The Mystery of Ireta (3 page)

Tanegli stood waiting, his squat solid bulk a bastion around which the smaller members of the party ranged. The three youngsters, Kai was relieved to see, appeared to be all right, as did the xenobotanist, Divisti. Then Kai noticed the small pile of assorted brilliant yellow objects in the storage cage of the sled: more of similar shape and color were strewn about the clear ground of the small grove.

“We called prematurely,” said Tanegli by way of greeting. “The swamp creatures proved curious allies.” He replaced his stunner in his belt and dusted his thick hands as if dismissing the incident.

“What was attacking you?” Varian asked, staring about her.

“These?” asked Paskutti as he dragged a limp, furred and winged creature from behind the trunk of a thick tree.

“Watch out!” said Tanegli, reaching to his belt before he saw the stunner in Paskutti’s. “I set the gun on a light charge.”

“It’s one of those gliders. See, no socket for the wing to fold,” Varian said, ignoring the protests of the heavy-worlders as she moved the limp wings out and back.

Kai eyed the pointed beak of the creature with apprehension, suppressing an irrational desire to step back.

“Carrion-eater by the size and shape of that jaw,” remarked Paskutti, peering with considerable interest.

“Well and truly stunned,” Varian said with a final twitch of arrangement to the wings. “What was dead enough to attract it here?”

“That!” Tanegli pointed to the edge of the clearing, to a mottled brown bundle, its belly swelling up out of the coarse vegetation.

“And I rescued this!” said Bonnard, stepping clear of his friends so that Kai and Varian saw the small replica of the dead animal in his arms. “But it didn’t bring the gliders. They were already here. It’s very young. And its mother is dead now.”

“We found it over there, hiding in the roots of the tree,” said Cleiti, loyally supporting her friend, Bonnard, against adult disapproval.

“The sled must have alarmed the gliders,” said Tanegli, taking up the story, “driven them away from her. Once we had landed and started collecting the fruit, they returned.” He shrugged his wide shoulders.

Varian was examining the shivering little creature, peering into its mouth, checking its feet. She gave a little laugh. “Anomaly time again. Perissodactyl feet and herbivorous teeth. There’s a good fellow. Nice to have something your own size, isn’t it, Bonnard?”

“Is it all right? It just shivers.” Bonnard’s face was solemn with worry.

“I’d shiver too if I got picked up by huge things that didn’t smell right.”

“Then perisso . . . whatever it is, isn’t dangerous?”

Varian laughed and ruffled Bonnard’s short-cropped hair. “No, just a way of classifying it. Perissodactyl means uneven-numbered toes. I want a look at its mother.” Careful of the nearby sword plants with their deceptively decorative purple stripe leaves, she made her way toward the dead creature. A long low whistle broke from her lips. “I suppose it’s possible,” she said in a sympathetic tone of voice. “Well, her leg’s broken. That’s what made her fair game to the scavengers.”

A loud noise attracted everyone’s attention: an ominous sucking sound. From the swamp a huge head and neck broke the slimy surface and wavered in their direction.

“We could be considered fair game, too, by such as that,” said Kai. “Let’s get out of here.”

Paskutti frowned at the great and evil-looking head, fingering his stunner onto the strongest setting. “That creature would require every charge we have to stop it.”

“We came for fruit . . .” Divisti said, pointing to the litter in the clearing. “They
look
viable, and fresh food would do us all good,” she added with as wistful a tone as Kai had ever heard from a heavy-worlder.

“I’d say we had a safety factor of about ten minutes before that swamp creature’s brain can make the logical assumption that we’re edible,” said Tanegli, as unconcerned as ever by physical threat. He began to gather up the scattered thick-skinned fruits and toss them into the storage cage of the six-man sled.

