Wildcatter (18 page)

“Dylan was closer than I was and got the worst of it. He had time to draw his stun gun and get off a few shots, but there were far too many of them. They swarmed him. I was farther away, and I drove them off with firecrackers.”

ISLA was going to hit the roof over that. Galactic would have to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Cacafuego centaurs were not sentient. Even then, it might be fined for using such weapons when it could not have been sure of the centaurs’ status. So company policy must be
no
sentience, which explained why
De Soto
had not posted a purple flag.

“Teeth? Claws? Weapons?”

“They have claws on their walking feet, but their hands are wrap-around flippers that may not be as prehensile as ours but can grasp things at least as well as an elephant’s trunk can. Some of them were carrying fishing spears, but they didn’t use them against us. First they tugged at Dylan’s suit. Then they tried to cut it with sharp stones and implements like daggers. I learned later that those are teeth from something like a shark. We were recording, of course, and later Control analyzed their speech patterns and concluded that their noises were more than just a series of alarm calls, but possibly not a true language. Our best estimate was that the centaurs rank about whale or dolphin level in communication. We could also analyze their actions, and Control was confident to the ninety-eighth percentile that the critters were not trying to hurt Dylan. They were only trying to free him from his suit. If you’re an air-breathing aquatic species, your greatest danger may lie in getting tangled in weeds, so they have an instinctive response to help anyone in that predicament. Or the orange color may signify some dangerous predator. Whatever the logic, they seemed to see him as a giant cub in peril and the whole tribe came to the rescue.”

Jordan’s voice. “
Golden Hind
to Prospector.”

“Just a moment,” Seth told Meredith, who couldn’t hear his helmet speaker. “Come in,
Golden Hind
.”

“Storm surge on the way. Expect flooding in about fifteen minutes and the crest ten or fifteen after that. We can’t predict the depth, I’m afraid.”

“Call up a plan of a KR745.”

“Got it.”

“The bird’s lying on its port side. We’re sitting in the lab, where the fuselage is almost broken apart. If we get flooded out, we’ll retreat through the decon room to the biologists’ dormitory. We can’t go beyond that, but we can shut ourselves in. There ought to be enough air in there for a couple of hours. If we’re underwater much longer than that, have a nice flight home, ok?”

“We’re praying for you.” So even Jordan was into prayer mode now.

Seth signed off and reported the bad news to Meredith. The water table was rising, bringing the pond almost to the door of their cave. He was thirsty. For the first time he seriously wondered if this killer planet might be going to claim another victim.

There was nothing he could do about that now, except wait and see. His duty was to continue getting Meredith’s story into
Golden Hind
’s record, because the odds were that she wouldn’t come out of this alive either. Her testimony would be invaluable if Mighty Mite and Galactic ended up in court.

Which they likely would. Seth didn’t care about JC and his moneyed buddies. JC Lecanard already had what he wanted—the video of Seth planting the flag and the two samples Seth had sent back with the shuttle. If Prospector Broderick did not come back alive, he could not claim his danger bonus, but JC could stake the planet and file for a development license, arguing that Galactic’s quarantine beacon was premature. If ISLA accepted that Mighty Mite deserved another try, it might grant at least a provisional license. Then Galactic would have to meet his price. Or JC could cut Galactic out, find other financing, build a better shuttle, and come back later. Of course Galactic would try to bury Mighty Mite under a landslide of litigation—sue, appeal, delay, argue, and spend them into bankruptcy. That was how the game was played.

As long as ISLA did not judge the centaurs to be an intelligent species.

Screw them all. Seth had little desire to help JC, but he did want to help the rest of the crew, who also had a stake in the expedition. A potential action for murder against Commander Duddridge might keep Galactic out of the courts.

Seth felt as beat as he had after the worst fights of his pugilism career. “Next episode? Dylan had just been knocked down for his own good.”

“The fall broke his arm. He was really pissed about that, the first fracture he’d ever had. He also got bruises, of course, but nothing more. We headed back to
Mercury
. That’s what I’d named the shuttle. Some centaurs followed us for a while, but they like to keep their hides damp, so they soon ran off.

“Then the second shoe fell. We were in sight of the shuttle. Out of clear air and blue sky came a blast of wind. It knocked us both flat, which didn’t help Dylan’s arm. It lifted
Mercury
half off the ground and dropped it. Two legs crumpled and one of the jets was badly bent. Our bird was a dead duck.

“Mariko reported upstairs at once of course.
Courageous
began fueling its shuttle. Before it was ready to come and get us, a real storm blew in. We were stuck here overnight.”

“Broken legs and jets? That was all the damage to the shuttle?”

“That time. Dylan was in serious pain after the second fall. I had to help him back to the
Mercury
. He weighed a thousand kilos, but we got there, and I got him into the EVA decon. And we cut no corners! Old Doddery didn’t want to believe me, later, but we went through the full sterilization treatment, every bit of it. Dylan was weeping with the pain in his arm, but I insisted we stand there for the entire fifteen-minute cleansing. I swear to you that there was not one single microbe or virus particle left on our suits!”

“I believe you,” Seth said, not entirely truthfully. The toughest test an EVA suit ever had to survive was the returning disinfection, and yet something had contaminated the shuttle. He wondered if the shuttle itself might have been breached in the fall. Control should have reported loss of the over-pressure needed to keep out biohazards, but the electronics might have been damaged also.

“At that time we couldn’t be certain that his suit had not been punctured, so Mariko and I put him in the quarantine room. She got his suit off of him and treated him as well as she could. His arm was a mess, but she deadened it and did a rough set, all we could manage.”

The KR745 shuttle was a flying hotel.
Niagara
had no quarantine room, and the Gut doubled as EVA decon area.

