"ROGAN?”
The tel- visor expert had spun his seat around and was facing another section of the control panel, his fingers flying across the buttons there. Needles spun on dials, indicators moved, and Rogan’s lips shaped words silently. When he had done Kimber flicked the control of the visa-screen which had gone dead at their landing.
Slowly pictures of the immediate surroundings of the ship unrolled before their fascinated eyes.
“Late afternoon,” Rogan commented, “by the length of the shadows.”
The ship had planeted in the middle of an expanse of gray-blue gravel or sand-backed at a distance by perpendicular cliffs of reddish rock layered by strata of blue, yellow and white. As the scene changed, those in the control room saw the cliffs give way to the mouth of a long valley down the center of which curved a stream.
’That water’s red!” Dard’s surprise jolted the words out of him.
The red river was hemmed in by blue-green, low-growing vegetation which cloaked the ground within the valley itself and ran in tongues along the water into the semi-arid stretch of sand. Their viewing device was across the river, picking up more cliffs and sand. Then they were fronted by ocean shore and vivid aquamarine waves tipped with white lacy foam. Into this emptied the river, staining the sea red for some distance. Sea, air, cliffs, river-but no living creature!
“Wait!” Kimber’s order sent Rogan’s finger down on a button and the picture on the screen became fixed. “Thought I saw something-flying in the air. But guess I was wrong.”
The scene changed until they were looking at the same spot where it had begun. Kimber stretched.
“This part of the country appears unoccupied. And, Tas, we didn’t sight any signs of civilization when we came in either. Maybe our luck’s held and we have an empty world.”
“Hmm. But is it one we can venture into?” The First Scientist squeezed over to Cully’s side of the cabin. “Atmosphere, temperature-within a fraction of Terra’s. Yes, we can live and breathe here.”
Kimber freed himself from the pilot’s straps. “Suppose we have a look-see in person then.”
Dard was the last to leave the cabin. He was still a little drunk with that riot of color on the visa-screen. After the remembered drabness of his home section of Terra this was overpowering. He was halfway down the ladder when he heard that clang which announced the opening of tile hatch and the emergence of the ramp that would carry them safely over ground super-heated by their jets.
When he came out the others were strung along the ramp, breathing the warm air, air that was pungent with a fresh tang. The breeze pulled at Dard’s hair, whipping a lock across his forehead, singing in his ears. Clean air- with none of the chemical taint which clung in the ship. Around the fins of their ship the sand had been fused into a curdled milky glass which they avoided by leaping from the end of the ramp to the dunes.
Kimber and Kordov plowed straight ahead to the wave-smoothed shore. Cully merely dropped in the soft grit of the beach, lying full length, his hands pressed tight to the earth, staring bemusedly up at the sky, while Rogan was pivoting slowly, as if to verify the scene tile visa-screen had shown them.
Dard made his way to the sand. The redness of the river occupied him. Red water-why? The sea was normal enough except where it was colored by the river. He wanted to know what painted the stream and he started off determinedly to its bank.
The sand was softer, more powdery than any he had known on Terra. It shifted into his boot packs, arose in puffs and covered all but the faintest outline where he had stepped. He stooped and sifted the stuff through his fingers, knowing a strange tingle as the earth of this new world drifted away from his palm-blue sand-red river-red, yellow and white striped cliffs-color everywhere about him! Overhead that arch of cloud studded blue-or was it blue at all? Didn’t it have just the faintest shading of green? Turquoise rather than true blue! Now that he was becoming accustomed to the color he could distinguish more subtle shades among the glows of brighter tones-shades he could not name-like that pale violet which streaked the sand.
Dard went on until he was in the stone-and-pebble strewn border of the river. It was not a large stream, four strides might take him across it. There was a ripple of current but the water was opaque, dull rusty red, and it left a reddish rim about every stone it lipped in passage. He went down on one knee and was about to dip in a cautious exploratory finger when a voice called a warning:
“Don’t try that, kid. Might not be healthy.” Rogan came down the stony bank to join him. “Better be safe than sorry. Learned that myself on Venus-the hard way. See a piece of drift wood anywhere about?”
Dard searched among the rocks and found what appeared to be a very ordinary stick. But Rogan inspected it carefully before he picked it up. The stick was lowered into the flood and as cautiously withdrawn, an inch or so of it now dyed red. Together they held it close for examination.
