off a string of numbers describing a rectangular area cutting across the mountain range from west to east.
“No good,” said Pete. “Too wide. Narrow it by half.”
Nathan relayed the message back. The woman didn’t seem too worried. She paused for a few moments, then gave us new specifications, cutting the area to be surveyed to a narrow corridor about thirty miles wide.
“I can do that,” said Pete, “except that it’ll be tapered toward the eastern end—we’ll be getting lower all the way.”
While Nathan confirmed this I peered closely at the map, trying to see something interesting in the specified area. Pete had turned away now to the control room, but Karen was still with me.
“Nothing but volcanoes,” she muttered.
“Mostly dead ones,” I observed. But the really curious thing was that the mountains were a hell of a long way east of the fertile land where the ships should have landed. Not only should there be no people there, but there seemed little enough reason for there to be people in the land to the east of them. It was good enough land but it was a long way from site prime. Unless, of course, the ships hadn’t put down where they were supposed to.
“People can spread out a lot in a hundred and fifty years,” said Conrad, from behind my shoulder.
I nodded. But all I could bring myself to say was, “Maybe.”
I turned my attention back to the radio conversation. Helene Levasseur was saying something about possibly being able to show us what she wanted to find out if and when we got the pictures. Then her voice faded out as the bulk of Geb interposed itself between us. Colonies don’t have relay satellites to enable conversations with orbiting ships to proceed uninterrupted.
“See to the cameras, Karen,” Pete requested.
Karen looked at me, shrugged, and then disappeared into the control room, shutting the door behind her.
“If we can get the pictures,” I said to Nathan, “perhaps we won’t need her to show us what she’s looking for. We can spot it ourselves.”
He ignored the statement. Instead, he said, “This is a better welcome than we’ve had elsewhere. She didn’t deny that Geb has problems, she didn’t show the least sign of wanting to refuse our help. In fact she’s too keen by half to use us. We’ve dropped into a live situation of some sort...she already had a problem and she was quick enough to see how she could fit us into it. I only hope that we aren’t helping out in a civil war.”
“If there’s a rebel army in the mountains,” I said sarcastically, “a few aerial photographs of their position isn’t going to help much. And who’d want to chase them anyhow?”
But there was a more serious side to the question he’d raised. Geb was the third of the colonies we were scheduled to visit that had been established on a world which already had intelligent indigenes—humanoid creatures that the kingpin of the survey team had named Sets. On Wildeblood humans and aliens hadn’t ever come close enough to rub shoulders, though there were some pretty sinister possibilities banging about in the background. On Attica, though, things had been different. Even with an ocean separating them, humans and aliens—thanks to a little unscheduled intercourse—had been building up for some kind of confrontation. By all accounts the Sets were peaceable vegetarians, and the survey team had been content to observe them from a distance. But a hundred and fifty years of human colonization could change a situation.
Those were the lines Nathan was thinking along too. “The Sets were loosely spread across two continents, right?” he said.
“Sure,” I confirmed. “Imhotep—which comes close to touching Akhnaton in the southeast corner—and Akhnaton. But only the eastern half. In the western half, where the colony was supposed to begin operations, they’re pretty sparse. But their range is vast—no need to read much into the fact that it includes the Isis mountains.”
“No,” he agreed. “No need at all.” I could tell that he had a hunch, though.
Pete’s voice came over the intercom. “Five minutes,” he said. “Then the descent begins. It’ll be just as usual. No trouble at all.”
He shouldn’t have said that. It was what some people might call tempting fate.
And fate, like Oscar Wilde, can resist anything but temptation.
CHAPTER TWO
At first I thought I’d broken something. But I wasn’t yet at the age where my bones had turned brittle. I was severely shaken but still in working order. After all, I’d only fallen off a chair, even if the floor had seemed to come up at me with alarming aggressiveness.
Nathan had been hurled clear across the cabin. He was all right too, but the extent to which he might not have been was obvious. He’d been clutching the hand-mike which patched him through to the main communications apparatus, and through which he’d been talking to Helene Levasseur. The connection had been ripped clean out of the console. It takes quite a jolt to shear through that kind of plastic, let alone the wire core.
I staggered to the door connecting the main cabin to the control room, but it opened before I got there. Karen stepped out, looking as sprightly as ever.
“I was strapped in,” she announced proudly.
“Why the hell couldn’t you warn us?” I demanded. “We could have taken to our bunks.”
“It was a bit of a surprise,” she said. “Pete didn’t realize we couldn’t make it until it was too late to shout. He was busy, anyhow. We overheated. We’re going to have to do those repairs all over again.”
“You’re lucky you don’t have to repair us, too,” said Nathan, coldly. “Where would we be if Alex and Conrad got smashed up? They’re the ones who mend people, remember?”
I changed direction and went for the other door, intending to check on Conrad, Marie! and Linda. With luck, they would have been on their bunks. Behind me I heard Pete begin to talk. He was somewhat more profuse in his apologies than Karen had been. It was the first time he’d had to ditch us, and we’d got around to trusting him. His self-respect was a bit battered.
I looked into the lab on my way past to make sure that nothing had shaken loose, but everything was okay there. Provision had been made in the packing arrangements for the occasional bump, and we were people of fairly neat habits.
Conrad met me in the narrow corridor. He was the oldest member of the crew and the one most at risk, but he’d been lying down. Even without the straps securing him he’d only bounced up and down a couple of times, and wasn’t even shaken. Mariel hadn’t been so lucky. She’d been dumped on to the floor and had made contact with the outside of her knee. She was white with the pain and it was already beginning to swell. I picked her up and put her back on the bunk, and left Conrad to take care of the injury while I looked for Linda. She, too, had joined the crowd by now, and she was obviously all right. She was tough enough to stand a little jolting.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We ditched,” I said. “The shield overheated and we wobbled. We came in a little steeper than we intended and hit the ground too soon. We were bloody lucky to miss the mountain peaks. The computer must have given up the ghost four thousand feet up. Now you know why we have a pilot.”
“Any damage?” asked Conrad, flexing Mariel’s knee and bringing forth a cry of pain.
“Same sort of repairs we did on Attica,” I said. “So Karen says.”
“No bones broken,” Conrad told Mariel. “But the bruising’s bad. You’ll have fluid on the joint for a while. Stay in bed.”
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“I got your lousy photographs,” said Karen, her voice floating out into the corridor because it was overly loud even by her standards. I didn’t hear Nathan’s reply. I tried to get past Linda to