Delta Pavonis (7 page)

"Weren't there all kinds of horrible diseases you could get just from being dunked in contaminated water?" someone asked.

"Forget that," Govinda said. "If we all have to stop washing on this expedition, I'm gonna swim back to the base camp."

"Let's keep our worries to a minimum," Forrest cautioned. "I don't think there were any diseases you could get that way that'd kill you very fast. If somebody comes down with something, we can probably evacuate them. Same procedure as dealing with serious injury."

"How come," Angus said, "all those heroic explorer stories we were raised on never said anything about the bugs and the diseases?"

"They did, if you go back far enough. In Magellan's day, you could expect at least fifty percent dead from disease or accident on a typical voyage. For a really big, round-the-world expedition, they could send out five ships. If one ship made it back, with half a crew and a cargo of spices, they figured it'd been a successful voyage."

"I guess that's okay for the Dark Ages," Hannie said. "Being gobbled up by a dinosaur is one thing, but dysentery is so undignified. Galloping diarrhea until you hemorrhage. That's no way for an explorer to die."

Sims tossed a pine cone at her. "If you wanted it easy, you could've stayed at home."

"Enough talk and relaxation," Forrest ordered. "Let's be on our way. I want everybody to be on the lookout for . . ." He hesitated. "For something different, out of place. I know that everything here looks exotic and new, but if you find something that really looks like it doesn't belong here, that's not a part of the natural landscape, that may be tangible evidence of the aliens."

"I think we get your drift, boss," Dierdre said, reshouldering her pack.

"Good. Jamail, you lead off, right behind Okamura."

Dierdre stepped out, smiling inwardly. She decided that being given the secondary point position was a sign that she was now accepted as a full-fledged explorer. She had, she decided complacently, acquitted herself rather well so far.

They continued to skirt the swamp and by late afternoon they came to a small lagoon where the water growth was less dense. A family of huge reptiles grazed on bottom growth, scooping up great, messy wads of muck and greenery, chewing it slowly in their wide, ducklike beaks. They paid no attention to the explorers, who were no more than fifty meters away.

"No gawking," Forrest said, "we'll see plenty more." Everybody gawked anyway, Forrest included. This was the closest they had come to any of the bigger specimens. These were mottled green-gray-brown, although it wasn't clear how much of that was hide and how much was mud.

"They don't seem too impressed with us," someone said.

"Would you be?" Colin asked.

By late afternoon they were not only physically exhausted but emotionally wrung out. It had been the longest, most exciting day of any of their young lives. The sights had been incredible and eventually even Forrest's no-gawking litany subsided to an occasional muttered "buncha damned tourists." The hint of omnipresent danger added to the strain, as did the knowledge that they were in willful violation of the regs. They were anxious to see everything, but nobody gave Forrest an argument when he decided to call it quits for the day.

They found a favorable campsite on high ground with a good field of view in all directions. They had discovered in the course of the day that the bloodsucking pests favored the low, swampy areas. In the final hour of daylight they gathered enough firewood to last the night. There were to be no after-dark separations from the group.

Dierdre tossed down her last load of wood and collapsed atop her pack. "I've gotta have some sack time or I'm gonna die right here!" she announced.

"You don't get to die until you've stood watch, Jamail," Forrest told her. He consulted his roster. "Which, in your case, will be 0300 to 0400, along with Lefevre."

"I might've known. The deadest part of the night." She unwrapped a ration bar and bit into it. She was so exhausted that it almost tasted good. "Well, knowing what's all around us should keep me awake."

She finished the concentrate, choking it down with chemical-tasting water. She unrolled her sleeping bag and sprawled on top of it, not even bothering to take off her boots. She told herself that, in a few minutes, when she worked up the energy, she would take her boots off and crawl into the bag.

The next thing she felt was someone shaking her shoulder. For a moment she thought she would need to use her hands to force her eyelids apart. They parted gummily and she saw Govinda leaning over her. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter," Govinda yawned. "It's time for your watch. There's a bucket of water over by the fire. Go splash some on your face."

"It can't be 0300 yet." She squinted at her watch. "On the other hand, maybe it is. What's it been like?" She sat, stretching the kinks out of her back. Her neck only seemed to turn in one direction.

