Dinosaurus Planet Survivors
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Dinosaur Planet #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Dinosaurus Planet Survivors». Краткое содержание книги:
“The joints won’t last as long as they would if I had the proper equipment but they ought to hold well enough,” Portegin announced after thanking Lunzie for her sacrifice.
Triv offered to assist Portegin as the man’s small-muscle control showed the effects of long disuse. They rearranged the seats in the larger sled and came across unexpected riches. Tucked between the seat back and the curve of the hull were two stunguns, three force belts, and a lift unit for power packs, rolled tightly up in a spare coverall.
“Bonnard, that clever scamp. He must have hidden them, while the mutineers were mauling us in the shuttle,” Varian cried, dancing about with the belts and guns held high in jubilation.
“D’you suppose he hid anything else in the other sleds?” Kai asked.
They searched thoroughly, but the food packs which Bonnard had secreted had been penetrated by insect or fungi and were empty.
“Disinfected, these tubes’ll make good containers,” Lunzie said.
Portegin was to make the last find, the most important one, and that only by chance, for the curve of the blunt sled had concealed it well. His hands found the real treasures: eight matrices, still in a film coating which even the purple fungus had been unable to penetrate, five tiny separators, several dozen stun-capsules, and another wrist unit. The items had been glued to the surface by some gummy substance that had long since hardened. Over the decades it had become brittle so that Portegin’s touch had loosened the riches from their unlikely hidey-hole. The five surveyed their wealth in a silence broken when Varian laid tentative fingers on the stun gun.
“In forty-three years, they would have exhausted all their supplies. No matter how clever they are, they couldn’t achieve the technology to produce more.”
“Not if they hunt that thunder lizard of Trizein’s with a crossbow and lance.” Lunzie said. “Nice to have an advantage again.”
Varian hated weapons but was exceedingly grateful to see them. The discovery also lifted from her mind the depression that had plagued her. She was far more tired than she cared to admit and not even Lunzie’s nutrient soup had reduced that weariness. In her present state, she’d never be able to use Discipline effectively for any long period, and any encounters with Aygar and his peers presumed full Discipline on her part. To have such accouterments when she kept that appointment gave her the psychological advantage she needed.
“If they’re metal-working and smart,” Triv noted as he hefted a stunner in his hand, “they’ll have found the ingredients for primitive explosive weapons. This stunner doesn’t have the effective range of a projectile weapon, even of that crossbow.”
“Strategy can make up for shortcomings-or short ranges,” Varian noted in a light tone.
“Even if you have to crash and destroy them, those sleds aren’t to fail into the mutineers’ hands,” Kai said forcefully, swearing again as his voice cracked.
“We don’t necessarily have to bring the sleds into sight,” said Varian, “not when we have lift belts.”
“Let’s not talk of destroying the sleds,” Portegin urged holding up both hands in dismay at the notion. “I can bypass the start switch so that only we’d know how to start one.”
“Can you patch a line from wrist unit to the shuttle or the sled?”
“You’re not taking the four-man sled are you, Varian?” Kai asked.
“Krims! No, but you’ll want to hear what’s going on, won’t you?”
“If I only had some sort of a magnifier…” Portegin was muttering under his breath. “Lunzie, you must have something?…”
She handed him a loupe but warned Portegin of the dire consequences of chipping or breaking one of her precious few medical aids.
When Kai volunteered to help Triv and Portegin, Lunzie would have none of it. She forced him to alternate bathing his injured hands in the sap with wringing out cloths for his face wounds. Then she made Varian lie down for an hour’s rest before having her go on a provisions hunt. With all the ravenous appetites she had to satisfy, Lunzie needed more raw vegetable matter for the synthesizer, and she also wanted to locate more of the edible fruits, pods, and herbs nearby.
Varian thought she’d be unable to sleep with Triv’s and Portegin’s murmuring and swearing, the sound and rustle of the wind through the vine screen, and the odd sounds made by Kai and Lunzie, but it seemed she’d only closed her eyes when Lunzie was shaking her awake again.
Since Triv seemed to have little to do while he watched Portegin assembling a matrix comb, Varian was a bit grumpy when Lunzie hustled her to the sled. Varian’s temper was not much improved by the drizzling rain that made visibility poor, but Lunzie pointed curtly to the brighter skies to the southwest and told Varian to make for a spot where they could see what they picked without getting drenched in the process.
Immediately three giffs curved away from those few idly circling the caves. It was well past the return of the fishers, and most adult fliers were already inside their caves, sleeping off their meal, or what ever they did.
“Do they do any more than follow?” Lunzie asked after observing them for a time.
“Not when I’m airborne…”
“When they consider you safe?” Lunzie asked with a wry grin.
“Come to think of it, when the scavengers began to circle in on that dead beast, the giffs were picking up speed.”
“That could be useful.”
Something in her idle tone, that of a woman not much given to chit chat, warned Varian that Lunzie had several purposes in the flight.
“How seriously ill is Kai, Lunzie?”
“Hard to say with no way of testing. Feeling is returning to his hands and the skin of his face isn’t as numb, or so he tells me. There’s no question that he’s suffered some motor impairment in his hands. I’m hoping that will pass once the last of the toxic fluid is flushed out of his system. I want to get more of that moss if we can find it, and I want a store of those succulent leaves around at all times.” Lunzie showed Varian a long red weal on her hand. “The sap is analgesic. I’m not used to dealing with raw fire.”
“How long, then, before Kai is well?”
“He’s not going to be physically fit for several weeks. I’d prefer to keep him from any exertion at all for four or five days, then a slow convalescence.” Varian digested that in silence.
“Triv can accompany you and Portegin if he’s finished patching. But I must watch Kai.”
“Yes, he’s likely to try something stupid because he feels responsible for us all.”
“What is it about this meeting that worries you, Varian?”
“I wish I could answer that. There was something about Aygar’s attitude…”
Lunzie chuckled in high amusement. “I’ll bet there was.”
“Lunzie! You said yourself, I’m not at my best-”
“At your very worst, you’d be a joy to a man deprived of a woman.
And one hell of an acquisition to their gene pool.
Varian didn’t dismiss that notion but it was not, she was certain, the entire answer to the enigma of Aygar’s cryptic expression.
“Sexuality could have been part of it, Lunzie, but it’s more as if… as if he had a surprise for me. And he did mention their beacon. Yes, the beacon had something to do with it and something that would, in his mind, neutralize my ability to throw him.”
“Why do they have a beacon?” Lunzie asked. She thoughtfully pursed her lips as Varian shook her head. Abruptly the medic pointed ahead and to starboard.
“Isn’t that moss down there?”
Varian banked sharply, noticing the small animals scurrying from the sound of the sled. She threw on the telltagger but it only made noises appropriate to the small life-forms rapidly leaving the area. When they had landed, Varian kept one eye on the giffs. As long as they circled lazily, she felt safe.