The Mystery of Ireta

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Gaber!”

  “Yes, Kai. Yes, I understand. I really do.” The man seated himself at the veil controls, glancing so anxiously from Paskutti to Varian that Kai had to nod at him reassuringly. Paskutti’s heavy face remained expressionless, as did his dark eyes; but somehow the heavy-worlder’s very silence could indicate disapproval or disgust more acutely than anything he might have growled.

  Paskutti, a man in his middle years, had been in ship security for most of his five-year tour with EEC. He had volunteered for this assignment when the call had gone through the mother ship for secondaries to assist a xenob team. Heavy-worlders often took semi-skilled tours on other worlds on the EEC ships as the pay was extremely good. Two or three tours would mean that a semi-skilled individual could earn enough credit to live the rest of his or her life in relative comfort on one of the developing worlds. Heavy-worlders were preferred as secondaries, whatever their basic specialty might be, because of their muscular strength. They were paid to be the muscles of humanoid FSP, generally a comment made respectfully, since the heavy-worlders were not just muscle men but numbered as many high-ranking specialists as any other humanoid subgroup.

  There was, however, no question that their sheer physical presence—the powerful legs, the compact torso, massive shoulders, weather-darkened skin—provided a visual deterrent that prompted many sentient groups to hire them as security forces, whether merely for display or as actual aggressive units. Contributing to the false notion that heavy-worlders were ill-equipped with mental abilities was the unfortunate genetic problem that, though their muscle and bone structure had adjusted to bear the heavy gravities, their heads had not. Consequently, at first glance they did look stupid. Away from the harsh gravity and climactic conditions that bred them, heavy-worlders also had to spend a good deal of their time in heavy-grav gyms to maintain their muscular strength and to enable them to make a satisfactory adjustment when they returned to their home worlds. Perversely enough, the heavy-worlders were intensely attached to their natal worlds, and most of them, having made their credit balance high enough to retire in comfort, happily returned to the cruel conditions that had developed their subgrouping.

  Paskutti and Tardma had joined the expedition out of sheer boredom with their shipboard security duties. Berru and Bakkun as geologists had been Kai’s own choices since it was always good to have a few heavy-worlders on any team for the advantage of their physical attributes. Both he and Varian had been pleased when Tanegli, as botanist, and Divisti, as biologist, had answered the request for such specialists. When they had made planetfall and Varian had seen the unexpectedly large type of animal life which populated Ireta, she had blessed the heavy-worlders on her team. Whatever emergency they were going to meet now would be approached with much more confidence in such company.

  Paskutti nodded at Gaber as the cartographer’s hands twitched above the veil controls. Slowly the veil lifted while Varian, by Kai’s side, shuffled with impatience. One couldn’t fuss Gaber by reminding him that this was an emergency and speed was essential.

  Paskutti ducked under the lifting veil, charging out, the squad at his heels, before Gaber had completed the opening. It was, as usual, raining a thin mist, which except for the heavier drops, had been deflected by the main screen as had the insects small enough to be fried by contact.

  They could hear Gaber muttering anxiously under his breath about people never waiting for anything as Paskutti gave the closed-fist upward gesture that meant sky-trailing. The rescuers activated their lift-belts and assumed the formation assigned them at Paskutti’s original briefing on emergency procedures. Kai and Varian were in the protected positions of the flying V formation.

  Aloft, Kai turned his combutton to home in on Tanegli’s signal. Paskutti gestures westward, toward the swampy lowlands, and indicated speed increase as his other hand adjusted his mask.

  They flew at treetop level, Kai remembering to keep his eyes horizontal, on Paskutti’s back. Oddly enough his tinge of agoraphobia bothered him less in the air, as long as he didn’t look directly down at the fast-moving ground. He was cushioned by the air-stream of his passage, an almost tactile support at this speed. The monotonous floor of conifers and gymnosperms which dotted this part of the continent waved briefly at their passage. High, high above, Kai caught a glimpse of circling winged monsters. Varian hadn’t yet had a chance to identify or telltale any of the aerial life forms: the creatures warily made themselves scarce when the explorers were abroad in lift-belts or sleds.

