by Jerry Oltion
He stopped to build another cairn, and this time when he dug out a half-buried rock, Judy bent down and examined the hole it left behind. No worms. No insects. The dirt didn't even smell of fungus. She didn't expect the same actinomyces that gave Earth dirt its characteristic smell, but there had to be something similar to break down organic matter here, didn't there?
Did there?
"Maybe there isn't an ecosystem," she said. "Maybe the trees get their nutrients straight from the air and the ground, and since there's nothing to eat them, they don't have to grow or reproduce nearly as fast as they do on Earth."
"Looks like they reproduce just fine," Allen said, waving his arms to encompass the couple of dozen trees surrounding them.
"But we don't know how often it happens. These trees could be thousands of years old." He cocked his head, looking from her to one of the trees and back. "That's a good theory. Appropriately wacky. We need a core drill so we can count rings and see just how wacky." Judy led off farther up the hill. "If they don't grow much from year to year, the rings would be microscopic, if there are any at all."
"Then that would be pretty good evidence for your theory," he said.
"And if I'm right, proving that theory could mean injuring something older than the dinosaurs." He laughed softly.
"What's funny about that?"
"I don't think I've ever met a pistol-packin' tree-hugger before." She looked down at the revolver tucked in her waistband. She had never exactly considered herself a tree-hugger, but there was no denying the pistol-packin' part. It was beginning to look like a useless weight, but she wasn't ready to put it in the stuff sack just yet. There might not be any animals on this planet, or there might be a pack of wolves just over the rise.
Or there might be a cliff. Judy had noticed that the trees seemed to thin out up ahead, but she couldn't see why until she was nearly on top of it. There was an outcrop of rock beyond the last of the trees, then a thousand feet or so of empty space beyond that. It wasn't a sheer drop, but it wasn't a slope she would try descending without a rope, either.
They had climbed the flank of the first mountain in the range. They weren't to the top yet, but they were quite a ways up. There was another mountain directly across the chasm from them, its peak probably no farther away than the valley floor below. A rushing noise came from the valley, almost like the sound of the wind in the trees, but not quite the same. The forest was thicker down there; it took a moment to see anything other than its green canopy, but eventually Judy spotted a few glistening flashes of sliver and white.
28
"Fat lot of good it does us down there." Allen picked up a rock and overhanded it out into space. It fell far short of the river, but it bounced and rattled its way down the slope, knocking loose more rocks on the way until a couple dozen of them careened through the trees and splashed into the water.
"Maybe we can get to it where it flows out of the canyon." Judy pointed into the foothills, where the river widened and slowed down and the banks were more manageable.
"Not today, we can't," he said. "I've walked just about as far as I want to go in one afternoon." She sat on one of the flat rock slabs that made up the outcrop. "Me too. But I'm thirsty as a fish, and all we've got to drink is beer."
"Beer'll do fine." He opened the stuff sack and took out a can of Bud, popped the tab, and handed it to her for the first swig.
She wasn't used to having men defer to her, not even after a week in Wyoming. After a lifetime spent competing with men in one of the most macho fields in existence, she didn't really know whether she should let Allen get used to pampering her, but it was easier to just take a sip of beer and hand the can back than to make an issue out of it.
She'd always thought of Bud and all the other light pilsners like it as wimpy beer, but she had to admit it tasted pretty good on a hot day. Trouble was, she might as well have pumped the alcohol directly into her bloodstream, because she could feel it hit almost immediately. The tingly buzz would have been fun in other circumstances, but at the moment she didn't want to mess up her reasoning ability or lower her reaction time. She just wanted to cool off and quench her thirst. Seeing all that water directly beneath her didn't help any, either.
She looked upstream. The canyon wound around behind the next mountain back in the range, but she could see where it led by the placement of the mountains beyond. She and Allen hadn't climbed high enough to see all the major peaks, but there were three or four with snow on top, obviously providing the meltwater that made up the river. It would be cold. Bathing would be a challenge, but Judy felt grubby enough she was willing to try at least a sponge bath.
It would have to wait until morning. They had at least a mile to walk back to the Getaway, and by the looks of the river's path once it left the mountains, they had at least another three miles from where they'd landed before they reached water. Judy was no more eager to do that than Allen. They could always take the Getaway back into space and try again, but from the height they would have to jump to, and without a steerable parachute, they would have no guarantee of coming any closer to a stream on a second attempt. They were just as likely to wind up farther away. At least this distance could be walked in a few hours, now that they knew which direction to go. If she ever needed an object lesson in the limits of technology, this was one to remember. They could cross sixty light-years in an instant, but without ground transport they were still half a day from water.
A cloud slid over the sun; one of the few clouds they had seen in the sky all day. Allen looked up, and after a few seconds he said, "It's so strange not to see contrails." She followed his gaze. The sky was a lighter shade of blue than on Earth, probably because of the extra thickness of the atmosphere, but the cotton-puff cloud looked exactly the same as a cumulus cloud would back home. Allen was right, though: it was odd to see no sign of air traffic. It was odd to see no sign of civilization on the ground, either, but there were no roads or cities or plowed fields. Not even a cell phone tower. Nothing, all the way out to the horizon.
