by Dale Olausen
But suddenly she had heard Fiana say something which she had had no trouble understanding.
"Sarah and I stopped in Max's gem shop on the way here," she had told Coryn. "Did you know that he's got an amarto?"
"I'd heard. This place is terrible for gossip," Coryn had replied casually although his eyes had betrayed curiosity.
"He showed it to us," Fiana had added. "And what do you think? He thought it might look good on Sarah and wouldn't you know - he tried it against her skin and the effect was - quite remarkable."
Coryn's blue eyes had turned to take Sarah's measure again, and she had squirmed uncomfortably under their gaze. She had had the abrupt, uneasy suspicion that there was more to this man than a handsome exterior.
"Hey, look you two," she had protested. "Let's give this amarto business a rest. I'm too poor to even dream of jewels like that."
Coryn's grin had returned and Fiana, too, had smiled.
"We'll do exactly that. How 'bout we all have a drink? It's on me." Laughing, Coryn had turned to punch numbers on the menu. "And, Sarah, don't forget the name Matty Harmiss when you get to XER."
*****
Wandering down memory lane had had the desired effect and Sarah curled up comfortably on her bed, ready to sleep. "Imagine," she murmured to herself before falling asleep, "I'm going after Witches’ Stones!"
When, some hours later, the Beth 117 made a planet fall she was fast asleep. Unknown to her, a great orange sun sank behind a row of mountaintops, leaving the spaceship to fade into the darkness of an alien night.
Chapter Six
The next morning every Explorer was up well before planet dawn. Over a quick breakfast Sarah chatted with Jodi and found that the sharp-tongued young woman had overnight metamorphosed into a businesslike planeting crew leader. She gave Sarah a brief rundown on the planet that they were on.
"It's a Class A2 planet," she explained. "That means that we humans find it quite comfortable. All Class A planets are suitable for Terran occupation; the number tells you how much they differ from the ideal. Earth would be A0, you see.
"The gravity here is nice, a fraction less than the Standard, and the air is rich in oxygen. Temperate climate, and it doesn't vary as much from the equator to the poles as do the climactic conditions on Earth. There's not much seasonal variation either. The sun is huge. It's a different type of star from the Earth's sun - you'll notice the light as soon as you step outside."
"Wow!" exclaimed Sarah. "Sounds fascinating!"
Jodi grinned at her enthusiasm. "I guess you'll be giving the Beth a check-over this morning?" she queried.
Sarah nodded. "Yes, I have to make sure she's in perfect repair," she answered. "She's the reason why I'm here."
"Well, once she doesn't need you anymore how would you like to join my unit? I realize that you've exactly zilch practical experience in this line of work but I've no doubt that we can figure out plenty of ways to make you useful. Did Dav and Ginette tell you we're looking for a needle in a haystack?"
She spoke the last words after taking a quick glance around the room. Sarah guessed that this was to ensure that Roger was not within earshot.
"Sounded like jewellery to me," she murmured.
"Yeah." Jodi sighed. "Jewels inside a mountain. The mountain's supposed to be honeycombed by tunnels and right now were searching for an entrance into those tunnels. It's a big job we have on our hands and we've just begun."
"Well, I'm looking forward to joining you on the job," Sarah said, scooping up the last mouthful of her meal onto her spoon. "I crave fresh air after living on the recycled stuff for so long!"
"If Dav tries to draft you into something else tell him that I've already claimed you." Jodi gathered up her dishes and leaned over to shove them into the nearest disposal unit. "I've got to run. I've a zillion things to do before the sun comes up. I want to be off and gone, as soon as there's light outside."
Sarah followed her out of the dining area at a more leisurely pace. On her way to raid Kells's equipment cabinets she planned the day's work in her mind, deciding on the order in which she would perform the necessary checks, and estimating how long it all would take her. The route from the tool cupboards to the Control Room where she had to begin her tasks, led through the storage area from which the planeting crews were preparing to leave the ship. The noise, the excitement and the chaos had her wishing that her day's duties lay with the planeting crews; nevertheless she found the quiet Control Room a pleasant environment in which to start her new life.
