The Mystery of Ireta

by Anne McCaffrey

  “So?” Bonnard regarded Varian steadily, waiting for the point of her digression.

  “So, the horse and cow don’t learn a lot from their parents: not much versatility or adaptability is required of them. Whereas human babies . . .”

  “Have to learn too much too soon too well and all the time,” said Cleiti with such an exaggerated sigh of resignation that Varian chuckled.

  “And change half of what you learn when the info gets updated,” she added, sympathetically. “The main advantage humans have is that they do learn, are flexible and can adapt. Adapt to some pretty weird conditions . . .”

  “Like the stink here,” put in Bonnard.

  “So that’s why I’m curious about the maturity of the fliers at birth.”

  “They’d be oviparous, wouldn’t they?” asked Bonnard.

  “More than likely. I don’t see that they’d be ovoviviparous . . . too much weight for the mother if she had to carry her young for any length of time. No, I’d say they’d have to be oviparous, and then the eggs would hatch fledglings, unable to fly for quite some time. That might account, too, for the fishing. Easier to supply the hungry young if everyone cooperates.”

  “Hey, look, Varian,” cried Bonnard who had not left off watching through the screen, “there’s a changeover on the net carriers. Bells! but they’re organized. As neat a changeover as I’ve ever seen. I’ll bet the fliers are the most intelligent species on Ireta.”

  “Quite likely, but don’t jump to any conclusion. We’ve barely begun to explore this planet.”

  “Are we going to have to go over all of it?” Bonnard was briefly dismayed.

  “Oh, as much as we can while we’re here,” she said in a casual tone. What if they had been planted? “Apart from its odor, Ireta isn’t too bad a place. I’ve been in a lot worse.”

  “I don’t really mind the smell . . .” Bonnard began, half in apology, half in self-defense.

  “I don’t even notice it anymore,” said Terilla.

  “I do mind the rain . . .” Bonnard continued, ignoring Terilla’s comment. “And the gloom.”

  At which point the sun emerged.

  “Can you do that again whenever we feel the need of sunlight?” asked Varian as the girls giggled over the opportuneness.

  “I sure wish I could!”

  Once again the angle of the sun projected a distorted shadow of the sled on the water and the fish, large and small, shattered the surface in vain attempts to secure the reality of that shadow. Varian had Bonnard tape the attacks for later review. It was an easy way to catalogue the submarine life, she said.

  “I sailed once on shore leave at Boston-Betelgeuse,” said Bonnard after the sun and the predatory fish had deserted them.

  “You wouldn’t catch me sailing on that!” said Cleiti, pointing to the water.

  “I wouldn’t, but something else would, wouldn’t it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Catch you, silly face!”

  “Oh, you’re so funny!”

  Additional fliers emerged from the clouds to relieve the net carriers who sped up and away, as if pleased to be free of their chore. The convoy, strengthened by the reinforcements, picked up speed, veering slightly east toward the highest of the prominences. They were not, as Varian had assumed, going to have to cross the entire sea to reach a home base.

  “Hey, that’s where they’re heading. I can see other fliers on the cliff top, and the front is all holey, with caves!” cried Bonnard, delighted.

  “They live in caves to keep their fur dry and their fledglings safe from the sea creatures,” said Terilla with unusual authority.

  “Birds have feathers, stupid.”

  “Not always,” Varian replied. “And those fliers appear to have fur, which is, sometimes, a variation of a feather in some beasts.”

  “Are we going to land and find out fur sure?” asked Bonnard in a ponderous tone of voice so everyone caught his pun. Cleiti swatted at him and Varian groaned, shaking her head.

  “No, we’re not landing now. It’s dangerous to approach animals when they’re feeding. We know where the fliers live now. That’s enough for one day.”

  “Couldn’t we just hover? That won’t disturb them.”

  “Yes, we could.”

  More of the golden creatures emerged from crevices and caves in the cliff and gracefully swooped up to the summit, which Varian could see was relatively flat for about five hundred meters, where it dropped off into very rough and boulder-strewn slopes.

