“Zainal did all the work, sarge,” she said quickly.
Mitford’s chuckle was audible to her and he patted her shoulder in approval.
No one moved from the uncomfortable height, human or alien. Then, to their listening ears, came a second change of engine sounds. They also heard the powerful blast of rockets, or whatever powered the great ship, as it headed skyward again. It burst into view, nose angled up now. Kris was awed by the technology that could produce such power. It wasn’t a beautiful craft, the way the Discovery and Challenger had been, delta-winged and shingle-clad. But it did have a triangular shape to it, blunt-nosed as it was.
“You guys willing to take a quick run back down there?” Mitford asked. He was looking at Zainal, Coo, and Slav.
“We sure are,” Kris said, and then gulped because she hadn’t intended to volunteer.
“Not you, Kris, you’re off duty.”
“If I am, they are. Only I’m going. I got just as much curiosity as the next one. I can’t believe that ship just gulped up all that was there and then calmly took off again.”
Mitford put his hands around his mouth to shout down to those on the ground. “Dowdall, send a team out to the granary. See if that got emptied.”
“Oh, lordee,” Kris said in a groan. She felt vulnerable again. And she’d brought in more mouths to be fed, too.
“Don’t worry,” Mitford said, “we’re stocked up, all things considered.”
So the two teams set off. Kris thought their return to the abattoir didn’t take half as long going back as it had coming in. When they got there, the acres of crates were all gone. In their place were stacks of what looked like collapsed units. That would account for some of the dents and scratches, she thought, still rather numb at the sheer volume that ship had lifted. Did they have matter transporters? Beam it up, Scotty, was the facetious thought that bounced in Kris’ mind until she gave a slightly hysterical laugh to stop it.
“It’s all right, Kris,” said Zainal, his accent improving all the time. He must have a terrific ear for language. Somehow that reassured her more than his words or the arm he laid briefly across her shoulders. “We check the barns.”
“How?” And Kris gestured broadly at the empty space that had once been conveniently bridged by a pyramid of crates. There was a drop of six or seven meters to the first of the piles of collapsed crates. She suddenly felt oddly disoriented by the alteration.
Zainal pointed to the rocky terrain. That was when Kris first realized that the mechanicals had sliced the crate storage out of the cliff side: the barns as well. From what she’d been told, the granary was also stored in natural rock. No arable land was taken up by even such essential facilities. If this was the condition of the entire planet, it was a remarkable achievement in its own right. And here come humans, she thought dourly, to mess it up.
The barns were empty, disinfected and ready for the next batch of occupants. Had the prisoners been dumped down on this planet at harvest and culling time? How often did that monster arrive to collect? Monthly, bimonthly? Semiannually? What season of this planet were they currently in? The weather was mild enough to be spring, but the crops in the fields were more mature than springtime growth. And she’d heard that grain had kept pouring into the storage caves, which suggested fall harvests.
The other salient fact was that the machines’ masters were probably as omnivorous as humanoids. And needed so much food that they went to the expense of developing highly specialized machinery to nurture and cultivate food crops and meat animals: and had sufficient planets available for their use so that they could devote all?—most?—of this one to food production. The collection vehicle as well as the mechanicals meant an extremely high technological level. And yet Zainal, for all the Catteni were well traveled and doing a lot of exploration on their own—did not recognize the type of craft used, and his exploratory service had registered the planet as uninhabited. Of course, if there were nothing but machines on the planet, that figured. Only why hadn’t the Catteni seen the machines on their appointed rounds? The Catteni hadn’t surveyed the planet in the night only, had they? Or maybe during an infrequent downtime during the “winter” months. Kris’ knowledge of farming suggested there were few “down” times on a farm: something or other had to be tended all year round. And what would winter on Botany be like?
Then Zainal blithely insisted that they have a look at the “garages” where curious vehicles with a variety of strange attachments awaited recall to duty.
