MacAran asked, “Shouldn’t we carry him down to the tent? Could there be more of those things crawling around?”
“I’d rather not move him now. Maybe in a couple of hours.”
MacAran stood, looking down in dismay, at the unconscious man. They shouldn’t delay–and yet, their party had been rigidly calculated for size and there was no one to spare to send back to the ship for help. Finally he said, “We’ve got to go on. Suppose we move Marco back to the tent, when it’s safe, and you stay to look after him. The others can do their exploration work here as well as anywhere, check out soil, plant, animal samples. But I have to survey what I can from the peak, and Lieutenant Del Rey has to take her astronomical sightings from as high up as possible. We’ll go on ahead, as far as we can. If the peak turns out to be unclimbable we won’t try, just take what readings we can and come back.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait and see whether we can go on with you? We don’t know what kind of dangers there are in the forests here.”
“It’s a matter of time,” Camilla said tautly. “The sooner we know where we are, the sooner we have a chance–” she didn’t finish.
MacAran said, ‘We don’t know. The dangers might even be less for a very small party, even for a single person. It’s even odds, either way. I think we’re going to have to do it that way.”
They arranged it like that, and since in two hours Zabal had shown no signs of recovering consciousness, MacAran and the other two men carried him, on an improvised stretcher, down to the tent. There was some protest about the splitting of the party, but no one seriously disputed it, and MacAran realized that he had already become their leader whose word was law. By the time the red sun stood straight overhead they had divided the packs and were ready to go, with only the small emergency shelter-tent, food for a few days, and Camilla’s instruments.
They stood in the shelter tent, looking down at the semi-conscious Zabal. He had begun to stir and moan but showed no other signs of returning consciousness. MacAran felt desperately uneasy about him, but all he could do was leave him in Ewen’s hands. After all, the important business here was the preliminary estimate of this planet–and Camilla’s observations as to where in the Galaxy they were!
Something was nagging at his mind. Had he forgotten anything? Suddenly Heather Stuart pulled off her uniform coat and drew off the fut-knit jacket she was wearing under it. “Camilla, it’s warmer than yours,” she said in a low voice, “please wear it. It snows so here. And you’re going to be out with only the small shelter!”
Camilla laughed, shaking her head. “It’s going to be cold here too.”
“But–” Heather’s face was taut and drawn. She bit her lip and pleaded, “Please, Camilla. Call me a silly fool, if you like. Say I’m having a premonition, but please take it!”
“You too?” MacLeod asked dryly. “Better take it, Lieutenant. I thought I was the only one having freaked-out second sight. I’ve never taken ESP very seriously, but who knows, on a strange planet it just might turn out to be a survival quality. Anyhow, what can you lose to take a few extra warm clothes?”
MacAran realized that the nagging at his mind had been somehow concerned with weather. He said, “Take it, Camilla, if it’s extra warm. I’ll take Zabal’s mountain parka, too, it’s heavier than mine, and leave mine for him. And some extra sweaters if you have them. Don’t deprive yourselves, but it’s true that if it snows you will have more shelter than we do, and it sometimes gets pretty cold on the heights.” He was looking at Heather and MacLeod curiously; as a general rule he had no faith in what he had heard about ESP, but if two people in the party both felt it, and he too had some inkling of it well, maybe it was just a matter of unconscious sensory clues, something they couldn’t add up consciously. Any way, you didn’t need ESP to predict bad weather on the mountain heights of a strange planet with a freakishly bad climates! “Take all the clothes anyone can spare, and an extra blanket–we have extras,” he ordered, “and then let’s get going.”