by neetha Napew
“We need everything to function with. And the scout? Where can we stash that now if we’ve got to clear the barns?” Scott held up his hands. ‘Give us a few hours here,’ and he gestured to the specialists sitting behind him, ‘and we’ll formulate the necessary plans and set up teams to implement them.
Now, I know some of you have been upset by the whizz-ball we had this morning . . .” His label for the orbital caught everyone’s attention, and he grinned to see its effect. ‘But we don’t want to start another batch of rumours with those who still feel insecure here on Botany. Let’s be careful how we discuss this meeting outside the mess hall, shall we? I ask all of you, by whatever you hold sacred, not to start a second wave of ridiculous rumours. We’ll do as much as humanly possible to rectify our misappropriation of housing and effects. Certainly our first priority is getting people out of our landlords’ buildings and to safer places, like the valleys. Equally important is preserving the equipment we need to conduct an orderly evacuation.” Chuck Mitford turned round to those behind him. ‘Keep in mind, folks, it’s taken the Farmers more than nine months to discover we’re here. I’d say we have plenty of time to get elsewhere and at least sweep the garages and barns clean before we leave. Right, Janet?
Anna?”
O_4 V c}
“That should be long enough,’ Patti Sue said so staunchly that Kris, remembering how fearful the girl had once been, nearly cheered out loud at that vote of confidence.
Both Janet and Anna obviously responded to her remark and looked less despondent.
“Of course,’ Patti threw them all by adding ingenuously, ‘they might not come until the growing season starts and we don’t even know when winter ends, if this is winter.” Zainal got to his feet again.
“I like the idea of moving us all to the other continent if it is okay,’ he said. ‘I think we should go soon. The airships can look at the other land-mass. It may not be as barren as it looks from space.
If it is, they can help us search.” Ninety got to his feet as soon as Zainal sat down. ‘There are a lot of those closed valleys, too, which obviously weren’t used by the Farmers. Maybe we can put people in them.” When he heard protests arise, he added, ‘With stairs to get out when you have to. The valleys grow trees and bushes. We could transfer a lot of the stuff we’ve been growing to feed us to the valleys. And aren’t the Turs and Catteni trying ‘em out for us?” He grinned broadly, with a teasing glance at Zainal.
Mitford rose. ‘I agree with Zainal, for what it’s worth,’ he said with an unusual touch of humility.
“Serge, you had the only idea feasible. Don’t have a guilt trip over it now,’ Kris said staunchly, and her remark was quickly seconded by many in the hall.
“We all helped,’ said Joe Latore, and turning around in his seat, looked straight at Dick Aarens. ‘Didn’t we?”
Aarens noticeably ignored him.
“Yes, but what happens if we move to the other continent?” Anna Bollinger asked, her face crumbling with fear, ‘and they come after us there?” Janet immediately put a reassuring arm around her shoulders and glared around.
“Hell’s bells, missus,’ Ninety said, ‘there’re caves all over the planet they’d never find you in. And probably caves across the channel, too, wouldn’t you say, Zainal?”
Kris turned round, one hand going to Anna’s knee. ‘We know
it’s your son you’re really worried about, Anna, but why borrow any more trouble than we’ve already got?” ‘Which brings me to the subject of the Catteni contribution to our present crisis,’ Scott said.
“Zainal, what will your High Eosi do when the satellite reports that whizz-ball?” ‘Worry,’ Zainal answered succinctly, his yellow eyes glinting with mischief.
Scott allowed a slight smile at Zainal’s facetiousness. ‘Would they come back to inspect Botany or set up a blockade of warships or something similar?” ‘First, it will be discussed. Second, the satellite checked for faults that what it reported is true. Third, they may send someone to see what happened to us.” Zainal obviously doubted his third point was likely.
“Fourth, what if they send us more colonists?” Sandy Areson asked.
Zainal considered that for a moment, dropping his chin to his chest. ‘I think no more colonists come for a while now, Sandy.” “Especially since it’s been unlucky for them to land on this planet,’ Aarens put in, chuckling.
