Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 44

"A pity acclimatisation is taking so long," Trizein said, easing a gla.s.s pipe into a joint. "We'll probably get used to the stench the day before the ARCT comes for us."

They set the still up, out of the way, in a corner of Lunzie's sleeping dome. With a sense of achievement, they watched the apparatus bubble gently for a time and then left it to do its job. "It's going to be days before there's enough for the whole team to drink," Trizein said in gentle complaint.

"I'll keep watch on it," she said, her eyes crinkling merrily, "but feel perfectly free to pop in and sample its progress."

"Oh, yes, we should periodically sample it," Trizein replied gravely. "Can't have an inferior product."

They shut the seal on Lunzie's dome just as Kai and Gaber burst excitedly into the camp.

"We've got films of the monster who's been taking bites out of the herbivores," Kai announced, waving the ca.s.sette jubilantly above his head.

The lightweights watched the footage of toothy monsters with horrified interest. Varian dubbed the carnivores "fang-faces" for the prominent fangs and rows of sharp teeth. They were terrifyingly powerful specimens, walking upright on huge haunches with a reptilian tail like a third leg that flew behind them when they ran. The much smaller forepaws might look like a humorous afterthought of genetic inadequacy but they were strong enough to hold a victim still while the animal chewed on the living prey. Fortunately the fang-faces on film were not savaging herbivores in this scene. They were greedily eating clumps of a bright green gra.s.s, tearing them up by those very useful forelimbs, stuffing them into toothy maws.

"Quite a predator," Lunzie murmured to Varian. She ought to have hauled Trizein away from his beloved electro-microscope. He needed to have the contrast of the macrocosm to round out the pathology of his biological profiles.

"Yes, but this is very uncharacteristic behaviour for a carnivore," Varian remarked, watching intently. "Its teeth are suitable for a carnivorous diet. Why is it eating gra.s.s like there's no tomorrow?"

As the camera panned past the fang-face, it rested on a golden-furred flying creature, eating gra.s.s almost alongside the predator. It had a long sharp beak and wing-hands like the Ryxi but there the resemblance ended.

"We've seen avian nests but they're always near water, preferably large lakes or rivers," Gaber told Lunzie. "That creature is nearly two hundred kilometres from the nearest water. They would have to have deliberately sought out this vegetation."

"They're an interesting species, too," Kai remarked. "They were curious enough to follow our sled and they're capable of fantastic speed."

Varian let out a crow. "I want to be there when we tell that to the Ryxi! They want to be the only intelligent avians in the galaxy even if they have to deny the existence of others by main strength of will."

"Why weren't these species seen on the initial flyby of Ireta?" Divisti asked in her deep slow voice.

"With the dense jungle vegetation a super cover? Not surprising that the report only registered life-forms. Think of all the trouble we've had getting pictures with them scooting into the underbrush."

"I wish the ARCT ARCT wasn't out of range," Kai remarked, not for the first time. "I'd like to order a galaxy search on EV files. I keep feeling that this planet has to have been surveyed before." wasn't out of range," Kai remarked, not for the first time. "I'd like to order a galaxy search on EV files. I keep feeling that this planet has to have been surveyed before."

Dimenon, as chief geologist, was of the same opinion. He was getting peculiar echoes from signalling cores all over the continental shield. Kai managed to disinter an old core from the site of one of the echoes. Its discovery proved to the geologists that their equipment was functioning properly but the existence of an unsuspected core also caused consternation.

"This core is not only old, it's ancient," Kai said. "Millions of years old."

"Looks just like the ones you're using," Lunzie remarked, handling the tube-shaped core. "That's true enough, but it suggests that the planet has been surveyed before, which is why no deposits of transuranics have been found in an area that should be rich with them."

"Then why no report in the EV files?" Dimenon asked.

Kai shrugged, taking the core back from Lunzie. "This is slightly more bulky but otherwise identical."

"Could it be the Others?" Dimenon asked in a hushed voice.

Lunzie shook her head, chuckling at that old childish nightmare.

"Not unless the Others know the Theks," Kai replied. "They make all the cores we use."

"What if the Theks are copying the science of the older technology?" Dimenon argued defensively.

While it was hard to imagine anything older than Theks, Lunzie looked at Kai who knew more about them than she did.

"Then the ancient core has to mean that Ireta was previously surveyed? Only who did it? What do the Theks say?"

"I intend to ask them," Kai replied grimly.

A few days later, Varian sought Lunzie out in her dome. The young leader was shaking and very disturbed. Lunzie made her sit and gave her a mug of pepper.

"What's wrong?"

The girl took a deep sip of the restorative drink before she spoke.

"You were right," Varian said. "The heavyworlders are reverting to savagery. I had two of them out on a survey. Paskutti was flying the sled as we tracked a fang-face. It chased down one of the herbivores and gouged bites out of its flank. It made me sick, but Paskutti and Tardma exhibited a grotesque fascination at the sight. I insisted that we save the poor herbivore before it was killed. Paskutti promptly blasted the fang-face with the sled exhaust, showing his superiority like an alpha animal. He did drive it off but not before wounding it cruelly. Its hide was a ma.s.s of char."

Lunzie swallowed her disgust. As surrogate mother-confessor and psychologist for the team, she knew that a confrontation with the heavyworlders was required to discover exactly what was going on in their minds, but she didn't look forward to the experience. Right now she needed to refocus Varian on her mission, to take her mind off the horror.

"The predator just took the animal's flesh," she asked, "leaving a wound like Mabel's? That's interesting. A fang-face has a tremendous appet.i.te. One little chunk of herbivore oughtn't to satisfy it."

"They certainly couldn't sustain themselves just by eating gra.s.s. Even though they do eat tons of it in the truce-patch."

Lunzie stroked the back of her neck thoughtfully. "That gra.s.s is more likely to provide a nutrient they're missing. We'll a.n.a.lyse anything you bring us."

Varian managed a laugh. "That's a request for samples?"

"Yes, indeed. Trizein is right. There are anomalies here, puzzles left from eons past. I'd like to solve the mystery before we leave Ireta."

"If we leave," Gaber said irritably later that day when Lunzie invited him to share a pot of her brew of synthesised coffee. "I don't intend ever signing up for a planetary mission again. It's my opinion that we've been planted. We're here to provide the core of a planetary population. We'll never get off."

"Nonsense," Lunzie returned sharply, ignoring his basic self-contradiction to concentrate on reducing a new rumour. "The transuranics of this planet alone are enough to supply ten star systems for a century. The FSP is far more desperate for mineral wealth than starting colonies. Now that Dimenon is prospecting beyond the continental shield, he's finding significant deposits of transuranics every day."

"Significant?" Gaber was sceptical.

"Triv is doing a.s.says. 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 organised pirate network to have manoeuvred 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 north-east 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 a.s.say 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 gla.s.ses. 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 behaviour.

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 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 quant.i.ties 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 h.e.l.ls 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 rumour about planting. He swears he has kept his notion to himself, but if he has reached that conclusion on his own, you may a.s.sume 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 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 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." 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 a.s.signment 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 authorise 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 inst.i.tute 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 pa.s.sed 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 her.

"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 wildly 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 realised 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 ..."