Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [2]
It came not from the vicinity of the landing transport but from the vehicle itself. It was Kairuna who finally recognized it.
“That’s the general alert.”
“General alert?” The census taker frowned back at him. “What the hell’s a ‘general alert’? I know all sorts of situation-specific alarms, but I’ve never heard of a general alert. Especially not on surface.” Her expression was bemused as she stared down the hill in the direction of the camp that had sprung up around the landing field that had been cleared to allow shuttle craft a safe place to set down.
“I told you!” Alwyn was irritatingly triumphant. “You can’t trust a new world, no matter how benign a face it presents.”
In reference to faces, Kairuna wished the annoying service specialist would take his elsewhere. It did not matter that he might be right: The botanist was tired of listening to the other man’s ranting.
“Come on,” he urged them. “We’d better go and see what’s happening.”
“General alert.” Nodding smugly, Alwyn joined them in descending from the densely forested knob and retracing their steps. “I knew it.”
Surrounded by members of the Chagos’s staff, Burgess was staring intently at the tridee. Magnification was visual, not schematic, so he was able to observe the craft that had just joined them in orbit in all its alien glory. It was an impressive ship, at least twice the size of the Chagos. While the prevalent configuration was similar to that of the Chagos and all other vessels equipped with the universal variant of the KK drive, its design and execution differed in a multitude of significant respects.
“Not ours,” one of the techs seated nearby murmured unnecessarily.
“Not thranx, either,” the first officer added. “Unless they’ve been hiding something from us. Could it be one of those AAnn ships the thranx are always trying to warn us about?”
Burgess looked doubtful. “I’ve seen the AAnn schematics the thranx have provided. This design is much too sleek. Could it be Quillp?” Burgess longed for expertise in an area his crew, through no fault of their own, did not possess.
“I don’t think so, Captain.” Though far from positive, the first officer felt secure in hazarding a guess. If he was proved wrong, he would be delighted to admit the mistake. He hoped he was wrong. The inherent pacificity of the Quillp was well known.
Looking sharply to his left, Burgess snapped a question. “Any response to our queries, Tambri?”
The diminutive communications officer glanced over at him and shook her head. Her dark eyes were very wide. “Nothing, sir. I’m trying everything, from Terranglo through High and Low Thranx to straight mathematical theorems. They’re chattering noisily among themselves—I can pick up the wash—but they’re not talking to us.”
“They will. Keep trying.” Burgess turned back to the three-dimensional image floating in the air of the ship’s bridge. “Who are they and what the blazes do they want here?”
“Maybe they’ve already claimed this world.” The observation no one had wanted to voice came from the back of the command section. “Maybe they’re here to inform us of a claim of prior rights.”
“If that’s the case,” the first officer declared, “they’ve been mighty subtle about advertising any prior presence here. There isn’t so much as an artifact on the planet, much less an orbital transmitter. There’s nothing on either of the two small moons, or anywhere else in the system.”
“That we’ve found yet, you mean.” Having stated a contention, the dissenter felt bound to defend it. “We’ve only been here a couple of months.”
“Okay, okay,” Burgess muttered. “Let’s everybody keep calm. Whatever the situation, we’ll deal with it. We didn’t expect to encounter sapience here, much less evidence of another space-traversing species. They’re probably taking our measure as carefully as we are theirs.” But I wish they’d respond to our communications, he thought