even a short hike into Sphinx's wilds.
Irina Kisaevna volunteered to go with them and Scott seriously considered agreeing; she'd been of immense help during the early months of his adjustment to Fisher. But Evelina Zivonik was still recovering from the delivery and Aleksandr was uneasy about leaving her alone without an adult in the house, so she reluctantly agreed to stay.
'Be careful out there, Scott,' she said urgently before returning to the house. 'We don't know what's happened or what the treecats want you to see out there. I'm worried.'
Scott nodded, kissing her gently. 'So am I. Believe me, we'll be very careful.'
'Good.' She smiled up at him. 'Go on, then. Solve our mystery for us, Scott. I know you're anxious to be off.'
He rubbed his nose sheepishly. Irina Kisaevna knew him too well. 'We'll com you if we find anything, all right?'
'I'll sit by the speakers and wait,' she smiled, kissing him again.
They finally set out, with Aleksandr Zivonik in the lead. His oldest boy Karl, who at fifteen T-years was a keen marksman, covered their rear. Scott drew the relatively safer middle position, with his own rifle and his medical pack strapped to his back. He'd learned the hard way to carry a well-stocked medical kit with him wherever he went—particularly on hikes into the wilds of Sphinx's picket wood forests, which were a tangle of interlaced, interwoven branches and nodal trunks, thanks to the picket wood's bizarre method of reproduction.
The picket wood tree propagated itself by sending out four long, straight branches parallel to the ground at a height of about three to ten meters, radiating out like spokes from a primitive wheel, at close to right angles from one another. Periodically, these branches put down 'roots' which grew downward and formed a new nodal trunk, with perfectly ordinary, randomized branches growing above and below them. A single picket wood 'tree' could grow to hundreds of kilometers in length and breadth, an unbroken green carpet that ran through river valleys, climbed partway up mountainsides, and spread out lushly across flatlands, with thousands of 'individuals' genetically identical to one another. Consequently, hiking through a picket wood forest was an adventure in orienteering, since the interconnected system prevented one from holding anything like a reasonably straight course for more than a couple of meters. It was a crazy way to reproduce, but it provided a perfect habitat for the arboreal treecats. The picket woods created a kind of intercontinental 'super-highway' system that, so far as could be determined, inhabited every corner of Sphinx that would support the trees.
The treecats had taken to the tangle of branches the moment Scott and the Zivoniks entered the forest; they raced ahead, pausing impatiently to let the humans catch up, then raced on as the sun descended steadily toward the horizon. Scott wasn't a professional woodsman, but he enjoyed fishing with a passion and had done his share of hiking to some of Sphinx's remoter spots, having immigrated here from Meyerdahl only three T-years previously.
Sphinx didn't possess 'true' fish, at least, not like Terran species, but wherever there was water, there were things that lived and swam in it, things that would glom onto a hook dangled temptingly in front of whatever they used for mouths, and that was all a born fisherman could ask of life. Scott loved the dense picket wood forests, loved the scent of their leaves and the slanting sunlight that filtered down through the dense green of the canopy, loved the clear, rushing streams and wild rivers that poured through these forests, and the fresh colors of spring as the land came back to life after the unimaginably harsh winter snows, fifteen Terran months of them, even this far into the subtropical zone of the planet.
Thanks to Sphinx's long year, spring—Scott's favorite season—also lasted a marvelous fifteen T-months, which meant it had
Hiking through the burgeoning picket wood forest now, Scott breathed in the wild scent of a world coming alive all around him, and smiled. Then he glanced upward, where two treecats waited impatiently, and felt the smile run away like bilge water. Whatever the treecats wanted him to see out here, it wasn't likely to inspire smiles. What in the world could have happened, to leave the strange treecat so cruelly wasted with hunger and thirst? Where had all that blood come from? And why was the treecat so afraid of air cars? For that matter, he'd clearly been wary of humans in general until Fisher had showed up with Scott in tow, refusing to come near any of the Zivonik family. Why would a treecat be afraid of people, yet broadcast its presence so vocally—yet when a human turned up in treecat company, cling to that person like a leech and insist they go with him into trackless wilderness?
Despite the overwhelmingly positive reaction of the Sphinxian human population to their arboreal neighbors, Scott could think of several unpleasant reasons why a treecat might be afraid of people, given the history of human race relations, even amongst its own species. While the colonists were, on the whole, good people, there were always troublesome, unpleasant individuals in any population and there had been occasional grumbles about sectioning off large parcels of previously choice real estate as sacrosanct treecat preserves.
None of the darker thoughts occurring to Scott as they hiked deeper into the forest inspired any confidence that this trek would have a happy outcome. So he gripped his rifle, watched and listened for any sign of hexapumas or peak bears, and tracked the passage of time as the sun lowered gradually toward the treeline. By the time the one-hour limit expired, Scott was flagging behind Aleksandr, an increasingly footsore hiker. He wasn't wearing his hiking boots and civilian shoes weren't manufactured with Sphinxian picket wood systems in mind. He was more than ready to turn back. As his watch alarm sounded, he called a weary halt and shut it off.
'That's an hour,' he said, unnecessarily.
The treecats burst into a frenzy of bleeking, racing along the horizontal picket wood branches overhead to dance agitatedly just above them, then turning and racing back in the direction in which they'd been moving steadily. The urgency he was picking up from Fisher increased at least threefold. He also received the distinct feeling they were very close to whatever it was the emaciated treecat wanted them to see.
'Five minutes,' he agreed reluctantly. 'Five minutes, then we turn back.'
'
Fifteen-year-old Karl Zivonik grinned. 'Five minutes, huh? Just how hard is it to say `no' to a treecat, Dr. MacDallan?'
'Watch yourself, youngster,' Scotty smiled, 'or one of these days some pretty little lady treecat might decide you're exactly what she's looking for—and then you'll find out!'
The boy's eyes went round. 'Really? Do you think I might ever get adopted?'
Scott chuckled, then slapped the youngster's shoulder. 'Frankly, I have no idea. The treecats can't share their criteria for picking friends, after all, since they can't talk to us.'
'Have any girl 'cats adopted anyone?'
Scott frowned slowly. 'That's an interesting question, Karl. Come to think of it, I haven't heard of any. I'll have to check it out. Maybe the xenology team that arrived to study them will know.'
They forded a shallow creek, work boots and Scott's low-topped shoes squelching in the mud, and climbed the opposite bank, heading deeper into a thick tangle of picket wood trunks. A couple of minutes later, Scott noticed an increase in the light falling through the canopy, a familiar sort of increase he'd noticed several times before while hiking to a promising fishing site, where occasional natural clearings in the forest allowed in more light. Such clearings often marked the presence of small lakes or old forest-fire scars or a change in topography or soils that discouraged picket wood growth. Another minute later, they rounded a thick tree bole and emerged at the edge of a small clearing, just as he'd surmised they would. But when he got a good look at that clearing, Scott rocked to a halt. So did the Zivoniks.
It was not a natural clearing. A ragged hole had been forcibly torn through the forest canopy, leaving a debris trail ninety meters long. Something large and man-made had plowed through the tangle of branches and upper-level trunks with massive, splintering force on its way to the forest floor. Bits and ribbons of metal lay in torn, jagged shreds in a path arcing downward along the trail of broken branches and clipped trunks. More metal fragments had embedded themselves in unbroken trees on either side of the path of devastation, where the force of impact had flung them. Scott's gaze followed the trail of ruin down and to their left, aware of a sick tension in his muscles as he sought what he knew he must inevitably find.
And there it was, nearly a dozen meters to their left. A massive cargo carrier had come down at what must
