Freedom's Landing

Chapter Seven

The aroma of roasting meat roused Kris, although her stomach was probably sending the message - it was empty. She could hear muted voices, pleasant voices, and feeling encouraged, she angled herself up out of the flattened bed. One other sleeping accommodation in her cave room was occupied by a sleeper and she slipped into her footwear as quietly as possible and left.

Neither Sandy nor Patti Sue were in the main cave but she spotted Bart and approached to see if she could scrounge a meal off him.

"Hey, Kris," the man said, smiling a welcome, "you did great!" and he dished up some of the food he was cooking onto a nearly round clay plate.

"Me? At what?" she asked with a cautious grin. When he also handed her a wooden fork, she exclaimed in surprise, "All the comforts of home." "We're improving. And I mean the rescue of all those folks trapped by the mechanicals.

"Oh, that. That was Zainal. He knew how to open the doors."

"Yeah, but I ask myself, how did he know how to open them?"

"Aw, c'mon now. Bart!" And Kris quickly donned her public relations hat. "He knew how, so what? Maybe I could have opened it, given a hair pin or a credit card which I didn't have. Door catches are door catches: there are only so many ways to lock one. He figured out the mechanism and opened it. The important thing is that he did know how and we could get all the others out before they got slaughtered."

"I heard…" Bart began uncertainly "What you heard and what happened could be two different things entirely. Who did you hear from?" Bart shifted uneasily. "One of the guys that came in with you."

"Wouldn't be named "Aarens", would he?" Kris asked, letting her tone drip with scorn.

"Next thing you hear, he'll be saying we oughtn't to listen to Mitford "cos he's a slave driver, a martinet, endangering us, who does he think he is, when he was only a sergeant at that, and what does he know?" Kris waved her arm around, at the well-organized kitchen area, the pots and pottery, the water crates, people moving about at assigned tasks.

"Well, Mitford knows enough to organize us to an amazing degree of self-sufficiency, I'd say. Aarens is a trouble-maker and he started almost the moment we hauled him out of that barn." Bart glared at Kris, resenting her tirade, so she smiled at him.

"You're too smart to fall for that kind of drivel, Bart, and this smells too good for me to let it get cold." She sat herself down on a convenient rock and started to eat.

"Now, can I give you the facts, nothing but the facts, about the great slaughterhouse rescue? I'd hate for you to have a bad opinion of me because I stuck up for the guy responsible for saving forty-five people, forty-six if Anna has her baby." The expression on his face told her it wasn't her he had a bad opinion of, which meant she really needed to put the record straight.

"Well, maybe what I heard was a bit garbled - "Scariest moment in my life was waking up in that barn " she said, giving a shudder, and was still answering his questions when Jay Greene spotted her.

"Sarge needs you, Kris," he said.

"Great meal, Bart," Kris said, standing up and then looking about her for the proper place to dispose of her plate and fork.

Bart grinned as he pointed. "Outside, to your left.

Aarens himself is on KP."

"No better man," she said and left the hearth with Jay.

"I'll take that," Jay said, removing the plate from her hands.

"You don't need to meet Aarens."

"Why? Is he poor-mouthing me? Or Zainal?" Jay snorted. "Don't worry. Mitford has his measure."

"Does everyone else?" Kris asked urgently. "Hell, he'd've been better off we'd be better off - with him as sausage meat after all," she added callously "He'll spend some time in the stocks if he keeps up "Which will only confirm his opinion of this chickenshit outfit."

"Who cares?" "Speaking of caring," and they were now outside in the bright sunlight.

Mitford was precisely where she had left him a good - she checked the sundial - nine hours ago. "Does he never rest?" Her question was hypothetical for she went on, How's Anna Bollinger, our pregnant lady?" "Doc says she'll be fine - Although she's grieving for her husband." He paused to click his tongue over that tragedy. "Janet's making her her special assignment - Janet and Patti Sue. Was that girl raped?"

"I suspect so."

"She never said anything?"

"It'll take a long while before she's able to talk about whatever it was happened to her."

"Oh?"

"You like her?"

"She's a sweet kid," Jay said, shaking his head, with a "gone" smile on his face.

"Go as slow as slow."

"I figured that. Kris went down the steps while Jay turned left towards the crates where Aarens was clumsily drying cups with cat-tail fibres. They must have found a humongous supply of the things for them to be used in so many different ways.

The man in the stocks was gone and Kris wished she'd thought to ask Jay what his offence had been. Was that why he'd asked had Patti Sue been raped? Mitford had meant what he said about punishing harassers.

Kris heard steps on the stone behind her and, looking over her shoulder, saw Zainal with Slav and Coo right behind him. She wondered if they shared a cave. All of them looked clean and rested "What are you guys doing up so early?" she demanded.

"I slept much," Zainal said, grinning back at her, his marvellously weird yellow eyes echoing his good humour.

"Slav and Coo well rested. Lot to do."

