Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (11 page)

As the zornic faded out of sight, Dex turned and began trudging up the mountain again. Syrdian whispered excitedly, “That was amazing! How did you know it would back away if you lifted your wings?”

“I think it was a zornic, they never leave the forest, eating carrion and plants and occasionally killing something. But, I
wondered if
, always living in the forest
,
its
regular vision might not be very good and it might mostly see infrared.
And
it wouldn’t have seen many winged animals or know that we weren’t really as big as our wings make us look. I
’m
supposing
it thought a really big animal
had
just stood up and might eat
it
so it took off
.”

***

The group watched the view from the rocket’s camera zoom up to the edge of the forest and stop, presumably as Goldy landed. The view wiggled a little then stabilized at a slight tilt. Goldy stepped past their viewpoint and grabbed a small branch. Pulling out a wicked looking knife
it
cut a piece a couple of inches long off of it.
Norris said, “Is that a flint knife?” It had a rippled surface but
none of them
knew for sure what a flint knife looked like.
Goldy came back to the rocket and wiggled the rocket a little as it worked on it, just below the camera they were watching through.

Ell said, “I think
it
’s shoving that stick into
one of
the attitude thruster
s
! Why in the world...?”

In a moment Goldy brought a strap into view a
nd seemed to be working with it, this time leaning close as if wrapping the leather strap around the rocket. A
gain,
he was working
just below the
view of the
camera. Then Goldy crouched out of view with another piece of stick and another strap in his hands.
More wiggling ensued.

Norris turned
to the others, “Do you suppose
he
’s plugging one of the lower attitude jets too, and tying the plugs in place with the leather straps? If so why?”

Manuel said, “Maybe he’s…”

“Yeah?”

“Uh, I’m not sure? Maybe he’s attaching a carry strap?” A moment later Goldy stood and lifted the rocket up to his chest as evidenced by one of the screens showing nothing but a close up view of a fuzzy
chest
. Goldy’s hand could be seen working around the rocket, blocking first one then another of the
cameras as it moved
. The bottom camera which had shown the ground now was up in the air showing Goldy’s birdlike feet. Manuel said, “
Maybe
just using the attitude thrusters as convenient attachment points for strapping the rocket to his harness.”

No one said anything because
Manuel
was obviously correct
,
but the screens
kept wiggling
back and forth. Emma said, “I’ll bet she can’t get it comfortable because the legs are digging into her tummy.”

Ell said, “Retract the legs.”
A moment later the wiggling stopped.

Roger said, “She? Are you seeing sexual characteristics that I’m missing?”

Emma elbowed him,
“No
,
but you guys are calling her a ‘he’ which I see no evidence of either. So I’m calling her a ‘she’ until we know. They may not even have sexes!”

Grinning, Roger rolled his eyes but said nothing. Their view moved forward into the forest. The view darkened
and
then brightened up as the AI compensated though some of the contrast was lost in the low lighting condition.

A long period of walking through the forest followed. Shortly it got boring. “Why are they walking instead of flying?” Roger asked.

Norris said, “Maybe there’s something in the forest that they want and they can’t fly to it through the trees?”

“I don’t know, the boles of those trees are pretty far apart and their wings are pretty short.”

Norris shrugged, “I really have no idea. Maybe their flying agility isn’t up to weaving around all the trees?

As the
hike
settled down to walking
uphill
and nothing else Emma went off to work on a laser acoustic pickup for the rocket.
Ell turned to the others, “This is exciting but it’s also
kind of
boring. I’m thinking that at most we should have one of us watching and telling the rest of us if something exciting happens?” She looked around at the others who all nodded. “I don’t mind taking the graveyard shift from
midnight
to 6.”

Norris laughed and said, “Sad to say, I’m an early
to bed, early to rise
person. I’m always up at
4AM
. I don’t have a class until
8
so it’d be easy for me to do
4-
7:30
.”

Roger said, “Why do we have to watch in real time
?
Why not just record the video. T
hen cruise through it
at high speed
later
looking for
the interesting parts
?
”

“What happens if Goldy starts to take the rocket apart?

“How would we stop him?”

“Fire up the engine, fly away if necessary?”

Emma signed up for
6 to 10PM
so Ell took
10PM to 4AM
.
Wilson,
Manuel and Roger
all
wanted to take shifts but Manuel was worried about how to handle a shift when he might be urgently needed to make things
in the machine shop
. Roger had to work around meetings with Bynewicz and Mullis. “But maybe
Wilson,
Manuel and I could work things out between us to cover the daytime hours
each day
?”

Wilson said, “My other
assignments
can be worked whenever I’m not busy
with this
, so I’ll
take
the daytime observation whenever you two can’t be available. When you
guys
can observe I’ll do my other work.”