“It’s alive!” If he had been holding that test branch, Dard thought later, he might have dropped it at the realization of what the red stain was. But Rogan kept a tight grip.
“Lively little beggars, aren’t they?” he asked. “Look like spiders. Do they float-or swim? And why so thick in the water. Now let’s just see.” He knelt and using the stick along the surface of the water skimmed off a good portion of what Dard secretly considered the extremely repulsive travelers. With the layer of “spiders” removed the water changed color becoming a clearer brownish fluid.
“So they can be scraped off,” Rogan observed cheerfully.
“With a strainer we may be able to get a drink-if this stuff is drinkable.”
Dard swallowed hastily as Rogan tapped off on a convenient boulder the greater number of creatures he had fished out of the stream; and then together they followed the water to the sea. Several times they detoured, quite widely on Dard’s part, to escape contact with patches of red marooned on shore. Not that the “spiders” appeared uncomfortable on the firmer element for they made no attempt to move away from the spots where some sudden eddy had deposited them.
A stiff breeze came in over the waves. It was heavy with the tang Rogan now identified for Dard.
“Natural sea-that’s salt air!” What he might have added was drowned out by a hideous screech.
Close on its dying echo came a very human shout. Kimber and Kordov were running along the beech just beyond the water’s edge. And above their beads twisted and darted a nightmare, a small nightmare to be sure, but still one horrible enough to have winged out of an evil dream.
If a Terran snake had been equipped with bat wings, two clawed legs, a barbed tail, and a wide fanged mouth, it might have approached in general this horror. The whole thing could not have been more than eighteen or twenty inches long, but its snapping fury was several times larger than its body and it was making power dives at the running men.
Rogan dropped his spider stick as Dard’s hand flew inside his blouse to claim the only possession he had brought from Terra. He threw the hunting knife and by some incredible luck clipped a wing, not only breaking the dragon’s dive but sending it fluttering down, end over end, screeching. It flapped and beat with the good wing, squirming across the sand until Kimber and Kordov pinned it to the shingle with hastily flung stones.
Its eyes gleamed with red hate as they gathered in a circle around it, avoiding the snapping jaws and the flipping of the barbed tail which now dripped oily yellow drops.
“Bet that’s poison,” suggested Rogan. “Nice critter- hope they don’t grow any bigger.”
“What’s the matter?” Cully came tearing down the slope, one of the green ray guns in his band. “What’s making all that racket?”
Rogan moved aside to display the injured dragon. “Native telling us off.”
“Usually,” Kimber broke in, “I don’t believe in shooting first and investigating afterward. But this thing certainly hasn’t any better nature to appeal to-nearly stripped the ear off my head before I knew he was around. Can you shoot it, Jorge, without messing it up too much? Tas, here, probably will want to take it apart later to see what makes it tick.”
The biologist was squatting at a safe distance watching the convulsive struggles of the dragon with fascinated eyes.
“Yes, please do not destroy it utterly. A snake-a flying snake! But that is not
possible!”
“Maybe not on Terra,” Kimber reminded him. “What can we say is possible or impossible here? Jorge, put it out of its misery!”
The green ray clipped the top of the creature’s head and it went limp on the sand. Tas approached it gingerly, keeping as far as he could from the tail barb still exuding the yellow venom. Rogan went back down the beach to retrieve his spider collection, and Dard picked up and wiped his knife clean.
“Flying snakes and swimming spiders,” the communications techneer held out his stick for their appraisal. “I’m going to be afraid to sit down out here-anything may pop up now,”
Tas was plainly torn between the now tractable dragon and the water dwellers Rogan had brought him. “All this"- his pudgy hands indicated the world of cliffs, sand and sea -"new, unclassified.”
Gully holstered his gun. He was frowning at the ceaseless waves.
“What do you make of those, Sim?” he demanded of the pilot, pointing to a low bank of clouds slowly expanding up the rim of the sky.
“On earth, I’d say a storm.”
“Might be a bad one, too,” Rogan commented. “And we have no shelter but the ship. At least this is summer- we’re warm enough.”
“You think so?” asked Dard with some reason. The sea wind was rising, to become a wet lash with an icy bite in its flail. The temperature was dropping fast.
Kimber studied the clouds. “I’d say we better get back.”
But when he turned inland his gasp brought them all around.