"Lots to do," she corrected him absently, then hastily added, "but you're real quick to learn."

"Need to learn," he replied, his smile broadened.

"Ve all learn," Slav said in his liquid voice. "Hi, Kn.ssss, he added, emphasizing the sibilant.

Just then the Deskis on the heights let out the whistling alarm and slid, as suddenly, down out of sight.

"Flyers?" someone cried anxiously.

All activity in the camp was suspended. A beat later, everyone out in the open made for caves. Kris looked skyward, pivoting, as Zainal, Coo and Slav were, to scan the horizon. So was Mitford in his exposed position on the floor of the ravine.

Coo gave an odd and ear-splitting cry, which was echoed from above.

"Large thing," the Deski said, spreading his arms to their furthest extension, indicating great size. He rolled his eyes.

"Baaaaaaad. Bad, bad, bad, bad," he repeated, shaking his head and then covering his ears tightly.

But that was as much to mask the noise which was becoming very, very loud - like half a dozen subway trains converging on you and every one of them clanking anff grinding and needing full servicing - as to stress the approaching danger. Kris thought the intensity of the sound was comparable to standing in a continuous sonic boom. Her bones began to vibrate right up to her teeth.

Even the stone under her feet reverberated.

She wanted to ask where the noise was coming from and what made it but she wouldn't be heard above that racket.

The shadow of it came first - longer and wider by far than the ravine, even the hill the ravine dissected. The shadow came on and on, and then they saw the blunt prow of the leviathan that growled and rumbled and still made the very stones shake.

It was coming in, prow definitely aiming downwards, on a descending slant: several thousand feet above them, Kris estimated, blotting out the sun like an island-sized umbrella. A big island, with all kinds of protuberances, long and thin, squat, rounded discs, with all kinds of stick-like rods planted here and there, even on the massive belly doors that were acres long and wide. It seemed to take hours to pass overhead. By then, inured to the noise it made, people were outside again, peering up at the monstrosity. Their curiosity was stronger than their initial panic.

By then Kris had followed others to the nearest height - Mitford, Zainal, Jay Greene, Slav, Coo, the Doyles led the way, joined by half a dozen other men and women who wanted to get a good long look at this vessel.

"It's heading in the direction of the slaughterhouse," Kris yelled above a slightly diminished noise.

"Yeah," Mitford said thoughtfully, rubbing his hand over his mouth, his expression very thoughtful indeed.

"Recognize it, Zainal?" Zainal shook his head slowly, never once dropping his eyes to look at Mitford.

"Catteni have no ship that big." He seemed as impressed by the size of it as everyone else. "Strange - - -" he rolled his hand, trying to find the appropriate word "Configuration?" Jay asked.

Zainal shook his head, made shapes with his hands that looked like the protuberances and spokes jutting out of the ship.

"Oh, those things. Yeah, the ships you took Earth with weren't anything like that one."

"No," and Zainal grinned down at Jay. "Too big, no good "Well, there's that aspect of big, I suppose, Jay replied amiably They watched until it was out of sight but not out of earshot.

On the noon air, they could hear it changing gears or whatever it did, causing the sound to alter.

"Hovering?" Mitford said, disbelieving what his ears reported.

Then he shook his head. "I sure wouldn't want to have to lzft that dead mass from the ground." He sighed.

"7' "How can they?" He looked enquiringly at Zainal who only shrugged again and shook his head. Kris saw anxiety for the first time in Zainal's expression.

Kris swallowed. "If we hadn't got those folks out yesterday Mitford nodded. "You did great, Bjornsen. "Zainal did all the work, Sarge,' she said quickly.

Mitford's chuckle was audible to her and he patted her shoulder in approval.

No-one moved from the uncomfortable height, human or alien. Then, to their listening ears, came a second change of engine sounds. They also heard the powerful blast of rockets, or whatever powered the great ship, as it headed skywards again. It burst into view, nose angled up now. Kris was awed by the technology that could produce such power.

It wasn't a beautiful craft, the way the Discoverer and Challenger had been, delta winged and shingle clad. But it did have a triangular shape to it, blunt nosed as it was.

"You guys willing to take a quick run back down there?" Mitford asked. He was looking at Zainal, Coo and Slav.

"We sure are," Kris said, and then gulped because she hadn't intended to volunteer.

"Not you, Kris, you're off duty."

"If I am, they are. Only I'm going. I got just as much curiosity as the next one. I can't believe that ship just gulped up all that was there and then calmly took off again." Mitford put his hands around his mouth to shout down to those on the ground. "Dowdall, send a team out to the granary. See if that got emptied."

"Oh lordee," Kris said in a groan. She felt vulnerable again. And she'd brought in more mouths to be fed, too.

"Don't worry," Mitford said, "we're stocked up, all things considered." So the two teams set off. Kris thought their return to the abattoir didn't take. half as long going back as it had coming in.

