Dinosaurus Planet Survivors
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Dinosaur Planet #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Dinosaurus Planet Survivors». Краткое содержание книги:
Two thoughts occurred to her at once and she diverted the sled to come up behind him.
“Aygar, I must speak with you,” she said, and sighting a ledge beyond him, settled the airsled, waiting until he came up to her before she slid down to his level. “I’ve been trying to find you. Base reported to me. One of our party has been attacked by some-some-thing…”
“Which sucks blood?” he asked quickly.
“You know it?”
“We call them fringes.”
“Fringes?” Varian masked her shock with an understandable curiosity. Surely those aquatic life-forms that Terilla had named “fringes” had not been amphibious. She shuddered with revulsion.
“They come in a variety of sizes,” Aygar went on, “are warmth seekers and fasten onto their prey, preferably lying on it, otherwise enveloping it between their two halves-”
“Their what?”
“I don’t know what your training is, Rianav, but surely you have seen strange life-forms before Ireta.” Aygar knelt, taking one of his knives to draw a fringe in the dust. “They move by collapsing the parallelograms of the side: they have two digits here and here, and can use them to clasp their envelope tightly about the victim, if it is alive. If not, they settle on it, and eat away!” He shrugged with indifference. “One can usually smell them coming but, of course, you haven’t been here long enough to know, have you?”
“Two days,” Varian found herself answering far more casually than she felt because, again, that curious reticence held her: a reticence evidently not stemming from Discipline. “But, if you know about these fringe things, you know how to treat them?”
“The victim’s still alive?” This gave Aygar some surprise.
“Yes, but unconscious and delirious, bleeding profusely from the worst of the… puncture wounds.”
“I thought exploratory teams were equipped with belts to protect them from-”
“I don’t know whether his belt was activated or not,” said Varian severely in a tone that implied she intended to find out if any basic precaution had been neglected.
“If he doesn’t die in the first few hours, then the punctures reached no vital areas and he’ll survive. If you’re near the original campsite, find a squat thick-trunked plant with leaves like this: they appear covered with a soft down or fuzz.” He neatly sketched the leaf with which the giff had supplied them. “Gather the thickest ones, squeeze them directly over the punctures and keep repeating the treatment until the wounds seal.”
“I’m told he’s running a very high fever…”
“Use an antipyretic, of course. When that didn’t reduce the fever, one of the original members of our group used a parasitic purple moss which usually grows on the north side of the green plum or yellow juice melon trees. There ought to be some nearby. Boil the moss, let it steep, and get it down the man’s throat. Tastes vile but it will reduce fever.”
Aygar rose, shifted the burden of meat on his shoulders and started off.
“End of interview,” Varian murmured to herself. She was too relieved by the information he’d given her to take offense at his curt departure or his lack of real surprise at seeing her again so soon the same day.
She scrambled up the side of the ravine and back into the safety of the sled as fast as if a fringe had been homing in on her blood warmth.
Terilla’s fringes! The same aquatic life-form that the giffs took care to avoid when caught in their grass nets. And if the creature was basically amphibious, no wonder it had lasted a long time after the other water-breathers had died. But that had been a small creature, like an almost transparent kerchief. Yet Varian recalled all too vividly the voracity with which the sea fringes had flung themselves after the reflection of the sled on the water. She stared at her hand a moment as if she could imagine what that same fringe could do, folding itself into a sucking envelope…
She shook her head: she was suffering the depression and enervation of the post-Discipline state. She reached for more of the pods and munched slowly at the beans: they were even more satisfying than the sweet fruit.
Purple moss, huh? That same purple moss that had grown in Divisti’s wall, no doubt. She wondered if she’d taken enough, but at least she knew what to harvest.
The trip was exceptionally profitable though one discovery displeased her a great deaclass="underline" forty-three years was a long time for ARCT-10 to have remained missing. And not long enough for a small sea creature to develop into something large enough to attack a man. To be sure, the larger species might have existed on Ireta when the expedition had first landed; they’d barely explored the continental basement shield area before the mutiny.
Varian shuddered again, reminding herself that one reason for her revulsion of the fringes must in part stem from her experience with the blood-sucking Galormis-by day so friendly, by night deadly.
The rain cleared and the omnipresent mists dispersed as the setting sun took a final look at the world it had spawned. The giffs were behind and above her, their golden selves glorious against the muted haze of the western twilight. She hadn’t noticed them when she was on the compound bluff, nor when she had intercepted Aygar. Nonetheless she felt they’d made the entire journey discreetly within sight of her.
Krims! but she was tired. Now, if she could keep her wits about her, and the light held long enough to land inside the cave… Other giffs whirled up from their vantage points to escort her the last few kilometers and she was touched by the courtesy, if that’s what it was. Had the giffs, as well as Lunzie, worried over her long day’s absence?
She made a good landing, considering she was aiming her sled into a dark hole, faintly illuminated on the left by a small campfire. She let the sled down at the far right, bumping just once as she misjudged the uneven stone floor.
“Is Kai improving?” she called as she flipped open the canopy.
“Yes, but we’ve run out of leaves again,” Lunzie said, rising from her position beside Kai’s bundled form.
“I’ve more and food besides. And a helluva lot to tell you.”
“Any equipment?”
“No, but I have a specific remedy for that fever,” Varian took the purple moss from the piles of food in the sled, offering it to the medic who accepted it skeptically.
“This?” Lunzie smelled it. “Why?”
“Highly recommended by a local resident.” Varian grinned wearily at Lunzie’s reaction. “Yes, I ran one down. Oh, it’s all right. I made out that I was one of a relief team. He’s Bakkun’s grandson.” She offered the information with a huge grin, as if it were the best joke in the galaxy.
Lunzie fingered the moss for a few more seconds before she searched Varian’s face. “Grandson!”
“Yes, we cold-slept forty-three years.”
“Well, it’s not much longer than I’d estimated,” Lunzie said, and Varian was deflated by the medic’s calm acceptance. “What else have you here?” Lunzie peered at the dark mounds in the sled.
“Everything’s edible, and this sort of pod bean tastes better than the fruit. Just how is Kai?” she asked, struggling out of the sled and trying not to stagger too much as she crossed to Kai’s supine body. “Has he recovered consciousness yet?” She all but collapsed beside him.
“No, but the fever is down a little. Hold still a moment,” Lunzie said. Before Varian realized what the medic was doing, she’d the spray icily stinging her arm.
“You shouldn’t waste it. I’ve so much…”
“It’s no waste,” Lunzie was saying, her voice getting farther away as consciousness left Varian. “You can’t see yourself but you’re drained white. Did you use Discipline all day long?”