Expendable - James Alan Gardner [31]
“Yarrun,” I said, “check out the south lake. The southern shore.”
He rubbed a dial. Far below us, one of the four probes sacrificed almost all its airspeed as it arrowed into the water. The splash was big enough for the other three probes to register: a pimple of red marked the splash point on the viewmap, until the computer factored it out.
“The water is fresh,” Yarrun reported as the sunken probe began to return data. “The usual natural trace elements; no signs of industrial pollution. Microorganism count measures a bit low.”
“Does that mean anything?” Prope asked.
“Probably not,” I told the captain. “Lots of simple factors could decrease the micro count in a given area—anything from a strong current, to a recent rain, to a nearby school of filter-feeders.”
“Still…it seems a little sinister, don’t you think?” I ignored her.
The Bluffs
“Let’s concentrate on these bluffs,” I said, pointing to a line of elevation on the south side of our chosen lake.
“Why there?” asked Chee as Yarrun twisted dials to send the three remaining probes on a close flyby.
I thumbed a dial myself to magnify that area of the map. “Along the top, we have open fields…good visibility. If we’re in for a long stay, we can get fresh water from the lake, but in the short term, we’ll be far enough away that we don’t have to deal with the complexities of shoreline ecologies.”
“What if something unspeakable charges the party and knocks you off the cliff?” Prope asked.
“If we see something unspeakable, I for one will jump off the cliff,” I answered. “Our tightsuits will protect us from the brunt of the impact, and the long leap is a nice fast escape route.”
Prope’s expression showed what she thought of people who would jump off a cliff rather than face something unspeakable; but she held her tongue.
Pictures
“Pictures,” Yarrun said; and the map on the screen shimmered to show a sunny meadow dotted with yellow wildflowers. Off to one side stood a deciduous tree, something like a maple; a bird flitted into the leaves, too fast to see clearly, but it had two wings, a small head, and a black or dark brown body. A few dozen meters behind the tree, the land dropped off at the edge of the bluffs, down to the sparkling blue lake.
The view slowly shifted as the transmitting probe moved along. We saw a gray rock outcrop, more deciduous trees, a thicket of brambles. Something darted into the brambles, and my mind said “rabbit”…but an Explorer had to ignore such snap judgments. The human brain is still hopelessly tied to Old Earth; it always interprets a fleeting image as something terrestrial, no matter how alien the creature might really look.
“Try it ten kilometers to the east,” I said. Yarrun played with dials.
Prope sneered. “You think the meadow looks too dangerous?” she asked.
I tapped the screen. “Didn’t you see that animal run into the briar patch?”
“You’re afraid of a little beast like that?”
“I’m wary of a little beast like that,” I told her. “I’m afraid of whatever the little beast was running from.”
Our Choice
The picture dissolved into a view from another probe, this one hovering over the lake and looking shoreward to the bluffs. The cliffside was tangled with weeds and scrubby bushes. Here and there, swaths of bare sandy soil interrupted the undergrowth—gullies probably washed out by spring runoff. Erosion was slowly undercutting the top edge of the ridge; at one point, the rim had collapsed in an earth slide that dragged down a great strip of brush.
The probe moved toward the land, and slowly rose to give us a view of the heights: another flowered meadow, with a few lichen-covered outcrops of rock. A short distance