Shonjir By C.J. Cherryh

The dusei roved the area more and more widely, emitting their hunting moans, that would frighten anything with ears to hear.

And they looked about them, and save for the ship’s alien presence, there was nothing but the earth and sky: flat in one direction, and beyond that flatness at the sky’s edge lay mountains, rounded and eroded by time; and in the other direction the land fell away into apricot haze misted with purples, showing a naked depth that drew at the eye and disturbed the senses no mere valley, but an edge to the very world, a distance that extended to the horizon and blended into the sky; and it reached up arms of cliffs that were red and bright where they were nearest and faded into the ambiguous sky at the far horizon.

Duncan breathed an exclamation in his own tongue, forbidden, but the mri did not seem to notice. He had seen the chasm from above, had brought them down near it because it seemed the best place easier to descend than to ascend, he had thought when choosing the highlands landing, but he had kept them far from the edge. From above it had seemed perilous enough; but here, themselves reduced to mortal perspective, it gaped into depths so great it faded into haze at the bottom, in terraces and slopes and shelves, eroded points and mounts… and distantly, apricot-silver, shone what might be a lake, a drying arm of what had been a sea.

A salt lake, it would surely be, and dead: minerals and salts would have gathered there for aeons, as they had in Kesrith’s shallow, drying seas.

They stood still for some time, looking about them at the world, until even the mri began to shiver from the cold.

“We must ‘find that source of power you spoke of,” said Melein. “We must see if there are others.”

“You are close,” said Duncan, and lifted his arm in the direction he knew it to be. “I brought you down as near as I dared.”

“Nothing responded to your attempts to contact.”

“Nothing,” Duncan said, and shivered.

‘We must put on another layer of robes,” said Niun. “We must have a sled packed with stores. We will range out so far as we can shall we not, she’pan? and see what there is to be seen.”

“Yes,” said Melein. “We shall see.”

Duncan started to turn away, to do what would be necessary, and finding no better time he hesitated, pulled aside the veil he had assumed for warmth. “She’pan,” he said. “It would be better that I should stay with the ship.”

“We will not come back,” said Melein.

Duncan looked from one to the other of them, found pain in Niun’s eyes, realized suddenly the reason of that sense of loss.

“It is necessary,” Duncan said, “that I take the ship to stand guard for you, she’pan. I will not leave this sun. I will stay. But it is possible that I may be able to stop them.”

“The markers that you have left… Are they for that?”

Shock coursed through him, the realization that Melein had not been deceived.

“Yes,” he said, hoarse. ‘To let them know that here are friends. And it may be that they will listen.”

“Then you will not take the ship,” she said. “What message you have left is enough. If they will not regard that, then there is nothing further to be said. The ship carries no weapons.”

“I could talk with them.”

“They would take you back,” she said.

It was truth. He stared at her, chilled to the bone by the wind that rocked at them.

“You could not fight,” she said, and looked about at the wide horizon, lifted her arm toward it. “If they would seek us out in all of this, then they would not listen to you; and if they would not, then that is well. Come with us, kel Duncan.”

“She’pan,” he said softly, accepting.

And he turned and ascended the ramp.

There were supplies to find: Niun named what was needed, and together they bolted aluminum tubing into what passed very well for a sled. They loaded it into the cargo lift, and secured on it what stores Niun chose: water containers, food, and the light mats that were for sleeping; aluminum rods for shelter, and thermal sheets tsi’mri luxury that they were, yet even Niun found the cold outside persuasive.

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