The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (2 page)

As a young biologist with latent qualities as a nexialist, she had joined the Exploration and Evaluation Corps for the diversity of duty and the thrill of being the first human to walk on unexplored planets and catalog new life-forms, but she hadn’t counted on losing friends in the process. EEC teams developed very close bonds, having to rely on each other’s strengths and weaknesses in dangerous, stimulating, and testing circumstances no textbook, indeed often no other team reports, could imagine. This was her fourth tour of duty but the first one punctuated by disasters. Now all the fieldwork would have to be accomplished by three people—herself, Liu, and Ben—while Castor, still handicapped by his leg injuries, remained on board as the exploratory vessel did its hairpin turn about the third planet.

Shavva would have to double as botanist on this trip. Fortunately she had learned enough from Flora to be able to determine a fair amount about the ecology of the plant life—if there were sufficient pollinators, what sort of competition there was for the food crops, as well as the nutritional possibilities of the native forms, and quite likely what disease agents and possible vectors existed within the ecology.

Ben, as a geologist with some secondary background in chemistry, could cope with the planet’s basic pulse—its air and landmasses, magnetic fields, mass-cons, continental plate structure, tidal patterns, temperatures, the general topography, and, especially, any seismic activity—and evaluate the history of the planetary surface for at least the past million years. If the survey proceeded without glitches, he’d have a go at the longer-term history, attempting to detect signs of magnetic reversals and to determine if—and when—there had been any large extinctions.

Liu, as nexialist, would investigate whatever remaining aspects of this planet they had time to consider. That is, if the probes brought back reports that would make a visit worthwhile. Numero Tres did look promising, but Shavva had discovered that looks could be very deceiving in this business.

The probe sent back reports that were skeptically regarded as being too good to be true.

“Good balance of land and water masses,” Liu said. “Usual ice caps, mountains, good plains areas. Parallels Earth in many respects. Initial P.E. for starters, Castor.”

“Atmosphere is breathable, slightly above normal in oxygen content: gravity slightly lower at zero-point-nine on the scale,” Ben contributed. “Considerable vulcanism in that chain of islands extending from the southern hemisphere, nothing major at the moment. Rather a nice little planet, actually.”

“Plenty of green stuff down there,” Shavva said. “What the hell?” she added in puzzlement as the computer began decoding topography. “Have a gawk at these crazy circles!”

The probe was now on a low-altitude vector, sending back more-detailed sections of the terrain of the southern continent. Clearly visible were groups of circular patches, like ripples overlapping each other but held frozen on the planet’s surface.

“Ever see anything like this before, Ben?” she asked, fervently regretting the missing Flora Neveshan, with her years of experience as a xenobotanist.

“Can’t say as I have. Looks like some sort of local fungus on a huge scale. Seems to hit all vegetated areas, not just what appear to be grasslands.”

“Fairy rings?” Shavva suggested very brightly.

“Ha! What esoteric stuff you been reading recently?” Ben gave her a jaundiced stare.

“Whatever it is, be bloody careful, will you?” Castor demanded bitterly. “We’ve got two more systems to work, and I’m running out of initials.”

“Thin red line of ’eroes?” Ben asked, trying to inject some lightness into Castor’s mood. He knew that Castor would forever fault himself for the deaths of Asturias and Neveshan. He was the most experienced climber of the group and would very likely have prevented the disaster if he’d been downside. The fact that no one blamed Castor did not assuage his feelings of guilt.

Shavva set the shuttle down on the great plain of the eastern part of the southern hemisphere, several hundred meters from one cluster of the rippling circles they had observed. She, Ben, and Liu went through the routine landing procedures, confirming atmosphere, temperature, and wind velocity before exiting, garbed in their cumbersome protective suits. At least they needn’t resort to face masks and the back-wrenching burden of oxygen canisters. They all drew in deep lungfuls of the fresh air that a stiff breeze flung at them.

“Good stuff,” Shavva said with a pleased grin. “No L.A., this one.” Suddenly, she felt an obsession for this planet to check out as habitable. From outer space it had had the look of the old Earth pictured in historical tapes. Such reassurance could be bloody, and bloodily, deceptive, she reminded herself, but that didn’t keep her from wishing!

