The Mystery of Ireta

by Anne McCaffrey

  “And nothing for the synthesizer either,” said Kai, trying to recall exactly what lay beyond the terrace and the rock-shelf on which the giffs dropped their catch.

  Triv had gone to the rear of the cavern and came back now, a sheaf of dried grasses in each hand. “There’s lots more of this, dried, but they’ll provide some substance for the synthesizer.”

  “There’s forest beyond the cliffs,” said Varian, thoughtfully, frowning as she concentrated. “Blast, but we rely too much on tapes and not enough on our own recall.”

  “C’mon, don’t fuss yourself, Varian. We’ll collect grasses at least. Triv, how are you at climbing up ropes?”

  “I’ll learn, but I suspect it’s the sort of thing Bonnard will do extremely well,” he said with a grin, testing the rope and then peering up its length, his expression dubious.

  Lunzie was not pleased with the grasses. Fresh, they’d have been perfect, but there was no telling how long they’d been lying about the cavern. Couldn’t they get some fresh green—even treetops?

  Treetops were about all they could reach, Triv informed the leaders when he and the youngsters had returned from their foraging. There was a tantalizing view of fruiting trees beyond a narrow but impassable canyon which separated the main cliffs from the forest beyond. At least on the terrace level which was, at the moment, all they could reach.

  “The giffs watched us,” Bonnard told Varian and Kai, “just like they did that rest day. Just watched.”

  “And I watched the skies for anything else,” said Terilla, a curiously bitter note to her soft voice and an unsettling hardness to her face.

  “Them?” Bonnard dismissed the heavy-worlders with a fine scorn. “They’re still thinking we’ve all been smashed flat in the dome!”

  There was, the two leaders noted with wry approval, a decided smugness about Bonnard to which he was, in fact, entitled. He, alone, had managed to evade and discommode the heavy-worlders despite their physical superiority.

  “Let us devoutly hope that they continue in that delusion for a few more days,” said Kai. “Until Tor has a chance to arrive. Can you manage another trip today?” he asked, eyeing the pile of fresh greens and estimating the finished, synthesized result.

  Triv’s answer was to turn back to the rope and begin the ascent, the others queuing to follow him.

  “Morale’s very good,” Kai murmured to Varian.

  “Now!” Varian’s single bitter word reminded Kai that morale was fickle.

  To bolster his own spirits, he sought Portegin, working in Trizein’s looted laboratory on a pile of matrix slabs and the damaged console panel which he had removed from the piloting compartment.

  “I don’t know if I can fix the comunit, even if I pirate every matrix circuit we’ve got and do field links,” the man said, running his fingers through his short hair. “They didn’t leave us so much as a sealing unit and these connections are too fine to be done by hand.”

  “Could you rig a locator signal on the Theks’ or even the ARCT-10’s frequencies?”

  “Sure,” and Portegin brightened to be able to give a positive response.

  “Do so, then, preferably one the heavy-worlders can’t tap.”

  “They’ve got to have power first, more power than they’ve got on their wrist units,” said Portegin, grinning with a touch of malice.

  Kai moved on, checking futilely in the storage compartments in the hope that something useful had been dropped by the heavy-worlders. He thanked providence for the ceramic hull of the shuttle which would not show up on the detectors the heavy-worlders possessed. The minor amounts of metal in the ship would easily be misread as ore in the cliffs. He tried again to remember if he and Varian had done much talking about the giffs in the hearing of any of the heavy-worlders. And remembered the tapes! Fighting the frantic pulse of fear, he also remembered the tangled, destroyed tape canisters strewn about the compound and now buried beneath megatons of dead beasts. Supercilious of the lightweights as the mutineers were, doubtless they had chucked tapes registered by either himself or Varian as being intrinsically useless. Kai forced himself to believe that possibility.

  Everyone was busy at something, he noted. Triv and the youngsters were on the foraging party, Aulia was sweeping the main cabin with a broom made of short stiff grasses, Dimenon and Margit were hauling water up the cliff in an all too small improvised bucket.

