The Seeker swept into a vertical attitude, gyroscopically balanced on its fiery exhaust, and sank tail-first down into the sea of thick foliage. Leaves, fronds and sections of smoking vine fountained away on all sides as the force of the exhaust tore into the vegetation, then the ship touched solid ground. Jan cut the engine. Petra and he lay perfectly still for a moment, relieved at having reached the ground in safety.
“We made it,” Jan breathed. “I wouldn’t like to go through that again—not ever.”
“We’d better start thinking about what comes next.” Petra began unbuckling her safety harness.
Jan did likewise. “The main thing is that Dad was right about the Seeker’s non-metallic construction—the ship isn’t attracting any lightning.”
“It might be attracting other things, though. We’re in a jungle, Jan, and it isn’t even an Earth jungle—there could be anything waiting for us out there. We’d better get ourselves ready to face it.”
“You’re right,” Jan replied, pulling open the canopy.
Warm and intensely humid air swirled through the cockpit, bringing with it a medley of sounds from the jungle—raucous cries from unseen birds, the chittering of small animals, and occasional deep-toned bellows from unknown larger species.
“So far so good,” Jan said, turning to look at Petra. “But now there’s the problem of what to do with you.”
“What problem?” There was more than a hint of exasperation in Petra’s voice. “I don’t see any problem.”
“Petra, you can hear what it’s like out there in the jungle. This is a dangerous place and I can’t expect you to…”
“Listen to me, Jan Hazard—I want to get this thing settled once and for all,” Petra interrupted. “There are only two courses open to us at this stage. The first one is that you can take off again immediately, surrender to the quarantine police and forget all about rescuing Bari. You don’t want to do that, do you?”
“No.”
“Good! At least we’ve got that much settled. The second option is that we stop wasting valuable time and go and find your brother.” Petra finished unfastening her harness. “And as for the danger from wild animals—don’t forget I’m a better shot than you with the bow. Now, are we agreed that you will stop fussing over me like a mother hen and concentrate on the job we have to do?”
Jan hesitated briefly, then gave her a smile of gratitude. “It’s a deal,” he said. “And thanks for putting me straight.”
“We’ll make a good team,” Petra replied, returning his smile. “Now, if you’ll hand me the spare survival pack we can get started.”
Jan took the two lightweight containers from the rear of the cockpit and gave one to Petra. She swung herself out of the cockpit with a single lithe movement and worked her way down the side of the crimson ship. With his own pack slung over his shoulder, Jan went out after her, closing the canopy to keep out the rain and unwelcome wildlife, then climbed down to the ground.
The blackened area of the landing site was still smoking, but there was no risk of fire spreading—every leaf and branch of the surrounding jungle dripped with moisture which was condensing out of Verdia’s saturated air. Thunder rumbled intermittently in the distance and every now and then the scene was illuminated by varicoloured flashes of lightning.
“This is a real hellhole, isn’t it?” Jan said solemnly, looking all about him. “It would be bloody hard for anybody to survive for long here without a lot of supplies.”
Petra, who had been busy opening her pack, gave him a level stare. “I never met your brother, but from what you told me about him he’s a natural survivor. Right?”
“Right.”
“And we’re here on the assumption that he has survived. Isn’t that so?”
Jan nodded, forcing a smile. “Bari has to be alive around here, somewhere, and we’re going to find him.”
He opened his own pack and took from it a green one-piece coverall which was light, tough and waterproof. After he had pulled it on over his shirt and slacks—reminders that less than an hour ago he had been enjoying the Florida summer—and had zipped it up to his neck he felt better prepared to face the jungle.
Petra, now similarly attired, drew the next item out of her pack—a belt on which were slung a knife and a two-edged sword. She strapped them on and partially withdrew the grey-bladed sword from its sheath.
“More plastic,” she said, laughing. “I feel as if I’d been kitted out by some fast-food restaurant. Where’s my plastic spoon?”
“Those weapons are as good as best-quality steel,” Jan assured her. “The main difference is they’re a bit lighter.”
When he had fastened his own belt he added to it a pouch containing compressed rations and some medical supplies. Finally, he stooped and brought out a plastic bow and a quiver of tubular arrows, a weapon with which he had practised assiduously for many hours under Petra’s tuition. The laminated bow was of standard hunting pattern, but the arrows were of his father’s own design and far from conventional. Each was in fact a slim solid-fuel rocket, the propellant of which was ignited by the sudden acceleration of the arrow’s release. The plastic fletchings were coloured yellow, orange or red according to the quantity and power of the fuel the arrows contained. Jan had no idea of what dangerous beasts the Verdian jungle might harbour, but he believed that he and Petra were well equipped to deal with them.
Petra finished kitting out at the same time as Jan. She pinned up her hair in a businesslike fashion and covered it with the jungle hat which had come with the supply pack. As he watched her calm preparations for facing the unknown the thought came to Jan that he had been lucky that fate had given him Petra as a companion—and perhaps that was a good omen for the rest of the mission.
“Are we ready to set off?” he said.
“I’ve been ready for ages.” Petra examined him with a humorously critical eye. “And I must say I look better in this kind of gear than you do—perhaps I should assume command of this whole expedition.”
“Field promotions have to be earned, and so far we haven’t seen any action.” Slinging his quiver and bow over his shoulder, Jan took a small compass from his pocket. Its needle was the tiny fragment of metal he had risked bringing on the desperate venture. At this proximity to Verdia’s north pole the needle was standing almost vertically on its pivot, but he managed to get a rough bearing which would help them find their way back to the ship.
“Well, the first thing we have to do is make our way into that ruined city we saw from the air,” Jan said. “That was where the first landing was made by the engineering group, and the records show that the SEF detachment touched down in roughly the same area.”
“Do you think the ones who survived would have stayed in the same place where all those terrible things happened?”
“Probably not, but I’m betting that if survivors from either group had decided to move to a safer or pleasanter area they would have left direction signs behind them. Don’t forget they wouldn’t have realised that the Council was going to sell them down the river—they would have been expecting a full-scale rescue mission to come after them.”
Petra nodded. “That makes sense.”
With one last glance at the Seeker—its slick crimson curvatures so incongruous in the prehistoric environment of the jungle—Jan and Petra unsheathed their swords and moved off into the gloom. As natives of Florida, they were no strangers to swampy wilderness—such as the Everglades—but nothing could have prepared them for the actuality of the Verdian jungle. Trees, vines, giant flowers, thorny shrubs, mosses and waist-high grasses fought for every inch of space. So virulent was their growth that in some places the movement was discernible—the tendrils of climbing plants could be seen blindly probing for their grip on trees; carnivorous flowers closed with audible snaps as they engulfed their prey.