Anne McCaffrey - Dinosaur Planet 1

VIP免费
2024-12-24 0 0 285.76KB 96 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Dinosaur Planet
by: Anne McCaffrey
copyright 1978
CHAPTER ONE
Kai heard Varian's light step echoing in the empty passenger section of the
shuttlecraft just as he switched off the communications unit and tripped the
tape into storage.
"Sorry, Kai, did I miss the contact?" Varian came in out of breath, her
suit dripping wet, carrying with her the pervasive stench of Ireta's "fresh"
air, which tainted the filtered air of the shuttle's pilot cabin. She glanced
from the unlit communications panel to his face to see if he were annoyed by
her tardiness, but a triumphant grin cut through her feigned penitence. "We
finally captured one of those herbivores!"
Kai had to grin in response to her elation. Varian would spend long
hours tracking a creature in Ireta's damp, stinking jungles; hours of patient,
obstacle-strewn search which, all too often, proved unproductive.
Nevertheless, short of resorting to Discipline, Varian found it nauseatingly
irksome to sit still in a comfortable chair through a Thek relay. Kai had
wagered with himself that she would manage to avoid the tedious interchange
with some reasonable excuse. Her news was good and her excuse valid.
"How'd you manage to capture one? Those traps you've been rigging?" he
asked with genuine interest, though those same traps had taken his best
mechanic from completing the seismic grid his geologists needed.
"No, not the traps," and there was a hint of chagrin in Varian's tone.
"No, the damned fool creature was wounded and couldn't run away with the rest
of the herd." She paused to give her next statement full emphasis. "And Kai,
it bleeds blood!"
Kai blinked at her announcement. "So?"
"Red blood!"
"Well?"
"Are you a biological idiot? Red blood means hemoglobin . . ."
"What s odd about that? Plenty of other species use an iron base . .
." "Not on the same planet with those aquatic squirmers Trizein's been
dissecting. They use a pale viscous fluid." Varian was fleetingly
contemptuous of his failure to recognize the significance. "This planet's one
mass of anomalies, biological as well as geological. No ore where you should
be striking pay-dirt by the hopper-load, and me finding creatures larger than
anything mentioned in text-tapes from any planet in all the systems we've
explored in the last four hundred galactic standard years. Of course, it may
be all of a piece," she added thoughtfully, as she pushed back the springy
dark curls that framed her face.
She was tall, as so many types born on a normal-gravity planet like
Earth were, with a slender but muscularly fit body which the one-piece orange
ship suit displayed admirably. Despite the articles dangling from her
force-screen belt, her waist was trim, and the bulges in her thigh and calf
pouches did not detract from the graceful appearance of her legs.
Kai had been elated when Varian had been assigned as his co-leader.
They'd been more than acquaintances on shipboard ever since she had joined the
ARCT-10 as a xenob-vet, on a three galactic standard year contract. While the
ARCT-10, like her sister ships in the Exploratory and Evaluation Corps, had a
basic administrative and operations personnel who were ship-born and
ship-bred, the complement of additional specialists, trainees and,
occasionally, high echelon travelers for the Federated Sentient Planets
changed continually, giving the ship-bred the stimulation of meeting members
of other cultures, sub-groups, minorities and persuasions.
Kai had been attracted to Varian, first because she was an extremely
pretty girl and second, because she was the opposite of Geril. He had been
trying to end an unsatisfactory relationship with Geril, who had been so
insistent that he'd had to change his quarters from the ship-born to the
visitor?" area of Earth-normal section of the compound ARCT-10, in order to
avoid her. Varian happened to be his new next-door neighbour. She was gay,
bubbling with humour, and intensely interested in everything about the
satellite-sized exploratory vessel. She infected him with her enthusiasm as
she chivvied him into taking her on a guided tour of the various special
quarters which accommodated the more esoteric sentient races of the FSP in
their own atmosphere or gravity. She'd been planet-bound, Varian had told
him, on how many diverse planets did not signify, so that she felt it was high
time she saw how the Explorers and Evaluators lived. Especially since, she
added, as a xenob-vet, she often had to correct some of EV's crazier judgments
and mistakes.