In point of fact, those sleds had been known to lift twenty, a capability never mentioned in the designers’ specifications. The exploratory sled was an all-purpose vehicle, its ultimate potential not yet realized. High-sided and slightly more than eight meters long, with a closed deck forward for storage, the compact engine and power pack sat under the rear loading space. The vessel could be fitted with comfortable seating for six as well as the pilot and copilot, with the storage cage, as it was now. When the seating was removed or lashed to the deck, a sled could carry enormous weight, on board or attached to the powerful winches fore, aft and midships on either side. The plascreen could be retracted into the sides or raised in sections. The sled had both retro and forward jets with a vertical life ability, which could be used in defense or emergency flight. The two-man sleds were smaller replicas of the big one and had the advantage of being easily dismantled and stored: in flight, usually in the larger vehicle.

Augmented by the rescue squad, the foragers accumulated enough fruit to fill the sled’s storage cage in the time it took more carrion-eaters to begin spiraling above the grove. The swamp head seemed mesmerized by the comings and goings of the group, swinging slowly back and forth.

“Kai, we don’t have to leave him here, do we?” asked Bonnard with an apprehensive Cleiti by his side. He had the orphan in his arms.

“Varian? Any use to you?”

“Certainly. I’d no intention of leaving it. It’s a relief not to have to chase something over the continent to get a close look.” She frowned at the suggestion of abandonment. “Into the sled with you, Bonnard. Keep a hold on it. Cleiti, you sit on his right, I’ll sit left. There we are. Belt up.”

The others stood back as Tanegli took off in the sled, gliding insolently over the ooze and the undecided beast that still regarded the grove with unblinking interest.

“Set for maximum stun,” Paskutti told them, glancing overhead. “Those carrion-eaters are coming in again.”

Even as the rescuers lifted from the ground, Kai saw the carrion fliers circling downward, their heads always on the dead creature in the grass below. Kai shuddered. The dangers of space, instant and absolute, were impersonal and the result of breaking immutable laws. The deadly intent of these things held a repulsively personal malevolence that disturbed him profoundly.

2

R
AIN
and headwinds buffeted the airborne
V
so steadily on their way back that the heavily powered sled had long since landed when Kai and the heavy-worlders finally set foot in the compound. Varian and the three children were busy constructing a small run for the orphan.

“Lunzie’s trying to deduce a diet,” Varian told Kai.

“Just what is its anomalous state?”

“Against every odd in the galaxy, we have succored a young mammal. At least its mother had teats. It’s not very old, born rather mature, you see, able to walk and run almost at birth . . .”

“Did you . . .”

“Debug it? Externally yes. Had to or we’d all be hosting parasites. I’ve interrupted more of Trizein’s carefully scheduled work to run a tissue sample on it so we can figure out what proteins it must have in its diet. It’s got some growing to do to reach momma’s size. Not that she was very large.”

Kai looked down at the tiny creature’s red-brown-furred body: a very unprepossessing creation, he thought, with no redeeming feature apart from wistful eyes to endear it to anyone other than its own mother. But, remembering the waving swamp-dweller’s head, and the hungry malice in the circling scavengers’ relentless approach, he was glad they’d brought the thing in. Besides, it might occupy Bonnard and keep the boy from following him everywhere.

Kai stripped off his belt and face mask, rubbing at the strap marks. He was tired after the return trip. The heavy-worlders had immense resources of stamina, but Kai’s ship-trained muscles ached from the exertions of the morning.

“Say, don’t we have to contact the Ryxi, too?” Varian asked, glancing at her wrist recorder and tapping the reddened 1300 that meant a special time.

Kai grinned his thanks for the reminder and made for the shuttlecraft with a fair display of energy. There was still a lot of busy day ahead of him. He’d get a pepper to pick his energy level up, and he’d get a bit of a breather while he made contact with the avians. Then he had to go see that complex of colored lakes Berru had documented yesterday in her sweep south. He found it damned odd there were no more than traces of the normal metals you’d think would be in abundance everywhere on this untouched planet. Colored waters indicated mineral deposits. He only hoped the concentrations were heavy enough to make them worthwhile. There ought to be something in old fold mountains, if only some tin or zinc and copper. They’d found ore minerals but no deposits worth the name.

