The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (29 page)

“I’d like to see them,” Saraidh said, her voice edged with excitement. “Bizarre as it is,” she said to Benden, “it is plausible—and unique. Of course, this erratic planet could be a large asteroid, even a comet. Its orbit is certainly a cometary.”

“No,” Benden replied, shaking his head. “The EEC report definitely identifies it as a planet, though probably a wanderer drawn into Rukbat’s family only recently. It orbits across the ecliptic.”

“Our father was too experienced an airman to make a mistake.” Jiro spoke for the first time, his voice as impassioned as Shensu’s was cold. “He was a trained pilot and observed critically and objectively on those missions. We have notes of thanks from Admiral Benden, Governor Boll, and Captain Keroon, all expressing gratitude for his investigation and his selfless dedication to duty.” Jim shot a contemptuous look at Kimmer, who was still sobbing, his face pillowed in his arms, while Chio tried to comfort and reassure him. “Our father died to discover such truths.”

Saraidh murmured something appropriate. “If you would cooperate, further information about this phenomenon would be invaluable.”

“Why?” Shensu asked bluntly. “There can’t be other worlds that are infested with this menace, can there?”

“Not that we know of, Mr. Fusaiyuki, but all information is valuable to someone. My orders were to find out more about this organism.”

Shensu shrugged. “You’re too late by several years to do the most valuable observations,” he said wryly.

“We saw some . . .” Saraidh fumbled for an exact description of the “tunnels” they had seen at Landing. “Remnants, dead shells of these Thread. Would there be any near you that I could examine?”

Shensu shrugged again. “Some on the plains below us.”

“How far in terms of time?” she asked.

“A day’s journey.”

“Will you guide me?”

“You?” Shensu was surprised.

“Lieutenant Ni Morgana is the science officer of the
Amherst,”
Benden put in firmly. “You will want to assist her in this investigation, Mr. Fusaiyuki.”

Shensu made a small gesture of obedience with his hands.

“Jiro, Kimo.” Chio spoke up. Kimmer seemed to have subsided into sleep. “Help me carry him to his room.”

The two men rose, their faces blank, and picked him up, much as they would a sack, and carried him toward a curtained arch through which they disappeared, Chio following anxiously.

“I’ll check on Nev,” Benden said, rising, “while you arrange tomorrow’s expedition with Shensu, Lieutenant.”

“A good idea, Lieutenant.”

Benden motioned for the remaining marine to stay behind as he made his way out of the superb room, his eyes on the gorgeous murals and their story of mankind’s triumph over tremendous odds.

“I could wish, Ensign Nev, that you would learn to think before you speak,” Benden said sternly to the chagrined junior when he returned to the
Erica.

“I’m real sorry, Lieutenant.” Nev’s face was twisted with anxiety. “But we can’t just leave them, can we? Not if we can actually rescue them?”

“You’ve made such calculations?”

“Aye, sir, I did, as soon as I got back on board.” Eagerly Nev brought his figures up on the monitor. “Of course, I could only estimate their weight, but they can’t weigh
that
much, and the inward journey only took a quarter of our fuel.”

“We’ve a planet to search, mister,” Benden said sharply as he bent to study the figures. This was going to be a command decision on his part: to abandon the search on the basis of the opinion of a few local witnesses, or to carry out his original orders scrupulously.

“We weren’t expected to
find
survivors, were we?” Nev asked tentatively.

Benden frowned at him. “What exactly do you mean by that, mister?”

“Well, Lieutenant, if Captain Fargoe had expected there’d be survivors, wouldn’t she have ordered a troop shuttle? They’d carry a couple of hundred people.”

Benden regarded Nev with exasperation. “You know our orders as well as I do: to discover the survivors and their present circumstances. Nothing was intimated that we wouldn’t find survivors. Or that we wouldn’t find them able to continue their colonial effort.”

“But this lot couldn’t, could they? There aren’t enough of them. I don’t trust the old man, but that Shensu’s okay.”

“When I need your opinion, mister, I’ll ask for it,” Benden said curtly. Nev subsided into glum silence while Benden continued to peer at the numbers on the screen, half wishing they would cabalistically rearrange themselves into a solution for his dilemma.