Varian was a good narrator and her tales of planetary adventures, both
as a youngster trailing after xenob-vet parents and as junior in the same
specialty, had fascinated Kai. He'd had the usual planetary tours to combat
ship-conditioned agoraphobia, and indeed had spent a whole galactic year with
his mother's parents on her birthworld, but he felt his must have been dull
worlds in comparison to those generating Varian's wild and amusing
experiences.
Another way in which Varian excelled Geril was in her ability to argue
pleasantly and effectively without losing her temper or wit. Geril had always
been oppressively serious and too eager to denigrate anything of which she did
not unconditionally approve. In fact, long before Kai heard that Varian was
to be his co-leader, he had realized that she must have had Discipline, young
as she appeared to be. He'd gone as far as to tap for a print-out of her
public history from the EV's data banks. Her list of assignments had been
impressive even if the public record did not give any assessment of her value
on those expeditions. However, he noticed she had been promoted rapidly:
this, combined with the number of assignments, indicated a young woman slated
for increasing responsibility and more difficult assignments. Granted her
addition to the Iretan expedition had been made almost at the last minute when
life-form readings had registered on the preliminary probe, but, with her
background, Ireta ought not to pose too many problems. Yet it was, as she'd
said, rampant with anomalies.
"I suppose," she was saying, "if one has a third-generation sun with
planets, one must expect oddities: like Ireta with poles hotter than its
equator stinking of -- I'll remember the name of that plant yet . . ."
"Plant?"
"Yes. There's a small plant, hardy enough to be grown practically
anywhere OD temperate Earth-type worlds, which is used in cooking. In
judicious quantities, let me add," she said with a wry grin. "Too much of it
tastes like this planet smells. Sorry, I digress. What did the Theks say?"
Kai frowned. "Only the first reports have been picked up by our
wandering Exploratory Vessel."
Busy moping off the worst of her wetness, Varian turned to stare at him,
towel suspended. "Fardles!" She sat slowly down in the chair next to him.
"That's unnerving! Just the first?"
"That's what the Theks said . . ."
"Did you allow time enough for them to manage a reply? Scrub that
question." Varian slumped against the backrest as she added, "Of course, you
did," giving him full credit for his ability to deal with the slowest moving
and speaking species in the Federated System. "That's unlike EV. They're
usually so desperately greedy for initial reports, not just for the
all-safe-down."
"My explanation is that spatial interference . . ."
"Of course," and Varian's face cleared of anxiety. "That cosmic storm
the next system over . . . the one the astronomers were so hairy anxious to
get to . . ."
"That's what the Theks say."
"In how many words?" asked Varian, her wry humour reasserting itself.
The Theks were a silicate life form, like rock, extremely durable and
while not immortal, certainly the closest a species had evolved towards that
goal. The irreverent said that it was difficult to know a Thek elder from a
rock until it spoke, but a human could perish of old age waiting for the word.
Certainly the older a Thek grew and the more knowledge he acquired, the longer
it took to elicit an answer from him. Fortunately for Kai, there were two
young Theks on the team sent to the seventh planet of this system. One of
them, Tor, Kai had known all his life. In fact, though Tor was considered
young in relation to the lifespan of his species he had been on the ARCT-10
since the exploratory vessel had been commissioned one hundred and fifty
galactic standard years before. Tor constantly confused Kai with his
great-great-grandfather who had been an engineering officer on the ARCT-10 and
whom Kai was said to resemble. It gave Kai a feeling of curious satisfaction
to be on the same mission, and a planetary co-leader, with Tor. His
conversation with Tor, while lengthened by space distance and Thek speech
habits, was comparatively brisk.
"Tor had one word actually, Varian. Storm." Kai added his laughter to
Varian's.
"Have they ever been wrong?"
"What? Theks in error? Not in recorded history."
"Theirs? Or ours?"
"Theirs, of course. Ours is too short. Now, about that red blood?"
"Well, it's not just the red blood, Kai. There are far too many
unlikely coincidences. Those herbivores we've been shadowing are not only
vertebrates and bleed red blood, but now that I've got close enough to have a
good look, the things are pentadactyl, too." She opened and closed her
fingers at him in a clawing motion.
"Theks are pentadactyl. . . after a fashion." Kai was well pleased
they had no visual contact during the interchanges as the Theks had the
unnerving habit of extruding pseudopods from their amorphous mass which tended
to distract the viewer sometimes to the point of nausea.
