycling. Next year we'll have decent chow. That's what they keep saying, anyway. Of course, the field expeditions will be the last to get it."

"I guess I could've stayed home if I'd wanted to live easy." She managed to eat half of the bar, then gave it up and stuffed the remainder in a pocket for later. Standing, she brushed crumbs from her coverall "Could we go into the woods a little way? I've never seen a wild environment before this."

He got up. "Sure. It's safe as long as we stay near the camp We have to sign out first." She followed him to the HQ shack where he logged them out, giving their planned route and approximate time of return. "If we don't log back in within an hour of that time," he told her. "the unit raises hell and the rescue parties go out. If they find you, they can make you wish they hadn't."

"I hear that nobody likes rescue parties." She followed him from the HQ shack toward the mess shack, where they could fill their portable water bladders.

"That doesn't quite describe it. I got caught by a carnivorous plant once. It couldn't eat me, but it held me immobilized with a tentacle for about six hours. The search party found me and cut me loose, but for weeks they acted like it was all my fault, as if I'd planned it so they could lose some rest. I guess we'll get that way too, if we're down here long enough."

As they walked toward the forest margin, he ducked into the Team Red barracks to inform Forrest of their hike. When they proceeded, Dierdre found that she had to restrain herself to copy Colin's leisurely pace.

As they neared the woodline, Dierdre felt an intimidation she hoped Colin wouldn't notice. It looked dark in there, and it was crawling with uncontrolled life. It was all indescribably alien.

"Scary, isn't it?" Colin said.

"Not at all," she protested.

"You don't fool me. Everybody who's come down from orbit is scared the first time they confront a wild environment. I thought I'd go into convulsions the first time I walked under the trees. And that was right outside a big planetside base."

"Well, maybe it's a little bit scary." She felt sure he was exaggerating to spare her feelings, but she appreciated the gesture.

Once they were beneath the branches of the first trees, she lost the irrational terror she had felt. It seemed peaceful. Better yet, it was a good deal cooler. In contrast to the previous night, the quiet was positively vacuumlike. That made sense, when she thought about it. Nocturnal animals would naturally depend more on sound. She began to wish she had taken more biology classes.

"Is it safe to touch things?" she asked.

"Sure, as long as you don't grab an animal. Sometimes they resent handling."

She stooped and picked up a handful of dirt. Holding it to her nose, she inhaled its loamy aroma. "It smells just like the soil back in the biocontrol labs."

"Dirt seems to smell like dirt everyplace. There are probably differences, but human noses aren't very acute. Down at the bacterial level, it's likely that life forms are pretty similar. Come over this way, I'll show you something you've never seen before."

"I've never seen any of this before." She followed him down a gentle slope. Somewhere ahead, through a screen of dense growth, she could hear a strange, continuous sound. It awoke feelings she could only describe as ancestral. They pushed through the growth and there before them was a stream tumbling over a rocky bed. The sound was subtly different from any she had heard in a holographic reproduction, and heir she could smell the damp streambed and feel the spray from where the rocks churned up a fine mist.

"It's beautiful!" She squatted on a damp rock and dipped her hand in the flow. The stream was perhaps five meters wide, not at all intimidating, unlike the ocean. She looked up at the sky, gleaming blue through a gap in the trees.

I think I'm going to like this place," she said.

THREE

The boats didn't look strong enough to paddle across a swimming pool, much less to take to the open ocean. They consisted of a thin polymer fabric stretched over a metal-tube frame. They were ballasted with slabs of rock cut to fit the bilge and powered by solar-charged storage batteries. They were not fast, but they were cheap and efficient. Each was ten meters by three, without decking or overhead cover. All comm and navigation equipment was in weathertight modules.

"What if it rains?" Dierdre wanted to know.

"Get wet and like it," said Govinda Murphy. She was a wiry, nervous woman who rarely stopped moving.

