The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) (8 page)

“Perhaps. But there were other bones. This is no behemoth, my friend, considering the size of some of Tartarus' denizens. Five, maybe six meters long.” He twirled the mangled rose. “I think…I think Christine found something out there that's going to revolutionize the theories of Tartarian evolution.” His laugh was a sharp cough of excitement. His cheeks flushed as he scooped up the beer and took a long swallow. “What am I saying?” he asked to Jack's puzzled look. “Possibly
all
of the theory of evolution!”

“And you want in on the ground floor of this discovery, don't you?”

“I'm a scientist, Jack. I won't be remembered for my good looks.”

Jack blew a long breath of smoke. The scenario he had so carefully constructed of Jules off in the fibrins dissolved like a vis holo. He saw Gail roll the bike out the door and start it. “Gail!” He strode after her. “Where are you going?”

Her eyes widened at his tone. “Just to try out the bike. I think it's tuned.” She studied his face. 'I won't go far, Dad.”

He nodded. “The engine sounds good. Be careful. And don't go past the town!”

“OK.”

He watched her fit the helmet over her head, then cruise toward the airstrip. He went inside and slammed down his beer on the workbench.

Stanley jumped.

“Why the hell would an intelligent alien want to hunt down and kill Terrans?”

“Why indeed?”

“You've got a lot more questions than answers, buddy.”

Stanley shrugged. “In science we try not to assume anything until it's been tested and proven. In fact, we attempt to disprove it, if possible. Just as in police work a person is innocent until.” He lifted his brows. “And even then there's always a few who continue to doubt.”

Jack moved closer. “I'll bet a ten deduct you didn't mention any of this to the tags at the Institute.” He poked Stanley's chest with a stiff finger. “You're not looking to find them alive. You just want your name in the Stel Banks Hall of Names, right?”

“So?” Stanley held his ground and pointed the bedraggled rose at Jack. “I'm on the brink of a major breakthrough. It was not the tags at the Institute who discovered collapsed caves along the north coast, my friend! Or excavated them and found bones and cultural artifacts from this same species!” He slapped the photo with an open hand. “It was not the tags at the Institute who discovered those caverns, or that they were not carved by geographical events.”

“Then how?” Jack asked.

“Don't you mean
what?
That's the interesting aspect of my find. I have evidence from my lab results that those caverns were chemically burned to make them larger and more symmetrical while they were still underwater. Eons ago! I won't bore you with the dating process.” He lowered his voice, though the garage was empty. “While they were inhabited!”

“That's a sack o' croteshit! The caverns are probably some kind of ancient coral reef.”

Stanley took off his glasses. “More likely they were the ancient homes of a species that never had reason to come ashore. Those particular caverns were left on dry land by receding oceans.” He replaced the glasses. “A people, Jack, who developed intelligence in the sea. And still live there. The skull at Christine's site was perhaps two hundred Tartarus years old. Not so ancient, is it, my friend?”

'You called them people?”

“People, as in intelligent alien life forms who bury their dead with corals and pearls and put slabs of limestone over the graves.”

“Who gave you authorization to remove that skull before the police department examined the site?”

“You mean in the event that my caverns are designated off limits as sacred grave sites of an ancient indigenous people?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Science gives me the authorization, my friend. The pursuit of truth says fling open the doors.”

“You know what, my friend?” Jack said, “It's getting a whole lot easier to believe you fabricated this horror story than to believe in your sea monsters. If you want to make a believer out of me, you're going to have to show the police department some real evidence in those coastal caverns of yours.”

Stanley smiled patronizingly. “My friend, not even electrodes attached to my gonads would make me reveal their location before I'm ready to publish my findings. But I have another photograph.” He took it from an envelope in his pants pocket, and extended it.

Jack hesitated, not really wanting to see it. When he did, he forgot to exhale smoke.

A limestone slab, about the length of Stanley's arm, as he held it in the photo, showed a petroglyph of a large-headed, long bodied slug, lying within an arch that could have been a cavern. Above the arch a ghostly slug, its outline scratchy, drifted toward a large star in the upper right hand corner of the slab.