When they got there, the acres of crates were all gone. In their place were stacks of what looked like collapsed units. That would account for some of the dents and scratches, she thought, still rather numb at the sheer volume that ship had lifted.

Did they have matter transporters? Beam it up, Scotty, was the facetious thought that bounced in Kris's mind until she gave a slightly hysterical laugh to stop it.

"It's all right, Kris," said Zainal, his accent improving all the time. He must have a terrific ear for language.

Somehow that reassured her more than his words or the arm he laid briefly across her shoulders. "We check the barns "How?" And Kris gestured broadly at the empty space that had once been conveniently bridged by a pyramid of crates. There was a drop of six or seven metres to the first of the piles of collapsed crates. She suddenly felt oddly disorientated by the alteration.

Zainal pointed to the rocky terrain. That was when Kris first realized that the mechanicals had sliced the crate storage out of the cliff side: the barns as well. From what she'd been told, the granary was also stored in natural rock. No arable land was taken up by even such essential facilities. If this was the condition of the entire planet, it was a remarkable achievement in its own right. And here come humans, she thought dourly, to mess it up.

The barns were empty, disinfected and ready for the next batch of occupants. Had the prisoners been dumped down on this planet at harvest and culling time? How often did that monster arrive to collect? Monthly, bi-monthly?

Semi-annually? What season of this planet were they currently in?

The weather was mild enough to be spring, but the crops in the fields were more mature than springtime growth. And she'd heard that grain had kept pouring into the storage caves, which suggested fall harvests.

The other salient fact was that the machines' masters were probably as omnivorous as humanoids. And needed so much food that they went to the expense of developing highly specialized machinery to nurture and cultivate food crops and meat animals: and had sufficient planets available for their use so that they could devote all? most?

- of this one to food production? The collection vehicle as well as the mechanicals meant an extremely high technological level. And yet Zainal, for all the Catteni were well travelled and doing a lot of exploration on their own, did not recognize the type of craft used, and his exploratory service had registered the planet as uninhabited. Of course, if there was nothing but machines on the planet, that figured.

Only why hadn't the Catteni seen the machines on their appointed rounds? The Catteni hadn't surveyed the planet in the night only, had they?

Or maybe during an infrequent down time during the "winter' months. Kris's knowledge of farming suggested there were few down times on a farm: something or other had to be tended all year round.

And what would winter on Botany be like?

Then Zainal blithely insisted that they have a look at the "garages' where curious vehicles with a variety of strange attachments awaited recall to duty.

"They do not recognize humans. No problem!" he told Kris and she was so flabbergasted that he had acquired the "no problem' slang that he was in the garage before she could protest.

One machine, standing inside, was hooked up to a framework which blinked and blipped. A servicing mechanism? Kris wished that they had someone with engineering training along. But then, who'd've thought they'd have a chance to inspect so thoroughly. Oh, for some of that bark and a pencil so she could make diagrams of the various types of mechanicals parked in the several garages. The last of the big barns contained sacks and sacks of what? Logic told her seeds or possibly fertilizers, more than likely. Had they been brought by the leviathan that had collected the meat? She used her knife to get into some of the bags and got samples of everything. Seeds, definitely, over half the shipment and, by the smell of it, fertilizer in the others.

The patrol got back to the camp by first moonrise. She didn't feel quite so wimpy when Coo and Slav showed signs of wanting to rest but she and Zainal first had to report to Mitford "They didn't take the grain, Bjornsen," was Mitford's first comment but she thought he seemed depressed.

"What did you find?" While Kris told him, including her surmises as she passed over the samples she had secured, Zainal had taken several large sheets of the papery bark and was quickly sketching on them. A couple of times Kris lost the thread of her report when she saw his accurate depictions of the various types of machinery they had seen in the garages. Mitford stole the odd glance, his eyes switching to Zainal's face as the Catteni's pencil flew over the surface, but his sketches looked remarkably accurate to Kris's eyes. Zainal regarded his handiwork and then calmly made necessary amendments, correcting occasional lines. They'd had an engineer along all the time, hadn't they, thought Kris. Zainal had rather more talents than anyone had realized.

"These," Zainal said, handing over the sheaf to Mitford.

"Hey, Bob the Herb, Mack Su, Capstan, Macy, front and centre and bring those granary sketches," Mitford roared in his parade ground voice, then grinned approvingly at both Zainal and Kris. "There's quite a range of these things. Now we got to figure how to disable them."

"Why?" Kris blurted out the question.

"Like you, Bjornsen, I think there are humanoids bound to be involved in this kind of food production, seeing as how they seem to need the same sort of foods we do. It's the pits that the Deskis aren't doing too well on what they can scrounge that doesn't rot their guts and we can't find enough of those greens that Coo thought would help. However," and he went on briskly, "we're obviously dealing with a very high-tech race." Kris nodded her head vehemently. "That ship confirms some sort of periodic check. So there's got to be some sort of ongoing monitoring, even if we haven't found a central control point.

