Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [68]
Matthew was slightly disappointed by the hesitancy of so many of their responses, and wondered for a moment whether they had mistaken him for the policeman sent to interrogate them, improbable as that might seem. It only took a few seconds, however, to realize that they were almost as awkward with one another as they were with him. It occurred to him that they might not have assembled into a single company for some time. They were, apparently, divided among themselves. Bernal Delgado’s death had presumably emphasized those divisions rather than bringing them together.
The manner in which the capsule had come to rest posed obvious problems so far as unloading the cargo was concerned, but the difficulties should have been easily overcome. As soon as Rand Blackstone began barking orders the mood of the seven seemed to suffer a further deterioration. No one actually started a quarrel over the tall man’s dubious right of command, and the instructions he gave were sensible enough, but the resentment was almost palpable. Having been briefed by Solari, Matthew had no difficulty figuring out that Tang Dinh Quan and Maryanne Hyder were the two most seriously at odds with the Australian, and that none of the other scientists wanted to take his side unequivocally.
“What’s the hurry?” Matthew asked, when he had tried and failed to introduce the newly arrived Vince Solari to the company. “There’s nothing in there likely to rot.”
“It’s going to rain,” was the answer he got from Blackstone. A glance at the sky told him that it was true, although it hardly seemed excuse enough for the impoliteness.
The blatant tokenism of the responses Solari did receive to his tentative greetings suggested that the seven were exceedingly unenthusiastic about welcoming the policeman into their midst, but Matthew wasn’t certain whether that could be taken as a sign of collective guilt. Unhappily, he let Solari draw him aside, so that they would not inhibit Blackstone’s attempts to organize a human chain to begin unshipping the cargo.
“The doctor was right about the weight,” Solari complained. “It doesn’t feel too oppressive, as yet, but it does feel distinctly peculiar.”
Matthew had been too preoccupied with the minutiae of his descent to pay too much heed to the restoration of nearly all his Earthly weight, but as soon as Solari mentioned it he became acutely conscious of the additional drag. As the policemen said, it didn’t feel too uncomfortable, as yet, but it did feel odd. The oddness didn’t seem to be confined within him, though—it seemed to have accommodated itself automatically to the general alienness of the environment.
It wasn’t until he concentrated hard on his own inner state that Matthew realized that his heart was pounding and that his breathing was awkward. His internal technology had masked the extra effort, but he realized that even standing still was putting a strain on him. Adaptation to the new gravity regime was going to take time.
He looked up reflexively, in the direction from which he had come, almost as if he expected to see Hope glinting in the sky. Even the sun was invisible behind a mass of gray clouds, but there was a margin of clear sky visible behind the hilltops in what Matthew assumed to be the north. The sky was blue, but not the pure pale blue of Earth’s sky; there was a hint of purple there too.
In every other direction, the purple coloration of the landscape seemed to leap out at his wandering gaze in a fashion akin to insult, if not to flagrant contempt. The color was not in the least unexpected, of course, but everything he had seen on Hope’s screens—even the large wallscreen—had been bordered and contained. The colors had been true, but the frame surrounding them had robbed them of a certain awe-inspiring vividness, and of their subtler sensual context.
Matthew had imagined stepping down onto alien soil