The Mystery of Ireta

by Anne McCaffrey

  In fact, Portegin was already puzzling over the print-out when Kai and Gaber strode into the chart dome.

  “Kai, we’ve got some crazy echo on the seismic . . . what’s this?”

  “One of those echoes.”

  Portegin, his lean face settling into lines of dismay, weighed the device in his hand, peered at it, turning it round and round, end for end, before he looked with intense accusation at Kai.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Approximately here,” said Kai, pointing to the gap in the line of old echoes on the screen.

  “We haven’t cored that area yet, boss.”

  “I know.”

  “But, boss, this is Thek manufacture. I’d swear it.”

  Margit, who’d been filling in her report, came over to the two men. She took the core from Portegin’s unresisting hand.

  “It feels heavier. And this crystal looks almost dead.” She regarded Kai for an explanation.

  He shrugged. “Gaber saw the echoes on the recorder, thought you’d mucked it up, Portegin . . .” He grinned as the mechanic growled at the cartographer. “But I decided we’d better check. This was what we found.”

  Margit made a guttural noise, deep in her throat, of disgust and irritation. “You mean, we’ve spent hours doing what has been done! You wit-heads could have saved us time and useless energy by rigging that screen right off.”

  “According to our computer banks, this planet had never been surveyed,” Kai said in a soothing drawl.

  “Well, obviously it has been.” Margit glowered at the screen. “And you know, we’ve paralleled their line almost perfectly. Not bad for a first working expedition, is it,” she added, talking herself into a better frame of mind. “Hey,” she said in a much louder, less happy tone of voice, “no wonder we couldn’t find anything worth the looking. It’d been got already. How far does the old survey coring go?”

  “Stops at the edge of the shield, my dear girl,” said Portegin, “and now that we know from the old cores where the shield ends, we can start hitting some pay dirt for a change. I don’t think we’ve done too much duplication—except perhaps in the north and northeast.”

  Kai thanked the compassionate computer that had put those two on this team with him—they might complain a bit, but they’d already talked themselves into a positive frame over the duplicated effort.

  “I feel a lot better now, knowing there was a good reason we couldn’t find any pay dirt at all!” Margit studied the screen and then pointed at several areas. “There’s nothing here and here. Should be!”

  “Signals are very faint,” Portegin said. “Some may have just given up the ghost. If everything else there is worked out, is there any point in setting new cores, Kai?”

  “None.”

  Aulia and Dimenon entered the cartography dome, closely followed by the other four geologists.

  “Guess what Kai and Gaber found?” Margit asked. Expressions of surprise and displeasure greeted her question. “They found out why we couldn’t find anything . . . yet!”

  So Kai and Gaber repeated the account of their afternoon’s activities, and the relief that spread throughout the room was reassuring to the team leader. Everyone had a turn at examining the old device, comparing it with those they were setting, joking about ghosts and echoes.

  “We can set up secondary camps right on the edges of the shield,” Triv was saying excitedly. “Can we start tomorrow, Kai?”

  “Surely, I’ll reassign everyone to more profitable areas hopefully. Let me work it out. And Bakkun, I’ll be out with you tomorrow.”

  The meal gong sounded, reverberating under the force-screen, so he dismissed them all, staying behind briefly to reschedule flights for the next day. They would have to set up secondary camps, as Triv suggested, but Kai wasn’t all that keen to dissipate their complement. Varian hadn’t yet had a chance to catalogue the worst of the predators and, despite the personal force-screens, a team could be caught too far away for help to arrive in time. That predator he’d seen today wouldn’t be stopped by a puny personal force-screen. He also couldn’t hold the teams back from finding deposits; they got credit bonuses based on the assays of their individual discoveries. That was one reason why the lack of finds so far had had such a serious effect on their morale. He couldn’t risk a further check to their spirits and ambitions. He also couldn’t risk sending them out against predators like those he’d seen today. So he must have a chat with Varian.

  He emerged into an insect-noisy night. The force-screen, arcing over the encampment, was aglow with blue spits of light as nocturnal creatures tried to reach the tantalizing floodlights which illuminated the compound.