Kris wondered just how much of this Zainal understood, but he was listening with every ounce of his big frame. She could feel the tension in the thigh next to hers on the wide rock they were sitting on. Odd, that she didn't mind tactile contact with Zainal but he was so subtle about it, unlike some guys with impudent, wandering paws she'd encountered.

"So, if we start lousing up the machines, someone will come look,' Mitford concluded.

"And we just overpower them?" Kris asked, aghast at the mere thought of invading a ship the size of the collector.

Especially since the only weapons they had were knives, hatchets, spears, and bows and arrows. She let out a burst of laughter.

"Don't laugh, Bjornsen. There's more than one way of infiltrating a spacecraft. And I'm more or less counting on the fact that the investigatory ship would be smaller and have a live, not a mechanical crew. Machines are good enough for routine jobs but evaluation requires brains."

"Then what?"

"First things first. Get the investigator here." Those Mitford had called for arrived and then he roared for a cook to bring two plates of food. He must have heard Kris's stomach rumbling.

"We've been tossing ideas around while you guys were investigating, so I'll bring you up to speed, Zainal, Bjornsen," he said and nodded at them both before turning to the other patrol members. "Coo, Slav, get some grub. Go eat." He pointed to the main cave. "And thanks. Oh, Coo, Bob the Herb harvested more of that green stuff you like.

Coo nodded and, with the Rugarian, made a beeline for the main cave. Mitford's eyes followed him.

"Ration bars are now reserved for Deskis, Morphins and Turs, folks. The rest of us can live off the land.

They can't. "Really?"

"Not until we find something their stomachs don't reject." Mitford gave the sort of resigned sigh that meant he was worried about the problem. He was leader enough to want to preserve all his troops, especially those with abilities like the Deskis. "The cooks are busy whipping up a sort of pemmican for patrols to eat so you don't upset the mechanicals by reducing their herds." He grinned.

"What did you call those critters, Kris? Loo-cows." He chuckled.

"Sarge, I thought you wanted us to upset the mechanicals," Kris said, wanting clarification on that point.

"We plan the upsetting - " he grinned again, "but I don't want any of our guys to get darted out in the fields. So we disable the mechanism. OK, fellas," he said to the newcomers. Capstan and Macy were new faces and names for Kris but they seemed to know who she and Zainal were. Mitford passed Zainal's sketches around.

"Zainal's drawn the sort of mechanicals that are housed at the slaughterhouse. Seem to me to be different from the ones at the granary.

"Highly specialized equipment," Su said, leafing through the drawings, pausing briefly to scowl at several before he switched his lot with Capstan. Kris found out later that the older man had been a designer of highly specialized production-line equipment.

"Look, all of "em are solar-powered!" Su said, flicking his fingers at various flat surfaces on the individual machines. "Like I said they had to be. Ecologically sound, using renewable energy.

Small wonder the Catteni scouts thought the planet was unoccupied.

They'd probably been scanning, or whatever they do, for life-forms and those mechanicals aren't alive. Now, they have to have collectors and storage batteries, too, and where'd they. ah, yes, possibly these units. Hmmm."

"And if there's no sun? Do they all just go down when it's overcast or rainy?" Kris asked, making a mental note of the solar panels on each variety of machine.

"Hasn't rained yet and we've been here ten days," Mitford said with a sigh, his glance going up and down the ravine that had experienced floods which had left visible high-water traces on the walls.

Zainal also looked around the camp and smiled. "Much done in ten days." "Good for morale," was Mitford's terse reply but he added a brief smile at the compliment. "Now, we got individuals who've got real expert with slingshots. Can take out a rock-squat at twenty-five metres. Stones'd take out those solar panels, wouldn't they?" Su thought about that but Capstan shook his head.

"We'd have to know what sort of material they use in the mechanicals' panels. But it would follow that if enough of the surface was marred, it might not collect sufficient solar energy to perform efficiently." "Perhaps," and Kris adopted an ingenuous look and tone to her voice, "we should practise some creative mudslinging? I didn't see a car-wash in that Dalek barn." Zainal flicked her a quick glance because he didn't understand her allusion, so she charaded it and then he smiled, nodding. Su seemed to like the idea and even Capstan gave a droll little smile.

"There're sure enough brooks where we'd need "em to make mud," Su went on with enthusiasm. "And if we got enough on the panels, the sun would dry it hard in place."

"Mud at night. No machine runs in day," Zainal suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Good idea, Zainal," Mitford said, grinning. "Decommission them at source.

"Well, now, hold on a moment," Capstan said. "There would have to be storage batteries, to keep them ticking over and start them off in the morning. Or there should be something like that. We'd have to disable those as well, you know."

"So we do," Mitford said cheerfully.

