‘But we haven’t got a world,’ Coffin pointed out. ‘We have a few uplands, most of them deserts. We’ll fill them with people in another several generations. Then what? We have to provide against that day. Build a culture that won’t fall into the same trap as Earth.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard that line of reasoning before. Myself, I don’t see how you can force the evolution of a culture along present lines without losing the freedom we came here to preserve.’
‘Maybe so. If you ask me, you overrate freedom dangerously – but then, I never was a Constitutionalist. I can tell you for certain that freedom requires elbow room. How can a man even be an individual, if there’s no place he can go to be alone with his God? and High America will run out of elbow room in a century or two.’
‘Someday there’ll be people who can live at sea level. Nature will select for such a breed.’
‘A thousand years hence? That’s not much use. Your libertarianism, my individualism (they are not identical), they will be long extinct.’ Coffin’s own eyes followed Svoboda’s, into the wet nothingness ahead. ‘I wonder what men will find, though. Down there.’
‘It’s anybody’s guess.’
‘Er – I thought I heard you remark, a while ago, this cloud stratum has life forms of its own.’ Coffin seemed eager to talk impersonally.
Svoboda was glad to oblige. ‘Haven’t you heard of the nebulo-plankton? Well, I don’t suppose you would have, since it rarely comes this high. Not much is known about it anyway, except that it consists of tiny organisms, plant, animal, and intermediate, that float within the permanent cloud band. My personal theory about them is that wind scours fine particles off surface rocks and the dense air carries them up to this level, where the water drops dissolve out some of their minerals. I don’t suppose it could happen on Earth, but here where you have a thick permanent stratum and an atmosphere that can uphold larger drops of water, you do get an appreciable concentration of mineral ions in the clouds. And of course there’s the CO2 and, though you’d hardly think so, abundant sunlight. So my guess is that microscopic life forms developed to use this thin mineral soup; and slightly larger species developed to feed off them; et cetera. It’s a very tenuous blanket of life, as you’d expect. I’ll be surprised if it averages ten pinhead-sized bits of living mineral thistledown per cubic meter. But there is life. There’s even a giant form, bigger than a man in volume if not weight, which grazes on it.’
‘Do you mean the air porpoises? I’ve heard vaguely of them.’
They aren’t seen often. I’ve glimpsed them a few times over the years. In fact, there was one hanging around near the mine only yesterday. But it stands to reason, if they live off the nebulo-plankton they must be a rare species. I’ve watched them through binoculars. They’re shaped like fat cigars and seem to propel themselves by a sort of jet. My guess, again, is that they keep aloft by filling a big external bladder with biologically generated hydrogen; and that they suck in air, retain the plankton, and blow the air out behind for propulsion. Slow, stupid, and harmless. But damned interesting. I’d love to dissect one.’
Coffin nodded. ‘However low the average density of plankton,’ he pointed out, ‘turbulence is bound to produce local concentrations. Also, where an updraft habitually moves along a bare mountainside like this, the clouds will be more mineralized and can support more organisms. That may be what attracts the porpoises.’ He hesitated. ‘Is there any harm in breathing the plankton, do you think?’
‘I wouldn’t make a habit of it,’ Svoboda said. ‘Silicosis might become a distinct hazard. But merely passing through now and then should be quite safe. The previous explorers weren’t bothered. Oh, conceivably some of the species contain some chemical which’ll cause the men to develop lung cancer in another decade. Who knows? But I doubt that.’
Coffin shrugged. ‘In a decade the hospital should have a full battery of cancer cures.’ He drained his cup. ‘Shall we go?’
Svoboda made him wait, fuming, for half an hour of rest. Then they donned their spikes, repacked their stuff, and roped themselves together. Svoboda took the lead, groping over declivities unknown to them both, which plunged ever more sharply between the invisible cliffs. The fog pressed close; the rivulets joined to make a stream beside which the men must pick their way. That water ran gray-green with mineral dust, white-streaked and noisy with haste, and cold.