It suddenly occurred to her that she could actually see the horizon. From her height it had to be at least a hundred kilometers away, and it was still distinct as a window frame. When was the last time she'd seen something like that?
"I wanted an untouched planet," she said. "I guess I got what I asked for."
"But?"
She looked over at him, still standing at the edge of the rocks, beer in hand. "But what?"
"I can hear it in your voice. You got what you asked for, but it's not what you wanted, is it?" She reached for the beer, maybe to give herself time to think as much as to quench her thirst. She savored two good swallows, then handed it back and said, "Exploring on foot is hard, sweaty work, and we're not finding anything particularly exotic. It's nice to take a hike in the woods, but all we've got to go back to tonight is a crowded septic tank. I'd love to sleep out under the stars, but that would be pretty dumb until we learn what kind of night life there is. So . . ." She shrugged.
"So you'd like a hotel room with a nice hot bath and a comfy bed?" The way he said it made the hackles stand up on her neck.
"No. I'd like a bigger spaceship and some ground gear so we can do this right." He nudged another loose rock off the edge with his toe and watched it bounce down the slope.
"Same thing," he said at last. "We've got what we've got. Wishing for more is a waste of time."
"Screwing around with inadequate equipment is the waste of time." He turned away from the canyon. "Look, I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a motor home and a humvee, okay? I did the best I could. We're here, aren't we? Shouldn't that count for something?" She had heard that lament from him before. She'd thought it sounded whiney then, and it didn't sound any better now. "Yes, damn it, that counts for something, but it doesn't count for everything. You're a genius, all right? You invented a hyperdrive engine. That's really neat, but now we're three or four miles from water and getting thirstier by the minute. No amount of genius is g
oing to make that okay."
Allen wiggled the beer can. "We've got three more of these, by my count. We'll be all right." Slowly, as if explaining it to a child, she said, "If we keep drinking beer, mister genius, we're going to get drunk. We haven't exactly been making the best decisions in the world as it is, but at least we've been sober when we made them. I don't want to start trusting my life to our reasoning ability when we're plastered. And tired."
"Lighten up," he said. "It'd take a lot more than a six-pack of beer to get us plastered." She stood, steadying herself on a rock, then faced him with her hands on her hips. "Lighten up?
Lighten up? Damn it, Allen, this isn't a camp-out; we're on our own out here! We're light-years from home. Nobody's going to come save our butts if we screw up. Nobody's even going to find our bodies. So I don't want to screw up."
He snorted. "Interesting choice of terms for someone who threw all caution to the winds along with her clothes a couple of hours ago."
"That . . . well, touche, but that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. What the hell were we thinking? We could have been eaten alive."
"I thought that's what—"
"Oh, be quiet." She felt herself blushing now. Losing her self-control was one thing, but talking about it later was even worse. "Come on, let's get back to the Getaway before we run out of daylight."
"Now that's a good idea." He held out the beer. "Want to kill it?" She was still thirsty, but her head had spun when she stood up. Maybe it was fatigue, but maybe it wasn't.
"Go ahead."
He drained it, sucking out the last drops, then held the can out in front of him, his fingers wrapped evenly around it.
"Don't crush—" Judy said, but it was too late. He gave one quick squeeze and the can collapsed with a whoosh. "Damn it, we could have used that to hold water."
"Oh." He looked at the mangled can, all his pride at learning how to crush it one-handed evaporating away. "Sorry. I'll, uh, see if I can knock it back out."
"Don't bother. We've got five more." Without waiting for him to answer, Judy set off downhill, back the way they had come.
It was a much quicker walk back to their landing site. They hardly spoke on the way down; just walked from cairn to cairn until they saw the familiar yellow plastic tank peeking through the trees. Judy didn't know if they were mad at each other or not; they were just quiet. So was the planet. Judy kept waiting for it to feel like an eerie, just-before-the-monster-pounces kind of silence, but it was just the silence of the wilderness. Except for the shape of the trees and their peculiar spacing, she could be in just about any backcountry nature preserve. Maybe that was part of the problem. They had seen plenty of bizarre things today, but they hadn't been able to explore any of them, and now that they could explore a little, they had nothing exciting to see.
She knew she was being unfair. They couldn't judge an entire planet by what they found in one spot, and they couldn't even judge that one spot after just a couple of hours. But first impressions were hard to shake.
Maybe tomorrow would bring something a little more otherworldly.
When they reached the Getaway, she climbed inside and started packing.
"What are you doing?" Allen asked when he saw her shoving the spacesuits into the corners.
"Making some room for tonight," she answered.
"Oh." He evidently decided that made sense, so he climbed in and helped her stow things. They emptied her sleeping bag and managed to tuck most of the food into nooks and crannies around the edges of the tank, but there was still not room enough to stretch out. The hyperdrive engines filled the center of their space.
"So do we move the engines, or sleep sitting up?" Allen asked.
"Sleep sitting up," Judy answered. "I want a working spaceship in case we have to make a quick getaway."
"So to speak."
She looked up and saw him smiling.