"This sure beats XER," she muttered to herself. A broad grin spread across her girlish face as she tossed around Kells' precious tools in a deceptively random fashion.
However, she had barely had time to settle down to her work before there was an interruption. She heard a knocking at the door and then Jasson, the leader of the second planeting unit, rushed in, looking harassed.
"Do you think that you could give me a hand, Sarah?" he asked. "There's something wrong with one of the flyers - I can't get it going. It's refusing to respond to all of the tricks that usually humour it."
"No problem."
Sarah set aside the task at hand, pocketed her trouble-shooter and followed Jasson out into the hallway, and back to the storage area. Jasson led her to a back corner of the room where his two crewmates were busy loading up the flyer which wouldn't purr. Sarah climbed into the driver's seat and checked everything that she could; then she climbed out again and opened up the engine hatch, putting the trouble-shooter to work on the engine. Jasson waited beside her, impatiently. The huge doors that allowed the flyers to exit from the Beth were wide open and through it, both the mechanic and the planeting crew leader could see that dawn was breaking outside. Jasson was impatient to get at his work.
"Okay, I've found the problem." Sarah squinted at the trouble-shooter and poked at the engine, pulling out a small, blackened part.
"Just hang on a moment while I raid Kells' closet again. I think that I know exactly where he keeps these things. It won't take a minute."
She had the flyer running smoothly within minutes.
"So what was the matter with her?" Jasson asked when she relinquished the controls to him.
"A variation on the usual nonsense," Sarah replied, shrugging. "A part that doesn't usually work itself loose did this time, and ended up self-destructing from the current once you tried to get the flyer going. Nothing I haven't seen before."
"Thanks." Jasson grinned at her. "I hear that Jodi has already claimed you for his crew," he added. "A pity."
Sarah let out a cheerful chuckle. It was nice, after all the time on XER, to be appreciated.
"If you need a mechanical hand any time just ask. I'm always ready to help."
Outside the Beth the sky was brightening. There was a peculiar tinge to the increasing light, Sarah thought, a brownish cast unfamiliar to her. She turned to the planeting crew leader her eyes aglow.
"Do you think that anybody will mind if I step outside and take a peek at the morning sun of this world?" she asked him.
He stared at her, surprised, then smiled an understanding smile. "I doubt it," he said, then added: "For a moment I'd forgotten that this is your first alien planet. Go on outside and drink it all in. You'll be quite safe if you stay near the ship. We're on a rocky ledge and the air's okay. Nothing there to poison you and no beasts to attack you, at least right beside the ship."
Sarah needed no further encouragement. She trotted across the big room to the large opening where a ramp allowed her to climb on to the rocks below.
A cool breeze caressed her face and lifted her hair the moment she stepped outside the spaceship. She paused for a few seconds to draw in lungfuls of the sweet air, flaring her nostrils to catch the alien scents that the wind brought her way. Then she hurried down the ramp, giving a little involuntary cry of joy as her feet landed on solid ground.
This was real rock that she was standing on!
About her, as if reaffirming her impression o
f being on "terra firma", lay scattered boulders of varying sizes. Apparently the Beth shared the ledge with these rocks and Sarah walked cautiously among them, picking her footing carefully amid the smaller, loose stones, wending her way to where the ledge altered into a slope which rolled down towards a still-dark valley. The slope was covered with vegetation; perhaps later, if she had some spare time, she could risk a walk down to investigate the flora of this, her first, alien planet.
At the moment, however, she was more curious about the sun which ought to be rising - from which direction? She looked around the jagged horizon, located the brightest portion of the sky and dubbed it immediately, in her mind, "the east".
"I don't believe it!" she blurted out when a sliver of a big orange ball crept from behind the mountain peaks. "That doesn't look like the sun!"
