Darkover Landfall by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Judith Lovat noted that the fat little zoologist was puffing with effort, but she said nothing. She could un­derstand perfectly well the fascination of being the first to see and classify the wildlife of a completely strange planet, a job usually left to highly specialized First Land­ing teams’ and she supposed MacAran wouldn’t have accepted him for the trip unless he was physically capable of it.

The same thought was on Ewen Ross’s mind as he walked beside Heather, neither of them wasting their breath in talk. He thought, Rafe isn’t setting a very hard pace, but just the same I’m not too sure how the women will take it. When MacAran called a halt, a little more than an hour after they had set out, he left the girl and moved over to MacAran’s side.

“Tell me, Rafe, how high is this peak?”

“No way of telling, as far off as I saw it, but I’d esti­mate eighteen‑twenty thousand feet.”

Ewen asked, “Think the women can handle it?”

“Camilla will have to; she’s got to take astronomical observations. Zabal and I can help her if we have to, and the rest of you can stay further down on the slopes if you can’t make it.”

“I can make it,” Ewen said, “Remember, the oxygen content of this air is higher than earth’s; anoxia won’t set in quite so low.” He looked around the group of men and women, seated and resting, except for Heather Stuart, who was digging out a soil sample and putting it into one of her tubes. And Lewis MacLeod had flung himself down full length and was breathing hard, eyes closed. Ewen looked at him with some disquiet, his trained eyes spotting what even Judith Lovat had not seen, but he did not speak. He couldn’t order the man sent back at this dis­tance-‑not alone, in any case.

It seemed to the young doctor that MacAran was fol­lowing his thoughts when the other man said abruptly, “Doesn’t this seem almost too easy, too good? There has to be a catch to this planet somewhere. It’s too much like a picnic in a forest preserve.”

Ewen thought, some picnic, with fifty‑odd dead and over a hundred hurt to the crash, but he didn’t say it, remembering Rafe had lost his sister. “Why not, Rafe? Is there some law that says an unexplored planet has to be dangerous? Maybe we’re just so conditioned to a life on Earth without risks that we’re afraid to step one inch out­side our nice, safe technology.” He smiled. “Haven’t I heard you bitching because on Earth you said that all the mountains, and even the ski slopes, were so smoothed out there wasn’t any sense of personal conquest? Not that I’d know‑‑I never went in for danger sports.”

“You may have something there,” MacAran said, but he still looked somber. “If that’s so, though, why do they make such a fuss about First Landing teams when they send them to a new planet?‑

“Search me. But maybe on a planet where man never developed, his natural enemies didn’t develop either?”

It should have comforted MacAran, but instead he felt a cold chill. If man didn’t belong here, could he survive here? But he didn’t say it. “Better get moving again. We’ve got a long way to go, and I’d like to get on the slopes before dark.”

He stopped by McLeod as the older man struggled to his feet. “You all right, Dr. MacLeod?”

“Mac,” the older man said with a faint smile, “we’re not under ship discipline now. Yes, I’m fine

“You’re the animal specialist. Any theories why we haven’t seen anything larger than a squirrel?”

“Two,” MacLeod said with a round grin, “the first, of course, being that there aren’t any. The second, the one I’m committed to, is that with six, no, seven of us crashing along through the underbrush this way, anything with a brain bigger than a squirrel’s keeps a good long way off !”

MacAran chuckled, even while he revised his opinion of the fat little man upward by a good many notches. “Should we try to be quieter?”

“Don’t see how we can manage it. Tonight will be a better test. Larger carnivores-‑if there’s any analogy to Earth‑‑will come out then, hoping to catch their natural prey sleeping.”

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