"Looks good, Major."
"Set her down, Captain," the Dutchman said. "Gently."
"Airspeed, please," I said. Shuttles aren't like most fixed-or variable-wing craft: it's a bad habit to take your eyes off the screen during a shuttle landing; whether or not you bump into something is far more critical than what your airspeed is at any given moment. If you drop below stall speed—just about four hundred, by the way—the engines'll light themselves, unless you tell them otherwise.
So, when it's tricky, my preference is to have whoever's in the right-hand seat read off airspeed. I know: I could have had the computer programmed to give me airspeed indications vocally. But I couldn't tell the Dutchman what to do if I did it that way, could I?
"Five hundred five," the Dutchman said.
The heads-up display was a glowing green line across the screen, just above the nose of the shuttle—
"Four eighty."
—so I pulled back on the stick with my right hand while I eased my left hand over to the panel and set the ignite selector to work the belly jets, since I wasn't going to need the main engines to get to the LZ. I thumbed back the cover to arm the button. We were a bit heavy in energy, so I wheezed the nose intakes open early.
"We're coming in on four hundred, Emmy. And that's fucking stall speed."
"So I've heard." I punched the ignite button to fire up the belly jets to a nice quiet idle, and dropped the shuttle down toward the plain.
"Give me landing pods, full extension."
"Got 'em," the Dutchman said unnecessarily, as they extended with a loud ka-chunk. "Bar-El—stand by with the foam."
"Yes, sir."
You have to pay attention to what airspeed indicators say, but don't believe them. They lie; the approach & closing radars are worse. Both swear you're slowing constantly, but the truth is the last few meters go faster than light speed.
The plain came up like God's Own Flyswatter.
I pulled the nose up more than thirty degrees past horizontal, and then shoved the throttle almost to the wall; at more than three gees, it only took a couple of seconds to kill the shuttle's speed, both forward and downward.
I pushed the nose down, pulled the throttle back, and settled the shuttle down firmly on the tall grasses, the landing pods hissing as the hydraulic system took up the shock.
"Powerdown," I said.
The Dutchman was already flipping his switches. "Bar-El, handle the fire."
Flames licked up in the monitor as the still-hot heat shield ignited the dry grasses around the shuttle.
"Foaming." Bar-El hit the foam switch. A turret in the roof snicked open and some distant piece of machinery began to whirr as the nozzle sprayed fire-killing foam over the shuttle and its environs.
"Negative," Bar-El said, eyeing his screens. "We've got some fire beyond range to port—to the south."
Moving more quickly and gracefully than a man his size had any right to, Akiva Bar-El was already out of his harness, on his feet, and halfway into his silvery environment suit, balancing on the balls of his feet like a dancer.
"Permission to go EVA and kill the fire?" he asked.
"Damn." The Dutchman pursed his lips. "Permission granted. Hop to it. Full decontam protocol, understood?" The fat man turned in his couch to trigger the outside bio-package; a little distant heat and smoke wouldn't do much damage to biogel, and the sooner we knew what biocontaminants we were up against, the better.
"Yessir." Bar-El slipped a membrane helmet over his head, sealed it to his E-suit's collar, and inflated it while he shrugged into a khaki oversuit. He threw a power rifle's sling over one shoulder, tucked an extinguisher under one arm, and slipped into the airlock, slamming it behind him as he cycled the outside door open.
The Dutchman turned to N'Damo. "Keep in touch with the jewboy. Comm or psi—I don't give a rat's ass."
"Yesss. Sirrrrrr." The sound caught in Donny's throat and turned into a high-pitched, liquid burbling.
I turned to look at him.
Pink tongue clenched tightly between his ivory teeth, he scrabbled his fingers slowly, clumsily, randomly across his panel, his eyes vague and watery.
"Sssschtannnnn?" he hissed, in a voice distant and alien, his fingers caressing the air in front of him. "No. N'vakt sssss . . . ssssschtannnnnn. Ssss." His eyes sagged shut as his arms fell limp at his side. Reflexively, I started to unbuckle myself from my couch, but then caught myself, snorted, and punched up the readings from Donny's sensors. He was breathing, his heart was pumping away, but his brain waves looked weird. Some esper thing, undoubtedly.