The grassy plain was springy underfoot, and their heavy boots released sweet, pungent odors from the bruised vegetation. Silently they walked over to the first of the ripples, and Ben and Liu hunkered down to eyeball it. Shavva took out a sampling probe and inserted it deftly into the soil, closing the lid as soon as she had retracted it. Liu poked a plasgloved finger into the hole, fiddled with the dirt that adhered, and dropped the grains carefully back into the hole.

“Funny. Feels like dirt. Common everyday dirt. Grainy. Rough, uneven.”

“The empirical test!” Ben chuckled.

“Let’s get started, guys,” Shavva said. “We’ve only got ten days to do eight people’s work and clear a planet.”

“A snap!” Ben replied, grinning impudently. “I’ll start by switching on my geologist’s brain.” He moved off to the next arc of the ripple and collected more samples of the discolored ground. “Hey, we’ve got ecological succession here,” he added suddenly, pointing to portions now speckled with new growth.

Shavva and Liu came to his side to see the promising green tufts.

“Great wind systems on this planet. They’d be strong enough to carry seed as well as dirt,” Shavva remarked, facing into the stiff breeze. “ ’Nother few decades and this’ll all be grass, or whatever, again. Well, we’ll see what the samples say. Take some right by that new growth, will you, Ben? See what, if anything, is aiding the regeneration.”

That first day they concentrated on dirt and vegetation samplings from the plain, moving on to other sites throughout the day, working from east to west to utilize as much daylight as possible.

They took several deep cores in the rich soils of the southern plains and grasslands and, with more effort, drove rock-sampling cores. Inland and south they went, to points that had shown possible ore sites, though the initial metallurgy probe readings did not suggest that the planet had any easily accessible ore or mineral wealth. They made their first nightfall on a vast headland, on the sands of a great cove.

Marine life seemed to be diverse, with enough interesting variations of exoskeletons and sea vegetation alone to give a marine biologist a lifetime employment. Liu scooped up samples of the red and green algae and found some interesting fungi on the shoreline, some with visible movement. Larger marine forms were occasionally visible in the deeper waters of the cove at dusk, a common feeding time. The explorers spent a pleasant evening taking samples and specimens along the seashore. Liu had found enough dead fronds and branches to build a fire on the sands. Shedding their protective suits, they ate their evening rations around the fire—occasionally managing to capture various types of insectoids drawn to the bright flames.

“Possibly the pollinators we need,” Liu mused as he peered into the tube of captured insectoids. One had paused in its frantic flight so that its double wings were visible. “Little buggers. I’d feel a lot better, though, if there were bigger things than these to contend with. The probe pictures should have shown us some sort of ruminants or grazers on these grasslands.”

“What about those large flying things we saw awhile back?” Ben asked, and then snorted. “They looked like airborne barges, squat and fat, and full.”

“Yeah, but what do they eat? And what eats them?” Liu asked morosely.

“Maybe we’re between ice ages?” Shavva offered hopefully. She really didn’t want to find fault with the planet, though she knew that was a totally unprofessional attitude to take—and dangerous, as well. But she couldn’t suppress the feeling of “coming home” that was beginning to color all her perceptions of this world.

Liu snorted, unconvinced. “Ecology is right for ’em. They should be here.”

“If they are, we’ll find ’em. If we don’t . . .” Shavva shrugged philosophically.

The next day they ventured as far as the ice cap in the southern hemisphere, taking samples of the frozen crust and as many layers of soil as the deep corer could manage to reach. Then they turned to the winter-held north. By then, Liu had become a bit paranoid about the lack of larger life-forms. So far, all they had seen were some reptiloids, scaled and basking.

“Quite large enough, thank you,” Shavva had remarked, narrowly escaping the attentions of a ten-centimeter-thick, seven-meter-long example.

They also saw a great many more of Liu’s flying barges.

“Wherries, that’s what they were called,” he said suddenly that afternoon. “Vessels that were used to ferry stuff between the English isle and the European continent. Wherries, and call ’em the biggest life-forms seen in the report. Maybe the term’ll stick.” Liu rarely exercised that EEC team prerogative.

