“Hey Elizabeth,” Jennifer Singh called to her, “are you going to pull weeds or have you decided to become a scarecrow?”
Sawyer realized she had been standing lost in thought. “Since we haven’t seen any crows, I guess I’ll get back to pulling weeds,” she said, and bent down to do just that.
∞ ∞ ∞
As Tyrell and Klaar followed the stream into the forest, he observed that the banks were getting higher relative to the stream bed, with occasional outcrops of worn, moss-covered rock, sandstone by the look of it, showing through. The ground rose slightly as they went, and Tyrell wondered if they’d find rapids or a waterfall. That could come in handy if Maclaren came up with a way to build a waterwheel.
“There are a lot of niches for small animals along here,” Klaar said. “Plenty of shelter and water.” She stopped and stooped down to look at something in a small pool beside the stream. “Look, salamanders.”
Tyrell knelt to examine the small creatures. They looked like a cross between a lizard and a frog, with branching growths at the base of their necks. “What are those growths on their shoulders?”
“External gills. These are probably still young.”
Tyrell reached out to the water, but Klaar grabbed his hand.
“Don’t touch them. Some Earth salamanders have a potent toxin in their skin. Besides, there might be something on your skin that would disturb them.”
Tyrell pulled his arm back. “Fair enough. Pretty though.”
“All the more likely that they’re toxic. Pretty colors warn off predators. Same with poison dart frogs on Earth.”
“Or coral snakes.”
“Exactly.” She took a few pictures with her omni, then stood up. “Come on, let’s see what else we find.”
About a half kilometer further on, the stream banks widened, and ahead through the trees Tyrell heard a muted roar and splashing. “Sounds like a waterfall ahead.”
They rounded a thick stand of trees and were suddenly at the edge of a clearing, the riverbank now a cliff about ten meters above the plunge pool of the waterfall. On the far side, where an eroded area made a kind of path down to the pool, a pig-sized animal was drinking. It couldn’t have heard them approach over the sound of the falls, but it looked up as they neared the edge of the cliff, then turned tail and darted off.
Tyrell only caught a brief glimpse of its head, with a pushed up nose, tusks out at a strange angle, and strange flaps and wrinkles of skin around its cheeks and eyes. It looked some kind of demon.
“What in the world was that?” he said.
“It looked like some kind of mutant wart-hog,” Klaar said. “I wonder if the skin folds had a specific function or were for some kind of mating display.”
“Mating display? That was one ugly beast. What would want to mate with that?”
“A female ugly beast, presumably. No accounting for taste.”
Tyrell looked at her. “Should I take that personally?”
She laughed. “Would it matter? You’re not complaining, are you?”
He pulled her to him and kissed her. “Not in the least.”
“Good.” She hesitated, as though trying to decide whether to say something.
“What?” Tyrell asked. “Is something wrong?” Shit, he thought, did I do something wrong? Ulrika was the best thing that had ever happened to him, he didn’t want to spoil it.
“Fred,” she said slowly, looking him in the eyes.
“Yes?” Crap, here it comes.
“How do you feel about children?”
“I . . . what?” Where did that question come from? “Uh, I like them fine I guess.”
“Good.” She smiled. “I’m pregnant.”
He couldn’t have heard that right. The waterfall suddenly sounded very far away. He felt like he couldn’t hear anything. He replayed her words in his head. Pregnant?
Still holding her, he leaned back a bit to look at her face. Am I just imagining that glow? “Pregnant? Are you sure?”
“Krysansky confirmed it earlier today. Yes. About two months.”
“That’s . . . that’s wonderful! But, how?”
“We’ve been sleeping together since that night on Kakuloa. Surely you understand the biology?” She was smiling at him, teasing.
“That’s not what I meant. What about our contraceptive shots?”
“I’d say they wore off. Maybe there’s some local biochemical that acts as an antagonist. I don’t know. Are you sorry?”