"Shit. Why the fuck do the locals have to always be breathing down our necks? Awright, Emmy, we're going to Condition Yellow," the Dutchman said, punching for the roof radar and weapons turret himself. He raised his hand to his throat. "You hear that, jewboy? We re at Yellow. Acknowledge."
"Condition Yellow, Major," came over the speaker.
The Dutchman shut off his mike. "Keep an eye on Bar-El. He's not particularly expendable at the moment."
"Yes, sir." After landing, the pilot's first priority is powering the ship down; that only takes a few moments, and most of it doesn't require full attention. I'd already hooked my right-hand display into the turret cameras and was watching Akiva carefully spray the last traces of smoking grass. He let the extinguisher drop to the ground.
"No problem. Major. He's already on his way back."
The Dutchman went over to N'Damo. "Out, but he seems okay," the fat man said as his fingers felt gently at Donny's neck and pried back an eyelid to reveal a dilated pupil.
Bar-El entered the lock and shut it behind him. Blue water ran down the window like an old-style washing machine as the lock began to spray biocides all over him and his suit.
The Dutchman sat back in his couch and folded his hands over his belly.
"Only thing to do now is keep watch until the biogel has a chance to spoil, and wait until sleeping darkie there has a chance to wake up." He wriggled himself a bit deeper into his couch and closed his eyes.
I hated it when he pretended to sleep in a situation like this. I think he was pretending. . . .
II
Donny shook his head. "It has to be Captain von du Mark, not Akiva, Major. Kaschtkd—no." A drop of spittle ran down the side of his mouth as he swallowed three times, then started again. "He isn't a xenophobe. It has to be him."
Donny looked at me, his eyes begging for support. The Dutchman looked at me, one eyebrow half raised. Bar-El looked at me, his broad face impassive.
Just to make it unanimous, I glanced at myself in the mirror.
I shook my head. "You say this Histeel—"
"Hischteeel."
"—of yours isn't fully psychic, but it's sensitive enough to tell the difference between me and Bar-El?"
"Yesss." N'Damo swallowed. "It wants to—kvreahn schtann." His mouth began to move soundlessly, his tongue wriggling like a snake.
He forced himself back under control. Well, mostly under control—his fingers shook as though he had Parkinson's disease. "Sorry. I have to get closer. Major. I've only got part of the language, can think with only part of the mind. It's like there's part of me missing."
He caught his lower lip between his canines, and bit down until a fat drop of dark blood oozed up and ran down his chin. He wiped it away.
"If you won't let me go alone, please let Emile come with me. Got to—" He slapped his palms together. Not like clapping. Like he was trying to crush something with the heels of his hands. "Kvath iechtef. Got to go now. Got to."
"What's the rush?" The Dutchman shook his head. "'Err in haste, get disemboweled at leisure'—that s the way I always heard it."
I didn't like the sound of that, either. The last time I'd been rushed into a decision, I'd ended up in the Contact Service.
"Because. Hischteeel says it has to be quickly. Don't know why, but we have to move quickly. Schtanns come." He bent forward and pressed his thumbs against his eyelids until I thought he
was going to pop his eyeballs out.
"And it can't be Bar-El."
"Because he's kdkchtt . . . because he isn't psi-neg. And he is a xenophobe."
I looked over at Akiva.
He smiled calmly. "We all have our flaws."
The Dutchman looked from Bar-El to me. "Agreed: you're both a couple of shitheads. On the other hand, so what if the local doesn't like the undercurrents in Bar-El's psyche?" With a thick thumb, the Dutchman flipped the cylinder of his Magnum open; he eyed the loads skeptically. "If it makes too much trouble, we can handle it, either with reason or with lead."
He frowned as he locked the cylinder back into place with a nice, solid click. "What I don't like is the fact that this contact of yours seems to have you locked up, N'Damo. Can't say as I like that at all—if you had a reset button, peeper, I'd be punching it."
