Juanita Coulson - Children of the Stars 04 Read online

  Dan didn’t need a second invitation. He followed the Whimed down the slope. It looked as if most of the xenoarchaeologists planned to be there all night. Their enthusiasm was an aroma. A few N’lacs sat nearby. Chuss gawked curiously at the scene, plainly puzzled by all the excitement.

  A three-meter-wide incline had been opened an equal length toward the hidden base of the dome. The structure itself was an ominous shadow, looming over the excavation.

  The team panned cameras along the painted wall, sprayed fresh preservatives, and picked away lingering crumbs of soil. A row of figures seemed to emerge from interment; half of the last shape in line was still buried. Squiggles and dots framed the pictures. One of the students said, “Too bad Ruieb’s bunch isn’t here. We could sure use him to translate this...”

  “Okay, okay, I shouldn’t have jumped him. So kick me,” Sheila grumbled.

  The byplay was vocal white noise to Dan. He was staring at those figures. Slender, round-faced, golden-eyed humanoids. Humanoids! A rare lifeform, as Kat had said. And he remembered her statement regarding the N’lacs’ kinship with these ruins’ builders. This was a civilization that had been unknown before Praedar’s expedition began digging here. A race lost to history! What a breakthrough!

  The figures marched across scenes of a high-tech culture, showing great cities, continent-spanning transport networks, advanced satellite navigation aids, aircraft, and spacecraft. Silvery ships, leaping away from the planet, reached toward a glowing dot, a distant star.

  “These people...” Dan murmured, his thoughts jumbled. Praedar anticipated him. “They ruled this world and a colony, T-S 311, where your kinsman is excavating.”

  Dan found himself wondering how the nonhuman members of the team saw these paintings. They viewed it with eyes and brains different from Homo sapiens’. He imagined wearing another being’s skin, exploring the universe in an alien body, with the outlook of another race. This must be what xenoarchaeology was really all about. The scientists’ enthusiasm had infected him, too. “Another star system,” he said. “If they did that, they had FTL. What happened. Where did they go?”

  “They’re here,” Kat said, without turning from her work.

  “The N’lacs? But why did they degenerate so much? Those villagers couldn’t have built a ramp like this, couldn’t have painted those pictures or written those inscriptions. Not the way they are now.”

  “Their society collapsed,” Praedar said tonelessly. “Their colony on T-S 31I collapsed, as well. We believe the colonists abandoned T-S 31I and returned to T-W 593, their home. Your kinsmen dispute that interpretation of events.”

  Dan was more and more caught up in the drama. “How long ago did this happen?”

  “It is not possible to be precise. We can date matters to within fifty niay. The approximate time of collapse, in Terran terms, is two thousand of your years before present. Feo Saunder and his wife agree with our findings at least in that respect.” The Whimed waited. For what? For Dan to arrive at some brilliant conclusion about those facts, which the xenoarchaeologists had already reached much earlier?

  If only Reid hadn’t lost his fortune, his younger son would have had a decent education, and Dan wouldn’t be so afraid of exposing his ignorance now. He peered intently at the wall, envying Dr. Chen his microscopic vision.

  The painted figures’ faces weren’t flushed like their modern-day descendants’. Their fingers were graceful, unwebbed, and unclubbed. Minds as dull as the average N’lac’s could never have created those cities and spaceships. However, Chuss and his siblings, properly educated and reared in a technologically oriented culture, just might have.

  “Was... ?” Dan hesitated. “Was there a catastrophe? Some kind of environmental upheaval or a drastic change in atmospheric conditions?”

  “No.” One of the scientists, Rosenthal, added, “Our biota analyses of the time period prove that conclusively.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Dan protested. “If Joe can raise a N’lac’s intelligence by pressurizing a gestating fetus...”

  Kat studied him narrowly. Praedar said, “Yes. You are indeed an explorer, Dan McKelvey.”

  “Much more open-minded than his relatives, as well,” Kat put in.

  Dan sighed in mild exasperation. “I just want to know how things work and why. This history you’ve described implies a severe alteration in this planet’s environment. I’ve seen what that means on some Terran Settlements, when pioneers homesteaded at the wrong altitude or skimped on breather apparatus. They didn’t usually end up as bad off as the N’lacs, but...”