  Had that other survey party, millennia ago, camped here? Would another group, millennia hence, return when his cores emitted shallow ghost blips on another screen?

  Had they really been planted? The disturbing thought bobbed to the surface of his reflections, much as the aquatic monsters had been triggered by the shadow of the sled over the water. He tried to push down the notion. Had one of the others been tipped off secretly? Varian? No, as co-leader she was the least likely to have been informed. Tanegli? And was that why he was so willing to search out edible fruits? No, Tanegli was a sound man, but not the sort to be given private instructions while the team leaders were keyed out.

  Not quite reassured within his own mind, Kai decided that congenial company would disrupt the uneasy tenor of his thoughts and he strode more purposefully toward the largest dome and his meal.

  3

  VARIAN was diverted by Kai’s reception of the fruit when it was served as the evening meal. Divisti and Lungie had collaborated, and the table was spread with the fruit in its natural form, sliced into green juicy portions; fruit synthesized as a paste, reinforced with nutrients and vitamins; fruit added to the subsistence proteins; stewed fruit, dried fruit. Kai fastidiously tasted a minute piece of the fresh sliced fruit, smiled, made polite noises and finished his meal with the paste. Then he complained of a metallic aftertaste.

  “That’s the additives. There’s no aftertaste with the fresh fruit,” Varian told him, suppressing a mixture of annoyance at his conservative tastes and amusement at his reaction. The ship-bred were wary of anything in its natural form.

  “Why cultivate a taste for something I can’t indulge?” Kai asked when she tried to get him to eat more of the fresh fruit.

  “Why not indulge yourself a little, while you have the chance? Besides,” she added, “once you have the taste, you can program it into any synthesizer and duplicate it on shipboard to your heart’s content.”

  “A point.”

  Varian had decided some time ago that it was just these little ship-evolved differences that fascinated her about Kai. He wasn’t physically that much different from the attractive young men she’d known on the various planets of her childhood and during early specialist’s training. If anything, Kai had kept himself more physically fit in the EV’s various humanoid sports facilities than his planet-based contemporaries. He had a lean, wiry frame, slightly taller than average, taller than herself, and she was not rated short on any normal Earth-type planet, being 1.75 meters tall. More important to her in Kai than mere handsomeness, which he had, was the strength in his face, the sparkle of humor in his brown eyes and the inner serenity that had commended him when they’d met in the EV’s humanoid dining area. She’d quickly recognized the aura of Discipline about him and had been overwhelmingly relieved that he was a Disciple and amused that his having passed the Training mattered to her on such short acquaintance. She’d accepted Discipline not that long ago herself, proud of her achievement and determined to suppress that pride, however much it meant that she could continue to advance in FSP service. A leader had to have Discipline since it was the only personal defense against other humanoids permitted by FSP and EEC, and of inestimable value in emergency situations.

  Varian had been quite willing to develop a relationship with Kai and had privately done a good bi
t of crowing when she’d unexpectedly been tapped as a xenob on his geology expedition to Ireta.

  “And what’s this I hear? This planet’s been raped before?”

  “The shield land mass we’re on has certainly been stripped,” Kai replied, grinning a little at her blunt phrase. “Portegin only got the seismic screen rigged last night. Gaber thought it was malfunctioning because we got echoes where we’d cored, and faint impulses where we hadn’t. So I did a deccod and found an old, old core.”

  Varian had already heard many of the details. “We were informed during our briefing on shipboard that the system had been in storage a long time.”

  “Well, there certainly was no mention made of a previous geological survey.”

  “True,” and Varian looked thoughtfully at a vague middle distance as she drawled out the affirmative. There had been sort of a last minute rush to assemble this Iretan expedition, though the Theks and Ryxi had been scheduled for their respective planets for some months. “My team was sure added in a hurry. After they got print-outs of life forms from the probe scan.”

  “With all due respect, co-leader, the inclusion of your team doesn’t puzzle me as much as no mention of a previous coring.”

