Nevertheless. Ring the trees. Let them die. Ditch those soggy pastures… But the trees did not appear to have a proper bark. In fact they weren’t really trees. Slash and burn might not work here. But something would! One way or another, the fields of Child of Kung would prosper!
Feng became aware that his name was being called.
He turned away from the place where the last trap had been, trotting back toward the settlement. As he approached the beach and the fronds thinned, he saw one of the walking casualties waving in excitement.
Feng arrived out of breath. “What, what?” he grumbled.
“A radio message from the long-nose! It is a distress signal, Hua-tse.”
“Tchah! What did he say?”
“He said nothing, Hua-tse. It is the automatic distress call. I tried to raise him, but there was no response.”
“Of course,” snarled Feng, gripping his hands together in anger. Another thing to admit to before the commune. Two members of the party endangered, perhaps lost, because he had foolishly permitted the division of their forces. Two irreplaceable persons — a hillman and a Hispanic, to be sure; nevertheless, persons. Their absence would be serious. And not just the persons. One of their three television cameras. The radio transponder. The precious plastic that had gone into making the skin of the boat. There was just so much of that. They had squandered a great deal on the bubbles to house the sick, the equipment, all their sparse possessions. That was foolishness, too; the fern forest was a limitless supply of woody stems for frames, fronds for ceilings and walls. In this drenched warmth they needed no more than that, but he had weakly permitted the blowing of bubble huts instead of using what nature provided.
Could they build another boat? It was by no means sure that there was plastic enough even for the hull and the sails; and when it was gone, where would they get more? Who could he send? Of their original eleven, one was dead, two were missing, and four were sick. Was it not even more foolish to further divide their forces, to attempt to repair the damage the first foolishness had cost? And what could they do if they did in fact build another boat and sail across the bay? That which had happened to the hillman and the Hispanic could just as well happen to whoever went after them. They had very little in the way of weapons, no more to spare than Dulla and the other man had taken with them in the first place, and little enough good that had done them -
“Are we going, Hua-tse?”
His attention was jarred back. “What?”
“Are we going to try to help our comrades?”
Feng gripped his hands tighter. “With what?” he demanded.
SIX
ON A PLANET that has no night the days are endless, Danny Dalehouse reflected, a meter down into the Klongan soil and at least that much more to go. His muscles told him he had been digging this latrine for at least eight hours. The discouragingly tiny spoil heap beside him contradicted them, and the ruddy glow that backlighted the clouds overhead offered no help. Latrine digging was not what he had signed on for. But it was something that had to be done, and he was clearly the most superfluous member of the party in line to do it — only why did it have to take so long?
They had been on the planet only three days (not that there were any days, but the old habits died hard), and already the pleasure was wearing thin. The parts that weren’t actively unpleasant like digging latrines were a bore. The parts that weren’t already boring were scary, like the madly violent thunderstorm that had blown away their first tent only hours after landing, or irritatingly uncomfortable, like the itchy rashes they had all developed and the stomach troubles that had made the latrines so vital. And to make it worse, they seemed to have company. Kappelyushnikov had come swearing in Russian to report that a third tactran vessel had climbed down its charge state to orbit Klong. Greasies, no doubt. That meant everybody in the world was now represented on Klong. What price the solitary pioneer?
His spade struck air.
Danny lost his balance, spun, and came down in a fetal crouch into the pit, his face almost in the hole that had unexpectedly opened up. From it came a cool, musty smell. It made him think of unopened cellars and the cages of pet mice, and he heard quick, furtive movements.
Snakes? He rejected the thought as soon as he formed it. That was an earthly fear, not appropriate on Klong. But whatever it was could easily be even more deadly than a nest of rattlers. He leaped with prudent speed out of the trench and yelled, “Morrissey!”
The biologist was only a few meters away, sealing plant samples pickled in preservative into plastic baggies. “What’s the matter?”
“I hit a hole, maybe a tunnel. You want to take a look?”
Morrissey looked down at the purplish seed pod in his forceps and back at Dalehouse’s trench, torn. Then he said, “Sure, only I have to stow these away first. Don’t dig any more till I finish.”
That was a welcome order, and Dalehouse accepted it gratefully. He was getting used to taking orders. Even as a latrine digger he was subject to instant draft whenever some presently more valuable member of the expedition needed another pair of hands: Harriet to set up her radio, Morrissey to heat-seal his baggies, Sparky Cerbo to locate the canned tomatoes and the kitchen knives that had vanished during the thunderstorm — anyone. Twice already he had had to empty the landing vehicle’s chemical toilet into a shallow pit and scrape the soil of Klong over it, because the rest of the crew couldn’t wait for him to finish the job they were preventing him from finishing.
It was a drag. But he was on Son of Kung! He could smell the strange Klongan smells — cinnamon and mold and cut vegetation and something that was a little like mom’s apple pie, but none of them really any of those things. He could see the Klongan landscape — he could see quite a lot of it, a shovelful at a time.
It was what he had expected in an expedition of specialists. Dalehouse was not a cook, not a farmer, not a doctor, not a radio surveyor. He had none of the hypertrophied skills that all the others possessed. He was the expedition’s only gener-alist and would stay that way until they made contact with the local sentients and he could employ the communications skills he was advertised to have. Meanwhile he was stoop labor.
The Russian pilot, Kappelyushnikov, was yelling his name. “You, Danny, you come have drink. Put back sweat!”
“Why not?” Danny was pleased to notice that Gappy was holding aloft a glass containing a centimeter of water, grinning broadly. He had finally got the still to working. Dalehouse swallowed the few drops and wiped his lips appreciatively, then his slippery brow. Kappelyushnikov was right enough about that. In the dank, humid air they were both covered with sweat. The still was powered with a small oil-spray flame, which made it like burning hundred-dollar bills to operate. Later it would be moved to the lakeshore and driven by solar power, but right now they needed water they could drink.
“Very good, is it?” Kappelyushnikov demanded. “You don’t feel faint, like is some poison? Okay. Then we go bring a drink to Gasha.”
The translator had given herself command of the setting-up phase of the camp, and no one had resisted; she was spending hours over her radio trying to make sense of the communications, but she claimed the other half of her mind was able to keep track of everyone’s duty assignments. She might have been right, Dalehouse thought. She was the least agreeable person on the expedition, and no one particularly wanted to disagree with her. She was also close to the least physically attractive, with stringy black hair and an expression of permanent disappointment. But she was grudgingly grateful for the water.
“Thank you for getting the still going. And the latrine, of course, Danny. Now if the two of you—”