“So settlements have not advanced much since First Ship,” commented Tau.
Dane saw the line along the ranger’s jaw tighten, as if he were biting back some hot and hasty comment, and then Meshler replied.
“Trewsworld’s done enough to keep autonomous. We won’t go up for any resettlement auction, if that’s what you mean.” Then he paused, looked to Tau, and Dane saw a shade of worry on his face. “You think— that might be it?”
“A chance, is it not?” Tau asked. “Suppose what you have so hardly won could be lost, or even a part of it? Enough so you could not claim autonomy any more?”
Dane understood. Any planet under pioneer settlement had to grow, to show appreciable gains each year in size of population and then in exports, or else the Grand Department of Immigration could legally put it up for auction. Then if the settlers could not match an outside bid, they lost all they had worked so hard to gain.
“But why?” asked Meshler. “We’re an Ag planet. Anyone else here would face the very same difficulties we have been fighting from the first. There’s nothing to attract outsiders—no minerals worth that much for exploiting—”
“What about the rock from the sealed compartment of the prospectors’ crawler?” Dane asked. “They had found something they thought rich enough to lock in. They were killed, and that was taken. Perhaps there is more here on Trewsworld than you know, Meshler.”
The ranger shook his head. “A mineral survey was run by detect on second survey. There are normal amounts of iron, copper, other ores, but nothing worth shipping off-world. We use what we can ourselves. Besides, those men may not have been blasted for what they carried but what they saw and the rock taken to confuse us. You said the antline was roaming near there. They might have run into a party trying to get it back.”
“Perfectly possible,” agreed Tau. “At the same time, I would suggest that another minerals survey be run— if you are left time to do it.”
“The basin camp,” Dane said, “was not a recent setup. How long have the Trosti people been here?”
“Eight years—planet time.”
“And how about any new holdings cut in their direction during that time?” Now Tau had given him the clue Dane was groping for.
“Cartl—let’s see. Cartl had his clearing gathering in the spring of ’24, before grass growth. And this is ’29. He has the southmost holding.”
“Five years then. How about other holdings—east, west, north?”
“North is too cold for lathsmers. They have only a couple of experimental Ag stations north of the port,” Meshler answered promptly. “East—Hancron. Hancron cleared in ’25. And west—that was Lansfeld. He was in ’26.”
“Three years since the last new clearing was established then,” Tau commented. “And in the years before that, how many?”
But Meshler, prodded by their questions, was already reckoning the list, judging by his expression.
“Up to ’24 we had one, maybe two, sometimes three new clearings a year. Had four emigrant ships come in ’23. Only one since then, and its passengers were mainly techs and their families to settle at the port. The push-out had stopped.”
“And no one noticed?” Dane asked.
“If they did, there wasn’t any talk about it. Mostly the holding people are self-sufficient and don’t come to the port more than once or twice a year—just when they have cargo to ship. There are five-six families to a holding under the signee who puts up the bond. They use self-repair robos for light field work, but robos of that size are no good for first clearing. Since the lathsmer trade has begun, it’s been easier. You don’t have to crop for the birds, just give them clear living space and put in one or two fields of smes seeds for extra winter food. They like the native insects and a couple of native berry plants and thrive on them. The buyers think that’s what gives them the unique flavor and makes them worth more. You can run lathsmers on ground that has been only partly cleared and patrol the field with robos to do the extra feeding. But it takes men and women to pluck for the down for export—and that comes in the late spring. Then they take the down, and it’s baled at the port.”
“So you are getting to be a one-crop world?”
Again Meshler showed uneasiness at Tau’s question, as if he might have drifted and never really thought of it before.
“No—well, maybe, yes. They raise lathsmers more and more because they’re all that’s worth exporting. A one-crop world and no new holdings—” The grim set of his jaw was more pronounced now.
“I’m a ranger. It’s never been my concern to do more than patrol, do some mapping and exploring, make the rounds of the border holdings. But, the Council—someone must have realized what was happening!”
“Undoubtedly,” Tau agreed. “It remains to be seen if this situation wasn’t given impetus to go along on just the road it has been traveling. You saw how those dragons finished off the lathsmers—and they were developed via radiation from the modern lathsmer embryos. Suppose one of those horrors behind the force field, or that antline, were to overrun the perching fields? Or one of those boxes be planted in some outlying district to affect all the birds coming near it—”
“The sooner we get to Cartl’s and the com there,” said Meshler, “the better!” And the note in his voice matched the set of his jaw.
It was not long before the river formed a vee with its tributary, and Meshler turned the flitter to follow the smaller stream, which was ice-roofed in places. A little later they crossed the first of roughly cleared fields with a roost set up. But there were no lathsmers. And the light skim of snow on the ground was unmarked by tracks.
That first field fed into another, also bare of life. Meshler turned the flitter and made a low run over the clearing.
“I don’t understand. These are breeding fields—they are the main roosting sections.”
Once more he thumbed the com and sent out his futile call. But the interference, though not as ear- torturingly loud, was still present. He raised again to cruising level and sent the flitter ahead at the highest rate of speed.
Two more fields—and in the last the birds were gathered, black masses of them, milling about. When the shadow of the flitter moved across them, they seemed to go mad with fear, rushing around, some of the smaller ones trampled upon as they wheeled and stretched their ineffectual wings, attempting to fly. The birds made a dark heaving mass, and then the flitter was past.
“I suppose,” Tau said, “that such a gathering as that is not natural.”
“No,” Meshler replied in a single curt monosyllable.
There was a screen of one of those brush-woods and then more fields, which had been more carefully cleared than those for the lathsmers. Here the stubble of some kind of crop pricked through the snow. The river made a long curve and in its bend was the holding.
It was not a house but rather a series of houses and buildings constructed in the form of a square. In the midst of that was a com tower, set well above the outer walls, and bearing halfway up its length the symbol that was Cartl’s brand, which would appear on all he sold.
The houses were of stone blocks, but there were roofs of clay, their lower layers, as Dane knew from the inform tapes he had read, baked into tile consistency but overlaying that other earth, which was thickly studded with bulbs. In the spring those would bloom in colorful array, and in the fall their seeds were carefully gathered and ground into a powder that was the planet substitute for off-world caff.