New America

MY OWN, MY NATIVE LAND

The boy stood at sunrise on the edge of his world, Clouds torrented up along the gap which clove it They burned in the light Wind sang, cold and wholly pure.

A spearfowl broke from those mists to soar further aloft, magnificence upon wings the hue of steel For an instant the boy did not move, He could not Then he screamed, once, before he fled.

He took shelter in a thicket until he had mastered both tears and trembling. Boys do not tell anyone, least of all those who love them, that they are haunted.

“Coming in, now,” said Jack O’Malley over the radio phone, and got to work at a difficult approach.

On its northeastern corner, that great tableland named High America did not slope in mountains and valleys, to reach at last the sea level which lay eight kilometers straight beneath. Here the rim fell in cliffs and talus until vapors drowned vision. Only at one place were the heights climbable: where a fault had driven them apart to make the Cleft. And the drafts which it channeled were treacherous.

As his aircar slanted toward ground, O’Malley had a clear view across the dropoff and its immense gash. At evening, the almost perpetual clouds that lapped around the plateau were sinking. Rock heaved dark and wet above the ocean, which billowed to the horizon. Their whiteness bore a fire-gold tinge and shadows were long upon them; for the Eridani sun was low in the west, barely above the sierra of the Centaurs. The illusion of its hugeness could well-nigh overwhelm a man who remembered Earth, since in fact its disc showed more than half again the width of Terrestrial Sol. Likewise the ruddier hue of its less ardent G5 surface was more plain to see than at high noon.

Further up, O’Malley’s gaze had savored a sweep of country from Centaurs to Cleft, from Hercules Mountains to Lake Olympus, and all the grasslands, woodlands, farmlands in between, nourished by the streams out of yonder snow-peaks. Where the Swift and Smoky Rivers joined to form the Emperor, he should have been able to make out Anchortown. But the rays blazed too molten off their waters.

Instead, he had enjoyed infinite subtleties of color, the emerald of man’s plantings mingled in patchwork with the softer blue greens of native growth. Spring was coming as explosively as always on Rustum.

Raksh, the larger moon, stood at half phase in a sky turning royal purple. About midway between the farthest and nearest points of its eccentric orbit, it showed a Lunar size, but coppery rather than silver. O’Malley scowled at the beautiful sight. It was headed in closer, to raise tides in the dense lowland air which could make for even heavier equinoctial storms than usual. And that was just when he wanted to go down there.

His pilot board beeped a warning and he gave his whole attention back to flight. It was tricky at best, in this changeable atmosphere, under a fourth more weight then Earth gives to things: Earth, where this vehicle was designed and made. He wondered if he’d ever see the day when the colony manufactured craft of its own, incorporating the results of experience. Three thousand people, isolated on a world for which nature had never intended them, couldn’t produce much industrial plant very soon.

Nearing ground, he saw Joshua Coffin’s farmstead outlined black against sky and some upsurgings from the cloud deck. The buildings stood low, but they looked as massive as they must be to withstand hurricanes. Gim trees and plume oak, left uncut for both shade and windbreak, were likewise silhouetted, save where the nest of a bower phoenix phosphoresced in one of them.

O’Malley landed, set his brakes, and sprang out: a big, freckle-faced man, athletic in spite of middle age grizzling his red hair and thickening his waist. He wore a rather gaudy coverall which contrasted with the plainness of Coffin’s. The latter was already, courteously, securing the aircar’s safety cable to a bollard. He was himself tall, as well as gaunt and crag-featured, sun-leathered and iron-gray. “Welcome,” he said. They gripped hands. “What brings you here that you didn’t want to discuss on the phone?”

“I need help,” O’Malley answered. “The matter may or may not be confidential.” He sighed. “Lord, when’ll we get proper laser beams, not these damn ‘casts that every neighborhood gossip can listen in on?”

“I don’t believe our household needs to keep secrets,” said Coffin a bit sharply. Though he’d mellowed over the years, O’Malley was reminded that his host stayed a puritanical sort. Circumstance had forced this space captain to settle on Rustum—not any strong need to escape crowding, corruption, poverty, pollution, and the tyranny on Earth. He’d never been part of the Constitutionalist movement. In fact, its rationalism, libertarian-ism, tendency toward hedonism, to this day doubtless jarred on his own austere religiousness.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” O’Malley said in haste. “The thing is—Well, could you and I talk alone for a few minutes?”

Coffin peered at him through the gathering dusk before he nodded. They walked from the parking strip, down a graveled path between ornamental bushes. The stellas were starting to flower, breathing a scent like mingled cinnamon and— something else, perhaps new hay—into coolness. O’Malley saw that Teresa Coffin had finally gotten her roses to flourish, too. How long had she worked on that, in what time she could spare from survival and raising their children and laying the groundwork of a future less stark than what she had known of Rustum? Besides science and ingenuity, you needed patience to make Terrestrial things grow. Life here might be basically the same kind as yours, but that didn’t mean it, or its ecology, or the soil that that ecology had formed, were identical.

The small stones scrunched underfoot. “This is new, this graveling,” O’Malley remarked.

“We laid it two years ago,” Coffin said.

O’Malley felt embarrassed. Was it that long since he’d had any contact with these people? But what had he in common with farmers like them, he, the professional adventurer? It struck him that the last time he’d trodden such a path was on an estate on Earth, in Ireland, an enclave of lawns and blossoms amidst rural bondage and megalopolitan misery. Memory spiraled backward. The sound of pebbles hadn’t been so loud, had it? Of course not. His feet had come down upon them with only four-fifths the weight they did here. And even on High America, the air was thicker than it was along the seashore of Earth, carried sound better, made as simple an act as brewing a pot of tea into a different art—

A volant swooped across Raksh, warm-blooded, feathered, egg-laying, yet with too many strangenesses to be a bird in anything than name. Somewhere a singing “lizard” trilled.

“Well,” said Coffin, “what is this business of yours?”

