people, one of them Demmy, were still in the flat valley bottom when the reeds parted. Five karnoos hurtled blindly toward them like armored tanks.
Demmy and the other woman threw themselves out of the way, but the man, a heavily-built youngster named Timko, slipped. Even so, he almost made it by flattening himself to the ground. One of the karnoos ran right over him, and merely seemed to brush his left leg as it went by. Wolfgang heard a snap and a gasp of pain, and saw the white of exposed bone. Then the karnoo had passed on. Wolfgang stood and listened. He heard only the sound of the retreating karnoos and Timko’s groans.
He hurried forward and bent at Timko’s side, at the same time thumbing the emergency button on his call unit. “Camp, we need a lift out, soon as you can make it. We have an injury.”
“Critical?” A voice answered at once.
“No.” Wolfgang was studying Timko’s leg. “But nasty. Compound fracture of the lower leg, tibia and fibula.”
“On our way. We have your coordinates.”
Wolfgang was already sliding the medical unit from his belt when Timko said, “What’s that for?” His face was pale and the sweat ran down his forehead, but his voice was under control.
“Painkillers. Don’t move. We’ll have you out of here in five minutes.” “No painkillers.” Timko gave a tiny shake of his head. “They’ll have to put me out to set the bones. No point in giving them a mixed-drug situation.” Wolfgang leaned back on his heels. Not for the first time, he marveled at the toughness of the Planetfest winners who arrived on Kallen’s World. They took pain, and hardship, and hunger and thirst, and shook them off as though they were nothing. He glanced around. The others, without a word from him, had formed a protective circle facing outward. They were utterly silent, and totally alert for any strange sound or movement.
“What happened?” Timko said softly. “You told us that the karnoos would run away from us, not right at us.”
He wasn’t rubbing it in, but Wolfgang felt it that way. He had given useless advice and walked everybody into danger.
“It was a karnoo stampede. I’ve seen it happen before, but only when they were running to get away from humans.” Wolfgang paused, then added — the group might as well learn the full extent of his incompetence — “I didn’t expect to encounter them for at least another couple of kilometers. And then they should have been fleeing.”
“So we don’t know what happened.” Timko lay back and closed his eyes. “In some ways, I guess that’s good. Maybe we’ll be useful. There’s still things about this planet that need to be learned.”
Wolfgang heard the whine of high-speed engines and looked up. Seconds later, an aircar was hovering overhead. Wolfgang waved, but the medical unit was already being lowered.
He turned back to the youth on the ground, silent and tight-lipped. “You’ve got it exactly right, Timko,” he said. “There’s still things about this planet that need to be learned.”
“Now you tell me.” Wolfgang was striding up and down, angrier than Elissa had ever seen him. “When it’s too late, and one of the group I’m responsible for has been damn near killed.”
“I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t know.” Elissa was trying to soothe him, because she would have been at least as mad if it had happened to her. “In fact, no one knew.”
“How can that be?” Wolfgang swung round to face her. “Are you telling me that settlements on this planet aren’t planned, they just happen at random?” “Of course not. We start with surveys — you’ve taken part in those. Then we proceed to site selection. After we’ve picked the next place for a settlement, we make a second survey to be sure we didn’t miss anything. And then, when that’s all done, we give the go-ahead for ground clearing and construction.” “Who gives the go-ahead?”
“Sometimes I do. Sometimes Peron does” — Peron himself had just entered the room — “and sometimes it’s a member of the development team. But Wolfgang, you haven’t let me get to my point. The clearbots and the conbots and the agbots are always busy. So once we give a go-ahead for development of a new area, the work is placed in the queue. After that, no human is involved. As soon as machines are available, work begins on clearing the area.”
“Well, that’s got to end.” Wolfgang finally stopped pacing and flung himself angrily into a chair. “I’m never again taking a group of new arrivals smack into a place where our own robots have started clearing the ground, and driven every karnoo in the whole area into a panic. I said I’d only seen karnoos stampede when they were running to get away from humans, and damn it, I was right. The karnoos were fleeing from us, or at least from our machines.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my responsibility. Those kids were in my charge. I want to know, what changes do you plan to make?”
He glared at Elissa, and then, even harder, at Peron. The other man was sitting opposite Wolfgang, and his face bore a strange and distant expression. “What changes?” Wolfgang repeated. “Peron, are you listening?”
Peron turned to him. “I was at first, but then what you and Elissa said gave me an idea.”
“For changing procedures?”
“Yes. But not the procedures we need for protecting your training groups. I was listening to you, talking about the karnoo stampede. And I suddenly thought, suppose we are the karnoos?”
Elissa said, “Peron, I’m not following. And I understand the way you think better than anybody.”
“My fault.” Peron pulled his chair forward. “Listen to me for a few minutes, then if you agree I think we have a ton of work to do. Wolfgang, do we have all the records received at Gulf City relating to the Kermel Objects?” “Every last bit of data, right up to the time we left. They’re in the bank down here, with a back-up copy in orbit.”
“Good. I think we’re going to need all of them. Here’s my understanding of how you and your party got into trouble today. Tell me if at any point you see things differently.…”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Charlene was late, as she always seemed to be late for any meeting called by Judith Niles.
“Sorry, sorry.” She slipped into her chair, out of breath. Sy, together with staff members Emil Garville, Alfredo Roewen, and Libby Trask, was already there, as was Judith Niles herself.
Charlene saw Judith’s mouth opening and did her best to forestall the criticism. “I know, punctuality, punctuality, and I’m wasting everyone’s time. But I was in the middle of an experiment when I heard about a signal, and I never for a moment suspected the call might be that signal. I mean, a message so soon — they left only a few weeks ago.”
“From our point of view, but not from theirs.” Judith Niles pointed to the wall of her office, where dual chronometers displayed N-space and S-space passage of time. “It’s been two hundred and forty years in N-space since they left Gulf City. While they were travelling they were in S-space, the same as we are, but for the past fifteen of their years they’ve been in N-space, struggling to set up the colony on Kallen’s World. Even the signal we’re about to see took seventeen of their years to get here. From their point of view, it’s all old history. But this is so important, I decided I had to call this meeting at once. Ready?”
“I’m ready.” Charlene slipped her shoes off. S-space, N-space,
no-matter-what-the-hell-space, she had never found a place to live where her feet felt right in shoes.
The display came alive. A group of a dozen people stared out at Charlene. Peron and Elissa were in the middle, smiling a greeting. Elissa was visibly pregnant and had a three-year-old holding her tightly by the hand. Four strangers stood on each side of them, somber and serious. And then, next to the end — Wolfgang! Charlene felt her heart turn over. It seemed he had been gone only a few weeks — for her, it had been only a few weeks — but he looked older and different. His bare arms were more muscular, he wore a heavy suntan, and there were fine