"But not vertebrate or red-blooded. And not co-existent with another
totally different life-form, like Trizein's marine squares." Varian fumbled
at the opening of her belt pouch and withdrew a flat object, well wrapped in
plastic. "It'll be interesting," she spread the syllables out, "to see the
analysis of this blood sample." With a graceful push she rose from the swivel
chair and strode out of the pilot cabin, Kai following her.
Their boot heels echoed in the emptiness of the denuded passenger
section. Its furnishings now equipped the plastic domes grouped below the
shuttle in the force-screened encampment. But Trizein's work was better
accomplished in the air-conditioned, ex-storage compartment which had been
converted into his laboratory. A terminal to the ship's computer had been
rigged up in the lab so that Trizein rarely stirred from his domain.
"So you've finally got an occupant for your corral," Kai said.
"So I was right to plan ahead. At least we've a place big enough to
stash him/it/her."
"Don't you know which sex?"
"When you see our beast, you'll know why we haven't taken a close enough
look to know." She shuddered suddenly. "I don't know what got to it, but
whole chunks have been torn from its off flank . . . almost as if . . .
." She swallowed hastily.
"As if what?"
"As if something had been feeding on it -- alive."
"What?" Kai felt his gorge rise.
"Those predators look savage enough to have done it . . . but while
the creature was still living?"
The appalling concept silenced them both for several strides. A
civilized diet no longer included animal flesh.
"I wonder if Tanegli's having any luck with those fruiting trees," she
said, quickly redirecting the conversation.
"D'you know if he did take the youngsters with him? I was setting up
the interchange."
"Yes," said Varian, "Divisti went too, so the kids are in good hands."
"Just as well," said Kai a little grimly, "someone can manage them. I
wouldn't relish explaining to the EV's Third Officer if anything happened to
her pride and joy."
Out of the corner of his eye, Kai saw Varian bite her lip, her eyes
sparkling with suppressed amusement. It was an embarrassingly well-known fact
that young Bonnard had a case of hero worship for the team's male co-leader.
"Bannard's a good kid, Kai, and means well . . ."
"I know. I know."
"I wonder if food tastes on this planet the way most things smell," said
Varian, again changing the subject. "If fruit tastes of hydro-telluride . .
." "Are we food-low?"
"No," said Varian, who was charged by the expedition's charter to
procure any additional food supplies needed. "But Divisti is a cautious soul.
The less we use of the basic subsistence supplies, the better. And fresh
fruit . . . you ship-bred types may not miss it . . ."
"Landborn primates have no dietary discipline."
They were both grinning, Varian cocking her head to one side, her grey
eyes sparkling. The first day they'd met, at a table in the humanoid dining
area of the huge EEC ship, they'd teased each other about dietary
idiosyncrasies.
Born and brought up on the ship, Kai was used to synthesized foods, to
the limited textures provided. Even when he'd been grounded for brief
periods, he had never quite adjusted to the infinite variety and consistency
of natural foods. Varian had-boasted that she could eat anything vegetable or
mineral and had found the ship's diet, even when augmented from the life
support dome with freshly grown produce, rather monotonous.
"I'd call it educated tastes, man. And if the fruit tastes at all
decent, you may be perverted to an appreciation of real food."
Just as they reached the storage compartment, the panel shushed open and
an excited man came charging towards them.
"Marvellous!" He halted mid-stride and, losing his balance, staggered
against the panel wall. "Just the people I need to see. Varian, the cell
formation on those marine specimens is a real innovation. There are
filaments, four different kinds . . . just take a look . . ." Trizein
was pulling her back into his laboratory and gesturing urgently for Kai to
follow.
"I've something for you, too, my friend," and Varian extended the slide.
"We caught one of those heavy-duty herbivores, wounded, bleeding red blood .
. ." "But don't you understand, Varian," continued Trizein, apparently deaf
to her announcement, "this is a completely different life form. Never in all
my expeditionary experience have I come across such a cellular formation . .
." "Nor have I come across such an anomaly as this, contrasting to your new
life form." Varian closed his fingers about the slide. "Do be a love and run
a spectro-analysis on this?"
"Red blood, you said?" Trizein blinked, changing mental gears to deal
with Varian's request. He held the slide up to the light, frowned at it.
"Red blood? Isn't compatible with what I've just told you."