O’Malley reflected on how rude it would be to make Teresa wait, or the youngsters for that matter. He drew breath and plunged:

“Phil Herskowitz and I were running scientific survey in the deep lowlands, around the Gulf of Ardashir. Besides mapping and such, we were collecting instrument packages that completed their programs, laying down fresh ones elsewhere—oh, you know the routine. Except this trip didn’t stay routine. A cyclops wind caught us at the intermediate altitude where that kind of thing can happen. Our car spun out of control. I was piloting, and tried for a pontoon landing on the sea but couldn’t manage it. The best I could do was crash us in coastal jungle. At least that gave us some treetops to soften impact. Even so, Phil has a couple of broken ribs where the fuselage got stove in against his chair.

“We didn’t shear off much growth. It closed in again above the wreck. Nobody can land nearby. We put through a distress call, then had to struggle a good fifty kilometers on foot before we reached a meadow where a rescue car could safely settle.

“That was five days ago. In spite of not being hurt myself, I didn’t recover from the shock and exhaustion overnight.”

“Hm.” Coffin tugged his chin and glanced sideways. “Why hasn’t the accident been on the news?”

“My request. You see, it occurred to me—what I mean to ask of you.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t think a lot of the wreckage can be salvaged, damn it, but I’d like to try. You know what it’d be worth to the colony, just to recover a motor or something. Salvagers can’t feasibly clear a landing area; they’d have no way of removing the felled trees, which’d pose too much of a hazard. But they can construct a wagon and slash a path for it. That’d at least enable them to bring out the instruments and tapes more readily—I think— than by trudging back and forth that long distance carrying them in packs.”

“Instruments and tapes,” Coffin said thoughtfully. “You consider that, whether or not repairable parts of the car can be recovered, the instruments and tapes must be?”

“Oh, heavens, yes.” O’Malley replied. “Think how much skilled time was spent in the manufacture, then in planting and gathering the packages —in this labor-short, machine-poor economy of ours. The information’s tremendously valuable in its own right, too. Stuff on soil bacteria, essential to further improvement of agriculture. Meteorology, seismology—Well, I needn’t sell you on it, Josh. You know how little we know, how much we need to know, about Rustum. An entire world?”

“True. How can I help?”

“You can let your stepson Danny come along with me.”

Coffin halted. O’Malley did the same. They stared at each other. The slow dusking proceeded.

“Why him?” Coffin asked at last, most low. “He’s only a boy. We celebrated his nineteenth… anniversary… two tendays ago. If he were on Earth, that’d have been barely a couple of months past his fifteenth.”

“You know why, Josh. He’s young, sure, but he’s the oldest of the exogenes—”

Coffin stiffened. “I don’t like that word.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Just because he was grown artificially instead of in a uterus, from donated cells instead of his parents coming here in person, he’s not inferior.”

“Sure! Understood! How would three thousand people be a big enough gene pool for the future, cut off in an environment like this, if they didn’t bring along—”

“—a potential million extra parents. When you marry, you’ll also be required to have one of them brought to term for you to adopt.”

O’Malley winced. His Norah had died in the Year of Sickness. Somehow he’d never since had more than fleeting liaisons. Probably that was because he’d never stayed put long at a time. There was too much discovery to be made, by too few persons who were capable of it, if man on Rustum was to endure.

Yet he was still, in one way, shirking a duty to wed. Man in his billions was a blight on Earth, but on Rustum a very lonely creature whose hold on existence was precarious at best. His numbers must be expanded as fast as possible—and not merely to provide hands or even brains. There is a more subtle kind of underpopulation, that can be deadly to a species. Given too few parents, too much of their biological heredity will be lost, as it fails to find embodiment in the children they can beget during their lifetimes. In the course of generations, individuals will become more and more like each other. And variability is the key to adaptability, which is the key to survival.

A partial, though vital solution to the problem lay in adoption. Spaceships had been overburdened with colonists; they would certainly not add a load of plants and animals. It sufficed to carry seeds—of both. Cold-stored, sperm and ovum could be kept indefinitely, until at last it was convenient to unite them and grow a new organism an an exogenetic tank. As easily as for dogs or cattle, it could be done for humans. Grown up, marrying and reproducing in normal fashion—for they would be perfectly normal people—they would contribute their own diverse chromosomes to the race.

This was, however, only a partial measure. The original settlers and their descendants must also do their part.

Coffin saw O’Malley’s distress, and said more gently: “Never mind. I get your point. You remembered how Danny can tolerate lowland conditions.”

The other man braced himself. “Yes,” he replied. “I realize the original cell donors were chosen with that in mind. Still, the way we lucked out with him, this early in the game—Look. The trip does involve a certain hazard. It always does, when you go down where everything’s so unearthly and most of it unknown. That’s why I’ve kept my idea secret, that Danny would be the best possible partner on this expedition. I don’t think the risk is unduly great. Nevertheless, a lot of busybodies would object to exposing a boy to it, if they heard in advance. I thought, rather than create a public uproar… I thought I’d leave the decision to you. And Teresa, naturally.”

Again Coffin bridled. “Why not Danny?”

“Huh?” O’Malley was startled. “Why, I, well, I took for granted he’d want to go. The adventure— a real springtime vacation from school… After all, when he was a tyke, he wandered down the Cleft by himself—”

“And got lost,” Coffin said bleakly. “Almost died. Was barely saved, found hanging onto the talons of a giant spearfowl that aimed to tear him apart.”

“But he was saved. And that was what proved he was, is, the first real Rustumite, a human who can live anywhere on the planet. I’ve not forgotten what a celebrity it made him.”

“We’ve gone back to a decent obscurity, him and the rest of us,” Coffin said. “I’ve seen no reason to publicize the fact that he’s never since cared to go below the clouds. He’s a good boy, no coward or sluggard, but whenever he’s been offered a chance to join some excursion down, even a little ways, he’s found an excuse to stay home. Teresa and I haven’t pushed him. That was a terrible experience for a small child. In spite of being a ninety days’ wonder, he had nightmares for a year afterward. I wouldn’t be surprised if he does yet, now and then.”

“I see.” O’Malley bit his lip. They stood a while beneath a Raksh whose mottled brightness seemed to wax as heaven darkened. The evening star trembled forth. A breeze, the least bit chilly, made leaves sough. It was not bedtime; this close to equinox, better than thirty-one hours of night stretched before High America. But the men stood as if long-trained muscles, guts, blood vessels, bones felt anew the drag upon them.

