Wildcatter (19 page)

“That must have been almost three weeks ago.”

“Feels like three years. Now you turn up. I may start weeping soon.”

“Weep away. Trauma and stim shorts can do that to anyone. You’ll be an international celebrity, you know. Sell your memoirs for a fortune.”

She leaned against him. It was a romantic gesture, except that she weighed a ton. “You really think this damned world will let us go?”

He put an arm around her. “I think the wind’s dropping already. As soon as the storm lets up,
Niagara
will come for us. We’ll walk over, load the samples, and be on our way.”

“You’re sweet,” she said dreamily.

She must be more confused than he’d realized. No one had called Seth Broderick sweet in the last twenty years.

He took Meredith’s cup and went over to the mouth of the cave. After one last breath of pure air, he removed his helmet, ignoring Control’s squawks of protest. The roar of the storm grew louder. Cacafuego smelled of steam, and sea, and something that he thought might be mulch. Despite the rain, the air was hotter than a sauna, provoking instant beads of perspiration on his face. He filled the cup where a steady trickle of water was running down the side of the shuttle. He drank.

“This hemlock tastes like champagne.”

Meredith smiled. “Champagne is iced. If it’s warm, it’s hemlock.” She stared at his face until he wondered what she was thinking. Then she said, “I didn’t know Neanderthals were so good looking.”

She was probably joking, but stim shots could have strange effects on people, especially if they were seriously traumatized, as she was. He drank another cupful.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You’d have been happy to see Quasimodo or one of his gargoyles.”

“Come and sit by me, Quasimodo. Why not take off your bell-ringing costume first?”

She must know what men wore inside an EVA suit, but she was right. The suit’s temperature control wouldn’t work without the helmet, so in this heat he must either remove the suit or put his helmet back on.

“I think I may as well die in comfort. But I’ll undress in the bedroom, if you don’t mind. My gear will be safer there.” The larger waves were coming well inside now, lapping close to the table. The castaways might soon have to abandon the lab and retreat to the dorm.

“Right. You go and slip into something comfortable,” she said.

Not knowing her, he wasn’t sure how much she was play­acting or what he would do if she started making serious advances. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t hesitate, for she was an attractive woman, but in their current predicament there was something grotesque about the idea. He had given her drugs, which would make it feel like date rape.

“Here,” he said, detaching the communicator and camera from his helmet. He handed to them on their strap, which could be worn as a headband. “You talk to the nice people upstairs.”

He clambered back into the decon room and crawled across the unsteady shower doors to the dorm. There, far from the raging storm, the air stank of rotting fish and human sweat. He removed his suit by the light of his helmet, stripping down to shorts and shoes. He was glad to be rid of the heavy suit, but now perspiration was pouring off him and he would need to drink much more water.

He had just begun to retrace his path when he heard a strange
yittering
noise ahead. He crawled forward across the shower doors as quietly as he could.

A herd of centaurs had arrived. Meredith had shed her bra and sarong. She was kneeling in the water that now sloshed to and fro in the former laboratory, moving her hands in a
feed-me
gesture, and the visitors were milling around her, as noisy as excited parakeets. Those closest to her kept fondling her hair.

They were about the size of middling dogs, black on top and white below, in the manner of penguins or fish, but their skin was as smooth as dolphins’. Like the lizard Seth had caught hours ago, they had six limbs, which must be the standard for Cacafuego’s vertebrate equivalents. They walked on the rear four limbs, but their front torsos bent upward, so that the first set of limbs looked like arms and their head faced forward, in human fashion. It was easy to see why Meredith and her team had named them centaurs.

Their hands had no fingers, being shaped like giant tongues, able to roll up to grip things. He saw three or four centaurs with spears and others carrying gourds, which must be used for storage or transport. The way they waved their hands about in gestures seemed typically human, but their faces were quite alien. The closest model he could think of would be giant pandas with muzzles full of sharp teeth. Fangs would not penetrate an EVA suit, and they were not being used to attack or even threaten Meredith. Sentient or not, centaurs were cute. They might make popular pets, except that ISLA would never allow an advanced species to be imported. ISLA wouldn’t hesitate to call them sentient.

Did he? Maybe. He didn’t
want
them to be intelligent! Although these hexapods would certainly qualify as intelligent by ISLA’s muddled rules, they were not building nuclear power plants yet, and their descendants never would. By terrestrial standards they were obviously marine mammals. The first step to technology was fire, and their chances of encountering that, let alone taming it, must be very close to zero.

As a first guess, this harsh sideways world would force them to migrate north and south with the sun. If permanent sea ice at the equator made that impossible, most likely they hibernated. The chimneys might serve as their winter lairs.

Well aware that Meredith would accuse him of terrestrializing again, Seth decided that
Centaurus cacafuegensis
was closer to marsupial than placental. Their white chests showed no nipples. Several bore humps on their backs with tiny centaur heads protruded from them, like baby kangaroos in their mothers’ pouches. But centaurs also had a resemblance to flying squirrels, because a web of skin joined all three limbs on each side. The general effect was that of a blanket draped over their backs, and very long sleeves in front. Their walk was an awkward roll, but they would be powerful swimmers, flying through water as bats flew through air. They had quadrupeds’ stability on land, plus bipeds’ dexterity. They had sharp teeth and claws to catch fish. Their overall design seemed more efficient than anything on Earth or any other planet Seth could recall offhand. Exobiologists would go into raptures over them.