"I wonder how many we would have to knock out for someone to come check the situation?" That question was tossed around but they all agreed that they would first have to locate more installations for the plan to be effective. Kris, Zainal and the two aliens had not been the only patrol which Mitford had sent out and one, Mitford told them, was still missing. He wasn't worried about them - yet - because they'd gone north, away from the slaughterhouse. He admitted that there would need to be a lot more such facilities to service all the land they could see cultivated and grazed. Enough hills could be seen from the sentry posts: each range could hide more mechanicals, farming nearby arable land.

"Zainal," Kris said after a brief pause in the exchange of ideas, "how many would the prison ship have dropped in one journey?" Zainal's shrug was almost apologetic. "Don't know. No need for me to know."

"Well, they landed more than us and those you just freed up," Mitford said in sudden anger. The others nodded solemnly. With a sigh, the sergeant went on.

"One of the recon patrols tangled with a savage bunch of individuals: only two of our guys got away and one was badly sliced up.

Estimated there were close to thirty in the lot that jumped them. So it'll be more important than ever for any patrols to post sentries at night. Esker was smart enough to hide himself and Barrett, who was injured, until they could be sure they weren't followed back here. And that," Mitford's thick index finger pointed at each one in the circle to emphasize his warning, "is what no-one does! I'll tell you one thing: they really hopped to it next time I called a Red Alert. And Murph made us a triangle out of metal that would wake the dead."

"But we could hold off hundreds here, Sarge," Kris said, startled. The mere thought that the camp was vulnerable, and to renegade humans, depressed her. As it must have depressed Mitford.

"You better believe it," Mitford said so resolutely and with such a knowing grin on his face that Kris relaxed.

Mitford had obviously been busy placing safeguards as well as amenities. "Do they ever check up on the job lots they drop down?" he asked Zainal who nodded.

"Not soon," he said. "In half a year, he added, dropping into Barevi to express the time.

"Half year," Kris murmured in English and he nodded again as he accepted that new word.

"Would they bring in more prisoners?" Mitford asked Zaina!, who nodded.

"Drop people many places, and he made a spreading gesture with his hands. "Many times to seed planet." Kris wasn't the only one who received that information with a sinking heart. How many did the Catteni expect would survive? And if none did, was the planet written off? What a way to colonize! While she hadn't even thought to estimate how many prisoners had been in that holding area prior to being forced aboard the transport, there had been a lot more than the few hundreds ending up in this camp. They knew of at least four other deposits now. How many had there been in the initial load? At that, they might be better off making first contact with the Mecano Makers.

"Well, we deal with what we can, Mitford said staunchly. "And we'll explore as thoroughly as possible under the circumstances.

Zainal, any more information on how they seed the planet?"

"I was in space more," he said, spreading his hands wide open to express his ignorance.

"Huh, so the Catteni operate just like any other army?" Mitford said in a droll tone. "Left hand doesn't know what the right hand does." Kris had a time explaining that remark to the puzzled Zainal who grinned when he did understand. i8o When Mitford finally dismissed them, Kris made her way down the ravine and over to the stairs. The kitchen cavern walls were now decorated with outlines of vegetations. These were divided into several sections: one marked human with those plants to avoid and those to gather; another had "Deski' in elaborate Gothic lettering as a caption and the subheading "potassium? calcium?".

"Hi there," a cheerful voice said, and Dick Aarens moved to intercept her.

"Not now, Aarens," she said, altering her direction to avoid him.

"Hey, gal, I'm only trying to be friendly." He stepped in front of her.

"So am I, but right now all I want is my bed.

His eyes, a pleasing shade of blue for all she didn't like the man who wore them, widened. "Why so do I!" And he attempted to put his arm around her as if to lead her off.

She ducked out from under. "By myself, Aarens."

"Kris She was both relieved and concerned to hear Zainal's voice behind her. She turned, took a step towards the Catteni.

"Yes?" She hoped her response conveyed her relief at his timely arrival.

"We talk tomorrow's patrol now?" he asked.

Behind her, she heard Aarens mutter something and then the crunch of his feet on the sandy floor as he moved away "Thanks, Zainal. You saved my life." Zainal regarded her with a thoughtful expression. "You do not like him?"

"No," she said, shaking her head for emphasis.

"I think so.

"Watch him, though, Zainal. He's dangerous.

"How?" Zainal was amused at her response.

"He doesn't like you "Because you do?" She shook her head.

"Because first you're Catteni and second he fancies himself better than you. And irresistible to me." Zainal shook his head, lightly gripping her on the arms, a tacit request for explanation.

"I'm not sure I can explain the nuances," she said, grinning up at him. Yellow eyes were much nicer than plain old blue. And she liked Zainal's hands on her whereas Dick Aarens' touch made her skin crawl.

"Nu-an-ces?" She put her hand on his chest, felt the faint pulse of his heartbeat - Catteni had hearts after all. "I'll explain later, Zainal. Right now, I'm so tired I can't."

"Go," and he turned her towards the corridor but when he gave her a little push, she grabbed his hand.

"You come, too. I don't mean to have Aarens jump out at me."

