Wildcatter

“They have claws on their walking feet, but their hands are wrap-around flippers that may not be as prehensile as ours but can grasp things at least as well as an elephant’s trunk can. Some of them were carrying fishing spears, but they didn’t use them against us. First they tugged at Dylan’s suit. Then they tried to cut it with sharp stones and implements like daggers. I learned later that those are teeth from something like a shark. We were recording, of course, and later Control analyzed their speech patterns and concluded that their noises were more than just a series of alarm calls, but possibly not a true language. Our best estimate was that the centaurs rank about whale or dolphin level in communication. We could also analyze their actions, and Control was confident to the ninety-eighth percentile that the critters were not trying to hurt Dylan. They were only trying to free him from his suit. If you’re an air-breathing aquatic species, your greatest danger may lie in getting tangled in weeds, so they have an instinctive response to help anyone in that predicament. Or the orange color may signify some dangerous predator. Whatever the logic, they seemed to see him as a giant cub in peril and the whole tribe came to the rescue.”

Jordan’s voice. “Golden Hind to Prospector.”

“Just a moment,” Seth told Meredith, who couldn’t hear his helmet speaker. “Come in, Golden Hind.”

“Storm surge on the way. Expect flooding in about fifteen minutes and the crest ten or fifteen after that. We can’t predict the depth, I’m afraid.”

“Call up a plan of a KR745.”

“Got it.”

“The bird’s lying on its port side. We’re sitting in the lab, where the fuselage is almost broken apart. If we get flooded out, we’ll retreat through the decon room to the biologists’ dormitory. We can’t go beyond that, but we can shut ourselves in. There ought to be enough air in there for a couple of hours. If we’re underwater much longer than that, have a nice flight home, ok?”

“We’re praying for you.” So even Jordan was into prayer mode now.

Seth signed off and reported the bad news to Meredith. The water table was rising, bringing the pond almost to the door of their cave. He was thirsty. For the first time he seriously wondered if this killer planet might be going to claim another victim.

There was nothing he could do about that now, except wait and see. His duty was to continue getting Meredith’s story into Golden Hind’s record, because the odds were that she wouldn’t come out of this alive either. Her testimony would be invaluable if Mighty Mite and Galactic ended up in court.

Which they likely would. Seth didn’t care about JC and his moneyed buddies. JC Lecanard already had what he wanted-the video of Seth planting the flag and the two samples Seth had sent back with the shuttle. If Prospector Broderick did not come back alive, he could not claim his danger bonus, but JC could stake the planet and file for a development license, arguing that Galactic’s quarantine beacon was premature. If ISLA accepted that Mighty Mite deserved another try, it might grant at least a provisional license. Then Galactic would have to meet his price. Or JC could cut Galactic out, find other financing, build a better shuttle, and come back later. Of course Galactic would try to bury Mighty Mite under a landslide of litigation-sue, appeal, delay, argue, and spend them into bankruptcy. That was how the game was played.

As long as ISLA did not judge the centaurs to be an intelligent species.

Screw them all. Seth had little desire to help JC, but he did want to help the rest of the crew, who also had a stake in the expedition. A potential action for murder against Commander Duddridge might keep Galactic out of the courts.

Seth felt as beat as he had after the worst fights of his pugilism career. “Next episode? Dylan had just been knocked down for his own good.”

“The fall broke his arm. He was really pissed about that, the first fracture he’d ever had. He also got bruises, of course, but nothing more. We headed back to Mercury. That’s what I’d named the shuttle. Some centaurs followed us for a while, but they like to keep their hides damp, so they soon ran off.

“Then the second shoe fell. We were in sight of the shuttle. Out of clear air and blue sky came a blast of wind. It knocked us both flat, which didn’t help Dylan’s arm. It lifted Mercury half off the ground and dropped it. Two legs crumpled and one of the jets was badly bent. Our bird was a dead duck.

“Mariko reported upstairs at once of course. Courageous began fueling its shuttle. Before it was ready to come and get us, a real storm blew in. We were stuck here overnight.”

“Broken legs and jets? That was all the damage to the shuttle?”