“I have a guess, after prowling and poking. I recorded it, in case I didn’t survive, but indeed I’d rather speak it in person over a mug of beer.”
“I can supply the person. The beer will have to wait.” A tingle went along Nansen’s spine. “What was it?”
“To my eye, the airscoop has corroded. You may recall, earlier I deposited chemosamplers at the Devil’s Playground hot springs. Sure, the material of the flyer is supposed to be inert, but that’s a hellish environment. My guess is that microscopic life is invading the land, and some kind of germ somehow catalyzed a reaction, maybe with the fullerene component. Let the scientists find out. The biochemistry here is so crazily different from ours.”
“Que es?” Nansen exclaimed. Alarm stabbed him. “Do you mean . . . our ship —”
Shaughnessy laughed, rather shakily, and clapped him on the back. Not to worry, I do believe. Otherwise the whole gang of us would be dead. Those bugs must be confined to that area. Anyhow, exposure to space would doubtless kill them. We’ve lost an aircraft, but we may be about to make a great discovery.”
Discovery is what we came here for.
“If you’re fit to travel, let’s get back to the ship,” Nansen proposed. “I am, if you go easy on the boost,” Shaughnessy said. “Especially with that beer waiting!”
CHAPTER 2
“Oh, you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road, And I’ll be in Scotland before you;
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”
Jean Kilbirnie sang only the chorus, almost under her breath. It faded away into the silence that had fallen since she and Tim Cleland reached the height. For a while, again, all they heard was the soughing in leaves overhead.
They sat on a bluff above a river. The westering sun, Tau Ceti, cast rays down the length of the vale, and the water shone like molten gold. Trees shaded turf, which nonetheless gave off fragrances to the mild air. After three terrestrial years, the first humans ever to see this world were calling it, in their different languages, Puerto, Limani, Kiang, Harbor.
Yet little here truly recalled Earth as Earth once was. The sward grew low, dense, a mat of minutely convoluted soft nuggets. Some of the trees curved their twin trunks upward, lyre-shaped, until they broke into shoots lined with feathery foliage. Others lifted columnar in a pelt of leaves. Others suggested huge, fringed spiderwebs. Nothing stood green; everything was in tones of yellow or orange, save where a patch flared red. Nothing could properly nourish the visitors, and much would have sickened them.
It didn’t matter. That two evolutions, sundered by half a score of light-years, had been this alike — that you could walk freely, breathe the air, drink the water, rejoice in the beauty — was enough.
“You surprise me,” Cleland blurted.
Kilbirnie turned her head toward him. “How so?” she asked.
“Oh, I, well, if you’re feeling sentimental I … I wouldn’t expect you to show it. You’d be extra cocky. Maybe you’d sing one of your bawdy old ballads.”
Kilbirnie smiled. Her husky voice took on more than its usual slight burr. “We Scots can wax unco sentimental. Read your Burns — or ha’ you no heard o’ him?” She dropped back to everyday English. “This is our free day, our last day of peace.” On the morrow their group would break camp and ferry up to the spaceship. She had said she wanted to go off afoot, into the countryside. He promptly proposed coming along. She didn’t refuse him, but had not spoken much as they walked. “Our last look at this fair land.”
“You could have taken more time groundside,” he reminded her. “I suggested it —”
“Often.” She paused. “Don’t mistake me, Tim. I’m not complaining. There were simply too many wonders, in three short years.” Her gaze went upward, beyond white clouds and blue sky. “I had to choose. And, of course, I had my duty.” She piloted one of the boats that not only bore aircraft to and fro but had carried explorers throughout the system.