Bedlam Planet (3 page)

But before she had a chance to frame her answer, he rose and headed for the door. “I’ll wander round and see who wants some data harvested. Maybe I can come back this afternoon with enough requests to save Abdul from being as obstructionist as you.”

The door closed behind him. It was of unseasoned timber. It had been accurately cut with power-tools when it was installed, but it was warping a little now, and when it met its jamb a bulge in the wood rubbed, and caused a squeak. Parvati winced.

Of course, he was perfectly right. Regardless of how well their plan to establish themselves was progressing, they had in the final analysis come naked to Asgard. They had to clothe themselves—indeed, to armour themselves—by power of reason alone. And human beings were not wholly rational creatures.

That imponderable had been taken into account as much as possible, and even there luck had in most ways
been on their side. Just as by policy they had set to immediately after arriving to work the native materials by hand, for the sake of the continuing psychological reinforcement which would stem from looking at the street, the houses, the boats and remembering that this was part of Asgard made over by the will of man, so too they had stocked their minds not only with the skills of Earth, but its varied culture and traditions: legend, folklore, literature, everything which could offer a pipeline to the past they had left lightyears behind them.

In a sense which was so cynical that she had not dared discuss it with anyone else, she was even coming to think that the loss of the
Pinta
had been a blessing in disguise. When irrational regret at something not being available on Asgard, though commonplace on Earth, threatened to overwhelm someone, there was a rational ground for resentment to which it might be attached: the fact that instead of the three ships they had expected, there were only two. The crash had laid a long shadow of sorrow across their lives, naturally—every member of the expedition had counted all the others as friends. But, like a wound which healed to a scar without imposing a permanent handicap, that would fade.

The sponsors of the venture had planned well. The lack of the
Pinta
had caused only difficulties, not failure, and perhaps the added incentive had driven people harder than they might have managed without the knowledge that catastrophe really could overtake them. That was just as well. She hated to think what another major setback would do to Hassan. As well as being the senior among them, at fifty, he was a sort of father-figure—deliberately chosen—and looked on the colonists as his family. The loss of the
Pinta
had put him in the predicament of an Abraham who had not escaped the charge to sacrifice his son, and, lacking visible compensation for his deed, he would have crumbled.

Yet he, and she herself, and all the other key members of the colony, were enduring what had to be endured, and gaining strength.

Except Dennis Malone.

With an effort, because she knew he was correct to say his sickness could not be cured unless it were by time and his own self-mastery, she returned to her study of the progress reports. Now, however, the elation had gone from her, and indeed the light seemed to have gone from the bright summer day.

A
T THE MOMENT
the village street was empty, though there were several people in sight on the hillside and along the beach. Everyone had dispersed, after their communal breakfast in the mess-hall, to their daily work. During the first month or so after landing, superfluous Dennis had been in continual demand, called on by all the work-teams whenever a spare pair of hands was needed. Now, things were so well under control he had to go out and beg for assignments.

He walked towards the harbour, more or less at random, his gun bumping his thigh as he went. To be seen without it, or without the medikit which occupied the corresponding pocket on the other side of his suit, would have been to invite the censure and rebuke of all the colonists. Not that he had to be compelled. Everything about his surroundings made him nervous. Even in the womb-like dark of his room at night, there was still the indefinably wrong smell of Asgard to remind him.

On a kind of natural wharf, formed by a slab of rock akin to slate, which ran beside the sandy bay, he found Daniel Sakky, their construction engineer in chief, discussing with shipwright Saul Carpender the siting of the boatsheds that would make their harbour storm-proof for the winter. Daniel was a big jovial African who personalised his standard suit with whatever touches he could find; today, he had given himself a brooch of little spiky egg-cases such as were found washed up on all
the nearby beaches, glistening like opals, fastened into an eight-pointed star.

He greeted Dennis cordially, but in response to his diffident request for something useful he could go looking for, merely shrugged.

“This planet’s being too kind to us, Dennis!” he exclaimed. “What I needed was mainly cement and a supply of steel bar, or else a source of structural plastics which could be cured on site. Ulla has found me both, when I could have made do with either. But if I think of anything …”

On a rocky promontory further around the island he encountered Kitty Minakis, the tiny fragile Greek meteorologist whom no one would have suspected of being on speaking terms with storms, being helped by an assistant to fill the day’s batch of upper-air radiosondes from a small automatic electrolyser that broke up water and supplied the necessary hydrogen. She gave him a flashing smile and contrived to draw down the zip of her suit—already low as though the heat of the day were oppressing her—another inch on her small but beautiful bosom. No one held her fondness for men against her; it was impossible to dislike such a sweet-natured person.

But there was nothing she could suggest for him to do which would furnish the excuse for another scouting trip away from the island. They had left robot weather satellites in orbit as they came down, and all of them were functioning; they had sown surface observation units on equally spaced islands from pole to pole, and they too were signalling on schedule.

He exchanged greetings with a couple of Daniel’s staff who were stringing additional power-cables from the solar collectors that had started to fledge the slopes of the island like weird technological shrubs, and came to the stream which they had dammed to provide their fresh water. Ulla Berzelius, her long blonde hair clipped back from her face with a metal comb, was sifting the mud of the exposed bed and picking out small pebbles to put in a box. Beside her, Yoko Namura was lifting,
examining, recording with an automatic camera and throwing away the corpses of the little water-creatures which the artificial drought had killed.

“You’ve done too good a job on your previous trips,” Ulla said in answer to his question. “We’ve, located all the minerals which are indispensable already. Right now I’m just looking for indium—our seawater analysers came up with a minute trace which was probably washed out by a stream, and I want to know if it was this stream. But if you like I’ll cheerfully tell Abdul a white lie. Even negative knowledge is useful, after all.”

