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“Holman,” he answered the call.

“Park,” the voice of Karen Mizumi
told him urgently even as her image began to materialize in front of him. “We
have a problem.”

“Alright,” Park nodded. “Tell
me.”

“You remember the other day when
I told you about the two teams we had down in Australis?” she asked.

“Doing a preliminary survey of
the continent,” Park recalled. “We mostly discussed the other teams who were in
various parts of Pangaea proper. What’s happened?”

“They haven’t checked in in three
days,” Mizumi replied.

“They have tracking transponders
don’t they?” Park demanded.

“They do, but there’s no
satellite coverage over Australis,” she replied, “or at least not frequent
enough to do us any good.”

“Meet me here in my office
soonest,” Park told her. “Bring in all the team leaders currently in town.”

“Everyone but Harry Lovell’s team
is in town,” Mizumi pointed out.

“That will make it a tight fit,
but there’s a conference room down the hall. How soon can you all get here?”
Park asked.

“About half an hour,” Mizumi replied
and broke the connection.

“Park, we have a problem,”
Marisea panted as she hop-stepped rapidly through his doorway.

“We sure do,” Park replied. “Why
is my calendar so far out of date?”

“Huh?” Marisea replied. “I just
assumed you left it up because you like the picture. Didn’t you say it was
someplace called Hawaii?”

“The Island of Lana’i,” Park
admitted. “Well, maybe that is why I kept it. I just never noticed before.
What’s your problem?”

“The teams in Australis didn’t
call in on schedule this morning,” she told him.

“Glad to hear it,” Park nodded.
“I’ve already heard. Do me a favor and ask Iris to come here, pronto, and then
set up the main conference room for fifteen to twenty of us. I’ll call Arn, in
case he’d like to sit in.”

“Two exploration teams were sent
on a preliminary survey of Australis two weeks ago,” Karen Mizumi repeated for
everyone in the conference room just over thirty minutes later. “As most of you
know, this was probably the most sought-after assignment since the Corps was
founded. I will not say I chose two of our best, because you are all the best
this colony has to offer, but Rick Menendez’s and Joyce Fisher’s teams got the
nod.

“Up until three days ago it was a
routine mission,” she continued. “They would report in each evening and again
each morning when there was an opportunity. The problem is, this is Australis
we’re talking about. Nobody lives there and long range communications are even
spottier than they were here before we launched the geosynchronous comm-sats.”

“Weren’t they issued equipment
capable of bouncing off those comm-sats?” Park asked.

“I would have liked to, but the
Corp doesn’t have anything that can punch a signal to them. We can only work
with the network of lower orbit satellites,” Mizumi told him.

“Park,” Iris cut in, “We’ve never
needed the high satellites and besides, we’re all big boys and girls. There are
always nights and days we’re out of touch. It’s never been a big deal before.”

“True enough,” Park admitted, “I
just thought that with such an unusual expedition we would have equipped the
teams differently.”

“I take the blame for that,”
Mizumi told him calmly. “I equipped both teams as per normal. It did not occur
to me to requisition special equipment this time.”

“It probably wouldn’t have
occurred to me either,” Park admitted. “This expedition was no more or less
unusual than any other we perform. Certainly, we are better equipped these days
that we were the first year or so since we came out of stasis. Okay, the
question is who’s going on the search and rescue mission?”

As one the team leaders raised
their hands to volunteer and Park laughed. “Put your hands down,” he told them.
“I know we all want in, but I think we’ll draw names from a hat. It’s the only
fair way. Three teams for this. Do we have any idea of where our two missing
teams are?”

Mizumi stepped over to a display where
a map of the Australis continent was shown. “They were supposed to rendezvous
with each other somewhere along this stretch of the Thames River.”

“When did we name it?” Park wondered.

“Chuck was born in New London, Connecticut,”
Mizumi explained. “Since his team made it there first, he chose the name. As
you can see they would have been fairly deep inside Australis by that point.
It’s still a lot of territory to cover, but the transponders will still work
when our teams are within line of sight.”

“At least they aren’t in the
mountains,” Park noted.