  “Try a piece,” said Varian, offering him a brownish slab. “It’s not bad,” she added as he broke off a corner and began to chew it.

  “Dead grass?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I’ve eaten worse. Very dry, isn’t it.”

  “Dry grass, but it’s bearable. There’ll be plenty of this junk, so Lunzie is good enough to reassure us.” Then her expression altered to one of distaste. “Trouble is, it uses a lot of power, and water, which uses power, too, to be purified.”

  Kai shrugged. Food they had to have, and water.

  “We need at least a week for Tor to reply.”

  Varian regarded him for a long moment. “Exactly what good will Tor’s appearance do us?”

  “The heavy-worlders’ mutiny, or I should say their success, depends on our silence. That’s why they rigged our ‘deaths’ so carefully, in case we hadn’t been planted. Why they’d believe Gaber is beyond me, but . . .” Kai shrugged. Then he grinned. “Heavy-worlders are big, but no one is bigger than a Thek. And no one in the galaxy deliberately provokes Thek retaliation. Their concept of discipline is a trifle . . . more permanent . . . than ours. Once we have Thek support, we can resume our interrupted work.”

  Varian considered this reassurance and, for some reason that irked Kai, did not appear as consoled as she ought.

  “Well, Lunzie estimates we’ve got four weeks power at the current rate of use.”

  “That’s good, but I’m not happy about four weeks stuck in this cavern.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Their refuge was twice as long as the shuttle craft’s twenty-one meters and half again as wide, but it ended in a rather daunting rock fall which may have been why the cave was abandoned by the giffs. There was not much space for privacy, and they couldn’t risk lighting the innermost section, which would have lessened the cramping.

  By the time the quick tropic night had darkened their refuge, Portegin had succeeded in rigging a locator, which he and Triv mounted in a crevice just outside the cliff mouth. After a final look to be sure that the stern of the shuttle was sufficiently camouflaged, Kai and Varian ordered everyone back into the shuttle. By the simple expedient of having Lunzie introduce a sedative into the evening ration of water, everyone was soon too sleepy to worry about confinement or boredom.

  The next day Kai and Varian sent everyone but the convalescent Trizein out to gather greenery. They estimated that they had this second day secure from any search by the heavy-worlders: possibly a third, but they could take no chances.

  The third day, apart from drawing water at dawn, was spent inside the cave. Portegin and Triv contrived a screen of branches and grass which could be used to secrete a sentinel at the cave entrance, to warn of any sign of either search from the heavy-worlders or, hopefully, the arrival of a Thek capsule. The angle of vision from the screen was limited but would have to suffice.

  The fourth day passed uneventfully, but by the fifth, everyone was beginning to show the effects of the close quarters. The sixth day Lunzie doctored the morning beverages so that everyone except herself, Triv and the two leaders were kept dozy. That meant that they had to maintain the watch themselves and draw the water at dawn and again at dusk.

  By the end of the seventh day, Kai had to admit that Tor had not rushed to their assistance.

  “What is our alternative?” Triv asked calmly at the informal conference the four Disciples held.

  “There’s cold sleep,” said Lunzie, looking rather relieved when Kai and Varian nodded.

  “That’s the sensible last resort,” said Triv, fiddling wit
h a square of grasses he’d been idly weaving. “The others’re going to become more and more dissatisfied with seclusion in this cave. Of course, once there aren’t any messages for EV, they’ll be bound to investigate.” Something in their manner, in their very silence alerted Triv, and he glanced about him, startled. “EV is coming back for us?”

  “Despite Gaber’s gossip, there’s no reason to suppose not,” said Kai, slowly. “Once EV strips the messages, they’ll come rattling here. This planet is so rich in all . . .”

  “Messages?” Triv caught Kai’s inadvertent slip.

  “Yes, messages,” said Varian, a sour grimace on her face.

  “How many?” The geologist couldn’t suppress his anxiety.

  “The all-safe-down is the only one they’ve stripped.”

  Triv absorbed that depressing admission with no hint of his inner reactions. “Then we’ll have to sleep.” He frowned and asked, as an afterthought, “Only the all-safe? What happened? They wouldn’t have planted us, Kai, there isn’t a large enough gene pool.”

