Beast Master's Quest Read online

  “Good. Then I have a suggestion, why don’t we—”

  The ship’s alarm abruptly went off with a mighty clamor. Everyone felt his or her heart race as they dived for the door. What rang wasn’t the alarm for trouble with the ship. It was the alert Storm had rigged to tell them when the ship had come within scanning distance of another possible planet. Four sets of feet and one set of paws pounded down the passage heading for the bridge. They met Captain D’Argeis at the door and there was an almost unseemly scrimmage while everyone tried to enter at once.

  The captain won, diving across the bridge to silence the alarm and give harsh commands.

  “Planet on-screen, all current information downloaded.”

  They stared at a world which, apart from its being pale green and white, appeared Earth-like from this distance. The ship’s samplers started and everyone listened with a ferocious intensity of concentration. They orbited twice while the scanners and samplers updated, refined, and announced their findings. Then, leaving them to continue, Storm called a meeting in the mess over a belated dinner.

  “Let’s eat and think about what we may have found. Do you have an initial suggestion, Captain?”

  Captain D’Argeis hesitated, then spoke slowly. “No insult to your possible kinfolk, Prauo. But I think we should immediately send our findings to date across to the Patrol ship. I have several reasons for that. One is that if anything at all happens to us, they won’t know exactly where in this sector we are or what we may have found. Our last contact with them was five days ago, and at that time we hadn’t even moved in the current direction.”

  Storm collected nods with one sweeping stare around the table. “We’re all in agreement with that, Captain. But you have another reason in mind as well, I think?”

  “A very basic one. As I said, no insult to Prauo’s kinfolk, but what do they know of humans? If that’s them down there, they know only that one of our ships landed about five years back and kidnapped a child of theirs. For all we know the Antares crew could have done a lot worse besides a possibly bloodless kidnapping. I know if aliens landed on my world and stole a child I wouldn’t be receiving them with happy handshakes and broad smiles if they returned. If they’d done that and maybe murdered some of my folk, too, I’d be reaching for weapons the minute I heard they were back.”

  *No insult to me or any kin I may have,* Prauo sent to them all. *This is sense. Harb spoke of ruins that his friend told him about. Has there been any sign of those? If not, this may not be the world his friend found, nor the world from which we think he may have taken me?*

  “That may take a while to check. I can set the scanners to look for those particularly, but I’ll have to re-program them.”

  Laris spoke first. “Can you do that, please, Captain? Once we know if this is that world, it’ll be easier to decide what to do next.”

  “I can do it.”

  “I’ll set the computers and transmitters to send updates to the Patrol cruiser on what we learn every half day as well,” Storm said quietly. “As the captain says, just in case.”

  It took Storm’s assistance all that evening to arrange the regular automatic transmission of updates, and to reconfigure the scanner program, but it turned out to be well worth the time spent. Midmorning the next day, ship-time, a scanner chimed, then a second. They had found ruins.

  Chapter Seven

  The scanners passed slowly over the ruins, showing them quite clearly. Storm studied the subsequent prints he made from the scanners’ views before passing them around and waiting.

  Logan looked up from the last one. “They have to be the ones Gerald Machlightner told Harb about. Harb said they looked as if they’d half-melted, and that fits the look of these. What could cause it?”

  It was Captain D’Argeis who answered. “I know one reply to that question, lad, and it isn’t a pleasant one. I’ve read a lot of Terran history, and I’d say those ruins could have been caused by a nuclear explosion.”

  Logan stared. “But . . . but, I thought the belief was that if people started that kind of war they wiped themselves out?”

  “Not always. Terra had a number of squabbles using them and survived. But take a look at this.” He changed a setting on one of the scanners and it began emitting a low beeping as it passed over the land below.

  “There’s radiation there, old radiation, although it doesn’t seem to be quite the sort we know. It’s everywhere the scanners have checked so far—which means, I’d say, that the whole world was saturated in it originally. It wouldn’t do us any harm now if we stayed a few weeks, but it wouldn’t be good for us if we settled there or even if we stayed a year or two.”