  They increased altitude to maneuver the first of the basaltic clines and then glided down the other side, skimming the endless primeval forest, its foliage in ever-varied patterns of blue-green, green and green-purple. They met the first of the thermal downdrafts and had to correct, buffeted by the air currents. Paskutti signaled descent as the best solution. For him, it was, with his bulk of heavy grav-trained muscles, flesh and bone, but Kai and Varian had to keep compensating with their lift-belts’ auxiliary thrust jets.

  As the buzz of the homer intensified, Kai began to berate himself. He ought not to have allowed any exploratory groups beyond a reasonable lift-belt radius of the compound. On the other hand, Tanegli was perfectly capable of combating most of the life forms so far seen here while dealing with the exuberant nature of the youngsters in his charge. So what aerial trouble could they have fallen into? And so quickly. Tanegli had left in the sled just prior to Kai’s scheduled contact with the Theks. They could barely have made their destination before running afoul of whatever it was. Tanegli would surely have mentioned any casualty. Then Kai wondered if the sled had been damaged. They’d only the one big unit and the four two-man sleds for his seismic teams. The smaller sleds could, in a pinch, take four passengers, but no equipment.

  The land dropped away again and they corrected their flight line. Far in the purple distance the first range of volcanoes could be seen on the edge of the inland sea—a lake that was doomed to be destroyed by the restless tectonic action of this very active world. That was the first area he’d had tested for its seismicity because he’d worried that perhaps their granite shelf might be too close to tectonic activity and would turn mobile. But the first print-out of the cores had been reassuring. The lake would subside, probably giving way to small hills pushed up from beneath, clad with sediment and eventually folded under, for this was the near edge of the stable continental shelf on which the encampment had been placed.

  The steamy, noxiously scented heat of the swamp-lands began to rise to meet them; cloying humidity intensified the basic hydrotelluride stench. The homer’s buzz grew louder and became continuous.

  Kai was not the only member of the party scanning ahead. Far-sighted Paskutti saw the sled first, in a grove of angiosperms, parked on a sizable hummock that jutted into the swamp, away from the firmer mass of the jungle. The great purple-barked, many-rooted branches of the immense trees, well-scarred by herbivorous assaults, were untenanted by avian life, and Kai was beginning to feel the anger of relief overcome concern.

  Paskutti’s arm gesture caught his attention and he followed the line of the heavy-worlder’s sweep toward the swamp, where several tan objects were slowly being dragged under the water by the pointed snouts of the swamp-dwellers. A minor battle began as two long-necked denizens contended for the possession of one corpse. The victor claimed the spoils by the simple expedient of sitting on the body and sinking with it into the muddy waters.

  Tardma, the heavy-worlder directly in front of Kai, pointed in the other direction, toward firmer land, where a winged creature, obviously recovering from a stun blast, was swaying upright.

  Paskutti fired a warning triplet and then motioned the group to land on the inland side of the grove. They came to a running stop, the heavy-worlders automatically deploying toward the swamp since the likelihood of attack was from that quarter. Kai, Varian and Paskutti jogged toward the sled from behind which the foragers now emerged.

  Tanegli stood waiting, his squat solid bulk
a bastion around which the smaller members of the party ranged. The three youngsters, Kai was relieved to see, appeared to be all right, as did the xenobotanist, Divisti. Then Kai noticed the small pile of assorted brilliant yellow objects in the storage cage of the sled: more of similar shape and color were strewn about the clear ground of the small grove.

  “We called prematurely,” said Tanegli by way of greeting. “The swamp creatures proved curious allies.” He replaced his stunner in his belt and dusted his thick hands as if dismissing the incident.

  “What was attacking you?” Varian asked, staring about her.

  “These?” asked Paskutti as he dragged a limp, furred and winged creature from behind the trunk of a thick tree.

  “Watch out!” said Tanegli, reaching to his belt before he saw the stunner in Paskutti’s. “I set the gun on a light charge.”

  “It’s one of those gliders. See, no socket for the wing to fold,” Varian said, ignoring the protests of the heavy-worlders as she moved the limp wings out and back.

  Kai eyed the pointed beak of the creature with apprehension, suppressing an irrational desire to step back.

  “Carrion-eater by the size and shape of that jaw,” remarked Paskutti, peering with considerable interest.