I didn't like that, either. While the radar motion detectors weren't picking up anything significant, there could have been, say, half a thousand tanks a few meters back of the treeline, and with N'Damo locked on this Hischteeel, there was no way he could even feel another alien presence.
I took another look at the printout of the biogel analysis. All in all, it looked like the local bugs weren't going to be interested in eating us. Well, maybe some of the spores seemed to be loaded with something a lot like histidine, but it was different enough that I wasn't worried about my ability to cope with the great outdoors sans helmet, although we'd be wearing powered filtermasks and E-suits, just in case.
I nodded cautiously. The extra oxygen might even make me a bit heady; have to watch it.
So I couldn't say no on the grounds that it was obviously dangerous out there. Matter of fact, it seemed pretty good.
"Major?" Donny pleaded.
"All right." The Dutchman nodded. "We'll do it your way. But . . ."
"But?"
"But, Emmy, both of you wear lifters, you are going to be armed with a wiregun and extra clips, Bar-El will be outside in his skimmer with the engines hot, and I'll be working the weapons turret, just in case. Keep your eyes open, Emmy, and your safety off."
"Yes, sir."
"Emmy?"
"Sir?"
"This isn't Pon. You may—may—have been right to go easy there, but . . . this isn't Pon. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir. You're telling me that this isn't Pon."
He slammed his fist down on the arm of his couch. "Listen to me, asshole. If you have any reason to worry about this Hischteeel character, you just blow it away and we'll let Third Team clean up after us. Just be careful. If you can't be careful, be lucky."
"And if I can't be lucky?"
"Then be very good."
We clumped along a rough path through the woods, Donny leading the way.
Sometimes the physical conditioning that the Service puts us through makes sense. What with my jetpack, the air filters and pumps that purified the local air, plus various and sundry weapons and ammunition for same, I must have been hauling close to thirty-five extra kilos. Subtract a few for the fact that local gravity was only point nine three standard, and that still adds up to a hell of a lot of extra weight pressing down on my shoulders and hips.
But even so, there was something nice about this forest, something particularly nice. I like real forests; I always have. Every one has a different feel.
Here, a distant breeze whispered vague but sincere promises of lazy coolness and quiet rest. Majestic trees curved overhead like the arch of a cathedral, branches decorated in plate-sized leaves that were so dark green that they were almost black.
Absolutely gorgeous. I smiled; I used to look at the old picture books when I was a kid; this was something like what the Schwarzwald must have been before the Xeno War turned it into a charred plain and the name Black Forest into a sad joke.
"Emmy?" The Dutchman's voice crackled over my phones.
"Emile," I said. "And I'm still here."
I'd decided to keep the private circuit open to Bar-El and the Dutchman while I followed Donny's rapid pace—it's just plain good sense to avoid trusting espers; when they're in communion with aliens, their loyalties aren't usually clear, even to themselves. That's why they're never armed; if you're going to have a gun at your back, it's best to know that it's a friendly one.
Donny walked quickly, with a weird, clumping stride, as though his legs weren't used to bending where they did.
I was worried, and I didn't know why. I ran it over in my mind for the nth time. The contact didn't sound simple, but I'd been through worse. Physical conditions weren't bad, not bad at all. The local sun was an F8 star, a tenth larger and a third brighter than Sol, almost unbearably small and bright when it peeked through the trees overhead.
Overall, this world got just a bit more irradiation than Earth, but nothing unusual. Atmosphere was breathable straight—my favorite—although it was a bit rich in both CO2 and O2, which is why we had to worry—just a little—about hyperventilating.
But that wasn't really a problem, not at this pace.
There was a sudden rustling behind me.
"Donny. Watch it!" Snatching up my wiregun, I spun as something about a third of a meter long bounded across the path.
Curling a gloved finger around the trigger, I snicked the safety off my wiregun and drew a hissing line through the trees and into it, just as it leaped into the air and fell back, cut in half.
The back half fell dead, limp. The head and shoulders jerked spasmodically for a second, and the eyes tried to focus on me, but didn't make it before it died. Dark blood mixed with brown viscera on the ground as leaves, cut and shattered by the blast, settled to the ground.