  “Few current stellar colonies have endured an apparently inhospitable environment for as many generations as we theorize the N’lacs have,” Praedar reminded him. “Interesting, is it not? The solution demands what xenoarchaeology refers to as selectivity. A most careful examination and interpretation of data to develop a correct hypothesis of a newly discovered civilization.” “The right selectivity,” Kat stressed, making it sound like an oath. “Not the selectivity Feo and Hope are using.”

  “Can’t you tell me... ?” Dan began.

  A predatory grin split Praedar’s features. “You must learn from your own effort.” Dan blinked. Was that a brash-off or a quaint Whimed homily quoted to chasten an inquisitive amateur? The alien gestured sharply and headed back up the ramp. With reluctance, Dan followed, glancing over his shoulder longingly at those mysterious pictures. He wanted to stay. Yet if he did, he’d be useless, as the scientists had been while he was repairing the dredge linkage.

  At the top of the slope, Praedar halted and said, “You fixed the machine. You will remain as our maintenance specialist.” Rattled by the sudden, welcome decision, Dan stammered his thanks.

  “I can pay little. Food. Quarters. Fifty per hundred-day. It is enough?”

  That was bare bones, right at the Chartered Settlement Planets’ recommended bottom base wage. Before this starhop, Dan would have turned it down with a sneer. Now, blacklisted and in a comer, he couldn’t afford to. He suspected Praedar would get the money out of his personal funds, which probably were already heavily involved in this dig. And from the way these scientists scrimped along, nobody was getting rich from the expedition. The offer was fair, given those factors.

  Also, this job would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what he’d find for a similar wage anywhere else in the sector.

  “That’s fine,” Dan said.

  “You will repair other vehicles.”

  “Sure, if they’re repairable.”

  “There is a skimmer.” The Whimed was wistful. “It has not functioned for a local year.”

  And Kat and Sheila said they didn’t need a tech-mech here! “I’ll see what I can do...”

  He started the next morning, taking inventory of the equipment. Some of it required only maintenance. Some qualified for major fix-it schedules. A small number were hopeless cases. They got shunted to the mechanical graveyard west of the complex.

  It was impossible to set up a routine work timetable. Dan had to play tilings by ear—-and according to what parts he could scrounge, make himself, or locate substitutes for.

  He took daily drives to the landing strip and ran his system checks on Fiona. That was just common sense, whether he got back into indie hauling or was forced to sell her, further along the line; no one would pay him a counterfeit credit for unspaceable junk.

  Most of his waking hours, though, were spent in camp. It was no ordinary Settlement. Little by little, he became acquainted with its people and its habitats. There were a dozen or so families with children among the offworlders. The majority, however, were singles. Accomplished scientists, up-and-coming young xenoarchs, and students tended to their special disciplines and assisted in others’. The multispecies team—nocturnal and diurnal races, monophasics and polyphasics, mammalian Terrans, Whimeds, the currently absent Vahnajes, and the marsupial Lan-non—worked together. Thanks to uniformly casual dress, they actually looked remarkably similar,
as well. Rumpled jumpers were round-the-clock wear—in the labs and cook shack and on the dig, whether day or night; the only changes involved attaching the garments’ sleeves and legs during the colder hours.

  Whatever their species, the scientists were characters, each with individual quirks. Those patterns came out in their speech, dress, and their working and sleeping quarters. Many team members wore “primitive jewelry”—a potsherd pendant, arm-and legbands of bright furs and feathers, clay ornaments braided into Whimed crests or human hair, the Lannon’s neck ropes of dyed natural fibers. Kat’s area of the xenosocio’s office was full of native masks and models of grisly rituals. Sheila’s lab featured a graffiti-accented sonic potsherd scrubber. Praedar’s contained a striking assortment of artifacts from Whimed history, including his grandfather’s oryuz, a garish anti-esper helmet, a leftover from the time of the Whimed-Vahnaj interstellar cold war.

  Camp operations never ceased. Scientists kept shifts going night and day. As a result, there was always an empty bunk where Dan could log a few zees or bench space for him in the cook shack.

