“Probably they contain some trace elements our present diet is not supplying,” Joe suggested. “Sometimes our bodies know better than our heads what is required. But let’s give it the overnight test. If no one’s had diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, or dies on us, the clams should be fairly safe to eat.”
“Fresh,” Kris added.
“By the seaside, by the beautiful sea,” Joe warbled.
Then the talk shifted to the point of whether or not scavengers lived in the sand dunes.
“Maybe something even worse,” Sarah suggested, shuddering.
“I’d kinda looked forward to making a sandy bed,” Kris said wistfully. “At least you can get it to conform to your bumps and lumps, which rock won’t.”
Joe whistled. “Yeah, great contours!” and he made a show of leering at her. Sarah pinched his thigh, calling him to order.
“I do miss mattresses,” Kris said, sighing. “I honestly don’t miss much else. Most of the time, that is. But I’d really, truly, deeply give my eyeteeth for even a pneumatic camping mattress,” she said, hugging her knees to her. She caught Zainal’s amused glance where he sat opposite her, his eyes twinkling in the firelight.
“Eyeteeth?” he asked.
She bared her lips and showed him.
“What good are your eyeteeth to anyone else?”
“They aren’t. It’s just a saying.”
The remainder of the evening was spent in language lessons. Oskar was picking up more and more English and Astrid’s was becoming more fluent. She was also picking up some of Kris’ pet phrases though such flattery made Kris just a little uncomfortable.
When fatigue made longer and longer pauses between conversations, Zainal announced the watch roster. He suggested that the sentinel stomp, and that was the word he used with a grin at Kris, around the perimeter from time to time, just in case the sand did harbor a species of underground scavengers. The others were to bed down in the sand around the fire, which the sentry would keep going.
“In between stompings?” asked Sarah irrepressibly.
“As you say,” Zainal agreed, nodding.
The long night passed with no alarms and Kris, comfortably positioned on the sand, slept deeply and well. As usual everyone roused well before the Botany dawn. Since no one had suffered any alimentary reaction to the clams, a beach party was organized. In the dim predawn light, they dug clams and when they decided they had enough for a good feed, they took a quick dip in the sea to wash off the clinging shore mud.
Rather a festive breakfast ensued. Then Zainal suggested they use the last of the night to approach the building and scout it out. No one had yet figured out how long a day’s charge of solar power lasted in the collectors since the mechs were usually inactive during darkness.
The building was bigger than they’d originally thought and seemed to expand as they approached it. Zainal, whose night vision was superior to the rest of the patrol’s, discerned some curious superstructures on the front of the building and a railed runway leading down into the water.
“A launch site?” Joe suggested.
“On Terra, fishing is done in the old ways,” Astrid said. Joe and Sarah agreed.
“Do they have an automated boat, then?” Kris asked.
“Maybe they whistle the fish into their nets,” Joe murmured.
“Haven’t heard a mechanical make any noise apart from ‘clank-whir,’” Kris said facetiously.
Machinery did not need windows, either, and the building had none. It looked as if the entire front of the building opened to permit the exit of whatever machinery was stored inside. The largest solar panels they had yet seen occupied the roof, held up by a heavy stem, which implied the panels altered direction to accumulate as much of the sun’s rays as possible. That was a new wrinkle in the mechanicals’ technology.
Zainal could find no exterior slit or lock or anything that would give them access within. He even had Joe up on his shoulders, searching the seaward walls as high as he could reach.
So they waited at a discreet distance to see if the building would open itself up once daylight had arrived. They waited until the sun was at its zenith, and occupied themselves by trying to fish, using the thinnest possible strips of blanket attached to a pole, and a piece of thin wire bent into a hook with a portion of clam attached as bait. When they caught nothing from the shore, they waded out as far as they could without losing their balance and finally caught some flatfishes. These they grilled for lunch, taking cautious bites.
