Rosalind shot another wild sow before nightfall with a single well-placed bullet to the lungs as it charged an empty jacket Owen had tossed in its path. They would eat well over the next few days.
The veteran huntershumans returning as empty-handed as their scorpionoid bretherenwere delighted with their pair of freshly blooded novices. The pigs were field dressed on the spot, slit from crotch to breastbone, the breastbone split, and the insidesexcept for the liver and heartleft for carrion-eaters. Danny, stained and sticky to the elbows with his part of the task, shouldered one end of the pole his pig was tied to and grinned every step of the way back to the camp until his jaws hurt. Now he knew why some men in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had become professionals at this "sport." He wanted to come out again tomorrow.
"Funny," Rosalind told him as she strode beside him carrying the organ meat in a plastic bag she'd brought for the purpose, "I don't feel the way I always thought I was supposed to feel about killing an animal. Certainly not sad or guilty." She gave her head a toss in the direction of Alvarez and Betal, who'd demanded the honor of carrying her trophy home. "Instead, I feel like singing."
"And why not, dear colleague?" Dlee Raftan Saon called to her over what would have been his shoulder if he'd had shoulders. "It's what three billion years of evolution have prepared you for!"
Rosalind smiled and curtsied to the other doctor, her service pistol incongruous on her hip. Hooray for evolution, Danny found himself thinking, and for the wild frontier. Their expedition had been colonial in concept, its members undesirables, embarrassing presences, outcasts, exiles. They'd been ordered to make a permanent home for themselves among the asteroids. Whatever they discovered they were stuck with; no resupply was planned for the foreseeable future because the Earth had no more ships. There had always been vague talk of a new fleet, but no resources. The present effort was expected to return the investment it represented to America's failing economy, in part by becoming self-sufficient as quickly as possible. Well, they'd made a good start todayperhaps their first.
Something concealed in the gathering darkness hooted at him, making him jump and reminding him that he was still an amateur at this wild frontier business. He shook his head. What had he been thinking about? Oh yes. Nobody had talked about it, nobody had needed to. Their leaders hadn't wanted to mention it and those ordered to go hadn't wanted to hear it. But if things didn't pan out, the ASSR was rid of a lot of misfits. Latermuch laterif they proved successful, new ships might be built to relieve the first arrivals. Earth had plenty of unwanted characters to be sent hundreds of millions of kilometers away. Now that Danny had discovered that he could feed himself and his friends, none of these considerations seemed as grimor even as importantas they had before. He had learned a lesson socialism never dares teach: the joy of individual independence.
The hunting party hadn't strayed far into the forest, so it wasn't long before they reached camp again. It looked much as it had from the beginning. In the flickering firelight even the new tents fooled the eye for a moment, standing beside the offloaded passenger modules in place of the shuttles.
There was no lack of shoulders to relieve Danny, Betal, Alvarez, and Jones of their burdens. Despite the absence of the general, Ortiz, Sebastiano, and their minimal crews, the camp seemed crowded. In addition to the American expeditionaries, temporarily commanded by Empleado, Mister Thoggosh was present, completely in the flesh, colorful shell and everything, to greet them this time, along with his assistant, Aelbraugh Pritsch. One reason, perhaps, that the camp seemed crowded was that Scutigerawho took up a lot of room all by himselfhad come with them.
"Auspicious beginnings!" the great centipede declared in a booming voice. "Congratulations! I shouldn't have thought your weapons adequate to the task."
Danny grinned up at the enormous being who, for once, wasn't making him feel like the next dinner course. "There's little, sir, in this or any other world that a .44 magnum isn't adequate for."
He didn't mention that it had taken him three shots to get the job done, or that Rosalind had killed her pig with a single, less powerful 11.43x23mm Leninabout the same power level as a .357 magnum. He was about to speak of her achievement when he was shouldered aside by Andre Valerian, one of the agricultural specialists included in all three shuttle crew-complements. Danny was fairly certain that the Russian was what he appeared to be, and not just another KGB agent traveling incognito. With him was Captain Guillermo, a soil geologist, and Major Ortega y Pena, another scientific type, a botanist, whom everyone referred to (behind his back) as "Pinhead."
"Corporal Owen!"
The machinist ducked out from the crowd of well-wishers and welcomers to address the major. "You rang?"
"Take a look at this." Ortega held out a metallic object, indistinct in the darkness. "How do you explain it?"