“It's almost impossible to date a petroglyph,” Stanley was saying, “but from dating a sample of the surrounding bones, I'd place it at about fifty thousand years old.”

Jack lit a cigarette and realized his hand was shaking. “You got any more photos?” The familiarity of place, the certain knowledge of what was the reality on Tartarus, seemed suddenly to crumble. He mentally reviewed cases of missing persons over the years. There weren't many. And most of them had disappeared in the dangerous outback, nowhere near the coast. Though two…two had disappeared on separate occasions years ago while doing field work near Purgatory Canyon. He blew out a long breath of smoke. And were never found. You figure one of these creatures is living around Christine's site?”

“Under it.”

“An' you want me to help you dig it out. Maybe they like their privacy. You ever consider that?”

“On the other hand, Jules and Christine -“

“Might still be alive. There's too much at stake here to keep your secret.”

“Of course. That's why you don't know how to find the entrances around Christine's site, since they're probably kept sealed, like the ones on the coast originally were. But you're a man of honor, Mister Cole…Jack, a person can see that from a kilometer away. And that's why even if you decide not to help me find your friend, you won't give this information to the police or the Institute until I publish my findings.” He raised brows. “It could be a long time. Perhaps years. Meanwhile your friend…” He shrugged. “So we need each other, Jack. Don't you think?”

“I think you made a mistake telling me this stuff, Fields.” Jack put down his beer and strode to the comlink.

“Jack!” Stanley limped after him. “If the police department could have found the entrances to that cavern, they would have by now.”

“They weren't looking for a cavern. They will be now.”

“Mister Cole,
please
. You know how the police work. If they start digging around the site with bulldozers, they just might provoke the Tartarian. And who knows what Tartarians will do when they're irritated?”

Jack let his hand drop from the link's button.

“I have a few ideas on how to locate Jules and Christine,” Stanley said. “Ideas your police department couldn't envision if Jehovah Himself lowered directions on a tablet.”

Jack waited.

“I need your trail know-how, your police experience and tactics in dealing with dangerous situations, and you need my knowledge to pinpoint exactly where to dig. I'm the only archeopaleontologist on this planet.” He grinned. “The only game in town. Can you get time off?'

Jack went to the door, sipped beer as he watched Robbie and his friends huddled around the schooner, stroking it, marveling at it. Jack's older son, John, joined the group. Across the street, children ran and shrieked as they plunged through the sunbright spray of a lawn sprinkler.

He had never considered humans to be intruders on Tartarus. Now… He felt he should step lightly on the land. As though it were fragile as an eggshell. Why hadn't these natives contacted the first Terran ship? And Terrans had been the first.

No. That first ship, The Calypso, had crashed. There weren't any survivors. A chill crept up his back. The reasons for the crash were never fully understood. The burned flesh, ripped off a white native animal, was discovered under the spacecraft's ruins. What the hell had Jules run into? What would he himself run into if he undertook this reckless mission, saddled with this ineffectual little man? Jules would be the right partner for this dangerous work. He smirked at the irony of it, squinted beyond the lawns and boxy houses which stood like a fortress against the aged peaks of White Mountains, bloodied now by a late afternoon sun. He restrained a shudder as he recalled vagrant winds plowing those high desperate passes.

“I don't think it's just a mutation,” Stanley said behind him.

He turned. In the sudden dimness before his eyes adjusted, Stanley seemed an apparition, some dark angel come to ask where duty and honor lay. Stanley caressed his bushy beard. “I'm certain it's the dominant life form of this planet.”

And of course Jules would stumble head-on into one of them!

“If they lived in these coastal caverns,” Jack said, “then why the hell should one of 'em be on the high plains?”

Stanley smiled. “Intelligent species like to communicate, and need to reproduce, possibly socialize and exchange new information and developments.”

“So?”

“So, tunnels. If they can burn out caverns, why not tunnels that filled with water from underground rivers?” He fingered the lathe. “I admire your mechanical skills. That's definitely not one of my talents.” He turned to Jack. “When I announce my discovery to the Stel Alliance Scientific Banks, which should be upon our return, hopefully with Christine and Jules in tow, you'll be free to make your report to your chief. Agreed, Mister Cole?”

