The Adventures of Deacon Coombs (24 page)

“These rocks, sire, date at over forty million years old. They are mostly volcanic and metamorphic rocks.” Just as Gem proceeded to recite the chemical analysis, a rock tumbled from above to in front of them. Immediately, Gem, Travers, and Deacon scampered behind a large boulder. At the same time, they heard horrifying shouts in the distance. Deacon sat between the two, fondling the trigger of his laser gun. Gem initiated a scanner to identify six hairy creatures about four hundred feet above them on a ledge. From Quobit’s vantage point, she witnessed the creatures traversing a thoroughfare and relayed the footage to Gem.

As the three patiently huddled together and Quobit stood in silence like a rock sculpture, no other indigenous forms appeared above or in front of them. Even though his weapon had a finder that could target the hearts of creatures, Deacon was not sure that he had the courage to do so. He fondled the trigger nervously as Gem motioned for them to wait. His heart beat faster just as a Nicosian creature fell out of the sky in front of them.

Gem cast a warning. “He’s dead. Don’t move. Don’t fire. Stay perfectly still. There are still beings in proximity.” Bloodcurdling shrills from above filled the air as Deacon examined the corpse in front of him. The creature was six feet tall, about two hundred pounds, and was covered in thick, oily black hair. The chlorine-like odor of it was offensive enough to take his breath away and cause him to turn his head for a better inhale.

Long, sharp, curled claws protruded from the end of each digit on the hands and feet. An oblong oversized head with two terrifying eyes and green mush trickling out of the mouth reinforced the ugliness of the being’s appearance. Travers pointed to the long fangs protruding from the gums as Gem crawled closer to photograph the beast from head to foot.

These beings had three major joints from their shoulders to the ends of their fingers. The fingers themselves were long, flexible, one-piece digits. The neck area was devoid of hair, the only part of the body to be so. The eyes petrified him. They were humungous, bulging out of their sockets in death as in life, obviously to track movement in each direction in the darkness. Gem stood up and motioned Travers and Deacon to do the same and follow her. Quobit gave a wave to Gem from her distant position.

“Much as the air s-s-s-s… stink-k-k-ks, these beings smell disgusting!”

Gem placed the scanner on alert for any other natives. Luckily for them, the emotional torment of further agonizing shouts was now absent. After three hours, they reached a crest from which they could see fires on the plains below on the other side of the ridge.

“I surmise that with no sunrise and sunset, the expense of energy determines the cyclic lifestyle of the Nicosians. They probably sleep only after all their energy has been used up on the daily rituals.” Travers seemed inattentive as Deacon spoke.

From here, there was no starry sky, no sun-bathed moons. Mountain peaks were barely decipherable on the horizon, but Deacon noticed Travers holding his focus on one peak in particular. Deacon stooped to examine some pulpy brown plants that clung to a ledge where a crack had formed in the smooth facing. “With a lack of freeze-thaw cycles,” said Gem, “any erosion must be dependent on flash floods, winds, and any contractions or condensations due to the small temperature fluctuations.”

The Jabu were known for their keen eyesight, so it was no coincidence that Quobit signaled Gem and alerted them to an enormous outline of a creature perched on a ledge two hundred feet above them. Camouflaged by the bleak scenery, standing statuesque, it stared down at them, an elongated protuberance with a bulbous head stretched out over the cliff’s edge. The body was held high above the rocks by an indeterminate number of stocky legs. A waiting game to descend below ensued. Quobit rested, keeping a watch on their rear.

In the campsite

As the din on the plains below died, the trio made their descent down the ridge, Deacon casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder to recognize any movement by the monstrous animal behind them. Once they were on the plains and in the camps, the stench of rotten meat was suffocating. The initial campsite contained about fifty Nicosians resting around a blazing fire. Sentries were posted, so they maintained their distance. Deacon put his hood up while a precautious Gem stalked around the perimeter recording heartbeats, the composition of flesh, metabolic rates, voices, and hair colors and body chemistry. Deacon made some crude sketches of native garb as Travers documented the implements around the fire. Travers clung to Deacon’s every move.

