Nan was quicker than he. “That is good advice, Gappy,” she said, standing up. “I think I will take it for myself.”
“I will escort you,” rumbled Kappelyushnikov. “No, do not disturb self, Danny. I see you are quite tired.”
Ana sighed. “Gospodin Kappelyushnikov,” she scolded, “apart from the fact that I am tired and quite disoriented from all these new experiences, you and I have barely met. I do hope that we will be friends. Please don’t make that difficult by behaving like some Cossack with a peasant maid.”
Gappy looked abashed, then angry. Then he grinned. “Anyushka, you are fine Slavic girl. Yes, we will be friends at once. Later on, perhaps more — but,” he added hastily, “only in proper Soviet style, no premature touching, all right? Now let us all three stroll through pleasant Jemman murk to your tent.”
Ana laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Russian bear! Come, then.” She led the way outside and stood for a moment, glancing around at the quieting camp. The floodlights that marked official “day” were out, but Kung was clear and ruddy in the sky overhead. “I do not know if I can get used to a world where it is never night,” she complained.
“Is severe handicap for certain purposes, yes,” Kappelyushnikov agreed. They climbed the bluff and walked along it toward the female tent area. At the very edge, surrounded by a border of rounded stones in lieu of a lawn, was a tent larger than the others. It already had a flat rock before it stenciled Col. M. Menninger, Commanding.
“Margie’s doing herself well,” Dalehouse commented.
“Is privilege of rank,” said Kappelyushnikov, but he was staring down the beach at the four new ships, one tall and slim, three squat, resting on their landing struts.
“That’s strange, isn’t it?” Dalehouse said. “Those three are quite unlike the others.”
Gappy glanced at him. “You are truly observant, Danny.” But his tone was strange.
“All right, Gappy. What’s the secret?”
“Secret? Simple pilot is not told secrets. But I have eyes, and I can make conjectures.”
“Come on, Gappy. You’re going to tell us your conjecture sooner or later. Why not do it now?”
“Two conjectures,” he corrected. “First, observe shape of three new spacecraft. Imagine sliced in half, forming two little cones each. Then imagine all six cones set on base around perimeter of camp, and the glass removed from those long, narrow ports that are so unnecessary for navigation of space. What have we then?”
“Upside-down cones with unglazed long, narrow ports,” Dalehouse guessed.
“Yes, exactly. Only when installed on defense perimeter we have other name for them. We call them ‘machine-gun emplacements.’ ” He sighed. “I think is triumph of two-faced engineering design, not accident, that this is so.”
“But one can scarcely believe that,” objected Ana. “This is, after all, a peaceable exploration party, not an invading army!”
“Yes, also exactly. Is only coincidence that so many members of peaceable exploration party are also soldiers.”
Both Dalehouse and the girl were silent, studying the landed spaceships. “I would like not to believe you,” said Ana at last. “But perhaps—”
“Wait a minute!” Dalehouse interrupted. “Those three ships — they don’t have any return stage! That’s why they’re so short!”
Kappelyushnikov nodded. “And that is second conjecture,” he added heavily. “Only is not really conjecture. Library of twenty thousand books is not light reading for weekend. Spacecraft that come apart to make forts are not for round trip. Vessels without return-capsule capability are not accident. Total of sum is clear. For many of us, is not intended we ever go back to dear old planet Earth.”
Getting into the Jemman sky again the next day was a victory for Dalehouse, and he did not know how many more of those victories he would have. The day had begun unpromisingly. As soon as the “morning” lights were on he had found a mini-memo on the bench inside his tent door to let him know that, as from 0800 hours that standard day, he was to consider himself under military discipline with the assimilated rank of captain. On the way to breakfast he had passed an orderly carrying two covered trays into Margie’s tent. An orderly! Not even the late Harriet Santori had gone that far. And on the way back past the tent, the Vietnamese colonel had been coming out.
Who Marge Menninger kept in her bed was no concern of his, and all this other military Mickey Mouse was irrelevant to his purpose on Jem. All the same, Dalehouse was not enjoying his flight as much as usual that day.
For one thing, Charlie and his flock were nowhere around — partly because Major Santangelo had insisted they overfly some of the other parts of Jem to bring back intelligence. Mostly because Dalehouse himself was reluctant to have them there, with so many ha’aye’i waiting in the clouds to prey on them. At least he had insisted they stay a full two kilometers away from the Greasy camp; maybe that was enough for safety. Meanwhile, Dalehouse had his lightweight carbine with him, and he was hoping to take out at least a couple of the ha’aye’i before Charlie drifted back. There was already one balloonist in the camp as a sort of combination convalescent and pet, waiting for his ha’aye’i-ripped gasbag to mend enough for flight. Dalehouse didn’t want Charlie to join him.
Trying to look appetizing, he drifted under the base of a low cumulus humilis. It was exactly the sort of place the air-sharks chose for hiding. But if there was one in the cloud it wasn’t hungry just then.
He vented gas and dropped away from the cloud as the updraft began to suck him toward it; if there were ha’aye’i, he wanted to meet them in clear air, not where they could be upon him before he could shoot. A return flow carried him back toward the camp, and he looked down from half a kilometer on a busy scene. About twenty people were still unloading the new ships. Others were clearing brush and forest to widen the perimeter around the camp, and up past the camp toward the hills, in a natural meadow of thorn-bearing ground vines, a tiny tractor was plowing furrows. That was new! The tractor must have come out of one of the ships, and the furrows looked exactly as though someone was planning to farm.
That was reasonable enough, and even good news — certainly they could use fresh vegetables, and if the Greasies could grow them so could the Fats. But something about it troubled Dalehouse. He couldn’t put his finger on it; something about using soldiers to farm? Forced labor on land?
He dismissed the thought; he was getting too low.
He vented some ballast, and the water sluiced down on the newly plowed land like a toy-scale rain shower. The thing that was tickling his memory was beginning to be annoying. For some reason, it reminded him of his undergraduate anthropology professor, a gentle and undemanding man a lot like Alex Woodring -
Like Alex Woodring, who was dead. Along with Gasha and the Bulgarian corporal he had never really come to know.
He was having none but depressing thoughts. His reserves of hydrogen and ballast were getting a little low, and evidently the ha’aye’i had learned to distinguish between a balloonist and a human being swinging from a netted cluster of bags. They were not to be tricked this day. Reluctantly he swung back over the beach, vented gas, and dropped to the pebbly sand.
By the time he had picked up and stowed the deflated balloons Margie Menninger was approaching, along with the woman sergeant who was her orderly. “Nice flying, Danny,” she said. “Looks like fun. Will you take me up with you sometime?”
He stood regarding her for a moment. She really looked very pretty, even in the maroon Kung-light that darkened her lips and hid the gold of her hair. Her fatigues were new and sharply pressed, and her short hairdo flopped becomingly as she moved. “Any time you say, Marge. Or is it ‘colonel’?”