I stooped over the creature, cursing myself for being a trigger-happy asshole.
"Got a sample, Major. The local equivalent of a rabbit."
It was a kind of brown, kind of reptilian kind of rabbit, but that's what it was. The ears were hairless disks; when I pried open the mouth, I could see the peglike, crunching teeth of an herbivore behind the forward tearing teeth—rabbitlike incisors, not the flesh-rending daggers of a carnivore or the compound styles of an omnivore.
Its stomach contained a putrid-looking mulch that had more than a few leaf fragments mixed among it.
A rabbit. That's all it was. I could be proud of myself: now, the local equivalent of rabbits would justifiably walk in fear wherever the brave Captain Emile von du Mark, Thousand Worlds Contact Service, trod.
"I just killed the local version of a rabbit, Major. Call it a smeerp."
"Sounds tasty." The humor in the Dutchman's voice seemed a bit strained over the phones. "Want me to hold dinner?"
"Funny, Major." Taking a sample handler—a lot like a cat-box scoop—from my utility belt, I tucked the corpse into a sample bag, pumped the air out, then hid the bag behind a fallen log, figuring on picking it up on our way back. Or maybe pulling rank on Donny and letting him carry it.
We walked on, the worry weighing even more on me.
I tried to work it out. There were a few disturbing sides to the Contact: First's orbital sweep had included pictures of sapients, about man-high, vaguely reptilian in appearance, although it was hard to tell even from the computer-enhanced pictures. Sapients are always potential trouble, even When they're at the early-agricultural level that these seemed to be.
But was it an early-agricultural level? The photos had showed an unusually high ratio of leafy-surface area to cultivated area, not the sort of scraggly-looking fields that you'd expect from low-tech primitives.
Maybe that was it. Without a lot of power equipment, the locals seemed to be farming awfully efficiently. But since when was that a crime—or a danger, for that matter?
Then there were the traces of RF, which meant that there was some sort of power technology going on . . . and that meant we couldn't just Drop and go. Power technology can lead to spaceflight. Spaceflight can lead to Gates. Gates can lead to wars.
One set of Xenos was more than enough. There was no particular re
ason to believe that the predecessors to the Sesss were the nastiest things in the universe.
"Anything yet, Emmy?"
"Nothing, Major. Taking a bearing: I have the dee ex at"—I glanced down at my tracker—"three point eight klicks, direction forty-three point nine absolute." I thumbed for my private circuit. "I'm worried about N'Damo, Major."
"Maybe you're just plain worried. You've been spooky since AlphaCeeGate."
"I've been spooky since I was born, Major," I said. I've been spooky since Manny Curdova died. Major, I thought. But I didn't say that.
"Burning out on me?"
"Maybe."
Maybe I was. It can happen to the best, and I wasn't claiming I was the best.
"Hischteeel is just ahead," Donny said, breaking into a jog, pushing off the path, into the brush.
We broke through into a low clearing, and there it was, squatting on a log.
It rose slowly. While it seemed immense, it was only a little taller than Donny, just about my height. It was naked, except for a gray skin rag wrapped about its waist, which fell almost to its bulging knees. The skin was gray and dull like a coat of primer paint; it hung loosely on the creature's frame. Its six-fingered hands writhed and shook, as though it had been infected with Donny's palsy. The forearms and lower legs were disproportionately long; the extra joints on its fingers made them look broken.
The face, such as it was, was the worst. If I closed my eyes down to slits, I could have imagined it as a burn victim; gray, wrinkled skin, no protuberances, only holes for a nose and ears, and the horrible red eyes, hidden behind massive folds of flesh.
"Contact, Major," I forced out.
The eyes burned redly into mine.
Donny stood motionless.
"Translate, dammit."
Donny turned back to me, his face from the nose down expressionless under his mask. But I could see the eyes through his goggles, and I didn't like the look in them. Sort of like my cousin Stefan looked after he joined up with the Christers and went to live on Graz Beach.
Emile and the Dutchman Page 18