Time was soon lost for Svoboda. Nothing remained but the weariness in shoulders and knees, the clamminess of garments, the buffet of winds, slipperiness underfoot and dankness in his nostrils. But he kept a memory of the report made by the exploratory climbers. They had had no means of drawing an accurate map, but they had noted what landmarks they could. Where the stream went over a high precipice, one must veer aside and follow a ledge … and didn’t he now hear those cataracts, bawling and booming in the clouds?
Yes. He signalled a stop when he came to the place. Ahead of him the drenched, rock-littered ground came to an end, nothing but mist to be seen, as if he stood on the rim of Ginnungagap. On his left the river dashed itself oyer that brink and was lost to view; only the noise that drifted back up, rumbling and echoing through the wind, gave proof that it had not been sucked away by the fog. On his right, vague and huge, a promontory thrust beyond the cliff like a guard tower adjoining the outer wall of some titan’s castle. That rock was pocked and scarred with weathering. A fault, slanting downward out of sight, made a sort of trail. Under that narrow ledge, the promontory dropped sheer into invisibility. But the explorers had made an echo estimate of its height. A hundred and fifty meters, was that it?
Svoboda indicated the outthrust. There’s the only way to proceed further,’ he said. ‘Nothing yet on your radio locator, I suppose? Then the kid must have taken yonder trail. He can’t be behind us in the Cleft, off to one side, because we’ve passed within a ten-kilometer radious of all that territory. Unless his bracelet isn’t working.’
‘You needn’t waste time repeating the obvious,’ Coffin grunted.
After a glance at the hollowed face beside him, Svoboda decided not to resent that. He said gently: ‘So far the trek hasn’t been too difficult for an active boy unencumbered by a pack. I can well imagine him coming this far, attempting to run away to fairyland. Because he could always find his way back if he wanted to. But when he arrived here —’
‘He might wilfully continue.’
‘I doubt it. Look, he’d have come far enough so the exercise would have eased his mood. In fact, he’d be cold and hungry. Now that’s a slow, difficult, obviously dangerous trail there. And most especially – night must have been coming on by then. Danny wasn’t old enough, I guess, to foresee being caught here by sundown; but he was certainly able to see that once he started along the ledge, he’d not get back soon or easily.’
‘So why did he continue? Well, I must admit I’m puzzled, when you put it in such terms. He … he isn’t a bad boy, you know. He cares for Teresa, at least, if not for— No, I don’t understand either.’
Svoboda gathered courage to declare what Coffin was unable to: ‘If he ventured a short ways out on the ledge, slipped and fell— It’s a long way down. His bracelet could have been smashed on a rock when he landed.’
Coffin didn’t reply.
‘In which case we’ll never find him,’ said Svoboda.
‘He could have negotiated the trail,’ said Coffin, as if choked.
‘In the dark? And now be more than ten straight-line kilometers beyond this point? I’ll give you even odds that that means thirty kilometers on the ground. No, I’m sorry, but let’s use our brains. Danny’s at the bottom of this cliff.’
Svoboda paused. ‘He must have died instantly,’ he added in a low voice.
‘We don’t know for certain,’ Coffin said. ‘We have supplies to continue till night and start back at sunrise. We can’t do less.’
Why the hell should I risk my neck? Svoboda thought. To soothe your own bad conscience for the way you treated him? There’s
no other reason to carry on this farce.
Except Theron and his filthy blackmail. Svoboda gasped with anger. ‘Okay,’ he said. His instructions in technique were curt and scornful.
They started off across the rock face. The falls were soon hidden, their sound muffled in the curdling grayness; but condensed moisture streamed over the promontory and dripped off the ledge. Sometimes the trail was broad enough for walking, sometimes it narrowed so that a man must press his face to the stone and shuffle sideways. There’d be no chance to eat until they reached the slope below, and Svoboda remembered from the report of the explorers that that would take hours. He should have called lunchtime before they started on this path. But in his rage he had forgotten. Now his stomach growled for him. He began to feel a little weak, and must battle against the fear of losing hold in a moment of dizziness or a sudden flow of wind.
Losing hold and falling. Ten or fifteen seconds to know he was a dead man, and then spattered into oblivion.
Like Danny, who had tested horror as the air shrieked past —
Svoboda whirled.
