Freedom's Landing Part 27

Sea stuff is full of minerals and junk."

"Yeah, I know," Sarah said, rolling her eyes. "I drank enough cod liver oil as a kid. Hey, Joe, c'mere a minute, will ya?" Joe, totally unselfconscious about his nudity, joined them and took the "clam' from Sarah.

"We will have to go the empiric route, I suppose," he said without real enthusiasm. "At least it won't eat us first." He took Sarah's hatchet, held out his hand for Kris's and, using one as a counter, hit the sh.e.l.l with the other.

"Oops, hit it too hard," he said, looking down at the mashed stuff that oozed off the side of the blade. "Get me another one." After the capture and dissection of three more molluscs, Joe decided the "flesh' might indeed be edible. He dressed, and they all went to find something burnable. No-one quite had the courage to try the mollusc raw, though they all thought it smelt as seafood should. Joe was game enough to be the guinea pig when the first one they cooked turned brown and a prod with the knife point went easily into the meat.

"A bit chewy but rather tasty, chums. Rather y' Sampling another morsel, Oskar agreed and immediately went out to gather more sh.e.l.ls.

Zainal only smiled and, although he put a piece in his mouth, did not swallow it, shaking his head.

"You don't have things like this on Catten?" Kris asked him, teasing.

He shook his head. "Eat land animals only."

"Fish has better protein content and less fat," Kris said, enjoying his reaction.

Zainal went back to watching.

Making a camp in the dunes, out of sight of the building, and shielded from the light breeze that had sprung up, they ate a meal that began with clams broiled on the half sh.e.l.l and then cold rock-squat.

Joe suggested that they wait and see if any of them had a reaction to the molluscs before they went on a hinge of them. Oddly enough, they all wanted to eat more.

"Probably they contain some trace elements our present diet is not supplying," Joe suggested. "Sometimes our bodies know better than our heads what is required. But let's give it the overnight test. If no-one's had diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea or dies on us, the clams should be fairly safe to eat."

"Fresh," Kris added.

"By the seaside, by the beautiful sea," Joe warbled.

Then the talk shifted to the point of whether or not scavengers lived in the sand dunes.

"Maybe something even worse," Sarah suggested, shuddering.

"I'd kinda looked forward to making a sandy bed," Kris said wistfully. "At least you can get it to conform to your b.u.mps and lumps which rock won't." Joe whistled. "Yeah, great contours!" and he made a show of leering at her. Sarah pinched his thigh, calling him to order.

"I do miss mattresses, Kris said, sighing. "I honestly don't miss much else. Most of the time, that is. But I'd really, truly, deeply give my eye-teeth for even a pneumatic camping mattress," she said, hugging her knees to her. She caught Zainal's amused glance where he sat opposite her, his eyes twinkling in the firelight.

"Eye-teeth?" he asked.

She bared her lips and showed him.

"What good are your eye-teeth to anyone else?"

"They aren't. It's just a saying." The remainder of the evening was spent in language lessons. Oskar was picking up more and more English and Astrid's was becoming more fluent. She was also picking up some of Kris's pet phrases though such flattery made Kris just a little uncomfortable.

When fatigue made longer and longer pauses between conversations, Zainal announced the watch roster. He suggested that the sentinel stomp, and that was the word he used with a grin at Kris, around the perimeter from time to time, just in case the sand did harbour a species of underground scavenger. The others were to bed down in the sand around the fire which the sentry would keep going.

"In between stompings?" asked Sarah irrepressibly.

"As you say," Zainal agreed, nodding.

The long night pa.s.sed with no alarrns and Kris, comfortably positioned on the sand, slept deeply and well. As usual, everyone roused well before the Botany dawn. Since no-one had suffered any alimentary reaction to the clams, a beach party was organized. In the dim predawn light, they dug clams and when they decided they had enough for a good feed, they took a quick dip in the sea to wash off the clinging sh.o.r.e mud.

Rather a festive breakfast ensued. Then Zainal suggested they use the last of the night to approach the building and scout it out.

No-one had yet figured out how long a day's charge of solar power lasted in the collectors since the mechs were usually inactive during darkness.

The building was bigger than they'd originally thought and seemed to expand as they approached it. Zainal, whose night vision was superior to the rest of the patrol's, discerned some curious superstructures on the front of the building, and a railed runway leading down into the water.

"A launch site?" Joe suggested.