“Well, he’s got to outgrow his fears,” burst from O’Malley. “He has a career ahead of him in the lowlands.”

“Why should he?” Coffin retorted. “We’ll take generations to fully settle this one plateau. Danny can find plenty of work. We could even argue that he ought to protect those valuable chromosomes of his, stay safe at home and found a large family. His descendants can move downward.”

O’Malley shook his head. “You know that isn’t true, Josh. We won’t ever be safe up here on our little bit of lofty real estate—not till we understand a hell of a lot more about the continent, the entire planet that it’s part of. Remember? We could’ve stopped the Sickness at its beginning, if we’d known the virus is carried from below by one kind of nebulo-plankton. We’ll never get proper storm or quake warnings till we have adequate information about the general environment. And what other surprises is Rustum waiting to spring on us?”

“Yes—”

“Then there’s the social importance of the lowlands. We came because it was our last hope of establishing a free society. In those several generations you speak of, High America can get as crowded as Earth. Freedom needs elbow room. We’ve got to start expanding our frontiers right away.”

“I’m not convinced that a political theory is worth a single human life,” Coffin said. His tone softened. “However, the practical necessities you mention, you’re right about those. Why do you need Danny?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Well, maybe it isn’t unless you’ve seen the territory. Take my word for it, men who have to wear reduction helmets are too handicapped to accomplish much in that wilderness. I told you, Phil and I barely made it to rendezvous with our rescue craft, and we had nothing more to do than hike. Salvagers will have to work harder.”

“Who’ll accompany him?”

“Me. We haven’t got anybody else who can be spared before weather ruins the stuff. I figure my experience and Danny’s capabilities will mesh together pretty well.

“I’ve arranged about the wage, plus a nice payment for whatever we bring back. The College will be delighted to fill his pockets with gold. That equipment, that information represents too many manhours invested, maybe so many lives saved in future, that anybody would want to write it off.”

Coffin was quiet for another space, until he said, “Let’s go inside,” squared his shoulders and trudged toward the house.

Within lay firelit cheeriness, books and pictures, more room than any but the mightiest enjoyed on Earth. Teresa had tea and snacks ready; this household did not use alcohol or tobacco. (The latter was no loss, O’Malley reflected wryly. Grown in local soil, it got fierce!) Seven well-mannered youngsters greeted the visitor and settled back to listen to adult talk. (On Earth, they’d probably have been out in street gangs—or enslaved, unless barracked on some commune.) Six of them were slender, brown-haired, and fair-skinned where the sun had not scorched.

Danny differed in more than being the oldest. He was stocky, of medium height. Though his features were essentially caucasoid — straight nose, wide narrow mouth, rust-colored eyes—still, the high cheekbones, blue-black hair, and dark complexion bespoke more than a touch of Oriental. O’Malley wondered briefly, uselessly, what his gene-parents had been like, and what induced them to give cells for storage on a spaceship they would never board, and whether or not they had ever met. By now they were almost certainly dead.

Small talk bounced around the room. There was no lack of material. Three thousand pioneers didn’t constitute a hamlet where everybody knew day by day what everybody else was doing, especially when they were scattered across an area the size of Mindanao. To be sure, some were concentrated in Anchor; but on the whole, High American agriculture could not yet support a denser settlement.

Nonetheless, an underlying tension was undisguisable. O’Malley felt grateful when Teresa suddenly asked him why he had come. He told them. Their eyes swung about and locked upon Danny.

The boy did not cringe, he grew rigid, in the manner of his stepfather. But his answer could scarcely be heard: “I’d rather not.”

“I admit we’ll face a bit of risk,” O’Malley said. “However”—he grinned—”you tell me what isn’t risky. I’m mighty fond of this battered hide of mine, son, and I’ll be right beside you.”

Teresa strained her fingers together.

Danny’s voice lifted and cracked. “I don’t like it down there!”

Coffin hardened his lips. “Is that all?” he demanded. “When you can carry out a duty?”

The boy stared at him, and away, and hunched in his chair. Finally he whispered, “If you insist, Father.”

Hours passed before O’Malley left the house, to go home and prepare himself. Meanwhile full night had come upon the highland. The air was cold, silent, and altogether clear. Raksh, visibly grown in both size and phase, stood low above the cloud-sea, while tiny Sohrab hastened in pursuit; both moons crossed the sky widdershins. Elsewhere, darkness was thronged with stars. Their constellations weren’t much changed by a score of light-years’ remove. And though it was a trifle more tilted, Rustum’s axis did not point far from Earth’s. He could know the Bears, the Dragon —and near Bootes, a dim spark which was Sol—

More than forty years away by spaceship, he thought—human cargo cold-sleeping like the cells of their animals and plants and foster children, for four decades till they arrived and were wakened back to life. But did the spaceships still fare? It had been a nearly last-gasp effort which assembled the fleet that carried the pioneers here: an effort by which the government, with their own consent, rid itself of Constitutionalist troublemakers who kept muttering about foolishnesses like freedom. Had any of those vessels ever gone anywhere else again? Radio had not had time to bring an answer to questions beamed at Earth. Nor would man on Rustum be prepared to build ships which could leave it for a much longer time to come. Quite possibly never… O’Malley shivered and hastened to his car.

Roxana was a large continent, and this trip was from its middle to the southern edge. Time dragged for Danny. They were flying high, for the most part very little below the normal cloud deck. Hence transient nimbuses, further down, often cut them off from sight of land. But then they would pass over the patch of weather and come back into clear vision—as clear as vision ever got, here.

O’Malley made several attempts at cheerful conversation. Danny tried to respond, but words wouldn’t come. At last talk died altogether. Only the hum of jets filled the cabin, or a hoot of wind and cannonade of thunder, borne by the thick atmosphere across enormous distances.

O’Malley puffed his pipe, whistled an occasional tune, sat alertly by to take over from the autopilot if there was any trouble. Danny squired in the seat beside him. Why didn’t I at least bring a book? the boy thought, over and over. Then I wouldn’t have to just sit here and stare out at that.

