I don't think I was ever so pleased to see anyone in my whole life. It must have shown, because as I ran to her side she shot me a funny look and said, "What's the good news?"
I don't think she cared whether I answered or not. I was sure pleased to be with her, but from the look of it she wasn't all that happy to see me. She turned to Danny Shaker without waiting for my reply.
"What's this, Captain? You never told me that you were bringing Jay with you. I'm not sure this place is safe."
"Safer for him than the Cuchulain, when I'm not there. I'll vouch for that." And, when she stared at him, "You know my crew, Doctor. They're hardworking and they're well-seasoned. But they're a rough lot, and one thing no spacer will stand is a spy. I'm sorry to tell you that the crewmen are convinced that Jay has been spying on them. Crawling through the air supply system, snooping around, listening in on private conversations."
"Nonsense! Wriggling along air pipes? I'm sure he did no such thing." Doctor Eileen turned back to me. "Did you, Jay?"
"Well . . . I did—but it wasn't like that at all. You see, I heard them talking about women—"
"And when did spacers ever talk about anything else?" Shaker glanced across at the four crew, who had slumped down on the soft earth half a dozen paces away. He stepped closer to Eileen Xavier and lowered his voice. "I'm going to be honest with you, Doctor, even though you'll maybe think the less of me for it. Privacy in space is hard to come by, and spying on your shipmates is one of the very worst things you can do."
"But I wasn't—"
"Shush, Jay." Doctor Eileen waved her hand, but she didn't look at me.
"They thought you were spying," Danny Shaker said, "and that's what matters. The way the men were talking after they found Jay in the air ducts, that was real ugly."
"But you were the one—"
"Jay!"
It was useless, she would believe him more than she would me.
"Some were even suggesting space-walking him." Shaker shook his head ruefully. "I had trouble controlling them—as Jay himself can tell you. And I certainly wasn't sure enough of myself to leave him behind when I came down here. I brought him along for his own safety."
It was ridiculous. But the odd thing is that I almost believed it myself, the way Danny Shaker said it. Doctor Eileen certainly did. She sighed, and shook her head.
"Jay, I'm sure you didn't mean any harm. But you should have known better. What now, Captain Shaker?"
"A little breathing space, I think, to let the crew back on board calm down. Jay ought to stay here for a day or two. And if you don't mind, I'd like to ask one favor of you."
"Anything within reason."
"It's the men. Part of the reason they're so angry has nothing to do with Jay's snooping. He was quite right, you see, the crew have been talking about women—because they've got the odd notion in their heads that was why you came here in the first place."
"That's more than odd. It's crazy."
"I know. But somehow the word's been going around the ship that this little worldlet has women on it. Living, human women. Young women."
"Then that rules me out. Your crew certainly entertains some bizarre ideas, Captain."
"They do. But that won't change just because you or I wish it. So this is the favor I'm asking: Will you let some of my crew roam around here for a day or so? Then they'll find nothing, and go back and tell their mates that they saw for themselves and there's nothing hidden. After that, you and your professors can go on exploring for as long as you like."
"Which won't be for more than another hour, the way things have been going. This is an artificial world, no doubt of it, but we've found nothing. Nothing to suggest that it was ever a Godspeed Base, I mean, and nothing to hint that it ever had anything to do with one." Doctor Eileen snorted. "You know, if you hadn't come down I was thinking of going back to the Cuchulain anyway, sitting down, and going over everything that's happened one more time to try to make sense of it."
"Perfect. Do it. The crew would like that, too, knowing you weren't trying to steer them away from anything."
"Wait a minute, though. Walter Hamilton says he wants to stay even if the rest of us go back. This place seems to have nothing to do with a Godspeed Base, but it does date back to before the Isolation, and it has its own unique biology. Hamilton wants to study it."
"Tell him to study away, Doctor, and welcome to it. So long as he doesn't try to advise my men where to go and not to go. I'll tell the crew to let him wander where he likes."
"And I'll tell Jim Swift and Duncan to get ready. They're back at the other cargo beetle."