  He did his best to fit in, memorizing names and relationships. Reactions to his presence ran the gamut from amiable acceptance to Dr. Getz’s open dislike. It wasn’t easy to get close to these people. They had little leisure to nursemaid an untrained newcomer in camp. There was extra pressure on the expedition at present, especially. They were preparing for a big upcoming scientific conference, the Twelfth Xenoarchaeological Assembly, to be held on Feo Saunder’s dig world. The prospect of facing their rivals on the rivals’ home territory made for touchy tempers. Conditions weren’t improved when a three-day sandstorm con-lined the entire crew to the complex. During that period, Dan lived in the repair sheds and kept a very low profile.

  In his rare free time, and when a monitor was free, he poked into the Settlement’s library. He hoped for a self-taught crash course in xenoarch. But many entries were code-locked. The generally available material only showed him how much he had to learn and made him hungry for more.

  He read through professional journal back-issue vids by the dozens, getting an overview of the field, of important past and present digs, and of prominent scientists. Feo and Hope Saunder came in for a lot of coverage—too much, in Dan’s sour opinion. Many of the articles dealing with them and their expedition sounded like standard Saunder-McKelvey PR releases. Frequently Dan’s kindred gave interviews calculated to play down their status as members of “Terra’s uncrowned royalty.” In fact, they went overboard to present an image as common, hardworking xenoarchs. The tactic was effective. Editors and reporters praised the Saunders’ dedication and their self-sacrifice in plowing thousands of their own credits into their work. As if Feo was bankrupting himself by doing so!

  Greg Tavares, a handsome redhead about Dan’s age, was the Saunders’ protege. He appealed again and again in those interviews, always alongside his mentors. Each time Dan saw Tavares’ picture, he recalled Kat’s description of the man as Feo’s dirty tricks expert, the one responsible for bribe-burying that cargo.

  Halfway through Dan’s second week on the job, the N’lacs returned to the dome dig. Kat’s powwows had obviously been successful.

  Dan was having his own share of success in the repair sheds with scout bikes, trucks, rovers, scanners, monitors, balky clime-control units, circuits, and other tools and gadgets.

  The skimmer was his most difficult assignment. She was a derelict. At some point, she’d been belly-landed, damaging vital components. There weren’t enough replacement parts to mend her, so he resorted to more jerry-rigging, calling on his training and a lot of ingenuity. He was well into his third week on Praedar’s roster before he felt he had the problem licked.

  The next day, he rolled out at dawn and gobbled breakfast, then hurried to the hangars, passing the morning shift of scientists headed for the dome dig.

  Dan opened the shed doors wide and took care to remove any test equipment and all connecting lines blocking the skimmer’s exit path. After an obligatory walk-around, he climbed into the cockpit and did a thorough systems check—three times, to be on the safe side. Green showed across the panel.

  Canopy locked, power cued, the flyer lifted smoothly, riding a column of air, awaiting commands. Taking her slow and steady, Dan steered through the doors. The skimmer soared to meet the rising sun. Lamps were winking out and shadows retreating fast. Moment by moment, the valley brightened. He put the little craft through her paces, banking, risking stalls, pushing her responsiveness. There were a few glitches, but nothing major. A duto dived and zoomed around the metal invader, casting a puzzled compound eye in Dan’s direction. Laughing, he applied more thrust and sailed away.

  He hovered above Dr. Chen’s museum excavation, Hanging Rock, and the village. E.t.s gathered at the pump, pointing excitedly at the skimmer. Joe Hughes was a dark face amid a sea of wizened red ones. Dan returned the N’lacs’ happy waves and flew on.

  The shakedown cruise tracked thirty kilometers upstream from camp and back again. It was Dan’s first look at where the team had dug in previous years. He was delighted to find that he could pick out shapes of ancient buildings and the N’lacs’ earlier village locations from the air. Maybe he had learned something from studying those vid journals, after all!

  At the end of the test run, he drifted in to a perfect landing near the dud pits below the dome. Excavation halted. Scientists and native diggers rushed to greet him. Chuss’ crew swarmed over the flyer, chattering and patting the craft investigatively. Dan hastily shut the canopy to prevent small webbed hands from touching something they shouldn’t.

