To his surprise, the heavy-worlders who had left the site considerably before him to return by lift-belt, had not arrived at the compound. The other sleds had all returned safely. The youngsters were cosseting Dandy while Lunzie watched. She used her over-seeing as an excuse not to answer the importunities of Portegin and Aulia for more joy juice. He saw neither Varian nor Trizein and had decided she must be in the xeno-chemist’s laboratory in the shuttle when the heavy-worlders, in their neat formation, came swooping in from the north. The north? He started towards the veil lock to ask Paskutti about such a detour when Varian hailed him from the shuttle. She sounded excited so he hurried over, leaving Paskutti till another time.
“Kai, Trizein thinks he knows why the fliers must need the grasses,” she said when he got near enough. “The stuff is full of carotene … Vitamin A. They must need it for eyesight and pigmentation.”
“Odd that they’d have to go such a distance for a basic requirement.”
“But it substantiates my hunch that the pentadactyls are not indigenous to this world.”
Kai was lifting his foot through the iris and stopped, grabbing at the sides to balance himself.
“Not indigenous? What in the name of raking … what do you mean? They have to be indigenous. They’re here.”
“They didn’t originate here,” and Varian gestured him to come into the shuttle. “Further, those parallelograms I saw today aren’t even vaguely arthropods, which would fit in with the vertebrates we’ve discovered like the herbivores, predators and even the fliers.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I am. This planet isn’t. You don’t find animals forced to go hundreds of kilometres from their proper environment to acquire a dietary necessity. What is essential to them is generally supplied right where they live!”
“Now, wait a minute, Varian. Think. If your pentadactyls are not indigenous, they were brought here. Who, why would anyone, want to relocate animals as large as that predator or your Mabel?”
She regarded him steadily, as if she expected him to know the answer to his question.
“You should know. They’ve already tipped us off. The Theks, slow-top,” she said with some asperity when he remained silent. “The inscrutable Theks. They’ve been here before. They left those seismic devices.”
“That makes no sense, Varian.”
“It makes a lot of sense.”
“What reason could the Theks possibly have for such an action?”
“They’ve probably forgotten,” Varian said, grinning mischievously.
“Along with the fact that they’d surveyed this planet before.”
They had reached Trizein’s lab and he was contemplating the enlarged image of some fibres.
“Of course, we’d need to have one of those avians of yours, Varian, to discover if it requires carotene,” Trizein was saying as if he didn’t realize that Varian had left the lab.
“We’ve Mabel,” said Varian, “and little Dandy.”
“You’ve animals in this compound?” Trizein blinked with astonishment.
“I told you we had, Trizein. The slides you analyzed yesterday and the day before …”
“Ah, yes, I remember now,” but it was obvious to his listeners that he didn’t remember any such thing.
“Mabel and Dandy aren’t fliers,” Kai said. “They’re completely different species.”
“Indeed they are, but they are also pentadactyl. So is the fang-face and he needed the grasses.”
“Mabel and Dandy are herbivorous,” said Kai, “and the predator and the fliers aren’t.”
Varian considered that qualification. “Yes, but generally speaking, carnivores absorb sufficient Vitamin C from the animals they eat who do get it regularly in their diet.” She shook her head over the quandary. “Then fang-face wouldn’t need to go to the valley. He’d get enough from chewing Mabel’s flank. I don’t make any sense out of it–yet. Besides, the fliers may have another reason for gathering grass, as Terilla pointed out today.”
“You’ve lost me,” said Kai, and then directed Varian’s attention to Trizein who had gone back to his microscope viewer and was oblivious to their presence again.
“You’ll understand when you see the tapes we got today of those fliers, Kai. C’mon, unless you’ve got something else to do?”
“Frame messages to the Theks but let me see what you taped first.”
“By the way, Kai,” said Varian following him out of the lab, “we didn’t encounter any life-forms in the vicinity of the pitchblende saddle that would cause a secondary camp there any trouble. If the camp’s set up properly, and preferably on a prominence and the force-screen posted deep, your team should be safe enough.”