  “What’re they going to do now?” asked Bonnard. “That net’s too big to get in any one of those cave entrances . . . Oh . . .” Bonnard’s question was answered as the entire group of fliers now carried the net up over the edge of the cliff and suddenly dropped one side, spilling the fish onto the summit plateau.

  From every direction fliers converged on the catch. Some landed, wings slightly spread, to waddle in an ungainly fashion toward the shimmering piles of fish. Others swooped, filled their throat pouches and disappeared into their cliff holes. For all the varied approaches, the dispersal of the catch occasioned no squabbling over choice of fish. As the four watched, there were periods when no fliers were picking over the fish. They did seem to be selective.

  “Sharpen the focus on the viewer, Bonnard,” said Varian. “Let’s get some frames of what they didn’t eat . . .”

  “Those fringe things, the small ones.”

  “Maybe that’s why the fringe fliers were after us. They’d taken their young . . .” said Terilla.

  “Nah!” Bonnard was contemptuous. “The fringes hadn’t eyes, much less brains, so how could they be sentimental about their young?”

  “I dunno. But we don’t know that they aren’t. Fish could have emotions. I read somewhere that . . .”

  “Oh you!” Bonnard gestured her peremptorily to silence.

  Varian turned, worrying that his attitude might bother the child since his tone was unwarranted, but she seemed unperturbed. Varian promised herself a few choice words with Bonnard. And then vetoed the notion. The young of every species seemed to work things out among themselves fairly well.

  She peered into the viewer herself, to see the rejects. “Some aquatic creatures are capable of loyalties and kindness to their own species, but I’d say that the fringe organism is too primitive yet. They probably spawn millions of eggs in order for a few to survive to adulthood—to spawn again. Our fliers don’t include them in their diet, though. Nor those spiny types. Bonnard, you’ve been helping Trizein and Divisti: take a good look! Seen any of those in the marine samples we’ve given them?”

  “No. New ones on me.”

  “ ’Course, we sampled from the main oceans . . .” Most of the fliers had disappeared now and only the rejected specimens were left, to rot on the stone.

  “Varian, look!” Bonnard, again at the screen, gestured urgently. “I’ve got it lined up . . . look!”

  Varian pushed his hand aside as he was so excited he was obscuring the view. One of the small fringers was moving, in that strange fashion, collapsing on one side and flipping over. Then she saw what had excited Bonnard: unsupported by water, its natural element, the internal skeleton of the creature was outlined through its covering. She could plainly see the joints at each corner. It moved by a deformation of parallelograms. It moved once, twice more, and then lay still, its fringes barely undulating, then not at all. How long had it survived without water, Varian wondered? Was it equipped with a dual set of lungs to have lived so long away from what was apparently its natural element? Was this creature on its way out of its aquatic phase, moving onto land?

  “You got all that on tape, didn’t you?” Varian asked Bonnard.

  “Sure, the moment it started moving. Can it breath oxygen?”

  “I hope it can’t,” said Cleiti. “I wouldn’t want to meet that wet sheet in a dark dripping forest.” She shuddered with her eyes tightly shut.

  “Neither would I,” said Varian, and meant it.

 
“Couldn’t it be friendly? If it wasn’t hungry all the time?” asked Terilla.

  “Wet, slimy, wrapping its fringes around you and choking you to death,” said Bonnard, making movements like his horrifying image.

  “It couldn’t wrap around me,” Terilla said, unmoved. “It can’t bend in the middle. Only on the edges.”

  “It isn’t moving at all now,” Bonnard said, sounding disappointed and sad.

  “Speaking of moving,” said Varian, glancing toward the one bright spot in the gray skies, “that sun is going down.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Bonnard sarcastically.

  “I’m looking at the chrono.”

  Cleiti and Terilla giggled.

  “Couldn’t we land and see the fliers up close?” asked Bonnard, now wistful.

  “Rule number one, never bother animals when feeding. Rule number two, never approach strange animals without first closely observing their habits. Just because the fliers haven’t attempted to take bites out of us doesn’t mean they aren’t as dangerous as those mindless predators.”

  “Aren’t we ever going to observe them up close?” Bonnard was persistent.

  “Sure, when I’ve applied rule number two, but not today. I’m to bring the sled back to the pitchblende site.”

