Part 6 (1/2)

”I know that,” he said, ”but what we want to look at is down a hole. OK?”

I shrugged. ”Lead on, pal,” I said. ”If you've found the key to the whole problem, I personally will thank you very kindly, and we can work out together how we are going to run the show.”

I was being heavily sarcastic, of course, but I was careful not to sound aggressive about it. It had not escaped my notice that I might yet have use for Johnny's good opinion.

We went out on to the field. It was completely deserted. All the Caradoc heavy machinery was at rest- the workers had gone home for the day. All they had done while they were actually active was to drive bulldozers and diggers around a bit, idling along in pursuit of plans whose urgency was suspended. They hadn't even left a night watchman. Who would want to steal a bulldozer in Paradise?

As we crossed the field, my mind was still trying to balance possible courses of action. There was really only one question: could I get far enough ahead of Charlot to offer to sell him a solution? That was a pretty ambitious question. