possible settlement, and the red line is our intended route.” The com-board showed a computer-simulated aerial view of the mountains and the central plain, and the flashing points denoted the transporter and the settlement. All Bennett had to do was keep the first flashing light on the red line. “It’s merely a case of following the lie of the valley plain,” Mackendrick said.
Their destination was just under three hundred kilometres distant. The com-board told them that at their present speed of thirty kilometres an hour, they would reach the settlement in approximately ten hours.
“But that doesn’t take into account stops we might make,” Mackendrick added. “I want to get out from time to time, see if there’s any evidence of habitation. Also, it’ll be getting dark in five hours. We’ll stop and pitch camp, prepare a meal and grab a night’s sleep.”
Shortly after landfall, Bennett had studied the original probe’s astronomical report on the characteristics of Penumbra. The planet was unique. It turned on its. axis in just sixteen hours, creating two fairly regular periods of night and day. The main source of light was that provided by Tenebrae, both the steady glow of its superheated gas and a more fitful illumination created by the electrical storms which raged in its upper atmosphere. The system was part of a stellar binary; the light of the major sun never reached Penumbra, hidden as it was behind the bulk of Tenebrae. A distant sun provided Penumbra with a secondary source of light, so that even during the night, when the planet turned away from Tenebrae, the minor sun would ensure that Penumbra was not in total darkness.
From time to time, as the belly of the gas giant overhead coruscated with storms, light pulsed across the surface of land around the transporter. The purple plain brightened perceptibly, and the shadows of rocks and plants fell in darker relief.
At one point Ten Lee pointed at something. “Look…”
Bennett slowed the transporter. Five metres ahead, a raft of vegetation was undergoing a transformation. As they watched, a patch of deeper purple grass sprouted a thousand bright yellow flowers, tiny blooms that winked open and stretched towards the electric illumination of the distant lightning. All over the plain, in fact, a constellation of tiny flowers was blossoming.
Seconds later Bennett made out what at first he assumed was some kind of dark mist, hovering over the land. Then he realised that the mist was shifting, lifting from the land and moving on, then descending. It
For perhaps three minutes the flowers remained open, a vast bright carpet, and then disappeared as quickly as they had arrived as the pulse of light from Tenebrae abated. Just as rapidly, the cloud of insects disappeared, as if absorbed into the land.
One hour later the storm arrived.
A driving wind hit the transporter head on, and low cloud swirled and swelled around them, driving a battering front of raindrops the size of golf balls. Muffled thunder sounded a distant, stratospheric cannonade. Seconds later the surrounding clouds pulsed with opalescent lightning. Bennett slowed the transporter and proceeded with caution.
Mackendrick doubted that it was a result of the lightning storm on Tenebrae they had just witnessed. “Too soon for that,” he said. “But I’ve no doubt that they’re linked. What we’re seeing now is probably the result of an electrical storm on the giant a day or so ago.”
The transporter rocked like a cradle in the wind.
Despite himself, Bennett experienced a surge of elation. He laughed, earning odd looks from Mackendrick and Ten Lee. “It takes me back,” he said. “You know, the storms when you were young, the sense of comfort from knowing you were safe.”
Ten Lee shook her head. “On Bhao Khet the storms frightened me,” she replied. “The typhoons killed thousands of people. I had an aunt who claimed they were avenging spirits. Of course that was nonsense, but I didn’t realise that at the time.”
As abruptly as the storm began, it ceased. First the wind flagged, and then the rain stopped its noisy pounding on the roof of the transporter. The cloud lifted in minutes, revealing a land washed clean and sparkling in Tenebrae’s milky light. A sea of rainwater coruscated across the plain, and another raft of tiny flowers, red as well as yellow this time, snapped open and drank in the light and the moisture. As before, a swarm of insects appeared to take advantage of the evanescent blooming.
Bennett was the first to witness the fauna of Penumbra. At first he thought that the movement to his left, on the periphery of his vision, was no more than a trick of the light, the shadow of a windblown stand of grass. The shadow continued its motion across the plain, though, and Bennett turned his head to see a long-legged animal, frail and skittish as a deer, halt in its sprint and regard them with intense suspicion. He slowed the transporter and pointed. The creature had a jet-black pelt as sleek as an otter and a thin wedge of a head. It was the improbable angularity of its head, and its massive bulging eyes, that marked it out as alien.
He realised, with amazement, that it was the first non-Terran animal he had ever seen in the flesh.
“And there are others,” Ten Lee said. “Hundreds of them.”
Beyond the first animal, Bennett saw others, a great stilled herd watching the progress of the transporter with minute attention. Seconds later they had seen enough; as if at some signal, they turned as one and flowed off down the valley away from the vehicle. Bennett estimated they were moving at close to fifty kilometres an hour. In seconds they were lost to sight.
As the day progressed, Tenebrae moved from its oppressive position directly overhead and slipped towards the mountains to the east. It lowered itself slowly over the horizon, its progress visible behind the silhouetted mountain range, and the light dimmed. The sky to the west became a wash of indigo; a scatter of faint stars, the constellations unfamiliar, appeared above the plain. High in the sky the faint yellow beacon of the minor sun materialised, the night star that ensured Penumbra would never know total darkness.
On Bennett’s reckoning they had covered some hundred and fifty kilometres—they were almost halfway to their destination.
Mackendrick suggested that they halt for the night. “Don’t know about you two, but I’m hungry. Let’s move into the lee of the hills over there and call it a day.”
Bennett turned the transporter and tracked across the plain, approaching the gentle rise of the foothills. Trees came into sight, a forest of dark shapes covering the hillside in the light of the stars and the distant minor sun. He braked the vehicle and stared out. In the sudden silence, the rearing trees seemed an eerie presence. They were branchless for much of their height, and near the top sprouted long, dangling fronds. Some of these fronds had connected themselves to neighbouring trees. Small dark shapes scurried from tree to tree, and occasional calls, piping ululations like the urgent shrilling of a piccolo, pierced the silence of the night.
Mackendrick touched the screen, and the computer graphic of their course was replaced by lines of text. “The air’s safe, according to the analysis,” he said. “We can take these damned masks off now.”
Bennett peeled off his mask and massaged his face. He glanced at Mackendrick, who nodded that he should open the door and climb out. As he did so, swinging down into the humid twilight, it occurred to him that he was setting foot on the most distant planet ever explored by humankind.
The grass was springy underfoot, the warmth cloying. The animals in the tree-tops high above called out with shrill urgency.
They expanded the dome, set up a perimeter alarm to alert them to unwelcome nocturnal visitors, and carried inflatable mattresses and food trays inside. The dome was transparent, and they ate their meals—Ten Lee preferring her own vegetarian fare—in the half-light of the distant second sun. Later, Bennett and Ten Lee sat cross-legged on the floor while Mackendrick stretched out on his mattress, hands lodged beneath his head. They chatted among themselves, Ten Lee contributing only occasionally.
“So now that we’re here, Josh,” Mackendrick was saying, “how do you feel about things?”
He thought it best not to give the smart-ass answer that life was pretty much as it had always been. Mackendrick was trying to gauge the morale of his team.
He shrugged. “I… I suppose I expected it to be more… I don’t know—
He realised he was saying the first things that came into his head. He could not tell Mackendrick and Ten Lee how he was really feeling.
When he had looked ahead at the start of the voyage, he had envisaged a strange new world with himself,
