Freedom's Landing (21 page)

“What are you guys doing up so early?” she demanded.

“I slept much,” Zainal said, grinning back at her, his marvelously weird yellow eyes echoing his good humor. “Slav and Coo well rested. Lot to do.”

“Lots to do,” she corrected him absently, then hastily added, “but you're real quick to learn.”

“Need to learn,” he replied, his smile broadened.

“Ve all learn,” Slav said in his liquid voice. “Hi, Krissss,” he added, emphasizing the sibilant.

Just then the Deskis on the heights let out the whistling alarm and slid, as suddenly, down out of sight.

“Fliers?” someone cried anxiously.

All activity in the camp was suspended. A beat later, everyone out in the open made for caves. Kris looked skyward, pivoting as Zainal, Coo, and Slav were, to scan the horizon. So was Mitford, in his exposed position on the floor of the ravine.

Coo gave an odd and earsplitting cry, which was echoed from above.

“Large thing,” the Deski said, spreading his arms to their farthest extension, indicating great size. He rolled his eyes. “Baaaaaaad. Bad, bad, bad, bad,” he repeated, shaking his head and then covering his ears tightly. But that was as much to mask the noise, which was becoming very, very loud—like half a dozen subway trains converging on you and every one of them clanking and grinding and needing full servicing—as to stress the approaching danger. Kris thought the intensity of the sound was comparable to standing in a continuous
sonic boom. Her bones began to vibrate right up to her teeth. Even the stone under her feet reverberated.

She wanted to ask where was the noise coming from and what made it, but she wouldn't be heard above that racket.

The shadow of it came first…longer and wider by far than the ravine: even the hill the ravine dissected. The shadow came on and on, and then they saw the blunt prow of the leviathan that growled and rumbled and still made the very stones shake.

It was coming in, prow definitely aiming downward, on a descending slant: several thousand feet above them, Kris estimated, blotting out the sun like an island-sized umbrella. A big island, with all kinds of protuberances, long and thin, squat, rounded disks, with all kinds of sticklike rods planted here and there, even on the massive belly doors that were acres long and wide. It seemed to take hours to pass overhead. By then, inured to the noise it made, people were outside again, peering up at the monstrosity. Their curiosity was stronger than their initial panic.

By then Kris had followed others to the nearest height—Mitford, Zainal, Jay Greene, Slav, Coo, the Doyles led the way, joined by half a dozen other men and women who wanted to get a good long look at this vessel.

“It's heading in the direction of the slaughterhouse,” Kris yelled above a slightly diminished noise.

“Yeah,” Mitford said thoughtfully, rubbing his hand over his mouth, his expression very thoughtful indeed. “Recognize it, Zainal?”

Zainal shook his head slowly, never once dropping his eyes to look at Mitford.

“Catteni have no ship that big.” He seemed as impressed by the size of it as everyone else. “Strange…” He rolled his hand, trying to find the appropriate word.

“Configuration?” Jay asked.

Zainal shook his head, made shapes with his hands that looked like the protuberances and spokes jutting out of the ship.

“Oh, those things. Yeah, the ships you took Earth with weren't anything like that one.”

“No,” and Zainal grinned down at Jay. “Too big, no good.”

“Well, there's that aspect of big, I suppose,” Jay replied amiably.

They watched until it was out of sight but not out of earshot. On the noon air, they could hear it changing gears…or whatever it did, causing the sound to alter.

“Hovering?” Mitford said, disbelieving what his ears reported. Then he shook his head. “I sure wouldn't want to have to
lift
that dead mass from the ground.” He sighed. “How can they?” He looked queryingly at Zainal, who only shrugged again and shook his head. Kris saw anxiety for the first time in Zainal's expression.

Kris swallowed. “If we hadn't got those folks out yesterday…”

Mitford nodded. “You did great, Bjornsen.”

“Zainal did all the work, sarge,” she said quickly.

Mitford's chuckle was audible to her and he patted her shoulder in approval.