At that moment, the alarm wailed its unnerving keen through the shuttle
and the outside encampment and tingled jarringly at the wrist units that Kai
and Varian wore as team leaders.
"Foraging party in trouble, Kai, Varian." Paskutti's voice, his thick
slurred speech unhurried, came over the intercom. "Aerial attack."
Kai depressed the two-way button on his wrist unit.
"Assemble your group, Paskutti Varian and I are coming."
"Aerial attack?" asked Varian, as both moved quickly to the iris lock of
the shuttlecraft. "From what?"
"Is the party still airborne, Paskutti?" asked Kai.
"No, sir. I have co-ordinates. Shall I call in your teams?"
"No, they'd be too far out to be useful." To Varian he said, "What can
they have got into?"
"On this crazy planet? Who knows?" Varian seemed to thrive on the
various alarms Ireta produced, for which Kai was glad. On his second
expedition, the co-leader had been such a confirmed pessimist that the morale
of the entire party had deteriorated, causing needless disastrous incidents.
As usual, the first blast of Ireta's odourous atmosphere took Kai's
breath away. He'd forgotten to slip back in the deodorizing plugs he'd
removed while in the shuttle. The plugs helped but not when one was forced to
breathe orally, as he was while running to join Paskutti's rapidly forming
squad.Though the heavy-worlders under Paskutti's direction had had farther to
come, they were the first to arrive at the assembly point as Kai and Varian
belted down the slope from the shuttle to the force-screen veil lock.
Paskutti shoved belts, masks and stunners at the two leaders, unaware in this
moment of urgency that the casual thrust of his heavy hand rocked the lighter
framed people back on their heels.
Gaber, the cartographer who was emergency duty officer, came puffing
down from his dome. As usual he'd forgotten to wear his force-screen belt
though there was a standing order for those belts to be worn at all times.
Kai'd tag Gaber for that when they got back.
"What's the emergency? I'll never get those maps drawn with all these
interruptions."
"Forage party's in trouble. don't wander off!" said Kai.
"Oh never, Kai, never will I do anything so simplewitted, I assure you.
I shan't move from the controls one centimetre, though how I'm ever to finish
my work . . . Three days behind now and . . ."
"Gaber!"
"Yes, Kai. Yes, I understand. I really do." The man seated himself at
the veil controls glancing so anxiously from Paskutti to Varian that Kai had
to nod at him reassuringly. Paskutti's heavy face was expressionless as were
his dark eyes but somehow the heavy-worlder's very silence could indicate
disapproval or disgust more acutely than any word he might have growled out.
Paskutti, a man in his middle years, had been in ship's security for
most of his five-year tour with EEC. He had volunteered for this assignment
when the call had gone through the mother ship for secondaries to assist a
xenob team. Heavy-worlders often took semi-skilled tours on other worlds or
on the EEC ships as the pay was extremely good; two or three tours would mean
that a semi-skilled individual could earn enough credit to live the rest of
his or her life in relative comfort on one of the developing worlds.
Heavy-worlders were preferred as secondaries, whatever their basic specialty
might be, because of their muscular strength. It was said of them that they
were the muscles of humanoid FSP, generally a comment made respectfully since
the heavy-worlders were not just "muscle men" but numbered as many high
ranking specialists as any other humanoid sub-group
There was, however, no question that their sheer physical presence, the
powerful legs, the compact torso, massive shoulders, weather-darkened skin,
provided a visual deterrent which prompted many sentient groups to hire them
as security forces, whether merely for display or as actual aggressive units.
Contributing to the false notion that heavy-worlders were ill-equipped with
mental abilities was the unfortunate genetic problem that, while their muscle
and bone structures had altered to bear the heavy gravities, their heads had
not. At first glance they did look stupid. Away from the harsh gravity and
climatic conditions which bred them, heavy-worlders also had to spend a good
deal of their time in heavy-grav gyms to maintain their muscular strength and
to enable them to make a satisfactory adjustment when they returned to their
home worlds. Perversely enough, the heavy-worlders were intensely attached to
their natal worlds and most of them, having made their credit balance high
enough to retire in comfort, happily returned to the cruel conditions which
had developed their sub-grouping.