Bones and raw meat littered the campsite. Fires were rimmed in stones; plant and mineral matter lay close at hand as fuel. Younger Nicosians slept huddled together in the middle of the site, while the adults slept around the edge of the settlement, armed with bones, wooden clubs, and rocks. Deacon was quick to notice crude cutting and cooking implements.

There were other campsites in proximity, so they chose to visit those too. The scene was much the same except that the sentries returned threatening glances. The closest they stood to a live specimen was about sixty feet.

Deacon could not understand the total lack of curiosity toward them on the part of the Nicosians. He felt confident strutting about with Gem by his side, on alert, treating this walk as a pure scientific expedition. His courage was soon suppressed, as a sentry inquisitively glared at him with razor-like teeth that were glowing from the light of the fires. They saturated themselves with observations and then left untouched. Six hours had passed, so they departed to rendezvous with the
Heritage
. The similarity of each campsite was stunning: the smell of wet hay, rotting flesh, and excrement; the posting of sentries; the huddling of the young; many primitive signs of organized life; the first indications of communities and social structure. As they sat to await Jim’s arrival, Deacon shared some thoughts with Gem. “The development of those razor-sharp teeth infers that they are carnivores, as we suspected. The stench of these savages is largely due to the lack of running water to cool themselves and bathe. The bulging eyes provide excellent peripheral vision in the dark and act as a key to defend.”

Gem agreed. “The large upper torso has evolved to combat the forces of natural elements. I detect, sire, that tribal traits are just evolving, as seen by the posting of guards, the implements, and the group warfare.”

“How do you ec-ks-cks… plain evolution on this planet?”

“Perhaps,” said Deacon, “the ingredients were transported here undisturbed through space, as we suspect in other cases of evolution in the Alliance. Comets carry the necessary carbon-based compounds. In addition, in this part of the galaxy, there are many carbon compounds in the clouds. Maybe the primordial materials were formed here by the combination of volcanic materials, high heat flow, and the locked greenhouse atmosphere. Maybe this planet had more water in past times.”

Deacon rose to collect a soil sample. “This would make an excellent dissertation on Earth. I’ve sampled both the weathered and unweathered materials. I think I recognize quartz, feldspars, and micas as on Earth. These purple crystals, nonradioactive, are very unusual.”

Gem explained. “These components infer a much higher heat flow at one time on the planet’s surface, Master.”

Travers was taking a sample from a thorny, squat brown bush when Deacon said, “Aha, look!”

A patch of Nicosian hair hung from one of the scraggly bushes. Gem bagged it and sealed it.

“Who knows wha… t-t-t-t horrible bact-t-t-t… teria may lurk in it?”

“If life began here, Travers, rather than being carried here, with a lack of oceans to brew the mixture, this would make an award-winning thesis,” said Deacon.

They departed quickly and climbed up the hills to rendezvous with Quobit, who had also collected plant and animal matter for analysis. The
Heritage
was a welcome sight as she hovered over the nearest mountain, preparing her descent to retrieve them. Deacon hoped her landing would not draw any curious observers.

For another day, the trio wandered around Nicosian campsites, carefully avoiding the peak savage periods and any confrontations. Jim maintained his vigilance while orbiting around the planet, observing the natives, searching for any sign of other alien life forms, and using scanning technology to establish evidence for hidden caches of arms. Instead, all he documented were many diverse animal forms. Jim’s data provided an increased understanding of the volcanic and biological activity but no further clues to any peculiar happenings on the planet.

Deacon saw that Travers was losing strength. While he himself gathered a second wind as time progressed, Travers had wilted by the end of each jaunt. Eventually the patches of humidity caused shorts in Gem’s wiring system while the jagged rocks scraped the bottoms of the Owlers’ feet. As Jim applied a healing plastic coating to Gem, Deacon raised a question to the group assembled in the
Heritage
. “I am curious about the hooded Nicosians and why we have not seen any in these parts. In the tape you acquired, Travers, there were numerous hooded ones.” When no one offered a viewpoint, Deacon ordered that it was time to relocate to the exact site of the last landing of the
Sleigher
.

“No need to guess the coordinates; I have them… mmm.”

The prisoner

Hours later, the
Heritage
was suspended above the surface, plotting extraordinary movements of the population on the surface. Deacon registered tens of thousands of heartbeats in a furious random motion, indicating that the natives were perhaps engaged in battle over territory and food.