"Team Red, climb aboard," Forrest shouted. Boat One was tied at the end of a spindly pier made of native wood, and metal struts scavenged from earlier building projects. It shook and swayed, seeming ready to collapse at any moment, as the team filed along it.

Dierdre was among the last to board. She tossed her duffel to Colin, who stored it amidships. Happily, she managed to scramble aboard without stumbling. When the whole team was aboard, the boat held thirteen explorers and their gear. Three other boats waited at the dock. Teams Blue, White and Gold would leave the next day.

As the sun broke over the horizon, Forrest addressed his team, the morning breeze ruffling his tawny beard. "Everybody listen close so I don't have to say this twice. Nobody sits on the gunnels while we're at sea. If you have to puke, do it over the leeward side. Got that? All right, cast off."

"Real inspiring oration, there," Dierdre whispered to Colin. "What's the leeward side?"

"That's the side where the wind's blowing away from you."

The silent engine started and the boat backed away from the pier, then reversed and nosed its way toward the entrance of the little lagoon. It hit open water just as the sun rose fully. In the open water, the gentle rocking of the craft turned to a more violent pitching, which smoothed out as they picked up speed.

To her relief, Dierdre found that she rather liked the motion of the boat. She had taken anti-nausea pills and was a bit groggy from their effects. It was another new experience, being tossed about amid a totally hostile environment. She looked over the side, hoping to see sea life, but the water was virtually opaque.

After about two hours, they sighted the island. Several of the team members hung queasily over the sides, but Dierdre felt fine. She stared eagerly at the island and was startled when a red-headed young man named Gaston pointed behind them.

"Look there!" he shouted.

They all looked back and saw a huge, humped form break the surface a hundred meters away. It was grayish and unbelievably big. With a hiss, a pillar of spray shot from an orifice, straight up for twenty meters. Beyond it, two other forms rose and did likewise. Then all three sank beneath the water.

"What was that?" Dierdre's heart was pounding.

The formerly benevolent ocean had turned hostile. It was full of monsters.

Forrest shrugged. "We see lots of things from a distance. All sorts of sea life's been observed from orbit, some of it bigger than those things. We've called those 'whales' for lack of a better term. They only show up near this archipelago. Nobody's figured out what keeps the oceanic life confined to specific areas. It's completely different from the way the Earth ecosystem worked."

"Do they ever get violent?" she asked,

"Not yet. Nobody's had a close look at them yet. They don't come closer to boats than those we just saw. So far."

Within an hour, they were a few hundred meters offshore. The southern tip of the island, where they were to land, appeared to be heavily wooded nearly to the waterline. It was girded with a narrow strip of sandy beach. A half-kilometer northward, on the eastern side of the tip, was a narrow inlet which had been chosen as the landing site. Wave action around the island was relatively mild, and in the little bay it was minimal. The boat nosed through the tiny breakers at its slowest speed and, with a gentle nudge, grounded.

"There," Forrest said, "jump smartly and nobody has to get wet feet. All ashore!"

Two bulky men named Sims and Okamura jumped ashore first. They carried beam rifles and trotted up the beach to the treeline, scanning alertly. While they stood guard, the others tossed gear onto the beach and jumped out onto the sand.

Dierdre knew that jumping was the ultimate test of accomplishment in a full-grav environment. She managed hers creditably, only getting one foot slightly wet. She picked up her duffel bag and trudged up the beach to the spot where everything was being stacked. Then she helped the others unload and carry the other gear. The vehicles would not arrive for several days. By the end of the task, the sun was at zenith and she was sweating profusely, but the island seemed to be marginally cooler than the mainland.

"Let's break," Forrest said. "We're going to be here a long time, so there's no sense anybody dropping from the heat and making more work for me."

Gratefully, Dierdre sat on her duffel. She took out a set of high-resolution magnifiers and scanned the inland prospect. For about a half-kilometer, the land sloped gently upward from the beach, then, abruptly, a line of cliffs formed a barrier as far as she could see. Lush, primeval growth hung over the edge of the cliffs; intensely green plants draped like carpets and hanging down in streamers, waving slowly in a breeze she could not feel. Aside from the green of the vegetation and the tan of the cliffs, there was little color. She could see no flowers.

She was about to turn the viewer off when she saw movement at the top of the cliff. Something long and serpentine poked out from the brush, swaying from side to side. She checked the distance reading at the bottom of her viewscreen. Then she checked it again. At this distance and magnification, the thing had to be really huge. She clicked in a higher magnification, but the thing was already withdrawing. She had an impression of a small head at the end of an absurdly long neck, then it was gone.

"I see something!" she said, excitedly. "At the top of those cliffs, thirty-five degrees."

Forrest and several others snatched up viewers and looked "I don't see anything," the team leader said.

"It pulled buck just as I called out. Big, really big. It looked like some kind of reptile, like a giant snake or something

Forrest snorted disgustedly and set his viewer down. "First time jitters The whales spooked you and now you're seeing land animals."

"I saw it," she protested, her temper rising. "I don't just hallucinate." The others were staring at her, but she was too angry to feel embarrassed.

Forrest sat back down and took a drink from his bladder. "You'll notice that you saw something familiar. A reptile. That's not the sort of thing you see here. It's always totally unexpected."

"I didn't say it was a reptile! I said it was like a reptile. It's different!"

He wasn't impressed. "We'll know soon enough. We check out those cliffs tomorrow."

She felt as if her face were flaming. That made it even worse. It was always like this, when people treated her like some sort of aberrant child. Working hard, as always, she calmed herself.
It's up there, I saw it
, she told herself.
I'll make him eat every word.

For the rest of the day, they sorted out their gear and erected temporary shelters. Dierdre merely unrolled her sleeping bag with its integral tent. Already, she felt alienated from the others. Social interaction had never been her strongest talent, and any sign of condescension could drive her into a rage. Since condescension was the natural attitude of the higher-ranking in any hierarchy, she had been in some sort of trouble most of her life. She knew that her temper was her worst enemy here. She had to guard against it, even if that meant keeping apart from the rest.

That night, she lay on her back, staring at the starscape overhead, her tent withdrawn for the moment. The two detailed for the first watch were down the beach somewhere, sitting near a tiny fire. She could hear their voices. There was no moon, but the densely packed stars cast a dim light. She had always seen the stars from space, and here they seemed oddly hazy, the result of atmospheric diffusion.

She saw a flickering overhead, and at first thought it was another effect of the rippling atmosphere, but it was something else. She lost it for several minutes, almost thought she had imagined it, then saw it again almost directly overhead. A shape blotted out a small section of stars. Something was flying up there.

She groped until her hand found her backpack, took out the viewer. She aimed it upward, turned to nightview. The stars bloomed like the bright suns they were, then dimmed as she set the viewer for a lower-altitude scan. She found it almost immediately. Against the dim background, the shape was ghostly-white from its own radiated heat. So faint was the white that she knew it had a low body temperature. She had no referent to judge its size, and the viewer wasn't able to gather enough data to give her a scale. It looked to be human-size, perhaps a bit smaller.

Whatever it was, it had a narrow body, a long tail between stubby hind legs, a wedge-shaped head on a fairly long neck, and wings. The wings seemed to take the place of forelegs, and they were vaguely batlike. But she was sure that no bat ever soared like that. The wings seemed to be of a thin, taut-stretched membrane, capable of subtle adjustment for riding the thermals.

In the faint ambient light, she could make out little else. After a few minutes, the creature soared away toward the cliffs. Dierdre put the viewer away. She was not about to make a fool of herself twice in the same day. She turned over and went to sleep.

Toward dawn Okamura woke her. "Time for your watch, Jamail."