His doubts about their intelligence faded when a centaur outside the cave started yittering louder than the others, and the crowd parted to let it enter. Unsteady under the load of a meter-long fish held in its hand flaps, the newcomer advanced to Meredith and presented her with its still-twitching gift. The rest of them yittered in loud approval and applauded by slapping their flippers, like seals. That was language Seth was hearing, and the speakers were a wild species, not trained or domesticated. Their behavior was closer to a demonstration of sentience than anything witnessed in a century of human stellar exploration. Centaurs met at least three of the five criteria in
GenRegs 001.196 [C].
Golden Hind
’s report would kill any hope of a development license.

So now JC’s suspicion about Duddridge made a lot of sense. There was more than enough evidence here to post a purple beacon on Cacafuego, and that would have sent
Golden Hind
away with its tail between its legs. Instead he had posted the quarantine flag, which might have seemed equally justified but which would not by itself have barred Galactic from sending a second expedition in future. He had passed up a chance at eternal fame in favor of a chance to return. Why? What opportunity for profit had he seen on this brutal world that Seth was missing?

While Meredith was thanking the centaurs for their kindness, Seth realized that she was not wearing the communicator headband he had given her, their only link to
Golden Hind
. Furthermore, a couple of youngish-looking centaurs were playing tug-of-war with his precious sample bag. Any moment they would pull it open and all his hard work would be lost forever.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Stop that!” He swung his feet over the door. On Earth he would have jumped. On Cacafuego, he had to clamber down as carefully as some fragile old lady.

The cave erupted in a tumult of yittering, a centaur panic. They had not known there was another of the monsters up there watching them, a larger version of the one they knew. A human crowd would have fled out the door in terror. The centaurs swarmed, but they headed for Seth himself, and their cries seemed to be more alarm calls than threats. The claws on their middle and rear paws enable them to climb, after a fashion. Some scrambled up the makeshift workbench-ladder beside him. Flippers wrapped around his ankles, arms clasped his waist, and he was dragged loose. Only the knee-deep water and a layer of centaurs saved him from serious injury.

He emerged spluttering but unharmed except for bruises, and none of his would-be rescuers seemed to have been damaged either. They must have rubber bones. They had not done with him yet. A dozen flippers grabbed his shorts and ripped them away in shreds. Other centaurs boiled around his legs to get those dangerous shoes off him. He was tipped back in the water again. Only when he was safely mother-naked was he allowed to sit up. Conscious of Meredith’s stare, he preferred not to stand.

“All right?” she said, having to shout.

“Where is the communicator?” he yelled, but couldn’t make out her answer over the storm outside and the excitement inside. The centaurs were fascinated by hair.
And this new one had it on his chest, too!
Then they discovered the stubble on his chin and every one of them wanted to stroke that, so that he could hardly breathe for flippers. He arranged his thighs to protect other places.

The waves were growing larger, threatening to float him, and already floating the centaurs. He wanted to move both himself and Meredith to the watertight compartments, but now that he knew that the centaurs could climb, he did not want to give them the idea of exploring in there. They were as curious as monkeys, another sign of intelligence.

A glimpse of orange through the forest of flippers and bright-eyed panda-like faces reminded him of the sample bag he had come to rescue. He heaved himself to his feet. The juvenile gang had given up their tug-of-war and taken to tossing the bag around in a game of catch. Seth struggled in their direction through water and massed centaurs. The excitement had begun to die a little, but revelation of more of him raised the noise level again.
The alien had hairy legs!

“Mine!” he roared and tried to grab the sample bag. That made the game even better. The bag hurtled past him several times, but his terrestrial reflexes couldn’t judge the higher speeds involved and he floundered, making a fool of himself and starting to lose his temper. He could recognize laughter, even in Centaur, and he thought he heard some human mirth in there also. At last, more by luck than skill, he intercepted a pass and retrieved the precious bag.

He raised it over his head. “Mine!” he repeated. They had gourds and spears; they must understand the concept of property. Yes, but that might not be the point in this case.

The teenager-equivalents thought this was another game and tried to jump high enough to reach the prize. He staggered as they collided with him and fell back, but he kept possession of the bag. Their yittering changed, growing even shriller. Seth couldn’t understand their chatter or their facial expressions, but when one of them slapped him on the chest he understood. Those flippers stung like a hard leather strap. Then another struck his back. He was rescued from a mobbing by one of the spear-carriers, who shouted and scolded, and drove the gang away from the monster.

Seth thanked him and bowed.

He, or she, yittered and clapped flappers.

The dialogue might have progressed further, had it not been interrupted by shrill cries from centaurs outside the cave. Those near the door took it up, and in moments the entire tribe had disappeared.

“That’s the surge coming,” Meredith said. “Hear the rumble?”

Mostly Seth could still hear the roar of the wind and rain, but at least he no longer had to shout over the centaurs as well. “What happened to the communicator?”

“I was kneeling on it.” She struggled to her feet, clutching the headband. She put it on. “Can you hear me? Yes, we’re both all right. Sorry to scare you. I had to hide the com from the centaurs. They’ll grab anything; worse than jackdaws or keas. Seth’s here, see? Yes, I agree. A bit on the hairy side, but that impressed the centaurs.”

“Mine!” Seth said firmly, dropping the sample bag so he could relieve Meredith of the com and camera. “Prospector to
Golden Hind
.”

“Welcome back, Mr. Universe,” said Hanna.
Oh, Lord, why did it have to be Hanna?
“That storm surge is almost upon you. If you can take cover, do so right now.”

“Yes, ma’am. Prospector out.”

Seth hurled the sample bag at the doorway to the decon room. He aimed very high and scored at the first attempt. By then he had decided that Meredith would need help and he would be better able to provide it if he went first, however ungallant that seemed. He scrambled up the improvised ladder as fast as he could and reached down for her.

She handed him the fish the centaurs had brought her, rescued her bra just before it floated out the door, and started to climb. The help he could give her was very limited, and they might not have made it had the rapidly rising water not lifted her. He hauled her in beside him.