... "No one said it was going to be easy," Cameron muttered to himself for the umpteenth time in as many days. Weeks of travel across the dry, semi-arid landscape had worked themselves into a routine of sorts, and he had to remind himself now and again that he had volunteered for this. He actually raised his hand and said, "I'll do that."
... Putting her samples into her bag, Denner put the scanner on top of them and slung the carryall over her shoulder. She turned away from the thick area of vegetation she'd been studying and walked over the small rise between her and Cameron. He was busily chopping a plant stalk into sections.
... What a strange place this world was. One minute the beauty of the land around you could take your breath away and the next minute you might be wishing you had never had to see such a place. Mazatl had been wavering between the two since the day of the crash. Getting used to the planet wasn't easy for any of the Eden Advance crew and he was relieved to discover they were all having their problems, and he wasn't the only one who missed the stations.
... "Hey!" A voice called from above and to their right.
... Denner followed behind the men. As soon as they entered the shadowed entrance, she felt the difference in temperature. The farther inside they walked, the cooler the air became and the darker the tunnel grew.
... Appearances were deceiving on this planet, distances were deceiving, nothing was uniform. On the stations, the hallways were always ten meters wide in residential areas, twice that in commercial areas, doors always the same, escalators and staircases exactly the same and placed identically from one station to another. In nature, everything was random!
... The wider passage was more or less straight, but they went only a few meters before coming to a side pathway that proved to be the one they had originally entered to explore. The bright sunlight of the cave entrance could be seen at the far end of the tunnel. The passage went on farther into the hills, widening noticeably just before meeting another intersecting passage leading off to left and right as they stood in the intersection. They turned back and when they reached the large cavern, Mazatl had already returned and was crossing the large space toward the third, smaller area that appeared to be an alcove or small chamber.
.... The twin columns of mineral deposits had provided a semblance of privacy for the small chamber. Inside, carefully stacked or laid in rows along the walls, were boxes and what appeared to be lengths of pipe and coiled ropes or wiring. Items bundled in heavy cloth lay on the floor of the cave or high atop the stacked crates and boxes.
... A short time later, Eben Sinh stood beside the rock columns and looked around the small alcove and gave a short laugh. "I just thought of something. Assuming he was telling the truth, remember when Gaal described the grendlers as mimics? Said he taught them some English words and they spread across the countryside like wildfire? What if that wasn't all they learned from humans? What if they learned to collect and stash goods from the penal colonists? Look at all the manufactured items in here. That might explain the grendlers' interest in such things."
... "Well? What are we going to do now? How are we going to handle this?" Mazatl said, hefting his pack in both hands to gauge the weight.
... The sun was low in the sky when the foursome left the cave, still the hot, dry air of outdoors was almost a physical shock after the coolness of the caverns. Sinh immediately adjusted the kerchief on her head.
... When the group began another day's march early the next morning, Denner sat on the back of the transrover for a time. She watched their campsite lose itself to distance, then turned her eyes to the north, to the low hills barely visible beyond the haze of dust left by the rolling tires of the vehicles. For the first time in days she was feeling free and light and comfortable.
The End
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Earth 2 Home
Robert Salway
... He knelt by the small brook he and three others had been following, and dipped his arms into it, rubbing vigorously at the sticky, thick gum that had come out of the root of the plant stalk he had broken open moments ago. As if escaping, the sweetly odorous goo was everywhere before he had time to realize his mistake. He should have cut it open, but his knife, and his weapon, were twenty meters away in a sandy spot next to the last plant he had dissected and catalogued. It was the pressure of his hands holding the stalk and breaking it that had caused the fluids to erupt out of it. How brilliant to realize that now.
He grabbed a handful of sand from the stream bed and used that to help rub away the ooze. It might have been waterproof, but it wasn't sand proof. A few minutes of vigorous rubbing and it was gone. That felt better. The cold water had taken the dry, stinging itch away from his exposed and sunburned skin. He dried his hands on his pant legs and got up to look around. There were several of the plants around. He just needed to do it right this time.
