“They think the van crashed?” Stephanie said. “No. That wouldn’t work. If the van crashed, then a beacon would have gone off immediately. I bet even the junker Jessica pilots has a crash beacon-and it’s really old model.”
Karl nodded. “I asked about that. Frank said they’re operating on the theory that the van didn’t crash. They’re figuring that the team landed it safely, but somehow did something to disable the van so they couldn’t take off again.”
“What would they do that would disable the van and its com-unit?” Stephanie protested. “And their uni-links?”
Karl grinned, but it was a tired grin. “‘You get your Sherlock Holmes badge,’ to quote what Frank said when I asked the same questions. No one knows what could have happened to the com-unit-although there has been speculation that the van suffered a complete electronics failure. However, we do have a solution to the Mystery of the Uni-Links.”
“Oh?”
“Both Peony Rose Iwamoto and John Qin had uni-links to match those being used by Dr. Whittaker’s crew. Chief Ranger Shelton had these checked over. Turns out that Dr. Whittaker’s crew is using units manufactured off-world. The operating system worked fine when it only needed to mesh with the local com-net. However, it’s all wrong for longer distances. Basically, it won’t link to the correct programs in the communication satellites. The crew had experienced a few minor problems already, but since they were mostly communicating with members of their own team who were local, maybe making a few calls to SFS personnel and Dr. Hobbard, they worked around them.”
“Let me guess,” Stephanie said. “The anthropologists probably figured the problem had nothing to do with their uni-links, but everything to do with the primitive systems on this colony world of ours. Right?”
Karl gave a rueful sigh. “I didn’t ask, but I bet you’re right. It would explain why the two family members didn’t think it completely odd when they couldn’t reach the team. Communications blackouts would have been a familiar problem.”
“If they’d been here just a little longer,” Stephanie said, “they would have realized something was wrong. Anders was starting to hang out with us…All it would have taken was him trying to com his dad and not getting through and us telling him it wasn’t normal…”
“Irina’s always quoting some old poem about how the saddest words are ‘it might have been,’” Karl interrupted her. “Fact is, Dr. Whittaker took his crew out-and something happened. Since it’s unlikely that he went somewhere other than the areas he indicated-I mean, they wouldn’t be so stupid as to risk SFS goodwill by going to look for Lionheart’s clan or something-the search is concentrating on the region north of Twin Forks, up to the foothills of the Copperwall Mountains.”
Already considering herself part of the search, Stephanie called up a map on her uni-link.
“The search isn’t going to be easy,” she said, holding the uni-link out so Karl could look at the map with her. “There’s some rough terrain in there.”
“Yeah,” Karl agreed. “That’s actually why the anthropological team chose the area in the first place. Because of the rise and fall of the mountains there-and that large river-there are a lot of ecosystems represented in a relatively compact area. Problem is, while the map shows the area as a couple hundred square kilometers, when you take into account all the dips and rises, what the search parties need to deal with is actually closer to twice or three times as much area.”
“Including a river,” Stephanie said. She pulled up details on it. “Large and fast-moving. You don’t think they landed the van in the river somehow?”
Karl’s expression became grim. “I don’t think even the most absent-minded scientist could do that, but if they did, the end result isn’t worth thinking about. They’d be gone and no one would find them, not in a million years.”
Climbs Quickly tasted the spike of anxiety and fear in Death Fang’s Bane’s mind-glow as Shadowed Sunlight talked. He felt his usual bud of frustration since none of the mouth noises gave him any indication of what the problem was. Once or twice, he heard the sound “Anders”-a sound which he thought applied to the bright-haired young male his two-leg was so interested in. However, since she often made this noise lately, Climbs Quickly couldn’t be certain that Bleached Fur was involved in whatever the problem might be.
As he was trying to piece together what might be wrong, Death Fang’s Bane’s newest friend, Windswept-as Climbs Quickly had dubbed the girl, both in tribute to her physical appearance and the changeable surges of her bright mind-glow-came trotting over to join Shadowed Sunlight and Death Fang’s Bane. The wild-haired girl had visited Death Fang’s Bane quite a bit lately, as had a female Climbs Quickly was fairly certain was Windswept’s mother.
Although Windswept could not read mind-glows, the new arrival was apparently aware of the tension. She asked a question. In reply, both Death Fang’s Bane and Shadowed Sunlight began talking rapidly, their mouth noises overlapping each other in a manner that Climbs Quickly wondered if anyone ever found confusing. However, whatever was being said, one thing became clear: whatever was wrong was centered on Bleached Fur. Death Fang’s Bane’s mind-glow as she explained matters to Windswept became shaded with a level of dread that was distinctly unsettling.
Climbs Quickly was certain this feeling was rooted in something real, not in those wild surges of emotion that filled Death Fang’s Bane whenever the young man was near. For one thing, Shadowed Sunlight and Windswept were also both disturbed.
Climbs Quickly was not in the least surprised when Death Fang’s Bane turned to him. Most of her mouth noises as she spoke to him were incomprehensible, but he caught two he recognized: “Go” and “Anders.” These, combined with the urgency in her mind-glow, were all he needed to know.
They were going to do something about this “Anders” problem, and his two-leg wanted him along.
“Bleek!” Climbs Quickly replied, scampering ahead in the direction of Shadowed Sunlight’s air car. “Bleek! Bleek!”
For Anders, the days since the crash had been a blur of cascading emergencies. Once the crew had accepted that they couldn’t hope for rescue any earlier than two or three days from now, there had been a round of blame-slinging.
Anders knew his own angry explosion had triggered this, so he felt guilty when Dr. Whittaker diverted the issue by tossing around some blame of his own.
“And, why,” Dr. Whittaker said to the air in his best “professor questioning the class” tone, “aren’t our uni-links working?”
He glowered generally, but it was Virgil Iwamoto who wilted. As junior member of the crew, he had been responsible for assembling much of the gear.
“We did notice a few problems before,” he began hesitantly, “but they didn’t seem to matter much, since we’d have the on-vehicle unit.”
That had been the wrong thing to say. Dr. Whittaker hadn’t been married for nearly twenty years to a politician without knowing that disapproval worked far more efficiently than anger in reigning in subordinates. He ignored the question of the vehicle and focused on the uni-links.
“You should have looked into having the problem fixed or substitute units purchased as soon as the problem first showed,” he stated in a manner that brooked no argument-and how could Virgil argue? What Dr. Whittaker said was correct.
Then came the question of where to set up their camp. They weren’t high enough in the Copperwall Mountains for peak bears to be a problem, but the highly adaptable hexapumas could not be ignored-especially since their only weapons were utilitarian vibro-blades and a single tranq rifle with only one clip of darts. That meant setting up camp in the trees, and that, as far as Dr. Whittaker was concerned, meant finding a location that would not contaminate his beloved site.