Kai’s orders from Exploratory and Evaluation Corps were to locate and assay the mineral and metallurgical potential of this planet. And Ireta, a satellite of a suspected third generation sun, ought to be rich in the heavier elements, rich in the transuranics and actinides, neptunium, plutonium and the more esoteric of the rare elements above uranium on the periodic table, so urgently and constantly required by the Federation of Sentient Populations, the search for which was one of the primary tasks of the EEC.

The diplomatic might say that EEC was exploring the galaxy, seeking to bring within its sphere of influence all rational sentient beings, augmenting the eighteen peace-loving species already incorporated in the FSP. But the search for energy was the fundamental drive. The diversity of its member species gave the Federation the ability to explore more types of planets, but colonization was incidental to exploitation.

The three useful planets of the sun Arrutan had long been marked on star charts as promising, but only recently had the Executive Council decided to mount the present three-part expedition. Kai had heard the rumor that it was because the Theks wished to be included. This rumor was partially substantiated during his private conference with the EEC chief officer on board the exploratory vessel
ARCT-10
. The CO had privately informed Kai that the Theks had superior control of the three teams, and he was to consider himself under their orders if they chose to supersede him. Vrl, the Ryxi team leader, had been given the same orders, but everyone knew the Ryxi. Furthermore, it was common knowledge that having a Thek on a team spelled ultimate success: Theks were dependable, Theks were thorough, the ultimate altruists. The cynics replied that altruism was easy when a creature calculated its life span in thousands of years. The Theks had elected to be placed on the seventh world of the primary, a heavy-metal, heavy-gravity planet, exactly suited to Theks.

The light-cored planet, fifth from the sun Arrutan, with a low gravity and temperate climate, was being evaluated by the Ryxi, an aerial species that was in critical need of new planets to relieve their population pressure, and give industry and opportunity to the restless young.

Kai’s assignment, the fourth planet in the system, exhibited curious anomalies. Originally designated a second-generation sun, with elements up to transuranic, Arrutan patently did not conform to that classification. A probe sent out for a preliminary survey registered that the fourth planet was undeniably ovoid in shape; the poles were hotter than the equator: the seas registered warmer than the land mass which covered the northern pole. There was almost constant rainfall and an inshore wind of variable velocities up to full-gale force. An axial tilt of some fifteen degrees had been postulated. The readings indicated life forms in water and on land. A xenobiological team was added to the geological.

Kai had requested a remote sensor to locate the ore concentrations, but at that point the storm in the very next system had been sighted and he found his request very low on the priority list. He was told that the original probe tapes would give him ample information to locate metal and mineral, and to get the job done
in situ
. Right now
ARCT-10
had an unparalleled opportunity to observe free matter in action.

Kai took the official brush-off in good part. What he did object to was having the youngsters dumped on his hands at the last minute. To his complaint that this was a working expedition, not a training exercise, he was told that the ship-born must have sufficient planetary experiences early in their lives to overcome the danger of conditioned agoraphobia. The hazard was not to be dismissed lightly by the ship-born: useless to explain to the planet-bred. But Kai railed against the expediency that made his team the one to expand the horizons of three members who were only half into their second decades. This planet was exceedingly active, volcanically and tectonically, and dangerous for ship-bred juveniles. The two girls, Cleiti and Terilla, were biddable and no trouble until Bonnard, the son of the third officer of the EV, instigated all manner of hazard-strewn games.

The very first day, while Kai and his team were dropping cores around the landing site to be sure they had landed on the more stable continental shield, Bonnard had gone exploring and had lacerated a protective suit because he hadn’t remembered to activate the force-field. He had stumbled into a sword plant, as pretty as the harmless decorative plants in the EV’s conservatory but able to slice flesh and suit to ribbons with the most negligible of contacts. There had been other incidents in the nine days since the party had landed. While the other team members seemed to make light of the boy’s escapades and were amused by his adoration of Kai, the team leader sincerely hoped the little orphaned beast would divert Bonnard.

Kai took a long sip of pepper, its tart freshness soothing his nerves as well as his palate. He glanced down at his recorder, switched on the comunit, arranged the recording equipment to the speed necessary to slow the Ryxi speech pattern into understandable tones for later review. He could generally keep up with their rippling voices but a tape helped to resolve any questions.