Ride the Star Winds (21 page)

“Yes. But these aren’t animals. They’re plants. They use their chlorophyll to convert sunlight into electricity. . . .”

Grimes was recovering now, his interest diverting his attention from the pain that persisted in his cramped muscles.

“Plants, you say? Motile plants . . . But why motile?”

“So that they can move from shadow into sunlight to recharge their batteries, crawl back into the shade to avoid an overcharge.” She laughed. “I gave this one an overcharge, all right! Too, very often, their victims are thrown away from them by the shock. Then they have to ooze toward them and over them to envelop and ingest them.”

Grimes shuddered. He did not fancy being enveloped and ingested.

“But why,” he persisted, “are their victims such mugs as to touch them in the first place?”

“Why were you such a mug, Commodore?”

“Mphm. And, come to that, why did I get a shock? The knife has a wooden handle. It should have been a fairly effective insulator . . .”

He was still holding the weapon. He dropped it to the ground, saw the metal studs that secured the hilt to the blade.

“Yes, Su Lin, I was a mug. But
why
are the local animals mugs too?”

“They are attracted by the gaudy coloration—which duplicates, almost exactly, the coloration of other plants, non-motile and without built-in solar power plants, which are very good eating. I hope that we find them so—as we might be here for a very long time.”

“If you will excuse me from the natural history lesson,” said Raoul, “I’ll carry on with my survey of the ship.”

“Do that,” said Grimes. “Su Lin and I will explore the island, what there is of it, and see what it has to offer in the way of a balanced menu.”

“We will keep together,” said the girl firmly. “As far as I can recall, from what I have read, the shockers are the least dangerous of the life forms that we are liable to encounter. So, while one is poking around the wreckage, the other two will be keeping a lookout. I shall have my lighter and the Commodore will have the laser pistol.”

“I wish it were a
real
pistol,” said Grimes.

“We have to make do,” she said, “with what we’ve got.”

Chapter 33

There were flying things
that sailed through the air with lazy, undulant grace—until they swooped. They were all great, flexible wing, long, sharp beak and huge, bulbous eyes. These creatures, the humans soon discovered, were attracted both by movement and by color. They saw one dive from the air onto a shocker, saw it stunned into immobility and, slowly, slowly enveloped by the crawling plant. They were attacked themselves, three times. On the first two occasions pairs of the creatures were easily driven off by the slashing jet of fire from Su Lin’s lighter, set to maximum intensity. The third attack was by a solitary flyer, hungrier or more aggressive than the others. It came boring in, vicious beak extended, like some nightmare airborne lancer, until Su Lin, standing her ground, succeeded in blinding it.
(Her favorite technique,
thought Grimes with a shudder.
I’d sooner have her on my side than against me. . . .)
Whining shrilly the thing veered away, flapping clumsily, and fell into the river. Almost immediately its struggling body was attacked by the denizens of the stream—and very shortly thereafter a covey of aerial predators swooped down, not (of course) to rescue their mate but to prey upon the aquatic carnivores that were ripping its (?) body to shreds. Long, writhing, segmented, many-legged bodies were impaled on the sharp beaks, carried into the sky and then dropped from a great height to fall with armor-shattering impact onto a rocky outcrop on the far side of the water.

“That could have happened to us,” muttered Sanchez, at last tearing his eyes away from the distant, grisly feast.

“But it didn’t,” said Grimes. “Thanks to Su Lin. But I suggest that, from now on, we move
very
slowly. It might help.”

It did—but working in slow motion was tiring. And although the flying things now seemed to be ignoring them (perhaps they were intelligent and had come to the conclusion that the strange, two-legged beings on the island were better left alone), there were other . . . nuisances. There was a sort of huge worm that, unexpectedly, would extrude its blind head from the mossy ground and attempt to fasten its sucker mouth upon their booted feet and ankles. There was a small army of crablike things, each with a carapace all of a meter across, each armed with a pair of vicious looking pincers, that marched out of the stream and up the hill in military formation, that milled about in confusion on finding the way blocked by the wreckage of
Fat Susie,
that finally made its way around the stranded airship and then down the hill and into the water.

There was a straggler.

This Grimes killed with the laser pistol. The smell of roast crab made his mouth water.

“That was very foolish, Commodore,” chided the girl. “The rest of them might have come back to attack you.”

