Zebara had a long burn down his back where a flying piece of metal from the exploding scout had plowed through his flesh. He spent his first eight days aboard the naval cruiser on his belly in an infirmary bed. Lunzie kept him company until he was allowed to get up. She called up musical programs from the well-stocked computer archives or played chess with him. Most of the time, they just talked about everything except pirates. Lunzie found that she had become very fond of the enigmatic heavyworlder.
"I won't be able to give you the protection you'll need once we're back on the ARCT-10," Zebara said one day. "I'd keep you under my protection if I could but I no longer have a ship." He grimaced. Lunzie hastened to check his bandages. The heavyworlder captain waved her away. "I had a message from the EEC. I have number one priority to take the next available scout off the assembly line but if I break my toys, I can't expect a new one right away." He made a rude noise.
Lunzie laughed. "I wouldn't be surprised if they said just exactly that."
Zebara became serious. "I'd like to keep you on my team. The others like you. You fit in well with us. To reduce your immediate vulnerability, I'd advise that you take the next available mission ARCT offers. By the time you come back, I should be able to reclaim you permanently."
"I'd like that, too," Lunzie admitted. "I'd have the best of all worlds, variety but with a set of permanent companions. I think I would have enjoyed myself on Ambrosia. But how do I queue-jump past other specialists waiting to get on the next mission?"
Zebara gave her his predatory grin. "They owe us a favor after our luring a pirate gunship to destruction. You'll get a berth in the next exploration available or I'll start cutting a few Adminstrators down to size." He pounded one massive fist into the other to emphasize his point, if not his methodology.
Chapter Fourteen
Zebara was right about the level of obligation the EEC felt for the team's actions.
"Policy usually dictates non-stress duty for at least four weeks after a planetary mission, Lunzie," the Chief Missions Officer of the ARCT-10 told her in a private meeting in his office, "but if you want to go out right away, under the circumstances, you have my blessing. You're lucky. There's a three-month mission due for a combined geological-xenobiological mission on Ireta. I'll put you on the roster for Ireta. With the medical berth filled by you, there are only two more berths to assign. It leaves in two weeks. That's not much turnaround time. . . ."
"Thank you, sir. It relieves my mind greatly," Lunzie said sincerely. She had come straight to him after that talk with Zebara. The scout captain had depressed the right toggles.
Then she had to give the Missions Officer her own report on the Ambrosia incident, with full details. He kept the recorder on through the entire interview, often jotting additional notes. She felt quite exhausted when he finally excused her.
She later learned that he had interviewed each member of the team as well as the Zaid-Dayan officers. Apparently the fact that the lugger with its cold sleep would-be invasion force had escaped didn't concern him half as much as he was pleased that the overgunned escort had been destroyed. Most of those ARCT-10 Ship-born felt the same way. "One less of those hyped-up gunships makes space that bit more safe for us."
The rest of Zebara's team was given interim ship assignments until a replacement explorer scout ship was commissioned. Lunzie, waiting out the two weeks before she could depart on the Iretan mission, found herself with one or more of the off-duty team, and usually Zebara himself. To her amusement, a whisper circulated that they were "an item." Neither did anything to dispel the notion. In fact, Lunzie was flattered. Zebara was attractive, intelligent, and honest: three qualities she couldn't help but admire. She was duly informed by "interested" friends that heavyworlder courting, though infrequent, was brutal and exhausting. She wasn't sure she needed to find out firsthand.
During his convalescence, Zebara strained his eyes going through ship records, trying to locate doctored files. The rumor of a bacterium on Ambrosia killing the landing party one by one had indeed made the rounds of the ARCT-10 before any report had come back from the Zaid-Dayan, It was arduously traced back to Chacal, Coe's asocial friend in communications. He was taken in for questioning but died the first night in his cell. Although the official view reported it as a suicide, whisper had it that his injuries couldn't have been self-inflicted. Lunzie felt compassion for Coe, who felt himself compromised by his "friend's" covert activities.
"Which gets us no further than we were before," Bringan remarked at Lunzie's farewell party the night before she embarked on the Iretan mission.
