If he got back.
We picked up two baskets of dirt in his shoulder yoke and carried them with him as he went to inspect the dam. That was his greatest hope. When it was completed, they would have electricity to spare—electricity to power the ultraviolet lamps, still stored in the landing craft's hold, that would turn the feeble, pale seedlings into sturdy crops. There was nothing wrong with this soil! No matter how many got sick, even if they died, it was not the soil's fault; Feng had rubbed it between finger and thumb, sniffed it, turned a spadeful over and gazed wonderingly at the crawling things that inhabited it. They were strange, but they meant the soil was fertile. What it did not have was proper sunlight. That they would have to make, as soon as the dam was built; and then, Feng swore, they would produce crops that any collective in Shensi province would envy.
It was raining as he started back, slow, fat, warm drops that ran down Feng's back under his cotton jacket. Another good thing: plenty of water. Not only was it good for the plants, but it kept the spores down, and Feng was highly suspicious of them as the source of the sickness. Even through the clouds he could feel the warmth of Kung Fu-tze. It was not visible, but it gave the clouds the angry, ruddy look of sky over a distant great city. It would stay that way until the air mass that carried the clouds moved away; then there would be that distant hot coal and the purple-black sky with its stars.
Feng took the forest path back to the headquarters, checking the traps. One held two multilegged creatures like land-going lobsters, one dead, the other eating it. Feng dumped them both and did not reset the trap. There was no point in it. They were too shorthanded to bother with more animal specimens than they had already. Three of the traps were sprung but empty, and one was simply missing. Feng muttered to himself irritably. There was a lot they didn't know about the fauna of this fern forest. For one thing, what had stolen the trap? Most of the creatures they had seen were arthropods, buglike or crustaceanlike, none of them bigger than a man's hand. Bigger ones existed. The sentients in the settlement across the bay were proof of that—they were the size of a man. But the wild ones, if they existed, stayed out of sight. And there was something that lived in the tall, woody ferns. One could hear them, even catch a glimpse of them from time to time, but no one in the expedition had yet caught or even photographed one. It stood to reason that if there were small creatures there would be bigger ones to eat them, but where were they? And what would they look like? Wolf teeth, cat talons, crab claws . . .? Feng abandoned that line of thought; it was not reassuring. To be sure, the local fauna would no doubt find humans as indigestible as the humans had found the local fauna.
But they might not realize that in time.
It began to look as though humans would not find anything at all to eat on Klong. The biologist had been reduced to taking samples of microorganisms from each member of the party and culturing them on plates of agar. It was no longer possible to use laboratory animals. They had all died. And one by one he tried every promising-looking bit of plant or animal they brought him, dropping a broth of it onto the agar, and one by one each of them destroyed the darkening circle of growing bacteria. They were perfect antibiotics, except for one thing: they would have killed the patient more quickly than any disease.
Nevertheless. Ring the trees. Let them die. Ditch those soggy pastures. . . . But the trees did not appear to have a proper bark. In fact they weren't really trees. Slash and burn might not work here. But something would! One way or another, the fields of Child of Kung would prosper!
Feng became aware that his name was being called.
He turned away from the place where the last trap had been, trotting back toward the settlement. As he approached the beach and the fronds thinned, he saw one of the walking casualties waving in excitement.
Feng arrived out of breath. "What, what?" he grumbled.
"A radio message from the long-nose! It is a distress signal, Hua-tse."
"Tchah! What did he say?"
"He said nothing, Hua-tse. It is the automatic distress call. I tried to raise him, but there was no response."
"Of course," snarled Feng, gripping his hands together in anger. Another thing to admit to before the commune. Two members of the party endangered, perhaps lost, because he had foolishly permitted the division of their forces. Two irreplaceable persons—a hillman and a Hispanic, to be sure; nevertheless, persons. Their absence would be serious. And not just the persons. One of their three television cameras. The radio transponder. The precious plastic that had gone into making the skin of the boat. There was just so much of that. They had squandered a great deal on the bubbles to house the sick, the equipment, all their sparse possessions. That was foolishness, too; the fern forest was a limitless supply of woody stems for frames, fronds for ceilings and walls. In this drenched warmth they needed no more than that, but he had weakly permitted the blowing of bubble huts instead of using what nature provided.
Could they build another boat? It was by no means sure that there was plastic enough even for the hull and the sails; and when it was gone, where would they get more? Who could he send? Of their original eleven, one was dead, two were missing, and four were sick. Was it not even more foolish to further divide their forces, to attempt to repair the damage the first foolishness had cost? And what could they do if they did in fact build another boat and sail across the bay? That which had happened to the hillman and the Hispanic could just as well happen to whoever went after them. They had very little in the way of weapons, no more to spare than Dulla and the other man had taken with them in the first place, and little enough good that had done them—
"Are we going, Hua-tse?"
His attention was jarred back. "What?"
"Are we going to try to help our comrades?"
Feng gripped his hands tighter. "With what?" he demanded.