“But they didn’t, did they? And I’m very fond of crab.”

“These things only look like crabs. Their flesh might be poisonous to us.”

“There’s only one way to find out. Standard Survey Service survival technique. You take only a very small taste of whatever it is you’re testing. If, at the end of an hour, you’re suffering no ill effects then it’s safe and you can tuck in.”

While he spoke he was using his knife to lever up the top of the carapace, like a lid. The smell was stronger, more tantalizing. He scooped out a pea-sized portion of the pale pink, still steaming, flesh with the point of the blade. He was raising it to his mouth when she put out a hand to stop him.

“No, Commodore. Not you. You’re the Governor. I’m the guinea pig.” Her long fingers plucked the morsel of meat from the knife, brought it to her mouth. “Hm. Not bad, not bad at all. Now, I’ll put this thing in the shade. If I’m still healthy at the end of an hour it will be our lunch . . .”

Slowly, painstakingly they continued to make their way about the wreck. They found that a relatively large area of the solar energy collecting screens on top of the envelope was undamaged. Power would be no problem. Hopefully neither food nor water would be—as long as they could fill buckets from the river without being dragged into it and eaten. (None of them had any desire to see the things that had attacked the downed flier at close quarters.) They might even, constructing a raft or canoe from the dirigible’s metal skin, be able to get away from the island by crossing the stream or by drifting downriver. But what then? Could they hope to make their way overland or by water to human settlement? So far they had seen only a small sample of the Unclaimed Territory’s flora and fauna, and only those creatures that operated by day.

What came out at night?

Yet, thought Grimes, there just could be a way. It all depended on what was in the workshop, what materials there were for making emergency repairs. Too, they would have to gain access to the wrecked control car so that they could study the charts.

“I’m still alive,” said Su Lin, breaking into his thoughts. “It’s lunch time. I can whip up some mayonnaise, and . . .”

But when they went to pick up the crab-thing they found that the worms had gotten to it first, sucking the shell dry and empty.

Chapter 34

Back in the wardroom
they took lunch, eating rather uninteresting sandwiches (Grimes bitterly regretted not having had the crab put in a safe place) and washing them down with mineral water. After the meal and a brief smoke Grimes suggested that they get in a supply of fresh water. There were buckets available; there were some large empty plastic bins that could be filled. Sanchez volunteered to do the actual bucket filling and insisted that it was his duty. While he stooped on the river bank, bending out and down and over, Su Lin and Grimes kept watch—she of the sky and he of the water. Her weapon had a far greater range than his, the laser tool.

The winged creatures did not bother them. The many-legged swimmers did, once they became aware of the humans’ existence. Grimes drove off the first attack, by a single predator, without any difficulty. He discovered that if he kept the water boiling or almost so it was a good deterrent. The ugly, vicious things did not venture from the merely warm into the very hot. He was beginning to congratulate himself when, very fortunately, he took a glance upstream. The water centipedes—as he had decided to call them—were coming ashore, were advancing toward them, their two-meter-long bodies wriggling sinuously along the bank. Hastily he and the others retreated up the hill, temporarily abandoning the buckets. Luckily the aquatic predators could not stay long out of their native element. They returned to the river.

But they waited there, their writhing bodies gleaming just under the surface, stalked eyes upheld like periscopes.

Grimes had seen in the workshop some pairs of rubberized work gauntlets. Accompanied by Su Lin and Sanchez he went to get three pairs of these.

“A good idea, sir, now that it’s too late,” complained Sanchez. “I could have done with these when I was having to dip my hands into that near-as-dammit boiling water . . .”

“They’re to insulate against more than heat,” Grimes told him.

Su Lin laughed appreciatively; she was quicker on the uptake than the pilot.

They went in search, then, of shockers. It was quite easy to distinguish them from those other gaudy plants that they imitated. If a thing wriggled sluggishly when it was lifted, it was a shocker. If it didn’t wriggle and was securely rooted to the ground it wasn’t. They were able to build a barricade of the electric plants up-river from where the buckets had been left. Then Grimes, with the laser, heated the water to near-boiling point again, simmering a centipede that was evincing hostile attentions toward him. The other creatures, as before, came ashore upstream. They tried to cross the living, garish carpet to get at their prey. They twitched and died.