"Somebody's got to do something positive about those fardling pirates," Pollili said, glowering about the room.
Lunzie was beginning to wish that she'd never imposed the Quinada personality on Pollili. Some of it was sticking. She devoutly hoped it would have worn off by the time she returned from her three months on Ireta.
At the docking bay while they were waiting for the ARCT-10 to reach the shuttle's window down to Ireta's surface, she had a moment's anxiety as she saw six heavyworlders filing in. Stop that, she told herself. She'd got on just fine with Zebara's heavyworld crewmen. This lot could be similarly sociable, pleasant and interesting.
She concentrated hard on the activity in the docking area for there were several missions being landed in this system. A party of Theks including the ubiquitous Tor were to be set down on the seventh planet from the sun. A large group of Ryxi were awaiting transport to Arrutan's fifth planet which was to be thoroughly investigated as suitable for colonization by their species. Ireta, the fourth planet of the system's third-generation sun, was a good prospect—some said a textbook example—for transuranic ores since it appeared to have been locked into a Mezozoic age. Xenobiological surveying would investigate the myriad life-forms sensed by the high-altitude probe, but that search was to take second place to mining assay studies.
The teams would contact one another at prearranged intervals, and report to the ARCT on a regular basis by means of a satellite beacon set in a fixed orbit perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. The ARCT-10 itself discovered traces of a huge ion storm between the Arrutan system and the next one over. They intended to track and chart its course.
"We'll be back for you before you know it," the deck officer assured them on his com as the Iretan shuttle lifted off and glided out of the landing bay. "Good hunting, my friends."
Ireta was named for the daughter of an FSP councillor who had been consistently supportive in voting funds to the EEC. At first it seemed that the councillor had been paid a significant compliment. Initial probe readouts suggested that Ireta had great potential. There was a hopeful feeling that if Ambrosia was lucky, Ireta would continue the streak. It possessed an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, indigenous plant life that ingested CO2 and spat out oxygen: probe analysis marked significant transuranic ore deposits and countless interesting life forms on the part surveyed, none of which seemed to be intelligent.
A base camp was erected on a stony height and the shuttle positioned on a massive shelf of the local granite. A force-screen dome enclosed the entire camp and the veil constantly erupted in tiny blue sparks where Ireta's insect life destroyed itself in clouds on the electrical matrix. Sufficient smaller domes were set up to afford privacy, a larger one for the messhall-lounge, while the shuttle was turned into a laboratory and specimen storage.
And then there was the extraordinary stench. The air was permeated with hydro-telluride, a fiendish odor like rotting vegetation. One source was a small plant, which grew everywhere, that smelled like garlic gone berserk. No one could escape it. After one good whiff when the shuttle doors had opened on their home for the next three months, everyone dove for nose filters, by no means the most comfortable appliance in a hot, steamy environment. Soiled work clothes were left outside the sleeping quarters. After a while, no amount of cleansing completely removed the stench of Ireta from clothes or boots.
The stink bothered Lunzie for less than
the feeling that she was being covertly watched. This began on their third day dirtside when the two co-leaders, Kai on the geological side and her young acquaintance Varian as xeno, passed out assignments.
The remainder of the team was a mixed bag. Lunzie knew no one else well but several of the others by sight. Zebara had personally checked the records of everyone assigned to that mission and she'd been delighted to learn that Kai as well as Varian and a man named Triv were Disciples. She was as surprised as Kai and Varian when three children had been included for dirtside experience on this mission. Bonnard, an active ten-year-old, was the son of the ARCT-10's third officer. The gen was that she was probably glad to have him out of her hair while the ARCT explored the ion storm. Cleiti and Terilla, two girls a year younger than Bonnard, were more docile and proved eager to help.
Kai and Varian had both tried to set the children aside.
"That's an unexplored planet," Kai had protested to the mission officer. "This mission could be dangerous. It's no place for children."
Lunzie was not proof against the crushing disappointment in the young faces. There would be a force-shielded camp: there were plenty of adults to supervise their activities. "Oh, why not? Ireta's been benchmarked. No planet is ever completely safe but it shouldn't be too dangerous for a short term."
