At intervals “trees”—bare spikes, leafless like the tubes—rose. The ones nearby were ten or a dozen feet tall, but some on the slope of the hill in the near distance were possibly double that. A few of them split into a double stalk at the midpoint, but Daniel could only conjecture whether they were simply genders or if he was seeing different species.
“Oh!” the Klimovna said. She clutched Daniel’s arm to demand his attention, pointing with the gun in her other hand. “Look! It’s alive!”
“It” was a ball about the size of a commo helmet, standing on two sharply-bent legs and browsing in the knot of tubes across the creek. Its head was small with long, narrow jaws; instead of eating the whole plant, it nipped off the tops of the vertical shoots with surgical precision.
Its hide was a shiny gray-green, similar to the algae-covered mud. Daniel had seen the creature and three other members of its . . . flock? herd? when he scanned the landscape on infrared from the Sissie’s hatch, but the Klimovna hadn’t noticed it till it hopped to a new location after cleaning its immediate surroundings.
“Yes, they seem quite harmless,” he said, forbearing to add that the vegetation and for that matter the bacteria-rich muck on which they were standing were also alive. Differently alive, he supposed. “There’s a pair of much larger animals—”
He extended his right arm, managing in doing so to detach the woman’s hand. “There, in the middle of that slough?”
Klimovna snatched a monocular out of her breast pocket and focused on the pair of creatures, each the size of a brood sow, which lay half submerged in the water as they ate arcs out of the sedges along the bank. Daniel wondered if her instrument had as many modes as the RCN goggles he was using. Thermal imaging—infrared—was a great deal more useful for finding animals in this foggy landscape than straight optics were.
“Umm . . . ?” the woman said. She shook her head and put the monocular away. “Not a good trophy, I suppose.”
“I shouldn’t think so, no,” Daniel said austerely. He grimaced, imagining the problems involved in dragging a half-ton carcass to dry ground and then caping it. That wouldn’t concern the Klimovna, since she—correctly—assumed it would be somebody else’s problem.
“All right, release it!” Woetjans bawled. “Now, get the cargo net unwrapped so somebody can fly the bastard off it. Or—”
She turned, poised on the antenna like an extremely large ape, and looked at Daniel. “Sir, do you want us to lift the aircar off the netting ‘stead of flying it off? I guess the right six people could do it, though I’ll use more with this muck so slick.”
“No, we will fly off now,” Klimovna called, striding toward the vehicle with an enthusiasm that splashed mud onto the legs of the jodhpurs bloused into her high boots. “Come along, Daniel.”
Hogg snorted and said something under his breath, but the woman’s brusque order didn’t bother Daniel overmuch. The RCN was a good school in which to learn the art of obedience to the whims of your superiors. Valentina was his superior, so long as she didn’t interfere with the good governance of the Princess Cecile. He had no justifiable complaint.
“Ship, this is the captain,” he said as he followed at a cautious distance from his employer’s side. “Hogg and I will accompany the Klimovs in the aircar to the pyramid at a vector of 132 degrees,. Lieutenant Chewning is in charge till my return. Continue second level maintenance. Six out.”
A patter of “Rogers” answered. Pasternak, standing with his head in a thruster, waved.
Klimovna slipped behind the driver’s yoke as soon as she reached the open aircar. Woetjans ran out ten feet of cable, riding the hook to the ground just ahead of Daniel. The Count started to get into the front passenger side but his wife waved him away. “No, you in back with the servant, Daniel in front. For balance, Georgi.”
Hogg snorted again, but this time with what Daniel suspected was appreciation. Before Hogg or the Klimovs could say anything further, Daniel said, “The lady wants us kitty-corner, Hogg. Sit behind her.”