  “That, and the fact that we’ve the youngsters, is what reassures us,” said Kai. “I feel that the EV is much too involved in that cosmic storm and the Thek were of the same opinion.”

  “Ah, yes, I’d forgot about that storm.” Triv’s relief was visible. “Then we sleep. No question of it! Doesn’t matter if we’re roused in a week or a year.”

  “Good, then we’ll sleep tomorrow, once the others have been told,” said Kai.

  Lunzie shook her head. “Why tell them? Aulia’ll go into hysterics, Protegin will insist we try to rig an emergency call, you’ll get blasted for withholding information about EV’s silence . . .”

  “They’re halfway there now,” said Varian, gesturing toward the sleeping forms. “And we’ll save ourselves some futile arguments.”

  “And any chances of being found by the heavy-worlders,” said Triv, “until either EV comes back for us, or the Theks arrive as reinforcement. There’s no way the heavy-worlders could find a trace of us in cold sleep. And there’s a real danger if we remain awake.”

  Such a major decision should be democratically decided, Kai knew, in spite of the fact that he and Varian as leaders could arbitrarily act in the best interests of the expedition. Lunzie’s assessment of reaction was valid. Kai spread his arms wide accepting the inevitable. He’d given Tor a week which, if the Thek had been going to respond, would have been more than adequate for the creature to make the journey from the other planet. If Tor himself had received the message. It could have been taken by one of the other two who would not necessarily pass it to Tor or bother about responding.

  “I’d rather meet those heavy-worlders again with a healed shoulder,” remarked Varian. “I hope they waste all their remaining power trying to find a trace of us.”

  Triv gave a mirthless laugh and rose, looking expectantly at Lunzie.

  “I’m not usually spiteful,” said the physician, getting to her feet, “but I’m of the same mind.”

  Lunzie prepared a preservative which she then administered to the sleeping. Triv, Varian and Kai checked each one until their skins cooled and their respirations slowed to the imperceptible. Kai toyed briefly with the notion of staying awake, of asking Varian to join him in the vigil until either Tor and EV arrived. But that would mean they’d have to stay outside, as the sleep vapor would permeate the shuttle. He’d no wish to remain away from his team, and less to inadvertently disclose their hideaway to the searching heavy-worlders. Soon the others were in the thrall of cold sleep.

  “You know,” announced Varian in a startled tone of voice as she was settling herself, “poor old Gaber was right. We are planted. At least temporarily!”

  Lunzie stared at her, then made an amused grimace. “That’s not the comfort I want to take with me into cold sleep.”

  “Does one dream in cryogenic sleep, Lunzie?”

  “I never have.”

  “Seems a waste of time not to do something.”

  Lunzie handed round the potion she’d made for them to take in lieu of the spray.

  “The whole concept of cold sleep is to suspend the sense of subjective time,” she said. “You sleep, you wake.”

  “And centuries could pass,” added Triv.

  “You’re less help than Varian is,” muttered Lunzie and drank her potion, arranging herself.

  “It won’t be centuries,” said Kai emphatically. “Not once EV has the assays on the uranium.”

  “That is a comfort,” said Triv and drank his dose.

  Tacitly Kai and Varian waited until the other two had quietened into the thrall of cold sleep.

  “Kai,” Varian said softly, “it is my fault. I had all the clues that pointed to a possible mutiny . . .”

  “Varian,” he said gently and stopped her words of apology with a kiss, “it was no one’s fault, just a concatenation of forces. Content yourself that we are alive, so are they. Gaber brought his own end with an essential stupidity of temperament. And we had best suspend subjective time for a while.”

  “How long a while?”

  He kissed her lightly again, smiling a reassurance he tried hard to make genuine. “EV will return for us. No matter how long it takes!” Not the most tactful remark to make. “Drink, Varian!” He raised his cup to her, waited until she followed suit and they drank together. “Nothing seems quite so bad when you’ve slept on it.”