“No! Rika, no! I said it was wonderful. I meant that. Will you marry me?”
“I . . . what?”
“I said, ‘will you marry me?’” Tyrell pulled her in close and kissed her again. “To be honest, I’ve been wondering how to ask you that. I love you, Ulika Klaar. I’m just sorry I don’t have an engagement ring for you.”
“You idiot, come here.” She pulled him in for a long, slow kiss. When she finally let him go, she said “In case you weren’t sure, that was a yes.”
Chapter 26: To the Pyramid
Above the forest, northwest of the Anderson
The bearing display changed to three-zero-seven. They were getting close. Maclaren scanned the ground in the distance, but couldn’t make anything out. The horizon was lost in haze, which was unsurprising given the humidity of the day.
“So,” she said, “it was hard to tell just what it was in the pictures. Do you really think it’s a pyramid? Could stone-age natives have built it?”
“It’s probably just a small monadnock, or inselberg, an isolated rock formation sticking up from the surroundings. It could just be the old eroded neck of a volcano, like Shiprock in New Mexico, although smaller. Or . . . Ayers Rock, uh, Uluru in Australia is another inselberg, although it’s sandstone, not volcanic. But this is way smaller than that.”
“I wouldn’t know. Never been there. My family left Oz when I was a young un.”
“Really? You didn’t lose your accent?”
“Hell no. I deliberately kept it. It was something that made me stand out from the rest of the crowd, and the boys loved it. Later I think it helped me come across as a bit more credible as an engineer. When you come from a continent where everything is trying to kill you, people think you’re tough and give you a bit more respect.”
“Oh, come on. I’ve been to Australia. It’s not that bad.”
“Shush, don’t tell anyone that,” Maclaren said, laughing. “Just tell them you survived. What were you doing down there, geology? Where abouts?”
“Not exactly. I was down for a geological conference, but I barely got out of South Australia. The convention was in Adelaide.”
“Ah, well. Hardly anything there trying to kill you. Nice wine country. Not much of a beach though.”
“Oh, better than almost anything in Canada. Lake Huron has a nice beach at one of the provincial parks, but that’s fresh water.”
“Come on, mate, if it doesn’t have salt it’s not a real beach.”
“Never seen the Great Lakes then, I take it?”
Maclaren thought a bit. “Part of Lake Michigan from Chicago, I suppose. Okay, I’ll admit they’re big bodies of water, but it’s still not the ocean.”
“Bigger than any lake in Australia.”
“Hah, well, that wouldn’t be hard. But Oz is surrounded by warm seas. You’ve got the Arctic Ocean.”
“Well, that’s warmer than it used to be, but you’re right. There aren’t many places I’d go swimming on Canada’s coast without a wetsuit. On the other hand, we don’t have sharks or crocodiles.”
“That’s the spirit. Everything in Australia tries to kill you. Just keep that straight.”
“On the other hand, you don’t have polar bears. World’s largest land predators, and they swim, too.”
She laughed. “Okay, enough with the ‘my country ha
s nastier creatures than yours’. Besides, like I said, I haven’t lived in Australia since I was a kid.”
“Hang on, we’re coming up on our radial.” Finley said. The display was at three-one-one, and as turned to three-one-two, he banked the aircraft left and came out on that heading. “Okay, if we’re where I think we are, it should be ahead. I didn’t see it the other way, but we’ll give it a few minutes then back track if we don’t see it.”
“Okay.” They flew over forest, a canopy of leafy green treetops below them. Here and there were gaps where the ground could be seen, and scattered stands of what might be a kind of pine tree that poked higher than the rest. At least it wasn’t jungle. “I wonder,” Maclaren said at last, “what nasty critters this place has. I’m surprised we haven’t seen any yet.”
“There was Tyrell’s terror bird,” Finley reminded her.
“Oh yeah, that. Okay, I take it back. This planet does have things that will try to kill you. Let’s watch our steps.”