“Grand, isn’t it?” O’Malley had said once. Danny barely kept from yelling back, “No, it’s horrible, can’t you see how awful it is?”

Above, it was pearl-gray, except in the east where a blur of light marked the morning sun. Mountains reared beneath: so tall, as they climbed toward the homes of men, that their heads were lost in the skyroof. They tumbled sharply downward, though, in cliffs and crags and canyons, vast misty valleys, gorges where rivers gleamed dagger bright, steeps whose black rock was slashed by waterfalls. Ahead were their foothills, and off to the west began a prairie which sprawled around the curve of the world. A storm raged there, swart bulks of cloud where lightning flared and glared, remorseless rains driven by the great slow winds of the lowlands. Hues were infinite, for vegetation crowded all but the stoniest heights. Yet those shades of blue-green, tawny, russet were as somber in Danny’s eyes as the endless overcast above them; and the wings which passed by in million-membered flocks only drove into him how alien was the life that overswarmed these lands.

O’Malley’s glance lingered upon him. “What a shame you don’t like it here,” he murmured. “It’s your kind of country, you know. You’re fitted for it in a way I’ll never be.”

“I don’t, that’s all,” Danny forced out. “Let’s not talk about it. Please, sir.”

If we talk, I won’t be able to hide the truth from him, I’ll start shaking. I’ll stammer, the sweat that’s already cold in my hands and armpits, already sharp in my nose, it’ll break out so he can see, and he’ll know I’m afraid. Oh, God, how afraid! Maybe I’ll cry. And Father will be ashamed of me.

Father, who followed me down into yonder horror and plucked me free of death.

Fear didn’t make sense, Danny told himself. His mind had stated the same thing year after year, whenever a dream or a telepicture or a word in someone’s mouth brought him back to the jungle. That was what had branded him. Not heat and wet and gloom. Not hunger and thirst (once his belly had lashed him into trying fruits which were unlike those he had been warned were poisonous). Not rustlings, croakings, chatterings, roar and howl and maniacal cackle, his sole changes from a monstrous silence. Not the tusked beast which pursued him, or even—entirely—the gigantic bird of prey whose beak had gaped at him. It was the endlessness of jungle, through which he stumbled lost for hours that stretched into days and nights, nights.

Sometimes he thought a part of him had never come back again, would always grope weeping among the trees.

No, I’m being morbid, his mind scolded him before it sought shelter at home on High America.

Skies unutterably blue and clear by day, brilliant after dark with stars or aurora, the quick clean rains which washed them or the heart-shaking, somehow heart-uplifting might of a storm, the white peace which descended in winter. Grainfields rippling gold in the wind; flowers ablaze amidst birdsong. Wild hills to climb, and woods which were open to the sun. Rivers to swim in—a thousand cool caresses—or to row a boat on before drifting downstream in delicious laziness. The reach of Lake Olympus, two hours’ airbus ride whenever he could get some free time from school or farm work, but worth it because of the sloop he and Toshiro Hirayama had built; and the dangers, when a couple of gales nearly brought them to grief, those were good too, a challenge, afterward a proof of being a skilled sailor and well on the way to manhood, though naturally it wouldn’t be wise to let parents know how close the shave had been…

This I’ve had to leave. Because I’ve never had the courage to admit I’m haunted.

Am I really, anymore? That wasn’t too bad a nightmare last sleep-time, and my first in years.

The eon ahead of him needn’t be unbearable, he told himself. Honestly, it needn’t. This trip, he had a strong, experienced boss, radio links to the human world, proper food and clothing and gear, a quick flit home as soon as the job was done, the promise of good pay and the chance of an even better bonus. All I’ve got to do is get through some strenuous, uncomfortable days. No more than that. No more. Why, the experience ought to help me shake off what’s left of my old terrors.

Not that I’ll ever return!

He settled into his chair and harness, and fought to relax.

The vehicle, a bulky cargo bus, almost filled the open space on which it had set down. Tall, finely fronded blue-green stalks—plants of that varied and ubiquitous family which the colonists misnamed “grass^”—hid the wheels and much of the pontoons. Trees made a wall around. They were mostly ruddy-barked goldwood, but among them stood slim feathery soartop, murky fake-pine, crouched ant thorny gnome. Between the trunks, brush and vines crowded like a mob waiting to attack. A few meters inward, the light-lessness amidst all those leaves seemed total, as if to make up for the lack of any noticeable shadows elsewhere. Insectoids glittered across that dusk. Wings beat overhead, some huge in this upbearing pressure. None of life closely resembled what dwelt on High America, and much was altogether unlike it. Those environments were too foreign to each other.

The air hung windless, hot and heavy. It was full of odors, pungent, sweet, rank, bitter, none recalling home. Sounds came loud—a background of trills, whispers, buzzes, rustles, purling water; footfalls; above everything else, the first incautious words of human speech.

Danny took a breath, and another. His neck felt stiff, but he made himself stare around. No matter how horrible a bush looks, it won’t jump out and bite me. I’ve got to remember that. It helped a little that they’d let their craft pressurize gradually before venturing forth. Danny had had a chance to get used to the feel of it in lungs and bloodstream.

Jack O’Malley had not. He could endure the gas concentration for a while if he must, with no consequences afterward worse than a bad headache. But let him breathe the stuff too long and carbon dioxide acidosis would make him ill, nitrogen narcosis blur his brain, over-much oxygen begin slowly searing his tissues. Above his coverall, sealed at the neck, rose a glassite helmet with a reduction pump, an awkward water tube and chowlock for his nourishment, a heavy desiccator unit to prevent fogging from the sweat which already studded his face.

And yet he’s spent his years on Rustum exploring the lowlands, Danny thought. What could make a man waste that much life?

“Okay, let’s unload our stuff and saddle up.” O’Malley’s voice boomed from a speaker, across the mutterings. “At best, we won’t get where we’re bound before dark.”

“Won’t we?” Danny asked, surprised. “But you said it was about fifty kilometers, along a hard-packed game trail. And we must have, uh, twenty hours of daylight left. Even stopping to sleep, there shouldn’t be any problem.”