It was not the vacation Annie had planned with such enthusiasm, but that would be the least of his problems. He extended his hand.

Stanley gripped it tightly.

“Just Jack.”

“We were colleagues, you know, Christine and I.” Stanley was more casual now. “In fact, before she met that kvetch ambulance chaser, Thad Denning, for a while I thought that maybe…” He shrugged. “One look at him, I should have known better. I wonder if she knows he's a gay rod?” He waved the hanging stem to encompass the garage. “You're a very lucky man…Jack.”

Jack nodded.
For how long?
He wondered. “You.”

“Not as much as my great grandmother's chicken soup.” Stanley smiled broadly. “But I'll make it do.”

Jack crushed the empty beer sil in one hand and tossed it into the trash bin. Stanley turned red trying to crush his sil. He put it down, rolled the broken rose stem into a ball between palms, grinned as he crushed it in a white-knuckled fist, and threw the sticky remains into the bin with a flourish.

After dinner, Jack and Stanley returned to the garage and talked late into the night. Stanley laid out aerial maps showing the maze of subterranean rivers that laced the west coast and east to the mountains, with the cavern intersecting a river directly under Christine's site.

They decided to take a landslider instead of an air manta. A manta would have to clear treetops and they might miss Jules or Christine's tracks, the burnt wood of dead campfires or other clues. Jack could not requisition a police manta anyway. This was not official business. But he had vacation time coming.

* * *

“Jack,” Annie said as they lay side by side in bed that night, “we were going to spend two whole weeks astrocruising with Frieda and Henry aboard the Star Maid. Remember? My mother already bought a space liner ticket to come and watch the kids.”

“I know, Kit.” He ground out his cigarette in the smokeless on the night table and stared at the glass-paneled ceiling. He had lightened it to let in a view of stars and moons.

“We were just supposed to relax,” she continued, “be served fattening meals, be entertained and renew the romance in our lives. Remember the brochure?”

He kissed her cheek. “Didn't know the romance went out of our marriage. We can still do it when I get back. I'll take sick leave.”

“”t's not the damned vacation!”

He nodded, wished he had another cigarette, but the pack was empty. He had lied to Annie, told her that Stanley had evidence of predators who prowled underground labyrinths hunting animals in their dens, and that Jules might have gotten lost in the labyrinths while searching for Christine.

Annie hadn't pressed the issue. He'd known she wouldn't. It was an unwritten pact between them because of his job. “I'll be careful, Kit. Promise.'

“That's what men have always told their wives before they go galloping off on some damn fool crusade!”

“This isn't a crusade.”

“So you say.” She got up on an elbow, brushed back thick black hair which was shaped to her broad-boned face. Strands curled under delicate ears and touched the curve of prominent cheekbones. “Jack? Let Stanley find another guide. It's a wild goose chase. If he manages to find Jules and needs help, he can always call in a message to the police department.”

“Hallarin wouldn't risk getting his officers hurt or killed for an unauthorized search. He'd refer Stanley's call to the Institute's search and rescue team. Did you see my cigarettes, kit?”

“And they would never find him, right?”

“They're trained for search an' rescue, not…”

“Not to battle dangerous predators on their own turf! Oh, but you can tackle anything, Cole, with Stanley for a backup.”

He took her hand and stroked it with a thumb. “There's a good chance Jules is still alive, down in one of those caverns. He can outwit any native beast. And there's fresh water.” Jack chewed his lip. “But God only knows…”

“You mean you want to believe he's still alive, and Stanley certainly wants you to believe it.” She laid back with a sigh, a hand spread on her swollen belly. “I think what scares me most is that you want so much to go.”

“I owe Jules. An' even if I didn't, we're friends.”

“Friends?” she echoed. “Maybe I should have remained your friend too. Maybe then you'd show me and the children the same consideration.”

“Come on, Kit, you're not lost in the wilds because of me.”

“No.” Her tone was dismal. “Not yet.”

Jack stared at stars and decided to take a chance. “If you don't want me to go, say the word.” He waited and wished he had a cigarette.