... He dug two more of the plants from the soil and carried them to the sandy spot and dropped to his knees beside it. He positioned his gear to record the process and began to examine them carefully.
... He looked up at the sound of her footsteps approaching. Using the back of his hand to wipe a fine film of sweat away, he nodded at the ground before him. "Scan this stuff before I go any further, Di. If I can throw it away and forget about it, it would make my day."
... She knelt beside him and pulled the scanner out of her pack. "Where did the others go?" she asked and began to examine the plant he was working on.
... Cameron eased himself to a sitting position on the ground and rested his arms across his raised knees. "They went to the other side of the stream to see if they could follow it to it's source from there. Less rocky. They took the other scanner with them."
... "Well, my bag is full," she said. "And this plant looks promising. It has a lot of what Julia told us to look for. Better dig up a few more. Ready to head back for camp, or do you want to follow after Mazatl and E?" She handed him the scanner to read.
... Even after a day spent walking, Cameron was still willing to go a little farther. "Let's get a couple more of these plants and go after them. Danziger will smooth it over if we get back to camp late."
... "Okay. It's not like we'll have a meal worth anything waiting for us."
... Putting on an exaggerated look of shock, he asked, "How can you say that? Emergency rations mixed with weeds are my favorite meal."
... "Uh huh."
... "See anything?" Eben Sinh whispered from behind him.
... The two of them were crouched behind a flowering bush and peering between the branches at a cave entrance just on the other side of it. They had stumbled upon it without warning and quickly sought cover in case it was an inhabited cave.
... "No. It must be empty. With all the damn noise we made, if anyone or anything was inside they'd have come out to see what was going on by now."
... Sinh fought back a laugh. They had made their presence known to any living creature in the area through no fault of their own. Mazatl's high pitched yelp as the dirt gave way beneath his feet and sent him sliding down the hillside to stop almost at the very mouth of the cave, had certainly startled her and gotten her attention. Seeing him scramble for cover as fast as he had was revelation. Who knew the laconic fellow could move that fast?
... Of course, her yelling his name as he disappeared from the hilltop so suddenly hadn't been so quiet, either.
... Well, it took a bit to get the hang of foraging.
... She peered around his shoulder. "Shall I call Cameron and Denner? Or do you want to just go in?"
... Mazatl looked down at his hands and swiftly got to his feet. "Let's go in. It might be just an empty cave."
... Eben followed suit. "Do you think Gaal was telling the truth about grendlers living in caves?"
... He shrugged. "Let's go find out."
They both swung to face that direction and frantically pantomimed "Be quiet!" to the speaker.
... On the hill above the cave entrance, Cameron chuckled and tilted his head toward Denner. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said in a low voice, "but I think they want me to shut up."
... Denner had a better view of the area at the foot of the hill. "Come over here," she said. "Look down there. I think it's a cave entrance. Oh, wouldn't it be great if we could find Gaal's cave?"
... "It would take a stroke of luck we haven't had lately." He looked around her. "Over there. On the other side of the rocks. Looks like a way down."
... A few minutes later, the four crew members stood together contemplating the cave.
... "We ought to call in," Cameron said. "Devon will want to know about this."
... Eben shook her head. "No, she won't. She's still reeling from Uly's close call. She doesn't want to let on she's cut from the same cloth as the rest of us, but I know how hard it hit her to have to put her kid back into that god-awful immuno suit. I saw her breakdown when she thought no one was looking."
... Cameron and Denner, the colonists of the four, still hesitated. Adair was their group leader even if the Ops crew was reluctant to accept her, she deserved the colonists' loyalty to her position.