  “I quite appreciate that. How old d’you think the cores are?”

  “Too scorching old for my liking, Varian. The lines end with the stable shield area!”

  Varian drew breath in a whistle. “Kai, that would mean millions of years. Could even a Thek-manufactured device last that long?”

  “Who knows? C’mon, you can have a look at the device yourself. Then I’ve some tapes to play for you that I think you’ll like.”

  “Those flying things Gaber was raving about?”

  “Among others.”

  “Sure you won’t have one more piece of fresh fruit?” She couldn’t resist teasing him.

  Kai gave her a fleetingly irritated look, then grinned. He had an engaging smile, she thought, and not for the first time. They’d seen a good deal of each other in the planning stages but far too little now that they had to deal with their separate responsibilities.

  “I’ve had a sufficiency to eat, thank you, Varian.”

  “And I’m a glutton, huh?” But she snatched up one more slice from the platter. “What are these avians like? I don’t trust Gaber’s observations.”

  “They’re golden-furred and I’d hazard that they’re intelligent. Curiosity occurs only with intelligence, doesn’t it?”

  “Generally, yes. Intelligent fliers? Raking ramjets, this’ll throw the Ryxi into loops.” Varian crowed with delight. “Where’d you encounter them?”

  “I went to see those colored lakes of Berru’s and startled them out of the cliffs. By the way, the lakes harbor monsters every bit as big and dangerous as those swamp dwellers we saw this morning.”

  “This planet goes in for big things . . .”

  “Big puzzles, too.” They had entered the cartography dome now and Kai picked up the old core and handed it to her. “Here’s my latest.”

  Varian hefted it in the palm of one hand. She saw another core on the table. “Is this one of yours?”

  Kai looked up from the tape canisters he was sorting through and nodded.

  Side by side, she could see the slight differences in circumference, length and weight.

  “Does this previous coring explain why you’ve had so little luck in finding any ores?”

  “Yes. The shield land has been stripped. My gang was relieved to know there was a good reason—this planet ought to be full of pay dirt. Now, however, we’ll have to set up secondary camps in the new fold mountains . . .”

  “Secondary camps? Kai, that isn’t safe. Even if the worst you’d have to content with is fang-face . . .”

  “Fang-face?”

  “Well, that’s what I call whatever chewed a piece off Mabel’s flank.”

  “Mabel?”

  “Must you keep repeating me? I find it a lot easier to name ’em than to keep calling ’em ‘herbivore number one’ or ‘predator with teeth A.’ ”

  “I didn’t know you’d seen the predator?”

  “I haven’t. I can postulate from his tooth marks . . .”

  “Would this be fang-face?” asked Kai as the tapes he and Gaber had made that afternoon began to appear on the viewing screen. He punched a hold on the one shot they’d had of the predator’s head.

  Varian let out a squeak as she got a good look at the toothy, snarling head, the angry little eyes upturned to the sled as the creature had flashed across the small clearing.

  “Yes, that could be the villain. Six meters in the shoulder, too. You couldn’t set up secondary camps that would keep him out. He could flatten you even with a couple of force-screen belts on you. No, I wouldn’t advise secondary camps until we find out how far these sweethearts range.”

  “We could move the shuttle . . .”

  “Not until Trizein has completed his current run of experiments. And why move? Are we low on power for travel?”

  “No, but I was considering the commutation time. Cuts down effective time in the field.”

  “True. Frankly, Kai, I’d prefer to scout an area before you set up a secondary camp. Even those herbivores like Mabel, useless as they are, could be dangerous stampeding from a fang-face. However,” she added, seeing he was adamant, “every animal in creation is afraid of something. I’ll figure out what animals you’d have to contend with in an area and we can set up some safeguards around, say, one larger, suitably situated secondary camp and your field teams would be relatively safe . . .”

  “You don’t sound certain.”

  “I’m not certain about anything on this crazy planet, Kai. And your discovery today only makes my uncertainty more . . .” she grinned, “certain!”

  He laughed.

