He released the safety harness and swiveled his seat around. Then he walked to the back of the sled, rummaging among the supplies.
“Lights, we’ll need lights, ropes, food, water, recording devices, specimen kit,” he muttered as his deft movements filled two backpacks. “Boots? Have you on proper boots . . ah, those will do, indeed they will. Sallah, you are always well prepared.” He compounded his inadvertent injury to her feelings by one of his more ingratiating smiles.
Once again, Sallah shook her head over her whimsical fancy, which had managed to settle on one of the most elusive males of her acquaintance. Of course, she consoled herself, anything easily had is rarely worth having. She landed the sled at the base of the towering precipice, as near to the long narrow mouth of the cave as she could.
“Pitons, grappling hook – that first slab looks about five meters above the scree. Here you are, Sallah!”
He handed her pack over, waiting only long enough to see her grab a strap before he released the canopy, jumped down, and was striding toward the towering buttress. With a resigned shrug, Sallah flipped on beacon, comm unit, and recorder for incoming messages, fastened her jacket, settled the rather hefty pack on her back, and followed him, closing the canopy behind her.
He scrambled up the scree and stood with one palm flat against the slab, looking up its imposing and awesome spread, his face rapt with wonder. Gently, as in a caress, he stroked the stone before he began to look right and left, assessing how best to climb to the cave. He dashed her an ingenuous smile, acknowledging her presence and assuming her willingness.
“Straight up. Not much of a climb with pitons.”
The climb proved strenuous. Sallah could have used a breather as she crawled onto the ledge, but there was the cave opening, and nothing was going to deter Tarvi from immediate entrance and a leisurely inspection. Ah, well, it was just 1300 hours. They had time in hand. She rolled to her feet, unlatching the handlight from her belt just a few seconds after he had done the same, and was at his side as he peered into the opening.
“Lords, gods, and minor deities!”
His invocation was a mere whisper, solemn and awed, a susurrous echo. The vast initial cavern was larger than the cargo hold of the Yokohama. Sallah made that instant comparison, remembering how eerie that immense barren space had seemed on her last trip, and in the next second, she wondered what the cavern would look like occupied. It would make a spectacular great hall, in the tradition of medieval times on Earth – only even more magnificent.
Tarvi held his breath, hesitantly extending his still-dark handlight, as if reluctant to illuminate the majesty of the cavern. She heard his intake of breath, in the manner of one steeling himself to commit sacrilege, and then the light came on.
Wings whirred as shadows made silent sinuous departures to the darker recesses. They both ducked as the winged denizens departed in flight lines just clearing their heads, though the cave entrance was at least four meters high. Ignoring the exodus, Tarvi moved reverently into the vast space.
“Amazing,” he murmured as he shined the light up and judged that the shell of the outer wall above them was barely two meters thick. “A very thin face.”
“Some bubble,” Sallah said, feeling impious and wanting to regain her equilibrium after her initial awe. “Look, you could carve a staircase in that,” she said, her light picking out a slanting foot of rock that rose to a ledge where a large darkness indicated yet another cave.
She spoke to inattentive ears, for Tarvi was already prowling about determining the width of the entrance and the dimensions of the cave. She hurried after him.
The first chamber of the cave complex measured an awesome fifty-seven meters deep at its widest, tapering at either end to forty-six meters on the left and forty-two meters on the right. Along the back wall, there were innumerable irregular openings at random levels some were on the ground level leading into apparent tunnel complexes, most of which were high enough to admit Tarvi’s tall frame with considerable head space; others, like great dead eyes, peered down from higher up the inside wall. Entranced as Tarvi was by their discovery, he was a trained scientific observer. With Sallah’s aid he began to draft an accurate plan of the main chamber, the openings of secondary ones, and the tunnel complexes leading inward. He penetrated each to a depth of a hundred meters, roped to a nervous Sallah who kept glancing back at the cave’s opening for the reassuring sight of the waning day.
His rough notes were refined by the light of the gas fire on which Sallah cooked their evening meal. Tarvi had elected to camp far enough into the cave to be protected from the stiff breeze that blew down the valley, and far enough to the left so as not to interfere with the habits of the cave’s natural residents. Later, a low flame from the protected gas fire would discourage most of Pern’s wildlife from investigating the intruders.
Somehow, in the cave Sallah did feel like an intruder, though she had not previously been bothered by that notion. The place was truly awe-inspiring.
Tarvi had gone down to the sled to bring up more drafting tools and the folding table over which he had hunched almost immediately. With no comment, he had eaten the stew she had carefully prepared, absently handing back his plate for a second helping.
Sallah was of two minds about Tarvi’s concentration. On the one hand, she was a good cook and liked to have her skill acknowledged. On the other hand, she was as glad that Tarvi was distracted. One of the pharmacists had given her a pinch of what she swore was a potent indigenous aphrodisiac; Sallah had used it to season Tarvi’s share. She did not need it herself, not with her mind and body vibrating to his presence and their solitude. But she was beginning to wonder if the aphrodisiac was strong enough to overcome Tarvi’s enchantment with the cave. Just her luck to get him to herself for a night or two and then have him be totally enthralled by Dear Old Mother Earth in Pernese costume. But she had not bided her time to waste a sterling opportunity. She could wait. All night. And tomorrow. She had enough of the joy dust to use the next night, too. Maybe it just took a while to act.
“It is truly magnificent in its proportions, Sallah. Here, look!” He straightened his torso, arching his back against his cramped muscles, and Sallah came up behind him, knelt, and considerately began to knead his taut shoulder muscles as she peered over his shoulder.
The two-dimensional sketch had been deftly drawn with bold lines: he had added back, front, and side elevations, truthfully ending them where his measurements ended. But that only made the cavern more imposing and mysterious.
“What a fort it would have been in the olden days!” He looking toward the black interior, his wide liquid eyes shining, his face alight as imagination altered the chamber before him. “Why, it would have housed whole tribes. Kept them secure for years from invasion. There’s fresh water, you understand, down the third left-hand tunnel. Of course, the valley itself would be defensible and this the protected inner hold, with that daunting slab to defeat climbers. There are no less than eighteen different exits from the main chamber.”
She had worked her hands up the column of his neck, then across the trapezius muscles, and down to the deltoids, massaging firmly but letting her fingers linger in a movement that she had found immensely effective on other occasions when she had wished to relax a man.
“Ah, how kind you are, Sallah, to know where the muscles bind.” He twisted slightly, not to evade her seeking, kneading fingers but to guide them to the sorest points. He pushed the low table to one side so that his arms could fall naturally to his lap as he rotated his head. “There’s a point, eleventh vertebrae . . .” he suggested, and she dutifully found the knot of muscle and smoothed it expertly. He sighed like a lithe dark feline being stroked.