Starfist: A World of Hurt Read Online Free PDF Page B

cover looked as if it had never been trod by man's foot, and the rope Volga had used to rappel into the valley obviously hadn't been used in several weeks.
    After a few minutes of peering nervously into shadows, Officer Ahvenan sidled over to Sillanpa. "I don't like this," he whispered.
    "Neither do I," the zoologist whispered back.
    "It's too quiet."
    "There are no animals."
    They heard a rustling in the branches and looked up toward the sound, but couldn't see what made the noise.
    "It's just the wind in the trees," Sillanpa said when he failed to see anything.
    "Then how come there's no wind up there?"
    Sillanpa looked higher. Ahvenan was right, nothing was moving in the trees.
    Just then someone called out, "I found something!" and everybody rushed to see what it was.
    It was a camera. Within minutes two more were found. There were two trids and a 2-D. All were broken open and plants grew through them. Frans Lagoda told the others to leave the cameras in place, but to retrieve the recording crystals in case they could still be read.
    Farther into the undergrowth, the search party found what they were afraid they'd find--human bones. They were still covered with clothing, but all the flesh was gone; they had been more thoroughly scoured than anybody would expect from the likely length of time they'd been there--especially with the clothing relatively undisturbed.
    When they attempted to lift the skeleton into a forensic bag, they found they had to cut it free of tendrils that grew from the ground, through the clothing, and into the bones. When they finally picked it up and bagged it, the disarticulated bones slid together into a pile.
    "Let's go," Lagoda said. "We found what we came for." He cast a worried look around.
    They'd found Samar Volga, but they had no idea what killed him--and whatever it was might still be nearby.
    There was rustling in the trees as they filed out of the forest, back to the steep slope leading up to the saddle. Officer Ahvenan, the last person out, didn't see the streamer of greenish fluid that arced out from the bush and just missed his heel as he left the trees.
    Outside again, Frans Lagoda ordered cameras and other sensors placed to observe the slope leading up to the saddle. If whatever killed Volga was still inside the valley, he wanted a warning if it tried to come out.
    In due time forensic pathologists determined that some of the cratering on a few of the bones had been caused by a yet to be determined acid and noted that fact in the Unexplained Expiration report frontier worlds were required to file with the Department of Colonial Development, Population Control, and Xenobiological Studies whenever cause of death was unknown.
    They routinely filed an Unexplained Expiration report for the two people who next died in a hidden valley. And for the one after that as well.

CHAPTER THREE
    Nobody had ever officially bothered to give 43q15x17-32, an uninhabited planet orbiting a smallish, nondescript G-2 star, any formal name other than its alphanumeric designation in the Atlas of Non-Habitable Planetary Bodies of Human Space. The Bureau of Human Habitability, Exploration, and Investigation--commonly called by the acronym "BEHIND"--had taken one quick look at the planet and summarily rejected it as a candidate for human colonization. They didn't even think it worthwhile for mineral exploitation.
    The planet 43q15x17-32 certainly wasn't much to look at. It was a blotchy brownish-red with occasional scabrous splotches of cobalt blue or washed-out green. The blue wasn't water (its seas were a sickly gray) and the green wasn't plant life--it was exposed mineral veins. So were the other surface colors. The only land-based plant life on the planet was scraggly mattings of algaelike bacteria at the fringes of its oceans. There wasn't any terrestrial animal life. No one other than xenobiologists studying the origins of life had any interest whatsoever in the plants or animals that might eke out a living