Ell said, “We need to bring someone else in on this. Our group is kinda small for something this huge?”

Norris said, “
How about hiring a student? Bridget’s friend Belle Donovan from
my
Planetary Science class
is
astonishingly
smart. She’s
killing all the tests and really enthusiastic about this
kind of
stuff. Students are
usually pretty
excited to have jobs where they don’t have to do much. Would you like me to ask her?
Or
you could get
Bridget
to
ask her?
”
He looked back and forth. Roger and Emma were grinning at Ell who looked embarrassed.
Manuel looked as puzzled as Norris felt. “What?”

Ell looked down at the floor and blushed, “Sorry
Dr. Norris,
but I need you to keep another secret for me.
I
a
m
‘Belle.’
I wanted to take
your
class but it causes a lot of pr
oblems when I go
to public
places like the campus as ‘Ell.’” She shrugged, “So I wear a disguise.”

Dumbfounded, Norris stared at
Donsaii,
trying to reconcile
Belle’s
long platinum blond hair, chipmunk cheeks
,
acne
and
thick
hips
with the beautiful young woman in front of him.
Despite her flaws Belle was cute, but compared to Ell… He’d never seen anyone who could hold a candle to Ell, stunning no matter what she wore. Why would anyone disguise themselves that way? He looked at the grinning Roger and Emma, “Are you guys kidding me?”

Emma laughed, “Nope. Believe it or not, that’s really her.”

Flummoxed, Norris leaned back and gave way to a guffaw.

Ell cleared her throat, “But if you have any other students
you think we
could trust, we’d be happy to hire them. Meantime, how about if we start designing
a followup
rocket,
like
this one
but
with a microphone
and speaker
?
A swiveling camera?
Maybe some other means for communication?”

The team worked on a plan for the new rocket as the aliens
, or “
Teecees
” as they had begun calling them
,
clambered through the forest for hours.
They stopped to watch for a few minutes when Goldy and Silver stopped and confronted a large wingless animal with their
pointed sticks
.
The animal
walked on four limbs. Coming off its back in a location that seemed somewhat analogous to Goldy and Silver’s wings there were two large
limbs that reminded Norris of a gorilla’s arms. Goldy
and Silver
stood tall and lifted
their
wings
and the animal stopped, then turned and ambled away.

They worked out most of the
requirements
for the new rocket
but decid
ed
to finalize the actual plan when Emma had picked some of the
actual
components
.
Satisfied, t
hey shut down the screens in the conference room and
headed home.
Emma
started her shift watching the aliens
’
progress on her HUD but when she got home she put it up on her big screen.

***

A couple
d
eks later Dex and Syrdian
climbed down into one of the ravines and drank their fill of water
then filled their water skins
. 
As they climbed
back onto the ridge they were following up the mountain they came to an enormous meadow
. Dex distantly remembered the fire that had cleared this area. The huge area had some small trees clumping up in a few areas but the grasses and other small meadow plants were still holding their own over most of it.
Hie turned to Syrdian, “I think we should stay in that clump of
little
trees near the high end. Can you clear a spot and start a fire?”

Syrdian narrowed hies eyes, “What are
you
going to do?”

“Try to
catch
some food.”

“Oh, OK.
Yes.
Thanks.
”

Dex beat into the air gratefully, tired of walking. Hie lifted along the tree line and once hie had altitude, curled out in a glide over the meadow
,
watching carefully for prey animals or food plants.
Hie
saw a patch of large flat leaves that
hie
thought signaled tubers and almost missed the burrower sitting near them, facing the other way. With a curl of hies left
main
wing and a flip of hies
back
wings hie stooped on the burrower
,
reaching out at the last moment for it. It saw himr coming with its weak back eyes and darted for its burrow.
Dex
banked hard and stretched out hies left hindclaw, touching but not catching it.

Landing, Dex stepped over to the burrow pulling out hies roll of
heavy
fiberlin
. A pace away hie found some of the burrower’s scat to rub on hies hands and the
fiberlin
.
Hie placed a
noose of
fiberlin
around the inside of the burrow a few inches down inside. Then
hie
tie
d
it to a hooked stick
hie
cut off a branching stem. More
fiberlin
connect
ed
the
hook-trigger
to a
sapling
hie
bent
.
Hie
hooked
the
trigger
stick
on
the
rock
at the edge of the
burrow
so the tip
of the stick
obstructed the
hole
. When the burrower came out and
bumped
the stick aside
,
the bent
sapling
would snap up
,
pulling the noose tight. Unfortunately
the burrower
might
get
itself
free if
Dex
didn’t get there in time
so hie’d have to listen for it.
Dex
then dug a couple of disappointing tubers
up
from the plants
hie
’d seen.