“What I’d give for a testing kit!” Joe sighed wistfully. “You miss mattresses, Kris, I’d give my eyeteeth for just a magnifying glass.” He paused. “And a few odd chemicals to test for toxicity. I’ll not even dream of having a microscope.…”
“Don’t!” Sarah said.
“Look, why put such tools past our panel of talented DIYs,” Kris said, “considering what they’ve managed to produce so far,” and she tapped the comunit.
At high noon, when no activity emanated from the building, Zainal said they would take measurements of this, the biggest facility they’d yet seen.
“Maybe it only goes after certain types of fish that aren’t running right now,” Joe suggested.
“Or maybe there’s a satellite up there,” and Sarah pointed skyward, “that tells it when to go fishing.”
Zainal shook his head. “No satellite or Catteni do not explore.”
“Are you aware then,” Kris asked, startled by the concept, “that there are other sentient space-traveling species?”
Zainal gave her a slightly patronizing look. “Space is very big. Many planets can be settled,” and he added with one of his engagingly broad grins, “not always this way.” Then he added, “It is a mark of honor, not unhonor.…”
“Dishonor,” Kris interposed.
“To be transported.”
“I could have done without the honor,” Sarah said drolly, then added quickly, giving Zainal’s arm the briefest touch: “But then I wouldn’t have met you, or learned that we Terrans are pretty damned good!”
“You are!” Zainal gave his head one of his quick affirmative nods. “Honor to me to be here.”
“Well,” Joe remarked, obviously gratified.
“Now we go search more,” he said, and raising his arm over his head, gave the move-out signal.
Kris was gratified, too, by that little exchange. She was even pleased that Sarah had touched Zainal: up until that gesture of conciliation, no one had made any physical contact with Zainal—except herself. And Leon, medically, but not socially. Touch him, he’s real live flesh and bleeds red blood, she thought sourly as they moved out, matching his easy jog pace: a disciplined squad, fit and able to cope with anything Botany had so far meted out.
Joe paused a couple of times to collect samples of berries or hard-shelled tree and shrub fruits. The soft ones he sampled or had someone else sample; judiciously, of course. Some of the soft berries were so bitter the merest morsel caused the mouth to pucker. A good rinse with water helped dissipate the effect. One, a dark green, was sweet enough to encourage the taster to try more. The green fruit was gathered but not eaten until the samplings proved there would be no ill effects.
They spent the rest of the day on the shoreline, noticing the flotsam pushed up by high tides, mainly seaweeds. These Joe thought might have nutritional value so he gathered specimens. They also noted the abundance of mollusks along the coast by the frequency of the blowholes. Toward evening they dug out a quantity and, along with a plump rocksquat, tuber roots, and greens that grew in abundance, made an appetizing stew, to which the seawater was added to provide the salt they were all beginning to crave.
They found another sandy camping spot on a height above the shore, which stretched out in both directions as far as anyone could see. Just visible in the dim light were the lavender blobs of a spattering of islands which made them wonder, around the evening campfire, if this was an inland sea and there might be a distant shore. They considered contin
uing along the coast as far as they could go.
“We come again. Mitford will evaluate the situation first,” Zainal said.
“Hey, now, listen to him,” Sarah said, grinning. “‘Evaluate,’ huh? That’s a fifty-dollar word, mate.”
“I listen, I learn,” Zainal said, grinning back at her.
* * *
MITFORD HIMSELF GOT IN TOUCH WITH THE PATROL the next morning to call them in.
“Getting too close to the time the Catteni might come back,” he said. “Swing wide but start back now.”
Zainal had them strike obliquely back to camp and they came across two more agricultural garages and an abattoir, empty and waiting. They disabled everything, stacking the various useful parts for later pickup. Scratching his head, Joe regarded the piles.
“I wonder has anyone reinvented the wheel yet,” he said. “Sure save packing that stuff out on our backs.”
“If you have air cushions which hop over obstacles, a wheel is backward step,” Kris said. “Hence no need for roads…a waste of good arable land, if you ask me.”
“Too right, mate.”
