Anne McCaffrey - Dinosaur Planet

“Morale's very good,” Kai murmured to Varian.

“Now!” Varian's single bitter word reminded Kai that morale was fickle.

To bolster his own spirits he sought Portegin, working in Trizein's looted laboratory on a pile of matrix slabs and the damaged console panel which he had removed from the piloting compartment.

“I don't know if I can fix the communit, even if I pirate every matrix circuit we've got and do field links,” the man said, running his fingers through his short hair. “They didn't leave us so much as a sealing unit and these connections are too fine to be done by hand.”

"Could you rig a locator signal on the Thek?", or even the ARCT-10's frequencies?"

“Sure,” and Portegin brightened to be able to give a positive response.

“Do so, then, preferably one the heavy-worlders can't tap.”

They've got to have power first, more power than they've got on their wrist units," said Portegin, grinning with a touch of malice.

Kai moved on, checking futilely in the storage compartments in the hopes that something useful had been dropped by the heavy-worlders. He thanked providence for the ceramic hull of the shuttle which would not show up on the detectors the heavy-worlders possessed. The minor amounts of metal in the ship would easily be misread as ore in the cliffs. He tried again to remember if he and Varian had done much talking about the giffs in the hearing of any of the heavy-worlders. And remembered the tapes! Fighting the frantic pulse of fear, he also remembered the tangled, destroyed tape cannisters strewn about the compound and now buried beneath megatons of dead beasts. Supercilious of the light weights as the mutineers were, doubtless they had chucked tapes registered by either himself or Varian as being intrinsically useless. Kai forced himself to believe that possibility.

Everyone was busy at something, he noted. Triv and the youngsters were on the foraging party, Aulia was sweeping the main cabin with a broom made of short stiff grasses, Dimenon and Margit were hauling water up the cliff in an all too small improvised bucket.

"Try a piece," said Varian, offering him a brownish slab." It's not bad," she added as he broke off a corner and began to chew it.

“Dead grass?”

“Hmmm.”

“I've eaten worse. Very dry, isn't it.”

“Dry grass, but it's bearable. There'll be plenty of this junk, so Lunzie is good enough to reassure us.” Then her expression altered to one of distaste. “Trouble is, it uses a lot of power, and water, which uses power, too, to be purified.”

Kai shrugged. Food they had to have, and water.

“We need at least a week for Tor to reply.”

Varian regarded him for a long moment. “Exactly what good will Tor's appearance do us?”

"The heavy-worlders" mutiny, or I should say their success, depends on our silence. That's why they rigged our "deaths" so carefully, in case we hadn't been planted. Why they'd believe Gaber is beyond me, but . . ." Kai shrugged. Then he grinned. "Heavy-worlders are big, but no one is bigger than a Thek. And no one in the galaxy deliberately provokes Thek retaliation. Their concept of Discipline is a trifle . . . more permanent . . . than ours. Once we have Thek support, we can resume out interrupted work."

Varian considered this reassurance and, for some reason that irked Kai, did not appear as consoled as she ought.

“Well, Lunzie estimates we've got four weeks of power at the current rate of use.”

“That's good, but I'm not happy about four weeks stuck in this cavern.”

“I know what you mean.”

Their refuge was twice as long as the shuttle craft's twenty-one metres, and half again as wide, but it ended in a rather daunting rock fall which may have been why the cave was abandoned by the giffs. There was not much space for privacy, and they couldn't risk lighting the innermost section which would have lessened the cramping.

By the time the quick tropic night had darkened their refuge, Portegin had succeeded in rigging a locator which he and Triv mounted in a crevice just outside the cliff mouth. After a final look to be sure that the stern of the shuttle was sufficiently camouflaged, Kai and Varian ordered everyone back into the shuttle. By the simple expedient of having Lunzie introduce a sedative into the evening ration of water, everyone was soon too sleepy to worry about confinement or boredom.

The next day Kai and Varian sent everyone but the convalescent Trizein out to gather greenery. They estimated that they had this second day secure from any search by the heavy-worlders: possibly a third but they could take no chances.

The third day, apart from drawing water at dawn, was spent inside the cave. Portegin and Triv contrived a screen of branches and grass which could be used to secure a sentinel at the cave entrance, to warn of any sign of either search from the heavy-worlders or, hopefully, the arrival of a Thek capsule. The angle of vision from the screen was limited but would have to suffice.

The fourth day passed uneventfully but by the fifth, everyone was beginning to show the effects of close quartering. The sixth day Lunzie doctored the morning beverage so that everyone except herself, Triv and the two leaders were kept dozy. That meant that they had to maintain the watch themselves and draw the water at dawn and again at dusk.

By the end of the seventh day, Kai had to admit that Tor had not rushed to their assistance.

“What is our alternative?” Triv asked calmly at the informal conference the four Disciples held.

“There's cold sleep,” said Lunzie, looking rather relieved when Kai and Varian nodded.

"That's the sensible last resort," said Triv, fiddling with a square of grasses he'd been idly weaving. "The others're going to become more and more dissatisfied with seclusion in this cave. Of course, once there aren't any messages for EV, they'll be bound to investigate." Something in their manner, in their very silence alerted Triv and he glanced about him, startled." EV is coming back for us?"

“Despite Gaber's gossip, There's no reason to suppose not?” said Kai, slowly. “Once EV strips the messages, they'll come rattling here. This planet is so rich in all . . .”

“Messages?” Triv caught Kai's inadvertent slip.

“Yes, messages,” said Varian, a sour grimace on her face.

“How many?” The geologist couldn't suppress his anxiety.

“The all-safe-down is the only one they've stripped.”

Triv absorbed that depressing admission with no hint of his inner reactions. “Then we'll have to sleep.” He frowned and asked, as an afterthought, “Only the all safe? What happened? They wouldn't have planted us, Kai, there isn't a large enough gene pool.”

“That and the fact that we've the youngsters is what reassures us,” said Kai. “I feel that the EV is much too involved in that cosmic storm and the Thek were of the same opinion.”

“Ah, yes, I'd forgot about that storm.” Triv's relief was visible. “Then we sleep. No question of it! Doesn't matter if we're roused in a week or a year.”

“Good, then we'll sleep tomorrow, once the others have been told,” said Kai.

Lunzie shook her head. “Why tell them? Aulia'll go into hysterics, Portegin will insist we try to rig an emergency call, you'll get blasted for with holding information about EV's silence . . .”

“They're half-way there now,” said Varian, gesturing towards the sleeping forms. “And we'll save ourselves some futile arguments.”

“And any chance of being found by the heavy-worlders?” said Triv, “until either EV comes back for us, or the Thek arrive as reinforcement. There's no way the heavy-worlders could find a trace of us in cold-sleep. And there's a real danger if we remain awake.”

Such a major decision should be democratically decided, Kai knew, in spite of the fact that he and Varian as leaders could arbitrarily act in the best interests of the expedition. Lunzie's assessment of reactions was valid. Kai spread his arms wide accepting the inevitable. He'd given Tor a week which, if the Thek had been going to respond, would have been more than adequate for the creature to make the journey from the other planet. If Tor himself had received the message. It could have been taken by one of the other two, who would not necessarily pass it to Tor or bother about responding.