“Then there’s nothing hopeless there either?”
“It’s honestly too early to say, Captain, but I shouldn’t think so. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I haven’t given up yet.”
Captain Leicester said, “Well, just now things look about as bad as they can; I suspect we’re all tending to look on the grim side. Maybe that’s good; anything better than the worst will be a pleasant surprise. Where’s Dr. Di Asturien? Medic?”
Ewen Ross stood up. `The Chief didn’t feel he could leave, sir; he’s got a crew working to salvage all remaining medical supplies. He sent me. There have been no more deaths and all the dead are buried. So far there is no sign of any unusual illness of unknown origin, but we are still checking air and soil samples, and will continue to do so, for the purpose of classifying known and unknown bacteria. Also–”
“Go on.”
“The Chief wants orders issued about using only the assigned latrine areas, Captain. He pointed out that we’re carrying all sorts of bacteria in our own bodies which might damage the local flora and fauna, and we can manage to disinfect the latrine areas fairly thoroughly–but we should take precautions against infecting outside areas.”
“A good point,” Leicester said. “Ask someone to have the orders posted, Del Rey. And put a security man to make sure everybody knows where the latrines are, and uses them. No taking a leak in the woods just because you’re there and there aren’t any anti-littering laws:”
Camilla Del Rey said, “Suggestion, Captain. Ask the cooks to do the same with the garbage, for a while, anyhow.”
“Disinfect it? Good point. Lovat, what’s the status on the food synthesizers,”
“Accessible and working, sir, at least temporarily. It might not be a bad idea, though, to check indigenous food supplies and make sure we can eat the local fruits and roots if we have to. If it goes on the blink–and it was never intended to run for long periods in planetary gravities–it will be too late to start testing the local vegetation then.” Judith Lovat, a small, sturdily built woman in her late thirties with the green emblem of Life-support systems on her smock, glanced toward the door of the dome. “The planet seems to be widely forested; there should be something we can eat, with the oxygen-nitrogen system of this air. Chlorophyll and photosynthesis seem to be pretty much the same on all M-type planets and the end product is usually some form of carbohydrate with amino acids:”
“I’m going to put a botanist right on it,” Captain Leicester said, “which brings me to you, MacAran. Did you get any useful information from the hilltop?”
MacAran stood up. He said, “I would have gotten more if we’d landed in the plains–assuming there are any on this planet–but I did get a few things. First, we’re about a thousand feet above sea level here, and definitely in the Northern hemisphere, but not too many degrees of latitude off the Equator, considering that the Sun runs high in the sky. We seem to be in the foothills of an enormous mountain range, and the mountains are old enough to be forested–that is, no active apparent volcanoes in sight, and no mountains which look like the result of volcanic activity within the last few millennia. It’s not a young planet.”
“Signs of life?” Leicester asked.
“Birds in plenty. Small animals, perhaps mammals but I’m not sure. More kinds of trees than I knew how to identify. A good many of them were a kind of conifer, but there seemed to be hardwoods too, of a kind, and some bushes with various seeds and things. A botanist could tell you a lot more. No signs of any kind of artifact, however, no signs that anything has ever been cultivated or touched. As far as I can tell, the planet’s untouched by human–or any other–hands. But of course we may be in the middle of the equivalent of the Siberian steppes or the Gobi desert–way, way off the beaten track.”
He paused, then said, “About twenty miles due east of here, there’s a prominent mountain peak–you can’t miss it–from which we could take sightings, and get some rough estimate of the planet’s mass, even without elaborate instruments, We might also sight for rivers, plains, water supply, or any signs of civilization.”