No one moved from the uncomfortable height, human or alien. Then, to their listening ears, came a second change of engine sounds. They also heard the powerful blast of rockets, or whatever powered the great ship, as it headed skyward again. It burst into view, nose angled up now. Kris was awed by the technology that could produce such power. It wasn't a beautiful craft, the way the
Discovery
and
Challenger
had been, delta-winged and shingle-clad. But it did have a triangular shape to it, blunt-nosed as it was.

“You guys willing to take a quick run back down there?” Mitford asked. He was looking at Zainal, Coo, and Slav.

“We sure are,” Kris said, and then gulped because she hadn't intended to volunteer.

“Not you, Kris, you're off duty.”

“If I am, they are. Only I'm going. I got just as much curiosity as the next one. I can't believe that ship just gulped up
all
that was there and then calmly took off again.”

Mitford put his hands around his mouth to shout down to
those on the ground. “Dowdall, send a team out to the granary. See if that got emptied.”

“Oh, lordee,” Kris said in a groan. She felt vulnerable again. And she'd brought in more mouths to be fed, too.

“Don't worry,” Mitford said, “we're stocked up, all things considered.”

So the two teams set off. Kris thought their return to the abattoir didn't take half as long going back as it had coming in. When they got there, the acres of crates were all gone. In their place were stacks of what looked like collapsed units.
That would account for some of the dents and scratches
, she thought, still rather numb at the sheer volume that ship had lifted. Did they have matter transporters?
Beam it up, Scotty
, was the facetious thought that bounced in Kris' mind until she gave a slightly hysterical laugh to stop it.

“It's all right, Kris,” said Zainal, his accent improving all the time. He must have a terrific ear for language. Somehow that reassured her more than his words or the arm he laid briefly across her shoulders. “We check the barns.”

“How?” And Kris gestured broadly at the empty space that had once been conveniently bridged by a pyramid of crates. There was a drop of six or seven meters to the first of the piles of collapsed crates. She suddenly felt oddly disoriented by the alteration.

Zainal pointed to the rocky terrain. That was when Kris first realized that the mechanicals had sliced the crate storage out of the cliff side: the barns as well. From what she'd been told, the granary was also stored in natural rock. No arable land was taken up by even such essential facilities. If this was the condition of the entire planet, it was a remarkable achievement in its own right.
And here come humans
, she thought dourly,
to mess it up.

The barns were empty, disinfected and ready for the next batch of occupants. Had the prisoners been dumped down on this planet at harvest and culling time? How often did that monster arrive to collect? Monthly, bimonthly? Semiannually? What season of this planet were they currently in? The weather was mild enough to be spring, but the crops in the
fields were more mature than springtime growth. And she'd heard that grain had kept pouring into the storage caves, which suggested fall harvests.

The other salient fact was that the machines' masters were probably as omnivorous as humanoids. And needed so much food that they went to the expense of developing highly specialized machinery to nurture and cultivate food crops and meat animals: and had sufficient planets available for their use so that they could devote all?—most?—of this one to food production. The collection vehicle as well as the mechanicals meant an extremely high technological level. And yet Zainal, for all the Catteni were well traveled and doing a lot of exploration on their own—did not recognize the type of craft used, and his exploratory service had registered the planet as uninhabited. Of course, if there were nothing but machines on the planet, that figured. Only why hadn't the Catteni seen the machines on their appointed rounds? The Catteni hadn't surveyed the planet in the night only, had they? Or maybe during an infrequent downtime during the “winter” months. Kris' knowledge of farming suggested there were few “down” times on a farm: something or other had to be tended all year round. And what would winter on Botany be like?

Then Zainal blithely insisted that they have a look at the “garages” where curious vehicles with a variety of strange attachments awaited recall to duty.

“They do not recognize humans. No problem!” he told Kris and she was so flabbergasted that he had acquired the “no problem” slang that he was in the garage before she could protest.