  She took one more long appraising look at the predator’s rows of needle-sharp teeth and then asked Kai to roll the tape. “Sure glad you were aloft when you met that fellow. Gaber managed to tag him? That’ll help estimate his territorial sway. Oh, I say, aren’t they lovely!”

  The golden fliers were on the screen, and while it might have been the juxtaposition to the preceding predator, they seemed so benign and graceful.

  “Oh, hold that frame, Kai, please!” Varian gestured for him to go back on the tape until she had the frame of the creature, suspended in its flight, its crested head slightly turned toward the camera so that both golden-colored eyes were visible.

  “Yes, I’d agree that it’s intelligent. Is that a pouch under its beak for storing fish? And it’s a glider, I think. Roll it, Kai, I want to see if that wing can rotate. Yes, see, there! As it veers away. Yes, yes. Much more advanced than that carrion-eater this morning. Why is so much of our reaction dependent on the eye of a creature?” She looked up at Kai, whose brown eyes widened with surprise.

  “Eye?”

  “Yes. The eyes of that little mammal today . . . I couldn’t have left it behind, Kai, short of mutiny, once I’d seen the frightened lost confusion in its eyes. Much less the entreaty in Bonnard’s and Cleiti’s. Those swamp horrors, they had tiny eyes, in comparison to their skull shape . . . wicked, beady, hungry eyes.” Varian shuddered in recall. “And that new predator’s eyes . . . fang-face has a wicked appetite. Of course, it isn’t a hard and fast rule—the Galormis were a hideous example of camouflaged intent. . . .”

  “You were on that expedition?”

  Varian made a face. “Yes, I was a very junior member on the team at Aldebaran 4 when those monsters were encountered. My first assignment out of xenoveterinary college. They had soft eyes, mind you,”—eyes which occasionally still haunted her sleep—“mild-looking creatures, too, softish, perfectly amenable until full dark—then—whammie!”

  “Nocturnal feeders—”

  “Bleeders! Sucked the blood and then chewed the flesh . . . like what’s been feeding on Mabel . . . no, it couldn’t be Galormis. Teeth are too big.”

  “Why on earth call it Mabel?”


  “Knew someone like her once, a walking appetite, hating the world around her, suspicious and constantly confused. Not much intelligence.”

  “What would you name the avian?”

  “I don’t know,” she said after regarding the furry face. “It isn’t easy until you’ve actually met the creature. But this species has intelligence and personality. I want to see more of them!”

  “Thought you would. Although we couldn’t tag them. They moved too fast. Kept up with the sled at cruising speed.”

  “Very good.” A yawn caught her unawares. “All this fresh air, chasing wounded animals to doctor them what don’t wish to be helped.” She stroked his cheek and gave him a regretful smile of apology. “I’m going to bed. And you ought to, too, co-leader. Sleep on our puzzles. Maybe sleep’ll solve ’em .”

  Kai could have wished it had, but he woke the next morning feeling refreshed, and the teams, when assembled, were in such good spirits that his rose, too.

  “I’ve discussed secondary camps with Varian. Until she has catalogued the habits of the predators, she can’t guarantee our safety,” said Kai, “but she’s going to set and search areas into which we can move, if we adhere to the safeguards she devises. Okay? Sorry, but you’ll understand better if you see the marks on the herbivore’s flank.” He noticed by the grim expressions that everyone had looked at the creature.

  “Boss, what about the gaps in the old cores, here, here and here?” Triv asked, pointing out the areas southwest and due south.

  “Faults,” said Gaber, slipping a scale transparency over the seismic map. “I read a massive overthrust here. Good area to search now but any seismimic would have been crushed. Or subsided too far below the surface to transmit.”

  “Triv, you and Aulia explore that overthrust today. Margit and Dimenon, your sector is here,” and he gave them the coordinates in the southwest, and to Berru and Portegin, explaining that he and Bakkun would try to explore the Rift Valley since there were old cores leading up to it. He stressed that they maintain safety procedures, tag or telltale animals when possible, and note and report any scavengers circling over what could be injured livestock specimens for Varian.