... Denner was the first to agree. "Okay. E's right. Devon has a lot on her mind right now, and frankly, Danziger isn't making things any easier for her." She raised a hand to quell the protests about to erupt from Mazatl and Sinh. "I know. I know. He's under a lot strain, too, because of what Gaal tried to do to his kid." She looked at Cameron. "That's why I think we should do this on our own initiative. If it comes to nothing, no harm done. No hopes to crush. If it is a grendler cave, or better. . . Well, it might be what it takes to put the memory of that damned Gaal behind us once and for all."
... Cameron nodded slowly. "Alright."
... Mazatl smiled and hefted his weapon, a mag pro, onto his shoulder, hanging it by a strap. "Good." To Cameron: "Give your mag pro to Eben." To her: "You stand watch and give us a call if you see anyone or anything coming. If we need you inside, we'll call."
... She nodded and took the weapon. "Got it."
... "Wait a second," she whispered, and surprised herself with the way so quiet a sound could echo the way it did. She reached into her pack and dug around, bringing out a small lumalight.
... Cameron nodded and stepped to one side to allow her to walk between them.
... The passage widened only slightly from the entrance and they walked for what seemed quite a distance before finding a second passage branching off to the left.
... As the men peered inside, Denner took the opportunity to look back the way they'd come. To her surprise, they'd come less than seventy-five meters from the entry. She could clearly see Sinh standing just off center of the entryway, weapon butt on her hip in a casual stance as she slowly turned in a small circle, looking around. The red bandana tied around her head was a bright splash of color in the sunshine. She could have sworn they'd walked twice the distance. Turning back to the business at hand, she caught Cameron's rueful smile. He was clearly thinking the same thing.
... Mazatl had gone into the tunnel branch, and they heard his voice softly calling to them from within. "Come on. There's a big chamber through here."
... Still holding the lumalight, Denner wondered how he knew that.
... The narrow passage curved gently toward the direction they had been going, and after a short distance they could see the figure of Mazatl silhouetted against a dim light beyond the other end of the passageway. They reached him and together left the passage and walked a few steps into a large cavern lit by sunlight coming through a hole in the roof. It was late afternoon and the light was still strong enough to see without the lumalight. At midday the sun probably shone through the hole and to the cavern floor very brightly.
... "What now?" Denner asked. "Looks empty."
... "Let's spread out. Looks like offshoot chambers - two over there and one over there," Mazatl said and pointed first to right and then to left in front of them. "You two take the ones to the right. I'll take the one under the hole in the ceiling. I won't need the luma."
... In short the cavern was bigger than merely large. It was enormous. What appeared to be a short distance in the semidarkness turned out to be a long walk.
... After a short time, Denner made a disgusted sound and said, more to herself than her companion, "This is pathetic. We have to get used to the planet sometime, might as well stop taking baby steps and let it be now."
... She heard Cameron chuckle behind her, but he kept up when she increased her speed.
... What looked like a smaller chambers were actually the entrances to other passages. One was wider than the tunnel they had come through, and seemed to run straight instead of curving.
... Cameron tapped his gear. "We found two more tunnels," he said. "We'll go a little way into the bigger one to see if it goes anywhere interesting. Just a few meters."
... "Alright," Mazatl answered. "I found one , too. I'm going to follow it until I can't see by the sunlight anymore. Meet you back here in a few minutes."
... "Yeah. Be careful."
... "Same to you."
... He stopped and waited for them come even with him. He pointed over his shoulder. "There is a fork in that tunnel a short way in. I didn't try to follow either. Too dark."
... Cameron briefly described what he and Denner had found. "Seems to be a bust," he concluded. "Just empty space."
... Denner agreed with a shrug. "Let's see what this one is."
... Two columns of rock reached from floor to ceiling, widening at top and bottom and tapering to a narrow center point just above their heads. They walked around them and entered a sheltered alcove. Denner lifted her lumalight high and they all stopped in their tracks.
The alcove had been home to humans once.
... "Guess I spoke too soon," Cameron said with a shrug.
... "Not really. How old do you think these materials will be? Twenty, thirty years? Gaal tricked us out of a working generator because what he had probably didn't work anymore. Anyway, if it was you, how good would the survival gear be that you gave to convicts?"
