“You'll need to be limber. We've got to have more for the synthesizer to masticate or I won't have enough of my brew to revive the others.”
Kai sipped carefully of the hot liquid. Lunzie had not misrepresented its effectiveness. As the warmth descended to his stomach, he could almost feel the loosening of his stiff muscles. He did have to apply slight Disciplinary controls to reduce the ache in his wrist.
“How long did we sleep?”
"I'd say we made it around the chrono and half again?" Lunzie said, glancing at her wrist bracelet. I know we didn't sleep a mere twelve hours or I've lost my knack at pulling sedatives into a sprayer. Which I haven't."
“How long before the others rouse?” asked Triv, who was now awake.
“I'd say we have another clear hour or so before the dead arise.”
“A little recon?” Triv asked the two leaders.
“Just remember,” said Lunzie at her driest, “you've none of your force-belts anymore. Don't fall.”
From reflex action, Kai found himself reaching for the stun locker door and saw its open, empty shelves.
“Yes, indeed,” said Varian with a wry laugh, “the cupboard is bare.”
“And all we've got is bare hands . . .”
“One a piece,” said Varian with a second laugh,
“Remember, you won't be able to use full Discipline today?” Lunzie cautioned. “I trust the need will not arise.”
“I doubt it. The giffs aren't aggressive,” said Varian, settling her hand comfortably against her body before stepping through the iris. “Another reason why this is a perfect hideaway.”
A scant few minutes later, as they peered past the mouth of their retreat, she revised her statement.
“Well, there are a few drawbacks.” She squinted down at the waves beating against the foot of their twenty metre high cliff. To either side was an expanse of sheer rock. The line Triv had secured from the terrace flapped in the light breeze. Looking up, Varian could see the giffs flying. “At least There's nothing but giffs airborne,” she added with an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“And nothing for the synthesizer either,” said Kai, trying to recall exactly what lay beyond the terrace and the rock-shelf on which the giffs dropped their catch.
Triv had gone to the rear of the cavern and came back now, a sheaf of dried grasses in each hand. “There's lots more of this, dried, but they'll provide some substance for the synthesizer.”
“There's forest beyond the cliffs,” said Varian, thoughtfully, frowning as she concentrated. “Blast but we rely too much on tapes and not enough on our own recall?”
“C'mon, don't fuss yourself, Varian. We'll collect grasses at least. Triv, how are you at climbing up ropes?”
“I'll learn but I suspect it's the sort of thing Bonnard will do extremely well,” he said with a grin, testing the rope and then peering up its length, his expression dubious.
Lunzie was not pleased with the grasses. Fresh they'd have been perfect but there was no telling how long they'd been lying about the cavern. Couldn't they get some fresh green – even tree tops?
Tree tops were about all they could reach, Triv informed the leaders when he and the youngsters had returned from their foraging. There was a tantalizing view of fruiting trees beyond a narrow but impassable canyon which separated the main cliffs from the forest beyond. At least from the terrace level which was, at the moment, all they could reach.
“The giffs watched us,” Bonnard told Varian and Kai, “just like they did that rest day. Just watched.”
“And I watched the skies for anything else,” said Terilla, a curiously bitter note to her soft voice and an unsettling hardness to her face.
“Them?” Bonnard dismissed the heavy-worlders with a fine scorn. “They're still thinking we've all been smashed flat in the dome!”
There was, the two leaders noted with wry approval, a decided smugness about Bonnard to which he was, in fact, entitled. He, alone, had managed to evade and discommode the heavy-worlders, despite their physical superiority.
“Let us devoutly hope that they continue in that delusion for a few more days,” said Kai. “Until Tor has a chance to arrive. Can you manage another trip today?” he asked, eyeing the pile of fresh greens and estimating the finished, synthesized result.
Triv's answer was to turn back to the rope and begin the ascent, the others queuing to follow him.
“Morale's very good,” Kai murmured to Varian.
“Now!” Varian's single bitter word reminded Kai that morale was fickle.
To bolster his own spirits he sought Portegin, working in Trizein's looted laboratory on a pile of matrix slabs and the damaged console panel which he had removed from the piloting compartment.
“I don't know if I can fix the communit, even if I pirate every matrix circuit we've got and do field links,” the man said, running his fingers through his short hair. “They didn't leave us so much as a sealing unit and these connections are too fine to be done by hand.”
"Could you rig a locator signal on the Thek?", or even the ARCT-10's frequencies?"
“Sure,” and Portegin brightened to be able to give a positive response.
“Do so, then, preferably one the heavy-worlders can't tap.”
They've got to have power first, more power than they've got on their wrist units," said Portegin, grinning with a touch of malice.
Kai moved on, checking futilely in the storage compartments in the hopes that something useful had been dropped by the heavy-worlders. He thanked providence for the ceramic hull of the shuttle which would not show up on the detectors the heavy-worlders possessed. The minor amounts of metal in the ship would easily be misread as ore in the cliffs. He tried again to remember if he and Varian had done much talking about the giffs in the hearing of any of the heavy-worlders. And remembered the tapes! Fighting the frantic pulse of fear, he also remembered the tangled, destroyed tape cannisters strewn about the compound and now buried beneath megatons of dead beasts. Supercilious of the light weights as the mutineers were, doubtless they had chucked tapes registered by either himself or Varian as being intrinsically useless. Kai forced himself to believe that possibility.
Everyone was busy at something, he noted. Triv and the youngsters were on the foraging party, Aulia was sweeping the main cabin with a broom made of short stiff grasses, Dimenon and Margit were hauling water up the cliff in an all too small improvised bucket.
"Try a piece," said Varian, offering him a brownish slab." It's not bad," she added as he broke off a corner and began to chew it.
“Dead grass?”
“Hmmm.”
“I've eaten worse. Very dry, isn't it.”
“Dry grass, but it's bearable. There'll be plenty of this junk, so Lunzie is good enough to reassure us.” Then her expression altered to one of distaste. “Trouble is, it uses a lot of power, and water, which uses power, too, to be purified.”
Kai shrugged. Food they had to have, and water.
“We need at least a week for Tor to reply.”
Varian regarded him for a long moment. “Exactly what good will Tor's appearance do us?”
"The heavy-worlders" mutiny, or I should say their success, depends on our silence. That's why they rigged our "deaths" so carefully, in case we hadn't been planted. Why they'd believe Gaber is beyond me, but . . ." Kai shrugged. Then he grinned. "Heavy-worlders are big, but no one is bigger than a Thek. And no one in the galaxy deliberately provokes Thek retaliation. Their concept of Discipline is a trifle . . . more permanent . . . than ours. Once we have Thek support, we can resume out interrupted work."
Varian considered this reassurance and, for some reason that irked Kai, did not appear as consoled as she ought.
“Well, Lunzie estimates we've got four weeks of power at the current rate of use.”