Ricky dashed out of the cabin door and crossed the half-dozen yards that separated his hut from his father’s. Just outside the voices were clearly distinct; Woodman was speaking excitedly and loudly.
‘It was absolutely devilish! Oh, I suppose it was physical -some sort of miasma - in fact it nearly knocked me down, but it felt just exactly as though somebody were standing and hating me a few yards off. Like that feeling you get after space ‘flu, as though nobody loves you, only this was magnified about a million times - the most powerful depressant ever, and absolutely in the open air, too.’
‘Where was this?’
‘The eighth sector - just about here.’
He was evidently pointing to a map. Cold with apprehension, Ricky deliberately tried to probe into his father’s mind, to see just what they were looking at. The picture was fuzzy and danced about, but he could see the pointer Jordan was using - the ivory stylus he always carried, and - yes, that was the clearing in the forest that housed the Tree itself! The guards about it had been all too successful in their efforts to keep intruders away.
Jordan laughed harshly. ‘Do you remember that we scheduled this planet as safe?’ He got to his feet. ‘First Barney encounters devils and now you’ve discovered the Upas Tree. You’re sure this gas or whatever it is came from the plants?’
‘I’m certain it was this one particular tree. It’s by itself in the middle of an open space. The feeling began when I was six feet from it. It has big pods - they may secrete the toxic - I collected a branch once before and didn’t feel anything. Perhaps it’s seasonal.’
‘Well, it’ll have to come down.’ Ricky, horrified, felt his father’s savage satisfaction at coming across an enemy he could deal with. ‘Ellen wants to push her soil examinations out in that direction - it’s the only sector we haven’t covered yet and a good many people want to work there.’
Ricky, horrified, straightened from his crouching position under the window and appeared like a jack-in-the-box over the sill.
‘You mustn’t, Doc! Honestly you mustn’t. That Tree’s terribly important. It’s only—’
‘Ricky!’ Jordan lunged to his feet, scattering objects across his desk. ‘Were you listening to my conversation?’
Ricky turned white. ‘Yes, I was, but—’
‘Go to your cabin.’
Woodman made a move to intervene, but Jordan brushed it aside.
‘I’ll speak to you later. For the moment, you’ll go to your cabin and stay there, until I have time to deal with you.’
Woodman thought that Ricky was about to make some further protest, but after a moment’s tension he turned and bolted.
Jordan picked up the stylus with a trembling hand.
‘I’ll come with you and investigate this thing at once, Woodman. We’ll need masks and an air-sampler, and we may as well take one of those portable detection kits. Can you draw chem from the store, please, and be ready in ten minutes. Get a blaster, too.’
Woodman thought of arguments and decided against them. Old Jordan had been stewing up for something like this for the last week and it was probably better to let him get it out of his system. When it came to the point Jordan wouldn’t start destroying things without careful consideration; he was too good a scientist for that. Woodman didn’t know why Ricky was so concerned, but he himself would take good care that a possibly unique specimen wasn’t damaged in a hurry. He went for the equipment.
Jordan hesitated at the entrance to Ricky’s cabin. He heard a slight movement within, and moved on. He was still trembling with a fury that he only half understood, and knew that he was in no state to conduct a delicate interview, or even to think straight. Better leave the boy alone until he had got things sorted out in his own mind.
Ricky, lying tense on his bunk, ‘listened’ with all his power. Old Woodman didn’t really approve of this expedition, made in such a hurry. Good. Doc J. was half aware that his own brain wasn’t working straight. Good again. Ricky spared a moment to wish that he had given more thought to his father during the last week, but it was too late for that now. Even if Jordan didn’t take a blaster to the Tree straight off the People were still perched on the thin edge of disaster. For the first time since he had understood what Big Sword wanted him to do, Ricky began to doubt whether it could be done. Were people going to listen to him? Were Doc J. and Woodman and Miss Ellen and the rest of them really any different from Cora and Camillo and all the other people on Earth who didn’t even try to understand?
No, there was only one way to make the People safe - if it would work. And he’d got to take it. Because this was his own fault for not telling Doc J. sooner. He’d acted like a silly kid, wanting to keep his secret to himself just a little longer. Well, now he was going to put things right, if he could - righter than they were before. With any luck it would be hours before anyone missed him. He might even be able to do what he wanted and call back on his transmitter to explain before they found that he had gone.
Ricky was already out of the clearing before Jordan, who had started out with Woodman, turned back to speak to Dr Scott.
‘Ellen, I’ve left Ricky in his cabin. We had a ... disagreement. I think he’s better left to himself just now, but would you mind going to his cabin in an hour or so, to see that he’s all right?’
‘Of course, John. But what—?’
‘No time now. I’ll explain later. Thank you, Ellen. Goodbye.’
