The Mystery of Ireta_ Dinosaur Planet & Dinosaur Planet Survivors - Anne McCaffrey [122]
As Varian approached the nearest, she saw that the windows had been glazed yet when she rubbed away grime, she could barely see through the dense and irregular glass. When her eyes had compensated for the gloom, she could see the interior had been stripped of everything but the stone shelving set into the corners of each room. The only door was made of stout wooden panels, coated with some glossy substance which obviously protected the wood against the depredations of Ireta’s insect life. Set above the handle of the locked door were four metal tumblers, coded to some pattern, for the handle would not move at her touch although the tumblers rolled easily under her thumb. A cursory examination of the other seven buildings told her they were identical: four rooms, two on either side of an entry hall. The windows were too narrow for any but a young child to climb in or out of. With such stoutly built dwellings, why had they moved? There was plenty of room for expansion on the bluff top.
She went beyond the octagon and saw outbuildings, two with chimneys well blackened even after decades of scouring rain. One proved to be a forge and marks on the concrete behind it indicated the complete removal of another installation, as well as the squat thick form of a kiln. What power would they have used for the forge? Water? Up here? No, but there was no shortage of wind! She had become so accustomed to the buffeting of the almost incessant breezes that blew from moderate to gale force through the course of every Iretan day, that she’d almost missed the most obvious and easiest power source.
Paskutti had not been idly bragging when he’d said that he and his band could survive nicely on Ireta. If Aygar was to be believed, and the barbed steel tip of his lance gave fair evidence of metal craftsmanship, they didn’t need the Federated Sentient Planets. Maybe not the FSP, thought Varian, kicking at the mud, but they’d need a larger gene pool or their community risked dangerous inbreeding that could wipe out all they had achieved.
She should reserve her sympathy for her own problem—Kai’s restoration—and she wasn’t getting any help on the bleak butte. But she couldn’t resist the urge to peer into the buildings set apart from the living quarters. They might provide her with a measure of information on the quality of life the mutineers had established for themselves. With metal-working, glass manufacture, windpower, and pottery, they’d achieved a commendable basic standard. One long building, downslope and nearer the luxuriant growth, attracted her interest since it was so obviously set apart from the industrial sites. The door faced the brush and Varian paused, puzzled. Despite the wild profusion of lush vegetation, something about the area struck her as odd. Then she realized that the fruiting trees were placed at regular intervals, and each row comprised different types. Moving closer, she saw metal stakes holding up another form of vine from which thick pods hung: a series of thorny bushes bore huge red berries, then another stand of trees and beyond the trees, against a low retaining wall were smaller plants, weed vines choking them and, on the wall, tucked into niches as if by design, a curious feathery purple moss.
Purple was not her favorite shade after the mold, Varian realized, even as she had to admit that she was looking at an overgrown garden. She turned then to the long hut and observed what she had failed to notice at first—it had no windows. A storehouse for the garden’s produce? Yes, for now that she was closer, she could see the carved panels in the door. Vines, trees, and plants were each so carefully delineated on that door that