“I don’t see what’s so bad about it,” Blohm said. “Watch what trees you walk under, sure. But they’ll have cleared a hundred square miles to prep for the colony, won’t they? We won’t see anything green till the crops start coming in.”
Blohm liked the sergeant better than anybody else who’d commanded a scout section Blohm was in. Gabe knew that Blohm was quicker and had better instincts than he did. He didn’t let it bother him. Gabrilovitch let Blohm set the agenda for the scouts and used his rank to put that agenda across in command group meetings.
Besides that, Gabe was as good a choice to cover Blohm’s back as Blohm figured he’d find until they cloned Blohm himself.
“Negative on the site prep,” Gabrilovitch said, shaking his head. “The only thing they did was plant a couple of message capsules and a landing grid for us to put down on. There’s a pair of bulldozers with land-clearing blades on Deck One, but nothing in the way of herbicide like you’d figure. It’s going to be a lot of work, and a lot of hand work, to open the settlement.”
On the display the umbilicus continued to shorten, dragging the captured browser toward the treetop. The victim had ceased to struggle. It looked like a gigantic cocoon. Its body would feed the tree for the next several weeks.
“They going to expect us to do it, you mean?” Blohm said. “Hell, Gabe, before I transferred to the Strike Force, they had me burning shit on Christophe where the water table at the base was too high for septic tanks. I guess I can handle a saw if that’s what it comes to.”
“No way C41’s going to be doing the labor, snake,” Gabrilovitch said. “The cits are going to have to handle that while the strikers guard them. Look at how dangerous this place is! The work’s going to have to be done, and the cits are going to be lucky if half of them don’t get eaten by things like that—”
He gestured at the holographic image, by now no more than a normal-looking tree with a white lump perhaps of fungus among the leaves of its peak.
“—for all C41 can do to save them.”
The display blacked out and segued into the next potential danger. For the moment the image looked like an ordinary bramble bush, but Blohm knew that would change shortly.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t know it’s going to be that hard. We’ve got the database loaded in our helmets. The visor’ll cue us if we come on one of these. Or whatever.”
His finger prodded the image, scattering it into discordant shimmers until he withdrew and permitted the interference patterns to reform. An animal the size of a pig appeared, cropping shoots several yards away from the bush.
“And we’ll, we’ll clear it with a grenade or whatever.”
“Some stuff isn’t going to be in the database,” Gabe said.
“That’s so,” Blohm agreed. “Especially at first. Sure, we’ll have to be careful, but we’re used to that, Gabe. Are you going to tell me this is as bad as a drifting minefield like we had to walk through on Kwam III?”
“There’s something else you’re not thinking about, snake,” Gabrilovitch said. “The rest of the people may stick close to base, but the major’s going to want you and me out in the boonies scouting. For things like those swarms and maybe worse stuff coming in. Tough as Kwam III, you say? Tougher, I’ll bet you, and we’re going to be out there pretty much the whole time C41’s on planet.”
“They’ll scout in aircars,” Blohm said, frowning.
“They got one, count them, one aircar on Deck One,” Gabrilovitch said. “How long do you figure that’s going to last with no more maintenance than a bunch of janitors can give it? It’s not like this colony’s got a real support echelon, you know.”
The browser suddenly stiffened, kicking violently with all four feet. Its square head remained close to the ground. A close-up showed that a shoot had sprung open like an explosive harpoon when the animal bit down on it. Petals held the browser as if it was chewing a mouthful of fish-hooks. The bramble bush hunched forward to engulf the browser held by the barbed root tip.