"Real quiet. I guess these reptiles are solar-powered. Once I heard some snorting and honking off in the distance, but that was all. Lotta bugs, though. Don't sit too close to the fire. They like it."

Govinda stumbled off to her bed and Dierdre took a few lurching steps toward the fire. Immediately, she knew that she had made a major mistake by leaving her boots on. Her feet were almost numb, but what little she could feel was pain. In fact, she was sore all over. Standing by the water bucket, she checked her body out, one part at a time. Yes, it all hurt, every bit of it. She splashed water into her face and felt marginally less awful.

Lefevre squatted by the fire, tossing a few more sticks onto it. In the intensified firelight she saw his teeth flash in a grin. "Hurting, huh?"

"Do you people just like to see suffering, or what?"

"Everybody has to learn. I have to admit this has been a hell of an initiation for a newby, though. Better sit down and get your boots off. Keep your feet raised so they won't swell too much."

That seemed like a good idea. She checked the ground for bugs and sat. Then she found she couldn't get her boots off. Her feet were too swollen. She gritted her teeth, but she was determined not to cry. This was getting to be too much.

Lefevre got up and walked over to her. He grabbed her by the calf of one leg, took her boot in his other hand and yanked it off in one violent motion, peeling her sock off and dropping it on top of the boot. He repeated the procedure with the other boot.

The air felt cool and soothing on her feet. "Thanks,"

He sat down by her. "Here, put your feet in my lap."

She studied him suspiciously. He was tall and knobby, dark with an ugly-handsome face. Was he making some sort of pass at her?

He seemed to read her thoughts. "Forget it. Govinda'd skin me. I have a secondary degree in physical therapy. You'd better let me work on these if you don't want to be walking around like a cripple tomorrow."

"Okay." She held out her left foot and he started with her toes. At first she thought she would scream with the pain, but that faded quickly. After twenty minutes, she decided that this was something she could really get used to. Lucky Govinda.

"I didn't know you two were attached."

"She hasn't talked to me in a week. She gets that way sometimes. She's still assertive about her prior claim, though." He did something absolutely fabulous with her achilles tendon.

"Don't worry. She'll make up next time she feels the need of a massage."

"That's the way it usually works out. I figure another day or two. Hard climbing usually brings her around." He got up. "Well, I better get to the other side of the fire. It's not a good idea to stay bunched up."

She was reluctant to reclaim her feet. "I really appreciate this." They felt almost normal. She had just added something new to the already lengthy list of qualities she wanted in a man. If he was this good with feet, what must the rest feel like?

She rested her chin on her knees and listened to the night around her. As Govinda had said, it was quiet. She could hear little above the faint crackling of the fire. Maybe the old cold-blood theorists were right and the dinosaurs needed sunlight to get started. She could sympathize with that. At least it might mean that they were safe after dark. These optimistic thoughts were interrupted when an enormous beetle walked across her bare foot. She gasped and jerked, sending it tumbling. Upended, its legs waving feebly in the air, it looked more comical than menacing. She decided it was probably not dangerous and flipped it over with a stick. It waddled unconcernedly away, apparently attracted by the fire. The thing was almost as big as her hand. She wondered how large the insects got around here. Just as she was feeling better about the reptiles, too.

These thoughts on the wildlife started her brooding on the aliens. They must have had power and technology that made the human variety seem Stone Age by comparison. They had made, she was convinced, actually made this planet, or at least redesigned it for their own purposes. Only that could explain its geological absurdities. They had populated it with what she was now sure were the fauna of hundreds of planets, the only requirement being compatibility with an Earth-type atmosphere.

And why? As a lab or zoo, most likely. Humans would do exactly the same thing if they had the power. The big question, as she saw it, was not why the aliens had done this, but what had happened to them. Where were they? How did all this keep functioning smoothly in their absence? It seemed to her unbelievable that such a mishmash of environments could remain stable over a great length of time. Something prevented volcanic and seismic and atmospheric activity from altering the balance of environmental conditions. Yet, so far, nobody had discovered any mechanism that accounted for it.

She got her second shock of the night when something swooped into the firelight from overhead. It darted about confusedly, striking at the ground, its narrow head lancing forward on a long, thin neck. It moved too quickly for her to fix details but she had an impression of batlike wings, tiny teeth and enormous eyes that reflected the firelight like lamps. It was no larger than a pigeon. She had seen holos of pigeons. After a few seconds, it darted away.