... "Well, it's pretty dry in here for a cave. I was taught that most caves are wet and dark with floor and ceiling formations being created by the dripping water. I guess the hole in the ceiling and the passageways made for good ventilation. We could check for clothing and working items. I doubt if we'll find anything from our cargo pods in here."
... As the men talked Denner leaned down and grabbed the edge of a tarp folded on the floor. It was heavy. She gave it a hard tug, straightening as she did.
... A flash of white moved under the tarp and she let it go with a startled, "Oh!"
.. When she saw what it was, she stumbled back a few steps. "Here," she said unnecessarily. "Is it human?"
... They were already in motion, stepping closer to crouch down and have a better look. They grabbed the material and pulled it back bit by bit to reveal what was inside.
... A skeleton, probably human, was wrapped in the tarp. The remains of a thin shirt covered the top half of the bones while the legs were exposed where the material of a pair of pants that had been cut away.
... "Look at that," Mazatl said quietly. "Both legs have more than one break."
... Cameron waved his scanner over the remains and frowned, shaking his head. "Can't tell if it's human. This is the wrong kind of scanner. It doesn't scan for fauna, but Eben's does." He looked up at Denner. "I'd say, yes, though. Definitely looks human. Probably died here from his injuries."
... Mazatl opened the shirt a little. "Broken ribs, too. I'd guess he died and someone covered him with the tarp. Wherever he got the injuries, it wasn't here. Someone brought him into the cave and probably tended him until he died." He started replacing the material as they found it. "Might have been a shroud. Something to drag him out to bury him."
... Cameron handed his light and scanner to Denner and helped the other man re-wrap the remains.
... Denner stepped around the remains and put the light on a high stack of boxes. She knelt on the cool cave floor and began opening the smaller hinged boxes lined along the wall. Inside were stockpiles of items which were probably quite dear to the humans of the dead man's time: medicines, rations, water bulbs, information chips, and weapons of wood and scrap metal. All of it impossibly outdated for their own group of stranded people.
...She opened a crudely carved wooden box, probably hand made by a convict after being on the planet a while, and poked at the contents with one finger. It was filled with bits of heavy cloth and there seemed to be writing on some of the pieces. Denner tilted the contents toward the light source. She looked up at the men beside her. "Look what I found," she said. "Patches with names on them. They each have a symbol like Gaal had tattooed on his neck. E2."
...Cameron took the box and removed a few of the patches, holding them toward the light so he and Mazatl could read the names. He looked at the other man. "Why would one person have all of these in one place? Keeping them so neatly in a box."
...Mazatl shrugged. "Trophies of the men he killed before he was killed himself? Or, maybe he was accounting for the people who were dying, so their names wouldn't be forgotten."
...Cameron nodded. "Yeah. Maybe that." He returned the patches to the box and handed it back to Denner. "They've been safe here for who knows how long. We might as well leave them in to rest in peace."
...She nodded and put it back where she'd found it.
... The bigger crates revealed little else of use to them, until they came to a long, wide and shallow box behind the others, barely visible in the shadows of the alcove. It held the closest things to valuables they could hope to find:
... Fifty-plus year old survival gear, still packed in manufacturers's boxes and clear shrink wrap.
... The items ranged from survival gear to simple communications equipment.
... "Hey," Mazatl said as he lifted some of the smaller boxes for a closer look. "Look at this. Gear, in it's infancy." He tossed a box to Denner. He leaned over and peered deeper into the box. "We can use some of this stuff. Knives, hatchets, eating utensils. There are rechargeable batteries in here. Won't take long to rig up a way to charge them. Range finders, night scopes, compasses, hand tools. Wow! Look at this stuff, Tim!"
... Cameron grinned at him. "Looks like the toys we played with as kids, doesn't it? Pretend stuff." He hefted a bulky set of old fashioned gear in one hand. "Only the people who had this stuff were expected to survive using it."