"If," Kai had emphasized that, holding up a warning finger at the children, "they act responsibly! Most important of all, never go outside the camp without an adult."
"We won't!" the youngsters chorused.
"We'll count on that promise," Kai told them, adult to adult. "It isn't uncommon for children to join a mission," he said to the others. "We can use the extra hands if we're to get everything done."
"We'll help, we'll help!" the girls had chorused. "We've never been on a planet before," Bonnard had added wistfully.
The last-minute inclusion of the children was curiously comforting to Lunzie: she'd missed so much of Fiona's childhood that she looked forward to their company. Lunzie preferred making new acquaintances, for strangers wouldn't know any details of her life. The team leaders, of course, knew that she had experienced cold sleep lags, for those were on her file. Varian considered her somewhat mysterious.
Gaber was the team cartographer and endlessly complained about the primitive facilities and noxious conditions. Lunzie usually greeted these outpourings with raised eyebrows. After the scout ship on Ambrosia, their quarters, not to mention the privacy of a separate small dwelling, seemed positively elaborate. However, Lunzie was willing to tolerate Gaber because he had been able to achieve long-term (for an ephemeral) friendships with the oldest Theks on the ARCT-10 and she would divert his complaints to the relationships which fascinated her. She assisted Kai in making certain that the cartographer remembered to wear his force-belt and other safety equipment. That much was out of pure selfishness on Lunzie's part, for Gaber had to be constantly treated for insect bites and minor lacerations.
Trizein was a xenobiologist whose infectious enthusiasm made him popular with everyone, especially the youngsters, as he would patiently answer their many questions. Trizein applied the same amazing energy to his work though he was absentminded about safety precautions. Lunzie would be assisting him from time to time and had no problem with that duty.
Dimenon and Margit were Kai's senior geologists who would locate Ireta's deposits of useful minerals. They were specifically hoping for transuranics like plutonium which paid the biggest bonuses. Ireta's preliminary scan clearly displayed large deposits of radioactivity. Dimenon's crew was eager to get to work laying detective cores. Triv and Aulia and three of the heavyworlders, Bakkun, Berru and Tanegli, completed the geologists, while Portegin would set up the core-receiver screen and computer analysis.
Lunzie made no immediate efforts to approach the six heavyworlders. They didn't seem to mix with the lightweighters as easily as Zebara, Dondara and Pollili. The captain had instilled his team with his own democratic, bootstrapping ideals and, while on the ARCT-10, they had not limited their acquaintances to heavyworlders.
Paskutti, the security officer, was of the sullen, chip-on-the-shoulder type who would prefer a ghetto in the midst of an otherwise tolerant society. Lunzie wasn't sure if he was just sullen or stupid, but he ruled the female Tardma's every action. Lunzie refused to let him worry her. Her time with Zebara had shown that the attitude problem was theirs, not hers. Fortunately, as time passed Tanegli and another heavyworlder named Divisti became more sociable though they remained more distant with lightweights than Lunzie's comrades on Zebara's team had been. Bakkun and Berru were a recent pairing and it was understandable if they were much engrossed in each other.
Lunzie could not quite dismiss her lingering anxieties: Orlig's death still haunted her. Chacal, who had proved to be a spy, could never have strangled the heavyworlder. Knoradel and Birra, the Ryxi, when questioned, had both adamantly insisted that Lunzie had insulted Birra and then attacked Knoradel, who had gone to her assistance. Birra had left with the Ryxi settlers and Knoradel transferred off the ARCT-10.
Far from being a wonderland, Ireta's landscape became downright depressing after the novelty of it wore off. The purple-green and blue-green growth overhung the camp on every side. What looked like a flat, grassy meadow beckoning to the explorer usually turned out to be a miry swamp. The fauna was far more dangerous than any Lunzie had seen on Ambrosia or on any of the planets she had so far visited. Some of the life-forms were monstrous.