SIX
ON A PLANET that has no night the days are endless, Danny Dalehouse reflected, a meter down into the Klongan soil and at least that much more to go. His muscles told him he had been digging this latrine for at least eight hours. The discouragingly tiny spoil heap beside him contradicted them, and the ruddy glow that backlighted the clouds overhead offered no help. Latrine digging was not what he had signed on for. But it was something that had to be done, and he was clearly the most superfluous member of the party in line to do it—only why did it have to take so long?
They had been on the planet only three days (not that there were any days, but the old habits died hard), and already the pleasure was wearing thin. The parts that weren't actively unpleasant like digging latrines were a bore. The parts that weren't already boring were scary, like the madly violent thunderstorm that had blown away their first tent only hours after landing, or irritatingly uncomfortable, like the itchy rashes they had all developed and the stomach troubles that had made the latrines so vital. And to make it worse, they seemed to have company. Kappelyushnikov had come swearing in Russian to report that a third tactran vessel had climbed down its charge state to orbit Klong. Greasies, no doubt. That meant everybody in the world was now represented on Klong. What price the solitary pioneer?
His spade struck air.
Danny lost his balance, spun, and came down in a fetal crouch into the pit, his face almost in the hole that had unexpectedly opened up. From it came a cool, musty smell. It made him think of unopened cellars and the cages of pet mice, and he heard quick, furtive movements.
Snakes? He rejected the thought as soon as he formed it. That was an earthly fear, not appropriate on Klong. But whatever it was could easily be even more deadly than a nest of rattlers. He leaped with prudent speed out of the trench and yelled, "Morrissey!"
The biologist was only a few meters away, sealing plant samples pickled in preservative into plastic baggies. "What's the matter?"
"I hit a hole, maybe a tunnel. You want to take a look?"
Morrissey looked down at the purplish seed pod in his forceps and back at Dalehouse's trench, torn. Then he said, "Sure, only I ha
ve to stow these away first. Don't dig any more till I finish."
That was a welcome order, and Dalehouse accepted it gratefully. He was getting used to taking orders. Even as a latrine digger he was subject to instant draft whenever some presently more valuable member of the expedition needed another pair of hands: Harriet to set up her radio, Morrissey to heat-seal his baggies, Sparky Cerbo to locate the canned tomatoes and the kitchen knives that had vanished during the thunderstorm—anyone. Twice already he had had to empty the landing vehicle's chemical toilet into a shallow pit and scrape the soil of Klong over it, because the rest of the crew couldn't wait for him to finish the job they were preventing him from finishing.
It was a drag. But he was on Son of Kung! He could smell the strange Klongan smells—cinnamon and mold and cut vegetation and something that was a little like mom's apple pie, but none of them really any of those things. He could see the Klongan landscape—he could see quite a lot of it, a shovelful at a time.
It was what he had expected in an expedition of specialists. Dalehouse was not a cook, not a farmer, not a doctor, not a radio surveyor. He had none of the hypertrophied skills that all the others possessed. He was the expedition's only gener-alist and would stay that way until they made contact with the local sentients and he could employ the communications skills he was advertised to have. Meanwhile he was stoop labor.
The Russian pilot, Kappelyushnikov, was yelling his name. "You, Danny, you come have drink. Put back sweat!"
"Why not?" Danny was pleased to notice that Gappy was holding aloft a glass containing a centimeter of water, grinning broadly. He had finally got the still to working. Dalehouse swallowed the few drops and wiped his lips appreciatively, then his slippery brow. Kappelyushnikov was right enough about that. In the dank, humid air they were both covered with sweat. The still was powered with a small oil-spray flame, which made it like burning hundred-dollar bills to operate. Later it would be moved to the lakeshore and driven by solar power, but right now they needed water they could drink.
"Very good, is it?" Kappelyushnikov demanded. "You don't feel faint, like is some poison? Okay. Then we go bring a drink to Gasha."
The translator had given herself command of the setting-up phase of the camp, and no one had resisted; she was spending hours over her radio trying to make sense of the communications, but she claimed the other half of her mind was able to keep track of everyone's duty assignments. She might have been right, Dalehouse thought. She was the least agreeable person on the expedition, and no one particularly wanted to disagree with her. She was also close to the least physically attractive, with stringy black hair and an expression of permanent disappointment. But she was grudgingly grateful for the water.
"Thank you for getting the still going. And the latrine, of course, Danny. Now if the two of you—"
"I'm not finished," Danny corrected. "Jim wants to check out a hole first. Is there anything new on the radio?"
Harriet smiled with closed lips. "We have a message from the Peeps."
"About that guy who's stuck?"
"Oh, no. Take a look." She handed over a facsimile film that said:
The People's Republics extend the hand of friendship to the second expedition to arrive on Child of Kung. Through peaceful cooperation we will achieve a glorious triumph for all mankind. We invite you to join us for the celebration of the fifteen hundredth anniversary of the writings of Confucius, after whom our star was named.
Dalehouse was perplexed. "Isn't that some kind of a winter holiday?"
"You are very well informed today, Dalehouse. It is in December. Our instructor called it the Confucian answer to Hanukkah, which is of course the Jewish answer to Christmas."