Oskar nodded approval. He was having to rely less and less on Astrid for translation.
“Just so long as I’m not around to carry the can when the bosses discover what we’ve done to all their facilities,” Joe said, washing his hands and flicking his responsibility away.
“What if it’s only more machines?” Kris asked, for she had considered that possibility. “At least machines don’t get angry.”
“Machines also don’t eat meat or make bread,” Sarah said staunchly. “The bosses have to be humanoid or why all of this?”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet they use machines for all their dirty, boring chores,” Joe replied thoughtfully. “I mean, the technology level that went into the design and manufacture of these mechs is phenomenal. We don’t have anything its equal. Not even you Yanks with those great combine harvesters you have in your midwest.”
“But machines have to be designed by…something else. They might be able to repair themselves—but design?” She shook her head. “There are intelligent sentient beings somewhere at the end of the line of machines.”
Sarah and Joe snorted in chorus. Joe, with a grin, added: “So long as they’re friendly.”
“They are earth-friendly,” Astrid said, speaking brightly.
“Are they human-friendly? That’s the big question,” Joe said.
“I like this planet,” Oskar said. “Now we run it, not machines. Not bureaus or men who do not understand the land.”
“Anything different in this lot?” Zainal asked Oskar as he added a coil of wire and a handful of connectors to the pile in front of the young Norwegian.
He shook his head but looked at Joe for confirmation. Joe shook his head.
“Nope, Zainal. Nothing that can’t wait, as far as I can see. And I’ve got the anesthesia darts wrapped up in my pack.”
“Good!”
They settled down for the night in one of the barns.
“So Kris can cushion her bones on straw,” Zainal said with a grin.
“Too right,” she said, having picked up that Australian phrase from Sarah.
First the girls retired to second barn for the privacy of their evening baths in watering troughs. When they returned, straw was piled in outrageously high beds.
“Deep enough for you, Kris?” Zainal asked, sweeping a sort of bow toward her accommodation.
She made a big show of spreading her blanket and then hesitated, not sure how she would get on to it. Zainal picked her up and, with a deftly controlled throw, deposited her, squealing in surprise, in the exact center of her “mattress.”
“Ohhhh,” and she drawled the exclamation as she wiggled her shoulders and hips deep into the soft mass. “Heavenly.”
“And I do not ask for your eyeteeth,” Zainal said, stepping back to take a brief run to launch himself onto his bed-pile.
“I wonder,” Kris said as she settled down to sleep, “what the mechos will say when they find six piles of battered fodder in these barns.”
“Probably check the programming of their mechs,” Sarah said sleepily. She was the last to speak that night.
* * *
THEY MADE IT BACK TO CAMP ROCK LATE THE next afternoon. Kris and Zainal made their report to Worrell, who said Mitford was out inspecting the latest gadget to be put together from “all those spare parts you blokes keep finding.” Worrell was a balding chunky man, more barrel than leg, with a flushed complexion and many small red veins on his cheeks and chin. He had a habit of hitching his coverall, and the leather belt of worked rocksquat hide that circled it, as if he were afraid it would slip around his hips. Kris wondered if he had once had a beer belly, though he was thin enough now: an effect of being long aboard a Catteni transport ship.
“Anyone with any claim to mechanical skills has been drafted,” he said, grinning, and then, losing his grin, pointed to the empty stocks. “That Aarens fellow’s organized quite a production line at Slaughterhouse Five.” Worry blinked at their exclamations. “Publicly we’re calling it Camp Narrow for the narrow escape I hear some of your blokes had from a processing plant. So,” and Worry gave another hitch to his pants before he motioned her, and just as politely, Zainal, to take a stone seat.
These had been improved by a reed-woven cushion, probably filled with fluff seed: much more comfortable than plain stone. My, but I’ve become soft, Kris thought, wanting mattresses and cushions to put my sit-upon upon.
