Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [1]
He was, however, very good at what he did.
“Why shouldn’t we?” The more argumentative Idar confronted the support specialist without hesitation. “It’s been years since anybody found a world that was even remotely Earthlike.” She gestured expansively at the forest. “Maybe it’s only partly colonizable because of the ice caps, but the rest of it, the upper temperate forest lands like this, will draw settlers in droves. You know the rules: Everybody qualifies for a share in the primary finding and exploration benefits.” She chuckled. “Even you, unless you want to sign over your presupposed nonexistent bonus to me.”
“Thanks,” the specialist muttered, “but I’ll hang onto the designation, just in case I’m wrong and the government decides to play fair and honest with this one.”
“With this one?” Kairuna’s heavy black eyebrows arched. “How many primes for colonizable worlds have you been on?”
“Well, none, actually.” The small, muscular form turned away. “This is my first.”
“This is everybody’s first.” Kairuna mentioned the obvious while Idar adjusted her instrumentation slightly in order to take a new sighting. “There are a lot more ships out looking than there are habitable worlds being found.”
“Right enough,” Alwyn agreed. “And half of those seem to be full of giant bugs who’ve already laid claim to the place.”
Idar looked up from the eyepiece of her taker. “The thranx are our friends.”
“Yeah, sure,” the tech groused. “The government keeps trying to convince us of that. Trying too hard, if you ask me. What about that covert colony they set up in the Reserva Amazonia? If it hadn’t been for that wandering street thug stumbling into the place the rest of us still wouldn’t know about that!”
“It was part of a secret government project.” Kairuna watched something slim and elegant soar across the clear blue sky. At this distance he could not tell if its wings were fashioned of feather, membrane, or some as yet unidentified organic substance.
Alwyn was nodding vigorously. “Sure was. It was such a secret government project even the government didn’t know about it. You ever seen a thranx? I mean, in person?” he challenged the bigger man.
“No,” Kairuna confessed. “Only tridees.”
“They’re ugly little bastards. Like big crickets or mantids with an extra set of limbs.” He shuddered. “I don’t care what the lovey-dovey we’re-all-sapients-together-in-this-galacticarm propagandists mew. You won’t catch me cuddling up next to no goddamn giant bug. And there are plenty of people who feel even stronger about it than I do. Me, if I ran into one, I’d step on it.”
“The thranx are a little big to step on,” Kairuna reminded him. “Especially for someone your size.”
“And they might step back,” Idar added without looking up from her work.
Alwyn thrust his chin forward belligerently. “Exactly my point. The galaxy’s a vast, unfriendly, dangerous place.”
“The more reason to make friends with those who inhabit it alongside us,” Kairuna argued.
Lively blue eyes stared back up at him. “The more reason to be careful just who we nestle up to.”
The discussion was interrupted—not by the weather or the indigenous wildlife, not by the need to continue working, but by a reverberant, insistent howl. Standing on the little knoll debating interstellar relationships while taking the measure of the alien forest, they turned as one in the direction of the wailing, sonorous bellow. It was unfamiliar to all of them.
“What the hell is that?” Alwyn had walked quickly to the edge of the knoll to gaze with even more than his