Delta Pavonis (9 page)

"What I'm hoping," Dierdre said, ignoring the interruption, "is that what the aliens left behind is some sort of interstellar transport system. Think of it!" She grew enthusiastic as she warmed to the subject. "Right now, with our best drive system and human life expectancy nearing the two-century mark, you can't reasonably expect to visit more than ten or fifteen systems in your lifetime. Less than that if you're going to do in-depth exploring when you get there. So much is wasted in transit time. With an instantaneous transport, we could visit dozens, maybe hundreds!"

"Don't get your hopes up," Govinda cautioned. "Lots of people thought the Rhea Objects would give us superluminal travel, but they didn't. Superluminal commo, sure, but only for electromagnetic signals, not matter."

"Besides," Hannie added, "we're pretty sure the aliens used ships. Sieglinde was positive the Rhea Objects were power packs for a space vessel."

"Maybe the receiver terminal has to go ahead first, through conventional space," Dierdre hazarded.

"Then why wasn't one ever found in Sol System?" Govinda asked.

"We never explored much of that system," Dierdre said. "Hell, there was lots of
Earth
that never got explored. A facility as small as that one in there could be lost for thousands of years near a major city. Out in the other planets, the moons, the Belt, it could stay lost for millions of years." It was, she thought, a hell of a conversation for three wet people to be having while pounding laundry on flat rocks.

"We keep talking like there's just one race of aliens," Hannie pointed out. "Maybe the ones who made the transporter aren't even connected with the ones that left the Rhea Objects behind."

"Yeah!" Govinda said. "Wouldn't that be great? I mean, the philosophical implications get bigger all the time! Maybe the galaxy's crawling with intelligent life! If that's the case, how long before we run into it?"

"It might already have happened," Dierdre said. "The Delta Pav expedition was just one of dozens. I'd like for us to be the first, naturally."

"Damn!" Hannie said, resting her chin on her knuckles in the classic
Le Penseur
pose. "I hadn't thought of that. There's Einsteinian time-dilation complications here. When we finally get together again and compare notes, how are we going to figure out who was first to do anything? Beyond a solely local basis, I mean, like exploring this planet."

It was, Dierdre thought, a typical explorer's worry. Pure knowledge be damned, everybody wanted to be
first
. "We do have superluminal commo," she said.

"That's no good," Govinda said. "Some of the expeditions went out before it was perfected, and others refused to use it because they wanted to cut ties totally. Besides, even when you're talking to someone over SL commo, elapsed subjective time since the last communication can vary tremendously."

"Not much sense speculating," Hannie sighed. "The big brains will be down here soon. They'll shove us aside, confer, study. Maybe in a couple of years we'll hear their tentative conclusions."

"Sure," Dierdre said, slapping her pants against a rock. "But I
like
to speculate."

By midafternoon, Forrest was ready to experiment with the transporter. "I'll go first," he said. Fumiyo, Schubert, Dierdre and Lefevre were in the transporter room. Others crowded the hall outside. "I'll stay long enough to confirm if it's the same arctic location Jamail went to, then I come right back. If I don't return, absolutely nobody follows me. From what Jamail says, it's not a dangerous environment, so a rescue attempt would be pointless. If I don't return, it'll mean I ended up somewhere else."

He wiped his sweaty palms on the seat of his coverall, not bothering to hide his nervousness. Teeth clenched, he grasped the controls and turned them.

Dierdre stood next to Fumiyo, who had mini holo recorders spotted around the chamber to record the event. They all stared hard, but nobody could really describe what happened next. There was no flashy display, no lightning and thunder. He did not blink out of view suddenly, nor did he slowly fade. The watchers felt as if they had been momentarily distracted, and when they took notice, he was gone.

"Did anyone see anything?" Fumiyo asked.

"I don't think human perceptions are set up for this phenomenon," Lefevre said. "I felt a sort of subliminal twinge."

"It was what I felt when I went through," Dierdre said, "only much fainter."

Schubert studied his sound equipment. "There was no noise, not even subsonic."

"No sound of displaced air," Fumiyo mused. "That means his body was replaced by exactly the same volume of air. It's going to be interesting going over our atmospheric data. I hope it's sensitive enough to tell us if there was a change of atmospheric chemistry."

