The voice was continuing: “The radius of Solferino is five thousand kilometers, rather less than four-fifths the size of the Earth. The surface gravity of this planet is almost exactly the same as Earth’s, but that is merely a lucky coincidence. It occurs because the average density of Solferino is twenty-six percent higher. The smaller size and higher density compensate for each other, which is convenient for human settlers.”
Josh switched channels. You couldn’t escape the flow of information, but you could change what you got. The same voice spoke again: “On the far horizon you can see the dark slopes of the Rayleigh Range, built of volcanic basalt. The high heavy-metal content of the range is strange by Earth standards, but it reflects the fact that the whole of Solferino is unusually rich in these substances. The Barbican Hills, in the foreground, are very different in base materials. Like the chalk hills of Earth, they were created by the deposit on the bed of the sea, over many tens of millions of years, of the shells of countless tiny sea creatures. About four million years ago, a general uplifting of the region brought the hills above sea level. Further buckling created the triple peaks.”
Josh had about as much interest in the Rayleigh Range and the Barbican Hills as they had in him. He tried another switch, but the system had its mind set on the approaching Barbicans and was not about to change.
“The Barbican Hills are a major habitat for Solferino’s most intelligent life form. Commonly known as a ‘rupert,’ this animal stands upright and is about four feet high. Its intelligence has been estimated as somewhere between a dog and a chimpanzee.” (Great. Except that Josh had never had a dog, and he had never even seen a chimpanzee.) “Like other Solferino animals, the rupert lacks eyes sensitive to ordinary light. Instead it sees as Earth bats see, by sending out and receiving echoes from intense, brief, high-pitched pulses of sound. The behavior of the rupert is the best support for the claim—”
Another voice, this one from the aircar’s navigation and control system, overrode the first one. “WE ARE WITHIN TWO MINUTES OF OUR DESTINATION. PREPARE FOR LANDING.”
The channel abruptly went silent.
Just when it was getting to the interesting part! Josh had tried the same channel earlier, and it had been yakking on about the basic genetic similarities between Solferino and Earth life forms, and what it meant that they were both based on the DNA molecule.
Behind him, he heard Winnie Carlson talking to Ruby. That figured. Ruby was so young, stuff for her had to be specially dumbed down. With nothing else to do, Josh found he was listening anyway.
“No, what Mr. Gage told you was quite right,” Winnie Carlson was saying. “When you were back on Earth, you couldn’t have eaten plants and animals from this world without getting very sick. They may look like Earth plants, but inside they are very different. They have DNA, but they don’t use it to produce proteins like the ones in Earth plants and animals. Before you came here, tiny specially designed machines—almost like little animals themselves—were put inside you.”
“Are those the same nanocritters that make us so we can breathe the air here?”
“Not quite. They’re small, like them, but these live inside your stomach, not your lungs. They make lots of copies of themselves when you eat Solferino plants and animals. Those copies all digest what you swallow, and what they give out you can digest. So it’s all right to eat the plants that you find here, or at least most of them. Do you understand?”
“I think so. Ugh!”
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re saying that I’ve got lots of these little animals inside me. They eat the plants, and all I get to eat is their poop. That’s disgusting, isn’t it?”
“No. I mean, you shouldn’t think of it that way. You ought to think—”
The rest of Winnie Carlson’s explanation was lost as the air-car’s voice again overrode normal conversation.
“WE ARE ENCOUNTERING STRONG SHEAR WINDS. BE PREPARED FOR A POSSIBLE ROUGH TOUCHDOWN.”
The vehicle was cruising along the center line of a long, narrow valley, seeking a wide, clear area suitable for landing. Josh held tight to his own armrests and braced his feet against the seat in front. He checked that Dawn’s belt system, like his, had come into automatic operation. Farther along the row, Rick and Hag had their eyes closed and seemed resigned to die at any moment.
The landing, when it came, was so soft and feathery that if Josh hadn’t been looking out of the window he wouldn’t have known when the ship made contact with the brick-red earth of the Barbican Hills.
On a random impulse, he gave a low, horrified moan and said, “Crashing! We’re crashing.”
He knew it was a dumb idea the moment he did it, even before he heard the wails of fear from his right. It was a little while before Rick and Hag opened their eyes and learned that they were safely on the ground. Then the vengeful glares that they gave Josh and the laughs of the others made him wonder if his joke had been all that bright a move.
Brewster saved Josh from immediate reprisals. As soon as the car landed he was on his feet. “Outside, everyone. We only have an hour or two to set up camp and stow everything inside.”
Josh decided that he agreed with Amethyst. It made no sense to rush out here to fumble around in Grisel’s red twilight, when fixing up the camp would be a lot easier in full daylight.
In practice, it turned out not to matter. Setting up camp required just three actions:
First, someone had to decide where the structures ought to go. Brewster did that, insofar as there was any choice. A stream occupied the middle of the valley, and most of the other ground was not flat enough, or was covered with chest-high plants. Brewster picked the one sizable area of level, dry ground, about forty paces from the stream and uphill from it.
Second, the cargo aircar had to release the crated building modules from its hold. Winnie Carlson gave the command for that.
And third, the buildings had to unfold from their crates, establish foundations, and transform themselves into bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen. The buildings were smart enough to do that without instructions from anyone. The camp shaped itself in just a few minutes, while everyone looked on.
In the final stages Brewster returned to the cargo aircar. He said he had to talk with the communications center back at the compound. Topaz and the Lasker twins took over the newly formed kitchen. The rest were free to examine their surroundings, or as much of them as they could see in the deepening gloom.
Josh looked around seeking the giant and colorful balloon trees. The amazing thing was that from far away they dominated the skyline. Here, in the valley, they were nowhere to be seen. They must be on the other side of one of the ridges, shielded from view by the valley walls.
What he could see was odd enough. The vegetation at the water’s edge, and all the way to and around the newly erected buildings, formed a springy ground cover like the plants in the clearing where they had first landed on Solferino. On the sides of the valley that changed, very suddenly, to a shorter version of the umbrella plants. Josh walked over to where Amethyst was standing. She was alternately rising on tiptoe and then crouching down with bent knees.
“It’s like two different places,” she said, as he approached. “You’d never know from one that the other existed. Take a look for yourself.”