She pointed up across the thicket of plants. She was too short to see over them.
"What about me!" I said.
"You can come with—" But Doctor Eileen paused and raised her eyebrows at Danny Shaker.
"Not a good idea." He was shaking his head. "Without me on the Cuchulain—or even with me . . . why, that's the whole reason I brought him. Jay should stay here. But don't worry, Doctor. The men here are the pick of the bunch. He'll be safe with us. I pledge my life on it."
I wanted to shout, but what about my life? I didn't, though. It would have been pointless. Doctor Eileen was convinced that I had been acting like a moron on the Cuchulain, and she thought that Dan Shaker was just worried about my safety.
As she started back along a trail of flattened plants, I hurried along after her. I just had to talk to her some more. But as we went I had another thought.
Suppose she believed every word that I said. Even though Danny Shaker carried no weapon himself, his men all had them. He had told me that Doctor Eileen's group had guns and knives, too, but I saw no sign of one on her. If Danny Shaker wanted to, he could just order his men (the "pick of the bunch"!—who'd pick Sean Wilgus or Joe Munroe for anything but dirty work?) to kill me, and kill Doctor Eileen, and kill all the rest of our party.
That's the sort of gloomy thought you have when you're struggling along head-down through tall leafy plants that catch you as you go, and you know that just behind you there are men who have already said they'd be more than pleased to chuck you out of an airlock into naked space.
I'll take those thoughts though, anytime, over the ones that I had ten minutes later; I'm talking about the ones that came as I stood at Walter Hamilton's side with Danny Shaker and his men just behind me, and watched the cargo beetle rise up, ease its way toward the softly glowing shield that surrounded Paddy's Fortune, and quietly disappear. Doctor Eileen, Jim Swift, and Uncle Duncan were all on board. I had tried one more time to talk to her, and she wouldn't even listen.
As the ship vanished beyond the translucent shield, my thoughts lurched from uneasiness to cold terror. Even now, I don't like to recall them.
CHAPTER 17
I never did like Walter Hamilton. I suppose it all goes back to what Danny Shaker told me: You are defined not so much by what you are, as by the way that you are treated by other people.
Doctor Eileen might occasionally pat me on the head or ruffle my hair, but she did it sort of absentmindedly, without thinking. And although I hated it, in a way she had the right to do it because she had been around me ever since I was born.
Walter Hamilton was different. He hardly knew me, but he acted as though I was a nothing. He didn't talk to me, he talked through me.
I would ask him a simple question (though not often after the first few days); something like, "Dr. Hamilton, you said that Erin's contact with other stars was cut off right at the time of Isolation. But Dr. Swift said you don't need a Godspeed Drive to transmit radio signals. Why didn't people send those from star to star?"
And he would suck in his pimply cheeks, and sniff, and stare at nothing. Then he'd come out with something like, "Let us not be quite so crushingly naive. An interstellar subluminal communications network may well have preceded the existence of the superluminal Godspeed Drive. However, once the latter had been fully established, the obsolescence of the former was guaranteed. And of course,
following the cataclysm of Isolation the presumed problems of basic civilization survival totally inhibited subluminal communications redevelopment."
And I would think (but not say), Ugh!
Yet both Jim Swift and Doctor Eileen had told me that Walter Hamilton was a serious and competent research worker, someone who really cared about his subject. I didn't argue. So far as I was concerned she could have my share of him. For most of the trip out to the Maze I had done my best to avoid the man.
But now, on Paddy's Fortune, he was the closest thing to a friend that I had. I must say, the competition was not great: Danny Shaker, who said he was my friend, and O'Rourke, Doonan, Munroe, and Wilgus, who made it perfectly clear that they were no such thing.
We all stood in silence, watching the cargo beetle lift off. Danny Shaker waited until it had eased its way beyond the atmospheric shield and was out of sight, then he turned to Patrick O'Rourke.
"Well, you asked for it, boyo, and now you've got it. You can go anywhere, poke into anything you find."
