“Nope, too busy,” said Vinnie. “Ranch has got to be run. Besides, we don’t need them.”
“Jat’s too busy?”
“Says she is,” said Vinnie, with a quelling look. “As for the lizard ride, enjoy it while you can, ’cos when we get toward the Roar we’re going to have to ask the Lepers for a frogsled.”
Kelvin shuddered.
“I hate frogsleds even more than the lizards!”
“What’s a frogsled?” asked Mazith.
“You’ll find out, Ms. Mazith,” said Kelvin. “You ever ridden a lizard?”
“No, sir,” said the lieutenant. A slight tremor in her voice gave away the fact that special communicators didn’t expect to be sent on potentially deadly planetside missions on lizardback, accompanied by what could only be described as extremely irregular forces.
“Just think of it like a paid holiday to the parts of Venus the tourists never see,” said Vinnie.
“There’s a good reason for that,” muttered Kelvin.
“Oh, stop with the whining, Kel. Anyone would think you were six again.”
“Yes, considerably older sister,” said Kelvin.
“Carry on,” said O’Kazanis, poker-faced. “I’ll see you in Venus Above, with the rescued students.”
“I hope,” she added, under her breath, as Mazith saluted and followed the bickering clone siblings out of the dome.
Outside, Vinnie dialed up the power pack to give the lizard an extra burst of warmth before its blanket came off, then quickly rigged an extra saddle between its third and fourth bony plate, a somewhat smaller space than between the first and second, where she would ride double with Kelvin.
“Hop up there,” she said to Mazith. “Put your feet through the stirrups, there are a couple of handholds welded onto the plate, there. You all lotioned up?”
“The latest all-defense formula, sir,” confirmed Mazith. She grabbed hold as the lizard shifted, feeling her weight.
“That’ll work for now,” said Vinnie. “But we’ll have to do you and my idiot brother over with the lichen when we get to the ranch, get you proper masks, and so forth. Nothing Terran-made will work in the Roar, and I’m guessing you don’t want to turn into a giant mess of mushroom flesh?”
“No, sir!” said Mazith. She hesitated, then added, “But does it really take six months to get the lichen off again?”
“Nah,” said Kelvin. He vaulted easily up into the forward saddle, and eased back to make room for Vinnie, who gathered the reins and mounted up before using the quick-release pull to unhood the mount, who reflexively snapped at the air in front of it. Even though its teeth had been filed down, it would have delivered a nasty bite. “I was exaggerating. It only took four months.”
Mazith was silent as they rode out of Venusport and began the slow descent down the quaintly titled Road to Hell, the clouds thickening with every kilometer and the temperature ratcheting up several degrees. Kelvin unsealed everything he could unseal on his flight suit and was still too hot. He and Vinnie exchanged a few words, mostly just catching up on various family news, his complicated relationship with Susan Susan 5 on Venus Above and so forth, before relapsing into the comfortable silence of close relatives who also happen to be good friends.
It was only when they started splashing through the first pools of steaming water and the green tops began to overhang the track that Mazith asked how far it was to the ranch, and then how long it would take to reach the crash—or hopefully landing—site beyond.
“Ranch by nightfall, or just before,” said Vinnie. “We’ll head out again at first light. Lizardback for three days, I guess, to get to Leper territory. Then we have to find some Lepers, borrow a frogsled, I guess another day after that. Five days there say, five days back.”
“But we’ll fly back, won’t we?” asked Mazith. “In the yacht?”
Vinnie glanced back over her shoulder, sharing a look with Kelvin.
“It really is unlikely the ship is intact enough to take off again,” said Kelvin. “And even more unlikely anyone survived. Apart from the crash and the high probability of sabotage, a bomb or something, there’s just … Venus. The farther you get into the Swamp, the more weird shit there is, of all kinds. We’ll probably end up taking a look to confirm the situation, then have to just slog back again.”
“I … we’re fairly certain there are survivors,” said Mazith, followed by a sudden exclamation as a small herd of tumblers rolled out of the green-cap jungle around them and across the track, the lizard straining at the reins to go after them, the small rolling reptiles being one of its main sources of food in the wild.
“Tumblers,” said Vinnie. “Harmless. But if you see something that looks the same, only light purple, that’s not. A fungal mimic. Nasty. Beam it if it’s closing in, let them go if not.”
“OK,” said Mazith. “Uh, I don’t get a lot of practice with small arms usually …”
“You’ll get plenty this trip,” said Vinnie, deliberately misunderstanding her concern. “Don’t worry.”
“So how does this special communication work?” asked Kelvin. “We didn’t have any back in the day. Are you communicating all the time? You know, your sib sees and hears what you see kind of thing?”
“No,” said Mazith. “It’s not that straightforward. We sense each other all the time, but to communicate takes a lot of concentration. If it works, then I can speak through … Lyman’s mouth. And he can speak through mine.”
“So where’s Lyman?” asked Vinnie.
“Uh, he’s on the Rotarua,” replied Mazith. “I … um … drew the short … the straw for the planetside assignment.”
“Rotarua?” asked Kelvin. “That’s a battle cruiser, isn’t it? I thought the treaty limited visiting warships to nothing bigger than a heavy cruiser?”
“Apparently under the treaty terms she is a heavy cruiser,” said Mazith easily. “Besides, we aren’t exactly visiting, just a kind of touch and go. We were on patrol and got called in when the shuttle went down.”
“I see,” said Kelvin. She was lying about something, he thought, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what, or why. The business with the Rotarua was strange. If the battle cruiser had been in anything like a regular approach and orbit, he would have seen it on the traffic scans on the way down that morning, but nothing had shown up apart from the usual picket ships, familiar icons on the screen. A “touch-and-go” approach could mean anything from literally dropping a boat while en route to somewhere else, or a long, irregular orbit that might be designed to keep the ship off the scans of both traffic control and the picket ships, but still put the ship close enough once every Venusian day or so for a brief window to fire ordnance or otherwise conduct military operations.
But why would they want to do that, mused Kelvin …
As predicted, they reached the ranch just as the light faded, the cloud lowering and thickening into a dense fog, as it always did at nightfall. The lizard quickened its pace, keen to get into a warm huddle with its fellows, Vinnie having to hood it to slow it down long enough for the saddle-sore Kelvin and Mazith to dismount and hobble up into the ranch house, a high-stilted building constructed from gorretwood, the valuable fungus-resistant hard timber that only grew on the highest points of the plateau.
Vinnie opened the door with an old-fashioned bronze key in a massive bronze lock that would have suited a Terran house of four hundred years before. There was no one inside, but a note was on the table of the common room.
“Osgood is rounding up some strays,” said Vinnie. “And Jat’s gone on ahead to line up things with the Lepers.”