Paskutti and Tardma had joined the expedition out of sheer boredom with
their shipboard security duties. Berru and Bakkun as geologists had been
Kai's own choices since it was always good to have a few heavy-worlders on any
team for the advance of their physical attributes. Both he and Varian had
been pleased when Tanegli, as botanist, and Divisti, as biologist, had
answered the request for such specialists.
When they had made planetfall and Varian had seen the unexpectedly big
type of animal life which populated Ireta she had blessed the happenstance
that there were heavy-worlders on her team. Whatever emergency they were
going to meet now was approached with much more confidence in such company.
Paskutti nodded at Gaber as the cartographer's hands twitched above the
veil controls. Slowly the veil lifted while Varian, by Kai's side, shuffled
with impatience. One couldn't fuss Gaber by reminding him that this was an
emergency and speed was essential.
Paskutti ducked under the lifting veil, charging out, the squad at his
heels, before Gaber had completed the opening. It was, as usual, raining a
thin mist which had been deflected, except for the heavier drops, by the main
screen along with the insects small enough to be fried by contact.
They could hear Gaber muttering anxiously under his breath about people
never waiting for anything as Paskutti gave the closed fist upward gesture
that meant sky-trailing. The rescuers activated their lift-belts and assumed
the formation assigned them by Paskutti's original briefing on emergency
procedures. Kai and Varian were in the protected positions of the flying V
formation.
Aloft, Kai tuned his combutton to home-in on Tanegli's signal. Paskutti
gestured westward, towards the swampy lowlands and indicated speed increase as
his other hand adjusted his mask.
They flew at tree top level, Kai remembering to keep his eyes
horizontal, on Paskutti's back. Oddly enough his tinge of agoraphobia
bothered him less in the air, so long as he didn't look directly down at the
fast-moving ground. He was cushioned by the air-stream of his passage, an
almost tactile support at this speed. The monotonous floor of conifers and
gymnosperms which dotted this part of the continent waved briefly at their
passage. High, high above, Kai caught a glimpse of circling winged monsters.
Varian hadn't had a chance yet to identify or telltale any of the aerial life
forms: the creatures warily made themselves scarce when the explorers were
abroad in lift belts or sleds.
They increased altitude to manoeuvre the first of the basaltic clines
and then glided down the other side, skimming the endless primeval forest, its
foliage in ever-varied patterns of blue-green, green and green-purple. They
met the first of the thermal down-draughts and had to correct, buffeted by the
air currents. Paskutti signalled descent as the best solution. For him it
was, with his bulk of heavy-grav-trained muscles, flesh and bone but Kai and
Varian had to keep compensating with their lift-belts' auxiliary thrust jets.
As the buzz of the homer intensified Kai began to berate himself. He
ought not to have allowed any exploratory groups beyond a reasonable lift-belt
radius of the compound. On the other hand, Tanegli was perfectly capable of
combating most of the life forms so far seen here and the exuberant nature of
the youngsters in his charge. So what aerial trouble could they have fallen
into? And so quickly. Tanegli had left in the sled just prior to Kai's
scheduled contact with the Theks. They could barely have made their
destination before coming afoul of whatever it was. Tanegli would surely have
mentioned any casualty. Then Kai wondered if the sled had been damaged.
They'd only the one big unit, and the four two-man sleds for his seismic
teams. The smaller sleds could, at a pinch, take four passengers, but no
equipment.
The land dropped away again and they corrected their flight line. Far
in the purple distance the first range of volcanoes could be seen on the edge
of the inland sea; a lake that was doomed to be destroyed by the restless
tectonic action of this very active world. That was the first area he'd had
tested for its seismicity because he'd worried that perhaps their granite
shelf might be too close to tectonic activity and turn mobile. But the first
print-out of the cores had been reassuring. The lake would subside, probably
giving way to small hills pushed up from beneath, clad with sediment and
eventually folded under, for this was the near edge of the stable continental
shelf on which the encampment had been placed.
The steamy, noxiously scented heat of the swamplands began to rise to
meet them: cloying humidity intensified the basic hydro-telluride stench.
The homer's buzz grew louder and became continuous.
Kai was not the only member of the party scanning ahead. Far-sighted
Paskutti saw the sled first, in a grove of angiosperms, parked on a sizable
hummock that jutted into the swamp, away from the firmer mass of the jungle.
The great purple-barked, many-rooted branches of the immense trees,
well-scarred by herbivorous assaults, were untenanted by avian life, and Kai
was beginning to feel the anger of relief overcome concern.