"On Terra, fishing is done in the old ways, Astrid said. Joe and Sarah agreed.

"Do they have an automated boat, then?" Kris asked.

"Maybe they whistle the fish into their nets," Joe murmured.

"Haven't heard a mechanical make any noise apart from "clank-whir",' Kris said facetiously.

Machinery did not need windows, either, and the building had none.

It looked as if the entire front of the building opened to permit the exit of whatever machiner was stored inside. The largest solar panels they had yet seen occupied the roof, held up by a heavy stem which implied the panels altered direction to acc.u.mulate as much of the sun's rays as possible. That was a new wrinkle in the mechanicals' technology.

Zainal could find no exterior slit or lock or anything that would give them access within. He even had Joe up on his shoulders, searching the seaward walls as high as he could reach.

So they waited at a discreet distance to see if the building would open itself up once daylight had arrived.

They waited until the sun was at its zenith, and occupied themselves by trying to fish, using the thinnest possible strips of blanket attached to a pole, and a piece of thin wire bent into a hook with a portion of clam attached as bait. When they caught nothing from the sh.o.r.e, they waded out as far as they could without losing their balance and finally caught some flat fishes. These they grilled for lunch, taking cautious bites.

"What I'd give for a testing kit!" Joe sighed wistfully.

"You miss mattresses, Kris, I'd give my eye-teeth for just a magnifying gla.s.s." He paused. "And a few odd chemicals to test for toxicity. I'll not even dream of having a microscope "Don't!" Sarah said.

"Look, why not put such tools past our panel of talented DIYs," Kris said, "considering what they've managed to produce so far," and she tapped the comunit.

At high noon, when no activity emanated from the building, Zainal said they would take measurements of this, the biggest facility they'd yet seen.

"Maybe it only goes after certain types of fish that aren't running right now," Joe suggested.

"Or maybe there's a satellite up there," and Sarah pointed skywards, "that tells it when to go fishing." Zainal shook his head.

"No satellite or Catteni do not explore."

"Are you aware then," Kris asked, startled by the concept, "that there are other sentient s.p.a.ce-travelling species?" Zainal gave her a slightly patronizing look.

"s.p.a.ce is very big. Many planets can be settled," and he added with one of his engagingly broad grins, "Not always this way." Then he added, "It is a mark of honour, not unhonour "Dishonour," Kris interposed.

"To be transported."

"I could have done without the honour," Sarah said drolly, then added quickly, giving Zainal's arm the briefest touch, "But then I wouldn't have met you, or learnt that we Terrans are pretty d.a.m.ned good!"

"You are!" Zainal gave his head one of his quick aftirmative nods. "Honour to me to be here."

"Well," Joe remarked, obviously gratified.

"Now we go search more," he said, and raising his arm over his head, gave the "move-out' signal.

Kris was gratified, too, by that little exchange. She was even pleased that Sarah had touched Zainal: up until that gesture of conciliation, no-one had made any physical contact with Zainal - except herself. And Leon, medically, but not socially. Touch him, he's real live flesh and bleeds red blood, she thought sourly as they moved out, matching his easy jog pace: a disciplined squad, fit and able to cope with anything Botany had so far meted out.

Joe paused a couple of times to collect samples of berries or hard-sh.e.l.led tree and shrub fruits. The soft ones he sampled or had someone else sample; judiciously, of course. S6me of the soft berries were so bitter the merest morsel caused the mouth to pucker. A good rinse with water helped dissipate the effect. One, a dark green, was sweet enough to encourage the taster to try more. The green fruit was gathered but not eaten until the samplings proved there would be no ill effects.

They spent the rest of the day on the sh.o.r.eline, noticing the flotsam pushed up by high tides, mainly seaweeds.

These Joe thought might have nutritional value, so he gathered specimens. They also noted the abundance of molluscs along the coast by the frequency of the blow holes. Towards evening, they dug out a quant.i.ty and, along with a plump rock-squat, tuber roots and greens that grew in abundance, made an appetizing stew, to which the seawater was added to provide the salt they were all beginning to crave.

They found another sandy camping spot, on a height above the sh.o.r.e which stretched out in both directions as far as anyone could see.

Just visible in the dim light were the lavender blobs of a spattering of islands which made them wonder, around the evening campfire, if this was an inland sea and there might be a distant sh.o.r.e.

They considered continuing along the coast as far as they could go.

"We come again. Mitford will evaluate the situation first," Zainal said.