“Indeed.”
“So I reckon, in answer to my earlier question, that you don’t think whatever it is was built by stone-age natives.”
“It could have been, I suppose. The Mayans and Aztecs built some pretty impressive structures and they never had metal tools. They worked silver and gold, but those are soft metals. Their tools and weapons were obsidian, as far as I know.”
“Obsidian? Like the spear points you and Tyrell found?”
“Yes, but it’s a long way from hunter-gatherers using stone points, even shaped ones, to an agricultural society that has the excess labor force needed to build a pyramid.”
Maclaren saw the truth in that. Stone tool technology had been around for hundreds of thousands of years on Earth before anyone started building monuments and cities. At least as far as anyone knew. Given that much of that time had been during ice ages, it was possible that there had been structures lost to rising sea levels. She gave a mental shrug. Not her field.
“Any idea how they worked stone then?” she asked. “Or where the stone came from? They didn’t drag it all the way from the dome.”
“Likely not, no. Although I think the Stonehenge stones came from a considerable distance away, didn’t they? But the dome is hard rock. Something softer like limestone could be worked, that’s what the Mayans had. But I’m no archeologist. I have no idea how they worked the stuff.”
“If it’s not natural,” she said, “archaeologists are going to be all over this place once word gets back to Earth.”
“Yes, they probably are. Them and the ancient astronaut nutters, I suppose.”
“Nutters? Might I remind you that there are two planets in this system, including the one we’re on, which were terraformed? And before you say that there’s no evidence they ever visited Earth, I’ll ask ‘then where did the plants and animals come from?’” She shook her head. “Don’t kid yourself, mate. There were ancient astronauts.”
Finley was quiet for a moment, just flying the plane. “Okay, sixty-some million years ago, yes. But no evidence they ever interacted with humans. None of that von Däniken stuff.”
“So you’re not saying it was aliens. But it was aliens.” She chuckled. “Fair enough.”
Finley muttered, but deliberately loud enough for her to hear, “Bloody Sheila.”
“Watch it mate!” She cuffed his shoulder.
“Hey! No interfering with the pilot.”
A short while later, he pointed in the direction they were headed. “There it is.”
∞ ∞ ∞
The peak was easily visible above the rest of the forest. On an absolute scale it wasn’t massive, but it towered three to four times higher than the trees at its base, although only a third the height of Devils Tower in Wyoming or Shiprock in New Mexico. Perhaps a hundred meters high, and maybe a hundred fifty at the base. It was hard to tell through the surrounding trees, and the pyramid – it certainly had a pyramidal shape, although perhaps due to natural forces – had its own covering of trees and other vegetation.
“That’s a lot more impressive in person than in your photos,” Maclaren said.
“It is that. Hard to say, but I’d guess the trees on it aren’t as tall as those in the surrounding forest. It depends on how thick the soil covering is.”
As they reached it, Finley banked the plane to the right, circling around to give Maclaren a better view.
“I can see ground through the trees. It doesn’t look like that bad of a hike.” She turned to rummage around in the collection of gear behind the seats, then came up with a small plastic box about the size of an omniphone. Finley watched curiously as she tied a long strip of red fabric to it, keeping one eye on his flying.
“Take us low over the top,” she said.
“Roger that.” Finley banked and reduced power. “What do you have in mind?”
“This.” They were now directly above the peak, and Maclaren tossed her bundle over the side of the open cockpit. The attached ribbon of fabric streamed behind, slowing its fall. It missed the peak, but caught on a tree about fifteen meters down the slope on the other side.
“What was that?”
“One of the surprises up my sleeve. A homing beacon. If we do decide to hike back, it’s a bit more accurate than a magnetic compass.”
“I like the way you think.”