Paskutti's arm gesture caught his attention and he followed the line of
the heavy-worlder's sweep towards the swamp. Several tan objects were slowly
being dragged under the water by the pointed snouts of the swamp-dwellers. A
minor battle began as two long-necked denizens contended for the possession of
one corpse. The victor claimed the spoils by the simple expedient of sitting
on the body and sinking with it into the muddy waters.
Tardma, the heavy-worlder directly in front of Kai, pointed in the other
direction, toward the firmer land, where a winged creature obviously
recovering from a stun blast, was swaying upright.
Paskutti fired a warning triplet and then motioned the group to land on
the inland side of the grove. They came to a running stop, the heavy-worlders
automatically deploying towards the swamp since the likelihood of attack was
from that quarter. Kai, Varian and Paskutti jogged towards the sled from
behind which the foragers now emerged.
Tanegli stood waiting, his squat solid bulk a bastion around which the
smaller members of the party ranged: the three youngsters, Kai was relieved
to see, appeared to be all right, as did the zeno-botanist Divisti. Now Kai
noticed the small pile of assorted brilliant yellow objects in the storage
cage of the sled: more of similar shape and colour were strewn about the
clear ground of the small grove.
"We called prematurely," said Tanegli by way of greeting." The swamp
creatures proved curious allies." He replaced his stunner in his belt and
dusted his thick hands as if dismissing the incident.
"What was attacking you?" Varian asked, staring about her.
"These?" asked Paskutti as he dragged a limp, furred and winged creature
from behind the trunk of a thick tree.
"Watch out!" said Tanegli, reaching to his belt before he saw the
stunner in Paskutti's. "I set the gun on a light charge."
It's one of those gliders. See, no socket for the wing to fold," Varian
said, ignoring the protests of the heavy-worlders as she moved the limp wings
out and back.
Kai eyed the pointed beak of the creature with apprehension, suppressing
an irrational desire to step back.
"Carrion eater by the size and shape of that jaw," remarked Paskutti,
peering with considerable interest.
"Well and truly stunned," Varian said with a final twitch of arrangement
to the wings. "What was dead enough to attract it here?"
"That!" Tanegli pointed to the edge of the clearing, to a mottled brown
bundle, its belly swelling up out of the course vegetation.
"And I rescued this!" said Bonnard, stepping clear of his friends so
that Kai and Varian saw the small replica of the dead animal in his arms.
"But it didn't bring the gliders. The were already here. It's very young.
And its mother is dead now."
"We found it over there, hiding in the roots of the tree?" said Cleiti,
loyally supporting her friend, Bonnard, against adult disapproval.
"The sled must have alarmed the gliders," said Tanegli, taking up the
story, "driven them away from her. Once we had landed and started collecting
the fruit, they returned." He shrugged his wide shoulders.
Varian was examining the shivering little creature, peering into its
mouth, checking its feet. She gave a little laugh." Anomaly time again.
Perissodactyl feet and herbivorous teeth. There's a good fellow. Nice to
have something your own size, isn't it, Bonnard?"
"Is it all right? It just shivers," Bannard's face was solemn with
worry."I'd shiver too if I got picked up by huge things that didn't smell
right."
"Then perisso . . . whatever it is, isn't dangerous?"
Varian laughed and ruffled Bannard's short cropped hair." No, just a
way of classifying it. Perissodactyl means uneven numbered toes. I want a
look at its mother." Careful of the nearby sword plants with their
deceptively decorative purple leaves, she made her way towards the dead
creature. A long low whistle broke from her lips. "I suppose it's possible,"
she said in a sympathetic tone of voice. "Well, her leg's broken. That's
what made her fair game to the scavengers."
A loud noise attracted everyone's attention; an ominous sucking sound.
from the swamp a huge head and neck broke the slimy surface and wavered in
their direction.
"We could be considered fair game too, by such as that?" said Kai.
"Let's get out of here."
Paskutti frowned at the great and evil looking head, fingering his
stunner onto the strongest setting. "That creature would require every charge
we have to stop it."
"We came for fruit . . ." Divisti said, pointing to the litter in the
clearing. "They look viable, and fresh food would do us all good," she added
with as wistful a tone as Kai had ever heard from a heavy-worlder.