  “Can I come with you when you do come back?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Promise?”

  “No. I just said it was possible, Bonnard, and that’s what I mean.”

  “I’m never going to learn anything on this trip if I don’t get out and do some field work, away from screens and . . .”

  “If we brought you back to the ship with a part or parts missing, left in the maw of a fringe or a flier, your mother would give us the deep six. So be quiet.” Varian used a sharper tone than she normally employed with Bonnard, but his insistence, his air that he had only to wheedle enough and his wish would be granted, annoyed her. She was sympathetic to his irritation with constant restrictions. To the ship-born, planets gave illusions of safety because one was insulated from ship-learned dangers by an atmosphere miles deep, whereas in space only thin metal shells prevented disaster, and any broaching of that shell was lethal. No shell, no danger, in simplistic terms.

  “Would you run through that tape, Bonnard, and see if we have good takes on the fringes,” she asked him after a long pause, mutinous on his part, firm on hers. “There’s something I want to check out with Trizein when we get back to camp. Fardles, but I wish we had access to the EV’s data banks.”

  After another long pause during which she heard the slight whir of rapidly spun tape, Bonnard spoke. “You know, those fliers remind me of something I’ve seen before. I can almost see the printed label on the tape sleeve . . .”

  “What about this tape?”

  “Oh, clear pictures, Varian.”

  “They’ve reminded me of something, too, Bonnard, but I can’t drag it out of storage either.”

  “My mother always says that if you’re worrying over something, go to sleep thinking about it and you’ll remember in the morning,” said Terilla.

  “Good idea, Terilla. I’ll do so and so can you, Bonnard. Meanwhile, we’re over new territory again. Man the telltale.”

  They got some good tags on a stumpy-legged ruminant, spotted but couldn’t tag more small mammals like Dandy and surprised several flocks of scavengers at their work. They returned to the mining site just as the “gloom thickened,” as Terilla put it. Kai was waiting with Dimenon and Margit with the equipment which the sled must transport.

  “It’s a very rich find, Varian,” said Dimenon. He looked very tired and immensely satisfied. He started to add more but stopped, turning to Kai.

  “And the next valley over shows another saddle deposit as large and as rich,” said Kai, a grin creasing his sweat and dirt-smeared face.

  “And probably the next one beyond that,” said Margit, sighing wearily. “Only, that can wait until tomorrow.”

  “EV should have given us at least one remote scanner, Kai,” said Dimenon, as he helped load the instruments. This sounded to Varian like the continuation of an argument.

  “I requisitioned one, standard. Supply said they’d no more in stock. If you’ll remember, we passed quite a few promising systems in the last standard year.”

  “When I think of the slogging we’d be saved . . .”

  “I dunno,” said Margit, interrupting Dimenon. She placed a coil of wire on the sled deck. “We do so raking much by remote. I know I’ve done something today.” She groaned. “I feel it in every bone and in muscles I didn’t know I had. We’re soft. No wonder the heavy-worlders sneer at us.”

  “Them!” A world of scorn was expressed in Dimenon’s single word.

  Kai and Varian exchanged quick glances.

  “I know they were bloody hungover or something earlier on, but I was glad enough of Paskutti’s muscle this afternoon,” Margit went on, pulling herself into the sled and settling down beside Terilla. “Get in, Di, I’m dying for a wash, and I bloody hope that Portegin’s deodorizer has fixed the water stink. Hydrotelluride does not enhance the body beautiful. So how did you pass the day, scamp?” she asked Terilla.

  While the three young people kept a conversation going, Varian wondered, as she set the sled on its baseward course, just what happened to occasion Dimenon’s captious attitude. Perhaps it was no more than irritation with the heavy-worlders’ behavior in the morning, and reaction to the excitement of such a rich find. She must ask Kai later. She didn’t want her team coming into contention with his, and she would be the first to admit the heavy-worlders had been less than efficient. Or was Dimenon still irked over last night’s alcohol rationing?

  There were dangers inherent in mixing planet- and ship-bred groups, and EV kept it down to a minimum whenever possible. The Iretan expedition had needed the brawn of the heavy-worlders and Varian and Kai would simply have to work out the problems.