"What was that?" she said.

"Another flying reptile," Lefevre answered. "This one adapted for night flying. Did you see those eyes? I think it was confused by the firelight, maybe mistook moving shadows on the ground for small animals."

"I guess they don't all need sunlight to operate. That one I saw two nights ago was a nocturnal flyer. It was a lot bigger, though. I got the impression that little thing had feathers. Did you see any?"

"Didn't get a close enough look. There must've been a lot of transitional forms that didn't leave fossils behind."

Another mystery. At least thinking about them helped pass the time, and let her forget her aches and pains. Before she knew it, it was time to wake up her relief. If she was lucky, she might get another whole hour of sleep before Forrest rousted them out for another day of slogging.

FIVE

By midafternoon of the second day on the plateau, Dierdre had had enough of dinosaurs. She was willing to put adventure on hold and let breathtaking scientific discoveries take a break for a while. What she really wanted was a bath. They were now several days from the base camp on the mainland, and she had never gone so long without a bath before. She was sweaty and itchy and her whole body felt gummy. She hated to think that she smelled like the others.

"I've decided how I'm going to make my fortune," she told Colin during a break. "Ill go into gene-splice research and design a microorganism that eats sweat and body oil and excretes perfume as a byproduct."

"I think it was tried once, back on Earth. The cosmetics cartel bought up the patents, destroyed the data and had the scientists executed."

"Isn't it always that way? What do you think are the chances of getting a bath around here? There are plenty of small streams and pools. By myself, I mean. I'm not quite ready to be as casual as the rest of these nature-lovers. There are some things I still prefer to do in private."

"It wouldn't hurt to ask, I guess, but not just now. Wait till later in the day, when he's too tired to argue. Right now he's too impatient to stop, plus he's afraid that if he lets one of us get killed, it'll look bad on his record."

"He's all heart. Okay, I'll wait until he looks exhausted and punchy."

The rest of the afternoon they spent making a detailed record of the ground they traversed. They had become so used to the huge reptiles that they began to take greater notice of the smaller ones. Perched on a bush, somebody spotted a tiny creature that was neither reptile nor bird, but some sort of transitional form. Its neck and head were scaly, but its back and paddlelike wings had definite, though crude-looking, feathers. Its flat tail was likewise edged with feathers. It blinked at them fearlessly as they crowded around and recorded it. Finally, it flapped away in what was not quite flight, but more of an extended jump. Dierdre found a dropped feather and stored it in a specimen envelope.

Colin chuckled. "The Earth paleontologists are going to have a fit, if word of this ever reaches them. A bunch of amateurs light years away from them have come up with more hard data on primitive Earth life than generations of specialists back home. This sure beats chipping matrix away from fossils."

Forrest called a halt as they climbed into a range of low hills. They were near a rushing stream and had a panoramic vista of the plain below.

"We're not going to find a better spot than this today," he announced, dropping his pack. They began setting up camp, taking more care than the previous day. There had been repeated rain showers since morning, so the tents went up and clothing was hung out to dry.

While foraging for firewood, Dierdre came across the perfect site: a shallow pool formed where a giant boulder blocked a tiny stream. While topping up her canteen, she checked the temperature. It was pleasantly cool, just what she needed after the days of tropical heat.

She found Forrest going over the holos they had recorded that day. They were fascinating even with the low-grade reproduction equipment they had. He was looking gaunt and hollow-eyed, so she decided now was as good a time as any.

"Hey, Boss, I just found a good site for a quick bath. How about it? It's close, just uphill a few dozen meters. You can hear me holler if I get into trouble."

"Everybody will be going up there in a while," he said, not looking up from his holos, "you can wait."

"I need privacy," she insisted.

He looked up, annoyed. "What is it, some sort of religious thing?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Oh, all right, but take Okamura with you. He can stay close by but out of sight."

"I can live with that." It was a better compromise than she would have expected. She liked Okamura better than Sims, who was always breathing down her neck.

"Be back before the light gets too dim. We're going to set out lights tonight and record some of the nocturnal life."