They had left the star ship on an even keel. Now it listed so that its nose pointed down the valley away from the sea.
A good half hour later Kimber got to his feet, relief mirrored on his face. One of the fins had broken through the fused coating the jet heat had put on the beach. But beneath the splintered glass crust it had found rock support -it would slip no farther. The scarred sides towering above them were no longer mirror bright as they had been in the Cleft, she had too many years, too long a voyage behind her. But she was not going to fail them.
“Rock all right,” Kimber repeated the statement he had made so joyfully a few minutes before. “The ledge slants a little, which is why she canted that way. But she’ll stand. And,” he did not need to draw their attention to the darkness closing in, “maybe it’s some more luck at work again. With her nose pointing away from this breeze, she’s less likely to come a cropper, even if it turns out to be a full-sized blow.”
Dard held on to the rail of the ramp. The wind screamed around them, stirring up devils born of the powdery sand, which filled unwary eyes and any mouth that bad the misfortune to be open. The dust had already driven Kordov inside, his precious dragon in a pair of forceps. He was more interested in that and Rogan’s spiders than he now was in the ship.
“Full- sized blow?” drawled Rogan. “This has the makings of a hurricane if I’m any judge. And unless you fellas want to be buried alive in these marching sand dunes, you’d better run for cover. As long as you’re sure we’re not going to land bottom side up, I think it’s time to adjourn.”
Dard followed him up the ramp just in time to escape a miniature sandstorm through which the other two had to fight their way. There was a brushing-off party in the air lock, but, as they climbed back to the crew’s quarters Dard could still taste grit in his mouth and hear it crunch under his feet.
Kordov was not to be found in the control cabin or bunk room when Kimber and the other two sat on the bunks and Dard dropped down cross-legged on the floor. The ship was vibrating under him. Could the wind have risen to that pitch already? It was Rogan who answered that.
“Like to see what’s happening out there?” He got up and went into the control cabin.
Kimber and Dard got up to follow, but cully shook his head.
“What you don’t know, doesn’t hurt you much,” he remarked. “And I don’t see anything exciting about a sandstorm.”
It was true that when Rogan adjusted the visa-screen there was little for them to see. The storm had brought night and obscurity. With an exclamation of annoyance, the techneer clicked off the viewer and they drifted back to find Cully asleep and Kordov climbing up to join them.
“Your ’spiders,’ ” he burst out as soon as he sighted Rogan, “are plants!”
“But they moved!” protested Dard. “They had legs.”
Kordov shook his head. “Roots, not legs. And plants they are in spite of being mobile. Some form of aquatic fungi.”
“Toadstools with legs yet!” Rogan laughed. “Next, trees with arms, I suppose. What about the dragon-was he a flying cabbage?”
Kordov did not need any urging to discuss the dragon.
“Poisonous reptile-and carnivorous. We shall have to beware of them. But it was full grown, we need not worry.”
“About their coming in larger sizes?” asked the relaxed Kimber in a lazy voice. “Let us be thankful for small favors and hope that they do a lot of that screeching when they go ahunting. But now-let us think about tomorrow.”
“And tomorrow-and tomorrow—” Rogan repeated sleepily hut Cully sat up thoroughly aroused.
“When do we wake up the others?” he wanted to know.
“And are we going to stay right here?”
Kordov locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the wall of the cabin. “I will revive Dr. Skort - Carlee-in the morning. She can help me with the others. Do you intend to explore the immediate terrain then? We should decide soon whether to stay here or try to find semi-permanent headquarters elsewhere.”
“There is just one thing,” said Kimber, “I can lift ship again, yes. But I can’t guarantee another safe landing. The fuel—” he shrugged. “I don’t know how long our voyage here lasted, but if we hadn’t made this landfall when we did, we might not have been able to come in at all.”
“So?” Kordov’s lips shaped a soundless whistle. “Then we had better be very sure before we think of a move. What about taking out the ’sled’?”
“I’ll break it out first thing tomorrow. That is, I will if this storm blows itself out by then. I don’t propose to take that contraption up in a high wind-the bugs aren’t out of it yet,” Kimber retorted.
“And how about food?” Cully asked. “Specifically here and now for us, and objectively for the rest when they wake up.”