The first sled reconnaissance flights sighted large bodies crashing through the thick green jungle growth but, at first, no images were recorded, just vast shadowy forms. When at last Varian's team saw examples of Ireta's native life, they got quite a shock. The creatures were huge, ranging from a mere four meters to over thirty meters in length. One long-necked, slow-moving swamp herbivore was probably longer, but it hardly ever emerged from the marsh where it fed, so that the length of its tail was still in dispute.
Lunzie watched the xenob films with disbelief. Nothing real could be that big. It could squash a human being in passing, even a heavyworlder, and never notice. Small life there was in plenty, too. Lunzie held morning and evening surgeries to treat insect bites. The worst of them was a stinging insect which left huge welts but the most insidious was a leechlike bloodsucker. Everyone activated their personal force-screens outside the camp compound.
Instead of a second balmy paradise like Ambrosia, Ireta had more nasty surprises and anomalies than Purgatory. Stunners were issued to the geology and xeno teams although Varian made far more use of telltale taggers, marking the native life-forms with paint guns trying to amass population figures. Anyone out on foot wore his lift-belt, to remove himself quickly from the scene of trouble.
Lunzie found it curious that there were so many parasites with a taste for red, iron-based blood, when the first specimens of the marine life forms which Varian or Divisti brought in to be examined proved to have a much thinner, watery fluid in their systems. To test the planet for viability, foragers were sent out for specimens of fruits and plants to test and catalog. More than curiosity prompted that for it was always wise to supplement food stocks from indigenous sources in case the EV ship didn't get back on time. In this task, the children were useful, though they were always accompanied by an adult, often Lunzie, frequently Divisti who was a horticulturist. Whenever she thought about the ion storm which the ARCT-10 was chasing, Lunzie pressed herself to find safe sources of indigenous foodstuffs. Then she chided herself for half believing her "Jonah" reputation. That had been broken by the fortuitous outcome of the Ambrosia incident.
Because her skills did not include mapping or prospecting, Lunzie took up the duties of camp quartermaster. She spent hours experimenting with the local foods when she wasn't overseeing the children's lessons or doing her Discipline exercises. She didn't mind being the camp cook for it was her first opportunity to prepare food by hand since she had left Tee. Making tempting meals out of synth-swill and the malodorous native plants prov
ided her with quite a challenge.
Lunzie and Trizein also combined their skills to create a nutritious green pulp from local vines that filled all the basic daily requirements. On the one hand, the pulp was an extremely healthful meal. On the other, it tasted horrible. Since she had concocted it, Lunzie bravely ate her share but after the first sampling no one else would eat it except the heavy-worlders.
"They," Varian declared, "would eat anything."
Lunzie managed a chagrined smile. "My future efforts will be better, I promise. Just getting the hang of it."
"If you could just neutralize the hydro-telluride," Varian said. "Of course, we can always eat grass like the herbivores. D'you know, it doesn't stink?"
"Humans can't digest that much grass fiber."
On one of their supervised "foragings," the children had spotted a shy, hip-high, brown-furred beast in the ferny peat bogs. All their efforts to capture one of the "cute" animals before an adult could follow the active children, were circumvented by the quadrupeds' native caution. Varian found that odd since there was no reason for the little animals to fear bipeds. Then a wounded herbivore too slow to escape with the others was captured. A pen was constructed outside the camp for Varian to tend and observe the creature. On the next trip, Varian brought back one very small specimen of a furry quadruped breed. It had been orphaned and would have fallen prey to the larger carnivores.
The two creatures proved to compound Ireta's anomalies. Trizein had been dissecting clear-ichored marine creatures, styled fringes because of their shape. The large herbivore, savagely gouged in the flank, was red-blooded. Trizein was amazed that two such diverse species would have evolved on the same planet. Trizein could find no precedents to explain red-blooded, pentadactyl animals and ichor-circulating marine creatures cohabiting. The anomaly didn't fit the genetic blueprint for the planet. He spent hours trying to reconcile the diversities. He requested tissue samples from any big creature Varian's team could catch, both carnivore and herbivore, and he wanted specimens of marine and insect life. He seemed to be constantly in the shuttle lab, except when Lunzie hauled him out to eat his meals. He'd have forgotten that minor human requirement if she'd let him.
The Death of Sleep Page 31