  Storm checked another dial. “You’re right about the age. I’d say if they did fight a war here it was close on five thousand years ago.” He looked at the captain. “Which probably means they adapted to the radiation over that period. It will have changed them—to what, I wonder?”

  Laris was practical. “Or even if there are any ‘them’ left. We may have to land to find out.”

  “No.” Storm was firm. “We keep the checks going and see what else may show up. Once the scanners have done all that can be done on their current settings, I’ll switch them to counting and measuring animals. That may give us some idea if people could have survived the initial heavy radiation.”

  The captain moved to change a setting. “I can have this initial scanner looking for that. I’ve set it for anything at Prauo’s size plus or minus twenty percent. That may give us an idea.”

  The picture it gave them five days later was interesting, to say the least.

  The scanners had done their initial job, then each second one in turn had been changed to match the captain’s parameters. The others had been changed to scan for animal life in the smaller range. Around eighty pounds, plus or minus the twenty percent. The results had left Storm silent. He’d run a complete check of the scanners’ instrumentation, then run the animal size and numbers check again for the same result. It looked as if Prauo wasn’t an anomaly. With the figures in hand, he called a meeting in the mess room.

  “We’ve got the results and they say that’s likely to be Prauo’s world. There is a sizable population of living beings of approximately his size.”

  Tani looked up from where she was studying a print of the ruins. “That doesn’t mean they’re Prauo’s people, just that the world has animals around his size. It isn’t as if he’s huge, or tiny. Earth had a whole list of animals similar in size to him.”

  “I know. We weighed him in at 239 pounds, eighty-one inches nose to hindquarters. Allowing for the possibility that he hasn’t finished growing, and that he may also be larger or smaller according to how conditions differ from his world to how he grew up, and plus or minus the twenty percent, then allowing that twenty percent for individuals missed by the scanners, we come up with a population of about one million—felines.” The last word he emphasized.

  Having caught their attention, Storm waved a plasheet of figures. “After that I ran a second scan checking for animals of a larger or smaller size. The smaller-size run came up with results. Very odd ones. Put the scanner runs together and they show that almost every feline down there is accompanied either by a large child or a small adult.

  He took in a breath. “I refined the size-runs right down. The very small animals which still show a signature similar to Prauo’s scan are alone. Once they reach about ten or twelve pounds, they acquire a humanoid partner.”

  It was Laris, naturally, who understood first if rather incoherently. “I’m normal down there. I mean, Prauo’s people have people.”

  Storm gave a slight smile. “Yes, I suspect that’s so. Some sort of parallel evolution or symbiosis. We’ll have to go slowly, but if I’m right, they may have assumed that Prauo’s kidnaping was merely a bonding, not theft.”

  He eyed everyone meaningfully. “However we are going to take this very slowly. I could easily be wrong about almost every assumption I’ve made, so
we don’t take chances. First up, we send everything we have to the Patrol cruiser. Then we sit up here and run instruments over every single spectrum we can think of—and any the Patrol can suggest. After that, and if things still look reasonably safe, we land.”

  He fixed his gaze on Laris and Prauo. “Hear what I say. They may be Prauo’s people down there but we will be taking no chances. You two in particular.”

  *I hear and obey.* Prauo’s mind-voice was slightly sarcastic, but Storm didn’t mind. He’d rather have sarcasm and obedience than polite lies. Laris nodded when his gaze turned to her. It was a reluctant nod, but he’d learned that her word was good. It escaped his notice that she hadn’t agreed to anything specific.

  So for the next five days they spied and peered from orbit. The Patrol, still searching for the Antares in sector nine, had suggestions for new tests to conduct on the world below. Storm came up with others from his war experiences and the captain had several more ideas based on his long years in space, his reading, and his experiences on other worlds.