There was no undergrowth in the forest but the branches were extremely thick, and the darkness beneath them almost complete. Jordan, following Woodman through the trees and the slow pace enforced by these conditions, felt his anger drain away and a deep depression take its place. What sort of showing had he made, either as a father or as the head of the expedition? This particular episode was quite idiotic. There was nothing in Woodman’s report to call for this immediate dash into the forest. He should at least have stopped to find out what Ricky knew about it - and now that he was cooling off, Ricky’s anxiety seemed more and more puzzling. If it weren’t that to turn back would make him look even more of a fool than he did already, he would have given up and gone to find out what the boy knew.
In front of him Woodman came to a halt.
‘That’s it, sir! That’s the Tree! But - there’s no feeling about it now.’
Jordan brushed past him.
‘Stay here. Be ready to put your mask on.’ He walked slowly forward until he was right under the branches of the Tree.
On either side of the clearing, sitting in the treetops, the Guardians consulted anxiously.
‘The Contact said we must not drive them away. We must do as he suggested.’
Jordan looked up at the branches and dared them to depress him.
‘I don’t feel anything,’ he said at last. ‘Woodman, are you certain this is the right tree?’
‘Well, I was, sir.’ Woodman approached it in growing doubt. ‘All these little clearings are so much alike, I could have - no, it is the right one! I tied my handkerchief to this branch for a marker, before I bolted. Here it is.’
The Guardians gave the telepathic equivalent of a sigh and started on the next line of defence.
‘You know, sir—’ Woodman was carefully deferential, ‘I’ve never seen another specimen like this. After all, this little bit of the Forest is pretty well cut off - the Rift on one side, the Mountains on the other, and the River in the south. This type of soil doesn’t even extend as far as the River. You might get forms here which were unique - relics, or species evolved since the Rift opened. I don’t feel we ought to destroy it without very good reason.’
Jordan scowled up at the nearest pod.
‘I wasn’t proposing to destroy it here and now! If the thing is a potential menace we must find out about it, that’s all. I must say I don’t... what’s that?’
The sound of snapping twigs could be heard back along the path. Woodman started down it with Jordan at his heels; it was so dark that he was almost on top of Dr Scott before
he saw her.
‘John! Thank goodness. Listen, you’ve got to come back at once. It’s... it’s Ricky. He’s gone. I went to his cabin like you said, and he wasn’t there. He isn’t anywhere in camp. He’s gone.’
* * * *
There was a flurry in the camp, but it was an organized flurry. Jordan, white and sick-looking, nevertheless had himself well under control. Important facts were sorted out quickly.
Three parties working on the east side of the clearing could swear that Ricky had not passed them.
Various delicate gadgets which responded violently to the movement of humans anywhere near them were rigged in the wood to the north, which was taboo in consequence. They showed no sign of disturbance.
That left the south and the west. South was a, stretch of about eight miles of forest, unbroken until it reached the big river. West was about half a mile of forest, fairly well explored, and then the Great Rift.
‘There’d be no sense in going that way,’ Jordan laid a pointer on the map to indicate the Rift; he noticed in a detached way that his hand was quite steady. ‘It doesn’t lead anywhere. There’s just one place he could be making for, if we assume him to have an intelligible plan, and that is the First Base on the coast. The one way he could possibly get there would be to get to the river and float down it on one of the log-rafts - we saw plenty of them coming down while we were at the base.’
‘But the rapids—’ said somebody.
‘Has anyone reason to suppose that Ricky knew about the rapids?’ Beads of sweat stood out on Jordan’s forehead. No one answered. ‘We have to find him before he gets there. Unless any of you can suggest another way he might be trying to go.’
Nobody cared to suggest that Ricky, if he had flung off in blind panic, might be headed nowhere in particular under the shade of the black trees. On the south side the paths went only for half a mile or so, and if he left them he could be lost within a hundred yards of the camp. They had already tried to pick up the tracker he was supposed to carry, but he had evidently switched it off or thrown it away.
The geologist, Penn, spoke suddenly from the back of the group.
‘How about the Rift? It interested him. He might try to get across.’
‘That’s possible,’ said Jordan. ‘On the Rift he’d be relatively easy to spot. That’s why I propose to leave it till later. We have only one heliflier. If he’s gone through the forest to the river we have to catch him at once. He’s been gone two and a half hours. If he went straight to the nearest point of the river he might be there by now. The heliflier’s the only chance. I can patrol the whole stretch and spot him as soon as he comes to it. If he hasn’t reached it by dawn, I’ll go back and fly over the Rift. If he does happen to be there, he won’t take much harm in that time.’
‘There are two helifliers,’ someone suggested.
‘No,’ said Jordan sharply. ‘The other is unsafe.’
Not all the party were to join the hunt at once.
‘There are only a few profitable lines,’ said Jordan. ‘We don’t want everybody exhausted at the same time. This may be more than one day’s search. And some of you have long-term observations to continue.’ He raised his hand, stilling a protest. ‘If to take all of you would increase the ... the speed with which we are likely to find Ricky by one per cent, or half that, I’d take you all. But I won’t ruin several months’ work for nothing.’