“The first expeditions were only
supposed to survey the plains of central Australis. It’s leaving a lot unlooked
at,” Mizumi shrugged, “but as you say, it’s a big continent.”

“It is,” Park agreed. “What had
they reported so far?”

“Most of it was routine,” Mizumi
summarized. “No more unusual than the initial reports we came up with here in
Pangaea; new critters, strange plants and so forth. Oh they found out what
those really huge creatures we spotted from space were. Rabbits.”

“Are you having me on?” Park
asked suspiciously.

“Well, I suppose technically they
aren’t rabbits anymore, but both Chuck and Lucy were fairly certain they were descended
from rabbits. According to the descriptions they look like someone crossed a
rabbit with a woolly mammoth only larger. But they’re fairly safe so long as
one doesn’t feel threatened. They’re large, yes, but herbivorous and travel in
small herds. Just give them a clear berth and there’s no trouble.”

“Well, something gave our people
trouble,” Park replied. “I want our teams heavily armed for this trip. Until we
know what happened, we won’t take any chances. Also, whoever ultimately goes,
this is strictly search and rescue. No time for sight-seeing. We’ll get in
there, get our people and get right out again. Recover equipment and data if
you can, but not at even the most trivial risk to our people. Understand?” All
heads nodded. “Karen, pick three teams to go.”

“Pick two,” Iris corrected.
“Park, we all know you want to lead the charge on this one and I think you
should.”

“Arn isn’t going to like it,”
Park pointed out, “And I’m supposed to be overseeing fleet exercises in a few
days.”

“This is more important,” Iris
argued. “You won’t be satisfied sending someone else while you stay behind and
Arn can’t stop you. This is an Exploration Corps matter. He has no say in it.”

“And I wouldn’t try to stop you
even if I could,” Arn spoke up from the back of the room. Heads turned suddenly
his way. “Sorry to startle you all. I slipped in just a minute ago and saw no
reason to interrupt. Park, I know I’m constantly trying to get you to take a
more hands-off approach and part of that is the fact I don’t have enough capable
self-starter types to hand jobs off to, but this is different. There isn’t a
leader worth the right to lead who wouldn’t want to be part of this expedition.
As for the Fleet exercises, they can be postponed or will run without you. I
doubt anyone will fail to understand this comes first.”

“Nice to be wrong for a change,”
Park grinned, “and you all are right. I do want to be in on this mission just
as much as everyone else. I’ve always led by example and it would not feel
right to stay behind. I just thought I’d been away so long I may have lost my
edge in the wild.”

There was a loud chorus of
denials. “We’ll just all have to hold your hand as you get used to roughing it
again,” Marisea laughed.

“Alright,” Park decided, “Karen
pick two teams and requisition three buggies. Outfit them with the best radios
we have and some big guns, both slug-chuckers and those sonic rifles the Mer
use. I want us in the air in an hour.”

“I’ve already decided to send the
teams of Chuck Xaviera and Lucy D’Angelo,” Mizumi told him. “And, if you give
us an hour and a half and we can have a phaser mounted on one of those buggies.”

“Where did we get a loose
phaser?” Park wondered.

“You remember the one that we
used to have on a Humvee for mobile security?” Mizumi reminded him. “It was one
of our Ex-Corps’ vehicles. It’s sitting in Hanger One next to the old chopper
but we can dismount the phaser in short order.”

“That thing didn’t work all that
well in atmosphere as I recall,” Park pointed out, “and I thought it was
mounted on the hill.”

“It was enough to shoot down one
of Jance’s ships when they attacked,” Arn pointed out. It should be a match for
anything organic like Jumbo the flying rabbit you might see down there.”

“They don’t fly,” Mizumi
chuckled. “They don’t even hop – just walk along ponderously according to the
initial reports and, no Park, Ronnie put it on a vehicle so it could move
around and also stay out of Jance’s sight. We really didn’t trust him.”

“I think we trusted him far too
much,” Park replied, “but we got him with that same phaser. It should probably
be put in a museum and honored as a hero of Pangaea.”

“As soon as we build an
historical museum,” Arn told him. “For now, though, you have an elephant gun
that Big Bwana Whitehunter would envy.”

