“I’d call it educated tastes, man. And if the fruit tastes at all decent, you may be perverted to an appreciation of real food.”
Just as they reached the storage compartment, the panel shushed open and an excited man came charging towards them.
“Marvellous!” He halted mid-stride and, losing his balance, staggered against the panel wall. “Just the people I need to see. Varian, the cell formation on those marine specimens is a real innovation. There are filaments, four different kinds … just take a look …” Trizein was pulling her back into his laboratory and gesturing urgently for Kai to follow.
“I’ve something for you, too, my friend,” and Varian extended the slide. “We caught one of those heavy-duty herbivores, wounded, bleeding red blood …”
“But don’t you understand, Varian,” continued Trizein, apparently deaf to her announcement, “this is a completely different life form. Never in all my expeditionary experience have I come across such a cellular formation …”
“Nor have I come across such an anomaly as this, contrasting to your new life form.” Varian closed his fingers about the slide. “Do be a love and run a spectro-analysis on this?”
“Red blood, you said?” Trizein blinked, changing mental gears to deal with Varian’s request. He held the slide up to the light, frowned at it. “Red blood? Isn’t compatible with what I’ve just told you.”
At that moment, the alarm wailed its unnerving keen through the shuttle and the outside encampment and tingled jarringly at the wrist units that Kai and Varian wore as team leaders.
“Foraging party in trouble, Kai, Varian.” Paskutti’s voice, his thick slurred speech unhurried, came over the intercom. “Aerial attack.”
Kai depressed the two-way button on his wrist unit.
“Assemble your group, Paskutti Varian and I are coming.”
“Aerial attack?” asked Varian, as both moved quickly to the iris lock of the shuttlecraft. “From what?”
“Is the party still airborne, Paskutti?” asked Kai.
“No, sir. I have co-ordinates. Shall I call in your teams?”
“No, they’d be too far out to be useful.” To Varian he said, “What can they have got into?”
“On this crazy planet? Who knows?” Varian seemed to thrive on the various alarms Ireta produced, for which Kai was glad. On his second expedition, the co-leader had been such a confirmed pessimist that the morale of the entire party had deteriorated, causing needless disastrous incidents.
As usual, the first blast of Ireta’s odourous atmosphere took Kai’s breath away. He’d forgotten to slip back in the deodorizing plugs he’d removed while in the shuttle. The plugs helped but not when one was forced to breathe orally, as he was while running to join Paskutti’s rapidly forming squad.
Though the heavy-worlders under Paskutti’s direction had had farther to come, they were the first to arrive at the assembly point as Kai and Varian belted down the slope from the shuttle to the force-screen veil lock. Paskutti shoved belts, masks and stunners at the two leaders, unaware in this moment of urgency that the casual thrust of his heavy hand rocked the lighter framed people back on their heels.
Gaber, the cartographer who was emergency duty officer, came puffing down from his dome. As usual he’d forgotten to wear his force-screen belt though there was a standing order for those belts to be worn at all times. Kai’d tag Gaber for that when they got back.
“What’s the emergency? I’ll never get those maps drawn with all these interruptions.”
“Forage party’s in trouble. don’t wander off!” said Kai.
“Oh never, Kai, never will I do anything so simplewitted, I assure you. I shan’t move from the controls one centimetre, though how I’m ever to finish my work … Three days behind now and …”
“Gaber!”
“Yes, Kai. Yes, I understand. I really do.” The man seated himself at the veil controls glancing so anxiously from Paskutti to Varian that Kai had to nod at him reassuringly. Paskutti’s heavy face was expressionless as were his dark eyes but somehow the heavy-worlder’s very silence could indicate disapproval or disgust more acutely than any word he might have growled out.
Paskutti, a man in his middle years, had been in ship’s security for most of his five-year tour with EEC. He had volunteered for this assignment when the call had gone through the mother ship for secondaries to assist a xenob team. Heavy-worlders often took semi-skilled tours on other worlds or on the EEC ships as the pay was extremely good; two or three tours would mean that a semi-skilled individual could earn enough credit to live the rest of his or her life in relative comfort on one of the developing worlds. Heavy-worlders were preferred as secondaries, whatever their basic specialty might be, because of their muscular strength. It was said of them that they were the muscles of humanoid FSP, generally a comment made respectfully since the heavy-worlders were not just “muscle men” but numbered as many high ranking specialists as any other humanoid sub-group.