"I like to come," Zainal said and there was a decided glint in his eyes that made Kris wonder how she was going to dismiss this courtier. And, if she hadn't been so tired, she might - just now - have considered She shook her head. The timing was wrong. She was so tired.

So, her hand tucked into his large one, they walked to her cave.

"Sleep well, Kris." F"Don't you just know I will," she said fervently.

To her utter surprise, he cupped her head briefly, tousling her hair before he let go. But he was off down the corridor before she could react.

"Too damned tired even for a goodnight kiss," she said ruefully and gratefully sank onto her bed of boughs.

The next day, her patrol consisted of Zainal, Coo, Slav and the Doyle brothers. Their main objective: to find and disable as many mechanicals as they could, starting with those at the abattoir. The optimum, according to Capstan, would be to dismantle the solar panels, if they could do so. Either smashing the panels or smearing them with mud was equally viable, so long as the mechanicals were disabled. The secondary aim was to continue the interrupted reconnaissance of their immediate vicinity. They started out better equipped than ever, with ropes braided of vines which didn't burn the skin as the tough synthetic material of the blankets did. They each had slingshots, a pouch of suitable small rocks - that was one of the duties for the few youngsters in the camp - a flint-tipped lance, and bags of the new trail food. Kris had sampled it when Jay handed over the ration and it was definitely an improvement over the dry compressed Catteni bar as far as taste was concerned. Coo and Slav were given ration bars, Patti Sue doling them out with thoughtful care. The girl evidently had no trouble serving the alien males, though she never once looked at Zainal.

"We don't know if the pemmican supplies all your daily nutritional needs," Jay said, "but you can hunt to augment protein." The Doyle brothers made cheerful companions, asking questions of both Kris and Zainal. Kris wondered if they had been chosen because, being Irish, they seemed to get along with anyone including aliens.

They made good time, Zainal setting a course diagonally west of the patrol's earlier trek, the one which had resulted in their capture.

They found a hillock and made their evening camp on its crest until the rain came. It wasn't a soft rain: Kris figured that it was comparable to standing under the waterfall in her Barevi refuge. They huddled under an improvised tent made from their blankets which gave them some protection from the driving force of the torrent. It rained hard for what Kris and the Doyles decided was probably an hour, though battered as they were, it seemed an endless period. Then, as abruptly as it started, it stopped.

"Like someone turned the shower off, Lenny said, peering out of the damp shelter. "And hey, not a cloud in the sky and it's only the first moon. I'd recognize her anytime by her craters." They shook the blankets out: the synthetic seemed to shed the water - the outside a trifle damp to the hand but the underside dry "Amazing fabric," Ninety said, crushing the edge of his blanket in his hand. "Give credit where it's due. Those Catteni make good survival gear."

"Durable," Kris agreed and looked over at Zainal who was staring about the land below their retreat. "What d'you see?"

"Nothing." -"That bothers you?"

"Yes," the Catteni said and then lowered himself to the ground. "You take this watch, Kris. Wake Slav. Slav, you wake Coo. Coo, wake Doyles. You wake me." Feeling for the dry side of his blanket, he then pulled it around him and pillowed his head on his arm. "I sleep, then think better.

Whatever he had feared at least kept them all alert on their separate watches. Maybe, Kris thought as she woke Slav to take his turn, that was what Zainal had had in mind, the sneaky so-and-so.

They were all awake before the sun came up, not being adjusted yet to the longer days and nights. They had saved enough dry droppings to make a fire to heat water from a nearby stream in their cups, adding the dried herbs that became a fragant tea to sip while eating their pemmican.

There were worse ways to break a fast.

When they came to the next ridge, Zainal climbed to the highest point and surveyed the distances, before pointing to their right "Hills," he said crypucally "Can the mechanicals have built into every hillside?" Kris asked, half-running to keep up with his long stride as he marched downhill again.

"We see," Zainal said, grinning at her, his yellow eyes twinkling.

They made the new destination by noontime, striding along the crest of that hill complex until they came to the bare rock and another silent, but full, garage.

"D'you think they take a lunch break and oil and grease themselves?" Lenny asked, as they all looked down at the closed doors of the anonymous facility. "Another granary?" He gestured to nearby fields, straw brown and shorn of whatever crops they might have sprouted.

"We look."

"And smear?" Ninety asked, mopping his perspiring forehead, for the last several klicks had included considerable climbing. "I could moisten a hill or two with the sweat I've raised." The storage barns were empty, not so much as a grain of whatever they had held.

"That was one busy mother of a ship," Lenny said, "if it cleared this, too."

"Long time,- Zainal said, showing dust on the finger he had drawn across the floor.

"Oh? Cutting back the farmers' subsidies here, too, huh?" Ninety asked facetiouslyZainal gestured for the patrol to check out each building of the fifteen in this complex. The last one was the garage where the mechanicals were standing in motionless lines.

