The Death of Sleep (42 page)

"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."