“Specifically,” Kordov opened one of the storage cabinets and took out five small packages which he tossed around to the company. “Concentrates. But, you’re right, supplies are not going to last forever. We shall not be able to awaken all our company until we are reasonably sure of food and shelter. But-we’ll get Harmon out of storage and have him investigate the soil up river where the vegetation is so thick. The exploration party might also hunt.”
“Not dragons, I hope,” Rogan mumbled through a mouthful of the dry concentrate cake. “I have a distinct feeling dragons will not agree with my internal arrangements! Or traveling fungi either—”
For the first time Dard ventured to break in upon his elders. “Some fungi-mushrooms-are good.” He had no desire to lunch off red spiders, but he knew what real hunger meant and if it were a question of being hungry or eating swimming mushrooms, he could close his eyes and eat.
“Just so,” Kordov beamed at him. “And we shall investigate the food value of these. I shall get the hamsters out of cold storage and try the local products on them.”
So if they don’t curl up and go blue in the face we feast,” Kimber stretched and yawned. “Since we have quite a full day before us tomorrow, suppose we hit the sack now. Toss for the bunks and the acceleration pads.”
They solemnly tossed a coin-one with a hole in it which Kimber wore on a chain about his neck as a lucky piece. Dard found that Fortune relegated him to one of the acceleration pads and did not care. To his mind the soft sponge of that support was infinitely more comfortable than any bed he could remember.
But when he curled up on it he found that he could not sleep. All the wonders of the new world whirled through his mind in a mad dance. And behind them lurked fear. Lui Skort had been a strong young man but he had not survived the passage. How many more of the boxes housed below in the star ship held death instead of life? What about Dessie?
Now that there was nothing to distract him, nothing he could give attention to, he remembered only her-the tight yellow braids sticking out at sharp angles, how she had been able to sit so quietly in the grass that birds and little animals accepted her as part of their world and had been entirely unafraid-how good and patient she had always been. Dessie!
He sat up. To lie there and sleep when Dessie might never wake to see this new land! He couldn’t!
On his hands and knees Dard crawled out of the control cabin and between the bunks. Kimber was curled in a ball on one, but the other, which had fallen to Kordov, was empty. Dard started down the stair.
The deck below showed a patch of strong light and he could hear someone moving. He ventured to the door of the laboratory where he had helped to revive Cully and Rogan The First Scientist was busy there, setting out instruments and bottles. He looked up as Dard’s shadow fell into the room.
“What is it?”
“Dessie!” the boy blurted out. “I’ve got to know about Dessie!”
“Ah, so? But it is for their own comfort and protection that our companions must continue to sleep. Until we are sure of food and shelter.”
“I know that.” But the desperation in Dard could not be so sensibly silenced. “But-isn’t there any way at all of telling? I have to know about Dessie-I just have to!”
Tas Kordov pulled out his lower lip with thumb and forefinger and allowed it to snap back hate place with a soft smacking sound.
“That is a thought, my, boy. We can tell whether the mechanism has in any way failed. And perhaps-just perhaps we can have other assurance. I must open that particular compartment in the morning anyway to bring out Carlee Skort. Carlee—” his face puckered with the misery of an unhappy child. “And then I must be the one to tell her about Lui. That will be a very hard thing to do. Well, we do not escape the hard things in this life. Come along.”
They went down five levels in the ship. Here the few lights were very dim, and the force of the wind against the hull could be more strongly felt. Kordov verified markings on the sealed door and at last released the fastening of a portal which came open with a faint sigh of displaced air. The chill of the room fed Dard’s unease. He edged along after Kordov, between doubled racks of the coffin boxes to the final set. The First Scientist dropped to his knees and snapped on a hand torch to read dials.
“Dessie and Lara Skort are in this one together, they were so small they could share a compartment.” The light in Kordov’s hand flashed from one dial to the next, and the next. Then he smiled up at Dard.
“These are all as they should be, son. There has been no organic or chemical change inside since this was sealed. To my honest belief they are alive and well. Soon they will be out to run about as little girls should. They shall be free-as they never could have been on Terra. Do not worry. Your Dessie shall share this world with you!”
Dard had himself under control now and he was able to answer quite levelly:
“Thanks- thanks a lot, sir.”
But Kordov had moved to another box and was reading more dials. He gave that case a slap of approbation as he straightened to his full height again.
“Carlee, too-we have been so very lucky.”