"Okay," she said, sitting up and yawning, but he had already turned away, heading for his sack and an hour or two of sleep before everyone had to roll out. Still yawning, she stumbled toward the faint glow of the driftwood fire. It was little more than coals now. Her partner for the last watch of the evening was already there; a big, athletic woman named Hannie Meersina. The woman seemed open and friendly, but Dierdre found her intimidating. Hannie was tall and blond where Dierdre was small and dark. She was heavy-breasted and broad-hipped, but Dierdre had seen her sparring the day before, practicing some sort of esoteric hand-to-hand combat technique, and she was as quick and strong as any of the men. In one especially rough bout, she had knocked the hulking Sims unconscious. Dierdre suspected genetic engineering somewhere in the woman's background.

"You look half asleep," Hannie said. "Here, take some of this." She passed a bladder that was warming by the fire and Dierdre caught a whiff of its fragrant steam.

"Real coffee!"

"It's the one thing they don't stint on for field expeditions. The food and working conditions make morale low enough. Without coffee, it'd plummet through the magma."

Dierdre took the bladder and drank. The first swallow of coffee was like nectar. She had never been a coffee addict, but then she'd seldom been called upon to get up so early, either.

"The sentries have all reported it's been fairly quiet all night," Hannie said, "so we can assume we've entered a different ecosystem from the mainland. The nocturnal animals raised hell all night there."

"I noticed. I've heard a few noises tonight, though; distant honks and hisses, and something kept buzzing by my ears with a high-pitched hum, almost subliminal."

"You, too. I heard the same thing, thought maybe it was my imagination." Hannie pulled up a trouser leg and picked at a scab on her muscular calf. "And something bit me. I wish they'd learn that it's futile. I probably poisoned whatever it was."

Tiny creatures hopped around in the sand, some of them jumping suicidally into the fire. They hissed and popped when they struck the coals. Dierdre found it very unpleasant.

"That's awful," she said.

Hannie shrugged. "It's their choice, nobody's making them do it."

Two hours later, everybody was up, seemingly without the early-morning grouchiness that had prevailed back at the base camp. Now there was the subdued excitement of breaking new ground. They drank coffee and munched on food bars, talking a little too loudly.

"Assignments," Forrest called. "I'll lead A team. Here's our order of march: Sims and Okamura take point, then me. I go solo because we have an odd number this trip. Everybody else pairs up. After me, Colin and Jamail, then Hannie and Govinda. Team B: Gaston and Schubert go first, then Ping and Lefevre. Angus and Fumiyo take drag. This morning, we check out the cliffs. Both teams travel together until we reach the base, then we split up. Team A goes north, Team B, south. We keep going until 0300, then turn back, rendezvous at our splitup point, and return here before dark. Use your comm units for essential information, not for conversation. Any questions?"

"We may have trouble using our comm units for anything," Schubert said. He was Team Red's communications specialist. "I ran a comm check last night when I was on guard. Orbital reports hellatious sunspot activity, screwing up communications bad. Not the sophisticated ship-to-ship stuff, but this obsolete radio equipment we have planetside is going to be all but useless for a while. We may be able to keep contact here on the island, but comm with the mainland's going to be spotty. As for contacting main base or orbital, forget it."

"Hell," Govinda said, "what if we have a real emergency here? We'll be isolated!"

"None of that," Forrest snapped. "We haven't run into anything we couldn't handle so far; there's no reason to think it'll happen just because we can't call in help. You were looking for adventure when you signed up for this, weren't you? Remote communication is a fairly recent luxury for explorers. Just think of yourselves as Columbus or something, or the early space explorers."

"Wait a minute," said Ping, a delicate-looking young man with Southeast Asian features, "they had radio commo."

"Sure," Forrest said. "They could call out all they liked, but nobody could come get them, no matter how much trouble they were in. Imagine how frustrating that would be. Okay, everybody load up the gear you're taking. We move out in five minutes."