They waited nervously for what seemed like an hour but was actually no more than ten minutes. Then, to their unutterable relief, Forrest reappeared as quietly as he had gone, a light dusting of snow on his hat and shoulders. He turned around with a broad grin. "Just like Jamail described it!" He turned to her. "Dierdre, did you scoop up your snowball to the right of the tunnel entrance?"

She thought for a second. "Yeah."

"The indentation's still there. The snow hasn't filled it yet."

Word was passed to the people in the tunnel and they could hear cheering.

"I'm going back now," Forrest said. "Jamail, you come next, then Schubert, then Fumiyo. Nobody else until we return. When I've left, wait one minute between transmissions so I can get out of the way. Surely these things must be set up so two people can't solidify in the same spot, but why take chances."

"Schubert has our only heavy commo equipment," Fumiyo said. "Otherwise we have only our belt sets. Do we dare risk it?"

"Kurz should be here by tomorrow afternoon, and it's not doing us much good with the sunspot activity, anyway. Besides, I need it for an experiment. Let's get going." He turned around and was gone.

Dierdre waited for a minute and followed. She was ready this time. She had put on two of everything and wore gloves. She had even brought along an extra undershirt to tie around her ears, if they should start to freeze. There was the now-familiar shock, then she was in the multiple transporter chamber with Forrest. She noticed that he had marked their terminal with a red grease pencil.

In a few minutes the other two were in the room as well. They conferred briefly and it was agreed that everybody felt fine and they had all experienced identical sensations. They went to the tunnel entrance and admired the snow for a while, then Dierdre and Fumiyo did a scan with their viewers while the two men set up the commo equipment.

Dierdre found that her scanner saw right through the snow. There were a number of large animals downhill, their massive bodies throwing out a heat signature like so many beacons. The hair covering and infrared viewing combined to make the contours of the beasts fuzzy, but Dierdre was pretty sure she could make out prehensile trunks at the larger ends.

"Now," Forrest said, "see if you can pick up the orbitals."

Schubert fiddled with his controls. "Still getting static from the sunspots, but the orbitals are up there."

"So we're still on the same planet," Fumiyo said.

"And we're still in the same time zone judging from the sun's direction from the meridian. Also, this is summer time in the north and the sun is visible in the Arctic but not in the Antartic. So, we must've moved straight north. If this static will just clear up, I can get an exact fix on our position. Ray, you want me to try to raise an orbital?"

"No! Not till Kurz and the others are here. We need to talk it over and work out our tactics. Besides, I've figured a way we can get immediate attention, but we'll need two heavy transmitters to do it, and tomorrow the sunspot activity will be a lot less."

"Shouldn't we do some exploring around here?" Fumiyo asked.

"Just the immediate area, to make sure we're safe. Jamail, go back and bring Colin and Sims up. Colin won't feel the cold in that body suit of his, and Sims used to be an ice miner. They can go out a short distance and take a look."

Dierdre went back, used to the process by now. Everyone clamored to be next but she named Forrest's choices and told the rest what they had learned. Excitement was running high. When she had guided the other two to the snowy tunnel mouth, Forrest gave Colin their best high-magnification, high-resolution viewer.

"Get a look at those animals, but don't go too far. This snow could turn heavy. Report in every ten minutes with your comm set. Remember, we're in completely unknown territory again," he told Sims and Colin.

"You don't have to tell me." Colin was gazing through the viewer at the big animals below. "Unless I miss my guess, those things are mammoths. The ice ages produced some really fearsome predators . . . sabertooths, dire wolves, cave bears, Felis Atrox . . ."

"Felis Atrox?" Dierdre asked, hugging herself.

"That's right. It means 'atrocious cat' and that about describes it. Like an African lion, only twice as big with a head three times as big. Ice age predators weren't as big as the ones in the dinosaur age, but they were plenty big enough and they were much smarter."

"Then keep your finger on your trigger, Sims," Forrest advised. "You two get going, but be back within one hour. I don't want you to freeze."

Sims shrugged. "Feels like home to me."

"You were dressed for it at home," Colin told him. "Come on."

As time passed, Forrest sent people back to warm up while others passed through. Dierdre spent much of the time in the ice-age transporter room, making sure that nobody touched the other controls. When Colin and Sims returned, the party adjourned to the transporter room where it wasn't so cold. Despite his previous bravado, Sims' teeth were chattering.