O’Malley’s smile flickered, wistful. “Not for you maybe. I’m not young anymore. Worse, I’ve got this thing on my head and torso. The pump’s powered by my chest expansion when I breathe, you know. You’d be surprised how the work in that adds up, if you weren’t so lucky you’ll never need the gadget yourself.”

Lucky!

“However.” O’Malley continued, “we can hike on after nightfall, and I guess we’ll arrive with plenty of time for preliminary jobs before daybreak.”

Danny nodded. Sometimes he wondered if men wouldn’t do best to adapt to the slow turning of Rustum. Whatever the medics said, he felt it should be possible to learn to stay active for forty hours, then sleep for twenty. Could it be that efficient electric lanterns were the single reason the effort had never been made?

“Come dawn, then, we can start constructing what we need to haul the salvage back here,” O’Malley said.

“If we can,” Danny mumbled.

He hadn’t intended to be heard, but was. Blast the dense atmosphere! O’Malley frowned disapproval.

After a moment the man shrugged. “Maybe we will have to give up on the heaviest stuff, like the engine,” he conceded. “Maybe even on the biggest, bulkiest instruments, if my idea about the wagon doesn’t work out. At a minimum, though, we are going to bring back those tapes—Huh? What’s wrong?”

Danny hugged the metal of a pontoon to himself. “N-n-nothing,” he pushed forth, around the shriek that still struggled to escape him. He couldn’t halt the shudders of his body.

Above the meadow soared a spearfowl, not the big raptor of the highlands but its truly immense cousin, eight meters from wingtip to wingtip, with power to carry a little boy off and devour him.

Yet boughs overarched the trail. Nothing flew beneath that high, high ceiling of bronze, amber, and turquoise except multitudinous small volants like living rainbows. And when a flock of tarzans went by, leaping from branch to branch, chattering and posturing, Danny found himself joining O’Malley in laughter.

Astonishing, too, was the airiness of the forest. “Jungle” was a false word. Roxana wasn’t in the tropics, and no matter how much energy Rustum got from its nearby sun, the Ardashir coast was cooled by sea breezes. The weather was not so much hot as warm, actually: a dry warmth, at that. Brush grew riotously only where openings in the woods provided ample light. Elsewhere, between the boles, were simply occasional shrubs. The ground was soft with humus; it smelled rich.

Nor was the forest gloomy. That appearance had merely been due to contrast. Pupils expanded, the human eye saw a kind of gentle brightness which brought out infinite tones and shadings of foliage, then faded away into mysterious cathedral distances.

Cathedral? Danny had seen pictures and read descriptions from Earth. He’d always thought of a big church as hushed. If so, that didn’t qualify this wilderness, which hummed and sang and gurgled —breezes in the leaves, wings and paws, eager streams, a call, a carol. Where was the brooding cruelty he remembered?

Maybe the difference was that he wasn’t lost; he had both a friend and a gun at his side. Or maybe his dread had not been so deep-rooted after all; maybe, even what he had feared was not the thing in itself, but only memories and bad dreams which for some years had plagued a child who no longer existed.

The trail was easy, broad, beaten almost into a pavement. He scarcely felt the considerable load on his back. His feet moved themselves, they carried him afloat, until he must stop to let a panting O’Malley catch up.

Higher oxygen intake, of course. What an appetite he was building, and wouldn’t dinner taste good? What separated him from his chief, besides age, was that for him this atmosphere was natural. Not that he was some kind of mutant: no such nonsense. If that had been the case, he couldn’t have stood the highlands. But his genes did put him at the far end of a distribution curve with respect to certain biochemical details.

I don’t have to like this country, he told himself. It’s just that, well, Mother used to say we should always listen to the other fellow twice.

When they camped, he had no need to follow O’Malley into sleep immediately after eating. He lay in his bag, watched, listened, breathed. They had established themselves off the trail, though in sight of it. The man’s decision proved right, because a herd of the pathmaking animals came by.

Danny grabbed for his rifle. The plan was to do pothunting, wild meat being abundant. Rustumite life didn’t have all the nutrients that humans required, but supplemental pills weighed a lot less than even freeze-dried rations—

He let the weapon sink, unused. It wouldn’t be possible to carry off more than a fraction of one of those bodies; and it would be a mortal sin to waste so towering-horned a splendor.

After a while he slept. He fell back into a tomb silence of trees and trees, where the spearfowl hovered on high. He woke strangling on a scream. Although he soon mastered the terror, for the rest of his journey to the wreck he walked amidst ghastliness.

The last several kilometers went slowly. Not only did compass, metal detector, and blaze marks guide the travelers off the game path, while a starless night had fallen, but many patches were less thickly wooded than elsewhere, thus more heavily brushcovered. None were sufficiently big or clear for a safe landing. O’Malley showed Danny how to wield the machetes they carried, and the boy got a savage pleasure from it. Take that, you devil! Take that! When they reached the goal, he too could barely stay on his feet long enough to make camp, and this time his rest was not broken.

Later they studied the situation. The slender shape of the car lay crumpled and canted between massive trees. Flashbeams picked out a torn-off wing still caught among the limbs above. There went a deep, changeable pulsing through the odorous warmth. It came from the south, where the ground sloped evenly, almost like a ramp, four or five kilometers to the sea.

Danny had studied aerial photographs taken from the rescue car. In his troubled state, he had not until now given them much thought. Now he asked, “Sir, uh, why’d you head inland, you and Mr. Herskowitz? Why not just out onto the beach to get picked up?”

“Haven’t got a beach here,” O’Malley explained. “I know; went and looked. The bush continues right to the edge of a whacking great salt marsh, flooded at high tide and otherwise mucky. Wheels or pontoons would too damn likely stick fast in that gumbo. If you waited for flood, you’d find the water churned, mean and tricky, way out to the reefs at the bay mouth—nothing that a pilot would want to risk his car on, let alone his carcass.”

“I see.” Danny pondered a while. “And with Mr. Herskowitz injured, you couldn’t swim out to where it’d be safe to meet you…. But can’t we raft this stuff to calm water, you and me?”