“They do not recognize humans. No problem!” he told Kris and she was so flabbergasted that he had acquired the “no problem” slang that he was in the garage before she could protest.
One machine, standing inside, was hooked up to a framework which blinked and blipped. A servicing mechanism? Kris wished that they had someone with engineering training along. But then, who’d’ve thought they’d have a chance to inspect so thoroughly? Oh, for some of that bark and a pencil so she could make diagrams of the various types of mechanicals parked in the several garages. The last of the big barns contained sacks and sacks of what? Logic told her seeds or possibly fertilizers, more than likely. Had they been brought by the leviathan that had collected the meat? She used her knife to get into some of the bags and got samples of everything. Seeds, definitely, over half the shipment and, by the smell of it, fertilizer in the others.
The patrol got back to the camp by first moonrise. She didn’t feel quite so wimpy when Coo and Slav showed signs of wanting to rest, but she and Zainal first had to report to Mitford.
“They didn’t take the grain, Bjornsen,” was Mitford’s first comment, but she thought he seemed depressed. “What did you find?”
While Kris told him, including her surmises as she passed over the samples she had secured, Zainal had taken several large sheets of the papery bark and was quickly sketching on them. A couple of times Kris lost the thread of her report when she saw his accurate depictions of the various types of machinery they had seen in the garages. Mitford stole the odd glance, his eyes switching to Zainal’s face as the Catteni’s pencil flew over the surface, but his sketches looked remarkably accurate to her eyes. Zainal regarded his handiwork and then calmly made necessary emendations, correcting occasional lines. They’d had an engineer along all the time, hadn’t they, thought Kris. Zainal had rather more talents than anyone had realized.
“These,” Zainal said, handing over the sheaf to Mitford.
“Hey, Bob the Herb, Mack Su, Capstan, Macy, front and center and bring those granary sketches,” Mitford roared in his parade-ground voice, then grinned approvingly at both Zainal and Kris. “There’s quite a range of these things. Now we got to figure how to disable them.”
“Why?” Kris blurted out the question.
“Like you, Bjornsen, I think there are humanoids bound to be involved in this kind of food production, seeing as how they seem to need the same sort of foods we do. However,” and he went on briskly, “we’re obviously dealing with a very high-tech race.” Kris nodded her head vehemently. “That ship confirms some sort of periodic check. So there’s got to be some sort of ongoing monitoring, even if we haven’t found a central control point.”
Kris wondered just how much of this Zainal understood, but he was listening with every ounce in his big frame. She could feel the tension in the thigh next to hers on the wide rock they were sitting on. Odd that she didn’t mind tactile contact with Zainal, but he was so subtle about it, unlike some guys with impudent, wandering paws she’d encountered.
“So, if we start lousing up the machines, someone will come look,” Mitford concluded.
“And we just overpower them?” Kris asked, aghast at the mere thought of invading a ship the size of the collector. Especially since the only weapons they had were knives, hatchets, spears, and bows and arrows. She let out a burst of laughter.
“Don’t laugh, Bjornsen. There’s more than one way of infiltrating a spacecraft. And I’m more or less counting on the fact that the
investigatory ship would be smaller and have a live, not a mechanical crew. Machines are good enough for routine jobs but evaluation requires brains.”
“Then what?”
“First things first. Get the investigator here.”
Those Mitford had called for arrived and then he roared for a cook to bring two plates of food. He must have heard Kris’ stomach rumbling.
“We’ve been tossing ideas around while you guys were investigating, so I’ll bring you up to speed, Zainal, Bjornsen,” he said and nodded at them both before turning to the other patrol members. “Coo, Slav, get some grub. Go eat.” He pointed to the main cave. “And thanks. Oh, Coo, Bob the Herb harvested more of that green stuff you like.”
Coo nodded and, with the Rugarian, made a beeline for the main cave. Mitford’s eyes followed him.
“Ration bars are now reserved for Deskis, Ilginish, and Turs, folks. The rest of us can live off the land. They can’t.”
“Really?”