The four crewmen laughed, and O'Rourke said, "You can sure count on that, Chief—if I can find anything to poke into."
Shaker nodded. "Go ahead, then. I've got other things to do. I'll be at the cargo beetle if you need me. I expect your report in four or five hours."
Without another word he turned and headed into the tall plants, moving along a faint line of disturbance that showed the way to the cargo beetle that we had arrived in. The vegetation sprang into position as soon as he had pushed through. I was starting right after him when Sean Wilgus moved to block my path.
"Not you," he said softly. "You stay with us." He lifted a hand to his belt.
"Now then. First things first." Patrick O'Rourke stepped in front of Wilgus. "You're too hasty, Sean, as usual. Don't forget what we came for." He turned toward Walter Hamilton. "You there. You've been here for a while. Are there any breaks in all this mess of plants?"
Not "Dr. Hamilton," you see, but "You there." Danny Shaker wouldn't have allowed such rudeness, only he wasn't around to stop it.
Hamilton glared at O'Rourke, but he answered quickly enough, and in a tone not designed to please. "If you'd bothered to use the eyes in your head on the way down, you'd know there are no totally cleared areas. But there are certain regions, like the one where we are presently standing, at which the natural climax species attain a reduced height. They seem to be associated with deep, narrow fissures in the surface. We found a dozen or more of those, up to ten meters deep and with more vegetation at the bottom of them. And then there are the trails."
"Aha!" That was Sean Wilgus. He came around to face O'Rourke. "I told you they'd been holding out on us. Trails! For people!" He swung to face Hamilton. "Right?"
The scientist stared down his nose at him, if you can do that to somebody taller than you are. "Don't sound like a bigger fool than you are. There are no people on this world. The trails are made by the frequent passage of small animals."
"How do you know?"
"There couldn't be people here. This world isn't big enough to support them."
"Just like it couldn't possibly have an atmosphere, according to all you big experts. But it has one." Wilgus was stepping closer to Hamilton. Patrick O'Rourke pushed in between them.
"Either there are or there aren't," he growled. "People, I mean. I told you, Sean Wilgus, calm down. That's what we're here for, to stay cool and see for ourselves. Make one of your wild moves, and the chief will skin you when we get back to him—aye, and me, too, for letting you do it. This isn't a big planetoid. Let's get down to finding our own answers."
O'Rourke was so big and broad that Walter Hamilton and Sean Wilgus could hardly see each other around him. For the moment it put an end to their argument. The four crewmen from the Cuchulain ignored Hamilton and me and started to organize their own search effort.
What they decided was simple-minded, but it ought to work. They would line up thirty or so paces apart, close enough to be in easy earshot, and walk around Paddy's Fortune in the direction of the setting sun. A "day" on the planetoid was a couple of hours, but on the other hand its circumference was only five or six kilometers. The walkers would catch up with the sun. By the time they had walked until Maveen was twice overhead, they would have performed more than one full circuit of the world. At that point they would either have found something interesting, or they would have found nothing. They could perform another sweep, farther north or south, or they might try something completely different.
No one suggested a role for me or Walter Hamilton. We trailed along after them, the two of us walking one behind the other in the path of flattened vegetation left by Sean Wilgus. I was in front, and I gradually slowed our pace so that we lagged farther and farther behind the crewman. I wanted to tell Walter Hamilton what Doctor Eileen had refused to hear: the full details of everything that I had heard when I was hidden on the Cuchulain.
I ought to have known better. If Doctor Eileen, who knew me so well, found it impossible to believe me, what chance did I have with a near-stranger?
I talked for maybe five minutes. Finally Hamilton caught up with me and pushed past, saying as he went, "Would you for God's sake shut up! It's hard enough to think without your blathering. And I've got plenty to think about."
He hadn't even been listening! But then he started, about the observed ecology of the planetoid, and how it all had to balance, and how anybody with half a brain and a first course in population dynamics would realize that the biggest animal you could find on Paddy's Fortune would mass no more than a mouse, or at absolute maximum a small miniver, and Sean Wilgus and anyone else who talked of people on this worldlet had to be morons.
