It occurred to Kai that he'd have all the arguments to press again once Gaber, and the others, learned that the EV had not picked up the secondary reports. He'd worry about that when the time came. Right now he had more to ponder in the ancient core in his hand. He didn't think they had any apparatus for dating the device in the shuttle. He couldn't remember if it had ever come up in discussion how long one of these cores could function. Portegin was the man to ask. And wouldn't he be amazed at what his malfunctioning screen was recording?
In fact, Portegin was already puzzling over the print-out when Kai and Gaber strode into the chart dome.
“Kai, we've got some crazy echoes on the seismic . . . what's this?”
“One of those echoes.”
Portegin, his lean face settling into lines of dismay, weighed the device in his hand, peered at it, turning it round and round, end for end before he looked with intense accusation at Kai.
“Where'd you get this?”
“Approximately here,” said Kai, pointing to the gap in the line of old echoes on the screen.
“We haven't cored that area yet, boss.”
“I know.”
“But, boss, this is Thek manufacture. I'd swear it.”
Margit, who'd been filling in her report, came over to the two men. She took the core from Portegin's unresisting hand.
“It feels heavier. And this crystal looks almost dead.” She regarded Kai for an explanation.
He shrugged. “Gaber saw the echoes on the recorder, thought you'd mucked it up, Portegin . . .” he grinned as the mechanic growled at the cartographer. “But I decided we'd better check. This was what we found.”
Margit made a guttural noise, deep in her throat, of disgust and irritation. “You mean, we've spent hours doing what has been don ! You wit-heads could have saved us time and useless energy by rigging that screen right off.”
“According to our computer banks, this planet had never been surveyed,” Kai said in a soothing drawl.
“Well, it has been.” Margit glowered at the screen. “And you know, we've paralleled their line almost perfectly. Not bad for a first working expedition, is it,” she added, talking herself into a better frame of mind. “Hey,” she said in a much louder, less happy tone of voice, “no wonder we couldn't find anything worth the looking. It'd been got already. How far does the old survey coring go?”
“Stops at the edge of the shield, my dear girl,” said Portegin, “and now that we know from the old cores where the shield ends, we can start hitting some pay-dirt for a change. I don't think we've done too much duplication – except in the north and north-east.”
Kai thanked the compassionate computer who had put those two on this team with him: they might complain a bit, but they'd already talked themselves into a positive frame over the duplicated effort.
"I feel a lot better now, knowing there was a good reason we couldn't find any pay-dirt at all!" Margit studied the screen and then pointed at several areas. There's nothing here, and here. Should be!"
“Signals are very faint,” Portegin said. “Some may have just give up the ghost. If everything else there is worked out, is there any point in setting new cores, Kai?”
“None.”
Aulia and Dimenon entered the cartography dome, closely followed by the other four geologists.
“Guess what Kai and Gaber found?” asked Margit. “They found out why we couldn't find anything . . . yet!”
Expressions of surprise and displeasure greeted this statement. So Kai and Gaber repeated their afternoon's activities and the relief that spread throughout the room was reassuring to the team leader. Everyone had a turn at examining the old device, comparing it with those they were setting, joking about ghosts and echoes.
“We can set up secondary camps right on the edges of the shield,” Triv was saying excitedly. “Can we start tomorrow, Kai?”
“Surely, I'll reassign everyone to more profitable areas, hopefully. Let me work it out. And Bakkun, I'll be out with you tomorrow?”
The meal gong sounded, reverberating under the force-screen so he dismissed them all, staying behind briefly to reschedule flights for the morrow. They would have to set up secondary camps, as Triv suggested, but Kai wasn't all that keen to dissipate their complement. Varian hadn't yet had a chance to catalogue the worst of the predators and, despite the personal force-screens, a team could be caught too far away for timely help to arrive. That predator he'd seen today wouldn't be stopped by a puny personal force-screen. He also couldn't hold the teams back from discovering deposits: they got credit bonuses based on the assays of their individual discoveries. That was one reason why the lack of finds so far had had a serious effect on their morale. He couldn't risk a further check to their spirits and ambitions. He also couldn't risk sending them out against predators like those he'd seen today. He must have a chat with Varian.
He emerged into an insect-noisy night. The force-screen, arcing over the encampment, was aglow with blue spits of light as nocturnal creatures tried to reach the tantalizing floodlights which illuminated the compound.
Had that other survey party, millenniums ago, camped here? Would another group, millenniums hence, return when his cores emitted shallow ghost blips on another screen?
Were they really planted? The disturbing thought bobbed to the surface of his reflections, much as the aquatic monsters had been triggered by the shadow of the sled over the water. He tried to push down the notion. Had one of the others been tipped off privily? Varian? No, as co-leader, she was the least likely to have been informed. Tanegli? And was that why he was so willing to search out edible fruits? No, Tanegli was a sound man, but not the sort to be given private instructions while the team leaders were keyed out.
Not quite reassured within his own mind, Kai decided that congenial company would disrupt the uneasy tenor of his thoughts and he strode more purposefully towards the largest dome and his meal.
CHAPTER THREE
Varian was diverted by Kai's reception of the fruit when it was served as the evening meal. Divisti and Lungie had collaborated and the table was spread with the fruit in its natural form, sliced into green juicy portions: fruit synthesized as a paste, reinforced with nutrients and vitamins; fruit added to the subsistence proteins; stewed fruit, dried fruit. Kai fastidiously tasted a minute piece of the fresh sliced, smiled, made polite noises and finished his meal with the paste. Then he complained of a metallic aftertaste.
“That's the additives. There's no aftertaste with the fresh fruit,” Varian told him suppressing a mixture of annoyance at his conservative tastes and amusement at his reaction. The ship-bred were wary of anything in its natural form.
“Why cultivate a taste for something I can't indulge?” Kai asked when she tried to get him to eat more of the fresh fruit.
“Why not indulge yourself a little, while you have the chance? Besides,” she added, “once you have the taste, you can programme it into any synthesizer, and duplicate it on shipboard to your heart's content.”
“A point.”
Varian had decided some time ago that it was just these little ship evolved differences that fascinated her about Kai. He wasn't physically that much different from the attractive young men she'd known on the various planets of her childhood and early specialist's training. If anything, Kai kept himself more physical fit in the EV's various humanoid sports facilities than his planet-based contemporaries. He'd a lean, wiry frame, slightly taller than average, taller than herself and she was not rated short on any normal Earth-type planet being 1.75 metres tall. More important to her in Kai than mere handsomeness which he had, was the strength in his face, the sparkle of humour in his brown eyes and the inner serenity that had commended him when they'd met in the EV's humanoid dining area. She'd quickly recognized the aura of Discipline about him and been overwhelmingly relieved that he was a Disciple, and amused that his having passed the Training mattered to her on such short acquaintance. She'd accepted Discipline not that long ago herself, however much it meant that she could continue to advance in FSP service. A leader had to have Discipline since it was the only personal defence against other humanoids permitted by FSP and EEC, and of inestimable value in emergency situations.