“Did you test his suit?”

“Don’t you try and tell me my job, Seth Whatever-your-name-is. I may be blonde but I am not dumb! You beat me out for the Mighty Mite job, but Galactic hired me ahead of four hundred other applicants. Yes, I tested both suits, just like GenRegs say. I inflated them both and neither lost a millibar of pressure in the next eight hours. They had not been compromised in any way. Next morning Dylan was going in and out of convulsions and delirium.”

“Concussion?” Seth guessed.

“Could be, but concussion doesn’t make you run a fever of forty-one degrees. Granted a shuttle med-kit is not the highest of high-techs, but it did have his blood sample and it did report mild concussion, but mainly it was screaming
Unknown Infective Agent
. Dylan was a big guy. When he went into convulsions, Mariko had to tie him down. We tried every antibiotic and antiviral we had without success.

“The weather was hellish all day. By nightfall, Earth time—we have no real darkness here yet—Mariko was running a fever too. That’s another mystery. She was a biologist, fergawsake, so she knew all about biohazard. She’d tended Dylan by the book, wearing her lab aseptic suit, showering… Her infection is just as hard to explain as his was.

“That was our
Day 363
, I think. By the next day I had them both tied to their bunks, Dylan still in the quarantine room, Mariko in the biologists’ dorm. By noon, ship time, I felt shitty-awful. The med-kit diagnosed an unknown infective agent. At that point there was no point my trying to preserve asepsis. I was starting to worry. Duddridge was talking of sending down an unmanned shuttle, but I couldn’t carry even Mariko in this gravity, and Dylan would need a crane. In any case, squalls kept coming through, so the shuttle never launched. There may have been a storm surge or a very high tide, because the ponds rose, and I had centaur visitors bouncing around the outside of the shuttle, warbling away. I did not open the door.”

“Inhospitable of you.”

“Very. I napped for an hour or so. When I awoke, Mariko was hallucinating and Dylan had died. My memory gets a bit fuzzy around then.

“It was likely the next day when I found I was tied to a bunk in the biologist’s dorm and Mariko was looking after me, although she could barely walk, she was so dizzy. She kept telling me were both going to die.”

“Commander Duddridge reported that an unmanned shuttle was sent down about then, but it crashed.”

“I spoke to him and he told me that, but we saw no signs of it. I don’t know what day it was when the storm surge came and I found myself turning cartwheels in bed and
Mercury
ended up on its side like this. All systems dead. I’ve told you the rest. Dammit, someone’s been sandblasting my throat.”

“Take a break. You’ve done very well.”

Day 413, Continued

002.001 When any expedition, whether exploratory or development, has significant reason to believe it has encountered a sentient species, it must immediately:

[a] terminate all contact with that species,

[b] discontinue sampling,

[c] withdraw all personnel, equipment, refuse, and all signs of its presence,

[d] post a Sentience Alert Beacon as defined in001.874.

General Regulations 
InterStellar Licensing Authority 
2375 edition 

The pond was washing into the cave with every wave. That water must be fresh, although it was certainly not sterile. There was no sign of a break in the torrential rain.

“Prospector to
Golden Hind
.”

“Go ahead, Seth.” It was JC himself on watch.

“There’s no chance of rescue for at least three hours, and eight or ten is more likely. I’m dehydrated. I’m going to open my vizor and drink some of the rainwater that’s slopping around outside. Plan to quarantine both of us when you get us back.”

“Seth, that’s suicide!”

“It’s sensible. Meredith’s alive and well, and it sounds as if Mariko survived until after the second crash, so whatever infection they caught wasn’t fatal. Once that storm surge arrives, there won’t be any fresh water anywhere. Prospector out.”

“No!” JC was not easily dismissed. “Listen. Collect some water by all means, but don’t drink it until you’re truly desperate.”

“Good idea,” Seth said, although he knew he couldn’t last another five or six hours without the dehydration affecting his physical and mental state. Dehydration brought on cramps, dizziness, delirium and a lot of other things he could not afford if he was going to get out of this mess alive.

“And Reese wants a word with you.”

“Seth? This is Reese.”

“Hi, Reese.”

“Those samples you sent up… No signs of reversed chirality. The proteins are terrestrial-normal.”

“So it was just the sort of stupid idea only a Neanderthal like me would think of. Thanks. Prospector out.”

“Come and sit down, Neanderthal,” Meredith said.

He obeyed. “So tell me the rest of your story.” Anything to take his mind off his thirst.

“Nothing to tell. By the next day I was feeling much better, thinking more clearly, but I knew I was doomed to die here. I could get water from the taps in the decon room but no food. I thought I heard Mariko tapping sometimes. I tried tapping back, but her response never seemed to make any sense, so perhaps I was just hearing a loose piece of the hull blown around by the wind. It stopped after a couple of days.

“When I was strong enough, I crawled out here, to the lab. I renamed it the lanai. I had no way of calling
De Soto
or the other ships. I tried to mark out a signal on the sand, because by then I’d decided that the infection wasn’t always fatal. It probably killed Dylan, I wasn’t sure about Mariko, and I seemed to be recovering.”

“
De Soto
was still there, then?”

“They all were. They were in very low orbit, and sometimes, when the sun was behind a cloud, I could see sunlight reflected off them as they went by overhead. Always there would be at least one of the three. Then they closed up into a group, close together, and I knew they were about to leave. Then I saw their jump flash. And knew I was alone.”

“Did you write your message in the sand?”

“It was very faint. I did drag a chair outside to show that there was still someone alive. They either didn’t see it, or they ignored it. The centaurs took it away later.”

Seth tried to imagine what the media would do with this story, but it made his mind reel. Duddridge was a dead man walking. He would be torn to shreds.