“Not until we find something their stomachs don’t reject.” Mitford gave the sort of resigned sigh that meant he was worried about the problem. He was leader enough to want to preserve all his troops, especially those with abilities like the Deskis’. “The cooks are busy whipping up a sort of pemmican for patrols to eat so you don’t upset the mechanicals by reducing their herds.” He grinned. “What did you call those critters, Kris? Loo-cows.” He chuckled.
“Sarge, I thought you wanted us to upset the mechanicals,” Kris said, wanting clarification on that point.
“We plan the upsetting”—he grinned again—“but I don’t want any of our guys to get darted out in the fields. So we disable the mechanism. Okay, fellas,” he said to the newcomers. Capstan and Macy were new faces and names for Kris, but they seemed to know who she and Zainal were. Mitford passed Zainal’s sketches around. “Zainal’s drawn the sort of mechanicals that are housed at the slaughterhouse. Seem to me to be different from the ones at the granary.”
“Highly specialized equipment,” Su said, leafing through the drawings, pausing briefly to scowl at several before he switched his lot with Capstan. Kris found out later that the older man had been a designer of highly specialized production-line equipment.
“Look, all of ’em are solar powered!” Su said, flicking his fingers at various flat surfaces on the individual machines. “Like I said, they had to be. Ecologically sound, using renewable energy. Small wonder the Catteni scouts thought the planet was unoccupied. They’d probably been scanning, or whatever they do, for life forms and those mechanicals aren’t alive. Now, they have to have collectors and storage batteries, too, and where’d they…ah, yes, possibly these units. Hmmm.”
“And if there’s no sun? Do they all just go down when it’s overcast or rainy?” Kris asked, making a mental note of the solar panels on each variety of machine.
“Hasn’t rained yet and we’ve been here ten days,” Mitford said with a sigh, his glance going up and down the ravine that had experienced floods which had left visible high-water traces on the walls.
Zainal also looked around the camp and smiled. “Much done in ten days.”
“Good for morale,” was Mitford’s terse reply, but he added a brief smile at the compliment. “Now, we got individuals who’ve got real expert with slingshots. Can take out a rocksquat at twenty-five meters. Stones’d take out those solar panels, wouldn’t they?”
Su thought about that but Capstan shook his head.
“We’d have to know what sort of material they use in the mechanicals’ panels. But it would follow that, if enough of the surface was marred, it might not collect sufficient solar energy to perform efficiently.”
“Perhaps,” and Kris adopted an ingenuous look and tone to her voice, “we should practice some creative mudslinging? I didn’t see a carwash in that Dalek barn.”
Zainal flicked her a quick glance because he didn’t understand her allusion so she charaded it and then he smiled, nodding. Su seemed to like the idea and even Capstan gave a droll little smile.
“There’re sure enough brooks where we’d need ’em to make mud,” Su went on with enthusiasm. “And if we got enough on the panels, the sun would dry it hard in place.”
“Mud at night. No machine runs in day,” Zainal suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Good idea, Zainal,” Mitford said, grinning. “Decommission them at source.”
“Well, now, hold on a moment,” Capstan said. “There would have to be storage batteries to keep them ticking over and start them off in the morning. Or there should be something like that. We’d have to disable those as well, you know.”
“So we do,” Mitford said cheerfully. “I wonder how many we would have to knock out for someone to come check the situation?”
That question was tossed around but they all agreed that they would first have to locate more installations for the plan to be effective. Kris, Zainal, and the two aliens had not been the only patrol which Mitford had sent out and one group, Mitford told them, was still missing. He wasn’t worried about them—yet—because they’d gone north, away from the slaughterhouse. He admitted that there would need to be a lot more such facilities to service all the land they could see cultivated and grazed. Enough hills could be seen from the sentry posts: each range could hide more mechanicals, farming nearby arable land.
“Zainal,” Kris said after a brief pause in the exchange of ideas, “how many would the prison ship have dropped in one journey?”
