“They’ve been hunted,” Marek said.
“Yes. But not recently, and I think not often. Maybe only in summer, when people come here. I’d need to be a lot closer to get a good shot with my pistol and the ammo I have.”
“I could hit one at that distance,” Marek said. “Maybe not a clean kill, but wound it badly enough we could catch it. If you’d allow—just two rounds, at the most.”
“We don’t even know what they are,” Ky said. “Some kind of deer, maybe?”
“Whatever they are, they’re probably good eating,” he said. “I wonder if they’d get used to us, enough to let us get really close.”
“I hope so,” Ky said. “Because they’re the best food source I see.” She glanced at the sky; clouds had thickened overhead, and even as they stood there, the first flakes of snow fell. “We’ll go back, see what we can find in those other buildings.”
Snow fell more heavily as they walked, and by the time they were past the first hut and nearing the generator shed, they could hardly see their way. “We need more ropes,” Marek said. “Someone could get lost in this.”
Ky said nothing. She could think of many things they needed more of—water, food, fuel for the generator, a working communications device other than her cranial ansible. They made it safely inside and set about cooking their boring and meager supper.
“If I had my father’s rifle,” Sergeant McLenard said, “we’d have had fresh meat tonight. Easy shot. Admiral, did I hear Master Sergeant say you had a firearm?”
“Pistol,” Ky said. “Optimized for short-range, in-ship use.”
“Ah. Not as easy then. Too bad. But still, if we could get close enough—”
“When the weather settles, I’ll certainly try,” Ky said.
They woke to blinding blue-and-white beauty. Ky squinted against the glare. Right in front of the hut door, some animals had left their mark: droppings and footprints. Not the hooved and antlered creatures but something with paws, and droppings that looked like those of big…
“Dogs,” McLenard said, squatting down to look closely. “Really big ones. You can tell dogs by the arrangement of toes.”
“Can you tell how many?”
“Six at least. This sun is so bright… we could get snow blindness; we should go back in and make eyeshades.” Inside he spoke softly to Ky. “We shouldn’t go out alone at night. They might not be dogs, but wolves. There are some in the northern forests, but these tracks are of larger ones.”
“Do wolves attack people?”
“Rarely, there. Deer, mostly. But here—depends how hungry they are, I imagine.”
With eyeshades in place, they went back out. Ky soon spotted the herd they’d seen before, grazing along the margin of the runway.
“Someone had to bring them,” Inyatta said. “Whoever terraformed the place. I never studied Origin biology, but my guess is they’re from Old Earth. And if someone put grazers here, they’d have put their natural predator or some equivalent here as well.”
“They’d have to be from the time people first got into space,” Marek said. “Whatever was left on the home planet by then. I mean, we’re told it was in bad shape, many species already gone.”
Suddenly all the animals jerked up their heads and stared—not at the humans, but in a different direction. They moved, not in a panic, but in a group. Ky looked where they had looked. Something moved, just visible behind the nearest rise. “What’s that?”
“I have no—”
A tall shape rose into view, turning toward them. Another followed, and another.
“That’s not anything I ever saw in a picture of Old Earth animals,” Inyatta said. “Unless they had shaggy elephants. And elephants were gone by the first colonizations. Besides not fitting on spaceships.”
Ky watched as the animals trudged nearer. Much bigger than any animal she’d seen, like pictures of elephants, only covered with long coarse hair. Ears like ragged flaps of thick woolly blanket, dramatic tusks gleaming in the sun, long noses hanging down in front. Despite their size, they moved with surprising grace. The leader stopped. That long nose—trunk, she remembered, was the name for it—lifted, pointing at them.
“They’re downwind of us; they’re getting our scent,” Inyatta said as the rest lifted their trunks.
“We’ll go back now,” Ky said. She wished they had real weapons. Her pistol would be no use against something that size.
In the next hour, all the animals wandered away, the deer-things in one direction and the hairy elephants in another. Ky turned her attention to the other buildings, assigning a group to examine each. The two that looked like hangars had huge sliding doors chained together, the chains locked with a simple padlock for which they had no key. “Bolt cutters would work,” Sergeant Chok said. “If we had any.” The doors did have small windows, one each; they brushed off the snow and looked into the dim empty space of the first building, hoping to see barrels of fuel for the generator, even aircraft. “Something in the back corners, maybe, but until we get the doors open I can’t tell what it might be,” Chok said. The next had some machines inside, but they couldn’t tell, in the dimness, what they were.
That left the building beside the tower. Only a small part of it showed; it ran straight into the rise behind it. They had already tried the Rector’s code on the door, but it didn’t work. Was Marek right? Could the door be rigged to harm anyone who tried to force it open? Marek’s group was still over at the more distant hangar. It was her decision. Frustrated, she asked for suggestions.
“There’s a crowbar in the generator shed,” Ennisay said. He jogged off and came back with it. “There’s a sledgehammer, too, and an axe and other tools. I found ’em this morning when I filled the generator’s fuel tank and knocked over those boards stacked at the end.”
“You could have mentioned that before we went to the first hangar,” Chok said. “We might’ve been able to break the chain.”
“Never mind,” Ky said. “Let’s get this open. Ennisay, go back and bring all the tools you find.”
In the end it took well over an hour to destroy the lock, using the crowbar, sledge, and a pick, but they finally wrenched the now-damaged door open, revealing a small square chamber. “It may never lock again,” Sergeant Cosper said, with satisfaction.
An overhead light came on when Ky stepped inside. Rough concrete floor, concrete walls, large enough for all six of them. To the left was another door, closed, with a pushbar on it and a sign: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Ky walked over and pushed the bar; the door, thick and heavy, swung open silently. Beyond, lights came on in a sequence, revealing a corridor slanting down into dimness. “Sergeant McLenard, stay in the antechamber. You can close the outer door, but don’t try to lock it. Chok, Ennisay, you’re with me.” She started down the slope; the others followed. As she went, lights turned on ahead of her. After about ten meters, the corridor turned right and continued downward. Ky checked to be sure there were no secret doors that might shut behind them. After another ten meters, the corridor turned right again.
“You have any idea how far down we’ve come?” asked Chok.