The scream came again. The birds which swooped upon him, crying from throats like brass, were the color and hook-beaked shape of spearfowl. But their wings had twice the span. They rushed at the men so swiftly that there was no time to draw weapon.
Talons smote Svoboda on the breast. A beak tore at his pack. He reeled from the blow and went over the edge.
Coffin stamped hard. His spikes drove into cracks in the stone. Their blades expanded from the slots and held him fast. Svoboda’s weight slammed against him. He threw himself backward, trying to stay erect. The second bird struck. Coffin had one arm to protect his eyes. Somehow, blind in a moment that whirled, he drew his pistol and fired point blank.
The bird yelled. The softened slug had blown a hole entirely through the great body. One wing banged Coffin’s head, before the creature fell. Its mate had released Svoboda and was circling about to make a fresh attack on him. Svoboda got his own gun free. He was too dizzy to aim straight, but he thumbed it to automatic fire and hosed the air with lead.
Two huge forms trailed blood down through the clouds.
Minutes afterward, Svoboda found strength to grab the rope, put his feet against the cliff, and climb back onto the ledge. The process was rough on Coffin, his anchor post, who was still only half conscious. Svoboda undamped the other man’s spike soles and stretched him out with his head pillowed on his pack. Coffin had a gash in his left cheek and a hand’s-breadth bruise on his right temple. Svoboda was in better shape. His heavy jacket had warded off the bird’s talons and his pack had absorbed the blow of its beak – though both were ripped. He felt numb with reaction.
When Coffin was awake, Svoboda gave him a stimpill and took half a tablet himself. Then they could talk. ‘What in blazes was that?’ Coffin asked feebly.
‘A kind of spearfowl hitherto unknown,’ Svoboda decided. He kept himself busy prying Coffin’s spike soles loose from the ground and pushing the emergency blades back into their slots against the phase-changing springplast. He didn’t want to dwell on what had nearly happened. ‘It’s been observed that aerial life forms below the clouds tend to be much bigger than the corresponding upland species. More barometric pressure to support them, you see.’
‘But I thought – the clouds were a boundary —’
‘Yes, they are, as a rule. But evidently the giant spear-fowl will come this high once in a while. I’d guess they were after the air porpoises I noticed. That’d be a fat prey. I imagine we also looked tempting. Down at their own proper altitude, where their wings can really function efficiently, they must be used to hunting animals as large as us. Here, we could not have been lifted. But if we’d been knocked off and had fallen to the bottom, that’d serve the same purpose.’
Coffin covered his face. ‘Oh, God,’ he mumbled, ‘it was like a monster out of Revelation….’
‘Don’t worry about ‘em. They’re both disposed of, and I hardly expect there’ll be any more. That particular species can’t come this high very often, or in very large numbers, or they’d have been noticed by someone.’ Svoboda refastened the soles to Coffin’s boots. ‘Think you can walk now? You didn’t turn an ankle or anything?’
The older man climbed to his feet and tested his limbs gingerly. ‘I’m okay. Battered, but nothing serious.’
‘We’d better get started, then.’ Svoboda moved to go around him.
‘Hey!’ Coffin barked. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Back. Where else? You surely don’t plan to go on when —’
Coffin clamped fingers around Svoboda’s wrist so hard that they left marks. ‘No,’ he said. It sounded like a stone falling.
‘But for Anker’s sake, man! Those birds – they must have been here yesterday, too – we know what happened to Danny.’
‘We do not. If they had killed him, his bracelet would be intact.’
‘Not if he got scared when he saw them, ran down the trail and fell. If the transmitter smashed on a rock—’
‘If, if, if! We go on, I say!’
Svoboda stared into the fanatical eyes. Coffin stood unbending. Svoboda turned. ‘Okay,’ he said with hatred.