  “I hope so. It’s . . . jussss . . .”

  Silence pervaded the shuttle. The mechanism that released a vapor to reinforce the sleep opened the proper valve. All life signs fell to an undetectable minimum.

  Outside, golden-furred flying creatures roused with the advent of another gloomy, sultry Mesozoic morning.

  DINOSAUR

  PLANET

  SURVIVORS

  Affectionately dedicated to

  Jeannie Cox

  in memory of my first Pernese Dinner

  1

  KAI managed to part his eyelids to a narrow slit and saw the rock. He closed his eyes. There shouldn’t be a rock. Especially a rock which could talk. For a sound, like his name, emanated from it. He seemed to be in physical control of only the area around his eyes. Otherwise he could not so much as twitch a finger. He tried to analyze his lack of sensation, reassured finally that he wouldn’t have been able to think if he weren’t in his body. And managed to open his eyes slightly wider.

  “Kkkkk . . . aaaaah . . . eeee!”

  The sounds corresponded to those in his name, but he hadn’t heard them uttered in such a fashion in a long time. He struggled to think when and became aware that he possessed neck, shoulders, and chest. The paralysis was ebbing. Yes, he was aware that his chest was moving up and down normally, but the air that his lungs drew in seemed stale and left a curious taste in the back of his throat.

  With the return of his olfactory sense, Kai knew that he hadn’t been paralyzed. He’d been asleep.

  “Kkkk . . . aaaa . . . eeee! Wuuuh . . . aaaakkhhhuh!”

  He forced his eyelids wider apart. The damned rock dominated his vision; it was now canted dangerously over him. As he watched in unbelieving silence, the rock slowly extruded a rod which split into three tentacles. With these, the rock grasped his shoulder gently but firmly and administered a shaking.

  “Tor?” Kai’s tone was startlingly similar to the quality of sound the rock had issued. He cleared his throat of a thick phlegm before he repeated the name.

  “Tor? You’ve come?”

  Tor made a grinding noise which Kai took as affirmative though he sensed a reprimand that he would comment on the obvious. Kai groaned as memory returned. He hadn’t been just asleep: he’d been in cold sleep. Tor had arrived in response to Kai’s emergency call.

  “Reeee . . . pppoooorrrtt.”

  Kai watched as Tor’s rod placed on his chest a small gray oblong, its grill toward his mouth. He took a deep breath because his mind was not yet clear enough to find the words he’d need to account for disturbing the Thek
at its own investigation of the system’s outermost planet. His message had not been ambiguous: “Mutiny! Urgent! Assistance Imperative!” But it was possible that the entire sequence had not been transmitted before the heavy-worlders smashed the communications panel.

  “Dee . . . taaa . . . illlll.”

  Kai felt the permaplas floor of the space shuttle sway as the rock that was named Tor settled beside him.

  “Ffffuuuulllll.” Tor added just as Kai opened his mouth.

  Closing his mouth abruptly, Kai wished that Tor would give him a little more time to collect his thoughts. After all, time was on the Thek’s side. But a full report in Thek terms still meant that his remarks must be succinct and limited but not the terse phrases which, in Kai’s state of mental funk, would have been hard to edit. He could also speak at a normal speed. Tor would later adjust the replay to Thek convenience.

  “Rumor permeated Exploratory Unit that plantation of group intended. Heavy-world personnel reverted to barbaric omnivory. Forcefully restricted all other members in one building. Drove large terrified herbivores toward building to effect our sudden deaths. Four Disciples effected timely release and sheltered in space shuttle which was buried under large corpses. Made nocturnal escape. Settled in natural cave unknown to the heavy-worlders, pending assistance. After seven days, cold sleep logical recourse. End report.”

  “Reeeeesssstt.”

  Kai felt a feather-light touch on his shoulder, heard a hiss, then felt the coolness of one sprayshot, an inch from a second. A curious warmth spread from his upper arm through his body with remarkable speed. Breathing became easier and, experimentally, he began to rotate his head and shoulders. His fingers tingled. He moved them with increasing ease.

  “Reeee . . . essstt.”