"They're mammoths, all right," Colin reported. "And there are lots of others, as well. This place looks bleak, but it's swarming with animal life, like the African veldt used to be. Our situation here is almost identical to the other transporter site: we're in foothills above a big plain, with mountains beyond the hills. The mammoths seem to like the hills, and we saw some wooly rhinos, too. Out on the plain below there are huge mixed herds, mostly some kind of long-horned bison, but there are things like clumsy giraffes, too."

"Predators?" Forrest asked.

Colin nodded. "Plenty. It seems the bison cows are dropping calves. Nothing draws mammalian predators like the smell of blood, babies and placentas. There must be a thousand wolves circling the herd looking for easy pickings. Big ones."

Dierdre shuddered. Raw nature wasn't as nice as the child-oriented holos she had loved in her younger days. "I guess everybody had better stick close, huh?"

"What I'm wondering," Sims said, "is why none of the animals are using these tunnels as dens. They're both wide open, but we haven't found a trace of animal life except what the wind's blown in. What's keeping them out?"

"Good question, but one we're not likely to answer. All right, you two go back and thaw out, and send up anybody who hasn't been through yet. Dierdre, how about you?"

"I'm fine." Actually, she was cold, but it was no more miserable than the tropic heat. She didn't want to miss a minute of this.

At the end of the day, she helped Forrest and Fumiyo pack up their equipment and they made their way tiredly back to the other cave, now so jaded that they barely thought of the exotic process that was transporting them unknown thousands of kilometers. Govinda was on duty in the other chamber. When the last were through, Forrest said, "We're shutting this place down for the night. Nobody reenters until morning, and only with my permission."

Govinda wasn't paying attention. She was watching the tunnel outside. "Boss, there's some kind of commotion outside."

"Uh-oh," Forrest said. "Come on, let's go assess the damage."

They found the camp in an uproar. Everyone was gathered around something that lay on the ground. Dierdre felt a sense of dread. Had someone been hurt? Killed?

"I had to shoot it!" Okamura said to anyone who would listen. "It was self-defense!"

"Damn right," Ping confirmed. "It was going to eat us!"

"What happened?" Forrest demanded. On the ground lay a reptile bulkier than a large man. Its body was similar to a tyrannosaur's but its head looked more like a crocodile's. Its forelimbs were stubby but thick, and ended in large talons tipped with sickle-shaped, four-inch claws.

"Ping and Angus and me went out for firewood, just over that way," Okamura pointed over the ridge to the left. "Not more than five hundred meters downhill. We were in a clearing, and this thing came right up off the ground and charged down on us. It must've been lying flat on its belly in plain view, but you can see how it's camouflaged. I saw nothing but claws and teeth and I opened fire when it wasn't ten meters away."

"That's how it happened, Boss," Angus affirmed.

Forrest squatted by the thing. Its belly was pale, but the back was mottled gray, green and brown, a perfect match for the forest floor. At the back of the head was a circular hole.

"If it was charging at you," Forrest said, "how come the hole's at the back of the head?"

"Uh-uh," Okamura said, squatting by the head. "That's where the beam came out." He tugged the ghastly, long-toothed jaws apart. " This is where I shot it." There was a neat hole burned in the roof of the thing's mouth.

"Good shooting, Oke," said Hannie, "especially in such a stressful situation."

"Sounds like justifiable reptilocide to me," Forrest said. "I think an autopsy is in order."

"Let me at that thing," Fumiyo said, flipping open a laser scalpel with the panache of an old-time hoodlum displaying a switchblade. "Just get a holo recorder on it and stand back."

In practice, it took the efforts of several people to get the monster dissected. To their horror, it was still twitching. Most of the team watched with a kind of morbid fascination.

At one point, Fumiyo reached into its thorax and emerged with something bloody and quivering. "I think this is a primitive four-chambered heart. So some of them were warm-blooded, after a fashion." She dropped the heart into a specimen bag that would preserve it for several weeks. With the efficiency of a trained technician, she extracted other organs, snippets of brain and muscle tissue, nerves, blood vessels, and other bodily pieces. Few of the others could watch when she extracted the eyes. By the time it was fully dark, she finished up under a floodlight, a neat pile of specimen bags at her feet.