One machine, standing inside, was hooked up to a framework which blinked and blipped. A servicing mechanism? Kris wished that they had someone with engineering training along. But then, who'd've thought they'd have a chance to inspect so thoroughly? Oh, for some of that bark and a pencil so she could make diagrams of the various types of mechanicals parked in the several garages. The last of the big barns contained sacks and sacks of what? Logic told her seeds or
possibly fertilizers, more than likely. Had they been brought by the leviathan that had collected the meat? She used her knife to get into some of the bags and got samples of everything. Seeds, definitely, over half the shipment and, by the smell of it, fertilizer in the others.

The patrol got back to the camp by first moonrise. She didn't feel quite so wimpy when Coo and Slav showed signs of wanting to rest, but she and Zainal first had to report to Mitford.

“They didn't take the grain, Bjornsen,” was Mitford's first comment, but she thought he seemed depressed. “What did you find?”

While Kris told him, including her surmises as she passed over the samples she had secured, Zainal had taken several large sheets of the papery bark and was quickly sketching on them. A couple of times Kris lost the thread of her report when she saw his accurate depictions of the various types of machinery they had seen in the garages. Mitford stole the odd glance, his eyes switching to Zainal's face as the Catteni's pencil flew over the surface, but his sketches looked remarkably accurate to her eyes. Zainal regarded his handiwork and then calmly made necessary emendations, correcting occasional lines. They'd had an engineer along all the time, hadn't they, thought Kris. Zainal had rather more talents than anyone had realized.

“These,” Zainal said, handing over the sheaf to Mitford.

“Hey, Bob the Herb, Mack Su, Capstan, Macy, front and center and bring those granary sketches,” Mitford roared in his parade-ground voice, then grinned approvingly at both Zainal and Kris. “There's quite a range of these things. Now we got to figure how to disable them.”

“Why?” Kris blurted out the question.

“Like you, Bjornsen, I think there are humanoids bound to be involved in this kind of food production, seeing as how they seem to need the same sort of foods we do. However,” and he went on briskly, “we're obviously dealing with a very high-tech race.” Kris nodded her head vehemently. “That ship confirms some sort of periodic check. So there's got to
be some sort of ongoing monitoring, even if we haven't found a central control point.”

Kris wondered just how much of this Zainal understood, but he was
listening
with every ounce in his big frame. She could feel the tension in the thigh next to hers on the wide rock they were sitting on. Odd that she didn't mind tactile contact with Zainal, but he was so subtle about it, unlike some guys with impudent, wandering paws she'd encountered.

“So, if we start lousing up the machines, someone will come look,” Mitford concluded.

“And we just overpower them?” Kris asked, aghast at the mere thought of invading a ship the size of the collector. Especially since the only weapons they had were knives, hatchets, spears, and bows and arrows. She let out a burst of laughter.

“Don't laugh, Bjornsen. There's more than one way of infiltrating a spacecraft. And I'm more or less counting on the fact that the investigatory ship would be smaller and have a live, not a mechanical crew. Machines are good enough for routine jobs but evaluation requires brains.”

“Then what?”

“First things first. Get the investigator here.”

Those Mitford had called for arrived and then he roared for a cook to bring two plates of food. He must have heard Kris' stomach rumbling.

“We've been tossing ideas around while you guys were investigating, so I'll bring you up to speed, Zainal, Bjornsen,” he said and nodded at them both before turning to the other patrol members. “Coo, Slav, get some grub. Go eat.” He pointed to the main cave. “And thanks. Oh, Coo, Bob the Herb harvested more of that green stuff you like.”

Coo nodded and, with the Rugarian, made a beeline for the main cave. Mitford's eyes followed him.

“Ration bars are now reserved for Deskis, Ilginish, and Turs, folks. The rest of us can live off the land. They can't.”

“Really?”

“Not until we find something their stomachs don't reject.” Mitford gave the sort of resigned sigh that meant he was worried about the problem. He was leader enough to want
to preserve all his troops, especially those with abilities like the Deskis'. “The cooks are busy whipping up a sort of pemmican for patrols to eat so you don't upset the mechanicals by reducing their herds.” He grinned. “What did you call those critters, Kris? Loo-cows.” He chuckled.

“Sarge, I thought you
wanted
us to upset the mechanicals,” Kris said, wanting clarification on that point.