Zainal’s shrug was almost apologetic. “Don’t know. No need for me to know.”
“Well, they landed more than us and those you just freed up,” Mitford said in sudden anger. The others nodded solemnly. With a sigh, the Sergeant went on. “One of the recon patrols tangled with a savage bunch of individuals: only two of our guys got away and one was badly sliced up. Estimated there were close to thirty in the lot that jumped them. So it’ll be more important than ever for any patrols to post sentries at night. Esher was smart enough to hide himself, and Barrett, who was injured, until they could be sure they weren’t followed back here. And that,” Mitford’s thick index finger pointed at each one in the circle to emphasize his warning, “is what no one does! I’ll tell you one thing: they really hopped to it next time I called a Red Alert. And Murph made us a triangle out of metal that would wake the dead.”
“But we could hold off hundreds here, sarge,” Kris said, startled. The mere thought that the camp was vulnerable, and to renegade humans, depressed her. As it must have depressed Mitford.
“You better believe it,” Mitford said so resolutely and with such a knowing grin on his face that Kris relaxed. Mitford had obviously been busy placing safeguards as well as amenities. “Do they ever check up on the job lots they drop down?” he asked Zainal who nodded.
“Not soon,” he said. “In half a year,” he added, dropping into Barevi to express the time.
“Half a year,” Kris murmured in English and he nodded again as he accepted that new word.
“Would they bring in more prisoners?” Mitford asked Zainal, who nodded.
“Drop people many places,” and he made a spreading gesture with his hands. “Many times to seed planet.”
Kris wasn’t the only one who received that information with a sinking heart. How many did the Catteni expect would survive? And if none did, was the planet written off? What a way to colonize! While she hadn’t even thought to estimate how many prisoners had been in that holding area prior to being forced aboard the transport, there had been a lot more than the few hundreds ending up in this camp. They knew of at least four other deposits now. How many had there been in the initial load? At that, they might be better off making first contact with the Mechano Makers.
“Well, we deal with what we can,” Mitford said staunchly. “And we’ll explore as thoroughly as possible under the circumstances. Zainal, any more information on how they seed the planet?”
“I was in space more,” he said, spreading his hands wide open to express
his ignorance.
“Huh, so the Catteni operate just like any other army?” Mitford said in a droll tone. “Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does.”
Kris had a time explaining that remark to the puzzled Zainal, who grinned when he did understand.
When Mitford finally dismissed them, Kris made her way down the ravine and over to the stairs. The kitchen cavern walls were now decorated with outlines of vegetations. These were divided into several sections: one marked “Human,” with those plants to avoid and those to gather; another had “Deski” in elaborate Gothic lettering as a caption and the enscription “potassium? calcium?”
“Hi, there,” a cheerful voice said, and Dick Aarens moved to intercept her.
“Not now, Aarens,” she said, altering her direction to avoid him.
“Hey, gal, I’m only trying to be friendly.” He stepped in front of her.
“So am I, but right now all I want is my bed.”
His eyes, a pleasing shade of blue for all she didn’t like the man who wore them, widened. “Why, so do I!” And he attempted to put his arm around her as if to lead her off.
She ducked out from under. “By myself, Aarens.”
“Kris…”
She was both relieved and concerned to hear Zainal’s voice behind her. She turned, took a step toward the Catteni.
“Yes?” She hoped her response conveyed her relief at his timely arrival.
“We talk tomorrow’s patrol now?” he asked.
Behind her, she heard Aarens mutter something and then the crunch of his feet on the sandy floor as he moved away.
“Thanks, Zainal. You saved my life.”
Zainal regarded her with a thoughtful expression. “You do not like him?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head for emphasis.
“I think so.”
“Watch him, though, Zainal. He’s dangerous.”
“How?” Zainal was amused at her response.
“He doesn’t like you.”
“Because you do?”
She shook her head. “Because first you’re Catteni and second he fancies himself better than you. And irresistible to me.
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