"Right, Boss." She ran to her pack and scrounged out a towel, soap and clean clothes. She found Okamura sitting with his back against a tree, his beam rifle propped next to him. He sighed and got to his feet when she told him Forrest's instructions, faintly amused by her insistence on privacy.

"You think you have anything other women don't have?" he said as they trudged uphill.

"What I have I prefer to keep to myself or carefully chosen companions. I don't know any of you that well."

He chuckled. "Well, everybody to his own . . . my God, look at that!" He pointed to the plain below. An immense reptile, far larger than any they had seen so far, had sauntered from the forest to browse on the tops of trees. It was built like a giraffe, but was far more massive. "How big can these things get?"

"Colin says there were some really huge ones that're only known from a couple of bones. There has to be an upper limit somewhere. The square-cube law applies to these things, too." She examined the cake of soap. "Does this stuff really work in cold water?"

"It's about the only thing we have that performs as advertised. Just lather up and rinse it off. Is that your swimming hole?" He pointed at the glinting pool in a depression at the base of a granite cliff. A narrow game path led from the ridge they stood on down to the stream, running along the base of the cliff.

"That's it. You stay up here and watch the pretty dinosaurs. I won't be long."

" 'Kay," he said, sitting down. "Yell if anything starts chewing on you. Look, there's more of them." Below, knobby heads perched atop long necks loomed above the trees.

"Looks like the rest of the family's coming in for dinner. I'll be back in a few minutes." Towel over shoulder, she walked down the path, footsore but elated at the prospect of a bath. The nearer edge of the pool was marshy, muddy and full of weeds. The opposite side looked more promising, rocky and probably deeper. She followed the path along the base of the cliff, which towered to her left. Midway, the path curved to the left, where the cliff curved inward, forming an oddly regular U-shaped wall. At the inner curve was a crevice leading into the stone. Thinking it could be the lair of something awful, she cut across the base of the "U" and continued to the rocks on the far side.

She sat on a flat-topped boulder of appropriate height and pulled off her boots and socks, trying not to breathe through her nose in the process. Then she stood and peeled off her sweat-stiff clothes. The soap cake had an embedded cord, and she immediately found out why. It was trickier getting into the deep water than she would have expected. The bottom was extremely irregular and rocks kept turning under her feet. She hung the soap around her neck and proceeded, using her hands on convenient boulders to keep from falling.

The center of the pool had a gravel bottom and the water came to just below her breasts. It was perfect. She began scrubbing industriously, ducking her head under and lathering her black hair until it squeaked. Then she just let herself soak for a few minutes, deciding that moments like this might make an explorer's life bearable, after all.

Eventually, she forced herself to get out of the water. Standing by the pile of her discarded clothes, she toweled off, noting that the soap had, indeed, left no sticky residue in spite of the tepid and no doubt mineral-laden water.

Sitting on her flat rock, she began to wring out her hair. Her dense, dark thatch always seemed to hold several liters. Twisting vigorously, both hands full of damp locks, she noticed something. There was a very odd regularity about the cave-crevice in the equally odd and regular indentation at the base of the cliff. She knew that water action could have made the symmetrical notch in the cliff face, but the cave entrance was just too centrally located, and too regularly rectangular. Even stranger was a pile of stones in front of the entrance. They looked almost like steps.

She knew it had to be an illusion, but she had to investigate.

Quickly, she dressed, reveling in the feel of clean clothes. She wrapped the malodorous bundle of worn clothes in her towel, shook her hair across her shoulders to air-dry, and went to check out the cave.

Close up, the impression of regularity was even stronger. The thing just didn't look natural. The opening was about a meter from the level of the path. It was approximately man-height. Gingerly, she climbed the "steps" and stopped just outside the entrance. It was awfully dark in there.

Dierdre set down her bundle, braced a hand against the side of the entrance, and leaned inside, ready to bolt at the first evidence of a tenant. She couldn't make out much. The lowering sun was behind her, but the light couldn't penetrate far. The tunnel within had a fairly level floor and an arched roof. All the surfaces she could see were rough enough that they just could be natural, but she felt that they weren't. She sniffed the air. It was faintly musty, but carried no animal scent she could detect. Surely, she thought, the lair of a predator would reek. She had no experience to confirm such a thing, but it just seemed sensible.

