The Mystery of Ireta (40 page)

Portegin gave a snort of derision. “The
ARCT
probably blew up in that cosmic storm.”

“Unlikely,” Lunzie said. “I once slept seventy-eight years and still was collected by my original ship.”

“You think the
ARCT-10 will
come back for us, Lunzie?” asked Portegin, amazed.

“Stranger things have happened. Whatever Aygar believes, Varian, Tanegli knows different, nor can he ignore the fact that some of us may have survived. He cannot take the risk that the
ARCT-10 will
return and with the information left in our beacon, recover the shuttle. Right now we must make plans that will safeguard not only us but the sleepers. Equally important, set ourselves up as scouts totally unrelated to the
ARCT-10
.
If
that ship did blow, its deadman’s knell will be recorded and known to every space commander—including the mutineers’ relief ship—so we can’t pose as a relief unit from the
ARCT-10
.”

“From what ship did we originate then, Lunzie?” Kai was slightly amused, but his husky voice betrayed his physical debility.

Varian looked at him quickly, wondering if he objected to Lunzie’s dominance. His eyes were glittering, but not with fever. He seemed to be encouraging the medic’s unexpected inventiveness.

“We can take our pick—freighter, passenger, another Exploratory Vessel . . .” Lunzie shrugged, suddenly reverting to her usual passivity. “Recall what you told Aygar, Varian.”

“That I was part of a team sent in answer to the distress call.”

“Any vessel has to investigate such a signal . . .” Portegin said.

“But only a Fleet ship could tap our beacon’s messages,” Triv reminded them.

“And
he’d
know how rich this planet is and send a party down if only for finders’ fees.” Portegin capped Triv’s remark.

“That’s what I implied,” said Varian. “Then Aygar gave me his version of the facts.”

“That his grandparents had been abandoned? . . .” Kai asked.

“Deliberately abandoned,” Varian replied with a grimace, “after the tragic accident that demolished their original site. No mention of either of us as leaders, remember.”

“Paskutti had that honor?” Kai was amused.

Varian shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I did inquire about the children. I also said that the
ARCT-10
was still missing.” Varian hesitated, dubious now about that admission.

“Why not?” Kai shrugged. “If the ship had returned within the Standard year, as planned, none of us would be where we are now. What puzzles me is the forty-three years. It doesn’t take anywhere near that time for a homing capsule to reach its destination. And I know the mutineers had ours.”

“They would have had to wait to be sure that the
ARCT-10
wasn’t just delayed,” Varian suggested.

“Could they have known that the
ARCT-10
never stripped the beacon of messages?” Lunzie asked.

“Only Kai and I knew that.”

“Bakkun might have guessed,” Kai said slowly.

“By what we didn’t say rather than what we did?” Varian asked. Kai nodded.

“We ought,” Kai went on, “to have invented a message from the
ARCT
.”

Lunzie snorted. “I don’t think that would have kept the heavy-worlders satisfied once they’d had their bloody rest day . . . and tasted animal protein. Brings out the worst in them every time.”

A taut silence ensued, broken as Varian shuddered, then said, “But Divisti’s garden produced sufficient vegetable protein to support twice as many heavy-worlder appetites.”

“I’d say they waited,” Lunzie began, picking at her lower lip for a moment before she continued. “They would have tried to locate the shuttle and the power packs which young Bonnard so cleverly concealed. They knew Kai’d sent out some sort of message, before Paskutti smashed the comunit? Well, then, they’d have had to wait to see if assistance arrived. They would have had to assume also that we’d rig some sort of distress beacon to attract rescue, even if it did take the Thek forty-three years to bother to investigate.”

Varian broke in excitedly. “You don’t suppose that they could have rigged an alert for a landing?”

“No way.” Portegin shook his head violently. “Not with the equipment they had. Remember it was replacement parts they took with the stores, not full units.”

“Yes, but Aygar spoke of iron mines, and they’ve been working a forge.”

Portegin kept shaking his head. “Bakkun was a good all-round engineer, but even with all the matrices I’ve got, I couldn’t make that sort of a scan system, not planetwide, and that’s what they’d need.”

“So,” Kai said in summation, “they waited to be sure
ARCT
wasn’t making the scheduled pick-up. They also waited until they could be reasonably certain our distress signal was unheard and then too weak. Then they sent the homing capsule to one of the heavy-world colonies inviting settlers and technicians.”