“Go see for yourself, come morning, and tell me.”

Danny had to force himself to do so. Alone again in the wilderness! But O’Malley still slept, and would want to start work immediately upon awakening. This might be Danny’s one chance to scout a quicker way of getting the cursed job done.

He set teeth and fists, and loped through the thin fog of sunrise.

At the coast he found what O’Malley had described. Of the two moons, Raksh alone raised significant tides; but those could rise to several times the deep-sea height of Earth’s. (Earth, pictures, stories, legends, unattainable, one tiny star at night and otherwise never real.) Nor was the pull of the sun negligible.

From a treetop he squinted across a sheet of glistening mud. Beyond it, the incoming waters brawled gunmetal, white-streaked, furious. Rocks reared amidst spume and thunder. The low light picked out traces of cross-currents, rips, sinister eddies where sharpness lurked already submerged. Afar, the bay widened out in a chop of waves and finally reached a line of skerries whereon breakers exploded in steady rage. Past these, the Gulf of Ardashir glimmered more peaceful.

No doubt at slack water and ebb the passage would be less dangerous than now. But nothing would be guaranteed. Certainly two men couldn’t row a sizeable, heavily laden raft or hull through such chaos. And who’d want to spend the fuel and cargo space to bring a motorboat here, or even an outboard motor? The potential gain in salvage wasn’t worth the risk of losing still another of Rustum’s scarce machines.

Nor was there any use reconnoitering elsewhere. The photographs had shown that eastward and westward, kilometer after kilometer, the coastline was worse yet: cliffs, bluffs, and banks where the savage erosive forces of this atmosphere had crumbled land away.

Above, the sky arched colorless, except where the sun made it brilliant or patches where the upper clouds had drifted apart for a while. Those showed so blue that homesickness grabbed Danny by the throat.

He made his way back. Since he’d gotten a proper rest, again the country did not seem out and out demonic. But Lord, how he wanted to leave!

O’Malley was up, had the teakettle on a fire and was climbing about the wreck making more detailed investigations. “Satisfied?” he called. “Okay, you can rustle us some breakfast. Did you enjoy the view?”

“Terrible,” Danny grumbled.

“Oh? I thought it was kind of impressive, even beautiful in its way. But frustrating, I admit. As frustrating as wanting to scratch my head in my helmet.

“—I’m afraid we’ll accomplish less than I hoped.”

Danny’s heart leaped to think they might simply make a few trips between here and the bus, backpacking data tapes and small instruments. The voice dashed him:

“It’s bound to be such slow going at best, you see, especially when I’m as handicapped as I am. We won’t finish our wagon in a hurry. Look how much work space we’ll have to clear before we can start carpentering.” They had toted in lightweight wheels and brackets, as well as tools for building the rest of the vehicle from local timber and cannibalized metal. “Then it’ll be harder cutting a road back to our game trail than I guessed from what I remembered. And the uphill gradient is stiffer, too. We’ll spend some days pushing and hauling our loot along.”

“Wh-what do you expect we’ll be able to carry on the wagon?”

“Probably no more than the scientific stuff. Damn! I really did hope we could at least cut the jets and powerplant free, and block-and-tackle them onto the cart. They’re in perfectly good shape.”

Danny felt puzzled. “Why didn’t we bring more men? Or a small tractor, or a team of mules?”

“The College couldn’t afford that, especially now in planting season. Besides, a big enough bus would cost more to rent than the salvage is worth, there’s such a shortage of that kind and such a demand elsewhere. What we have here is valuable, all right, but not that valuable.” O’Malley paused. “Anyway, I doubt the owner of a really big vehicle would agree to risk it down here for any price.”

“It’s only okay to risk us,” Danny muttered. I’m not afraid, he told himself, I’m not! However… all the reward I could win doesn’t counterbalance the chance of my dying this young in this hell.

O’Malley heard and, unexpectedly, laughed. “That’s right. You and I are the most society can afford to gamble for these stakes. God never promised man a free ride.”

And Father always says, “The laborer is worthy of his hire,” came to Danny. In his mind, it means the laborer must be.

Day crept onward. The work was harsh—with machete, ax, cutting and welding torches, drill, wrench, hammer, saw, and tools less familiar to the boy. Nevertheless he found himself quite fascinated. O’Malley was a good instructor. More: the fact that they were moving ahead, that they were on their way to winning even a partial victory over the low country, was heart-lifting, healing.

Danny did object to being stuck with trail clearance while the other went off to bag them some meat. He kept quiet, but O’Malley read it on his face and said, “Hunting hereabouts isn’t like on High America. Different species; whole different ecology, in fact. You’d learn the basic tricks fast, I suppose. But we don’t want to spend any extra time, do we?”

“No,” Danny replied, though it cost him an effort.

And yet the man was right. Wasn’t he? The more efficiently they organized, the sooner they’d be home. It was just that—well, a hunt would have been more fun than this toil. Anything would be.

Slash, chop, hew, haul the cut brush aside and attack what stood beyond, in a rain and mist of sweat, till knees grew shaky and every muscle yelled forth its separate aches. It was hard to believe that this involved less total effort than simply clearing a landing space for the cargo bus. That was true, however. A field safe to descend on, in so thick a forest, would have been impossible to make without a lot of heavy equipment, from a bulldozer onward. A roadway need not be more than passable. It could snake about to avoid trees, logs, boulders, any important obstacle. When it meant a major saving of labor, Danny allowed himself to set off a small charge of fulgurite.

Returning, O’Malley was gratified at the progress. “I couldn’t have gotten this far,” he said. “You couldn’t yourself, up in thinner air.” He estimated that in two days and nights they would link their path to the game trail. Then remained the slogging, brutal forcing of the loaded wagon upward to the bus.

At midday dinner, O’Malley called his superiors in Anchor. The communicator in that distant cargo carrier had been set to amplify and relay signals from his little transceiver. Atmospherics were bad; you couldn’t very well use FM across those reaches. But what words straggled through squeals, buzzes, and whines were like the touch of a friendly hand. Wherever we go on Rustum, Danny thought, we’ll belong, and was wearily surprised that he should think this.

