“You and I will carry Langston,” Dr. Emberly said. “Mother, help Kesia get the supplies that haven’t already been relayed to solid ground. It may be enough for Virgil and Bradford to move themselves.”
Anders obeyed. Dr. Emberly was about his own height. When she took Langston’s feet, Anders raised the mud-covered man’s head and shoulders. The unconscious man might not be overly tall, but covered with mud and soaking wet, he was astonishingly heavy.
Dr. Emberly reached and checked the controls on Dr. Nez’s counter-grav unit.
“Ruined,” she said. “These are basic units, not meant to be sunk in the mud.
She stripped off her own unit and wrapped it around Dr. Nez, then adjusted the dial. “Go! He’s light enough for one person to move now. I’ll get myself back to shore.”
Anders obeyed, but remembering how he had felt the couple of times he’d tried to move around Sphinx’s 1.35 gravity without his unit, he could only admire the older woman for her tenacity.
Eventually, they got themselves and their gear to what they now all thought of as “shore.” Kesia located a freshwater spring near the lace willows, and brought back water. With this, Anders carefully cleared Langston’s mouth and nose, periodically turning him and thumping him gently on the back in the hope that he would cough up any mud that had lodged in his lungs. However, although Dr. Nez’s heart beat and he was breathing, that breath came shallow and rasping.
In the background, Anders heard someone say something about “oxygen starvation” and “brain damage,” but he wasn’t giving up. Dr. Emberly reclaimed her counter-grav belt and went to assist in setting up camp. Dacey Emberly came over to join Anders.
“I’m going to give Langston my belt,” she said softly, “but don’t tell Calida. She’ll worry. My heart isn’t what it used to be, but I’m sure I’ll be fine if I sit quietly. That poor man doesn’t need to fight the gravity along with everything else.”
Anders forced a smile. He didn’t know when he’d last felt so tired, but for some reason the image of Stephanie Harrington kept coming to him. She’d saved Lionheart from the hexapuma after, not before, she’d broken her arm, seriously banged up her knee, and cracked a bunch of ribs when her hang glider had crashed in that storm. If Stephanie could do that, surely he could keep going when all he’d done was move some mud.
Inspired by this, he got Dr. Nez comfortable, then, leaving him under Dacey Emberly’s watch, he went to see what he could do to help with setting up camp. He found Dad-more or less clean now-arguing with Dr. Emberly.
“I think you’re overdoing it. Yes, we’re out of communication with base. Yes, we won’t be expected back until tomorrow-we were set to camp tonight, but eventually someone will come looking.”
“And where will they search?” came Dr. Emberly’s icy reply. “At various picketwood groves to the north-not here. I seem to recall you ‘overlooked’ telling them about your intention to stop here.”
Dad was temporarily silenced, then he said, “When they can’t find us, they’ll search for the air van. The crash beacon will bring them right to us.”
Anders-tired, fed-up, angry that Dad had taken time to change and get clean while others tried to help Langston, while poor old Dacey was sitting carefully over there so her counter-grav unit could be used to ease the injured man’s suffering-lost control. Forgetting everything he’d ever been taught about not embarrassing his parents in public, he exploded.
“Crash beacon! Crash beacon? There isn’t going to be any crash beacon. We didn’t crash. You landed us very neatly, right on the edge of a bog. The van sank very slowly. There was no crash to set the beacon off. No one is going to be able to find us because no one knows where to look-and it’s all your fault!”
Chapter Nine
“What do you mean, ‘they’re missing’?” Stephanie exclaimed.
Karl frowned. “I mean exactly what I said, Steph. You know Frank and Ainsley are both close friends of Uncle Scott. Well, they stopped by yesterday to update him on someone he’d treated for them-a hiker who slipped and broke a leg.”
I don’t care about any stupid hiker, Stephanie thought. Is Anders missing?
“Then Frank went on to say, ‘I wish there was some way we could ask everyone who leaves town to wear a tracking beacon. Chief Ranger Shelton hasn’t made an official announcement, but those off-planet anthropologists may have gone missing.’
“I came in then,” Karl went on. “I mean, this had to be Anders’ group, and I’ve gotten to like him. First I confirmed whether or not Anders was with his dad’s team. He was.”
A faint flicker of hope died in Stephanie’s breast. “Go on.”
“Then I got what details they’d give me-but I had to swear that I wouldn’t tell anyone but you. I think,” Karl grinned, “they knew you’d kill me if I didn’t tell you.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Go on, Karl, or I’ll do worse than kill you.”
“Okay. Here’s the short form. Four days ago, Dr. Whittaker logged that he and his crew-which included Anders and that older lady, the painter, Dacey Emberly-were going to view several picketwood groves north of Twin Forks, ones that, as far as anyone knows, have not been used by treecats. They were covering a wide region, since the idea was to lay in data about picketwood groves for later comparison to treecat dwellings.
“The trip was supposed to take two full days. That is, they would be back at their base on the evening of the second day. That evening, Peony Rose Iwamoto and Jon Qin-spouses of two of the crew members-commed Dr. Hobbard to ask if she knew where Dr. Whittaker’s crew was. Apparently, they’d tried to com the team and had not been able to make contact. These two were a little worried, but not panicked, since they weren’t certain how complete the Sphinx com-net is.”
“It bugs me,” Stephanie said, trying to sound normal, “how off-worlders seem to assume that because this is a colony planet, we’re primitive or something.”
“Yeah. Well, Dr. Hobbard said some stuff that calmed their worries, but she also got in touch with Chief Ranger Shelton. She went right to the top, because she didn’t want the newsies to get a hold of this and embarrass the Forestry Service.”
“Nice of her,” Stephanie said, but even her high opinion of Dr. Hobbard couldn’t stop a building sense of apprehension. “You say they were reported missing after only two days, but they’ve been missing four? What’s happened since?”
Karl raised a hand on which four fingers were extended, then folded down the first two. “Okay. Here’s the end of Day Two. Chief Ranger Shelton wouldn’t have been too worried, but he didn’t like the fact that the anthropologists hadn’t answered their uni-links. He himself went to the picketwood grove that should have been their last stop, but they weren’t there. There wasn’t any sign they’d been there.
“Without making a huge fuss, he couldn’t send search teams out-these areas were in different ecological zones, but still within a ‘night’ time zone, and sending out search parties would have raised the exact sort of fuss Dr. Hobbard hoped to avoid.”
Stephanie wanted to protest-after all, this was Anders they were talking about-but she forced herself to be rational.
“I suppose,” she said, “that Chief Ranger Shelton thought it was possible the anthropologists decided to go back to one of the other areas or something. Did they have camping gear with them?”
“They did. They planned to camp the one night rather than return to base.” Karl folded down his third finger. “On Day Three, Chief Ranger Shelton got a few tight-lipped rangers to check the various sites Dr. Whittaker had noted the team was going to inspect. They did. Again, there was no hint they’d ever been there. Seven people, even if trying for minimal impact, should have left something trained eyes could find.”
Karl folded down his fourth finger. “That takes us to today-Day Four. SFS is expanding the search now, checking along the flight path the anthropologists would have taken going out to the first site, then between the sites. They’re figuring that the air van must have gone down somewhere in there.”