When Captain Kimi was satisfied that no living enemy was apparent, it allowed `others’, meaning the humans, to come down. Despite Flavia’s offers of teleportation, multi-purpose shuttles were used as these would provide ground transport, not best accomplished by `portation which tended to go from Point A to any designated Point B.
The Talents were asked to `port down sensitive instrumentation once the base camp was established.
Where the Talents were undeniably indispensable was to see if the panels in the queens’ quarters which Kimi had located were still operational. Flavia, Rhodri and Zara slid down the connecting links in the main building while Asia, assiduously accompanied by Lieutenant Ismail and a detachment of marines, went off to the second building.
Mallen and Jesper Ornigo went with whichever group thought they might require Talented help.
enough for the power source to be found, and the `They really don’t alter their structures much,’ Flavia said when the three Talents picked themselves up off the dusty floor of chambers that so closely resembled the queens’ quarters on Refugee. Dust had filtered in a thin film over the “foot’ panels but the upper ones had been installed high enough to be covered by only a light layer. Rhodri and Flavia were tall enough to brush this off `First left-hand panel’s exactly the same,’ Rhodri said, peering at what his hand light revealed. `But these – are different.’ `You’d expect that, wouldn’t you?’ Zara asked with some asperity. `This is a ground operation. So what do we do noW?’ `Try to start it up: that panel’s the same and I brought mock-ups,’ Rhodri said, removing from his thigh pocket a handful of triangular-tipped wands which approximated the shape of a queen’s palps. He handed some to Flavia and Zara.
`I’m not damned tall enough,’ Zara muttered.
`Nor am I,’ Flavia said with some disgust.
`There’re plenty of boxes the right size ` and Rhodri pilfered rigid crates from the supply depot for the two women.
`D’you remember the sequence that started the ship, Flavia?’ `Engraved on my retina,1 Flavia said, arranging three wands in her fingers on each hand in a triangular pattern. When she got them right, by using a light application for telekinesis, she inserted them in the apertures in the sequence she remembered.
A flickering illumination started – and also a near riot from the unprepared `Dini crewmen still exploring the facility. The light, if one could call it that, lasted long desiccated remains of one queen and nine attendants.
When the corpses had been examined – such pieces as permitted examination of any kind because most disintegrated into dust at the lightest touch – the generally accepted opinion was that death was caused by starvation. Then the arguments began: had only one queen been installed on the planet? That wasn’t the usual procedure. Or had only this one been left by others which had escaped to a more hospitable planet?
Had she died before or after their leaving? But fields had been ploughed and seeds sown; a second building had been prepared and a tunnel connecting it: a tunnel large enough for a queen to traverse.
The enigmas quite outweighed the matters confirmed.
Only the queens seemed to have special quarters, though tubes and tunnels connected with what appeared to be large spaces where harvests were processed and stored. Egg tubes opened into each of the queens quarters.
`Work, work, work, work, Zara muttered under her breath when the xeno Yakamasura went into a long explanation of the possible societal structure of the Hivers. `No other ethic but work.
`And conquest, Rhodri murmured back. `Don’t forget conquest!’ `A change is as good as a rest!
Continuing an orderly investigation, the scientists sampled and examined everything from the dust, to the underlying layers of clay and stone, to the desiccated fragments of vegetation that were found and brought in. Then they moved fiarther away from the now sizeable base camp, inspecting the dying vegetation, tree-like as well as ground-cover. Bushes, shrubs, hedges, plants, large vines, grassoids: all were dead or dying right up to the snow level on the mountain ranges of the continental mass. It was on the higher slopes that scattered piles of skeletals, the remains of various species, were found, as if the creatures – whatever they had been – had sought sanctuary in the highest place away from the predators, and whatever means was used to destroy the planet’s indigenous lifeforms.