“Establish how much we’d need to jettison, mister, without seriously affecting safety during slingshot. Ascertain just where we can put eleven passengers, and take into your weight consideration the extra padding and harness we’d need to secure them during lift-off.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Nev’s enthusiasm and the admiring look he gave Benden was almost harder to endure than his chastened funk.

Benden strode to the airlock and out of the ship, taking the crisp air into his lungs as if that would aid his thinking. In a sense Nev was right: the captain hadn’t expected that they would find survivors in need of rescue. She had assumed that either the settlers had overcome the disaster or all had succumbed to it. However, these eleven could not, in the name of humanity, be left behind on the planet.

The
Erica’s
remaining fuel would barely accomplish that rescue. It certainly wouldn’t allow the Pernese to bring anything back with them to start again elsewhere, like metal ores. Possibly some of those gemstones Shensu had mentioned could be permitted. With no more than the usual shipwreck allowance, these people would be seriously handicapped in the high-tech societies on most of the Federation planets and financially unable to establish themselves in an agrarian economy. They had to have
something.

If
Kimmer could be believed—and possibly, with the estranged brothers corroborating his statement, it was true that these eleven constituted all that remained of the original colonial complement—then further search would be fruitless, as well as wasting fuel that could, really, be put to better use. Did the brothers have any reason to lie? Not, Benden thought, when they hated Kimmer so much. Ah, but they’d want to leave this place, wouldn’t they, even if it meant perjuring themselves!

Unusual noises attracted his attention, and he walked to the edge of the plateau to check. Some twenty meters below him he saw four people, Jim and the three youngest, mounted on Earth-type horses, herding a variety of four-legged domestic beasts through a huge aperture in the cliff. He heard an odd call and saw a brown, winged shape hurtling after them. As he watched, a heavy metal door swung on well-oiled hinges to close off the opening. The evening breeze wafted some curious smells up to him. He sneezed as he made his way across the plateau to the door to this unusual residence. They’d have to turn those animals loose. Bloody sure, there was no room on board the
Erica
for that mob.

When Benden reentered the big room, he spotted Ni Morgana and Shensu poring over maps on a smaller table to the left of the main entrance. There were cases of tapes and other paraphernalia along that section of the smooth-carved wall.

“Lieutenant, we’ve got both the original survey maps here and those that the colonists filled in with detailed explorations,” Saraidh called to him. “A crying shame this endeavor was so brutally short-lived. They’d a lovely situation here. See—” Her scripto touched first one, then another of the shaded areas on the map of the southern continent. “Fertile farms producing everything they needed before disaster struck, a viable fishing industry, mines with on-site smelting and manufactory. And then—” She gave an eloquent shrug.

“Admiral Benden rose to the challenge magnificently,” Shensu said, the glow in his eyes altering his whole appearance, making him a far more likable person. “He called for centralization of all materials and skills. My father commanded the aerial defense. He had flamethrowers mounted on sleds, two forward and one aft, and developed flight patterns that would cover the largest area and destroy quantities of airborne Thread. Ground crews were organized with portable flamers to incinerate what did get through to the ground, before it could burrow and reproduce itself. It was a most valiant effort!”

There was an excitement and a ring in Shensu’s voice that made Benden’s pulse quicken; he could see that Saraidh was also affected. Shensu’s whole attitude was suffused with reverence and awe.

“We were just young boys, but our father came as often as he could and told us what was happening. He was always in touch with our mother. He even spoke to her just before—before that final mission.” All the animation left Shensu, and his expression assumed its habitual taciturnity. “He was brutally murdered just when he might have made the discovery which would have ended Threadfall and preserved the whole colony.”

“By this Avril person?” Saraidh asked gently.

Shensu nodded once, his features set. “Then
he
came!”

“And now we have come,” Saraidh said, pausing a moment before continuing on a brisker note. “And we must somehow gather as much evidence after the fact as possible. There have been many theories about Oort clouds and what they contain. This is the first opportunity to examine such a space-evolved creature, and the disaster it causes on an inhabited planet. You said the organism burrowed into the ground and reproduced itself? I’d like to see the later stage of the organism’s life cycle. Can you show me where?” she asked. She looked exceedingly attractive in her eagerness, Benden thought.