“And if a colony ship, large enough to transport enough people and supplies, is to make the journey profitable, they’d have to build a landing grid,” Triv exclaimed.

“Which explains why they left the very good settlement they had in the secondary camp,” Varian cried.

“And why Aygar chooses to meet you there rather than at their new site,” Lunzie finished with a sour grimace. “Such an undertaking also explains forty-three years.”

“Even for heavy-worlders, it would take years to clear this sort of jungle and hold it back while they got a grid in place,” said Portegin with some awe.

“Probably with a homing device built into the acknowledging capsule to confirm arrangements and approximate time of arrival,” Triv added.

The group reflected on this solution with no joy.

Triv broke the silence. “I’d opt for us to come from a Fleet ship, a cruiser. They make periodic reports to a Sector HQ and no one in his right mind messes with a cruiser.”

“Would Aygar know that?” Varian asked facetiously.

“No, but the captain of the incoming ship would,” Triv replied. “And a search party could have been set down here to check on the distress call while the cruiser goes on to the Ryxi and the Thek planets.”

“Now that our identity is established,” Kai said with an attempt at heartiness, “I suggest we transfer to the campsite built for Dimenon and Margit. If it still exists.”

“Don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Triv said. “The heavyworlders wouldn’t have wasted belt power dismantling and transporting it.”

“Wouldn’t we go to the original site?” asked Portegin.

“We did,” Varian replied, “but Kai got attacked there, didn’t he? So we should move to the second auxiliary camp.” She rose and stretched. “And we’d also better fill in the holes of the vine screen. Then the sleepers will be safe.”

The next morning, Triv took one of the smaller sleds to investigate the secondary camp which had been sited for Dimenon and Margit to use as a base for their explorations of the southwestern part of Ireta’s main continent. Assisted by Varian and Lunzie, Portegin gathered the matrices removed from the other two small sleds and the undamaged units in the shuttle. He was optimistic that with these components, he could rig working comunits in the two small sleds and the four-man sled, plus an ordinary homing beacon, consonant with their role as a rescue team from a Space Fleet cruiser.

Lunzie proved the deftest in making minute welds with the heated tip of a surgical probe, all the while muttering about the misuse of her precious medical equipment on inanimate objects.

Varian’s usefulness to the project was shortlived. She was unable to limit herself to controlled dexterity for long, and announced that she was better suited to shifting vines than matrices. It was hard, sweaty labor, hampered by Ireta’s sudden squalls and then steamy sunheat. The vines clung with tenacious webs of sticky fibers to the rock, so she hacked away, pried loose, and tugged at the tendrils to rig a full curtain across the entrance. At the same time, she rigged fiber ropes to pull the vines back to allow for the entry and exit of the sleds. She coaxed additional new vine tendrils across the chasm, setting them to fill in. At the rate vegetation grew on Ireta, the cave ought to be densely screened in a matter of weeks.

Triv returned with the welcome news that the other camp had survived, although it had become the residence of creatures large and small. However the fortified posts were functional so that, once cleared of intruders, the camp would be habitable.

Lunzie made good use of the vines left over from Varian’s camouflage trimming and created emergency rations from the vegetable matter and more light blankets from the residual fibers. These were packed into the two smaller sleds while Kai was made comfortable in the larger. Lunzie made a last check on the sleepers and set the time release for additional sleep vapor. As Triv pulled back the vine curtain, using Varian’s cords, the three sleds emerged just as the evening rain began to splash down. They landed briefly on the cliff, while Triv joined them and took over the controls of one sled from Lunzie who then joined Varian and Kai in the larger sled.

As Varian lifted, she searched the leaden skies. “No giffs!”

“They’ve sense enough to come in out of that rain,” Lunzie said, drying her hands as she looked at the raindrops battering the sled’s canopy.

“They followed me, you know.”

“So you told me. Not superstitious, are you, Varian?” the medic asked with an ironic chuckle.

“Enough to prefer their company to their absence.”

“They stood guard a long time,” Kai said in his husky voice.

“You’re both allowing them far more intelligence than they deserve.”

Varian turned her head to give Kai a broad grin which he answered. Then the rain squall quickened and she had to keep her attention on flying for the rest of the journey.

Although Triv and Portegin had arrived in advance of the four-man sled, Kai was struck by the eeriness of landing in the gloom of Iretan twilight at a campsite which he knew had been uninhabited for over four decades. It seemed to have slept, unchanged, as they had.