"But a sun it is," called a cheerful voice from behind her. She turned to see Dav Castilo walking towards her.
"I understand that stars of this type seem to give off less light but more warmth than the Old Sol does," he told her once he was standing beside her. "You will note that even at midday this world is not quite as bright as the Standard which we create wherever we go. But one gets used to it very quickly."
"It really is huge," Sarah murmured as she watched the copper disk inch its way up. "And, you're right, it's not as bright as the sun I'm used to."
She shifted her gaze to the strangely muted colours of the slope beneath them. The shadows were fast disappearing. The greens that replaced them had an odd brownish cast to them; nowhere on Earth could she recall having seen quite these shades of green that she was looking at now. Yes, this was a different world. She raised her eyes again towards the horizon - and let out a startled exclamation.
"What kind of a mountain range are we in, anyway?" she demanded of Dav who was still standing beside her. "It looks to me like what I took for a valley is really a broad plain, surrounded on all sides by mountains!"
Castilo nodded. "That's more or less what it is," he replied. "When we came here the first time, we had no trouble whatsoever, finding the place. It was quite easy to identify from the information that the Witch Alta had given us. It's a very unique bit of geography that we have here - a circular mountain range. We're standing on a side of the mountain with the highest peak of the ring; the amartos should be somewhere within it."
Sarah turned to scrutinize his face. "Jodi told me that we are looking for an entrance into tunnels that crisscross the inside of the mountain," she said. "Does that mean that there are intelligent beings here - somebody must have made the tunnels?"
"It would seem that perhaps there was something or somebody intelligent here at one time," the Explorer ship captain replied thoughtfully. "But the Kordean Witches came across nothing of the sort during their mind search of the planet, we were told. Apparently there are creatures with consciousness of a sort, inside the tunnels, but Witch Alta said that they were more like smart beasts than like intelligent beings."
"Wow!" Sarah grinned, then returned her attention to the alien sun. It was going to be a while before it would clear the horizon. "I can hardly wait to get out on field duty and see a little of this world!"
"Good. Enthusiasm we can use. Jodi told me that she wants you on her crew. The way we do it is that Ginette, myself, Jaff and you will rotate base duty with field duties. Two of us stay on the ship while two join the planeting crews. You'll get to work with Jodi's unit tomorrow - provided, of course, that the Beth doesn't need her mechanic."
"In that case I better get back to work at once," laughed Sarah. "I don't think that there's much on the Beth that needs fixing but whatever there is to be done, I do want to finish today."
*****
The maintenance check of the Beth proceeded uneventfully for the first part of the morning. Sarah went about her work cheerfully, singing snatches of old songs that she had learned as a child. But, just before she was ready to break for coffee, while she was crawling around on her hands and knees to do a check of the water recycler system, a creepy sensation that someone was watching her, overtook her. The tune that she had been humming died on her lips as she gave a loose wire the necessary twist. She then carefully eased herself out of her ridiculous position. Yes indeed; she discovered that she did have an audience - Roger Delmen stood at the door of the tiny closet which housed the water recycler, his eyes following her every curve. She leaned her back against the machine to try to get as far away from him as possible. How long had the man been there, admiring her posterior?
Sarah forced herself to speak politely. "Yes?" she queried, unable to keep all testiness from her voice. "Did you want something? Is there something I can do for you?"
She found the grin that spread across his face infuriating. She wished that she had thought of something more clever to say than what she had! If only he would go away!
"We-e-ell no," he finally responded, after an irritatingly lengthy pause. "There's nothing you can do for me right now." Yet he made no move to leave.
"Well then, Mr. Delmen," blurted Sarah, unable to keep her resolve to remain calm. "Be kind enough to leave me to my work. I don't care for an audience!"
The pale blue eyes flashed with some strong emotion - anger? Sarah struggled with a sudden stab of fear, then willed it into the background.
"In that case - excuse me!" He turned, and strode off!
