“Glue?” Sallah repeated in surprise. “They’ve dropped everything else; why on earth would they leave glue out?” She winked at Red, who grinned. “Otherwise our local experts are sure to be able to whomp something up. Pern seems to be well supplied. On board with you now, Clan Hanrahan. We’re only a skip ahead of today’s horde.”
As the first arrivals, the Hanrahans got their choice of seats, and Sorka suggested that they take the last row so they would be the first out. It was almost agonizing to have to wait until everyone else was strapped in and the drop begun. Excitement almost strangled Sorka. She was disappointed that the forward screen was malfunctioning, because then she did not know exactly when the shuttle left its bay. And a display would have given her something to distract her from the shuttle’s vibrations. She looked anxiously at her parents, but they had their eyes closed. Brian looked as bug-eyed as she felt, but she would not give him the satisfaction of appearing scared. Then, suddenly, she remembered Sean Connell, hiding in the garden, and forced herself to imagine Spacer Yvonne Yves leading an exciting mission to a mysterious planet.
And then they were there. The retros pushed her back into her padded seat, nearly depriving her of breath, and the shuttle bumped lightly as its landing gear made contact.
“We’ve landed! We made it!” she cried.
“Don’t sound so surprised, lovey!” her father said with a laugh, and reached over to give her knee a pat.
“Can we eat when we get out?” Brian asked petulantly. Someone up front chuckled.
Sorka heard the whoosh as the passenger hatch was cracked. Then the two pilots appeared at the top of the aisle and gave the order to disembark. A blast of sunlight and fresh air streamed into the spacecraft, and Sorka felt her heart give an extra thump of gladness.
Laughing, her father flipped open her safety belt and urged her to move. But a moment of nervousness held her back.
“Go on, you little goose,” Red said, grinning to let her know that he understood her hesitation.
“Hey, Sorka, you can leave now,” Sallah called.
Sorka’s legs were a bit wobbly as she stood. “I’m heavy again,” she exclaimed. Full weight was a new sensation after the half gravity of the Yoko. At the exit, she stopped, awed by her first glimpse of Pern, a vast panorama of the grassy plateau, with its knobs of funny bluish bushes and the green-blue sky.
“Don’t block the exit, dear,” said a woman who was standing outside by the ramp.
Sorka hastily obeyed, though how she got down the ramp with so much looking around to do, she never knew. The ground cover was subtly different from grass on the farm. The bushes were more blue than green, and had funny-shaped leaves, like the put-together geometric shapes of a toy she had played with as a toddler.
“Look, Daddy, clouds! Just like home!” she cried, excitedly pointing to the sky.
Her father laughed and, with an arm about her shoulders, moved her forward with him.
“Maybe they followed us, Sorka,” he said kindly, smiling broadly. Sorka knew that he was just as excited as she was to be landing on Pern at last.
Sorka threw her head back to the fresh breeze which rippled across the plateau. It smelled of marvelous things, new and exciting. She wanted to dance, free once more under a sky, without ceiling or walls to constrict her.
“Are you Hanrahan or Jepson?” the woman asked, a recorder in her hand.
“Hanrahan,” Red replied. “Mairi, Peter, Sorka, and Brian.”
“Welcome to Pern,” she said, smiling graciously before she made a tick on her sheet. “You’re House Fourteen on Asian Square. Here’s your map. All the important facilities are clearly marked. Now, if you’ll just lend a hand to unload and clear the shuttle . . .” She handed him a sheet, gestured toward the float that was backing up to the open cargo hatch, then moved on to the Jepsons, who had just emerged.
“We made it, Mairi love,” Red said, embracing his wife. Sorka was surprised to see tears in her parents’ eyes.
There was more to be unloaded than just the personal luggage of the passengers. Cartons of stores still had to be checked off the supercargo’s lists.
“Tell the dispatcher that more furnishings are required,” Sallah was told once the shuttle’s hold had been emptied. “Or some people won’t have beds tonight.”
“That’s efficiency for you,” Sallah remarked to Barr. She waved to the Hanrahans as she closed the hatch to prepare for the return flight. “Soon there won’t be anyone above and precious little left of the ships but the hulls.”
“I know,” Barr replied. “I half expect to find our bunks already gone.”
The two began their take-off check and Sallah grinned as she made her notations. She had the glide down to perfection, which meant that she was saving nearly twenty liters every journey. The wind was veering to stern, and she warned Barr to speed up her checklist.
“Want to take advantage of that tail wind. Saves fuel.”
“Good God, Sal, you’re as bad as Fussy Fusi.” But Barr completed her list with a flourish. “What I want to know is why are we busting ass saving fuel? We can’t go anyplace useful with what we’d be saving. And once the ships are gutted, there isn’t any use for space shuttles, now is there?”
Sallah gave her a searching stare and then chuckled drolly. “A very good point, my friend. A very good point. I think,” she added after a moment’s thought, “I’ll check the tanks while Fussy’s dropping.”
But when she had done that, she was not that much wiser. If they were saving so much fuel, then the level in the tanks should have been higher. Barr, who was enjoying a flirtation with one of the resource engineers, forgot her idle observation. But Sallah did not. During one of Kenjo’s drops, she did a bit of checking in the mainframe’s banks.
Fuel consumption was at acceptable levels in both of Yoko’s remaining tanks. Sallah computed in her average fuel consumption per trip, plus an estimate of Kenjo’s, and came up with a total that should have left them with an extra two thousand liters of available fuel. She knocked off a percentage, based on consumption during her heavier trips, when drift and wind factors had required a higher expenditure of fuel. Once again she came up with a deficit figure, slightly lower than before but still higher than the amount available.
What good would it do anyone to hoard fuel? Avril? But Avril and Kenjo were not at all friendly. In fact, Avril had made snide remarks about Kenjo on several occasions, unacceptable ethnic-based slander.
“Of course, if you wanted to put someone off the track . . .” Sallah murmured to herself.
Checking the distance to the nearest system, which had been interdicted a century before by the EEC team, and the distance to the nearest habitable system, and computing in the cruising range and speed of the captain’s gig, Sallah came up with the answer that the Mariposa could, even with the most careful management, make it only to the uninhabitable system. But what good would that do anyone? Disgusted by the waste of the afternoon, Sallah went in search of Barr. They had the evening run to make, and that meant that they would get to sleep planetside.
Chapter 4
TO SORKA’S UTTER delight, school on Pern concentrated on adapting the students to their new home. Everyone was given safety instruction about common tools, and those over fourteen were taught how to operate some of the less dangerous equipment. They were shown specimens of the plants to be avoided and lectured on the botany so far catalogued: the varieties of fruit, leafy vegetables, and tubers that were innocuous and could be eaten in moderation. One of the jobs for the young colonists, they were told, would be to gather any edible plants they found to supplement the transported foodstuffs. They were also shown slides of native insectoids and herpetoids. Finally those under twelve gathered in the main classroom, while the older ones assembled outside to be assigned work with adult team leaders.