“Not bad,” he commented. “Nothing great, but I think it’ll be useful. Professor, suppose you stop daydreaming and start gathering as many of these as you can reach. They may not grow along our route, and we’re going to need every safe kind of food we can find.”
Leswick nodded and walked over to one of the trees that grew the pale green fruits. He started to pick them. Good, Rand thought. If the philosopher would do his share of the work, they’d stand a much better chance of making it safely through the jungle to the beacon.
“Tarzan, you come here with me,” Rand said. “I want to unload the ship before nightfall. We’ll drag out of it everything we can possibly use.”
He and Dombey went into the ship.
Rand wondered if Dombey and Leswick would ever realize how lucky they were that he was a trained engineer. They couldn’t possibly have survived this long without him.
Dombey, of course, wouldn’t stop to think about that. The poor dope was happy to be alive, but he didn’t spend much time thinking about such things. Or anything.
Leswick, though, ought to recognize his good luck. He’d be a dead man without me by now, Rand thought. What good was a professor of Metaphysical Synthesis on a jungle planet?
Leswick had said that his special field of study was savage tribes. Well, there might be savage tribes here. But how would he deal with them? He seemed able only to deal with situations in books.
Rand had looked into the book Leswick had brought along. It was full of chapters about cultural arcs and tribal war-patterns and other high-sounding things. There were solid pages of mathematical equations, too. But could Leswick translate any of that into useful knowledge? Rand didn’t think so.
Then he shook his head. He told himself that he had no business thinking such things. He had been lucky, too. Lucky that he had been born clever, and not dull-witted like Dombey. Lucky that he had chosen to study engineering, and not something that wouldn’t do him any good in a tough situation like this.
But it wasn’t right to keep congratulating himself for his own good luck. He told himself to cut it out. If I pat myself on the back much harder, he thought, I’ll sprain my shoulder.
“Grab hold of this, Tarzan,” he called. “Let’s haul it outside.”
“Sure, boss, sure.” Dombey reached up easily and broke loose a long strip of metal from the cabin wall. That would be useful, Rand knew.
Dombey picked up the heavy piece of metal, grunted, and carried it out of the ship by himself. When he came back in, he grinned, scratched the thick stubble on his cheek, and spat out a mouthful of fruit. He rubbed his stomach happily and belched.
“You know what, boss? Them fruits is pretty good, but I could go for a little beef, now. Something to drink, maybe, too.”
“You know what, Tarzan? So could I. But let’s finish clearing the ship first.”
They worked until it got dark. By then they had ripped out of the ship just about everything that might come in handy in the weeks ahead.
The darkness was spooky and weird. This planet had no moon, and the jungle turned black and frightening after sundown.
Strange noises came out of the distance. Birds made a rasping, harsh chirping sound. Something far away made a loud mooing noise, over and over and over. Another animal made a sound that was midway between the neighing of a horse and the screeching of an owl. It wasn’t the kind of sound that made you feel cheerful about spending a night on the planet called Tuesday.
Leswick and Dombey gathered twigs and logs and built a fire near the ship. Meanwhile Rand checked out the survival kit to see how much food and medicine they had. Not much, he discovered.
The fire became a hot, lively blaze. It would help to keep the jungle animals away, Rand figured. Maybe they had never seen fire before. In any case, they wouldn’t come close. Especially since the lifeship’s rough landing had knocked a big opening in the jungle. The animals wouldn’t want to cross that clearing of burned and flattened trees.
“Dinner’s ready,” Rand called, when the fire was lit.
They squatted by the fire and had a simple meal. Food tablets out of the survival kit, and some of the green fruits Dombey had discovered. Then they went inside the ship to sleep.
This would be the last time they would be sleeping indoors for many weeks. After tonight, they’d be out in the open, sleeping in the jungle.
Rand stretched out on one of the acceleration couches. Dombey, next to him, was already asleep. Leswick was sitting up crosslegged, reading his big book by flashlight. Rand looked sourly at him.
“Why don’t you save your eyesight, Leswick? Do your homework some other time!”
“It’s an extremely fascinating book,” Leswick said. “You ought to read it yourself.”
Rand laughed. “Yeah. Maybe I will, some year or other. But not right away.”
He closed his eyes. But the light of Leswick’s flashlight bothered him. After a few minutes Rand said, “Leswick, do you mind putting out that light? I can’t sleep.”
“If you’ll only let me finish this chapter—”
“The chapter might be a hundred pages long. Put out the light, Leswick.”
“But—”
“Put out the light.”
Leswick made a clucking sound of annoyance. But he switched the flashlight off.
“Thank you,” Rand said.
He wrapped his arms around his head and waited for sleep to take him.
Chapter 8
Sleep didn’t seem to want him, though. Hours passed, and Rand stayed awake.
Listening.
Thinking.
Worrying.
The jungle sounds echoed through the night. Howls and wails and chirps and screams and roars of fifty different kinds split the air. Booming, bellowing, hissing noises could be heard. It was like trying to sleep in the middle of a zoo.
The animals weren’t coming close to the ship. Not yet. The fire kept them at a distance—for now.
But soon the three Earthmen would be far from the ship, sleeping out in the open. How much good would a fire do them then? How long would it be before the jungle beasts got curious?
The jungle beasts weren’t Rand’s only worry. This planet had intelligent native life. The chartbook said so—but the chartbook didn’t go into details. What kind of natives? Cannibals? Headhunters? Or creatures so strange and alien that they couldn’t be described?
The lifeship’s survival kit included a Thorson thought-converter. That was a device that automatically translated languages into terms that could be understood anywhere. The converter would allow him to speak with Tuesday’s natives. But it didn’t guarantee that they’d give him a friendly, peaceful reception.
Rand tossed uneasily for hours, wondering how they were going to deal with all the problems ahead. This was going to be a test of their skill, toughness, and energy. He felt that he would have what it took to get through the jungle alive.
But how about Dombey? Toughness and energy, yes, but no brains.
How about Leswick? No toughness, no energy, and, as far as Rand could see, no skill.
Rand knew that even his own abilities as an engineer could get them only so far and no farther. When a man is facing a deadly jungle beast about to spring, it doesn’t matter how good an engineer he is. That man is in trouble. Even cleverness has its limits.
Thoughts like these kept Rand awake almost until morning. At last he slipped into a light doze. Right away, it seemed, the sun came up and woke him.
Blinding rays of sunlight came slanting into the ship, through the broken places in the cabin wall. Rand groaned. He tried to hide from the morning brightness, without any luck.