“Yes, of course, Mundy,” Daniel said with his usual bright smile. He buckled his equipment belt with the holstered pistol on over his utility uniform. “You’ll be able to tell us what to look for.”
The group from the bridge trooped down the echoing companionway. Adele frowned when she saw that the escort waiting in the entryway within the open main hatch was armed to the teeth. “Daniel?” she murmured in her friend’s ear. “Do you think the guns are necessary?”
“No, I don’t,” he said, pursing his lips in thought. “But your most recent information is five years old, and there’s no foreign ship on the planet so far as we could tell from orbit. The personnel Woetjans chose for our escort are well-disciplined, so we needn’t fear accidents on our side . . . and I’d just as soon view the situation on the ground myself before I assume it’s perfectly safe.”
The air blowing in through the hatchway was cool and dry with the hint of a vegetable odor. Adele would’ve described the smell as cinnamon if she’d been forced to pick, but of course she wasn’t.
“I’ll lead,” Daniel said nonchalantly and strode down the boarding bridge. Hogg was directly behind him, and Woetjans with her armed band followed ahead of the Klimovs, Adele, and last of all Tovera. Because the Princess Cecile stood on solid ground, the entry port was some distance in the air. High enough to break a leg or your neck, Adele suspected; and there was enough wind to make a fall possible even for someone sober.
The ship’s exhaust had fused the ground into coarse glass. There were similar patches at many places along the south side of the tree’s vast circle. Archeologists could probably identify thousands of earlier landing sites, covered or broken up by ages of blowing wind.
The Service of the Tree had pointedly chosen not to encourage visitors by improving the facilities. Even the small vessel the Service kept for its own purposes stood in the open. Its only protection was a fence upwind which formed a berm of sand dumped on the other side of the slats.
Daniel had waited with his hands crossed behind his back until the Klimovs arrived. “Count and Lady Klimov,” he said, “allow me to present the Prior of the Service of the Tree and Sister Margarida, a novice of the order.”
Adele noted with amusement she was careful to hide that the Count didn’t know whether to react to Margarida as an attractive young woman—which she certainly was, at least in the slightly plush fashion that Daniel favored—or as the religious figure which her title and gray habit suggested. In the end he bowed to both man and girl, without offering to kiss the latter’s hand.
“Please come in with us,” the Prior said, turning with the careful determination of age. “You’ll find it more comfortable out of the wind, I’m sure.”
He chuckled, adding, “And so will we, to tell the truth, though I don’t remember it bothering me so much when I was as young as Margarida, here. That was a very long time ago, of course.”
The door set into the rock was wooden, but it had weathered to such a degree that valve and jamb blurred visually from any distance. At ground level the Tree was a mass of trunks, surface roots, and low-hanging branches. The different portions were indistinguishable to Adele and probably confusing even to Daniel, whose knowledge of natural history was more than a dilettante’s. Everything—bark, wood, and the underlying stone—was the same color: gray with tawny undertones.
Margarida opened the door. Before she could help the Prior through, Woetjans pushed inside with her stocked impeller pointed forward at waist level.
“Most of the Acolytes are at their duties in other parts of the monastery now,” the Prior said with a faint smile. “I don’t believe you’ll find anyone in this section of corridor, but if you do I assure you that they’ll be friendly.”
Daniel bowed to the old man. “May I help you, sir?” he said. “I appreciate you inconveniencing yourself in order to greet us.”
The tunnel within was eight feet wide and not quite that high. The ceiling was a mass of wood with a ropy pattern. Daniel, the Prior leaning on his right arm, looked up and said, “Is that a root, sir? It certainly appears to be.”