  The world was similar in size to their lost Terra, but almost all the large continents were heavily forested. The seas were smaller and shallower, with water that shaded from a pale green to a greenish black; indicating the water depth by the darker or lighter color, Storm and the Captain agreed.

  The coasts were rocky, with high tide lines in some areas marked strongly by heaps of debris that appeared to have been flung much further inland that the ordinary tides that they saw would normally have carried such items. These suggested the possibility that the storms on this world could be ferocious at times. Logan was itching to get down to a coast to inspect that flotsam. He had a feeling some of those bits could prove really interesting.

  They met regularly each evening over dinner, to talk about what they’d found, what they hoped for or thought possible, and—endlessly—when they should risk a landing. Storm held out on that for two days over the original five, but finally every possibility anyone could think up had been concluded and the conclusion, so far as the world itself was concerned, was good.

  “Air that is close enough to ours for us to breathe it. A bit light on oxygen, which may explain Prauo’s larger lung capacity. The gravity is acceptable.” Storm gave a short chuckle. “I’d say close to Earth-normal, but since Arzor is a few percent up on that, Lereyne is down, and several other human-settled planets differ quite strongly, Earth-normal has less rigid meaning nowadays. Let’s just say that we’ll manage quite well.”

  “What about the radiation?” Laris asked.

  “I ran a battery of extrapolations. We’d be fine down there for six months or less. After that we could begin having medical problems. If I was the Patrol, I’d limit ship crews to visits of no more than six weeks per six months.”

  “Did you find out more about the possible population?” Logan was curious. He’d searched by scanner and instrument and found very little evidence of buildings or civilization.

  “Not a lot.” Storm looked resigned. “There appear to be around one million of the pairs of feline and humanoid. They’re scattered all over that one big, heavily-forested continent in the southern hemisphere. They appear in small groups, ranging from five or six pairs up to twenty-seven or twenty-eight. There are a large number of the smaller groups.

  “I think they have some forms of machinery. I’ve separated out the signatures of electricity and some sort of small motors. I could be wrong, but that’s how I read what the scanners tell me. The radiation is lower over that continent, which may be why the people survived, or they may have moved there for that reason. But apart from ruins in a number of places, most of them on the other continent, the scanners can find no sign of any really large artificial habitats.”

  Tani nodded. “That’s all any of us could find: just ruins. Maybe they live in caves or dens or something. I wondered, Storm, could it be that they were so scared or horrified by what the war did that they became anti-tech?”

  “It isn’t impossible, or even unlikely. Or it could also be that any concentration of them is painful mentally, or dangerous physically, for some reason.”

  “In other words,” Logan caught up the discussion, “the only way we have of finding out anything more from now on is to land.”

  Storm saw the gazes of Tani and Logan fixed on him. Prauo looked at him imploringly. Storm failed to notice that Laris was silent, merely regarding him with a blank expression. He turned to Captain D’Argeis. “What do you think?”

  “I think they’re right. It’s time to decide.”

  “Then we land.” He endured a back-pounding from Logan while Tani hugged him. “We don’t take any chances. I’ve looked at the scanner specifications and with the density of trees here we can’t use the mobile scanners very effectively as scouts. So, Tani, it looks as if you’ll have your first experience of using your team for the original purpose for which they were bred.”

  He considered that briefly. “We’ll send out Mandy first. Go into full link with her and relay whatever she sees. If there’s nothing to be wary about after that, we’ll send out Minou and Ferrare to scout the immediate area. Ho and Hing leave with them to check out vegetation.”

  “But if everything is okay after that we can come out?” Logan was shifting from foot to foot.

  Storm nodded. “Yes,” he said shortly. He’d done his best. If nothing dangerous had shown up by then he wouldn’t be able to hold them back any longer, anyway.

  He wasn’t their superior. They just tended to look to him for leadership, but he had no right to give orders. In that situation a wise man wasn’t inclined to become arbitrary. Better to agree where possible and keep control. With the definite prospect of action, though, he found the others would be quite ready to wait and observe. Their input was required anyhow to choose a landing site first.