"I'd say we had a safety factor of about ten minutes before that swamp
creature's brain can make the logical assumption that we're edible," said
Tanegli, as unconcerned as ever by physical threat. He began to gather up the
scattered thick-skinned fruits and toss them into the storage cage of the
six-man sled.
In point of fact, those sleds had been known to lift twenty, a
capability never mentioned in the designers" specifications. The exploratory
sled was an all-purpose vehicle, its ultimate potential not yet realized.
High-sided and slightly more than eight metres long with a closed deck forward
for storage, its compact engine and power pack under the rear loading space,
the vessel could be fitted with comfortable seating for six as well as the
pilot and co-pilot, with the storage cage, as it was now. When the seating
was removed or lashed to the deck, a sled could carry enormous weight, on
board or attached to the powerful winches fore, aft and midships on either
side. The plascreen could be retracted into the sides or raised in sections.
The sled had both retro and forward jets with a vertical lift ability which
could be used in defense or emergency flight. The two-man sleds were smaller
replicas of the big one and had the advantage of being easily dismantled and
stored: in flight, usually in the larger vehicle.
Augmented by the rescue squad, the foragers accumulated enough fruit to
fill the sled's storage cage in the time it took more carrion eaters to begin
spiraling above the grove. The swamp head seemed mesmerized by the comings
and goings of the group, swinging slowly back and forth
"Kai, we don't have to leave him here, do we?" asked Bonnard, with an
apprehensive Cleiti by his side. He had the orphan in his arms.
"Varian? Any use to you?"
"Certainly. I'd no intention of leaving it. It's a relief not to have
to chase something over the continent to get a close look." She frowned at
the suggestion of abandonment. "Into the sled with you, Bonnard. Keep a hold
on it. Cleiti, you sit on his right, I'll sit left. There we are. Belt up."
The others stood back as Tanegli took off in the sled, gliding
indolently over the ooze and the undecided beast that still regarded the grove
with unblinking interest.
"Set for maximum stun," Paskutti told them, glancing overhead. "Those
carrion are coming in again."
Even as the rescuers lifted from the ground, Kai saw the carrion fliers
circling downwards, their heads always on the dead creature in the grass
below. Kai shuddered. The dangers of space, instant and absolute, were
impersonal and the result of breaking immutable laws. The deadly intent of
these things held a repulsively personal malevolence that disturbed him
profoundly.
CHAPTER TWO
Rain and head winds buffeted the airborne V so steadily on their way back that
the heavily powered sled had long since landed when Kai and the heavy-worlders
finally set foot in the compound. Varian and the three children were busy
constructing a small run for the orphan.
"Lunzie's trying to deduce a diet," Varian told Kai.
"Just what is its anomalous state?"
"Against every odd in the galaxy, we have succoured a young mammal. At
least its mother had teats. It's not very old, born rather mature, you see,
able to walk and run almost at birth . . ."
"Did you . . ."
"Debug it? Externally yes. Had to or we'd all be hosting parasites.
I've interrupted more of Trizein's carefully scheduled work to run a tissue
sample on it so we can figure out what proteins it must have in its diet.
It's got some growing to do to reach momma's size. Not that she was very
large."
Kai looked down at the tiny creature's red-brown furred body: a very
unprepossessing creation, he thought, with no redeeming feature apart from
wistful eyes to endear it to anyone other than its own mother. But,
remembering the waving swamp-dweller's head, and the hungry malice in the
circling scavengers' relentless approach, he was glad they'd brought the thing
in. And it might occupy Bonnard and keep the boy from following him
everywhere.
Kai stripped off his belt and face mask, rubbing at the strap marks. He
was tired after the return trip. The heavy-worlders had immense resources of
stamina but Kai's ship-trained muscles ached from the exertions of the
morning.
"Say, don't we have to contact the Ryxi, too?" Varian asked, glancing
at her wrist recorder and tapping the reddened 1300 that meant a special time.
Kai grinned his thanks for the reminder and made for the shuttlecraft
with a fair display of energy. There was still a lot of busy day ahead of
him. He'd get a pepper to pick his energy level up, and he'd get a bit of a
breather while he made contact with the avians. Then he had to go see that
complex of coloured lakes Berru had documented yesterday in her sweep south.
He found it damned odd there were no more than traces of the normal metals
you'd think would be in abundance everywhere on this untouched planet.