"Hey, now listen to him," Sarah said, grinning.

"Evaluate", huh? That's a fifty-dollar word, mate."

"I listen, I learn," Zainal said, grinning back at her.

* * * Mitford himself got in touch with the patrol the next morning to call them in.

"Getting too close to the time the Catteni might come back," he said. "Swing wide but start back now." Zainal had them strike obliquely back to camp and they came across two more agricultural garages and an abattoir, empty and waiting. They disabled everything, stacking the various useful parts for later pickup. Scratching his head, Joe regarded the piles.

"I wonder has anyone re-invented the wheel yet," he said. "Sure save packing that stuff out on our backs."

"If you have air cushions which hop over obstacles, a wheel is a backward step," Kris said.

"Hence no need for roads - - - a waste of good arable land, if you ask me."

"Too right, mate." Oskar nodded approval. He was having to rely less and less on Astrid for translation.

"Just so long as I'm not around to carry the can when the bosses discover what we've done to all their facilities," Joe said, washing his hands and flicking his responsibility away "What if it's only more machines?" Kris asked, for she had considered that possibility. "At least machines don't get angry' "Machines also don't eat meat or make bread," Sarah said staunchly. "The bosses have to be humanoid or why all of this?"

"Yeah, but I'll bet they use machines for all their dirty, boring ch.o.r.es," Joe replied thoughtfully. "I mean, the technology level that went into the design and manufacture of these mechs is phenomenal. We don't have anything its equal. Not even you Yanks with those great combine harvesters you have in your midwest.

"But machines have to be designed by - - something else. They might be able to repair themselves, but design?" She shook her head.

"There are intelligent sentient beings somewhere at the end of the line of machines.

Sarah and Joe snorted in chorus. Joe, with a grin, added, "So long as they're friendly."

"They are earth friendly," Astrid said, speaking brightly.

"Are they human friendly? That's the big question," Joe said.

"I like this planet," Oskar said. "Now we run it, not machines.

Not bureaux or men who do not understand the land."

"Anything different in this lot?" Zainal asked Oskar as he added a coil of wire and a handful of connectors to the pile in front of the young Norwegian.

He shook his head but looked at Joe for confirmation.

Joe shook his head.

"Nope, Zainal. Nothing that can't wait, as far as I can see. And I've got the anaesthetic darts wrapped up in my pack."

"Good!" They settled down for the night in one of the barns.

"So Kris can cushion her bones on straw," Zainal said with a grin.

"Too right," she said, having picked up that Australian phrase from Sarah.

First the girls retired to the second barn for the privacy of their evening baths in watering troughs. When they returned, straw was piled in outrageously high beds.

"Deep enough for you, Kris?" Zainal asked, sweeping a sort of bow towards her accommodation.

She made a big show of spreading her blanket and then hesitated, not sure how she would get on to it.

Zainal picked her up and, with a deftly controlled throw, deposited her, squealing in surprise, in the exact center of her "mattress' "Ohhhh,' and she drawled the exclamation as she wiggled her shoulders and hips deep into the soft ma.s.s.

"Heavenly."

"And I do not ask for your eye-teeth," Zainal said, stepping back to take a brief run to launch himself onto his bedpile.

"I wonder," Kris said as she settled down to sleep, "what the mechos will say when they find six piles of battered fodder in these barns.

"Probably check the programming of their mechs," Sarah said sleepily. She was the last to speak that night.

They made it back to Camp Rock late the next afternoon.

Kris and Zainal made their report to Worrell, who said Mitford was out inspecting the latest gadget to be put together from "all those spare parts you blokes keep finding'. Worrell was a balding chunky man, more barrel than leg, with a flushed complexion and many small red veins on his cheeks and chin. He had a habit of hitching his coverall, and the leather belt of worked rock-squat hide that circled it, as if he was afraid it would slip around his hips. Kris wondered if he had once had a beer belly, though he was thin enough now: an effect of being long aboard a Catteni transport ship.

"Anyone with any claim to mechanical skills has been drafted," he said, grinning and then, losing his grin, pointed to the empty stocks.

"That Aarens fellow's organized quite a production line at Slaughterhouse Five." Worry blinked at their exclamations. "Publicly we're calling it Camp Narrow for the narrow escape I hear some of your blokes had from a processing plant.

So," and Worry gave another hitch to his trousers before he motioned her and, just as politely, Zainal to take a stone seat.