“Now, is this gravity back to normal, or is this place actually below normal as the last one was above it?” Julian asked quizzically, as much of herself as of the others.
“Impossible to say,” a weary Mavra replied. “It would make sense to have a fairly large disparity, though, simply because it would keep Ituns from being interested in spreading out over here and probably the other way around, too. To tell you the truth, it hadn’t been so dramatic in the places I was last time, at least so I could notice.”
“Now what?” one of the centauresses—Tony, from the accent—asked. “Is anybody around here we should worry about?”
“You worry about everything on this world,” Mavra warned. “Even the friendly places. There’s not much chance of diseases—all but a very few don’t even travel well between species on Earth, and they’re all much closer than the ones here—but meat eaters will eat the meat of carbon-based forms and many plants and animals are potentially poisonous. Even potentially friendly tribes tend sometimes to shoot first and ask questions later. Julian?”
The Erdomese shifted to the infrared spectrum and scanned the relatively flat grasslands. “There are whole herds of creatures out there, most bunched close together and showing little signs of activity. Asleep, probably.”
“You think they’re natives?” Anne Marie asked, suddenly feeling a little bit refreshed by the lowered gravity and humidity but still feeling sore from the burdens of Itus.
“Who can say? But I tend to doubt it. I’ve seen the same sort of patterns with cows out on the western ranges and such, and you’d figure that a race would have some kind of night watch and probably fires or the remains of fires that I could easily see. If Earth is any example, and it seems to be to at least some extent, then this is a savanna, much like east Africa. That means lots of herd-type animals, which is what the patterns here suggest. Like the antelope. There are probably a lot of other creatures who are also grass eaters here.”
Lori had slept for a while and had finally awakened just before the crossing when he’d shifted a bit and his horn had jabbed Tony in the back.
“Where there’s a lot of herbivores,” he noted, “there are also carnivores. Probably not all intelligent, either. You’ve got a finite space here, no matter how large a hex is, so something, usually a combination of things, has to keep the population managed. The gravity barrier and maybe incompatible vegetation would keep the animals on this side of the line, but what keeps them in balance?”
Mavra nodded. “We’ve got to make a camp. Tromping through this meter-high grass for any length of time at night, we’re likely to start a stampede, and that’s the last thing we want. Who knows what this stuff could conceal, too?”
“There is a large stand of trees just about two kilometers in,” Julian noted. “It would afford some shelter and protection.”
Mavra was dubious. “That’s your Erdomese instincts talking. In the desert you head for the trees and the oasis. Think more like the Africa you talked about. I remember a part of it much like this, going on almost forever. It was huge, with vast herds of game and great cities and civilizations, until the coastal folks chopped down all the trees and the rains were able to erode and undermine the soft rock and good soil and the whole thing turned into a desert. The last time I was there, it was desert wasteland from almost the Mediterranean shore as far in as I knew. When I saw what had happened and what greatness had been lost, I cried, and I don’t do that much.”
She paused a moment, remembering the devastation, the eternity of baking hot sand, then regained control.
“Well,” she continued, “the point is that when you had thick areas of trees like the ones you describe, it meant a water hole, maybe a spring at the surface, just as in the desert, but it also was where all the nastiest predators went and spent the night. Wouldn’t you? They sure don’t sleep out here in the grass. Otherwise the herds of prey would be somewhere else. You don’t see any signs of some kind of camp, some kind of civilization in that grove, do you?”
Both Julian and Lori looked hard, using magnification as well. “No,” Lori answered after a bit. “But you’re right; there are some pretty large creatures in those trees.”
Julian pointed to their left a bit. “The grass seems to get lower over there. It is possible that there is some surface rock. I do not see anything much right in that area, either. Lori?”
“No, I don’t, either. It’s a good bet, although it won’t give us a lot of cover.”
“Better than nothing,” Mavra said at last. “We’re not exactly inconspicuous anywhere in these parts, you know.”
“Or anywhere else, as a group,” Lori agreed.
“Well, I for one think we all look just splendid!” Anne Marie announced, missing the point.
The area was a rocky outcropping that wind and rain had worn clean of soil. It was a large tabular rock, cracked in a few places, that ran about twelve meters by nine. There were some raised sections of what looked like the same material along two sides, although nothing that would really conceal them from an interested onlooker. It was, however, barren of grass and didn’t seem to have been staked out by anything else alive, and that was good enough.
“It’s basically a form of sandstone,” Julian noted, “not unlike on Earth. It’s a common pattern. The stuff will eventually erode back to sand—and you can see some of that along the back side there—and probably underlies the whole plain. Basically, this isn’t much different than Erdom, except that this region gets an adequate rainfall that allows the grass to grow and stabilize the rock.”
Mavra nodded. “That’s right. You were a geologist, weren’t you? Okay, let’s get the bedrolls down for us three bipeds. Anne Marie, do you still have the firestarter? I want to check on something.”
“Yes, yes. I believe… Half a moment!” With that the centauress turned on her forward hips almost all the way around and fumbled in one of the large packs, then said, “Aha!” She pulled out a long, thin metallic rod and handed it to Mavra.
As the supplies were taken off and the three bedrolls were spread out in the middle of the slab, Mavra went over, picked a strand of the grass, and brought it back to the center of the rock, well away from anything else. She pressed a button on the end of the stick, and from the other end came a tiny jet of flame, which she applied to the grass.
It caught fire but went out as soon as she removed the source of the flame. She tried it two or three times, and each time the result was the same. Satisfied, she tossed the remains of the grass stalk away and put the lighter back in the pack.
“If you don’t mind, what was that about?” Tony asked her.
“Testing fire hazard. Either it’s not long after the rainy season or this soil really holds water well. Maybe both,” Mavra explained. “It also means that the grass is probably just grass. Plus, it shows that the reason for not seeing any sort of fires or fire remains isn’t because it’s too dangerous to build one. And that probably means there aren’t any Gekirs around at the moment, whatever they are.”
“Either that or they just don’t use fire,” Lori noted.
Mavra gave her a look she hoped the Erdomese could see in the darkness. “Don’t kill my optimism too quickly! I was enjoying this,” she said grumpily.
Lori looked around with his night vision from atop the centaur’s back. “I wonder what would be the most logical life-form for a place like this?”
“Either carnivores or omnivores,” Tony guessed. “Probably carnivores. They would have the most stake in managing such a place, and it would explain the lack of any sort of groves or cultivation in such a desirable spot. I would wager that they eat a lot of meat, anyway.”