Although Worrell looked first at Kris, it was Zainal who gave the report in an English that was almost as unaccented as Kris’. He even managed the tinge of a drawl she was in the habit of using. She drew out her map and showed Worrell the distance they’d covered—which drew an appreciative whistle from him—and the new garage locations.
He was particularly interested in the shoreline building.
“Think Mitford’ll want that inspected and entered.”
“Anything else exciting happen around here?” Kris asked, noting that the main camp did not seem as crowded as it had been when they left.
“Well, we’ve set up two more camps besides Camp Rock,” and he grinned broadly at Kris, who chuckled. “Camp Shutdown’s one of the garages you lot found on your last walkabout, and Camp BellaVista’s the other side, which Cumber’s patrol found,” and he waved his hand to the east. “The miners’ve got living quarters in their adit, Ironclad.”
“How many patrols have gone out?” Kris asked.
“At the moment, four others.” Worry pulled a sheet from under a pretty agate used as a paperweight, checked that it was the one he wanted before he showed Kris the small-scale map with its lines indicating patrol directions. “We’ll know this place as well as the mechos do.”
“Is something burning?” Kris asked, aware of an acrid metallic stink in the breeze that was blowing across them in the “office.”
“Ah, yes, we got us a forge here, too. There’s another one at Ironclad. Found us a real top grade of iron ore, plus copper, zinc, tin, gold, and bauxite.” He winked at Kris with a grin on his face. “You’ll note how far down the list gold is. Any road, mines are over thataway,” and he waved a hand northward and then northeasterly. “Got us two farriers, a wrought-iron fabricator, and nine welders. We’ve screwdrivers, now, and screws, all kinds of other tools, nails and hooks; soon maybe even needles and pins and I dunno what all else. Skillets, kettles, and pots are being turned out of the sandpit daily. Pretty good stuff considering we’re back to reinventing essential equipment.”
Kris grinned back at him, amused. “The mechs didn’t mine any metals on the planet?”
“Nary a nugget, as far as we can see, and some of the ore was just lying around like they couldn’t be bothered shoveling it up.”
“So they bring in all their equipment,” Zainal said thoughtfully, fingering his lower lip.
“Looks like. Leastwise we haven’t found any garage or building or mine adit or an
ything suggesting the alloys they use in the mechos were indigenous. And oh my word, some of our engineers would give their eyeteeth” (Zainal shot Kris a quick amused look) “to know the composition of the alloys used for the chassis of those mechos.” Worry whistled again.
Kris was wondering if this was an Antipodean habit—whistling for emphasis. Joe Marley was prone to whistle, too. Well, it made a nice change from swearing.
“And the computer guys are right beside ’em, wanting to know where the crystals used in the motherboards came from.”
“So no one reinvents the wheel here?” Zainal asked, astounding Worrell again.
“I thought you didn’t speak much English, Zainal,” he said, giving Kris a suspicious glance.
“I learn languages easily,” Zainal said. “I learn”—and he paused briefly, touching his fingers in his counting—“fifteen with English.”
“Some people got a real talent for it, that’s the truth. I still have trouble with the Queen’s English.” Then Worry gave a big grin. “You mentioned the wheel, well, I want to tell you, we have gone beyond the need for something as primitive as a mere wheel.”
“We did?” Kris asked.
“One of the engineer blokes got one of the air-cushion mechos working. Only now they gotta reprogram it to work when they want it to.”
“Boy oh boy oh boy.” Zainal startled Worrell into an open-mouthed stare. “Then we don’t have to carry all those parts back here.”
“You bet!” Worry’s smile was prideful as he shuffled to find another sheet of paper. “Ah, here we are. Your patrol’s bunked in Mitchelstown. You got tomorrow off and I think they’ll want you hanging about here a bit.”
“Mitchelstown?” Kris asked.
“Yeah, we started naming the caves. Makes it more homey. So the main cook cavern’s now Cheddar. We even got name plates so you’ll know when you get to the right one. Mitchelstown’s quite roomy. Second turn on the left past Cheddar. Near the Johns, too.”
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