Darkover: First Contact Read Online Free PDF Page B

because of rough ground. We can see the peak from here; once we get further into the foothills we may not be able to see anything but the next hilltop, or the trees.”
    At first it was easy, pleasant walking, up gentle slopes between tall, deeply rooted coniferous trunks, surprisingly small in diameter for their height, with long blue-green needles on their narrow branches. Except for the dimness of the red sun, they might have been in a forest preserve on Earth. Now and again Marco Zabal fell out of line briefly to inspect some tree or leaf or root pattern; and once a small animal scooted away in the woods. Lewis MacLeod watched it regretfully and said to Dr. Lovat, “One thing—there are furred mammals here. Probably marsupials, but I’m not sure.”
    The woman said, “I thought you were going to take specimens.”
    “I will, on the way back. I’ve no way to keep live specimens on the way, how would I know what to feed them? But if you’re worried about food supply, I should say that so far every mammal on any planet, without exception, has proved to be edible and wholesome. Some aren’t very tasty, but milk-secreting animals are all evidently alike in body chemistry.”
    Judith Lovat noted that the fat little zoologist was puffing with effort, but she said nothing. She could understand perfectly well the fascination of being the first to see and classify the wildlife of a completely strange planet, a job usually left to highly specialized First Landing teams, and she supposed MacAran wouldn’t have accepted him for the trip unless he was physically capable of it.
    The same thought was on Ewen Ross’ mind as he walked beside Heather, neither of them wasting their breath in talk. He thought, Rafe isn’t setting a very hard pace, but just the same I’m not too sure how the women will take it. When MacAran called a halt, a little more than an hour after they had set out, he left the girl and moved over to MacAran’s side.
    “Tell me, Rafe, how high is this peak?”
    “No way of telling, as far off as I saw it, but I’d estimate eighteen-twenty thousand feet.”
    Ewen asked, “Think the women can handle it?”
    “Camilla will have to; she’s got to take astronomical observations. Zabal and I can help her if we have to, and the rest of you can stay further down on the slopes if you can’t make it.”
    “I can make it,” Ewen said. “Remember, the oxygen content of this air is higher than Earth’s; anoxia won’t set in quite so low.” He looked around the group of men and women, seated and resting, except for Heather Stuart, who was digging out a soil sample and putting it into one of her tubes. And Lewis MacLeod had flung himself down full length and was breathing hard, eyes closed. Ewen looked at him with some disquiet, his trained eyes spotting what even Judith Lovat had not seen, but he did not speak. He couldn’t order the man sent back at this distance—not alone, in any case.
    It seemed to the young doctor that MacAran was following his thoughts when the other man said abruptly, “Doesn’t this seem almost too easy, too good? There has to be a catch to this planet somewhere. It’s too much like a picnic in a forest preserve.”
    Ewen thought, some picnic, with fifty-odd dead and over a hundred hurt in the crash, but he didn’t say it, remembering Rafe had lost his sister. “Why not, Rafe? Is there some law that says an unexplored planet has to be dangerous? Maybe we’re just so conditioned to a life on Earth without risks that we’re afraid to step one inch outside our nice, safe technology.” He smiled. “Haven’t I heard you bitching because on Earth you said that all the mountains, and even the ski slopes, were so smoothed out there wasn’t any sense of personal conquest? Not that I’d know—I never went in for danger sports.”
    “You may have something there,” MacAran said, but he still looked somber. “If that’s so, though, why do they make such a fuss about First