Zainal went on as if Aarens hadn’t aired his wit. ‘They will not believe the speed of the whizz-ball.” ‘And they will know that it did not originate in this solar system?” Scott asked.
Zainal nodded. ‘They will think a long time before they do anything.” ‘Good,’ Scott said, rubbing his hands together. “Then that will give us time to remove ourselves completely. As I understand Catteni colonial policy, Zainal, they might even abandon the planet as unsuitable. Is that right?”
Zainal nodded.
“So we might be all right after all?” Anna Bollinger asked, her tear-streaked face brightening.
“It is entirely possible,’ Scott said with considerable and sincere aplomb.
The upshot of the discussion was not a referendum after all, but
the organization of scouting parties to check out every single one of what Ninety Doyle tagged ‘lonesome valleys’. Small groups would quarter in the valleys to discover any unusual denizens, though none had been seen in either of the other two inhabited places. Once Mitford had organized the basics of those explorations, he left a sheaf of instructions with Easley as ‘the manual’ and roused the members of his combined team.
They set off before second moonrise since the amphibious vehicle had lights. It also had excellent suspension, because Mitford slept his usual six hours as Zainal drove it over surfaces rough and smooth.
The driver sat in the centre of this vehicle, with seating for two on either side and control panels across the width of the ‘command’ position. Zainal gave demonstrations to his relief drivers, Joe Marley and Astrid, conducting a running lesson on the vehicle’s potential and what each control was supposed to show, what the various icons on the panel board meant.
“Have we got a periscope?” Marley wanted to know in a facetious mood.
“Third button on right, sun icon,’ said Zainal.
“Why didn’t I guess?” ‘We can drive deep, cannot use scope. Says the manual,’ Zainal replied.
“A man who will read manuals!” Sarah gave a sigh of exaggerated respect.
Joe gingerly tapped the ‘glass’ of the slit window beside him.
“How much pressure will this stand?” ‘Enough. We will not go deep. Is more built for cor-ro-sive atmospheres,’ Zainal added.
“Which is to close vents, Astrid?” he asked, testing her memory of the functions on the panel in front of her.
“This one,’ she said, promptly pointing to it.
“Got it in one,’ said Zainal and Kris, seated behind him, chuckled. He leaned back. ‘I learn new ones every day, don’t I?”
“I, too,’ said Astrid proudly.
“You sure do, Astrid,’ Joe agreed, grinning at her.
Sarah, seated behind him, tapped his shoulder. ‘And what
have you learned today, Francis Marley?” she asked, teasing him with his hated Christian name.
“I’ll tell ya later,’ doe said, giving her a mock leer.
“Any time, cobber,’ she replied.
The point at which they were headed was close to 500 miles from Camp Narrow, and the intention was to drive straight through to their destination with only brief halts to let air circulate through the Tub.
It was such a new piece of equipment that it reeked of paint, oil and other strong odours and needed to have its air system flushed out, especially before they submerged. So they stopped from time to time, to brew tea and relieve themselves.
By midmorning the next day, the sea sparkled ahead of them.
Visible without benefit of the binoculars was the irregular lavender coastline of the
neighbour land-mass. The water before them was calm, with gentle ripples curling over onto the beach.
“Further away than Dover from Calais,’ Astrid said, for she had travelled extensively in Europe in her college days.
Zainal said something in Catteni, flicked up his left hand when the number he wanted refused to come to mind. ‘Six or seven plus seven tens,’ he said.
“Seventy-six,’ said Kris. ‘And how fast will the Tub go underwater?”
“Not as fast as on land,’ he replied. ‘Half the speed.”
“That’s far from slow,’ said Joe, impressed, and he peered at the sloping shoreline. ‘Shallow?” he wondered.
“We’ll find out soon enough,’ Mitford said. ‘All aboard,’ end he called in Astrid, Bjorn and Jan who had been searching for clams on the pebbly shoreline.