Coloured waters indicated mineral deposits. He only hoped the concentrations
were heavy enough to make them worthwhile. There ought to be something in old
fold mountains, if only some tin or zinc and copper. They'd found
ore-minerals but no deposits worth the name.
Kai's orders from Exploratory and Evaluation Corps were to locate and
assay the mineral and metallurgical potential of this planet. And Ireta, a
satellite of a suspected third generation sun, ought to be rich in the heavier
elements, rich in the neptunium, plutonium and the more esoteric of the rare
transuranics and actinites above uranium on the periodic table, so urgently
and constantly required by the Federation of Sentient Populations the search
for which was one of the primary tasks of the EEC.
The diplomatic might say that EEC was exploring the galaxy, seeking to
bring within its sphere of influence all rational sentient beings, augmenting
the eighteen peace-loving species already incorporated in the FSP. But the
search for energy was the fundamental drive. The diversity of its member
species gave the Federation the ability to explore more types of planets, but
colonization was incidental to exploitation.
The three useful planets of the sun Arrutan had long been marked on star
charts as promising but only recently had the Executive Council decided to
mount the present three-part expedition. Kai had heard the whisper that it
was because the Theks wished to be included. This whisper was partially
substantiated during his private conference with the EEC Chief Officer on
board the exploratory vessel ARCT-10. The CO had privily informed Kai that
the Thek had superior control of the three teams, and he was to consider
himself under their orders if they chose to supersede him. Vrl, the Ryxi team
leader, had been given the same orders, but everyone knew the Ryxi. And it
was common knowledge that having a Thek on a team spelled ultimate success:
Theks were dependable, Theks were thorough, the ultimate altruists. The
cynics replied that altruism was easy when a creature calculated its life span
in thousands of years. The Theks had elected to be placed on the seventh
world of the primary, a heavy metals, heavy gravity planet, exactly suited to
Theks.The light-cored planet, fifth from the sun Arrutan, with a low gravity
and temperate climate, was being evaluated by the Ryxi, an aerial species, who
were in critical need of new planets to relieve their population pressure and
give industry and opportunity to the restless young.
Kai's assignment, the fourth planet in the system, exhibited curious
anomalies. Originally designated a second generation sun, with elements up to
the transuranic, Arrutan patently did not conform to that classification. A
probe sent out for a preliminary survey registered that the fourth planet was
undeniably ovoid in shape; the poles were hotter than the equator: the seas
registered warmer than the land mass which covered the northern pole. There
was an almost constant rainfall, and an inshore wind of variable velocities up
to full gale force. An axial tilt of some fifteen degrees had been
postulated. The readings indicated life forms in water and on land. A
xenobiological team was added to the geological.
Kai had requested a remote sensor to locate the ore concentrations but
at that point the storm in the next system had been sighted and he found his
request very low on the priority list. He was told that the original probe
tapes would give him ample information to locate metal and mineral, and to get
the job done in situ. Right now ARCT-10 had an unparalleled opportunity to
observe free matter in action.
Kai took the official brush-off in good part. What he did object to was
having the youngsters dumped on his hands at the last minute. To his
complaint that this was a working expedition, not a training exercise, he was
told that the ship-born must have sufficient planetary experiences early in
their lives to overcome the danger of conditional agoraphobia. The hazard was
not lightly to be dismissed by the ship-born: useless to explain to the
planet-bred. But Kai railed against the expediency that made his team the one
to expand the horizons of three members who were only half into their second
decades. This planet was exceedingly active, volcanically and tectonically,
and dangerous for ship-bred juveniles. The two girls, Cleidi and Terilla,
were biddable and no trouble until Bonnard, the son of the Third Officer of
摘要：

DinosaurPlanetby:AnneMcCaffreycopyright1978CHAPTERONEKaiheardVarian'slightstepechoingintheemptypassengersectionoftheshuttlecraftjustasheswitchedoffthecommunicationsunitandtrippedthetapeintostorage."Sorry,Kai,didImissthecontact?"Variancameinoutofbreath,hersuitdrippingwet,carryingwithherthepervasivest...

展开>> 收起<<
Anne McCaffrey - Dinosaur Planet 1.pdf

共96页,预览20页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：96 页 大小：285.76KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-24

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 96
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注