  “Well and truly stunned,” Varian said with a final twitch of arrangement to the wings. “What was dead enough to attract it here?”

  “That!” Tanegli pointed to the edge of the clearing, to a mottled brown bundle, its belly swelling up out of the coarse vegetation.

  “And I rescued this!” said Bonnard, stepping clear of his friends so that Kai and Varian saw the small replica of the dead animal in his arms. “But it didn’t bring the gliders. They were already here. It’s very young. And its mother is dead now.”

  “We found it over there, hiding in the roots of the tree,” said Cleiti, loyally supporting her friend, Bonnard, against adult disapproval.

  “The sled must have alarmed the gliders,” said Tanegli, taking up the story, “driven them away from her. Once we had landed and started collecting the fruit, they returned.” He shrugged his wide shoulders.

  Varian was examining the shivering little creature, peering into its mouth, checking its feet. She gave a little laugh. “Anomaly time again. Perissodactyl feet and herbivorous teeth. There’s a good fellow. Nice to have something your own size, isn’t it, Bonnard?”

  “Is it all right? It just shivers.” Bonnard’s face was solemn with worry.

  “I’d shiver too if I got picked up by huge things that didn’t smell right.”

  “Then perisso . . . whatever it is, isn’t dangerous?”

  Varian laughed and ruffled Bonnard’s short-cropped hair. “No, just a way of classifying it. Perissodactyl means uneven-numbered toes. I want a look at its mother.” Careful of the nearby sword plants with their deceptively decorative purple stripe leaves, she made her way toward the dead creature. A long low whistle broke from her lips. “I suppose it’s possible,” she said in a sympathetic tone of voice. “Well, her leg’s broken. That’s what made her fair game to the scavengers.”

  A loud noise attracted everyone’s attention: an ominous sucking sound. From the swamp a huge head and neck broke the slimy surface and wavered in their direction.

  “We could be considered fair game, too, by such as that,” said Kai. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Paskutti frowned at the great and evil-looking head, fingering his stunner onto the strongest setting. “That creature would require every charge we have to stop it.”

  “We came for fruit . . .” Divisti said, pointing to the litter in the clearing. “They look viable, and fresh food would do us all good,” she added with as wistful a tone as Kai had ever heard from a heavy-worlder.

  “I’d say we had a safety factor of about ten minutes before that swamp creature’s brain can make the logical assumption that we’re edible,” said Tanegli, as unconcerned as ever by physical threat. He began to gather up the scattered thick-skinned fruits and toss them into the storage cage of the six-man sled.

  In point of fact, those sleds had been known to lift twenty, a capability never mentioned in the designers’ specifications. The exploratory sled was an all-purpose vehicle, its ultimate potential not yet realized. High-sided and slightly more than eight meters long, with a closed deck forward for storage, the compact engine and power pack sat under the rear loading space. The vessel could be fitted with comfortable seating for six as well as the pilot and copilot, with the storage cage, as it was now. When the seating was removed or lashed to the deck, a sled could carry enormous weight, on board or attached to the powerful winches fore, aft and midships on either side. The plascreen could be retracted into the sides or raised in sections. The sled had both retro and forward jets with a vertical life ability, which could be used in defense or emergency flight. The two-man sleds were smaller replicas of the big one and had the advantage of being easily dismantled and stored: in flight, usually in the larger vehicle.

  Augmented by the rescue squad, the foragers accumulated enough fruit to fill the sled’s storage cage in the time it took more carrion-eaters to begin spiraling above the grove. The swamp head seemed mesmerized by the comings and goings of the group, swinging slowly back and forth.

  “Kai, we don’t have to leave him here, do we?” asked Bonnard with an apprehensive Cleiti by his side. He had the orphan in his arms.

  “Varian? Any use to you?”

  “Certainly. I’d no intention of leaving it. It’s a relief not to have to chase something over the continent to get a close look.” She frowned at the suggestion of abandonment. “Into the sled with you, Bonnard. Keep a hold on it. Cleiti, you sit on his right, I’ll sit left. There we are. Belt up.”

  The others stood back as Tanegli took off in the sled, gliding insolently over the ooze and the undecided beast that still regarded the grove with unblinking interest.

