“Well, I’ll just do a few for private consumption. After all, my hide has been flayed to produce power to run ‘em.”
Sallah laughed, but she could not help but feel compassion. Poor Boris’s face was raw with sunburn, and he wore the loosest possible clothing. She regarded him casually until he became absorbed in a perusal of the library; then she turned back to the computer.
Avril was asking for figures on the remaining fuel in the tanks of all three colony ships. Nabol was inquiring about machine parts and replacement units that had already been landed. He was accessing their exact locations in Stores. So he won’t have to ask to get them, Sallah thought. More worrisome were Avril’s programs, for she was the only fully qualified and experienced astrogator. If anyone could make use of available fuel, it was Avril. And where were the liters and liters that Kenjo had scrounged?
Avril requested the coordinates for the nearest planet capable of sustaining humanoids. Two had EEC reports that indicated developing sentient life. They were distant, but within the range of the admiral’s gig. Just. Sallah could not quite see why Avril would be at all interested in those planets, even if they were within reach of the Mariposa. Granted Avril could calculate her way there, but it would be a long, harrowing trip even at the maximum speed the gig could achieve. Then Sallah remembered that the gig had two deep sleep tanks: a last resort and not one she herself would undertake. If she were in deep sleep, she would prefer to have someone awake and checking the dials. The method was not as foolproof as all that. But there were two tanks. So who was the lucky one to go with Avril? If escape from Pern was what she planned. But why would anyone escape from Pern when she had just got there, Sallah wondered mystified. A whole new sparkling world, and Avril was not going to wait until she had given it a chance? Or was she?
Sallah continued her surveillance throughout the three-day stint and took hard copy before she erased the file. By the time she boarded the shuttle to return planetside, she understood why the crews had needed shore leave. The poor old nearly gutted Yoko was a depressing place. The two smaller ships, Buenos Aires and Bahrain, would be claustrophobic. But the stripping was nearly complete, and soon the three colony ships would be abandoned to their lonely orbit, visible at dawn and dusk only as three points of light reflecting Rukbat’s rays.
* * * * *
Despite her parents’ tacit disapproval of Sean Connell as a friend for their daughter, Sorka found many reasons to continue seeing him, once he had relaxed his natural suspicions of her. Curiously enough, Sorka also noticed that his family was no keener on his friendship with her than her own was. That added a certain fillip.
They were bound together by their fascination with their creature and her clutch of eggs. Sorka was watching the nest with Sean, as much to be sure that he did not succeed in his efforts to snare her as to be present when the eggs hatched.
That morning – a rest day – Sorka had come prepared for a long vigil with sandwiches in her pack. She had brought enough to share with Sean. The two children had hidden, bellies down, in the underbrush that bordered the headland rock, in a spot where they, could keep the nest in sight. The little gold animal sunned herself on the seaside; they could see her eyes glittering as she maintained her watch over her eggs.
“Just like a lizard,” Sean murmured, his breath tickling Sorka’s ear.
“Not at all,” Sorka protested, recalling illustrations in a book of fairy tales. “More like a little dragon. A dragonet,” she said almost aggressively. She did not think that “lizard” was at all appropriate for such a gorgeous being.
She carefully waved away another one of the many-legged bugs that was urgently trundling its three-sectioned body through the underbrush. Felicia Grant, the children’s botany teacher, had called them a form of millipede and was happy to see them. She had explained their reproductive cycle to the class: the adult produced young, which remained attached to the parent until it reached the same size, whereupon it was dropped off. Two maturing offspring were often in tow.
Sean was idly building a dam of leaves to turn the bug away from him. “Snakes eat a lot of these, and wherries eat snakes.”
“Wherries also eat wherries,” Sorka said in a disgusted tone of voice, recalling the scavengers at work.
A subtle crooning alerted them as they sprawled, half-drowsing in the midday heat. The little golden dragonet spread her wings.
“Protecting them,” Sorka said.
“Nope. Welcoming them.”
Sean had a habit of taking exactly the opposite line in any discussions they had. Sorka had grown used to it, even expected it.
“It could be both,” she suggested tolerantly.
Sean only snorted. “I’ll bet that trundle-bug was running from snakes.”
Sorka suppressed a shudder. She would not let Sean see how much she detested the slithery things. “You’re right. She’s welcoming them.” Sorka’s eyes widened. “She’s singing!”
Sean smiled at the sound that was growing more lyrical. The little creature tilted her head so that they could see her throat vibrating.
Suddenly the air about the rock was busy with dragonets. Sean grasped Sorka’s arm, as much in surprise as to command her to silence. Open mouthed in astonishment, Sorka could not have uttered a sound; she was too delighted with the assembly to do more than stare. Blue, brown, and bronze dragonets hovered in the air, blending their voices with that of the little gold.
“There must be hundreds of the dragonets, Sean.” The way they were wheeling and darting about, the air seemed overladen with them.
“Only twelve lizards,” Sean replied, impervious. “No, sixteen.”
“dragonets,” Sorka said firmly.
Sean ignored her interruption. “I wonder why.”
“Look!” She pointed to a new flight of dragonets that appeared suddenly, trailing large branches of dripping seaweeds. More arrived each with something wiggling in its mouth, the burden deposited on the seaweeds that made an uneven circle about the nest. “Like a damn,” Sorka murmured wonderingly. More avians, or perhaps the same ones on a return trip, brought trundle-bugs and sandworms which flopped or burrowed in the weeds.
Then, as they saw the first of the eggs crack and a little wet head poke through, Sorka and Sean clung to each other in order to contain their excitement. Pausing in their harvesting, the airborne creatures warbled an intricate pattern of sound.
“See, it is welcome!” Sean knew that he had been right all along.
“No! Protection!” Sorka pointed to the blunt snouts of two huge mottled snakes at the far side of the underbrush.
The intruders were spotted by the flyers, and half a dozen dove at the protruding heads. Four of the dragonets sustained the attack right into the vegetation, and there was considerable agitation of branches until the attackers emerged, chittering loudly. In that brief interval four more eggs had cracked open. The adult avians were a living chain of supply as the first arrival shed its shell and staggered about keening woefully. Its dam herded it, with wing motion and encouraging chirps, toward a nearby dragonet that was holding a flopping fishling for the hatchling to devour.
A bolder snake, emerging from the sand where it had hidden itself, attempted a rush up the rock face toward another hatchling. It braced its middle limbs as it raised its head, its turtlelike mouth agape, to grab its prey. Instantly the snake was attacked by the airborne dragonets. With a good sense of preservation, the hatchling lurched over the damlike ramparts of seaweed, toward the bush under which Sorka and Sean hid.
“Go away,” Sean muttered between clenched teeth. He waved his hand at the keening juvenile, shooing it away from them. He had no wish to be attacked by its adult kin.