Trembling, Sarah returned to her work, abruptly deciding to forgo her coffee-break. She sang no more that morning. Her tension did not dissolve until lunch time when Captain Castilo told her that Roger had taken his little flyer planetside on a fact-finding mission of his own.
When she was confident that the Beth was once again in top-notch shape and capable of handling another five omega-jumps if necessary, Sarah stowed Kells' tools back into their storage cupboard, and peeked outside to see how the planet day was progressing. The huge sun still hung fairly high in the sky and, delighted, the girl rushed off to find Captain Castilo so as to obtain his permission to do some minor exploration.
Castilo had no objections to her plan.
"Certainly you may go out and take a look at this world," he told her. "So far it has proved itself uncommonly harmless. The only problem that we have had was Kells' accident and that was one of those things that could have happened anywhere. As long as you take the proper precautions, you should be quite safe, assuming, of course, that you don't wander off too far from the ship. You'll have to dress in a protecto-suit and carry an emergency kit and a stunner, of course. The kit contains a communicator among other things - and I'll set a tracer on you so there won't be any chance of you getting lost.
“You'll have at least two standard hours before the sun goes down. When you're ready to step out stop by the Control Room again and I'll set the tracer."
Sarah needed no urging. She sprinted to the now-silent storage area which seemed unnaturally empty with three of the flyers gone. After all the time that she had spent working on the Beth she knew where everything aboard the ship was kept. Locating and donning a protecto-suit of the type that she had seen the planeting crew members wear took only minutes. The stunner in its pouch snapped onto the waistband of the suit and the emergency kit - which she opened for a quick inventory of its contents - slipped comfortably on one shoulder.
"Will this do?" she asked Castilo, displaying the outfit, after she had returned to the Control Room for the tracer.
The Captain looked her over briefly and nodded. "Make a point of keeping the gloves on at all times," he advised her, "and if I were you I'd wear the hood, too. You might run into poisonous vegetation and I wouldn't count on Jaff having the proper antitoxins on hand."
Sarah nodded and adjusted the suit accordingly. Castilo pasted a small, silvery disc on her shoulder and, smiling at her enthusiasm, sent her off. Sarah couldn't wait to get outside.
The first few meters of the slope leading down from the stone ledge on which the Beth sat were covered with loose rocks and gravel. Sarah, through naive care
lessness, almost had an accident before she had even begun her explorations.
"Good thing the Beth's in shape," she muttered as she struggled to right herself after taking an unpleasant tumble. "Wouldn't it be lovely if I cracked my skull the first day on this planet, just like Kells did?"
But she was a quick study and the next steps that she took were cautious. She made it down to where firm ground replaced the loose gravel, without further incident. "Whew! I guess the Beth's present ship mechanic is safe for the moment!"
Then she forgot all danger as she stooped to examine the turf that now stretched beneath her feet. It was not grass - at least not grass as she knew it! Her gloved fingers probed at the dense growth of delicate filaments which, instead of reaching upwards towards light like grass did, grew randomly in all directions. What a strange mat they created! She grasped a handful and gave it an experimental tug, only to discover that the filaments put up an unexpected resistance.
They were much stronger than they looked, she decided after further yanking produced no results.
But what was this? Sarah sprawled down on the slope, to bring her face closer to the turf. Her sharp eyes had caught sight of tiny, orange flashes among the peculiar green of the "grass". Her fingers groped among the filaments and found something.
"Wow!"
Minute, brilliant orange flowers blossomed in the turf! Sarah drew in a lungful of the clear air and gave her head a shake. This world certainly was different from the Earth that she was used to, but at least for now the differences were charming. The little flowers were beautiful! She especially liked the way their stalks all grew directly skyward holding the blossoms aloft; unlike the filaments, they were reaching for the sun's light.
Finally Sarah crawled back onto her feet, reluctantly watching the orange pinpricks fade back into the dull green of the sod. It was clear that a casual trespasser might never even guess the existence of the little flowers; while standing, a person couldn't see them.
