“That’s the Bureau’s radio beacon,” the pilot said, pointing at a squat yellow pyramid which clung like a limpet to the rocky surface a hundred metres away. He was a competent-looking boy with fine gold hair and a bored manner which, in view of his extreme youth, Harben thought to have been cultivated.
“You dropped square on to it, didn’t you?” Harben said, testing his theory. “Nice flying.”
The pilot looked gratified for an instant, then got back into his vocational stride. “It’s ten minutes off local noon. The shuttle will be back here at noon six days from now – that’s giving you ten minutes more than the charter called for.”
“Generous.”
“We’re like that, Mr Harben.” The boy went on to explain the cost penalties involved if they failed to rendezvous promptly, and to check that their chronometers were properly set to cope with Hassan IV’s day of almost thirty hours.
“The shuttle will be here on time,” he concluded. “You can be assured of that – though I don’t know if I’ll be the pilot.”
“Oh, I hope it is you.” Sandy said, joining in Harben’s game. “I was really impressed. David, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.” The pilot was unable to hold back a wide smile. “I have to go now. Good hunting!”
“Thank you, David.” They picked up their field packs, retired to a safe distance and watched the shuttle rise vertically for a few metres before vectoring its thrust and swooping upwards into the clouds. It was lost to view long before the irregular, surging echoes from its jets had subsided, but it was not until the final whisper had faded – dissolving their perceptual link with the rest of mankind – that Harben became fully aware of the planet on which he was standing.
Visibility was surprisingly good, considering the amount of moisture in the air, and he could see complex perspectives of grey hills, interlocking wedges of vegetation, and bodies of water which were leaden, black or soft-glowing silver depending on the direction of the light. The temperature was in the region of ten degrees and a breeze was blowing steadily from the east, laden with ozone and the smell of mosses and wet rock. There were no birds, nor any immediately visible signs of animal life – though Harben knew the area was the haunt of one very special creature, the one whose killing technique he had been commissioned to film.
“What a nice boy,” Sandy said lightly.
“He’s gone,” Harben reminded her, gently making the point that it would be best to put the ways of Earth behind them and concentrate on successfully interacting with the new environment. Their marriage covenant had only two months to run and, although he had repeatedly sworn to her that he intended to renew, he suspected she did not fully believe him and had come along on the current expedition with some idea of cementing a bond. He would have been pleased had it not been for the fact that a previous team had disappeared without a trace while filming ET Cephalopodus subterr. petraform. His attempts to persuade her not to come had been resisted on grounds he believed were emotional rather than logical, and in the end he had assented on condition that she bore a full working load, both mental and physical.
“Let’s go,” Harben said. “With any luck we’ll find a good site in less than an hour, then we can eat.”
Sandy shouldered her pack willingly and they set off in a direction which was virtually due north by their compasses. Harben could actually see the point he was aiming for – a notch in an east-west rampart about eight kilometres away – but he made a careful note of the bearing so that they could return in the foggy conditions which were common throughout the region. In keeping with the agreement that Sandy was not to be sheltered in any way, he insisted that they carry their energy guns at the ready – hers set for a slightly divergent beam which would compensate for any lack of expertise, his own adjusted for maximum-intensity convergence at five hundred metres. There was no evidence to suggest that the Visex team of two years earlier had encountered a fate more sinister than, say, falling into one of the numerous underground rivers, but Harben had agreed with his employers that they should take as few chances as possible.
Sandy and he continued north, zigzagging on tilted platforms of sedimentary rock, and gradually reached a softer terrain where the tricky shale gave way to a blackish sand in which thrived shrubs and ground-hugging creepers. In some places the surface was infested with saltatorial insects which leaped from underfoot with audible pops, causing Sandy to flinch away from them. Harben assured her their metallized field suits were proof against much larger creatures, and after a short time she began to take his word for it. She was a travel journalist whose previous experience had been on resort worlds, and he was relieved to see how quickly she adapted to Hassan IV.
Presently they drew near the natural gateway to the north and, as he had hoped to do, Harben found signs of ET Alcelaphini, the gnu-like animals which were the principal prey of petraform. The tracks fanned outwards from the notch in the encircling cliffs and dispersed into the rocky tableland from which Harben and Sandy had just emerged.
“This is good,” Harben said. “I think we’re on a main migration route to the south.”
Sandy glanced around her. “Shouldn’t we have seen some of them?”
“No – that’s the whole point. The females slow down a lot when they’re getting ready to drop their young, and they and their mates become super-cautious. That could be why our friend petraform evolved the way he did.”
An expression of distaste appeared briefly on Sandy’s classically feminine features. “Don’t refer to those things as our friends, please.”
“But they’re going to bring us a lot of money,” Harben protested, smiling. “And that’s the second friendliest thing anybody can do for you.”
“They’re horrible.”
“Nothing in nature is horrible.” Harben raised his compact binoculars and felt a pang of excitement as he scanned the flat ground immediately south of the pass. The angles were too acute for good observation, and his view was obscured by boulders and vegetation, but he thought he could see no less than three horseshoe formations of grey rocks. They were like miniature and incomplete versions of terrestrial Druid circles, each about five metres in diameter. Harben’s pleasure mounted as he counted the stones and confirmed that there were seven in each circle. Most significant of all was the fact that in each case the gap, where the eighth stone should have been, faced due north – in the direction from which the quasi-gnu came every spring in search of the lush pastures needed by their young.
“In fact, everything in God’s garden is lovely,” Harben said.
“What do you mean?”
“I think we’ve hit the jackpot first time. Let’s go – I’m hungry.”
As they approached the circles Harben discovered that the site was even better for his purpose than he had at first supposed. He had four automatic cameras in his pack and right away could see vantage points in the shape of trees and boulders where they could all be hidden and serviced. There was even a small, wind-hewn monolith just to the north of the group of circles which would enable him to get high-angle shots to improve the visual texture of the completed film. He became so absorbed in plotting camera locations that his attention wandered from Sandy and it was only when he noticed she was unconcernedly walking straight ahead that he became alive to the danger.