  “Put down in a clearing,” Logan suggested. “Some of them should be big enough to take the ship. That’s if we can drop the ship straight in. Those trees are tall.”

  Storm felt a twinge of unease at the thought. “I’m not one hundred percent happy about doing that.”

  “Why?” Tani questioned. “Do you think it’ll be too difficult bringing the ship in?”

  “N-n-no.” Ah. He had caught the memory that was making him uneasy. “No. But on one of the Xik worlds there were clearings like that. They’d dug underground depots with roofs that could be slid back in a second.”

  Laris stared. “You think the clearings could be the roofs of Prauo’s people’s homes?”

  “I don’t know, but would you want to find out by our dropping a ship on one?”

  Both she and Prauo shared a horrified mental picture of what would happen to anyone underneath as the Lady rode a tail of superheated air straight down to land on top of them. She shivered. “I don’t think we should take the chance.”

  Captain D’Argeis had been running the scanner along the sea coast. “What about here?” He pointed to a clear picture showing an area of flattish rock and hard-packed pebbles.

  “The ship’s landing would fuse all that into a solid foundation. It’s well above the tide mark, judging by the debris lower down on the beach, but it’s a perfect spot for us to take on water we can purify and solid material we can use to replace fuel.

  Storm studied the site carefully, then nodded. “It looks good to me. Does anyone disagree? No? Then let’s make preparations for landing.”

  In the event the landing was neat and uncomplicated. Captain D’Argeis dropped the ship down cautiously, slowing as they neared the ground until they dropped the final few feet and all could feel the ship settle into her ground-side weight with a thump. A quick inspection via the instruments and scanners found they were fin-down on an area fused hard by the landing and precisely where they’d hoped to be.

  For the next hour they took turns to survey the immediate landscape for anything interesting, but saw neither movements nor anything suspicious.

  “All right,” Storm decided. “We’ll tak
e the next step. Let Mandy out.” Mandy flew free as soon as the small crew door was opened. Tani, sitting comfortably in a recliner and in full link with the paraowl, reported busily as Mandy overflew the terrain.

  “Trees, clearings, more trees. Ugh. Mandy!”

  “What?”

  “She ate a moth or a butterfly, some insect. I hope she’s okay.”

  “She should be. The scanners indicate the same carbon-base as Terran edibles, and Mandy was enhanced to make suitable food choices,” Storm reassured her.

  “Trees and more trees. You know, that’s all there seems to be. Trees, clearings, and trees again.” Her voice changed. “A path!”

  “A road?” Laris was hopeful.

  “No, a footpath, not even straight, so it could have been made by animals. There’s another one. Storm? I think most of them link clearings. I wonder why?”

  “No idea, but we may find out eventually. It could be that animals spend time in the clearings regularly for some reason. That’d explain why the trails link them. Then again, it could be like the Xik world, and the people here have homes underground. Keep going. Swing in a big circle then bring her in again. We don’t want to tire her too much this first flight.”

  Mandy drifted in to swoop through the door an hour later, weary but satisfied. This was a pleasant world to the paraowl. The flying insects were tasty, the trees had good branches to sit on, and the air was sweet. So far as Mandy was concerned, her friends should all come out and enjoy the forest with her.

  Logan went in search of Laris, who’d gone to read in her room. “We’ll be eating in two hours.”

  “Yes, thanks.” Her voice was gruff.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. I just want some time on my own.”

  Logan was slightly hurt but Prauo was there. If there was anything really wrong the big cat would tell someone. “Okay.” He left Laris to return to her brooding. She’d hardly noticed his arrival and departure.

  In the beginning it had all been an adventure, inheriting money and a ship, then fitting out the ship and looking for Prauo’s world. Now they’d found it and found, too, that there were as many as a million duos like her. She was scared. No, terrified.