... The other man rose. "I'll get Sinh. We can take the useful things back to camp in our packs."
... "Need the light?" Denner asked.
... "No, I'll be all right," Mazatl said over his shoulder and hurried across the big cavern.
... The other three looked at one another and made subtle "Maybe" gestures with their faces and shoulders.
... "You might be right," Cameron said. "Electronics, clothes - well, hell, they might have learned to wear clothes and animal skins from the convicts for all we know."
... "And to live in caves," Denner said, and shrugged. "As long as we're speculating." She looked deeper into the box. "What are those things in the corner?"
... "Called Geiger counters," Mazatl said. "Test for radiation. The doctor's medical scanner and the transrover's sensors can do a better job. These are antiques. They work, but a modern scanner can tell you what kind of radiation it is as well as how bad it is."
... Cameron lifted one and looked at it closely.
... Sinh nodded her head when she saw it. "Oh, I remember those. We used them when we built the skybridge above Mars."
... Mazatl nodded. "Yep."
... Denner watched as the men began putting things into their backpacks. "Why are you taking so many of the old gear?" she asked him.
... "We can use some of the parts for replacements. The range finders and optical portions are pretty much obsolete, but the wiring and even some of the chips are still in use. Also the old lenses might come in handy somewhere down the line. Some of the vehicles and other equipment we have are pretty old themselves. Never know where we might be able to find a use for them."
... Cameron shook down the contents of his pack. "Well, let's err on the side of curiosity. Give me another of these counter things. We might be able to use them somewhere down the line, too. I'll hide them in my personal stuff. I was trained for geology. I can pass them off as my own."
... Denner looked up from the cavern floor where she was kneeling to stuff her own pack. "You mean about investigating a cave without asking permission first? I'd say keep it to ourselves."
... "So do I," Sinh agreed immediately. "The same reasons still stand. Let's give Adair and the others time to collect themselves. Uly's lapse and True's brush with Gaal aren't the only things affecting the group. There's Alonzo's state of mind, the doctor's nervousness, not to mention some people still being angry at Morgan Martin for taking that first escape pod. The commander's death. What we have in our pack can be unobtrusively added to our equipment without anyone being the wiser. Denner and I made out the inventory list we've been going by. It won't be a problem to slip more items onto it."
... "That's right," the other woman said. "We can fit most of this stuff into the spare tool kit, and whatever is left into the spare parts crate. No one will notice the difference. It's usually one of the four of us who is put in charge of them. It won't be hard to keep the job among us."
... Cameron sighed with resignation. "I guess you're right. There's nothing we can do for the poor fellow on the floor anyway, except disturb him even more than we already have. Hell, if we bring the whole group trooping through here, it might make the grendlers think it's open season to raid the place after we leave."
... "Fine with me," Mazatl said. "What they don't know won't hurt them. Grendlers and people."
... As the others began to leave, Denner held back, still kneeling on the floor and fiddling with her pack. "I'll be right there," she said. "Almost done."
... Making sure the others were walking away, she leaned away from her pack and brought her hand to her mouth. She extended two fingers inside, toward her throat and caused herself to dry heave once, then twice, and the third time a small metallic object fell to the ground in a small pool of gastric fluids.
... Rattling her back to cover the sounds, she wiped at her mouth and looked quickly toward the others. They were adjusting one another's packs.
... The small object she had vomited out of her body was blinking off and on silently, waiting for her to open it and activate it. Denner picked it up and cradled it in the palm of her hand for a while.
... To hell with the Council, she thought. I'll have over forty years to live free of them and their threats. By the time they find out some of us survived the crash landing, but I didn't check in, I'll be too old to care when the people they send to kill me finally arrive. Damn the whole bunch of them to hell. I'm not betraying these people for them.
... She dropped the tiny communicator to the ground and quickly covered it, and the evidence of where it had been, with dirt. She put a small crate on top of it, and rose to her feet to join the others. She tried to put the cursed blinking light firmly from her mind.