  “Set for maximum stun,” Paskutti told them, glancing overhead. “Those carrion-eaters are coming in again.”

  Even as the rescuers lifted from the ground, Kai saw the carrion fliers circling downward, their heads always on the dead creature in the grass below. Kai shuddered. The dangers of space, instant and absolute, were impersonal and the result of breaking immutable laws. The deadly intent of these things held a repulsively personal malevolence that disturbed him profoundly.

  2

  RAIN and headwinds buffeted the airborne V so steadily on their way back that the heavily powered sled had long since landed when Kai and the heavy-worlders finally set foot in the compound. Varian and the three children were busy constructing a small run for the orphan.

  “Lunzie’s trying to deduce a diet,” Varian told Kai.

  “Just what is its anomalous state?”

  “Against every odd in the galaxy, we have succored a young mammal. At least its mother had teats. It’s not very old, born rather mature, you see, able to walk and run almost at birth . . .”

  “Did you . . .”

  “Debug it? Externally yes. Had to or we’d all be hosting parasites. I’ve interrupted more of Trizein’s carefully scheduled work to run a tissue sample on it so we can figure out what proteins it must have in its diet. It’s got some growing to do to reach momma’s size. Not that she was very large.”

  Kai looked down at the tiny creature’s red-brown-furred body: a very unprepossessing creation, he thought, with no redeeming feature apart from wistful eyes to endear it to anyone other than its own mother. But, remembering the waving swamp-dweller’s head, and the hungry malice in the circling scavengers’ relentless approach, he was glad they’d brought the thing in. Besides, it might occupy Bonnard and keep the boy from following him everywhere.

  Kai stripped off his belt and face mask, rubbing at the strap marks. He was tired after the return trip. The heavy-worlders had immense resources of stamina, but Kai’s ship-trained muscles ached from the exertions of the morning.

  “Say, don’t we have to contact the Ryxi, too?” Vari
an asked, glancing at her wrist recorder and tapping the reddened 1300 that meant a special time.

  Kai grinned his thanks for the reminder and made for the shuttlecraft with a fair display of energy. There was still a lot of busy day ahead of him. He’d get a pepper to pick his energy level up, and he’d get a bit of a breather while he made contact with the avians. Then he had to go see that complex of colored lakes Berru had documented yesterday in her sweep south. He found it damned odd there were no more than traces of the normal metals you’d think would be in abundance everywhere on this untouched planet. Colored waters indicated mineral deposits. He only hoped the concentrations were heavy enough to make them worthwhile. There ought to be something in old fold mountains, if only some tin or zinc and copper. They’d found ore minerals but no deposits worth the name.

  Kai’s orders from Exploratory and Evaluation Corps were to locate and assay the mineral and metallurgical potential of this planet. And Ireta, a satellite of a suspected third generation sun, ought to be rich in the heavier elements, rich in the transuranics and actinides, neptunium, plutonium and the more esoteric of the rare elements above uranium on the periodic table, so urgently and constantly required by the Federation of Sentient Populations, the search for which was one of the primary tasks of the EEC.

  The diplomatic might say that EEC was exploring the galaxy, seeking to bring within its sphere of influence all rational sentient beings, augmenting the eighteen peace-loving species already incorporated in the FSP. But the search for energy was the fundamental drive. The diversity of its member species gave the Federation the ability to explore more types of planets, but colonization was incidental to exploitation.

  The three useful planets of the sun Arrutan had long been marked on star charts as promising, but only recently had the Executive Council decided to mount the present three-part expedition. Kai had heard the rumor that it was because the Theks wished to be included. This rumor was partially substantiated during his private conference with the EEC chief officer on board the exploratory vessel ARCT-10. The CO had privately informed Kai that the Theks had superior control of the three teams, and he was to consider himself under their orders if they chose to supersede him. Vrl, the Ryxi team leader, had been given the same orders, but everyone knew the Ryxi. Furthermore, it was common knowledge that having a Thek on a team spelled ultimate success: Theks were dependable, Theks were thorough, the ultimate altruists. The cynics replied that altruism was easy when a creature calculated its life span in thousands of years. The Theks had elected to be placed on the seventh world of the primary, a heavy-metal, heavy-gravity planet, exactly suited to Theks.