They walked in silence; there was plenty to see. As they reached the lip of the valley, MacAran paused and waited for them to come up with him.
"I have very little experience with alien planets," he said. "But don't blunder into any strange underbrush, look where you step, and I hope I don't have to warn you not to drink the water or eat anything until Dr. Lovat has given it her personal okay. You two are the specialists." he indicated Zabal and MacLeod, "anything to add to that?"
"Just general caution," MacLeod said. "For all we know this planet could be alive with poisonous snakes and reptiles but our surface uniforms will protect us against most dangers we can't see. I have a handgun foruse is extreme emergencies--if a dinosaur or huge carnivore comes along and rushes us--but is general it would be better to run away than shoot. Remember this is preliminary observation, and don't get carried away in classifying and sampling--the next team that comes here can do that."
"If there is a next team," Camilla murmured. She had spoken under her breath, but Rafael heard her and gave her a sharp look. All he said was, "Everybody, take a compass reading for the peak, and be sure to mark every time we move off that reading because of rough ground. We can see the peak from here; once we get further into the foothills we may not be able to see anything but the neat hilltop, or the trees."
At first it was easy, pleasant walking, up gentle slopes between tall, deeply rooted coniferous trunks, surprisingly small in diameter for their height, with long blue-green needles on their narrow branches. Except for the dimness of the red sun, they might have beep in a forest preserve on Earth. Now and again Marco Zabal fell out of line briefly to Inspect some tree or leaf or root pattern, and once a small animal scooted away in the woods. Lewis MacLeod watched it regretfully and said to Dr. Lovat, "One thing--there are furred mammals here. Probably marsupials, but I'm not sure."
The woman said, "I thought you were going to take specimens."
"I will, on the way back. I've no way to keep live
specimens on the way, how would I know what to feed them? But if you're worried about food supply, I should say that so far every mammal on any planet without exception, has proved to be edible and wholesome. Some aren't very tasty, but milk-secreting animals are all evidently alike in body chemistry."
Judith Lovat noted that the fat little zoologist was puffing with effort, but she said nothing. She could understand perfectly well the fascination of being the first to see and classify the wildlife of a completely strange planet, a job usually left to highly specialized First Landing teams' and she supposed MacAran wouldn't have accepted him for the trip unless he was physically capable of it.
The same thought was on Ewen Ross's mind as he walked beside Heather, neither of them wasting their breath in talk. He thought, Rafe isn't setting a very hard pace, but just the same I'm not too sure how the women will take it. When MacAran called a halt, a little more than an hour after they had set out, he left the girl and moved over to MacAran's side.
"Tell me, Rafe, how high is this peak?"
"No way of telling, as far off as I saw it, but I'd estimate eighteen-twenty thousand feet."
Ewen asked, "Thinkthe women can handle it?"
"Camilla will have to; she's got to take astronomical observations. Zabal and I can help her if we have to, and the rest of you can stay further down on the slopes if you can't make it."
"I can make it," Ewen said, "Remember, the oxygen content of this air is higher than earth's; anoxia won't set in quite so low." He looked around the group of men and women, seated and resting, except for Heather Stuart, who was digging out a soil sample and putting it into one of her tubes. And Lewis MacLeod had flung himself down full length and was breathing hard, eyes closed. Ewen looked at him with some disquiet, his trained eyes spotting what even Judith Lovat had not seen, but he did not speak. He couldn't order the man sent back at this distance--not alone, in any case.
It seemed to the young doctor that MacAran was following his thoughts when the other man said abruptly, "Doesn't this seem almost too easy, too good? There has to be a catch to this planet somewhere. It's too much like a picnic in a forest preserve."
Ewen thought, some picnic, with fifty-odd dead and over a hundred hurt to the crash, but he didn't say it, remembering Rafe had lost his sister. "Why not, Rafe? Is there some law that says an unexplored planet has to be dangerous? Maybe we're just so conditioned to a life on Earth without risks that we're afraid to step one inch outside our nice, safe technology." He smiled. "Haven't I heard you bitching because on Earth you said that all the mountains, and even the ski slopes, were so smoothed out there wasn't any sense of personal conquest? Not that I'd know--I never went in for danger sports."
"You may have something there," MacAran said, but he still looked somber. "If that's so, though, why do they make such a fuss about First Landing teams when they send them to a new planet?-
"Search me. But maybe on a planet where man never developed, his natural enemies didn't develop either?"
It should have comforted MacAran, but instead he felt a cold chill. If man didn't belong here, could he survive here? But he didn't say it. "Better get moving again. We've got a long way to go, and I'd like to get on the slopes before dark."
He stopped by McLeod as the older man struggled to his feet. "You all right, Dr. MacLeod?"
"Mac," the older man said with a faint smile, "we're not under ship discipline now. Yes, I'm fine
"You're the animal specialist. Any theories why we haven't seen anything larger than a squirrel?"
"Two," MacLeod said with a round grin, "the first, of course, being that there aren't any. The second, the one I'm committed to, is that with six, no, seven of us crashing along through the underbrush this way, anything with a brain bigger than a squirrel's keeps a good long way off !"
MacAran chuckled, even while he revised his opinion of the fat little man upward by a good many notches. "Should we try to be quieter?"
"Don't see how we can manage it. Tonight will be a better test. Larger carnivores--if there's any analogy to Earth--will come out then, hoping to catch their natural prey sleeping."
MacAran said, "Then we'd better make it our business
that we don't get crunched up by mistake," but as he watched the others sling their packs and get into formation, he thought silently that this was one thing he had forgotten. It was true; the overwhelming attention to safety on Earth had virtually eliminated all but man-made dangers. Even Jungle safaris were undertaken in glass-sided trucks, and it wouldn't have occurred to him that night would be dangerous in that way.
They had walked another forty minutes, through thickening trees and somewhat heavier underbrush, where they had to push branches aside, when Judith stopped, rubbing her eyes painfully. At about the same time, Heather lifted her hands and stared at them in horror; Ewen, at her side, was instantly alert.
"What's wrong!"
"My hands--" Heather held them up, her face white. Ewen called, "Rafe, hold up a minute," and the straggling line came to a halt. He took Heather's slim fingers gingerly between his own, carefully examining the erupting greenish dots; behind him Camilla cried out:
"Judy! Oh, God' look at her face!"
Ewen swung around to Dr. Lovat. Her cheeks and eyelids were covered with the greenish dots, which seemed to spread and enlarge and swell as he looked at them. She squeezed her eyes shut. Camilla caught her hands gently as she raised them to her face.
"Don't touch your face, Judy--Dr. Ross, what is it?"
"How the hell do I know?" Ewen looked around as the others gathered around them.
"Anybody else turning green?" He added, "All right, then. This is what I'm here for, and everybody else keep your distance until we know just what we've got. Heather!" He shook her shoulder sharply. "Stop that! You're not going to drop dead, as far as I can tell your vital signs are all just fine:,