beginnings of a menu.”
Cliff clapped him on the back. “Good stuff. You’re the food guide now.”
It made him glad to get some clarity on an issue they’d shied away from. Just talking about it and making rude jokes helped. Irma came ambling back and laughed, too.
Howard finally said, “Meat’s the best for us. Kills a lot of nasty stuff. Let’s find some.”
“Where?” Aybe asked.
“Look to all points of the compass.”
“Compass doesn’t work here,” Terry pointed out, and they moved on, following the stream.
At a rest stop hours later under some zigzag trees, Cliff wanted to get some game into their bellies and sleep, so when Howard pointed silently into the distance, they all crouched down and peered through their binocs.
“Looks like a squashed ape,” Irma said. “Meaty.”
It had a gray pelt and walked with a swaying motion, hips throwing the legs forward. A narrow head kept wary watch, and it was coming toward them.
“At least two meters high,” Aybe judged.
“Plenty of meat on it,” Howard said. His stomach growled.
“With that thick coat, lasers won’t be much good,” Terry said.
Irma said, “A head shot is tough, too. Look at those eye ridges — bony and not a large skull.”
“It’s not carrying anything in those hands. They look nearly like claws,” Howard said.
Cliff thought about killing a primate but … they were really hungry. He decided to say nothing.
“Let’s go to Howard’s points of the compass,” Aybe said, “and close in on it. Maybe get some spears?”
This zigzag tree had limbs that slanted backwards as the trunk angled left, then right. They cut off four limbs that were fairly straight and trimmed them down, sharpening their points with knives, searing the points hard with their lasers. They had all gotten quick and sure, handling their field gear, and the gray “ape” was only a hundred meters away when they circled through the tree line, working around it as it moved steadily on. The quarry looked around a lot but didn’t notice them.
On Cliff’s signal, they all closed in. The target was bigger than they were, he judged, by fifty kilos at least. It was watching the ground as they quietly edged closer. It climbed a short knoll and crouched down among the grassy tops. This helped shield them as they moved to within twenty meters of it. The quarry’s attention was focused on the ground and Terry, who edged up the slope, gave the hand signal to attack.
They ran up the slope with makeshift spears and the thing suddenly sprang up, eyes wide. Terry charged at it with a high-pitched yell and then suddenly stopped. “It’s got a tool kit!”
“Hold!” Cliff shouted. They stopped, spears still at the ready.
The creature drew out a slender instrument and pointed it at them.
“That a gun?” Aybe asked.
“Doesn’t look like one.”
Silence. Edgy foot shuffling. Cliff now saw their potential prey was not covered in gray fur but rather a formfitting garment of close woven cloth. From a distance it had looked like a pelt. It backed up, saw that it was surrounded, and crouched low. At its feet was a square opening, revealed by a hatch tilted back by a large handle. It had used the slender tool to unlock the thing, and the lid of turf swung wide open on a big, rugged hinge.
“It’s intelligent,” Terry said.
The creature stepped carefully over and took hold of the lid. It murmured something and gestured with its long, angular hands. They ended not in simple fingers but with an array of flexible, multi-jointed appendages.
Cliff dropped his spear and stepped closer. About a meter below in the hole was a complex mechanical array. As they watched each other warily, a slight rumble came from the ground, vibrating his boots. The creature bent down and tripped two flanges to a new setting, ignoring them.
It swung the lid back into place with a thump that broke the strained silence. It put away the tool and held out its hands, appendages up. They were twice as long as human hands and fingers.
“Is that a peace gesture?” Irma asked.
Intelligence gleamed in the quickly shifting eyes. It focused on Irma and Howard, who were standing together. Slowly it walked toward them. They glanced at each other uncertainly, and Cliff said, “Stand aside.”
With what Cliff thought was supreme self-confidence, the thing walked past the humans and continued on its way. It did not even look back or seem concerned that they might follow it. They stood awhile and watched it walk into the distance with a dignified, measured pace.
When Cliff turned from watching it, Aybe had the lid up and was examining the space below. The rumble was louder with the lid off but soon faded away.
“This is interesting mechanical engineering,” Aybe said. “I could squeeze down in there and — ”
“I’m hungry,” Terry said. “I was already figuring out how to roast that thing.”
“Can’t eat a smart alien,” Irma said tersely.
“I suppose not,” Terry allowed with a nod.
Cliff thought,
They went back to the stream and managed to catch one of the oval turtles with the razor-sharp crest. They were all in a bad mood. They hit it with a rock and roasted it over a spit. Cracking the shell, they found leathery meat sizzling from the fire and giving off heavenly aromas. Tough, but no one hesitated.
NINETEEN
A small set of rocky ruins lay downstream. Big stones cemented in place, no obviously advanced technology. They seemed abandoned. Cliff wondered at their age.
They skirted these, and the river broadened into a lake that smelled of sulfur. A swamp dominated one side and unfortunately it was theirs. They tried moving through it but the sour muck sucked at their every footstep. A hundred meters of this made them stop.
“Leaving prints in this muck makes it easier for them to track us,” Irma said.
Terry looked exhausted again. “Look, we can only run so long. We’re not trained for this.”
Cliff nodded. “There’s gotta be a better way.”
There was, but not easy. They found logs and lashed them together with vines and strips of bark from the rotting fallen trees. No high chippering cries from behind, but they worked quickly together. Their discipline was getting better; nobody spoke more than the minimum. Cliff thought to himself,
At 0.8 g, the raft didn’t have to be as strong as on Earth. Cliff and the men took off their belts to bind together the gray logs. The mud reeked and they were glad to cast off into the shallow lake. Paddling with some broad branches was slow, but they caught a breeze and the smell got better. Cliff set them facing all four directions in case anything came after them. He could tell from their faces that they were worrying. Only partway across did he recall the dinosaur-like thing that rose from the last lake they had seen. That thing could capsize them easily here. But nothing did. Fish splashed, making them all jumpy, but nothing more came. This lake wasn’t deep enough to support something like that.
They landed in a thin forest on the other shore, a kilometer away from the swamp. Wind was increasing, sighing through the trees. At Cliff’s orders — he was getting used to just making them clear and direct, when speed was crucial — they hauled the raft beyond view, into the wispy trees. Then he had them take a break. He needed a pause and they must, too.
They ate the pitifully small provisions they carried, maybe thirty grams each. Irma made a joke about losing the weight she didn’t need, and they all laughed ruefully. Soon enough, it wouldn’t be funny. Cliff could feel his overalls clinging to him because he was burning up his stored fat, always hungry. He wished they had time to stop and take a swim just to clean their clothes. But who knew what was in those murky waters?
So they pushed on — and found a wreck within minutes. They had seen rusting debris before, but this was different, fresher. It was a crashed light plane, made of light composites, its rear section crumpled. The passenger