Maclaren smiled at that. “Aw, thanks. Now, let’s go find a clear area to set up the gear.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Five kilometers further on, the forest thinned out as the ground rose slightly. Finley guessed that it might have something to do with drainage, but whatever the reason, the small meadows and open areas they had flown over earlier—too small to even think of landing—were now reaching a size where it might be possible. If the trend continued there would be somewhere to land soon. Here and there low rock ridges poked above the grass and scrub, and from the linear patterns in the trees, they extended a ways into the forest. He wondered if they might be low dikes or rills associated with the peak behind them.
“How about down there?” Maclaren broke into his reverie, pointing to a large clearing ahead.
“That might work, let’s check it out.” He lowered the nose toward the clearing, watching the surrounding trees to get a feel for surface winds, although the winds aloft had died down considerably, and keeping an eye out for birds. They had seen a few flying over the forest, but nothing like the massive flocks that Tyrell and Klaar had, all too literally, run into on Kakuloa.
The same low rock ridges paralleled both the near and far edges of the clearing. They were only perhaps a meter high and less than that thick. Finley decided that there had once been a small lake here, and that over time it had filled with silt and leaf debris. It was common for meadows to form that way on Earth, especially if the ground was fairly flat, as this was, and he saw no reason for it to be different here.
A low pass didn’t show any boulders or gullies in the field itself, although the grass might be concealing something small.
“The grass is a bit higher than I’d like, but I don’t think it’s hiding anything,” he told Maclaren. “What do you think?”
She had been checking the ground on her side. “Looks all right to me. Let’s do it. Want smoke?”
“If you don’t think it will set the grass on fire, sure.”
“Nah, the grass doesn’t look that dry.” She pulled out a smoke pellet. “And these things don’t get that hot. Here we go.” She tossed it over the side and they watched as a stream of orange smoke rose from it, barely drifting at all.
“Nice and calm.” He’d suspected as much from the relative lack of motion in the grass, but was happy to have it confirmed. “Right, this might be bumpy.”
Finley pulled the power back and eased the plane toward the ground. As they approached he gently pulled the nose up and they glided for a whi
le in ground effect, the main wheels just starting to brush the top of the grass. Then with a ssshhh of the wheels threshing the grass the plane slowed quickly and touched the ground, bounced slightly then settled again, the nose-wheel coming down with a thump. The roll-out was short, bumping a bit as they hit denser tufts of grass, and then they stopped.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Maclaren said, looking around at the meadow they were in. “Grass is a bit tall.” It was a half-meter high, not up to the cockpit but about level with the tops of the main wheels.
“It is. We might want to stamp down a runway, otherwise there’ll be a lot of drag on take-off.”
Maclaren climbed out and walked around, inspecting the grass and the ground. “Maybe. I think she’ll handle it but it wouldn’t hurt to be sure. So what now?”
“Hop in, or stay clear. I’m going to taxi the plane over to the edge of the field against that ridge. It should be safer there than out in the middle of the field, and it will give me a feel for how it handles in the grass.”
“I’ll watch, thanks. I have a feeling the prop might kick up a fair bit of grass clippings. And I can check ahead for rabbit holes or the like.”
“All right. Clear?” he called.
Maclaren stepped well clear of the propeller. “Clear!” she confirmed.
The prop spun up with a whine and, sure enough, a spray of chopped grass fibers blew back at Finley. Between the windshield and the fact that only the very tip of the prop was hitting the grass, it wasn’t too bad. They’d have to clean the front of the plane when they got back, though.
“Well, it’ll never replace the lawnmower,” Maclaren said when he’d parked the plane and shut it down, “but it didn’t look too bad. How was it?”
“There’s a noticeable drag, I had to give it more power than usual for taxiing, but if we had to take off without flattening the grass we could.”
“Good to know. So, time to set up the gear then?”
“Yep, let’s get to it. Let’s do the magnetic sensors first so they can be recording while we set up camp. I doubt it’s worth setting up a radio link.”
Alpha Centauri: Sawyer's World (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 2) Page 12