Carefully, the ship descended. Perched on a high ledge overlooking the basin of activity, the computer registered no beings within a half a mile of their landing place. Travers confirmed that this was indeed the location where the
Sleigher
had landed, and he also encouraged Deacon to depart to the place he knew that served as an excellent viewpoint of the plains. They carefully donned their apparatuses, and the
Heritage
door opened to lay down a ramp from its underbelly. As Jim tracked the party by zeroing in on Deacon’s heartbeat, Deacon, Gem, Quobit, and Travers hiked down a broad gully full of boulders to a perfect observation post where they could vaguely outline thousands of Nicosians lined up like ants about to commence battle in front of blazing bonfires. The sight was bizarre as they shrieked and jumped up and down, working themselves into a frenzy. Deacon saw his first hooded figures; they assembled in front of each of the sides.

He locked his camera on them, magnifying their images to the point at which he could clearly see that the hooded figures were Nicosians, dispelling any idea that they might be aliens. However, they vacated immediately, indicating that they were not to participate in the war scene. What curious immunity did they hold? The four skirted the location by traversing parallel to the edge of the scene while keeping out of sight and maintaining an excellent vantage point.

Suddenly the din grew exponentially as the two sides attacked. The group was not able to see the details of the battle in the dim light, but the shrieks of horror and the sounds of clubbing depicted the grim scene unfolding below them.

Quobit posed an observation: “What a life for the victors—to live to fight another day.” Because of the daily battle scenes, Deacon was convinced that the birth rate must be high to replenish the troops, and perhaps the food supply. Within two hundred feet of them, a solitary savage tried to escape before his captors clubbed him to death. Deacon had witnessed enough, so he slumped down beside Travers, who was noticeably shivering. Together they sat, their backs to the large rock, while Gem and Quobit continued to record the events.

Gem tugged at Deacon to get him to resume his upright position as a strange event occurred. Nearby, the fighting halted as ten hooded figures strolled onto the battlefield. Clubs were dropped; Nicosians bowed and then sank to their knees. An eerie silence fell over the spectacle. Deacon felt uneasy about the uncanny nature of the exhibitionists. What should cause them to act so?

As some of the Nicosians retreated, a crazed savage attacked a hooded individual. Suddenly the hood was drawn back, a laser gun was exposed, and the hooded savage fired again and again into the helpless, writhing creature. The sides dispersed quickly as Deacon sat down to retreat from the gruesome act, his eyes afire with fear. Travers looked back at him with this same fright. Gem joined them in a huddle. The strange powers of the hooded ones were no longer a secret; the location of the stolen weapons had probably been uncovered by these natives. Either on their own, or with help, they knew how to kill.

“If each one of those hooded beings has a weapon, it explains why no one bothered us as we made our rounds,” said Deacon. “More importantly, where did they discover the weapons? Who taught them to use the laser guns? Enough of this site for one day, Gem. Let’s climb up and over the ridge to see what transpires on the other side.”

The group clambered up the side to the apex. Hours later, they reached a point where they could not see individual Nicosians in the darkness but could see the bottom of the basin abounding with slithering movements. The sound of sobbing disturbed Deacon’s concentration, and he moved to the end of the ledge, where there was an entrance to a cave. Inside he came upon a Nicosian, withdrawn in the dark recess of an adit. At the sight of him, the being retreated farther into the cave, wailing and jumping. Deacon immediately summoned Gem and Quobit, and then motioned Travers to the sight.

“Travers, we’re okay in here, in the cave. Gem, turn on your beacon.” Travers elected to remain as sentry while Deacon, Quobit and Gem tracked the Nicosian deeper into the recess of the cave. They turned a corner and found it licking a wound on its arm. At the sight of the towering Quobit, the creature wailed. Deacon withdrew his gun, set it on stun, and fired. The savage collapsed. With medical expertise, Gem quickly disinfected and bandaged the wound before the savage could regain consciousness. Deacon was repulsed by the slimy texture of the hair and the odiferous moisture expelled by the being as Gem treated the injury. Then they sat patiently, waiting for the native to awaken. When it did, it was startled and confused by the bandages, and so it began to grunt and weep and pace about.