Although by my standards Gilda was a very attractive woman, not once had she ever shown me the slightest bit of warmth, so I didn’t know how to react to this. “I’m all right. Honest.”
“I was worried,” she said, leaning back to look up at me.
“So was I,” I admitted truthfully.
She seemed to think it was a joke. She dimpled. “Oh, sure you were. I heard about how you nailed that guy right between the eyes.”
“I got lucky.”
She squeezed me, hard, then released me just as Adam Anderson, the leader of our team, walked up.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Sure, I’m fine. The worst part was having to work that part of Bareback Ridge with a dead animal twenty meters away.”
He grinned. “Look, if you’re not too tired, I’d like for you to give us a report on what you’ve found out there so far… other than the creature, I mean.”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
We were on rotation. About once every three or four weeks, we would give a report on what we had discovered. In theory, it was to promote some kind of cross-fertilization of ideas among the various disciplines. In reality it was a subtly disguised popularity contest. Few, if any, people attended the talks by those who were “out,” whereas those who were “in” could count on a lively crowd to discuss their findings. I never counted on more than two or three people when it was my turn. Sometimes I simply waited ten minutes to see if anyone showed up, then went about my business.
After talking to Adam, I turned to go back to the small hut I lived in, but stopped when I heard Gilda’s voice behind me. “Care for some company?”
That froze me in my tracks. Facing down a wild animal is nothing. True courage is not panicking when an attractive woman seeks you out.
I swallowed hard in a suddenly dry throat. “Um… sure.”
She fell into step beside me. We walked slowly. After standing outside the door of my hut talking for twenty minutes, I ducked inside and retrieved two chairs. We sat watching everyone else straggle in from their various researches out in the field until time to eat.
For all the sugar in orbit, I couldn’t tell you what we talked about, but I had more fun talking about it than I had had in ages.
What was even better was the quick peck on the cheek she gave me later on that evening. Maybe it was less than Mike Gaston would have gotten, but it was enough to make me grin like a fool.
Eighteen people showed up for my report that night, a personal record, but I was not surprised when it dwindled to seven the next time, then four. Nor was it surprising that they peppered me with questions, not about the magnetite, but about the beast I had shot.
Still, it stung that I was forgotten so quickly.
Two more lasting things did come of the incident. The first was that I started carrying the rifle with me every time I went out into the field. The other was that Gilda began to speak to me. Mike Gaston was still very much in the picture, yet she began saying hello, asking me how my day had gone. Not wanting to run afoul of Mike, I did nothing to encourage her, but I certainly didn’t go out of my way to dissuade her, either.
Honestly? Aside from the possibility of conflict with Mike, I was afraid of rejection, but I wouldn’t admit that, even to myself.
Perhaps strange things happen to a man who works alone all day. I began to think of the wallah at Bareback Ridge as a pet. I’d never owned a pet in my life. Never felt the urge. But if I didn’t see the silly little thing at least once during the course of the day. I’d fret a bit.
The barren flank of Bareback Ridge stretched for quite some ways. I worked that rock to death, dallying much longer in the area than I had originally planned, just so I could have company—even if it was an alien scavenger.
Mike had begun to be peripherally aware of me after I killed the creature. Before, I had been safely anonymous. Now, I was a player, albeit a very weak one. Whenever he happened to see Gilda talking to me, he’d always make a point of coming over, pumping my hand and asking me how I was doing. He’d talk animatedly for a few minutes, then somehow Gilda would end up leaving with him, often without bothering to say good-bye. The clincher? If Gilda wasn’t talking to me, Mike didn’t even glance my way. I’d have given a shiny penny to know what Susan thought of his behavior. Not that I ever wasted my time asking.
But the wallah was mine. At least until Mike found out. He’d probably do something obnoxious like stand on the edge of the woods and imitate its call… Wall-ah! Within ten minutes, it’d be eating out of his hand and riding his shoulder, nuzzling his ear. And that would be the end of my pet wallah. From then on, it would be Mike Gaston’s pet wallah, and all the women would coo and vie for a chance to rub its fuzzy little ears. So I kept my pet a secret.
My rifle began seeing regular use. I used it to feed the wallah. Not only was I feeding my pet, but it was good target practice. Game was always plentiful—frequently right at the edge of the trees, almost on display. Something or other would pop up within shooting range within five or ten minutes of my arrival at the ridge. I’d shoot it, and generally, if it wasn’t already watching from the safety of a nearby tree, the wallah was there within a few minutes.
It couldn’t last forever, of course. I had other places I needed to be. But I kept prolonging my inspection of Bareback Ridge. The wallah moved down the ridge with me, a matter of nearly four kilometers before all was said and done. Whether the critter was commuting to and from a fixed nest or migrating along with me, I couldn’t say.
On the last day, I shot a Wilson’s squirrel-cat, then went and sat about three meters from the carcass. I had already seen the wallah, bouncing from tree to tree, and I knew that it had seen me. It clung to the side of a tree not far away, eyeing breakfast. After about ten minutes, it came down and started padding towards me, walking upright with a bowlegged gait—almost a swagger—that I had never seen it use before.
It kept an eye on me, but I’d be hard pressed to say that it was being wary. It didn’t act the least bit skittish. It fell to eating and gave up watching me entirely. After a bit, it sat up on its haunches, staring me in the eye, then turned and walked into the forest.
The next day, I shifted to the south face of Tea Kettle Dome, over five klicks away.
If Bareback Ridge had been a waste of time, Tea Kettle Dome was not. A small trickle of water that bounced and slid down off the side had a tendency to leave green stains on the rock. I started up the side of the hill, hacking my way through the dense undergrowth with a machete, following the water up the slope, adding my dripping sweat to the rivulet. About two-thirds of the way up, my foot snagged in a vine and I tried to drill a hole in the hillside with my nose. I managed to get my arm up in time and my elbow took the brunt of the impact. Better than my nose, perhaps, but the pain was excruciating. I lay just as I had fallen, cursing in a monotonous monotone which did nothing to lessen the agony.
When the worst of it had subsided, I rolled onto my side, still breathing heavily. Before my face was a roughly triangular area where I had scuffed the thin dirt when I fell. I could see the ribs of the mountain. Translucent quartz, stained deep blue-green.
Oh, boy.
Within an hour, I had found enough malachite and azurite, both secondary weathering products of copper ores, to convince me that Tea Kettle Dome was going to figure prominently in the colonists’ future.
I spent the rest of the afternoon collecting specimens, ranging up and down the slopes, more excited than I’d been since I’d visited my first mine dump as a boy of ten. My pack grew heavy, pregnant with samples. I left it and the gun and clambered across the side of the hill, determined to find a crystalline specimen; all I’d found so far were masses. Finally, just at dusk, I cracked open a pitted mass of quartz the size of my head and found the tiny radiating hair-like crystals I’d been seeking all day.