  As he stood on the wing, Sheila reached up and swatted his rump playfully. “Not bad, handsome! I never thought you’d get this thing up.”

  “Interesting congratulations you give. I’d heard you Kruger 60 women are insatiable.”

  “Oh, it’s true, it’s true!”

  Praedar studied the skimmer narrowly. Dan could almost see wheels turning in that crested skull. Saluting, the pilot said, “One skimmer, fully functional and ready for action, boss.”

  “That’s Dr. Juxury to you,” Getz growled.

  Dan was taken aback. Had he been too chummy? He’d adopted the team’s patterns of address without asking permission. That might have been a mistake.

  “Not important,” Praedar said, intent on the aircraft.

  Getz argued, “It is important. You must demand respect appropriate to.. .”

  “Oh, go classify effigies,” Kat said tiredly. “Get your respect from them. If you’re in the lab, you won’t be nitpicking everything we do at the dome.”

  Getz left in a rage. Looking rueful, his students tagged along behind him. A few scientists smiled in relief and gave Kat a ihumbs-up. Getz rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

  “It’s really okay now?” Sheila asked, nodding at the skimmer. “I’m flying her. If she isn’t A-One, I’ll be the first to know.” Kat winced at that old spacer’s joke. Then she turned to Prae-dar. “This means we can pull fresh core samples and take readings at the other sites.”

  “Yes.” Praedar’s chin dug into his bony chest in a sharp nod. “Update of correlations. Preparation for Assembly. We will need tools, maps, charge-coupled cams. You and I.”

  There was a brief, noisy protest. Praedar vetoed others’ attempts to join the party. He had decided, and that was that.

  “We were going to enlarge the ramp,” Baines, the geologist, said. “Use the dredge ...”

  “Hell, I can do that,” Sheila said, sniffing scornfully. “We don’t need McKelvey. Now that handsome’s taught me how to manage the rig, no sweat.”

  “Do not proceed further with the image wall,” Praedar ordered. “Clear the eastern face. We will reveal the structure there which Armilly has scanned.” Sheila made an “O” with her thumb and forefinger, grinning.

  Most of the N’lacs had already lost interest in the skimmer. They squatted listlessly, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Only Chu
ss was still bright-eyed and alert by the time Dan, Kat, and Praedar finished loading survey gear aboard the aircraft. Kat took the elevated observer’s seat, Praedar the second pilot’s chair. Dan locked the canopy, and outside noises muted. As the skimmer rose, Chuss and the scientists standing near the dud pits sent them off with cheers.

  “Which route?” Dan inquired.

  “Site TWP-30 to TWP-40, then return,” Kat instructed.

  Course lines rippled on the nav screens. The skimmer’s guidance system tied in to the planet’s nav-sat and logged the data. The sky boat swung around, aiming due north. As they passed a badlands area at the bend of the dry river, Dan boosted speed. The flyer’s needle-nosed shadow raced ahead of them over scrubby uplands.

  “Very good. Excellent repairs,” Praedar said. Kat’s reflection smiled at Dan from the control panels. He smiled, too. A step up the ladder! Still a long way from being a student xenoarch. But at least now he was the team’s resident tech-mech.

  Cameras and scanners soaked up info: precisely measured weather figures; land contours; elevations; moisture variations;

  vegetation quantities and types; and shadow configurations. Dan tapped that last entry and said, “That’s an ancient town line there, right? And that looks like a buried road.”

  “You have been studying, haven’t you?” Kat exclaimed. She leaned forward, pointing out details on the flowing map. “This was a population core, not as big as our city, but fair-sized. That depression was probably a market square. The structures are long gone, of course, but with the optimum lighting, they’re apparent. I wish we’d been able to make these aerial surveys more frequently, at all times of day, to get the overall picture. But because the skimmer..

  “Suffered a belly landing,” Dae supplied, “you couldn’t. Too bad. You missed a lot of data. Better let me fly her from now on. I can’t fix everything you people inflict on her.”

  Kat blushed prettily. Had she been the one at the controls when the skimmer crashed? She rushed on, covering her chagrin. “Every trip adds material we lacked before. We really appreciate what you’re doing to repair the machinery, Dan.”