Were that the case, though… Her hand went first to the blaster at one coveralled hip, next to the broad-bladed knife; and there it lingered. If she devoted the rest of her days to the project, and, if the gods were kind, she might eventually get his murderers into her clutch.
Yasmin shed the last armor. She hugged herself and shivered in a chill breeze. “But we haven’t any radios except in our helmets,” she said. “How can he contact us?”
Dagny framed ,a reply: “If he’d been able to follow us, he’d already be here, or at least have called. I left my squealer circuit on, for him to track us by. That was safe; its frequency varies continuously, according to synchronized governors in both our suits. But he hasn’t arrived, and we daren’t stay near this much metal and resonant electronic stuff.” Somehow, by words and gestures, she conveyed the gist. Meanwhile she filled their pockets with rations and medications, arranged the weapons beneath their garments, checked footgear. Last she hid the armor under leaf mould and canebrake, and took precise note of landmarks.
Yasmin’s head drooped until the snarled dark locks covered her face. “I am so tired,” she whispered.
Think I’m not? My lips are numb with it. “Go!” Dagny snapped.
She had to show the city-bred girl how.to conceal their trail through the woods.
After a couple of hours, unhounded, the air warming and brightening around them, both felt a little better. It was up-and-down walking, but without much underbrush to combat, for the ground was densely carpeted with a soft mossy growth. Here and there stood clumps of fronded gymnosperm plants. This native vegetation was presumably chlorophyl-bearing, though its greenness was pale and had a curious bluish overcast. Otherwise the, country had been taken over by the more efficient, highly developed species that man commonly brought with him. Oaks cast sun-speckled shadows; birches danced and glistened; primroses bloomed in meadows, where grass had overwhelmed a pseudo-moss that apparently had a competitive advantage only in shade. A sweet summery smell was about, and Yasmin spoke of her homeland. Even Dagny, bred in salt winds and unrestful watery leagues, felt a stirring of ancient instinct.
She was used to denser atmosphere. Sounds—sough in leaves, whistle of birds, rifling of brooks they crossed, thud of her own feet—came as if muffled to her ears; and on a steep upgrade, her heart was apt to flutter. But oxygen shortage was more or less compensated for by a marvelous, almost floating low-gravity lightness.
A good many animals were to be seen. Again, terrestroid forms had crowded out most of the primitive native species. With a whole ecology open to them, they were now in the process of explosive evolution. A few big insect-like flyers, an occasional awkward amphibian, gave glimpses of the original biosphere. But thrushes, bulbuls, long-winged hawks rode the wind, Closer down swarmed butterflies and bees. A wild boar, tusked and rangy, caused Dagny to draw her blaster; but he went by, having perhaps learned to fear man. Splendid was the more distant sight of mustangs, carabao, an entire herd of antlered six-legged tanithars.
A measure of peace came upon Dagny, until at last she could say, “All right, we stop, eat, rest.”
They sat under a broad-spreading hilltop cedar, that hid them from above while openness, halfway down the heights to the forest, afforded ample ground vision. They had made for the bay and were thus at a lower altitude. The waters sheened to south, ridges and mountains stood sharply outlined to north. In this clear air, the blueness of their distance was too slight to hide the basic ocherous tint of rocks and soil.
Dagny broke out a packet of dehydrate. She hesitated for a moment before adding water to the tray from a canteen she had filled en route. Yasmin, slumped exhausted against the tree trunk, asked, “What is the matter?” And, her eyes and mind wandering a little, she tried to smile. “See, yonder, apples. They are green but they can be dessert.”
“No,” Dagny said.
“What? Why not?”
“Heavy metal.” Dagny scowled. How to explain? “Young planet. Dense. Lots heavy metals. Not good.”
“Young? But—”
“Look around you,” Dagny wanted to say. “That sun, putting out radiation like an early Type F—in amount—but the color and spectral distribution are late G or early K. I’ve never seen anything like it. The way it flares, I don’t believe it’s quite stabilized at its proper position on the main sequence yet. Because of anomalous chemical composition, I suppose. You get that with very young suns, my dear. They’ve condensed out of an interstellar medium made rich in metals by the thermonuclear furnaces of earlier star generations. Or so I’ve been told.
“I know for fact that planets with super-abundant heavy elements can be lethal to men. So much… oh, arsenic, selenium, radioactives. Slow poison in some areas, fast and horrible death in others. This water, that fruit, may have stuff to kill us.”
But she lacked words or inclination. She said, “Iron. Makes red in rocks. No? Lots iron. Could be lots bad metal. Young planet. Lots air, no?”
She had, in truth, never heard of a dwarf world like this, getting such an amount of sunlight, that had hung onto a proper atmosphere. Evidently, she thought, there had not been time for the gas to leak into space. The primitive life forms were another proof of a low age.
Beyond this, she didn’t reason. She did not have the knowledge on which to base logic, nor did she have the scientific way of thinking. What little cosmology and cosmogony she had learned, for instance, was in the form of vague, probably distorted tradition—latter-day myth. And she was intelligent enough to recognize this.
Once, she imagined, any Imperial space officer had been educated in the details of astrophysics and planetology. And he would have seen, or read about, a far greater variety of suns than today’s petty travels encompassed. So he would have known immediately what sort of system this was; or, if not, he would have known how to find out.
But that was centuries ago. The information might not actually be lost. It might even be moldering in the damp, uncatalogued library of her own Skerrygarth. Surely parts of it were taught in the universities of more civilized planets, though as a set of theoretical ideas, to be learned by rote without any need for genuine comprehension.
Practical spacefarers, like her and Tom, didn’t learn it. They didn’t get the chance. A rudiment of knowledge was handed down to them,.largely by word of mouth, the minimum they needed for survival.
And speaking of survival—
She reached her decision. “Eat,” she said. “Drink.” She took the first sample. The water had a woodsy taste, nothing unfamiliar.
After all, humans did flourish here. Perhaps they were adapted to metal-rich soil. But the adaptation could scarcely be enormous. Had that been the case, terrestroid species would not be so abundant and dominant, after a mere thousand years or whatever on this planet.
Thus Nike was biochemically safe—at least, in this general region—at least, for a reasonable time. Perhaps, if outworlders stayed as long as one or two decades, they might suffer from cumulative poisoning. But she needn’t worry that far ahead, when a hunt was on immediately and when Tom—
Grimly, she fueled her body. Afterward she stood watch while Yasmin caught a nap. What she thought about was her own affair.
When the Sassanian awoke, they held a lengthy conference. The order Dagny had to issue was not complicated:
“We’re in enemy territory. But I don’t believe it covers the whole planet, or even the whole area between this sea and the next one east. ‘The Engineer of Hanno’ is atypical feudal title. I’ve not heard before that ‘engineer’ changed meaning to the equivalent of ‘duke’ or ‘king,’ but it’s easy to see how that could’ve happened, and I’ve met odder cases of wordshift. Well, our darling Engineer made it plain he regarded us as either the worst menace or the juiciest prey that’d come by in years. Maybe both. So he’d naturally call his full air power, or most of it, against us. Which amounted to half a dozen little craft, with gravmotors so weak they need wings! And look at those sailboats, and the absence of real cities, and the fact there’s scarcely any radio in use… yes, they’ve fallen far on Nike. I’m sure that raid from space was only the latest blow. They must have a small half-educated class left, and some technicians of a sort; but the bulk of the people must’ve been poor and ignorant for many generations.