Then all of a sudden he stopped dead, and said, "For the love of Kevin! A natural world's balance. But of course it can't possess any such thing." He went down to one knee on the muddy ground, and pulled a little calculator and an electronic book from his pocket.
"What is it?" I said. "What have you found?"
"I told you, shut up," he muttered. "I've got to think." He ignored me as he did a whole bunch of calculations, then started to key new entries into his book.
I wanted to tell him that nobody could tell me to shut up, and I had plenty to think about, too. But I didn't want to make him angrier than he already seemed to be. Although he wasn't my choice of company, whatever he did he wouldn't kill me. I couldn't say that of any of the others. And Hamilton had a gun at his belt, a white-handled pistol that he could use if anyone tried violence.
Meanwhile he was back on his feet again, and moving fast. We were closing on the line of four crewmen. I knew that was the case, because although we were again in the middle of tall, scrubby bushes and I couldn't see anything but leaves and twigs and soggy black earth—how did it stay so damp, without rain?—I heard voices ahead.
Angry voices. Everyone was cursing. The crew had arrived on Paddy's Fortune looking for women, but what they had found so far was mostly mud. They had stopped for a rest, calling to each other to compare loud and angry notes.
Walter Hamilton went up to Sean Wilgus and waved the electronic book in his face. "Listen to me," he said.
Wilgus had his right thumb in his mouth. He was squatting down, peering along a low archway that ran through the tight-leaved plants, and he took no notice of Hamilton.
With loud complaints coming in from all sides, that was not too surprising. The only person who wasn't shouting was Robert Doonan, and that was probably because he was in such bad physical shape that he needed all his energy just to walk and breathe. But Patrick O'Rourke, off to the left, had encountered a patch of thornbush, with spines hard and sharp enough to draw blood. Joseph Munroe, next in the line, had not been looking where he set his feet. He had stepped into one of the little pools. It turned out that it was not so much a pool as a deep pothole, only a few feet across but as deep as it was wide, and Munroe had plunged into cold water up to his crotch.
Sean Wilgus himself had just crossed a little tr
ail and seen a brown thing like a small kangaroo rat jumping along it. He had tried to grab it as it passed, but it had bitten him on the thumb and got away.
If he had been in a bad mood before the search began, he was in a worse one now. He had taken his gun from his belt, and he was aiming it along the dark tunnel.
Walter Hamilton stopped waving his book and crouched down at Wilgus's side. "What the devil do you think you're doing?"
Wilgus did not even look up. "I'm waiting. Next time I see some damned jumping thing, I shoot. I'll teach that son of a bitch."
"You will not! This is an unexplored world, a whole new balance of nature. You are doing too much damage already, smashing a way through the plants."
I admired Walter Hamilton's courage in taking on Sean Wilgus, even if the balance of nature on Paddy's Fortune didn't seem like a big deal to me. But I don't know if Wilgus was even listening. He certainly took no notice. As we watched he crouched lower, sighted along his gun, and fired twice. There was a high-pitched sound, somewhere between a bark and a scream of pain, from farther along the tunnel.
"Got it!" Wilgus shouted.
Walter Hamilton produced his own high-pitched sound, a cry of outrage and disbelief. He reached down with one hand, grabbed the shoulder of Sean Wilgus, and lifted. In the low gravity of Paddy's Fortune, Wilgus came easily up into the air, still in his crouched position.
"You will stop that!" Hamilton was stammering in his fury. "There will be no more killing of native life. Do you hear me? None! Or I will—I will report you to Erin's central council."
If Hamilton had left his threat at that, Sean Wilgus might have been too busy laughing to do anything else. Threatening a spacer with a pack of Erin bureaucrats was no way to command respect.
But Walter Hamilton did something much more provoking. He released his hold on Sean Wilgus's shoulder, and reached for the white-handled gun at his own belt.
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