Glancing over at him, she remembered that he was the one who had guided them here, so clearly he had thought they could do some good. She was turning back to the next section of her patch, when she saw a windblown branch come sailing across the stream and land in the midst of the farther edge of the grass-filled meadow.
“Karl!” she yelled. “Fire line’s been broken. I’m going in.”
Grasping her Pulaski firmly in one fist, Stephanie galloped beneath the picketwood trees, in the direction of the burning segment of the meadow. Her bladder bag had long emptied its original load, but she’d had the siphon in the stream, so she had some water with her. Even so, playful tongues of wind were spreading the fire through the dry meadow grass faster than she could reach it.
“Steph,” Karl called, his voice reaching her through her fire-suit’s radio, “we’re not going to be able to put that out. Do you have your drip-torch?”
“Yes.”
“I think we have enough room to start a counter-fire. It’s risky, we’ve got to try. If that fire takes the meadow, it’s going to reach the trees and then…”
He trailed off, perhaps remembering that his words were audible to anyone on their channel. She knew what he had been about to say. If those flirtatious winds pushed the fire in the direction of the tree line, there would be no saving the treecats. There might be no saving themselves, either.
Within a few steps, Stephanie reached the edge of the meadow. One corner of her mind noticed that a few meters of the tall grass had already been cut down to a few millimeters’ height. That might slow the fire if the wind was not driving it, but not enough to count on-especially since the grass had only been clipped, not raked down to bare earth.
When she dashed out into the taller grass, she cursed her lack of height. The grass came up to her neck in places, making progress difficult, but she could hear the whoosh of the fire as it licked at the dry stalks, and knew the direction in which she must go.
Karl’s voice again. “Steph, we’re deep enough in. If we go much closer, we’re going to just join up with this fire. Ready?”
She glanced over, saw Karl standing about three meters to her right.
“Ready. I’m starting now!”
Essentially, the drip torch was nothing more than a tube holding very flammable liquid with a quick-lighter set at the tip. Stephanie pressed the tab that caused the tube to elongate outwards so that she wouldn’t be starting the fire at her own feet. Carefully, pretending this was nothing more than a training exercise, she drew a neat line with the liquid, then set it alight.
Fuel, heat, oxygen, she thought, fanning the flames so they’d burn away from her, back toward the already existing fire, not toward the trees. When her backfire was burning well, she traded the drip torch for her Pulaski. Turning it hoe side down, she started raking back the grass on her side of the new blaze so that even if the wind decided to take part, the flames would only find bare earth.
Over to her right, Karl had also started drawing a new fire line. Then, to her left, Stephanie became aware someone else-shorter even than her-was tearing away at the grass.
“To-” she started to say, but this person was smaller even than Toby. In fact, this person wasn’t even human. It was a treecat, a very large treecat. The same treecat, she somehow felt certain, who had confronted Lionheart upon their arrival. To his left another cat was digging away at the grass, exposing the bare, unburnable earth.
Wow! Stephanie thought. I wish Dr. Whittaker and Dr. Hobbard were here. They’d love this.
She swallowed a laugh. She supposed the opponents of treecat intelligence could still claim that constructive firefighting wasn’t an indication of constructive thought. They’d say that what treecats were doing was a matter of instinct or imitation or that anyone who thought running towards a fire, rather than in the opposite direction, was an indication of intelligence needed their heads checked.
Time vanished into motion as Stephanie concentrated on building a barrier against the fire. Occasionally, one of the human members of her team would ask a question, but common sense and initiative were the order of the day.
Over across the stream to the east, the fire was spreading.
We’re not going to be able to stay here much longer, Stephanie thought. I hope Lionheart convinces the treecats to let us get them out of here.
She glanced over to where Jessica, Toby, Christine, and Chad, assisted by a few treecats, had done a good job clearing their side of the stream. Stephanie knew all too well that all it would take was another stray branch or windblown bundle of leaves and that hard-won fire line would be broken.
Already the drought-dry leaves in some trees were catching fire. One dead near-pine went up in a blaze of isolated glory.
Candling, Stephanie remembered. That’s what they called that effect in class. Weirdly pretty…
She was turning back to her work when the flames coursing up the near-pine flared, burning scorchingly hot, probably as they consumed a pocket of resinous material. With a loud cracking noise, the tree trunk exploded, showering sparks. Then the entire burning mass tumbled down, directly toward Jessica.
A shrill scream cut through Stephanie’s earphones, followed by a mass of confused chatter, chatter in which Jessica’s voice was conspicuously absent.
Chapter Thirteen
Climbs Quickly was pleased when Nose Biter and his clanmates had the good sense to join the effort to stop the grass fire. After all, if the fire spread, the question of whether the People accepted the two-legs’ aid or ran for what safety they could find on a burning island would be moot. Fire that had grown fat on dried grass and fragile shrubbery would be well-prepared to gorge upon the leaves beneath the spreading branches of the net-wood grove.
As much as he longed to be close to Death Fang’s Bane, Climbs Quickly did not join those fighting the fire, but turned his attention to those of the Damp Ground Clan who trembled between a desire to flee on their own six legs and to accept the offered help. Among those who now balanced on the brink of decision were several mothers with kittens of various sizes huddling near them. These would be the most vulnerable in a traditional flight, and he turned his attention to them.
‹ I swear,› he said, ‹ Death Fang’s Bane has often visited our clan and shown only the greatest care and respect. She is a youngling, of course, and delights in games with the kittens…›
Here he shared an image of his two-leg, her arms extended in a wide loop as she used one of her devices-the one that seemed at times to almost let her fly-to give a hooting and squeaking armload of very small kittens a ride from branches to duff, the entire giggling mass landing as lightly as did a flower-wing on a leaf.
The Damp Ground Clan kittens were captivated, for a moment forgetting their fear of both fire and strange creatures. Climbs Quickly felt fringes of “Me, too! Me, too!” from their mind-voices. He wished he had time to pull Death Fang’s Bane from her labors so she could enchant them with the warmth of her mind-glow, but there was no time.
Less time, indeed, than he had estimated. At that moment, the breeze became suffused with the odor of burning near-pine sap-doubtless one of those pockets that collected in a dead tree and were considered treasures by any treecat who excavated them, since, if carefully warmed, the sap could line a basket so that it would carry water.
The odor was followed by an ear-foldingly loud explosion as the heat-suffused sap caught fire all at once and exploded. The top of the tree vanished into sparks and flaming bits that eddied toward the ground like shooting stars. The trunk of the tree tottered and crashed down toward the stream.
Climbs Quickly knew his was not the only mind that shouted warning, but as swift as were sight and thought, in this case the falling tree was swifter. Slender as the dead near-pine had seemed when among the company of its fellows, the fiery mass that plummeted downwards was vast and terrible, trailing flaming branches that snagged and broke against the tangled trees on either side of the stream.