  Varian was a bit depressed. A computer could give you a probability index on any situation. This mission had had a good one. But a computer couldn’t adjust its input with such unexpected details as a stink and constant gloom or drizzle, affecting tempers, or a cosmic storm cutting off communications with the mother ship: it certainly hadn’t printed out the fact that a planet listed as unexplored was now giving immutable evidence of previous survey, not to mention anomalies like . . . But if, Varian thought, there had been the survey, maybe such things as pentadactyl development and aquatic collapsing parallelograms were entirely possible! Yet which was indigenous? Both couldn’t be!

  Fliers having to find grass so far from their natural habitat? Varian’s spirits lifted again with excitement. And if the golden fliers, who were pentadactyl, were not indigenous, then the herbivores and predators they’d so far encountered were not indigenous either! Not anomalies: conundrums. And how? By whom? The Others? No, not the ubiquitous Others. They destroyed all life, it there was any substance to the rumor that such sentient beings existed.

  The Theks might know about the previous survey . . . if Kai could stimulate them into a serious attempt at recall. By Matter! She’d sit through an interchange herself to find out! Wait till she told Kai that!

  6

  KAI had as much to reflect upon as Varian as he sledded back to the encampment. For one thing, he was minus some irreplaceable equipment that Paskutti and Tardma had dropped down a crevice. EV had allowed him only the minimum of seismic spares, and the last group he’d expect to be careless with equipment was the heavy-worlders. They moved so deliberately they avoided most accidents. He couldn’t restrict the heavy-worlders from drinking the distillation, but he’d have to ask Lunzie to dilute any given them from now on. He couldn’t afford more losses.

  An expeditionary force was permitted so many credits in loss of equipment due to unforeseeable accidents, but above that figure, the leaders found their personal accounts docked. The loss of the equipment was bothering Kai more than any possible credit subtraction: it
was a loss caused by sheer negligence. That irritated him. And his irritation annoyed him more because this should have been a day of personal and team satisfaction: he had achieved what he had been sent to do. Ruthlessly now, he suppressed negative feelings.

  Beside him Gaber was chattering away in the best spirits the cartographer had exhibited since landing. Berru and Triv were discussing the next day’s work in terms of which of the colored lakes would be the richest in ore minerals. Triv was wishing for just one remote sensor, with a decent infrared eye to pierce the everlasting clouds. A week’s filming in a polar orbit and the job would be done.

  “We do have the probe’s tapes,” Berru said.

  “That only sounded land mass and ocean depth. No definition, no infrared to penetrate that eternal cloud cover.”

  “I asked for a proper prelanding remote sensing,” Gaber said, the note of petulance back in his voice.

  “So did I,” said Kai, “and was told there wasn’t a suitable satellite in Stores. We have to do it the hard way, in person.”

  “That would seem to be the criterion for this expedition,” said Gaber, giving Kai a sly glance. “Everything’s done the hard way.”

  “You’ve gone soft, Gaber, that’s all,” said Triv. “Not enough time in the grav gym on shipboard. I enjoy the challenge, frankly. I’ve gone flabby. This trip’s good for all of us. We’re spoiled with a punch-a-button dial-a-comfort system. We need to get back to nature, test our sinews, circulate our blood and . . .”

  “Breathe deeply of stinking air?” asked Gaber when Triv, carried away by his own eloquence, briefly faltered.

  “What, Gaber? Lost your nose filters again?”

  Gaber was easy to tease and Triv continued in a bantering way until Kai turned the sled through the gap in the hills to their encampment. Kai had affected not to acknowledge Gaber’s glance although, tied in with Gaber’s notion of planting, “doing everything the hard way” could well be a prelude to the abandonment that was euphemistically termed “planting.” It could account for quite a number of deletions in Kai’s original requisition list. Remote sensors were expensive equipment to leave behind with a planted colony. But, if the colony were supposed to be self-sufficient, surely some mining equipment would have been included so that they could refine needed metals for building and for replacement of worn-out parts, like sled members. There would have been . . . “Do it the hard way” rang ominously in Kai’s mind. He’d better have a long chat with Varian as soon as he could.