"And now this. How can you have so much certainty about what you will accomplish this time, and so little in what you accomplished before?" Briefly his head swayed from side to side in rejection. "I, on the other hand, believe you did well before, you and your fliers. Not perfectly it seems, but well. This was an alien outpost world, nothing more. There were no towers. No ghats. Not even towns. There were never more than a few sophonts here, and your fighters killed most of them. The few survivors, those who did not succeed in fleeing the planet, scattered to different regions, where they have hidden. In caverns no doubt. It seems they have an affinity for caverns.
"But they cannot hide forever. They must surface, walk beneath the sky, bath in the streams"-his words slowed for emphasis-"and grow food. And when they do, our surveillance buoys will find them. The aliens know this. They are not ignorant primitives. This appearance today-if it is real; if the report is not an aberration-this appearance is an act of desperation, perhaps to collect supplies from some old cache."
The gosthodar repeated himself, as if savoring the aptness of the phrase. "An act of desperation." He paused thoughtfully. "There may be caverns behind the cliffs of the High Falls Gorge, as there were behind the lesser. You must seek them, and destroy any you find."
He straightened, his old voice sounding fuller, less aged. "You will not gather the squadrons from Grasslands and Basin. You will do your searching with what you have here. If your fears reflect fact, and the aliens retain some little potency, to gather the other squadrons here would expose Grasslands and Basin to destructive raids."
The old head swayed again, side to side, side to side, and for a moment the eyes closed entirely. "Go," the old voice said, suddenly raspy again, "and heed what I have said."
The general backed away, arms spread, forelegs bent, belly low, trunk and head lowered in deference. "As you direct, your lordship, that shall I do. And as you enjoin, your lordship, that shall I not do."
The gosthodar was rocking again.
Tech 2 Kroliss had marked his approximate crossing point on Lieutenant Zalkosh's map. Zalkosh, piloting the armed scout, reached High Falls Gorge about two linear miles north of the marked point, at 5,000 feet local reference. He saw no alien craft below, nor did Kroliss, who sat beside him.
If there was an alien craft down there, they would probably have seen it. Nonetheless, Zalkosh began descending on a gravitic vector. The gorge meandered sufficiently that one just might be concealed down there by a rock wall. And at any rate, he wanted to examine the bottom.
Tech 2 Kroliss could imagine serious personal problems if they found no alien craft. It would strongly suggest there'd been one, and that it had escaped. The obvious alternative conclusion would be that he'd hallucinated. So far, the lieutenant hadn't seemed to judge.
Zalkosh paused some twenty feet from the bottom, then started southward along the curving gorge. Both he and Kroliss watched intently for any sign that an alien craft had been there. It was the dry season, and the stream level was low, exposing the larger rocks that had fallen from the walls. If an enemy ship had made a forced landing, it should either still be there, or have left signs of having been there.
It occurred to Kroliss that the alien ship might have been hovering just above the bottom when he'd seen it, and left no trace. Left because he, Kroliss, had flown over. That's what a Board of Investigation would think, and a court-martial.
Zalkosh proceeded for more than a linear mile past the point where Kroliss reported crossing. Then he switched on his transmitter, accessing Security directly.
"Security, this is Lieutenant Zalkosh, reporting on the alien sighting. I have examined more than three linear miles of gorge bottom, centered on Tech 2 Kroliss's reported crossing point, and have seen no sign of an alien craft. I suggest other scouts be sent to search this entire quadrangle, and that the surveillance buoys be instructed to intensify surveillance of this region. Unless otherwise instructed, I will continue south down the gorge to the ocean, or until I find an alien craft.
"Zalkosh out."
Kroliss imagined himself assigned to the death platoon, making amends to the tribe.
Hours had passed when one of the marine lookouts trotted up to the Mei-Li, to report that a small alien craft had snooped the gorge from the north, just above the bottom, and passed out of sight southward. A scout, Menges thought. He felt extremely nervous. Other Wyzhnyny might be flying a search pattern above the plateau, sensors scanning.
He'd heard that the Wyzhnyny didn't take prisoners, and wondered what might happen to him if they did. He decided he'd prefer a pounding from energy bolts. A quick death. Meanwhile he wondered how the hornet hunters were doing. He wasn't about to break radio silence to ask.
While the entomologists and Olavsdottir hunted for hornets' nests, and Captain Stoorvol's men napped, Stoorvol had scanned the known Wyzhnyny radio frequencies. Hearing a lot of traffic but learning nothing, except what Wyzhnyny sounded like on the radio. Finally, after five hours, Olavsdottir collected her sixth colony of hornets. Stoorvol had seen no bogies, and had no idea what the situation was at the big gorge. When everyone and everything was loaded and secured, he took off, the second scooter close behind. He'd wait till he was nearer before radioing Menges and getting the new coordinates. Assuming the Mei-Li was still intact, and Menges alive and free.
Before the additional Wyzhnyny scouts lifted from Seaside Base, their pilots were briefed. Among other things, they were given Tech 2 Kroliss's description of the alien craft: green, and about the size of a corvette. Actually, at eighty-three feet in length, a Wyzhnyny corvette was seriously longer than the forty-six-foot Mei-Li, and proportionately broader. A corvette could hardly be maneuvered into the rainforest.
Stoorvol's two scooters had barely cleared the trees behind them when one of the marines shouted, "Bogies aft!" Both Stoorvol and Haynes accelerated, snapping heads back, then darted down into the pirate gorge, to careen south together below the rim. They were quickly past the burn, then slowing sharply, lifted again to rim level, curved into the rainforest and proceeded eastward among the great trunks and dangling lianas. The whole sequence took perhaps fifteen seconds.
"Captain," said Olavsdottir, "that was exciting!"
"I'm glad you liked it," he answered drily. "Now let's hope they don't find us with their sensors." He switched on his transmitter. "Menges," he said, "this is Stoorvol. What are your coordinates?"
He got no answer. The forest damps transmission at both ends, he told himself. Ten minutes later, in a glade, he lifted above the trees and tried again, using more power. The reply was brief and faint, but readable. He fed Menges' coordinates into his scooter's navcomp, acknowledged Menges' reply, then ducked into the trunk space again and continued eastward.
"I didn't see the bogies," Olavsdottir told him.
"Right. They probably continued east when they lost us. But they'd sure as hell have reported us, which must have stirred things up considerably." And they haven't found the Mei-Li yet. That's the hopeful part.
He pushed as fast as he dared. The sun had been low when they'd left the burn, and once it set, this near the equator, it would get dark quickly. He didn't lift above the trees for a peek around. Didn't see the Wyzhnyny scouts' ground support fighters and APCs posted above the big gorge, waiting for word from the surveillance buoys. He didn't need to. He assumed they'd be there, they and more.