Rain fell shortly after he and his companion awoke at midafternoon, one of the cataracting lowland rains which left them no choice but to relax in their tent, listen to the roar outside, snack off cold rations, and talk. O’Malley had endless yarns to spin about his years of exploration, not simply deeds and escapes but comedies and sudden, startling lovelinesses. Danny realized for the first time how he had avoided, practically deliberately, learning more than he must about this planet which was his.

The downpour ended toward evening and they crawled out of the shelter. Danny drew a breath of amazement. It was likewise a breath of coolness, and an overwhelming fragrance of flowers abruptly come to bloom. Everywhere the forest glistened with raindrops, which chimed as they fell onto wet grass and eastward splintered the light into diamond shards. For heaven had opened, lay clear and dizzyingly high save where a few cloudbanks like snowpeaks flung back the rays of the great golden sun. Under that radiance, leaf colors were no longer sober, they flamed and glowed. In treetops a million creatures jubilated.

O’Malley regarded the boy, started to say something but decided on a prosaic: “I’d better check the instruments.” They were still in the wreck and, though boxed, might have been soaked through rents in the fuselage.

He climbed up a sort of ladder he had made, a section of young treetrunk with lopped-off branches leaned against a door which gaped among the lower boughs. Foliage hid just what happened. Danny thought later that besides making things slippery, the torrent had by sheer force loosened them in their places. He heard a yell, saw the ladder twist and topple, saw O’Malley crash to the ground under the full power of weight upon Rustum.

Night deepened. The upper clouds had not yet returned; stars and small hurtling Sohrab glimmered yonder, less sharply than on High America but all the more remote-looking and incomprehensible. The tent was hot, and O’Malley wanted breezes on his sweating skin. So he lay outside in his bag, half propped against a backpack. Light from a pair of lanterns glared upon him, picked out leaves, boles, glimmer of metal, and vanished down the throat of croaking darkness.

“Yes.” Though his voice came hoarse, it had regained a measure of strength. “Let me rest till dawn, and I can hike to the bus.” He glanced down at his left arm, splinted, swathed, and slung. Fortune had guarded him. The fracture was a clean one, and his only serious injury; the rest were bruises and shock. Danny had done well in the paramedical training which was part of every education on Rustum, and surgical supplies went in every traveling kit.

“Are you sure?” the boy fretted. “If we called for help—a couple of stretcher bearers—”

“No, I tell you! Their work is needed elsewhere. It was harder for Phil Herskowitz to walk with those ribs of his, than it’ll be for me.” Pride as well as conscience stiffened O’Malley’s tone. Bitterness followed: “Bad enough that we’ve failed here.”

“Have we, sir? I can come back with somebody else and finish the job.”

“Sorry.” The man set his teeth against more than pain. “I didn’t mean you, my son. I’ve failed.” He turned his face away. “Lower me, will you? I’d like to try to sleep some more.”

“Sure.” Suddenly awkward, Danny hunkered down to help his chief. “Uh, please, what should I do? I can push our roadway further.”

“If you want. Do what you like.” O’Malley closed his eyes.

Danny rose. For a long while he gazed down at the stubbled, pale, exhausted countenance. Before, O’Malley could take off his helmet temporarily to wash, shave, comb his hair. Danny hadn’t dared allow that extra stress on the body. Dried perspiration made runnels across furrows which agony had plowed. It was terrible to see this big, genial, powerful man so beaten.

Was he asleep already, or hiding from his shame under a pretense of it?

What was disgraceful, anyway, about a run of bad luck?

Danny scuffed boot in dirt and groped after understanding. Jack O’Malley, admired surveyor-explorer, had finally miscalculated and crashed in an aircar. He could make up for that—it could have happened to anybody, after all—by arranging to recover the most important things. But first it turned out that there was no way to haul back the motor, the heart of the vehicle. And then, maybe because he had actually continued to be a little careless, he fell and got disabled…. All right His pride, or vanity or whatever, is suffering. Why should it—this much? He’s not a petty man. What’s wrong with another person completing his project? Certainly not a mere chunk of salvage money. He’s well off.

It must be pretty crucial to him, this. But why?

Danny looked around, to the stars which were relentlessly blinking out as vapors rose from sea and soil, to the shadowiness which hemmed him in. Trees stood half-seen like trolls. They mumbled in the slow, booming wind, and clawed the air. Across the years, his fear and aloneness rushed toward him.

But I can beat that! he cried, almost aloud. I’m doing it!

O’Malley groaned. His eyelids fluttered, then squeezed shut again. He threw hale arm across helmet as if to shield off the night.

Realization came like a blow: He’s been afraid too. It’s that alien down here, that threatening. More than it ever can be to me.… He won his victory over himself, long ago. But a single bad defeat can undo it inside him—

Jack O’Malley, alone and mortal as any small boy?

Danny shook his fist at the forest. You won’t beat him! I won’t let you!

A minute later he thought how melodramatic that had been. His ears smoldered. Yet, blast, blast, blast, there had to be a way! The wagon was built. The few remaining kilometers of brush could be cleared in some hours. True, no one person could manhandle the thing, loaded, the whole way to the bus; and O’Malley lacked strength to help on that uphill drag….

“Do what you like,” the man had whispered in his crushed state, his breaking more of soul than bones. Uphill?

Danny yelled.

O’Malley started, opened his eyes, fumbled after his pistol. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Danny chattered. “Nothing, sir. Go back to sleep.” Nothing—or everything!

Roadmaking was a good deal easier between camp and sea than in the opposite direction. Besides the ground sloping downward, salt intrusions made it less fertile. Still, there was ample brush to lay on muddy spots where wheels might otherwise get stuck. By the brilliance of a lantern harnessed on his shoulders, Danny got the path done before he must likewise sleep.

“You’re the busy bee, aren’t you?” O’Malley said drowsily on one of his companion’s returns to see him. “What’re you up to?”

“Working, sir,” Danny answered correctly, if evasively. O’Malley didn’t pursue the question. He soon dropped again into the slumber, half natural, half drugged, whereby his body was starting to heal itself.