She snapped her fingers. “Just a second, though! One thing we don’t have, which it would be nice to find in a natural deposit instead of having to make them, and that’s diamonds. I’ll bet that Abdul would love to have a supply. He keeps asking me hopefully whether the stuff I’ve located is in hard or soft strata, because we’re not overloaded with rock-drill bits. Shall I see if I can work out a list of likely localities for you?”

“Just tell me what to programme the computers for, and I’ll do it myself,” Dennis said, cheering up instantly. “Blue clay in a young volcanic region—isn’t that right?”

Ulla chuckled. “Start concentrating on that, on a world with vigorous tectonics like this one, and you could spend half a lifetime on the job.”

“That would be great,” Dennis muttered. Not catching his meaning, she gave him a blank look and continued.

“You might as well have a shot at it, though. I think I should have put enough data into the store by now to produce a manageable printout. Just punch for bort—industrial-grade stones. We certainly haven’t mapped enough of the local geology to pin down gemstones with any precision.”

“Thanks,” Dennis said. “Anything I can do for you, Yoko?” he added to the xenobiologist.

“The usual,” Yoko shrugged. “Shots of any creature or plant you don’t recognise, and enough clues to lead us back to where you spotted it.”

“Will do,” Dennis said, and climbed back out of the streambed.

The island was roughly hexagonal, with rocky ridges connecting the central peak where the
Santa Maria
rested to each of the promontories. The shallow valleys between the ridges were cluttered with vegetation, except where Tai Men’s team had cleared the ground to plant vegetables from Earth in the rich soil there exposed, but on the ridges themselves there were only the warty excrescences of the woodplants. He made his way to the spine of the nearest and started to follow it towards the ship. As he went higher, he was able to see over the island’s shoulder, towards the spot where the
Niña
was being systematically dismembered for the sake of its components. The star-brilliance of a cutting torch hurt his eyes as it moved across the gleaming plates of her upper hull, not because it could truly be so bright at this distance, but because at every pass it eroded another of the strands that tied him to Earth, as though he were hanging at the brink of a precipice feeling the stems of a grass-clump break one by one with his weight, and could not tell how few there must be before he fell.

Also he could see the heavily wired pens where their handful of test animals were kept, the survivors which a cautious planner had assigned to
Santa Maria
instead of the
Pinta.
There were plenty of rats and mice thanks to their rapid breeding, but the more useful hamsters and pigs were alarmingly few when one considered how soon human beings must start to eat soil-grown instead of hydroponic food.

However, he was no longer in the mood for gloomy thoughts. Ulla had given him the excuse for an excursion by himself, and that was all he cared about right now. He hastened his steps, remembering that when he first made an ascent like this, in company with Carmen Vlady, the exertion tired him owing to Asgard’s eight per cent greater gravity. Now he was used to it and didn’t notice. Perhaps, in time, the other strangenesses of the planet would cease to trouble him.

Suddenly, however, he checked. As usual, Tai Men was taking sick call at the entrance to the
Santa Maria’s
main lock, attended by his deputies. He had never seen so many people waiting to be dealt with. There must be a couple of dozen at the least, standing and sitting around, looking worried.

Wondering what could have caused it, yet not wanting to interrupt the medics by inquiring, he made to go straight inship. But, catching sight of him, Tai Men called out.

“Hey, Dennis! Here a moment!”

Complying, he approached the electronic desk with its load of computer remotes, through which the doctors could consult the store of medical knowledge in the memory banks of the ship.

“You feeling all right?” Tai Men demanded. He was above average height for a Chinese, but thanks to his blocky build he gave the impression of squatness—by implication, power and determination. But Dennis had never seen him wear such a grim expression before.

Now very disturbed, he answered truthfully: apart from inadequate sleep, he was well.

“Open your mouth,” Tai Men snapped, and peered inside. “Gums been sore at all? Any bleeding?”

“No, none,” Dennis said, paling as he made the assumption any spaceman might have reached. “Not checking on overdoses of radiation, are you, Tai?”

“Radiation hell,” the biologist in chief said curtly.
“That’s
a stupid question, if you like. Here, have one of these.” He seized a jar from the table and shook out a large white capsule. By the look of it, he had given one to everybody else here assembled, and the level of the remainder was down to half.

“What is it?” Dennis said, taking the capsule.

“Ascorbic acid. We have twenty-two advanced cases of scurvy, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

I
N ONE WAR
at least, Parvati reflected as she laid out the various section reports on the table where Hassan would preside over the day’s progress meeting, Asgard was almost more suitable for human habitation than Earth. Here, the days were nearly thirty hours long. The twenty-four hours of Earth were—for some unaccountable reason—too short for the natural bio-rhythm of the majority of people; something between twenty-eight and thirty was the cycle that developed under experimental conditions when they were left to find their own preference away from the tyranny of clocks.

They had adjusted gradually as their voyage from home progressed, and everyone had been issued with a watch, on arrival, which kept Asgard instead of Earthly time. Before their first summer was over, virtually everyone was accustomed to the new time-scale—though they sounded a siren for meal-calls, meetings and the midnight
curfew, just in case anybody was distracted enough not to keep proper track.

Answering the siren now, people were drifting in steadily from all parts of the island. The first arrivals had gone to the mess-hall and fetched its chairs and benches, ranging them on the level surface of the street facing the chairman’s table. Now, with everything ready for the meeting including the computer remotes, Parvati sat down and watched the colonists assembling. Occasionally she waved a greeting.