There were two identifiable types of the large avians, with raucous calls and the aggressive manners of predators; brilliantly plumed smaller fliers, a thousand types of what Shavva called “creepy-crawlies,” both inland and littoral. They had also found eggshells on southern beaches, shards littering what were apparently sand-buried nests. Of the egg layers, or the previous occupants, there were no signs.

They did discover interesting fossil remains, a good fifty thousand years dead and gone, in an extensive tar pit; one specimen was intact enough to expose the ground-down dental machinery for grazing, suggesting that these fossils could have been the ruminants Liu wished to see. While the short, greenish spiky vegetation looked somewhat like grass, it wasn’t, for it had no silicates, was visibly triangular in form, and was more blue than green.

“I want to see those grazers
now,
too,” Liu said firmly. But he was somewhat relieved to find the necessary variety of life-forms at a different epoch on the planet.

They also located a diamond pipe just below the surface in the major rift valley fault. Rough stones, one as large as Shavva’s fist, were pried out of the soil. The team kept several as souvenirs; they were not particularly valuable otherwise, for the galaxy had produced many gemstones more exotic than these, though diamonds remained useful in technology for their durability and strength.

“I find it rather a relief not to have to be constantly on guard,” Ben said on their third night, when Liu began again on the disappearance theme. “Remember Closto, the L.A. in our last tour? I kept holding my breath, waiting for something else to latch on to me.”

Liu snorted. “Absence is as ominous as presence, in my tapes.”

“Could have been an axial tilt, you know, and what’s now the ice caps were their homegrounds,” Shavva suggested. “They got caught in the blizzards and froze. We do have ice cores, which could very well produce tissue and bone fragments.”

“Well, this P.E. has only a fifteen-degree axial tilt; the probes set the magnetic poles very near the ecliptic north and south, maybe fifteen degrees away from tilt.”

“We’ll know when we get back to the ship and have a chance to study things. Are today’s samples ready to go back to Castor?”

“Yeah, but I wish the fardles he’d sent us back
his
conclusions. He’s had time.” Liu scowled as he handed his latest containers to Ben to pack in the case to be launched back to the spacecraft.

“Maybe they all moved north,” Ben said in a spirit of helpfulness.

“To winter?”

“This continent’s not in full summer yet.”

“Well, it’d never get hot enough to fry things, not with the prevailing winds this continent’s got.” Liu refused to be mollified.

On their way north they paused on the largest of a group of islands: basaltic, riddled with caves, bearing the profusion and lush growth common to tropical climes. They noted several unusual reptilian forms, more properly large herpetoids of truly revolting appearance.

“I’ve seen uglier ones,” Ben remarked, examining at a safe distance one horny monster, seven centimeters broad and five high, which waved tentacles and claws in an aggressive manner. They could discern neither mouth nor eyes. The olfactor gave a stench reading; and the creature’s back was covered with insectoid forms.

“External digestive system?” Shavva suggested, peering at the thing. “And—wow!”

The creature had sped forward suddenly, its nether end now covered with tiny barbs. At the same time, the olfactor reading went off the scale, and a repellent stench filled the little clearing.

“Look, it backed into that spiny plant,” Ben said, pointing to the little bush. “And got shot in the ass.”

Standing well back and using a long stick, Shavva nudged one of the remaining spines and was rewarded with a second launching.

“Well, a clever plant. Didn’t just let loose in all directions. I wonder what would deactivate it?”

“Cold?” Liu suggested.

“There’s a small one here,” Shavva observed. She sprayed it with the cryo and gave it an exploratory prod. When it did not respond she packed it in a specimen box.

That evening, as they were readying the day’s tube for Castor, Liu let out a whoop, holding up a glowing specimen tube for the others to see.

“That growth I found in the big cave. Some sort of luminous variety of mycelium.” He covered it with his hand. “Indeed. Now you see it—” He opened his hand to let the tube glow again. “Now you don’t.” He closed his hand again, peering through thin cracks he permitted between two fingers. “Does oxygen trigger the luminosity?”

“You are not going back into the cave tonight, Liu,” Shavva said sternly. “We don’t have the spelunking equipment necessary to keep you from breaking your damned fool neck.”