They didn't look dusty, but just as Ninety started to enter the building, Zainal held up his arm and then pointed to the long rectangles on the eastern overhang of the garage.

"Sun power.

"Yeah," Ninety said, gulping. "D'you think they've registered us as thieves?"

"Doubt it," Lenny said. "What've they got to guard Fagainst on this planet? They don't even know we're here.

And dangerous!" Zainal chuckled. "We are. To them." Then he gestured to Ninety, made a cup of his two hands and waited.

Ninety, shrugging at the thought of his not inconsiderable bulk being hoisted by the Catteni, put his foot in the hand and climbed to Zainal's shoulders where he was now high enough to examine the panels.

"Hey," he said after a moment 5 scrutiny, "I think they come off - He grabbed one, rocking a bit on Zainal's Fshoulders, but the Catteni compensated easily and Ninety unclipped the panel from its brackets.

"Easy to install, replacements in stock, no waiting, no problem!" He handed each of the four panels down, then examined the links to wherever the power was collected. "Wish I'd seen the specs of the solar power stuff they were bringing into Dublin before we left."

"You weren't taken in Ireland?" Kris asked, somehow having assumed that they were.

"Naw, we were working on a construction site in Detroit. Pay wasn't great but better'n getting only fifty quid a week on the dole." Then he jumped neatly down from Zainal's shoulders and joined his brother, Slav and Coo, who were peering suspiciously at the units.

Zainal seemed to be waiting, his attention on the unmoving machines.

"How much power would these things store up?" Ninety asked him.

"Do we have to wait until dark? We wouldn't be able to see then." "Maybe they're on standby anyhow," Lenny suggested.

"They're not armed er anything.

"Darts," Zainal said and peered into the garage to see if he could locate the little aerial menaces.

"I don't see anything set in the frame," Lenny said, running a hand down the side of the opening. "No sign of security devices. Not as if I'd recognize any if I saw "em. There has to be some - Coo broke his thoughtful silence by walking right in and straight to the back of the dim garage. Turning around, he raised his long, spider-fingered hands in a "so there' gesture.

"OK," said Ninety, brushing his hands together. "Let's see if we can't disable these fecking mechanicals." He jumped to the flange of the nearest big farm machine and, finding toe holds, climbed high enough to reach the canted solar panel surfaces. "And these come off with a twist of the wrist, too," he said, after yanking first one, then the next panel out of their brackets. There were seven in all. Having done that, he looked down at Zainal.

"OK, boss man, whaddawe do next?" Zainal stepped up on the flange and then on tiptoe to look into the opening left by the removal of the panels.

Kris held her breath, hoping nothing would turn on and knock him out, or off. She couldn't remember, from her brief glimpses of them, what sections of the machinery lit up when in use.

Zainal began tugging at a section which came away in his hands.

He grunted, handed this down to Kris and he and Ninety began dismantling the exterior sheets. Even Slav looked pleased as he, Coo, and Lenny handled the pieces.

"Simple," Zainal remarked after a good look at the innards. "This…" and he touched a cube the length of his spread hand, "is the power collector." He pulled it loose.

"Hrnmm, a regular pop-tool," Ninety said, grinning.

"Handy dandy Meccano set."

"Well, if other machines had to service it, might as well be easy to disassemble," Lenny said, changing his voice on the last word to sound more like Short Circuit Number Five.

- The wires and connectors that were plugged into the -power cube also came away easily, and Zainal, with yet another grunt, removed the cube.

"Could we use that back at the camp?" Kris asked.

"For what?" Ninety said with a snort. "We haven't anything to power up."

"We could if we had power and maybe some of the engineer types could rearrange all those parts into something useful for us.

"For what?" Ninety asked.

"What's the matter with you? Don't you like technology?" Lenny wanted to know, dismissing his brother's attitude.

"Mitford will want," Zainal said. "We bring on later back to camp." He looked around again, his eyes narrowed.

"What's wrong?"

"No dart thing."

Coo suddenly pointed up, chattering in the way of Deski laughter.

Craning their necks, they finally saw the aerial unit, high up in the ceiling.

"No wonder we didn't see one in the slaughterhouse garage. We never looked up," Kris said. "Well, now we know where it hangs out, we can get that one, too.

"Already half-launched like that, isn't it?" Lenny said.

"That thing has to be programmed by a machine, doesn't it? I mean, it can't go off in here, can it?"

"I hope not," Ninety said.

They had to do a circus act: Ninety on Zainal's shoulders, with Coo on Ninety's to get enough height to reach the thing. In trying to remove it from the brackets that held it in place, the human ladder swayed alarmingly back and forth, with Lenny and Kris doing a dance around Zainal, ready to cushion any faller with their own bodies.

Coo ended up swinging on the thing, to break it loose from its mooring. So it and he fell, Coo uttering amazing cackles as he plummeted, clutching the mechanism to his thin chest. Lenny and Kris smacked into each other as they reached out to catch his spider body.