"I don't know, Major. It would help if I could see it better." Before the indignant botanist could reply, Eichra Oren was beside the corporal, shining a powerful light down at the object in Owen's broad hand. Sam was at the Antarctican's knee and Pulaski was within an arm's length. It took a moment before Danny realized that the "flashlight" was the plasma pistol, a multipurpose tool with which Eichra Oren had held off one of Empleado's thugs after they'd first arrived on the asteroid. "Okay, that's the nosepiece of the plow blade I made for you aggie people, and it's sheared off. Pretty neat trick, PinI mean, Major. It's graphitic tool steel, hardened to sixty-five on the Rockwell `C' scale. How'd it happen?"
Ortega sniffed. "I expected you to tell me, Corporal."
Owen ran his fingers through his black, bushy beard and hair. He'd neither shaved nor had a haircut in months and often looked like a wildman to his fellow humansGod knew, Danny thought, what he looked like to the aliensthe lieutenant often thought of him as the world's biggest hobbit. "Gee, Maje, I expected to win the state lottery someday, too, but it never happenedgot sent here, instead. Life's full of disappointments, isn't it? Let's go sit by the fire and talk. You used the winch with this?"
The group adjourned to the center of the camp, where logs had been laid as seats around what had become a permanent fireplace. Several people took charge of the pigs. There were compartments within the tent walls in which food never spoiled, even though it remained at ambient temperature and was subjected to no detectable radiation.
The experts had started a little garden under a sheet-plastic greenhouse. Among the expedition's most important supplies were fast-growing high-yield seeds of various kinds. Twentieth-century experience with Lunar soil samples had led this mission's planners to expect fast growth and high yield in uneroded carbonaceous chondrite despite the fact that less sunlight was available beyond the orbit of Mars. Before taking off on a hunting expedition of his own, General Gutierrez had decided it was time to put both experts and supplies to their intended use.
At Ortega's order, some of the personnel had begun laying out a plot next to the encampment. Various individuals from the nautiloid establishment had come from time to time to observe the quaint agricultural practices of the barbarians. Thanks to a nearby stream and the soft rains that fell almost every night, there was no lack of water. A shallow ditch had been scraped to divert a little of it to the garden. Everyone had expected that the soft, crumbly carbonaceous chondrite soil would work easily. If the Lunar soil experiments were any guide, all one had to do was shove the seeds into the ground, sprinkle on some water, and jump back out of the way.
The experts had assured everyone that, despite the canopy, there was more than enough light to grow cropsjust look at the jungle growing all around them. Danny had, and began to wonder why it was necessary to plant their own crops, when more food than they could ever use seemed to be hanging wild on every tree and bush. Owen had spoken of little else all the way back to camp, wondering aloud if the local equivalents of tomatoes, garlic, mustard, and onions they'd already discovered would make suitable barbecue sauce for pork. He'd spoken with Raftan, Tl*m*nch*l, and Dr*f*rst*v about obtaining vinegar and brown sugar. Danny hadn't had the heart to remind him that at any moment they might be cut off from that kind of largesse, especially since Marna, who outranked him, had joined the conversation, arguing for sweet-and-sour instead of barbecue.
However, if everything else went as it should, they would soon have their own food supply, and if somebody didn't happen to like broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts, it was just too bad. The trouble was, Danny grinned with ironic appreciation, he'd never liked broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts himself. On the other hand, he thought, when, since they'd landed on this asteroid, had anything gone as it should? This, of course, was yet another thought which, like the political opinions he shared with his father, was best kept to himself.
Owen had asked Ortega, "You used the winch with this?"
The botanist bobbed his head as if he were the corporal and Owen the major. "As you instructed." Since the expedition was shorter on available labor than on land, they'd adopted a semimechanized plan to make their furrows radial instead of parallel, each terminating at a common point. There, Owen had set up a powerful electric motor and steel cable to drag the plowshare through the dirt from the far ends of the furrows to the center.
After each furrow was completed, the plowshare would have to be carried out to the end of the next furrow by hand, but that was the full extent of any physical labor involved.
"It appears that the topsoil in the chosen location is only centimeters deep," Valerian told the machinist, glaring at the soil geologist, Guillermo. "Almost immediately our rig hit impermeable bedrockwe couldn't stop the motor in timedestroying the blade."
Running a thumb over the jagged edge, Owen raised his eyebrows. "And what about the spare blade I made you?"
A long-suffering Guillermo polished his glasses and sighed, "I'm afraid this is the spare blade, Corporal."
"Well," replied the machinist, "before we left to go hunting, I was working on a third blade, cobbled together from carbide-edged titanium alloy, but I'd like to see this bedrock of yours before I finish it. I can't guarantee that it won't meet the same fate."