Shensu looked disgusted. “You wouldn’t want to see any stage of its life cycle. My mother said that there was only the hunger of it. Which no one should encounter.”

“Any sort of residue would aid the research, Shensu,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. “We need your help.”

“We needed yours a long time ago,” he said in a voice so bitter that Saraidh withdrew her hand, flushing.

“This expedition was mounted as soon as your message came up on the records, Shensu. The delay is not ours,” Benden replied crisply. “But we are here now, and we’d like your cooperation.”

Shensu gave a cynical snort. “Does my cooperation guarantee escaping from this place?”

Benden looked him squarely in the eye. “I could not,
in
conscience, leave you here,” he said, having in that moment made his decision. “Especially in view of the fact that I also cannot assure you that you would be relieved by another vessel in the near future. I shall, however, need to have the exact body weights of everyone, and frankly we’ll have to strip the
Erica
to accommodate you.”

Benden was aware of Ni Morgana’s discreet approval. Shensu kept eye contact, his own reaction to Benden’s decision unreadable.

“Your ship is low on fuel?”

“If we are to successfully lift additional passengers, yes.”

“If you did not have to strip the
Erica
to compensate for our weight?” Shensu seemed amused as he watched Benden’s reaction. “If you had, say, a full tank, could you allow us to bring enough valuables to assist us to resettle somewhere? Rescue to a pauper’s existence would be no rescue at all.”

Benden nodded in acknowledgment of that fact even as he spoke. “Kimmer said there was no more fuel. He was emphatic about it.”

Shensu leaned his body across the table and spoke in a scarcely audible whisper, his black eyes glittering with what Benden read as quiet satisfaction. “Kimmer doesn’t know everything, Lieutenant,” Shensu said with a chuckle, “he thinks he does.”

“What do you know that Kimmer doesn’t?” Benden asked, lowering his own voice.

“Spaceship fuel has not changed in the past six decades, has it?” Shensu asked in his whisper.

“Not for ships of the
Amherst’s
and the
Yoko’s
class,” Saraidh replied, quietly eager.

“Since you’re so interested,” Shensu said in a louder, conversational tone as he rose from the table, “I’d be happy to show you the rest of the Hold. We have a place for everything. I think my esteemed father had visions of founding a dynasty. My mother said that had not Thread come, there were others of our ethnic type who would have joined them here in Honshu.” Shensu led them toward a hanging, which he pushed aside, gesturing them to proceed through the archway. “They accomplished much before Thread fell.”

He let the hanging fall and joined Saraidh and Benden on the small square landing where stone-cut steps spiraled in both directions. Shensu indicated that they were to ascend.

Saraidh started up. “Wow! This is some staircase,” she said as she made the first turn.

“I must warn you that the living room has peculiarities—one of which is an echo effect,” Shensu said. “Conversations can be ovetheard in the passages outside. I don’t believe
he
has yet recovered from his—disability—but Chio, or one of his daughters, is always eavesdropping for him. So, I take no chances. No, continue up. I know the steps become uneven. Balance yourself against the wall.”

The steps were uneven, unfinished, and several had no more than toe space.

“This was deliberate?” Saraidh asked, beginning to show the effort of the climbing. “Oh, for a grav shaft!”

Benden was in agreement as he felt the muscles in his calves and thighs tightening. And he had thought that he’d spent adequate time in PT to keep himself fit for any exertion.

“Now where?” Saraidh asked as she came to a very narrow landing. The thin slit of a tiny aperture did nothing to illuminate the blank walls all around them.

Shensu apologized as he squeezed past the two officers, the half smile still on his face; to their chagrin, he was showing no signs of effort. He put his hand, palm down, on a rough, apparently natural declivity in the wall, and suddenly a whole section of the wall pivoted inward. Light came on to illuminate a low, deep cave. Benden whistled in surprise. The space was full of sacks, each tagged with some sort of coded label. Sacks of fuel, row upon row of them.