But they did break his fall even though Kris got clouted across the nose by one wing extension of the flying device. She saw stars but managed to hang on to the frail Deski body until they could ease him to the ground.

When they separated Kris gasped, for the wicked points of the anaesthetic darts were visible along the leading edge of both wings, pointing right at frer. She could so easily have been pricked. She sat down, tipping her head back trying to stem the nosebleed.

The men were all for breaking up the evil device.

"No way, she said with muffled urgency because she only had her sleeve to use to staunch the blood on her face. "Let's find out if there's a reservoir or well of that anaesthetic they use," she said.

"Why?" Lenny demanded. "I'm not a vindictive sort but when I think about what happened to some bodies who got darted -, "I'm thinking of a medical use for the anaesthetic, Lenny. It put us to sleep. And that could be useful."

"Oh, yeah.

So they were even more careful as they disassembled the unit.

Then they disabled all the other machines in the garage, making neat piles of the various components.

"Don't fancy lugging all this back," Lenny said, eyeing the lot thoughtfully.

"We get more people to carry. Aarens is strong," Zainal said, grinning maliciously in Kris's direction.

"He'll love you for that," she said with a snort and a laugh.

"Lugging's about all that gobshite's good for, Ninety said as he regarded the piles dubiously. "But, hey, is it safe to just leave the stuff lying here?" Zainal shrugged. "No machine has power!"

"That's true enough," Ninety said, still worried.

"No power in the garage either," Kris reminded him.

F "Suppose they have got some sort of security patrol that comes around checking to be sure they're on duty or something?" Ninety wanted to know.

After a moment, Zainal grinned. "That is what is wanted."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," and Ninety scratched his head. "So, shouldn't we break all this up so it can't put them all back together?"

"9' "We hide, Zainal said decisively after a moment's thought.

They had to haul the panels and cubes quite a distance to find some place that would be secure from an aerial or surface inspection, and that task took the rest of the day.

That night they camped inside the inoperative garage, safe from the torrential rains that once again pummelled the ground. The rock-squats they'd hunted - Kris had surprised herself by stunning one in her first attempt to hunt with a slingshot - were roasted over the fire they made. The patrol ate, watching the rain sheeting down.

In the course of their seven-day patrol, for that was the time given them by Mitford for this tour, they found and rendered useless four more installations, including another empty abattoir. They camped there that night, more comfortably on fodder bedding while outside the hour-long rain pelted down. It rained every evening, hard, for approximately an hour and they preferred to be undercover during such onslaughts.

"This sort of rain can't be natural," Kris said the fourth night.

"Not rain at night, when all the machines would be safely back in their garages.

"They got the farming so well organized here, I wouldn't put it past "em to organize the weather, too," Ninety said, then added thoughtfully, "Sure would be nice not to have the soccer games rained off.

"You would think of soccer," his brother said with amiable asperity.

"Then there'd have to be a central control facility somewhere on this planet," Kris said, turning to Zainal. He nodded. "Only where?

We aren't going to be able to cover a great deal of distance on foot and we don't even know which continent we're on. Do we?" she asked Zainal.

He shook his head, sighing again and indicating his own frustration over insufficient data.

"Well, if we keep on the way we're going, disabling garages, we may meet our landlord soon. Maybe sooner than we'd like," and unconsciously her hand went to the knife at her belt. "Comforting a knife may be, but it's not really sufficient to combat the kind of technology we've seen." "No intelligence on this planet, Zainal said with a shrug.

"D'you mean anything that comes after us would be a machine?" Kris wasn't at all happy with that notion. "Or more flying darts?"

"We were trapped in that place," Zainal said but he was obviously turning over the possibilities in his head and then gave a convulsive shrug. "We are careful. We keep watch." He delivered a short series of guttural barks to the Deski, who was chewing a mouthful. Coo nodded and pointed to his ear-flaps. Then, to Kris's surprise, he held up one of his two opposite digits in the "gotcha' gesture.

"They catch on quick, don't they?" Lenny murmured as he beamed at the Deski and made the thumbs-up with both of his hands. Coo nodded enthusiastically but kept right on chewing.

Kris, watching the Catteni's face during this exchange decided that he had also noted the alteration in the Deski.

Though the alien kept up with the patrol, climbing was no longer as effortless for him and, to Kris, he seemed even more spidery and insubstantial than ever. And he was constantly trying out some new greenery, root, or the nut-like objects he found in the forested areas.

Some of the vegetation sprouted sort of nuts, or fungi, on the trunks.

Coo tried everything and, when the others chowed down on rock-squat, he ate slowly of his ration bars. Twice Zainal had evidently told him not to save the bars: there would be more back at the camp. At least that's what Kris thought Zainal was telling him.

On the morning of the sixth day, Slav pointed out their homeward direction. Kris was suitably awed by the confidence he displayed, since they'd done so much up- and downhill travel, so many detours around impassable rock faces that she had no idea where the home camp was.