Later, Danny took the wagon to the shore. It went easily, aside from his occasional need for the brake. Unladen, it was light enough for him to bring back alone. But it would require more freeboard—he grinned—especially if it was to bear a heavier burden than planned. With power tools he quickly made ribs, to which he secured sheet metal torched out of the wreck. Rigging would be difficult. Well—tent and bags could be slashed for their fabric.

He labored on the far side of the site, beyond view of the hurt man. Toward morning, O’Malley regained the alertness to insist on knowing what was afoot. When Danny told him, he exclaimed, “No! Have you gone kilters?”

“We can try, sir,” the boy pleaded. “Look, I’ll make several practice runs, empty, get the feel of it, learn the way, make what changes I find we need before I stow her full. And you, you can pilot the bus one-handed, can’t you? I mean, what can we lose?”

“Your fool life, if nothing else.”

“Sir, I’m an expert swimmer, and—”

Shamelessly, Danny used his vigor to wear O’Malley down.

Preparation took another pair of days. This included interruptions when Danny had to go hunting. He found O’Malley’s advice about that easy to follow, game being plentiful and unafraid. Though he didn’t actually enjoy the shooting, it didn’t weigh on his conscience; and the ranging around became relaxation and finally a joy.

Once a giant spearfowl passed within reach of his rifle. He got the creature in his sights and followed it till it was gone. Only then did he understand that he had not killed it because he no longer needed to. How majestic it was!

O’Malley managed camp, in spite of the clumsiness and the occasional need for pain-killer forced on him by his broken arm. With renewed cockiness, he refused to return to High America for medical attention, or even talk to a doctor on the radio. “I’m coming along okay. You did a first-class job on me. If it turns out my flipper isn’t set quite right, why, they can soon repair that at the hospital. Meanwhile, if I did call in, some officious idiot would be sure to come bustling out. If he didn’t order us home, he’d cram his alleged help onto us, so he could claim a share in the salvage money—your money.”

“You really will go through with it, then, sir?”

“Yes. I’m doubtless as crazy as you are. No. Crazier, because at my age I should know better. But if the two of us can lick this country—Say, my name is Jack.”

Filled with aircraft motor and all, the wagon moved more sluggishly than on its trial trips… at first. Then the downgrade steepened, the brake began to smoke, and for a time Danny was terrified that his load would run out of control and smash to ruin. But he tethered it safely above high-water mark. Thereafter he had to keep watch while O’Malley walked back to the bus carrying the data tapes, which must not be risked. Danny could have done this faster, but the man said it was best if he spent the time studying the waters and how they behaved.

He also found chances to get to know the plants better, and the beasts, odors and winds and well-springs, the whole forest wonderland.

Wavelets lapped further and still further above the place to which he had let the wheels roll. He felt a rocking and knew they were upborne. Into the portable transceiver he said: “I’m afloat.”

“Let’s go, then.” O’Malley’s was the voice drawn more taut.

Not that excitement didn’t leap within Danny. He recalled a remark of his comrade’s—”You’re too young to know you can fail, you can die”—but the words felt distant, unreal. Reality was raising the sail, securing the lift, taking sheet and tiller in hand, catching the breeze and standing out into the bay.

No matter how many modifications and rehearsals had gone in advance, the cart-turned-boat was cranky. It could not be otherwise. Danny knew sailing craft too well to imagine he would ever have taken something as jerry-built as this out upon Lake Olympus. The cat rig was an aerodynamic farce; the hull was fragile, ill-balanced, and overloaded; instead of a proper keel were merely leeboards and what lateral resistance the wheels provided.

Yet this was not High America. The set of mind which had decided, automatically, that here was water too hazardous for aircar or motorboat, had failed to see that a windjammer—built on the spot, involving no investment of machinery—possessed capabilities which would not exist in the uplands.

Here air masses thrust powerfully but slowly, too ponderous for high speed or sudden flaws, gusts, squalls. Here tide at its peak raised a hull above every rock and shoal except the highest-reaching; and, the period of Raksh being what it was, that tide would not change fast. An enormous steadiness surrounded the boat, enfolded it and bore it outward.

Not that there were no dangers! Regardless of how firm a control he had, it took a sailor who was better than good to work his way past reefs, fight clear of eddies and riptides, beat around regions against which the hovering man warned him.

Heaven was not leaden, it was silver. Lively little weather clouds caught the light of a half-hidden sun in flashes which gleamed off steel and violet hues beneath. The land that fell away aft was a many-colored lavishness of life; over the forest passed uncountable wings and a wander-song to answer the drumbeat of breakers ahead. The air blew full of salt and strength, it lulled, it whistled, it frolicked and kissed. To sail was to dance with the world.

Now came the barrier. Surf spouted blinding white. Its roar shook the bones. “Bear right!” O’Malley’s voice screamed from the transceiver. “You’ll miss the channel—bear right!” Starboard, Danny grinned, and put his helm down. He could see the passage, clear and inviting ahead. It was good to have counsel from above, but not really needed, in this place that was his.

He passed through, out onto the Gulf of Ardashir, which gives on the Uranian Ocean and thence on a world. Waves ran easily. The boat swayed in the long swell of them. So did the airbus, after O’Malley settled it down onto its pontoons. Still, this could be the trickiest part of the whole business, laying alongside and transferring freight. Danny gave himself the challenge.

When both vessels were linked, the man leaned out of his open cargo hatch and cried in glory, “We’ve done it!” After a moment, with no less joy; “I’m sorry. You have.”

“We have, Jack,” Danny said. “Now let me give you the instruments first. The motor’s going to be the very devil to shift across. We could lose it.”

“I think not. Once the chains are made fast, this winch can snatch along three times that load. But sure, let’s start with the lesser-weight items.”

Danny braced feet against the rolling and began to pass boxes over. O’Malley received them with some difficulty. Nevertheless, he received them. Once he remarked through wind and wave noise: “What a shame we can’t also take that remarkable boat back.”

Danny gazed at this work of his hands, then landward, and answered softly, “That’s all right. We’ll be back—here.”