Rationally, he knew that part of its lack of change was due to the rocky site, but the dome which Dimenon and Margit had set up was only slightly browned by wind and weather. A small fire burned on the hearth outside. Its light was cheering and its smoke a partial deterrent to insects until the force field could be powered up. The pack was quickly connected and crackled immediately with tiny spurts as insects were vaporized. Small bits of char drifted down as Kai stiffly made his way from the sled to the dome. He was heartily disgusted with his weakness and kept to himself the fact that he still had no feeling at all in the areas where the fringe had sucked deepest. He couldn’t prevent furtive glances for fringes lurking beyond the veil. He worried briefly if the creatures could be stopped by the force field. Of course they could— Force fields had even held back the stampede of the herbivores . . . for a time.

He was trembling again, to his disgust. Only a short walk, and he was spent. Lunzie had cautioned him against using Discipline to overcome the weakness of convalescence, but surely a daily routine of basic Discipline exercise would be beneficial. Might even be essential if Varian’s meeting with Aygar proved unlucky. Kai wasn’t easy about that confrontation, even with all three armed. He’d spent some time trying to estimate how large the mutineers’ group would be after two generations of breeding. And if a colony ship had arrived, there could be thousands to back the heavy-worlders’ claim. Either way his team was at risk.

Where had the
ARCT-10
disappeared to? Why had Tor been so uncharacteristically keen to find the old core? Why had the Thek then departed? Kai reminded himself that a mere human did not demand explanations of a Thek. Out of sight, out of mind, yet Tor had awakened him to find the core.

And how had the Ryxi flourished on their new planet? Kai wondered, though he knew that Vrl, his contact with the volatile avians, probably wouldn’t have worried about the geologist’s silence. Certainly the Ryxi wouldn’t have communicated with the Thek. Surely, though, Kai reasoned, the commander of the Ryxi colony vessel ought to have tried to raise the Iretan group, if only prompted by courtesy. Probably the silence of the Iretan expedition was thought to mean that the
ARCT-10
had collected the Iretan team as scheduled.

Which brought Kai back to the original question: What had happened to the
ARCT-10
? The great compound ships were constructed to withstand tremendous variations of temperature and stress. Short of a full nova, an EEC vessel could endure almost anything. Possibly, a black hole would consume a whole EEC ship, but no EEC ship would approach such a hazard. As no known species that was inimical to the Federated Sentient Planets was capable of space travel, nothing short of the Others could have attacked the
ARCT-10
. A real mystery. Kai exhaled deeply.

“Does supper not appeal to you? I’d thought you were resigned to eating natural foods by now,” said Varian, breaking Kai’s reverie.

“I’m hungry enough to eat anything.” He grinned at her as he accepted a bowl.

Once they had finished eating, Lunzie rinsed out the bowls and filled them with fruit steeped in its own juices. By then Kai was more tired than hungry so he put the bowl to one side and slipped down under the light blanket, closing his eyes. As he drowsed, he heard Portegin yawning loudly, complaining that he hadn’t done much to be so tired.

“You’re not quite recovered from cold sleep yet, you know,” Lunzie remarked. “You’ll have a full day tomorrow. Sleep now. There’s nothing more needs doing tonight.”

Kai was aware that the others were seeking their blankets and, as he lay, waiting for sleep to overtake him, he grew envious of their ability to drop off so quickly. He was all the more surprised then to hear Lunzie’s quiet voice.

“Portegin, Varian, Triv, you will listen to me. You will hear nothing but my voice. You will obey only my voice. You will follow my directions implicitly for you entrust your lives to me. Acknowledge.”

Fascinated, Kai listened to the murmured assent of the three.

“Portegin, you will feel no pain, no matter what is done to the flesh of your body. From the first blow, your body will be nerveless, impervious to pain. You will not bleed. You will command your body to relax and your flesh to absorb injury without discomfort. You will be unable to reveal anything except your name, Portegin, your rank as helmsman first class of the FSP Cruiser
218-ZD-43
. You are part of a rescue mission. You know no more than that of your present. Your childhood years are open, your years of service as well, except that all service was with the Space Fleet. This is your first visit to Ireta. You will feel no pain, no matter what is done to the flesh of your body and the channels of your mind. You have a barrier against pain and mental intrusion. Your mind is locked to control. Your nerves and pain centers are under my control. I will allow nothing to cause you pain or distress.”