He frowned, trying to remember—already, it was becoming hard. "But this isn't even October yet."
"You are very swift indeed, Danny. So translate that, won't you?" requested the translator.
"I don't know. Are they saying something like, 'Don't bother us for a couple of months'?"
"Is more like to drop dead," the pilot put in.
"I don't think so. They aren't being unfriendly," Harriet said, recapturing the fax and squinting at it. "Notice that they referred to Kung Fu-tze by the latinized form of the name. That's a pretty courteous thing for them to do. Still— " She frowned. At best Harriet's eyes were always faintly popped, like a rabbit's, because of the heavy contacts she wore. Now her lips were pursed like a rabbit's too. "On the other hand, they were careful to point out we're the second expedition."
"Meaning they're the first. But what's the difference? They can't make territorial claims because they got here ahead of us; that's all spelled out in the UN accords. Nobody gets to claim any more than a circle fifty kilometers around a self-sustaining base."
"But they're pointing out that they could have."
Gappy was bored with the protocol. "Any love letters from the Oilies, Gasha?"
"Just a received-and-acknowledged. And now, about that latrine—"
"In a minute, Harriet. What about the Pak who's stranded?"
"He's still stranded. You want to hear the latest tapes?" She didn't wait for an answer; she knew what it would be. She plugged in a coil of tape and played it for them. It was the Peeps' automatic distress signal: every thirty seconds a coded SOS, followed by a five-second beep for homing. Between signals the microphone stayed open, transmitting whatever sounds were coming in.
"I've cut out most of the deadwood. Here's the man's voice.
Neither Dalehouse nor Kappelyushnikov included Urdu among their skills. "What is he say?" asked the pilot.
"Just asking for help. But he's not in good shape. Most of the time he doesn't talk at all, and we get this stuff."
What came out of the tape player was a little like an impossibly huge cricket's chirp and quite a lot like a Chinese New Year festival in which Australian aborigines were playing their native instruments.
"What the hell is that?" Danny demanded.
"That," she said smugly, "is also language. I've been working on it, and I've sorted out a few key concepts. They are in some sort of trouble, I'm not sure what."
"Not as much as Pak is," grunted Kappelyushnikov. "Come, Danny, is time we go to work."
"Yes, that latrine is—"
"Not on latrine! Other things in life than shit, Gasha."
She paused, glowering at him. Kappelyushnikov was almost as dispensable as Danny Dalehouse. Maybe more so. After the expedition was well established, Dalehouse's skills would come into play, or so they all hoped, in making contact with sentient life. The pilot's main skill was piloting. A spacecraft by choice. If pressed, a clamjet, a racing vessel, or a canoe. None of those existed on Klong.
But what he had that was always useful was resourcefulness. "Gasha, dear," he coaxed, "is not possible. Your Morrissey still has his micetraps in the trench. And besides, now we have water, I have to make wasserstoff. "
"Hydrogen," Harriet corrected automatically. "Hydrogen? What in the world do you want with hydrogen?"
"So I will have a job, dear Gasha. To fly."
"You're going to fly with hydrogen?"
"You understand me, Gasha," the Russian beamed. He pointed. "Like them."
Danny glanced up, then ran for the tent and the one remaining decent pair of binoculars—two pairs of them, too, had turned up missing after the thunderstorm.
There they were, the windblown flock of balloonists, high and near the clouds. They were at least two kilometers away, too far to hear the sounds of their song, but in the glasses Dalehouse could see them clearly enough. In the purplish sky they stood out in their bright greens and yellows. It was true, Dalehouse verified. Some of them were self-luminous, like fireflies! Traceries of veins stood out over the great five-meter gasbag of the largest and nearest of them, flickering with racing sparks of bioluminescence.
"Damn," he snarled. "What are you saying, Gappy? Do you think you can fly up there?"
"With greatest of ease, Danny," the pilot said solemnly.
"Is only a matter of making bubbles and putting wasserstoff in them. Then we fly."
"You've got a deal," said Dalehouse firmly. "Tell me what to do and I'll do it. I'll—wait a minute! What's that?"
The balloon swarm was scattering, and behind it, coming through the place it was vacating, was something else, something that beat with a rhythmic flash of light.
The sound reached him then. "It's a helicopter!" he cried in astonishment.
The chopper pilot was short, dark, and Irish. Not only Irish, but repatriated to the UK from eleven years in Houston, Texas. He and Morrissey hit it off immediately. "Remember Bismarck's?" "Ever been to La Carafe?" "Been there? I lived there!" When they were all gathered he said:
"Glad to meet you all. Name's Terry Boyne, and I bring you official greetings from our expedition, that's the Organization of Fuel-Exporting Nations, to yours, that's you. Nice place you've got here," he went on appreciatively, glancing around. "We're down toward the Heat Pole—ask my opinion, you folks picked a better spot. Where we are it's wind you wouldn't believe and scorching hot besides, if you please."
"So why'd you pick it?" asked Morrissey.
"Oh," said Boyne, "we do what our masters tell us. Isn't it about the same with you? And what they told me to do today was to come over and make a good-neighbor call."