“Rise and orbit!”
Dane was jarred out of sleep, his hammock oscillating from a hearty push Rip must have delivered, for Shannon still had a hand raised as if to shove again if his first assault was not effective. Dane sat up groggily. For a second or two he was not oriented. This was not his cabin on the Queen.
Beyond Rip, as he was able to focus better, he saw Ali wearing a thermo jacket, already at the hatch as if impatiently awaiting him.
“What’s the—?”
“We may have trouble,” Ali answered. “See?”
He pointed. Ali had made certain safeguard arrangements when they had completed their two caches—that of the box and that of the embryos. He had set small ray warns on each so that any disturbance would be recorded on an improvised pickup, and now one was blinking red with warning enough to shake Dane fully out of sleep.
“Which one?” With their present luck it would be the box, of course. He swung stiffly out of the hammock and reached for his own thermo wear.
But Ali surprised him. “The embryos. Fire rockets, can’t you—this is a speed job!”
They came out into the early morning and a crisp chill, which made Dane pull up his hood with its visored face plate and tuck his hands into the gloves, which dangled at the ends of his sleeves, but he remembered to make fast the hatch, ensuring that the brachs were safe in the warm cabin.
There was a rime of frost on twigs and leaves, giving a silvery coating to the vegetation, and their breath formed small white clouds.
“Listen!” Rip threw up his hand as if to bar them from entering the path they had made yesterday when dragging the containers to the cache.
They heard a crackling, as if something large forced its way through the brush. There was another noise, a kind of snort sounding now and then, and from that they judged that whatever might be sniffing around was no small creature.
Dane drew his stunner, thumbed its controls to full force, and saw that his companions were doing the same. The growth hid whatever crunched along, and they could only trace it by sound. But by the sound it was going away, not coming toward them. They stood listening for several minutes until they were sure the unknown had retreated farther into the wood.
That it had been nosing about the embryos’ cache Dane was sure. Perhaps there was some scent that attracted it. They had best see how much damage it had done. The lathsmers were useless to the settlers— that was positive—but no cargo could be destroyed until ordered, and Dane did not have that order. Therefore, he must protect the boxes until he did.
They had not gone far along the tracks left by their journey of the day before when they came to the signs left by the other thing. It had tramped, or rather stomped. There were prints breaking the frozen crust of the ground, large enough so that when Dane knelt to measure his hand beside them, the marks spread beyond the stretch of his fingers. They were not very plain, for the frostbound soil had resisted even this heavy weight. They were more like rounded holes than anything else.
A stunner set on high would take care of most creatures, but there were on some worlds menaces with nervous systems on which such a ray would have no more effect than the flick of a twig. Then a blaster was the only answer, but those they did not have.
So now they went slowly, listening, relying on the fact the crashing was faint and the unknown was still going from them. When they came to where they had hidden the containers, they had more proof of the strength of what they had not yet seen, for the stones and earth they had piled with such backbreaking effort to hide the cache had been pulled away. The containers themselves had been battered and broken, though they had been made to withstand all the shocks and strains that might occur during space flight. They were twisted and rent, and two had been opened as if they had been as easy to handle as an E-ration tube.
And as an E-ration tube would have been by a hungry man, they had been completely emptied. Dane kicked one out of the way to see a third that had been bent and then left. He had not been mistaken. What had rested so cushioned inside was stirring. But it was not time for it to be decanted yet! As with the brachs, its “birth” was coming ahead of schedule.
He could see the writhing of the monster body inside. A few more minutes and it could certainly die. Since it was a monster, let it. Only his sense of duty objected. Cargo intact—that was what it said. And perhaps it would be proof of their own innocence to keep these embryos intact until the techs could assess what had happened to them.
But this scaled, half-serpent thing—they could not nurse it in the LB. And how long before Jellico sent them instructions?
Dane knelt beside the broken container. Surely the thing would be frozen stiff soon. Reptiles were especially sensitive to extremes of both cold and heat. Perhaps they could freeze it and keep it that way, as they had kept the body of the dead stranger on the Queen.
What had seemed feeble straggles at first were growing stronger instead of weaker. If the thing felt the cold, the chill stimulated it to greater efforts instead of sending it into stupor and death. The container shook back and forth now under the wriggling and fell over on its side. Through the rent in the top, not large enough for the creature to crawl through, was thrust a scaled foot, large claws gouging at the frost- filled ground for purchase to pull itself out.
Dane changed the reading on his stunner to half and rayed the container. The clawed foot released its clutch on the soil and relaxed. The container ceased rocking.
“Two more want out.” Ah had been stacking the containers. Now he indicated two set to one side.
These had not been misused by the feaster. However, before the men could move, now the tops swung open as they were triggered to do at “birthing,” and the things inside began to crawl out. Rip beamed them unconscious.
Dragon heads on long necks swung limply over the edges of their boxes.
“How about the others?” Dane went to check. But there were no more signs of life. The warning tags on the covers were safely blank.
“What do we do? Give them full beam and finish them off?” Ali asked.
Probably the most sensible move. But they were cargo, and they might be needed. Dane said as much and saw Rip nod slowly as if he agreed.
“The labs might want them. Maybe they could tell more about the radiation by examining them. But where do we put them?”
“Yes, where?” Ali demanded. “The LB? If so, we’d better move out. It’s turned into a part-time zoo already. And these”—his nose wrinkled—”are not the best shipmates. At least they don’t smell fresh—”
Certainly the fetid odor of the inert reptiles made them the last things one wanted penned under or around one’s bed. But they would never live outside unless some kind of a heated pen could be rigged. Dane wondered about that aloud.
“We have the brach cage. If they cooperate as they did last night,” Rip suggested, “we can put them in the extra hammock. And these containers, could we pound them out and weld them around the cage with a heat unit hooked up?”
Ali picked up one of the smashed containers. “Can’t promise anything, but it’s worth trying. At least we can’t share the LB with them loose or in boxes either. That stink’s enough to send one’s stomach into space. How long will they stay under?”
Dane did not want to touch the unconscious things, and he had no way of judging. The only answer was that one of them would have to stay on guard while the other two worked.
“There’s another problem,” Rip said, and it was not the kind of thought to add brightness to their day. “That thing that smashed in here might have acquired a taste for pseudo lathsmer. If it trails or hunts by scent, it might follow to the LB. Do we want that?”
That made sense, Dane thought. His first solution had been to get the creatures back to the craft and build the heated pen right outside. But did they need to do that?