6
At the bottom of the promontory they were below the clouds, and the Cleft had merged with the general mountainscape. This continued its fall toward the coastal plains, but the trend of peaks and valleys, ridges and ravines, was not visible to a man afoot. For timberline merged with the clouds, in the form of gnarly little trees, and soon the forest enclosed him. He could gauge his rate of descent by an aneroid – or by the quickness with which the trees became tall, the temperature rose, and his head felt stuffy. From patches of meadow he could see alps, remote above the leaves, their highest points vanishing into the sky. He could note how swiftly the livers ran and how deep their gorges were carved. But otherwise he knew only the forest.
If the boy had made it thus far, he would surely have lost his way in a few minutes. The searchers hung yet another beacon bracelet in a tree, checked compass and pedometer, and started off in a spiral. Not that they could maintain the pattern to more than the vaguest approximation, in that broken and overgrown country.
Eventually they must halt, for supper and sleep. Since, luckily, the weather didn’t threaten rain, this involved little more than heating some food and inflating the sleeping bags. After placing a sentinel cell on a log to sweep the area with its beams, they lay down. Svoboda tumbled into unconsciousness.
A buzz awoke him. For a moment, disoriented, he thought it was the sentinel, then realized it was only his wrist-watch alarm. He didn’t want to get up. However tired, he had slept badly. Muscles and head ached, his brain was clogged with half-remembered evil dreams. He unglued his eyes. Thirst made his mouth abominable.
‘Here.’ Coffin handed him a canteen. The older man was already dressed. His clothes were rumpled, his chin unshaven, the flesh seemed melted from his bones. But he moved with feverish energy and excitement tinged his voice. ‘Hurry up and get functional. I’ve something to show you.’
Svoboda drank deeply, splashed water on his face, and crawled from the bag. His lungs toiled. According to the barometer, they were now at five Terrestrial atmospheres. Since carbon dioxide was denser than oxygen or nitrogen, it would have an even larger density gradient. He tried to control the hyperventilation it induced, but couldn’t do much for the headache and mental fuzziness.
Clad, he went over to Coffin, who sat on the ground by a portable rack in which were several test tubes and a miniature electronic box with four dials. An ovoid yellow fruit, a cluster of red berries, a soft tuber, and a few varieties of nut were spread on the ground before him, together with some ampoules. Svoboda couldn’t interpret his expression. Hope, eagerness, gratitude, awe?
‘What’ve you got?’ Svoboda asked.
‘A food testing kit. Haven’t you seen one before?’
‘Not like that. I’ve seen Leigh drive around in his lab tr
uck, checking plant and meat samples. Though not for a long time, come to think of it.’
Coffin nodded absently. His gaze was still on the apparatus. He spoke, lecturing on the obvious as well as the new, in such a quick harsh rattle that Svoboda realized he wasn’t paying attention to his own words:
‘No, you wouldn’t have. Agrotechnic data on most species in the Emperor Valley were gotten by the first expedition. Leigh’s work has extended further, into the deserts, the higher mountains, and the other continents, as well as studying what few lowland species have been brought back. With the cooperation of other specialists, he’s worked out certain basic patterns. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of his results, even if they aren’t in your line of work. I know everybody’s wrapped up in his own concerns, too busy developing his own specialty under alien conditions. But if we can’t yet publish a scientific journal,don’t you think we should hold periodic meetings?
‘Well, in any event.. Leigh’s conclusions are very recent. You’d hear of them in time, because they’re of interest to everyone. He has shown what could have been foreseen, that there is not an infinite range of dangerous compounds on Rustum. The same chemical series recur, just as the same starches and sugars and acids are found in Terrestrial plants. Theoretical studies have lately enabled him to predict beyond the data. For instance, he’s found it’s not possible that any native leaf can contain nicotine. It’d react with an enzyme known to be essential to Rustumite photosynthesis.
‘On the foundation of such studies, Leigh’s developed this portable testing kit. With high probability, any meat or vegetable sample which passes the battery here – simple color, precipitation, electronic and optical tests – anything which passes can be eaten by man. It’d probably lack certain vitamins and so on that we need, but it’d keep you alive for quite a while. He’s given such kits to a number of farmers who’re willing to experiment with domesticating native plants. Soon he will try to organize an expedition into the lowlands, to carry on an extensive program of tests. You and I happen to have anticipated him a bit in that respect.’
Orbit Unlimited Page 14
