Nimisha's Ship

"Where shall I land, Lady Nimisha?" Helm asked.

Nimisha looked at Jon and Casper. "Near the biggest clump of pods. I think that constitutes a fair selection of what's available."

"Won't they want to see the freighter?" Casper asked.

"They'd find it awkward climbing into it, I think," Nimisha said. "Unless you have ladders available."

"Point," Jon said, "but I think we should take a couple of dark-furs on a tour to show good faith."

"It's not as if they could fly it away, is it?" Casper added.

"All too true," Nimisha remarked wryly.

"I can't remember if we closed the hatches on those skeletons," Jon said, frowning. "We should have."

"If there's time, I'll grab body bags and cover them up," Casper said. "Leave it to me. We can hold a proper burial ceremony next time we're back. I suspect we'll be making additional trips. I know we'd have the gig while you're gone, but Syrona wants a house, a proper house," he said with a long-suffering sigh for the vagaries of his pregnant partner. "I think I do, too, complete with a fireplace for the cold winter nights Ay was talking about. Have you ever felt how thick the fur on him is?"

Nimisha nodded, for she'd had occasion to touch some of weavers when they showed her their looms and what they were currently working on. It was a craft that had always fascinated her. She might try her hand at it when they got back from their exploration of the other two M-type planets.

Though none of them discussed the subject, once Helm had regretfully admitted that none of the primaries listed on the Sh'im star charts matched anything in his data files, they were individually coming to terms with the fact that, quite possibly, they might spend their lifetimes on Erehwon. That is, if one of the other planets was not gentler in its climate and indigenous species. Not that she was eager to leave the Sh'im and Erehwon. There were only four of them and not a sufficient gene pool. She'd have to have children by Casper, as Syrona had had one by Jon. Or more.

"They exude a sort of lemony smell, don't they?" she observed, bringing herself ruthlessly back to the moment.

Helm set the Fiver down so gently there wasn't so much as a bump.

"Well done, Helm," she said and touched the control to open the two hatches.

The exodus was remarkably like a stampede as the Sh'im leaped daringly from the open hatch down the human-adult-sized steps to the ground. Jon, Casper, and Nimisha followed as Sh'im swarmed about the pods, hooting and ooing and dancing with excitement.

"Tools, I think," Casper said, consulting the printout in his hand and going to the nearest pod on his list. "Jon, the next one has tools, too. Nimisha, you open the third one. Jon, go to the fourth on the left. It's listed as prefab units. I'll join you as soon as I open up."

Though the Sh'im were small, they had unusual strength for their body size. They were also good observers and they needed only to be shown what to touch on the digital locks-each commodity had its own series of four numbers-and managed to undo the tight clasp.

"One way to teach them our numbers," Jon said, pleased with their quickness.

Rather than requiring the Sh'im to scramble up and into high pods, Jon and Casper tipped those containers still upright to their sides for easier access. Soon enough, all the pods in that first strewing were open and the contents examined-even the farm tools that had been designed to be drawn by some four-legged draft animal.

Neither Jon nor Casper-and certainly not Nimisha, who'd been city bred-could explain exactly what the more complicated equipment was used for, though they did recognise a plough.

"1 can see juvenile shaggies from those grazers on the other continent being taught to pull one of these," Nimisha said, laughing at such a whimsy.

"They have tried to domesticate them," Casper surprised them by saying. "But so far they've only found the ones the herd rejects, the weak or lame. So long as you feed them, they're amenable to being kept enclosed. The trouble is they grow up and break out of any enclosure the Sh'im have been able to construct."

"There are other, smaller, grazers," Nimisha said. She remembered seeing them eating apart from the bigger creatures.

Casper grinned. "They've tried. Fast as the Sh'im are, those deer types are faster. We weren't able to hunt them, much less catch any. First hint of danger and they're off… at incredible speeds. Like the springbok types from old Earth."

"Didn't the Altair III colony domesticate their deer types?"

"Finally," Jon said with a grin.

The Sh'im also spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the use of some of the tools, talking among themselves and turning the equipment this way and that. Then Jon found a pod full of disassembled wagon elements. He showed the Sh'im the instruction booklet with its illustration of the finished product and they went into a frenzy of excitement. One group was trying to push and shove the pod toward the Fiver in their eagerness to take possession of its contents. Others were wildly running up and down the line of pods trying to find a similarly marked one. Jon and Casper managed to convey, with Tim acting as pantomimist, that as many as the Sh'im wanted would be transported. In this first trip, they should take back samples of everything that looked to be useful.