“Tor had one word actually, Varian. Storm.” Kai added his laughter to Varian's.
“Have they ever been wrong?”
“What? Theks in error? Not in recorded history.”
“Theirs? Or ours?”
“Theirs, of course. Ours is too short. Now, about that red blood?”
“Well, it's not just the red blood, Kai. There are far too many unlikely coincidences. Those herbivores we've been shadowing are not only vertebrates and bleed red blood, but now that I've got close enough to have a good look, the things are pentadactyl, too.” She opened and closed her fingers at him in a clawing motion.
“Theks are pentadactyl. . . after a fashion.” Kai was well pleased they had no visual contact during the interchanges as the Theks had the unnerving habit of extruding pseudopods from their amorphous mass which tended to distract the viewer sometimes to the point of nausea.
“But not vertebrate or red-blooded. And not co-existent with another totally different life-form, like Trizein's marine squares.” Varian fumbled at the opening of her belt pouch and withdrew a flat object, well wrapped in plastic. “It'll be interesting,” she spread the syllables out, “to see the analysis of this blood sample.” With a graceful push she rose from the swivel chair and strode out of the pilot cabin, Kai following her.
Their boot heels echoed in the emptiness of the denuded passenger section. Its furnishings now equipped the plastic domes grouped below the shuttle in the force-screened encampment. But Trizein's work was better accomplished in the air-conditioned, ex-storage compartment which had been converted into his laboratory. A terminal to the ship's computer had been rigged up in the lab so that Trizein rarely stirred from his domain.
“So you've finally got an occupant for your corral,” Kai said.
“So I was right to plan ahead. At least we've a place big enough to stash him/it/her.”
“Don't you know which sex?”
“When you see our beast, you'll know why we haven't taken a close enough look to know.” She shuddered suddenly. “I don't know what got to it, but whole chunks have been torn from its off flank . . . almost as if . . . .” She swallowed hastily.
“As if what?”
“As if something had been feeding on it – alive.”
“What?” Kai felt his gorge rise.
“Those predators look savage enough to have done it . . . but while the creature was still living?”
The appalling concept silenced them both for several strides. A civilized diet no longer included animal flesh.
“I wonder if Tanegli's having any luck with those fruiting trees,” she said, quickly redirecting the conversation.
“D'you know if he did take the youngsters with him? I was setting up the interchange.”
“Yes,” said Varian, “Divisti went too, so the kids are in good hands.”
“Just as well,” said Kai a little grimly, “someone can manage them. I wouldn't relish explaining to the EV's Third Officer if anything happened to her pride and joy.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Kai saw Varian bite her lip, her eyes sparkling with suppressed amusement. It was an embarrassingly well-known fact that young Bonnard had a case of hero worship for the team's male co-leader.
“Bannard's a good kid, Kai, and means well . . .”
“I know. I know.”
“I wonder if food tastes on this planet the way most things smell,” said Varian, again changing the subject. “If fruit tastes of hydro-telluride . . .”
“Are we food-low?”
“No,” said Varian, who was charged by the expedition's charter to procure any additional food supplies needed. “But Divisti is a cautious soul. The less we use of the basic subsistence supplies, the better. And fresh fruit . . . you ship-bred types may not miss it . . .”
“Landborn primates have no dietary discipline.”
They were both grinning, Varian cocking her head to one side, her grey eyes sparkling. The first day they'd met, at a table in the humanoid dining area of the huge EEC ship, they'd teased each other about dietary idiosyncrasies.
Born and brought up on the ship, Kai was used to synthesized foods, to the limited textures provided. Even when he'd been grounded for brief periods, he had never quite adjusted to the infinite variety and consistency of natural foods. Varian had-boasted that she could eat anything vegetable or mineral and had found the ship's diet, even when augmented from the life support dome with freshly grown produce, rather monotonous.
“I'd call it educated tastes, man. And if the fruit tastes at all decent, you may be perverted to an appreciation of real food.”
Just as they reached the storage compartment, the panel shushed open and an excited man came charging towards them.
“Marvellous!” He halted mid-stride and, losing his balance, staggered against the panel wall. “Just the people I need to see. Varian, the cell formation on those marine specimens is a real innovation. There are filaments, four different kinds . . . just take a look . . .” Trizein was pulling her back into his laboratory and gesturing urgently for Kai to follow.
“I've something for you, too, my friend,” and Varian extended the slide. “We caught one of those heavy-duty herbivores, wounded, bleeding red blood . . .”
“But don't you understand, Varian,” continued Trizein, apparently deaf to her announcement, “this is a completely different life form. Never in all my expeditionary experience have I come across such a cellular formation . . .”
“Nor have I come across such an anomaly as this, contrasting to your new life form.” Varian closed his fingers about the slide. “Do be a love and run a spectro-analysis on this?”
“Red blood, you said?” Trizein blinked, changing mental gears to deal with Varian's request. He held the slide up to the light, frowned at it. “Red blood? Isn't compatible with what I've just told you.”
At that moment, the alarm wailed its unnerving keen through the shuttle and the outside encampment and tingled jarringly at the wrist units that Kai and Varian wore as team leaders.
“Foraging party in trouble, Kai, Varian.” Paskutti's voice, his thick slurred speech unhurried, came over the intercom. “Aerial attack.”
Kai depressed the two-way button on his wrist unit.
“Assemble your group, Paskutti Varian and I are coming.”
“Aerial attack?” asked Varian, as both moved quickly to the iris lock of the shuttlecraft. “From what?”
“Is the party still airborne, Paskutti?” asked Kai.
“No, sir. I have co-ordinates. Shall I call in your teams?”
“No, they'd be too far out to be useful.” To Varian he said, “What can they have got into?”
“On this crazy planet? Who knows?” Varian seemed to thrive on the various alarms Ireta produced, for which Kai was glad. On his second expedition, the co-leader had been such a confirmed pessimist that the morale of the entire party had deteriorated, causing needless disastrous incidents.
As usual, the first blast of Ireta's odourous atmosphere took Kai's breath away. He'd forgotten to slip back in the deodorizing plugs he'd removed while in the shuttle. The plugs helped but not when one was forced to breathe orally, as he was while running to join Paskutti's rapidly forming squad.
Though the heavy-worlders under Paskutti's direction had had farther to come, they were the first to arrive at the assembly point as Kai and Varian belted down the slope from the shuttle to the force-screen veil lock. Paskutti shoved belts, masks and stunners at the two leaders, unaware in this moment of urgency that the casual thrust of his heavy hand rocked the lighter framed people back on their heels.