She had discovered all she was going to without going in. She thought of calling Okamura down, It would be comforting to have his beam rifle handy, in case of emergency. But he would insist on reporting the find to Forrest before going in. She knew that she was about to make the kind of foolish mistake that had always gotten her into trouble before. She stepped inside.

Three steps in, she stopped and waited for her eyes to adjust to the interior dimness. She could see that the tunnel went into the hill for about thirty meters before taking a turn to the right that cut off further view. Just a little bit farther, she thought, then I'll go back.

Halfway to the turn, she realized that the pearly light inside couldn't all be coming through the entrance. It was too pale to be reflected sunlight, even reflected through dust. It was pale, and it seemed to come from all directions at once. It was just possible that it was some sort of natural phosphorescence or bioluminescence, but she didn't think so.

The oppressive heat and humidity were gone and it was comfortably cool. She didn't know whether that was natural or not. Maybe caves were always like that. She had never been in one before. Then she came to the righthand curve and unhooked the power torch from her belt, only to find that she didn't need it. She stood in a chamber where the ambient light was noticeably brighter than in the tunnel. Also, this chamber was definitely, unequivocally, artificial.

Her scalp tingled and her stomach lurched. She wasn't sure whether what her heart was doing was a genuine flutter or just beating rapidly, but it was doing something irregular. This had happened only once before in human history, when Derek Kuroda had discovered the Rhea Objects. She had discovered genuine alien artifacts. It looked as if the whole cave was an alien artifact. The chamber in which she stood was roughly cubical, with a domed roof. Whoever had made it apparently felt no need for smooth surfaces or sharp angles, but the regular dimensions ruled out natural formation. One wall had been cut to form a tier of shelves, and another was studded with pegs, as if to hang equipment on. Then there were the discs.

There were two of them, on the opposite wall, about shoulder height and a meter apart. In a half-daze, she walked across the small room for a closer look. The discs were set in holes in the stone wall, about ten centimeters in depth. They were, she estimated, about twenty centimeters in diameter, and they looked metallic. Each had a vertical ridge across its diameter.

Rarely daring to breathe, Dierdre flexed her fingers, itching to touch the discs, to evaluate their feel and texture. She wanted to learn everything she could about them before reporting back. It was dangerous, she knew. These things might carry some deadly charge.

What would old Derek do in a case like this? she wondered. He had found two objects on Rhea. He had turned in one, as the law at that time had required. He took the other one, lied through his teeth about it, and turned it over to Sieglinde Kornfeld-Taggart. As a result, the nearby stars of the galaxy had been made accessible to human beings without need for multi-generation ships.

Admit it, she thought, you want all the glory. Well, why not? Wasn't that what they were all here for? There would be plenty of glory to spread around. She just wanted the first and biggest chunk of it. It might also get her killed, but you never got something for nothing.

She reached out and touched the righthand disc. It felt cool and metallic. The ridge seemed to be designed for gripping. There was no tingle of energy but then, she thought, there wouldn't be if she touched a terminal of a powerful electrical generator. Not until she touched the other terminal.

She pushed against the disc. There was no give. She hadn't really expected it to. The design of the thing suggested a dial, something meant to be turned. She took a deep breath and twisted. No give to the left. It turned easily to the right, moved ninety degrees and then stopped. Nothing happened. She turned it back and removed her hand.

With her left hand, she touched the other disc. This one turned only to the left. The design implied, she thought, that the dials were meant to be grasped and turned simultaneously. Already, she was able to make an informed inference about the aliens. The Rhea Objects had given no idea about the appearance or dimensions of the aliens. It seemed now that they were probably roughly man-sized and they had an arm span, or tentacle or whatever span, about like the human norm. Unless they were meant to be turned by two individuals, which threw her theory into the trash.

She heard a voice in the distance, someone calling her name. Okamura. If she was going to do something to make her name immortal, even if it killed her, she had to do it fast. Still holding the lefthand disc, she gritted her teeth and grabbed the one to the right. She was still alive. So far, so good. She forced herself to keep her eyes open as she turned both dials simultaneously.

There was a sudden . . . what? Something like a bolt of lightning hitting nearby, only she had never experienced lightning. She had a sense of great power discharging, but there was no real sound, no sense of impact, no smell of ozone. Still, something had happened.