Dinosaurus Planet Survivors
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Dinosaur Planet #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Dinosaurus Planet Survivors». Краткое содержание книги:
She raised her hand and touched his mouth with her fingers.
“And I’d give anything to know if it was a hundred years!” Kai replied, taking her fingers in his hand and kissing them in what he considered an appropriate fashion. He continued to hold onto her hand as a thought came to him. “We might have one quick way of finding out. Step out of this cave and let the golden fliers have a good look at us. If the giffs react, we can’t have slept that long.”
“Don’t know the life span of giffs.”
Kai shot a glance at the quiescent Thek. “I experience an earnest desire to be recognized by something that remembers me,” and he prodded his chest with a fist, “besides that rock!”
“Hundred years’d mean no mutineers on watch.”
“Point well taken. Even the freshest of their power packs wouldn’t last more than two years. I’d also guess they’d stay at that secondary camp since they’d already stocked it last rest day…”
“Last rest day?” Varian regarded him with an amusement tinged with disbelief. “How long ago was last rest day?”
“Subjective? Or objective time elapsed?” he asked in reply and grinned to take the sting out of the notion.
“Good question.” Varian could enunciate more clearly now. She began to flex her arms and knees. “Hey, my shoulder knit perfectly!” She rose, muttering under her breath as her rebelling muscles made the effort graceless. “Things seem to be all in working order,” she added as she headed for the toilet.
While she was gone, Kai stared at Tor. Then he walked around the Thek, looking for the recorder. Irreverently he wondered if the Thek was sitting on it, had ingested it, or perhaps created a heat-resistant pouch in which it could keep bits and pieces of fragile alien manufacture.
“It’s going to stay like that for days,” Varian said in disgust as she joined Kai. “C’mon. I want to see what’s been happening outside. And I want something to drink to take the dust out of my mouth-and to put some unprocessed food in my poor shrunken stomach.”
She gave him a malicious wink, knowing that the ship-bred Kai never noticed the after taste of processed food as she invariably did.
They opened the exit iris of the shuttle just enough to squeeze through without diluting the cold-sleep gas significantly. But the atmosphere outside the space shuttle was like a hot smack in the face with a moist stinking cloth.
Varian let out a surprised grunt, then began to inhale deeply to adjust to the shocking change of temperature. At first Kai thought they must have emerged during the planet’s night but, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he realized that the opening of the cave was covered with thick green foliage. There was a break where the Thek had pushed its vehicle through. The cone-shaped carrier was resting a few meters from the shuttle’s entrance.
“Where are the power units?” Varian called as the two were drawn to examine the strange craft. “It’s the same shape Tor is, only larger.” She gestured with her hands in surprise, then reached out to touch the dull metal of the rounded stern. She pulled her hand back. “Wow, heat’s radiating from it.”
Kai was at the bow of the Thek vehicle, inspecting the scored heavy plasshield which was half-open on its pivots. He looked inside, trying to deduce the purpose of various odd protuberances and cavities on the metallic rim of the nose section.
“Only a Thek could pilot the damned thing with a nearly blind shield!” She turned away, indifferent to the mysteries of Thek navigation. “Now these,” she said, catching a vine and testing its strength by hanging her weight from it, feet off the floor, “are enough to feed us for weeks if that’s all we want.”
Before Kai could stop her, Varian took a running start and, holding tightly to the vine, swung out beyond the cave mouth.
“Wheeeee!”
“Varian!” Kai rushed forward, catching her on the swing back, holding tightly to her hips. He’d a moment’s horrific vision of the vine’s parting, dropping her into the sea, meters below, to certain death.
“Sorry, Kai,” she said in a tone that wasn’t apologetic. “I couldn’t resist the urge. Used to do a lot of vine-swinging as a kid on Fomalhaut.” Then she relented as she realized her exuberance had scared him. “Irresponsible behavior when I’m not quite fit but-and she grinned at him mischievously”-there’s something about contact with a Thek which makes me behave…”
“Childish?” Kai’s panic had subsided and he realized that he, too, had overreacted.
“Yes, childish. Say, have you ever seen a Thek child, young, cub, pup, fledgling… or maybe you’d call it a pebble?”
Varian’s laughter was contagious at any time and, despite his frustrations and worries, Kai laughed too, hugging her to him in wordless appreciation of her ability to find any amusement in their circumstances.
“There! That’s better, Kai,” she said, rubbing her nose against his. “I equate Thek with gloom and doom.” Abruptly she released herself and grabbed a vine. “You know, there’s something odd about such vines growing on a giff’s cliff. You don’t suppose our presence here…”
In another abrupt movement, Varian held onto the vine and leaned out of the cave mouth, peering up at the sky and to her right.
“No, there’re still giffs above us,” she said, swinging in again. She allowed the momentum of the vine to carry her back out, looking to the left this time. “But this is the only cliff covered in vines. I’m sure it was barren rock when we wedged the shuttle in here.” She made a third excursion, grinning as she released the vine on its inward sway, and landed back at his side. “A fruit-bearing vine, too.” She reached down to her boot and whistled in shrill triumph, removing the slim blade lodged there. “Too frail, like us, to pierce a heavyworlder’s hide but, praise Krim, they left ’em for us. I’m going to cut us juicy, fresh fruit for breakfast. Or whatever meal it is.”
Before Kai could protest, she had put the knife between her teeth and was pulling herself up a vine, out of sight. He was testing the strength of another thick tendril when her cheerful voice advised him to look up. Instinctively he caught the object launched at him.
“Here comes another. And it’s dead ripe so don’t squeeze hard.”
“Varian.” His fingers did exert too much pressure on the melon and the succulent sweet odor made his mouth water.
“I could eat these all by myself, Kai, so here’s another one for you.” Varian dropped to the cave floor.
“We shouldn’t eat too much at first,” Kai said. He sank down beside her as she sliced a segment off and offered it to him on her knife point.
“Quite likely,” she said, slicing a second piece, for herself. She murmured with delight as she bit the soft green fruit. “Go ahead. Eat!” she urged, juice dribbling from the corners of her mouth.
“The things I do for the EEC,” Kai said, pretending horror at having to eat unprocessed food. As the first sweetness dissolved in his dry mouth, Kai was willing to admit, privately, that natural food was undeniably juicier than processed.
They both ate slowly, chewing thoroughly.
“I suspect root vegetables would have been wiser in terms of protein content but fruit sugar raises blood levels,” Varian remarked thoughtfully. “Oh, but this is good. What I don’t understand,” she went on gesturing with her half-eaten slice, “is how those vines grew here. Granted,” and she raised the slice to forestall Kai, “we don’t know how long we’ve slept, and growth on Ireta is explosive. But the other cliffs are still clear. The giffs’ main diet is fish and Rift grass. These vines aren’t from the Rift, and this section of cliff looks more like forest than palisade. The vines grow right down to the water.”