They had no sooner reached the flotation point for the Tub than a quick ping began to echo from Joe’s panel. ‘Sonar?” he asked and then saw the gauge that was lighting up. ‘Or something like it. Are you taking us down, skipper?”
Zainal shook his head. ‘Distance to bottom.”
Water was reaching the slit windows now and covering twothirds of the main one, and the slight movement of the waves could be felt.
“I forgot to ask,’ Mitford said, ‘does anyone on board get seasick . .
. besides me?”
“Serge? You can’t,’ Kris said in mock-alarm.
Leila, who had watched as was her custom, now rose from her seat and went aft. She returned with a large basin which she offered to Mitford. He gave her such a disgusted look that she started to apologize.
“I was only trying to be helpful.”
“He’s teasing you, Leila,’ said Kris.
“Maybe I’m not,’ Mitford said, staring down at the basin.
“Are you claustrophobic?” Kris murmured.
He nodded.
“Oh,’ she said, in as sympathetic a tone as she could manage.
No wonder he hadn’t been so keen to fly in Baby.
“The way the Tub is moving, serge,’ Joe said in a very cheerful tone, ‘we’ll be there in no time at all. No time at all!’
“Just think of it, Chuck . . .”
Mitford put a hasty hand on Kris’s shoulder. ‘Don’t . . . use that particular word, will you?” ‘Ooops, but you are first to cross this channel, or strait, or whatever it is. Can we name it after you?” ‘Huh?” The sergeant regarded her with startled eyes; then he realized she was trying to divert him and managed a grin. ‘I’ll be all right.
There’s still some view left . . .” But the waves washed up over the windscreen and he hastily looked away from their activity.
The crossing was completed in just under two Catteni-style hours as marked by the timepiece set in the control panel. The Tub trundled out onto a sandy beach, dotted with the same sort of shrubs that grew on its neighbour.
“Clams, too,’ said Astrid, pointing to the air holes as they all emerged from the Tub, once again flushing out the ‘newness’ smells.
“We get some?” she asked Mitford.
“There’s plenty of time,’ he said, shading his eyes to glance up the slope that led inland. Then he glanced down at the map he had taken from his pocket and unfolded it. ‘We’re about here,’ he said, pointing and then cocking his finger due west. ‘Should be higher ground this way. Zainal, Kris, Astrid, Bjorn, Whitby - let’s have a bit of a recon.” And he strode forward. ‘Joe, you’re in charge of the Tub,’ he added.
When they reached the first height and had an overview, there were green-covered stretches in either direction and right back to the distant hills.
“Like loo-cow pastures,’ Bjorn said, pausing to dig a toe through the vegetation to the soil beneath. Little many-legged things burrowed deeper, away from the air. ‘Good dirt,’ he added, pinching some between his fingers and letting it sift back down. Neatly, he stepped on the divot he had made.
“Think the Farmers’d notice if we rustled some of their steers?” Kris asked, wondering what else was hidden in the soil here.
“No such insects in loo-cow pastures,’ Bjorn added. ‘May be no night-crawls, too.” Kris looked around her. ‘We should be so lucky.” She tried to remember what she’d learned in geography about terrain.
“This looks exactly like the landscape over there,’ and she pointed over her shoulder at the distant mainland. ‘Could there have been some sort of subsidence to separate the two . . . or maybe the gap just hasn’t closed as it did on Earth in prehistoric days.
Continents used not to be the way they are now, you know.
Maybe this is a young land . . .” ‘No, this is an old planet,’ said Whitby. ‘No volcanoes on those space maps at all, and a lot of the hills are worn down. But this place does look like the same sort of terrain that we just left.” ‘Then why is it not farmed?” Astrid asked, her usually serene expression marred by a frown.
Mitford shrugged his shoulders and cleared his throat. ‘Who knows, but we’ll keep in mind that, if it looks alike, it could be alike and we might have night-crawlers here, too. We’ll bunk in the Tub tonight.” Then he swung his arm in a wide arc. ‘Let’s move out and see if we can find a good place to park.” In the four hours they searched, they caught only a glimpse or two of small aerial life forms but no rocksquats.