Grimes wondered if they were edible—but the motile plants had already made that decision. Very soon the long, twisted bodies were enveloped and the process of ingestion had commenced. Grimes shrugged. Those centipedes hadn’t looked very appetizing. Hopefully, perhaps tomorrow, at the same time as today, there would be another procession of crabs. . . .

Anyhow, something had been accomplished. The wreck of
Fat Susie
was now well-stocked with water.

“What now, Commodore?” asked Sanchez wearily.

“We get down into the control car to fetch out the charts, Raoul.”

“Come off it, sir. Can’t it wait until tomorrow? We’ve put in a very busy day, and it will be advisable for us to keep watches all through the night. We’ve seen only the daytime beasties—Bakunin alone knows what the nocturnal ones are like!”

“Was Bakunin a xenobiologist?” asked Grimes interestedly.

“Just somebody to swear by, sir—the same as your Odd Gods of the Galaxy.”

“We’ll continue this theological discussion later,” said Grimes. “Right now I want those charts. I want to see what chance we have of getting out of here.”

“But we can’t even get ashore from this blasted island!”

“Can’t we?” asked Grimes gently. “Can’t we?”

“Of course we can,” said Su Lin, “as long as the Commodore’s famous luck hasn’t run out.”

“I don’t think that it has,” said Grimes softly. “I don’t think that it has. . . .”

They had to cut their way into the control car, using the laser tool. Fortuitously—a case of Grimes’s luck!—the aperture that they burned in the deck was directly over the chart table. Fantastically none of the charts sustained fire damage. They took these to the wardroom, spread them out on the carpet, studied them.

“We’re here,” said Sanchez definitely, drawing a circle around the representation of an island in a wide river with a soft pencil.

“Are you sure, Raoul?”

“Yes, sir. It’s not far from where Flattery attacked us. We made very little headway after that—for obvious reasons.”

“Mphm. Now find me a small-scale chart, one with the Shocking River and this island on it but showing the terrain beyond the Unclaimed Territory.”

“This one should do, Commodore.”

“Good. Now, how was the wind today?”

“I . . . I didn’t notice. . . .”

“Did you, Su Lin?”

“No.”

“Well, I did. It’s been northerly all the time—no more than light airs during the forenoon but, by now, quite a stiff breeze. Presumably—and hopefully—this weather pattern will persist. From where we are now the shortest distance to what is laughingly referred to as civilization is due south.”

“But we still have to get off the island, sir!” protested Sanchez. “And then, when we do, we have to cross at least a thousand kilometers of broken terrain
crawling
with all manner of
things. . . .
”

“I know that, Raoul. Now, am I correct in stating that I saw, in the workshop some tubes of a very special adhesive?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Used when you’re slapping patches on to ruptured helium cells.”

“That’s what it’s for, sir.”

“And did I see some cylinders of compressed helium?”

“You did.” Sanchez laughed. “I see what you’re driving at, Commodore. A balloon with the envelope made from pieces of our burst gas cells glued together. And suppose we get winds with an average velocity of, say, twenty kilometers an hour . . . A fifty-hour flight—and we’re out of this mess!”

“And probably into a worse one,” grumbled Su Lin, but smiling as she spoke.

But the supply of adhesive, they discovered, was sufficient only for making the odd repairs. There was not nearly enough to gum together pieces of fabric to make a balloon large enough to support three persons. The helium situation was better—but what would they have to put the lighter-than-air gas in?

Grimes said, “With luck we might be able to make a reasonably airworthy one-man balloon. With luck that one man might make it, then come back to rescue the others . . .”

“A one-woman balloon,” said Su Lin.

“After we’ve made the thing,” said Grimes, “we’ll decide who’s to go.”

Chapter 35

Sanchez stood the evening watch,
Su Lin the middle and the morning watch was kept by Grimes. Before they broke up—two to go to their beds and the other to commence his tour of duty—they discussed procedure. Would it be better for the watchkeeper to stay inside the ship or should he go outside? They agreed that an open-air vigil could well be tantamount to suicide. Then there was another question. Should lights be rigged to illuminate
Fat Susie
from the outside, or not? None of them knew much about the flora and fauna of the Unclaimed Territory. Would night prowlers be scared away by lavish illumination or would they be attracted to it?