"I can guarantee that it will," declared a familiar voice. They turned to watch Mister Thoggosh drag himself into the firelight. Covered in plastic that kept his body moist, the mollusc glistened. "It's exactly the same problem I've been having, and the reason I came to visit you tonight. You may wonder why none of us is amused at your mishap. I observed what you would-be farmers went through with sympathy. You see, I've been makingrather the scientists and technicians in my employ havea series of bewildering discoveries about this troublesome asteroid. If you'll accompany me to the place your agricultural implement failed, I'll tell you about some of them."
"I just suggested that," Owen told Mister Thoggosh. "Got a flashlight?"
He was answered by a burst of blue-green brightness and a loud, hollow-sounding hiss. Behind Mister Thoggosh, Llessure Knarrfic, looking, as she always did, like a six-foot rubber flower, held one of the expedition's Coleman lanterns. "Excellent, Lieutenant," the plant-being declared to Marna, who stood beside her blowing on a burnt-out survival match. "It has a nice, piquant, after-dinner flavor I've never experienced with artificial lighting before, heady, but with just a touch of mellow smoothness."
Marna grinned and shook her head. "Can I cook, or can I cook?" Several people turned to listen.
"I thought you were supposed to be a carnivorous plant," objected Danny, who'd been content to watch until now. "That's what Raftan told me, anyway. He said your people huntjust like we do."
"That's what I told him," the insect physician confirmed, his faceted eyes glittering in the lamplight.
The enormous flower swiveled her blossomlike face to look at him. "Because I'm a vegetable, did you think I have to be a vegetarian? That's the animal thinking process for you. Of course we hunt, young person. But we're also fully photosynthetic, like any proper orger, plantlife. And by the way, Corporal, I believe that I agree with Lee: sweet-and-sour sounds much better than this bar-bee-queue you suggested. Shall I kill a pig of my own? I'm looking forward to the feast. Now, are we going to see this tragic furrow of yours, or not?"
Owen laughed and led the way. A rather large, slow procession wound between two of the tents in the direction of the stream, its pace set by Mister Thoggosh, who didn't have the option of buoyant levitation that he enjoyed in his own quartersand had decided to continue concealing what agility he did have. As he drew himself along with his tentacles, theatrically dragging his shell behind him, he continued his explanation.
"I already knew there was something strange about this planetoid's composition," Mister Thoggosh told them. "I'd have been surprised had it proved otherwise. I was attracted to this asteroid in the first place because it had no equivalent in any other parallel universe."
They found the "tragic furrow" when Demene Wise, still hobbling on crutches, stumbled into it. Rosalind rushed forward to get him on his feet again. The man, another former KGB ruffian, even managed a self-deprecating laugh, something he'd have been incapable of only days before. Whatever difficulties the asteroid presented, Danny thought, being here seemed to be good for some people.
Mister Thoggosh went on. "It persists in destroying my custom-designed drilling equipment at various sites, deep in what you call the super-kudzu forest. Understand that we're speaking of nuclear plasma bolides now, not tool steel. I've just learned, with the help of your father and his associates, Lieutenant Gutierrez, that it also renders the asteroid opaque to neutrino-scanning."
"What?" Several people gasped the word at once. Small insects began to be attracted to the light, and somewhere, deep in the forest, a night bird made a gobbling noise, mocking them.
"Indeed," the nautiloid replied, "and this, as we all know, is quite impossibleunless 5023 Eris were as dense as a collapsed star."
Owen was down on one knee in the furrow, brushing soil away from the infamous bedrock with the aid of Llessure Knarrfic's lamplight. Danny leaned over and watched as the machinist ran his short, blunt fingers over a surface which looked to the lieutenant like the dried peel of an orange, highly magnified. He wasn't disturbed to feel the tips of Scutigera's long, sensitive, tapering antennae slide past his neck like armor-covered snakes for a look at the ground below.
Owen had other ideas. "Petrified dinosaur hide," he declared. "But the whole asteroid can't consist of material as dense as you say, Mister Thoggosh; its gravity would exceed that of Earth."
"I'm certain," Mister Thoggosh replied, "that the astronomical-minded among you have followed much the same line of thought, Corporal. It can lead to one conclusion only, not one that I like much, but consistent with what we know. This asteroid's impermeable surface"
Danny interrupted. "Is nothing more than a hollow shell!" His words seemed to die as soon as they were spoken, absorbed by the nearby woods. A breeze stirred its leaves before Mister Thoggosh spoke again.
"Quite right. And to account for the low gravity, it has to be a relatively thin shell, at that. As fantastic as it seems, 5023 Eris appears to be"
"A giant spaceship!" Toya almost screamed the words which caused another round of gasps among her fellow humans.
"Go to the head of the class, my dear. It would appear that the Predecessors constructed 5023 Eris, dwarfing any of their previous artifacts."