“No he wouldn’t,” Park chuckled.
“He wouldn’t have a trophy to bring home. Well, I don’t want trophies, just two
safe explorer teams.”

In spite of his insistence on
speed, Park himself, was not ready to leave until two hours later. Iris and Marisea
packed for him, but he had orders for the rest of those under his command, so
by the time he arrived at the aerospaceport, he found Iris already at the
controls and ready to lift. It was only after he sat down in the shotgun seat
and the buggy was in the air that he realized that Sartena, the ambassador from
Planet Tzantza was in a seat beside Marisea and Cousin.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he told
Sartena.

“Everyone has to be somewhere,”
she smiled at him, “and I’ve had wilderness training. Besides, Iris said you
needed a fourth member of the team and Cousin is cute, but she doesn’t count.”

“We can’t afford to use a foreign
ambassador on such a dangerous mission,” Park maintained.

“Well, I’m here anyway,” Sartena pointed
out, “and being an ambassador is not the time consuming job on Earth it might
be elsewhere. I’ve been on Exploration Corps missions with you before.”

“Those were working vacations,”
Park argued. “This time we’re going to
Terra
incognita
.”

“And Africa was known territory,
was it?” Sartena countered, secretly pleased she remembered what Park’s ancient
term meant.

“Oh, very well,” Park gave up.
“But if you end up dead, don’t come crying to me.”

That was an expression Sartena
had heard before and she laughed hysterically at the mental picture it conjured
up. “Really, Park, you sound like my mother!” she finally gasped out.

“You sneaked into a search and
rescue mission with her too?” Park countered.

“No, it was just something she
would say anytime I insisted on doing something she thought was risky,” Sartena
replied. “It’s an old joke, really.”

“Older than you think,” Iris
chimed in. “Interesting what expressions are immortal, however. Okay, our
course is set in. We shall be flying in formation to Sanatis, where we shall
refuel and stay overnight. Then we leave at first light so we should probably
sleep here in the buggy.”

“Sanatis?” Marisea asked,
interested. “That’s my home town. I’d love to show you all around. I know
you’ve been there before, but that was on your initial tour of the Mer cities.
This time I can show you the fun places.”

“We’ll be arriving fairly late,
dear,” Iris told her, “and we’ll only be there long enough to get some sleep
and move on. We can take a day or two out on the way back, though, if you like.”

True to Iris’ prediction, it was
late night before they arrived in Sanatis, a Mer city on the south coast of
Pangaea between the Atackack Geck and Bidachik tribal territories. It weas also
the Mer city closest to Australis. Park had wondered frequently why there were
so few Mer settlements on the south coast of Pangaea, but most were on the west
and north coasts. The few cities
 
in
Eastern and Southern Pangaea tended to have specialties, such as Questo’s
 
spaceshipyards.

Sanatis was renowned for
shellfish farming. Some of the mollusks and neo-crustaceans bore only a passing
resemblance to the species Park and Iris had been acquainted with back in the
Twenty-first Century, but they were delicacies nearly all the humans had come
to enjoy when they could get them. Unfortunately, they did not have time to enjoy
any of the local cuisine on this trip. As Iris had told Marisea, they were all
back in the air as the Sun poked its first rays onto the Sanatis’ airport’s
landing field.

All three of the buggies,
Mer-built vehicles that flew courtesy of anti-gravity suspensors, zipped
rapidly across the Strait of Australis and by the time most of Sanatis was just
waking up, the rescue teams could see the northeastern coast of Australis on
the horizon.

“The Thames is about twenty-five
hundred miles to the southwest,” Park commented to all three teams, via their
communicators. “It’s time to split up, though. Chuck, I want you to start your
search at the mouth of the river and Lucy you start at the headwaters and work
your way down stream. From the maps I see a major tributary that starts in the
middle of the continent. I’ll follow that down to the Thames. I want to hear
from each of you once an hour. Take no chances. We’ll all meet wherever we find
our missing team members.”

Chuck Xaviera’s craft split off
from the others immediately to follow the Australis coastline, but Lucy
D’Angelo’s team was headed in the same general direction as Park’s so they flew
together for the next two hours until Lucy spotted something on the ground.