"Right." His expression was contagious, and the bright yellow glow from the evening sunlight hitting the tank was too cheery to let her sustain a bad mood for long anyway. She smiled back at him, then leaned against the side of the tank and said, "This reminds me of the way I used to play spaceship when I was a kid. I'd get a big cardboard box or throw a blanket over a couple of chairs and crawl inside, and I'd pretend I was landing on another planet. Everything was completely familiar inside, but I would convince myself that just beyond the walls were all sorts of alien mysteries waiting to be explored." She lifted the top of her sleeping bag up to her nose and inhaled the unmistakable smell of nylon and insulation. "This is so close to what it was like, it's hard for me to believe we're really here." Allen raised up so he could see her over the hyperdrive and said, "It seems kind of surreal to me, too. I never really considered this part; the first night on a new planet, trying to relax enough so I can get to sleep."
"It's going to be tough," she said. "It's been an amazing day." She rolled up onto her knees so she could lean over the hyperdrive and give him a quick kiss. "All the same, the body will do what it has to do. Speaking of which, I'm going to go outside and find a bush."
He frowned. "Huh? We've already found dozens of bushes just outside."
"That was a euphemism, idiot." She picked up the roll of toilet paper from where she'd hung it between the two hatches and held it out for him to see.
"Oh."
"Be right back." She climbed up through the hatch and dropped to the ground. There were plenty of bushes, not that it mattered; with Allen inside, there probably wasn't another pair of eyes to see her on the whole planet. Still, she walked a few dozen paces away before she unzipped her pants and squatted down to pee.
The sun was setting behind the mountain. The clouds overhead were still bright white, but that would probably change within the hour. Judy wondered if the sunset colors would be any different with a thicker atmosphere.
She saw a flicker of motion off to her right, and when she turned her head, she saw a butterfly landing on a branch a few feet away. It was a big one, with bright blue wings maybe three inches across and a fat, yellow body the size of her thumb. It had six or eight legs—Judy couldn't tell for sure—and a single bulbous eye in front. The eye glistened with gold highlights in the evening sun. Insects! Her planet had animals after all. She wanted to shout to Allen, but she was afraid of scaring it, so she just finished watering the fern at her feet and stayed put.
The butterfly flapped its wings a couple of times, then Hew to a closer branch. Judy watched its wings move. They were triangular, and attached point-first to its body. There were three to a side: two in front held one over the other like the wings of a biplane, and a single smaller one in back. Its eye still glowed, even in the shade of a leaf. Was it actually emitting light, like a firefly?
Then it turned sideways and she saw that the glow came from a little knob at the end of its forelegs, which it was holding up to its eye. Built-in landing lights, she thought, smiling. It was a little early to need them, but maybe the butterfly was practicing for tonight.
The light blinked out, and the butterfly stuck its forelegs into a pouch under its belly. When they emerged again, they were empty. Was the light a separate creature? Maybe the big one carried its young in a pouch, like a kangaroo. And the young glowed so they would be easier to find?
Judy admired the way the pouch was designed: it opened to the front, but it had a flap to make air flow smoothly over it in flight. It even had a little clasp to hold the flap shut. Plus little tendons or cords or something to hold the whole thing snug to the butterfly's body. And. . . buckles on the cords? She leaned in for a closer look.
With a quick, fluid motion, the butterfly reached into a smaller pouch beside the first and withdrew an inch-long needle with a bulb at the base. A detachable stinger, too? Judy suddenly felt the urge to jump back. But the cords— she had to get a better look at those cords.
The butterfly held its ground while she bent forward. She stopped when she was about a foot and a half away, but she could see clearly e
nough. They were miniature cargo straps, flat webbing with buckles on the end just like the ones she and Allen had used to tie down the foam insulation on the bottom of the Getaway. And the bag was covered with even tinier pockets, from which protruded the handles of yet more equipment.
"Take me to your leader," she whispered. Then she remembered to pull up her pants. 29
"It's intelligent," she told Allen. He had come running, pistol held high and cocked, when she called to him. The butterfly had fled at his approach, but it had quickly returned to flutter over their heads, just far enough away that none of its artificial equipment was visible.
"No way," he said. He held the pistol off to the side now, pointed at the ground.
"It's wearing a pack, and it's got some kind of—there!"
The tiny light had come back.
"What's that?" Allen squinted at the butterfly, which hovered surprisingly still while it did whatever it was doing with the light.
"I think it's a video camera," Judy said.
"Oh, come on!"
"Well, what do you think it is?"
He held his free hand upward, palm up. "Come here, little guy. Let me get a good look at you." It dipped down, but stopped just out of reach. Allen lowered his hand, and it came a little closer.
"See?" Judy said. "It's holding something in front of its face. Something that came out of a little belly pack. It's got a stinger in that long sheath on the side, too."
"Hmm. That's sure what it looks like, all right. But that doesn't mean it's artificial. Something like that could evolve pretty easily."
Then the light blinked once, went out for a second, blinked twice, went out again, blinked three times, another pause, then five.
"It's counting every other number," Judy said.
"Could still just be an instinctive biological thing," Allen replied, but he held his breath as it finished blinking seven, paused for a second, then started blinking again. He began counting with it to keep track.
