They had a regular routine of listening and broadcasting, trying to contact the two, but nothing came of it. No one heard a man crying again, and no one heard anything from April.
Time drifted by, all but unmarked. Cirocco had Calvin's watch to tell them when to sleep, but it was hard to adjust to the unfailing light. She would never have suspected it of a group of people who had lived in the artificial environment of Ringmaster, where the day was set on the ship's computer and could be varied at will.
Life was easy,. All the fruit they tried was edible, and seemed to be nourishing them. if there were vitamin deficiencies they had yet to make themselves known. Some fruits were salty, and others had a tang they hoped was vitamin C. Game was plentiful, and easy to kill.
They were all used to the strict time-lines of an astronaut, where every chore is assigned by ground control and the chief pastime is bitching about how it was impossible and yet doing it anyway. They had been prepared to struggle for survival in a hostile environment, but Hyperion was about as hostile as the San Diego Zoo. They had expected Robinson Crusoe, or at least the Swiss Family Robinson, but Hyperion was a creampuff. They had not yet adjusted enough to think in terms of a mission.
Two days after Calvin and August left, Gaby presented Cirocco with clothes she had made from the discarded chutes. It touched Cirocco deeply to see the expression on Gaby's face when she tried it on.
The outfit was half toga and half loose pants. The material was thin, but surprisingly tough. It had taken Gaby a lot of hard work to cut it into usable sizes and sew it together with thorn needles.
"If you can work out something for mocassins," she told Gaby " I'll promote you three grades when we get home."
" I'm working on it." Gaby glowed for a day after that, and was frisky as a puppy, brushing against Cirocco and her fine clothing at the slightest excuse. She was pathetically eager to please.
Cirocco was sitting by the side of the river, alone for once, and glad of it. Being the bone of contention between two lovers was not to her taste. Bill was starting to get annoyed by Gaby's behavior, and seemed to feel he should do something.
She reclined easily with a long limber pole in one hand and watched a small wooden float bob at the end of her line. She let her thoughts drift over the problem of aiding any rescue party -that might come for them. What might he done to make rescue easier?
It was a certainty that they couldn't get out of Gaea on their own. The best she could do would be to try contact the rescue party. She had no doubt one would arrive, and few illusions that its primary purpose would be rescue. The messages she had managed to send during the break-up of Ringmaster described a hostile act, and the implications of that were enormous. Ring- master's crew would certainly be presumed dead, but Themis- Gaea would not be forgotten. A ship would arrive soon, and it would be loaded for bear.
"All right," she said. "Gaea should have some communications facilities somewhere."
Probably in the hub. Even if the engines were there too, its central location seemed the logical place for controls. There might be people up there running things, and there might not. There was no way to make the trip look easy, or the destination safe. It could be carefully guarded against entry and sabotage.
But if there was a radio up there, she should see what she could do about getting to it.
She yawned, scratched her ribs, and idly moved her foot up and down. The float bobbed in and out of the water. it seemed a good time for a snooze.
The float jerked, and vanished beneath the muddy waters. Cirocco looked at it for a moment, then realized with mild surprise that something had taken the bait. She stood and began pulling in the line.
The fish had no eyes, no scales, and no fins. She held it up and looked at it curiously. It was the first fish any of them had caught.
"What the hell am I doing?" she asked aloud. She tossed it back into the water, coiled her fishing line, and started around the bend in the river toward camp. Half-way there, she began to run.
"I'm sorry, Bill, I know you put a lot of work into this place. But when they come to get us, I want to be working as hard as I can toward getting ourselves out," Cirocco said.
"I agree with you, basically. What's your idea?"
She explained her thinking about the hub, the fact that if there was a central technological control for this vast construct, it would be up there.
"I don't know what we'd find. Maybe nothing but cobwebs and dust, and everything down here is still going by sheer inertia. Or maybe the Captain and a crew waiting to blow us to pieces for invading their ship. But we have to look."
"How do you propose to get up there? "
"I don't know for sure. I'm assuming the blimps can't do it or they would know more about this goddess they talk about. There may not even be any air in the spokes."
"That would make it a bit tough,"Gaby pointed out.
"We won't know until we look. The way to get up the spokes is the support cables. They should go all the way up the insides, right to the top."
"My God," Gaby muttered. "Even the slanted ones are a hundred kilometers high. And that just brings you to the roof. From there it's another 500 kilometers to the hub."
"My aching back," Bill groaned. "What's the matter with-you?" Cirocco demanded. "I didn't say weld climb them. We'll decide that when we get a good look. What I'm trying to tell you is that we're ignorant of this place. For all I know, there's an express elevator sitting in the swamp that would take us all the way to the top. Or a little man selling helicopter tickets, or magic carpets. We'll never know unless we start looking around."
"Don't get excited," Bill said. "I'm with you." "Mat about you, Gaby? "
"I go where you ga," she said, matter-of-factly. "You know that."
"All right. Here's my thinking. There's a slanted cable to the west, toward Occanus. But the river flows the other way, and we could use that for transportation. We might even get to the next row of cables faster that way than beating through the ~Ie. I think we should head cast, toward Rhea."
"Calvin said we should stay out of Rhea," Bill reminded. "I didn't say weld go into it. if there's anything that would be harder to take than this perpetual afternoon, it would have to he perpetual night, so I'm not anxious to go there anyway. But there's a lot of country between here and there. We could take a look at it."
"Admit it, Rocky. You're a tourist at heart." She had to smile. "Guilty. I thought a while ago, here we axe in this incredible place. We know there are a dozen intelligent races in here. What do we do? Sit around and flsh. Well, not me. I feel like nosing around. It's what they were paying us for, and bell, it's what I like. Maybe I want some adventure."
"My god," Gaby said again, with a hint of chuckle. "What more could you ask? Elasn't enough happened?"
"Adventures have a way of t~ around and biting you," Bill said.
"Don't I know it. But we're heading down that river, anyway. I'd like to get going after the next sleep period. I feel like I've been drugged."
Bill considered that for a moment. "Do you think that's possible? Something in one of the fruits?"
"Huh? You've been reading too much sci-fi, Bill.,,
"Listen, you don't knock my reading habits and I won't knock your old black and white flat films. "
"But that's art. Never mind. I guess it's possible we've eaten something that tranquilizes but I really think it's just old-fashioned laziness."
Bill stood and reached for his non-existent pipe. He looked annoyed to have forgotten yet again, then dusted off his hands.
"It'll take a while to knock a raft together," he said.
"My a raft? What about those big seed pods we've seen float- ing down the river? They're big enough to hold us."
Bill frowned. "Yes, I guess they are, but do you think they'll handle well in rough water? I'd like to get a look at the bottoms before----"
"Handle? You think a raft would be better?" He looked startled, then chagrined.
"You know, maybe I am getting slow. Lead on, Commander."
CHAPTER TEN
The seeds grew from the tops of the tallest trees in the forest. Each tree produced only one seed at a time, and when it reached maturity it exploded like a cannon shot. They had heard them going off at long intervals. What was left after the explosion was something like a walnut shell, evenly and smoothly divided.