In the end several parties set out through the trees south and one went west. Jordan had already taken the one serviceable heliflier and departed. They had arranged an automatic sound-signal to go off every half hour in the clearing, in case Ricky was lost and trying to find his way back, and there were flares and a searchlight for when it became dark.
Ellen Scott had been left behind as part of the ‘reinforcements.’ She managed to catch Woodman before his party left.
‘You used the second heliflier, didn’t you? What’s wrong with it?’
Woodman grimaced. ‘It failed to co-operate over landing. I got down intact by the skin of my incisors and had to walk home - we fetched it finally on the truck. I found a rough patch on one of the power planes and cleaned it up. That may or may not have been the cause of the trouble. We haven’t got checking equipment here and nobody’s tried it out the hard way. Leave it alone, Ellen. When those things are good they’re very very good. Once they act up - leave them alone. It wouldn’t be any use over the Forest and Doc J. won’t miss anything on the River.’
‘How about the Rift?’
‘Why should he go there? He was upset but he wasn’t crazy. No, he must have set out for the base camp - probably thinks he’ll be treated as a hero if he gets there. I’ll give him heroics next time we meet.’
* * * *
Ellen was occupied for the next hour with various laboratory jobs to be done for members of the search party. Reports came in every few minutes over the radio, but they were all negative. The ground was hard dry. If Ricky had stuck to the broken trails, he would leave no sign. Even off them, he was small enough to walk under the trees where a grown man would have had to push his way through. There were three chances: to see him from the air, to get a fix on his radio, and to come upon him among the trees. And however systematic the searchers were they knew perfectly well that they could only do that by chance.
Unless one could guess where he had gone. Jordan thought he had guessed.
Ellen prowled restlessly about. What would Ricky have done? Nothing had been taken from his room; had he set out without any equipment at all?
She went to the kitchen. Barney was muddling around among his store-cupboards, in a very bad mood. He had wanted to go with the search parties and had been turned down. ‘Barney,’ said Ellen quickly, ‘did Ricky take any food?’ ‘That’s what I’m trying to check, Miss. There’s some biscuits gone, I think. He could have taken them, or it could have been anyone this afternoon. And I think one of the big canteens has gone, but I suppose a search party took it.’
‘They didn’t,’ said Ellen sharply. ‘There are always plenty of streams, apart from the pools in the leaves. They only took small water bottles.’
‘One of the big canteens has gone,’ repeated Barney obstinately. ‘And one of the water bottles isn’t, if you take my meaning - Ricky did not take one of those, I mean, I’ve accounted for them. The canteen I can’t account for. But Ricky wouldn’t lumber himself up with that,’ he added morosely. ‘He couldn’t carry it if it was more than half full, and he knows about the streams as well as anybody. No, I reckon someone pinched it for a collecting tin or something. That’s how it goes in this place, and now we can see what comes of it. You can’t keep a proper check on anything—’ But Dr Scott had gone.
She waited, fuming, until the party which had gone west came back.
‘Yes, we looked over the Rift all right,’ said the leader morosely. ‘Hell, Ellen, the whole place is a heat-trap. With the haze and flickers visibility is about twenty yards. Even from the air you wouldn’t see anything, unless maybe when the shadows get longer and before they get too long. Jordan wouldn’t see anything if he did fly over it now. Besides, why should the kid have gone into that oven?’
Ellen turned away. Why should Ricky have gone that way? But why should he have taken a big canteen, unless he was going to cross a waterless area? If he had taken it, of course. But there were plenty of containers in the stores for scientific work.
Ricky had been interested in the Rift, certainly. He had been asking questions about it yesterday - one of the few times lately he had shown interest in anything at all.
But visibility in the Rift was bad now. When the shadows were longer—
Jordan called over the radio. He had been flying up and down the river and the adjacent forest for the last hour and a half. Ricky had been gone about four hours.
There were three hours of daylight left.
Two hours later the situation was unchanged. To the parties in the forest night would make little difference; they were using l
ights already. Jordan proposed to stay in the air - one or other of the- moons would be in the sky most of the night. There was about one hour of daylight left.
Ellen Scott listened to his report, and those of the search parties. Then she went briskly to the place where the one remaining heliflier was parked. She found another member of the expedition contemplating it gloomily.
‘Come away from there, Phil,’ she said severely.
‘Oh, hell, Ellen, there’s a seventy-five per cent chance the thing’s all right. Woodman said he’d fixed up a rough plane, didn’t he?’ The man turned away nevertheless. ‘What in Space did Jordan want to bring that kid here for?’
Ten minutes later he shot out of his cabin, where he had been dispiritedly collecting together the makings of a drink, in time to see the heliflier rise gently into the air and disappear towards the west.
Spectrum 5 - [Anthology] Page 28