“They wouldn’t be down here where there’s no rocks, for starters,’ Mitford said when Astrid grew worried about their absence.
“Not even any trees for the avians either; just bushes.
Let’s split up into two groups. You head north, Zainal with Kris, Coo and Bjorn. You, Slav, and the rest, we’ll go south.” Several times, Bjorn stopped to check the soil again. It was good, black and moist, but not too moist, full of small creatures to keep it loose.
“Plenty good for farms.” ‘Then why aren’t there farms here?” Kris asked, almost aggrieved.
“We will find the reason,’ Zainal reassured her, touching her elbow briefly.
“They farm well enough on the main continent. Don’t need this one,’ Bjorn said but he didn’t sound all that convinced.
“And the closed valleys?” Kris asked. ‘They’re even more enigmatic.” ‘Perhaps,’ and Bjorn considered his words, ‘they used them to keep animals in. Safe from the night crawlers.”
“Where are the animals now, then?” Kris demanded.
“Eaten?” Bjorn asked, his eyes twinkling.
“We will ask that questtion also,’ Zainal said.
They had gone north and now swung wide on their return to the Tub. Zainal had seen low foothills at a good day’s travel to the north, but otherwise this coastal plain was covered in low vegetation and bush. Good smells wafted on the evening breeze as they neared the Tub’s position.
Joe had wasted no time in digging for clams; Leila and Oskar had caught several varieties of fish and, having tested them in the Tub’s small but efficient laboratory unit, found them safe for humans to eat.
Sarah contributed some familiar edible roots and greens found near a stream. Among the Tub’s supplies were small cooking units which were occupied by boiling pots of clams. A grill had been laid across stones for the fish, and there was bread from Narrow among their supplies, so when Mitford broke out the beer everyone was in an expansive mood.
The report of the unusual orbiting device was forwarded to the Eosi Mentat Ix, who had registered an interest in vrvthino to do with the colony planet.
Ix snarled each time it replayed the record of the object, for the speed alone suggested a technology worryingly more advanced than the Eosi had. Ix demanded all records, especially those made by its new entity, for within the entity’s fading mind was a memory of a visit to the planet. Ix drew forth all the relevant facts, including the presence of the Catteni it had chosen from the bloodline of its present, but not selected, entity. It examined what the entity had dismissed, the gadget that had been presented for inspection as proof that the planet perhaps had been or was occupied by another species.
/>
Ix worried over all the little memories, having them repeated and repeated until every nuance was dragged out for inspection.
The Mentat was pleased that Catteni had set up a second, more flexible satellite around the subject planet. Unfortunately this satellite only emphasized the incredibly fast global search that had been conducted by the alien orb, and the anger of Ix increased at the implications of technical superiority over the Bosh Logic suggested that the original discoverers of that planet were re-evaluating the world. What had it been programmed to discover? And why had this object, too, disappeared just beyond the heliopause of this solar system?
Ix summoned a meeting of those of its fellow Mentats who were sufficiently cognisant of their responsibilities to be useful in formulating a course of action. In lightning exchanges of information as unlike the torturous communications with their subject Catteni as the orbiting object of the Unknown was unlike their own satellite units - it was decided the matter must be investigated in greater detail.
All further shipments to the colony planet were suspended, and the great number of recalcitrant Earth people would be sent to the secondary colomal venture.
Since it was the Ix Mentat’s idea that the matter must be investigated,
its peers decided that it must undertake the onerous
.., .e,.
journey, forgoing its usual pleasures and routines. Fortunately it could pass the tedium of the voyage in a suspended state, but that amenity required some alterations to the newest and fastest Catteni warship. The delay annoyed the Ix still further and it amused itself thinking of ways to punish those beings which had been instrumental in causing this discommodation.
The Ix Mentat had just been awakened by the high-ranking naval commander of this jewel of the Catteni fleet when proximity alarms jangled fiercely all over the ship, which went into attack alert. The mass approaching the Catteni vessel was so large, it was too large to be contained on the detection screen.
