The Mystery of Ireta_ Dinosaur Planet & Dinosaur Planet Survivors - Anne McCaffrey [199]
So, the Thek had been here and no living Thek had retained a record of the event, despite the much praised memory of the species. Kai knew that when each new Thek was created—and some wits insisted that propagation occurred when two Thek bumped into each other with sufficient force to chip off fragments—it immediately acquired the race memory as well as the working memories of every Thek in its direct line. No reliable figures about the exact numbers of Thek were available. Once again, the humorists’ theories filled a vacuum. They maintained that old Thek never died, they became planets.
A sudden thought, more fanciful than Fordeliton’s, erupted into Kai’s mind: could Ireta, itself, be a Thek? The notion had a certain appeal, if no plausible scientific basis. But was it possible that somewhere in the areas his team had not yet penetrated, there was a Thek mountain? Kai ran from the mess hall, and then, because his curiosity was intense, he increased speed, pelting up the slope, mindful though not to catch his shoulder on the iris as he entered the shuttle. He did bang his hip against the narrower door into the pilot’s compartment. Then he tapped out the file designation of the probe survey maps, hoping that time or some unforeseen wipe had not yanked those records from the shuttle’s memory banks.
To his relief, his request was implemented and the screen showed the probe’s journey as the vehicle zoomed in on the planet. As usual, clouds covered most of Ireta’s face but the probe’s filters very quickly produced a clear view of the nearing planet. All right, now, what does an ancient Thek resemble? A pyramidal form might be the most common, but was it the most enduring, the most effective long-term configuration? Surely a silicon mountain would be unusual enough for a probe to register? Catching his underlip on his upper teeth, Kai watched as the probe changed orbit to overfly a new portion of the planet’s main continent. Unless—Kai tapped for a magnification of the island chains, but the shattered formations were almost uniformly, and easily identified as, volcanic atolls. Theks had great patience and never “blew their stacks.”
If there had been a Thek, where was the most logical place for it to have positioned itself on Ireta? Basement rock! Kai called back the map of the main continent and peered over the area, sighing as he realized that the teams had traversed most of the shield rock and had not sighted any unusual mountains. But then, had they been looking for a Thek mountain? No, but wouldn’t Tor have noticed, or been contacted by such an elderly Thek? When did a Thek stop emitting conscious thought to its peers? And would it not have propagated to continue its existence? To perpetuate its memories? Or had that search been the one conducted near Dimenon’s site, when forty Thek had landed? Were the old cores merely incidental to that vastly more important search?
“Verifying,” Tor had said. Verifying not that the old cores had been Thek manufacture or that the planet had been claimed by the Thek, but verifying the whereabouts of that incredibly ancient Thek which had not been linked with any current generation of its kind.
And, if the Thek did claim Ireta for their own, how would that effect Kai and his team? A long sad sigh escaped his lips. Just when they thought they had a chance to snatch some profit from the debacle, a prior claim appears. All they’d end up with after forty-three lost years would be their base pay and a kindly handshake from the Exploration and Evaluation Corps. At least, he thought to cheer himself from