“Very well,” the medic said. “I’d suggest the deaths were caused by some unknown virus—or, perhaps, by some virulent poison that occurred occasionally, a poisonous smog of some kind that had settled in the valley for a time and then dissipated.”
Wayne frowned and shook his head. Both hypotheses made sense.
“Do you have any suggestions, Doctor?” Petersen said.
“Since we don’t have any direct information about why those men died, Colonel, I can’t make any definite statements. But I can offer one bit of advice to everyone: wear your suits and be alert.”
During the week that followed, several groups went out without suffering any ill effects. A short service was held for the eight of the Mavis and then the skeletons were buried in the valley.
They ran a check on the double-nucleus beryllium toward the end of the week, after it had been fairly safely established that no apparent harm was going to come to them. Wayne and Sherri were both in the crew that went outside to set up the detector.
“You man the detector plate,” said Major MacDougal, who was in charge of the group, turning to Wayne.
He put his hand on the plate and waited for the guide coordinates to be set. MacDougal fumbled at the base of the detector for a moment, and the machine began picking up eloptic radiations.
Wayne now looked down at the detector plate. “Here we are,” he said. “The dial’s oscillating between four and eight, all right. The stuff’s here.”
MacDougal whistled gently. “It’s really sending, isn’t it!” He pointed toward the mountaintop. “From up there, too. It’s going to be a nice climb. Okay, pack the detector up and let’s get back inside.”
They entered the airlock and passed on into the ship.
“The D-N beryllium up there, sir,” Major MacDougal said. “It’s going to be a devil of a job to get up to find the stuff.”
“That’s what Captain Wayne’s here for,” Petersen said. “Captain, what do you think? Can you get up here?”
“It would have been easier to bring along a helicopter,” Wayne said wryly. “Pity the things don’t fit into spaceships. But I think I can get up there. I’d like to try surveying the lay of the land, first. I want to know all the possible routes before I start climbing.”
“Good idea,” Petersen said. “I’ll send you out with three men to do some preliminary exploring. Boggs! Manetti! MacPherson! Suit up and get with it!”
Wayne strode toward the spacesuit locker, took out his suit, and donned it. Instead of the normal space boots, he put on the special metamagnetic boots for mountain climbing. The little reactors in the back of the calf activated the thick metal sole of each boot so that it would cling tightly to the metallic rock of the mountain. Unlike ordinary magnetism, the metamagnetic field acted on all metals, even when they were in combination with other elements.
His team of three stood before him in the airlock room. He knew all three of them fairly well from Earthside; they were capable, level-headed men, and at least one—Boggs—had already been out in the valley surveying once, and so knew the area pretty well.
He pulled on the boots and looked up. “We’re not going to climb the mountain this time, men. We’ll just take a look around it to decide which is the best way.”
“You have any ideas, sir?” Sergeant Boggs asked.
“From looking at the photographs, I’d guess that the western approach is the best. But I may be wrong. Little details are hard to see from five hundred miles up, even with the best of instruments, and there may be things in our way that will make the west slope impassible. If so, we’ll try the southern side. It looks pretty steep, but it also seems rough enough to offer plenty of handholds.”
“Too bad we couldn’t have had that helicopter you were talking about,” said Boggs.
Wayne grinned. “With these winds? They’d smash us against the side of the mountain before we’d get up fifty feet. You ought to know, Sergeant—you’ve been out in them once already.”
“They’re not so bad down in this valley, sir,” Boggs said. “The only time you really notice them is when you climb the escarpment at the northern end. They get pretty rough up there.”
Wayne nodded. “You can see what kind of a job we’ll have. Even with metamagnetic boots and grapples, we’ll still have to use the old standbys.” He looked at the men. “Okay; we’re all ready. Let’s go.”
They unhooked four of the six tabs from the wall and donned them. Then they moved on into the airlock and closed the inner door. The air was pumped out, just as though the ship were in space or on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere. As far as anyone knew, the atmosphere of Fomalhaut V actually was poisonous. Some of the tension had relaxed after a week spent in safety, but there was always the first expedition to consider; no one took chances.
When all the air had been removed, a bleeder valve allowed the outer air to come into the chamber. Then the outer door opened, and the four men went down the ladder to the valley floor.
Wayne led the way across the sand in silence. The four men made their way toward the slope on the western side of the valley. Overhead, the bright globe of Fomalhaut shed its orange light over the rugged landscape.
When they reached the beginning of the slope, Wayne stopped and looked upwards. “Doesn’t look easy,” he grunted. “Damned rough hill, matter of fact. MacPherson, do you think you could make it to the top?”
Corporal MacPherson was a small, wiry man who had the reputation of being a first-rank mountaineer. He had been a member of the eighteenth Mount Everest Party, and had been the second of that party to reach the summit of the towering peak.
“Sure I can, sir,” he said confidently. “Shall I take the rope?”
“Go ahead. You and Manetti get the rope to the top, and Sergeant Boggs and I will follow up.”
“Righto, sir.”
Corporal MacPherson reached his gloved hands forward and contracted his fingers. The tiny microswitches in his gloves actuated the relays, and his hands clung to the rock. Then he put his boots against the wall and began to move up the steep escarpment.
Private Manetti followed after him. The two men were lashed together by the light plastisteel cable. The sergeant held the end of the cable in his hands, waiting for the coil to be paid out.
Wayne watched the two men climb, while a chill wind whipped down out of the mountains and raised the sand in the valley. It was less than eighty feet to the precipice edge above, but it was almost perpendicular, and as they climbed, the buffeting winds began to press against their bodies with ever-increasing force.
They reached the top and secured the rope, and then they peered over the edge and signalled that Wayne and the sergeant should start up.
“We’re coming,” Wayne shouted, and returned the signal. It was at that instant that he felt something slam against the sole of his heavy metamagnetic boot. It was as though something had kicked him savagely on the sole of his right foot.
He winced sharply at the impact. Then, somewhat puzzled he looked down at the boot. He felt something move under the sand. He tried to step back, and almost tripped. It was as though his right foot were stuck firmly to the sand!
He pushed himself back, and with a tremendous heave managed to pull himself free. He braced his body against the cliff, lifted his foot, and looked at it.
Hanging from his boot sole was one of the ugliest monstrosities he had ever seen, unusually grotesque.
It was about the size and shape of a regulation football, and was covered with a wrinkled, reddish hide. At one end was a bright red gash of a mouth studded with greenish, gnashing teeth. From the other end of the creature’s body protruded a long, needle-like projection which had imbedded itself in the metal sole of Wayne’s boot.