detected for a few weeks more.”
“What axe those things?” Jason asked. “Giant snakes of some kind?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Brucco snorted. He tapped the stereo with his thumbnail. “Roots. That’s all. Greatly modified, but still roots. They came in under the perimeter barrier, much deeper than anything we’ve had before. Not a real threat in themselves as they have very little mebility. Die soon after being cut. The danger came from their being used as access tunnels. They’re bored through and through with animal runs, and two or three species of beasts live in a sort of symbiosis inside. Now we know what they are we can watch for them. The danger was they could have completely undermined the perimeter and come in from all sides at once. Not much we could have done then.”
The edge of destruction. Living on the lip of a volcano. The Pyrrans took satisfaction from any day that passed without total annihilation. There seemed no way to change their attitude. Jason let the conversation die there. He picked up the log of the Polhwc Victory from Brucco’s quarters and carried it back to his room. The wounded Pyrrans there ignored him as he dropped onto the bed and opened the book to the first page.
For two days he did not leave his quarters. The wounded men were soon gone and he had the room to himself. Page by page he went through the log, until he knew every detail of the settlement of Pyrrus. His notes and cross-references piled up. He made an accurate map of the original settlement, superimposed over a modem one. They didn’t match at all.
It was a dead end. With one map held over the other, what he had suspected was painfully clear. The descriptions of terrain and physical features in the log were accurate enough. The city had obviously been moved since the first landing. Whatever records had been kept would be in the library-and he had exhausted that source. Anything else would have been left behind and long since destroyed.
Rain lashed against the thick window above his head, lit suddenly by a flare of lightning. The unseen volcanoes were active again, vibrating the floor with their rumblings deep in the earth.
The shadow of defeat pressed heavily down on Jason. Rounding his shoulders and darkening, even more, the overcast day.
14
Jason spent one depressed day lying on his bunk counting rivets, forcing himself to accept defeat. Kerk’s order that he was not to leave the sealed building tied his hands completely. He felt himself close to the answer-but he was never going to get it.
One day of defeat was all he could take. Kerk’s attitude was completely emotional, untempered by the slightest touch of logic. This fact kept driving home until Jason could no longer ignore it. Emotional reasoning was something he had learned to mistrust early in life. He couldn’t agree with Kerk in the slightest-which meant he had to utilize the ten remaining days to solve the problem. If it meant disobeying Kerk, it would still have to be done.
He grabbed up his noteplate with a new enthusiasm. His first sources of information had been used up, but there must be others. Chewing the scriber and thinking hard, he slowly built up a list of other possibilities. Any idea, no matter how wild, was put down. When the plate was filled, he wiped the long shots and impossibles-such as consulting off-world historical records. This was a Pyrran problem and had to be settled on this planet or not at all.
The list worked down to two probables. Either old records, notebooks or diaries that individual Pyrrans might have in their possession, or verbal histories that had been passed down the generations by word of mouth. The first choice seemed to be the most probable and he acted on it at once. After a careful check of his medikit and gun, he went to see Brucco.
“What’s new and deadly in the world since I left?” he asked.
Brucco glared at him. “You can’t go out, Kerk has forbidden it.”
“Did he put you in charge of guarding me to see if I obeyed?” Jason’s voice was quiet and cold.