... "It's getting late," she said. "We were in there longer than I thought."
... "I hope no one tried to get a hold of us," Cameron said, still feeling a little bad about holding back.
... Mazatl clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry. If they had they would have come looking for us and found us by now."
... The four climbed the hill above the cave entrance and walked through the thin stand of trees between it and the creek. The partial shading kept the sun's heat off them for a distance. At the creek bed there was little shade, and they stopped to put their hands in the water and splash their faces with cool water. On the other side of the current, where the day's campsite was, there would be no shade until they reached the main group.
... "Damn sun is making my skin itch," Sinh grumbled, rubbing the water over her arms. "I wish I brought a jacket."
... "Heller says it's the heat and dry air drying out our skin," Denner said. "We'll all look old before our time." Lucky me. Maybe I'll look so old the Council's assassins won't recognize me.
... "All of us except Cameron here," the other woman said. She looked at him. "Why aren't your arms as red as mine?"
... He looked down at his hands. "I don't know." After a pause. "Unless it's because of that sticky stuff I got on me. I thought I washed it all off."
... "What sticky stuff?"
... "I broke open a plant root earlier. It had a thick, milky liquid inside that got all over my hands and arms. It wouldn't wash off so I scrubbed it off with sand and water."
... "Well, give me some of it," she said with a laugh. "I don't care how sticky it is as long as it gets rid of the itch and the redness."
... He was already looking at the ground nearby. "There's one over there. The one that looks like a clump of grass with white stripes in the blades."
... A few minutes later, the other three were again beside the rushing water, industriously scrubbing away the plant goo from their arms and hands before it dried.
... Eben Sinh smiled at Cameron. "It's soothing, and it isn't just the water. This stuff is making the burn feel better. You just might have found something more valuable than the things we have in our packs."
... "She's right," Mazatl said, getting to his feet and extending his hands to help the women stand. "We have something to show to the others after all, and they'll be happier to see it than a handful of out of date electronics."
... Cameron smiled back. "Well, it did scan out to have a lot of the stuff Julia told us to look for."
... They resumed walking toward the spot in the stream where they had crossed on exposed rocks.
... "Hey, you'll have naming rights," Sinh said. "You can call it. . . The Scotsman's Salve. Guaranteed to take the burn out of sunburn."
... "Liquid Kilt," Mazatl said. "Cover yourself with goo and say goodbye to skin damage."
... " Soothing goo," Sinh said. "Cover yourself with soothing goo."
... "Okay. Soothing goo."
... Cameron laughed. "Oh, come on. You know it'll end being called something like Eden Advance Emollient. Something that doesn't aggrandize one person, but the group instead."
... "Group Ointment!"
... "Walker's Cream!"
... "Something simple, like . . . Plant Juice. That doesn't aggrandize anything!"
... "But it sounds bad."
... "Yeah. Juice anything just sounds unpleasant."
... "Pick, pick, pick."
... "Hurry up, you guys. There's the crossing. Let's get back before they come looking for us. It'll be embarrassing to have them think we got lost."
... She knew she had done the right thing. She had been forced into accepting the hidden communicator, forced into memorizing an identification code, and forced into agreeing to spy on the Eden Advance team. But, she had to real ties to the Council, no reason to keep helping them after they had tried to kill everyone when the ship left the stations. She'd felt the communicator activate two days ago and in the time since she'd had a good, long talk with herself. Forty four years was a good sized buffer zone between her and the Council. And who knew? Maybe they'd had something to do with the crash landing in the escape pods, too. She owed them nothing after two possible attempts on her life.
... Soon the hills were lost from sight behind a grove of trees. No one need ever know about the little device calling out to nothing more than a dead man's bones in his burial wrap. Denner jumped from the back of the vehicle and went around the corner to look for Sinh.
... All in all, there were probably a lot of things the group as a whole was better off not knowing.
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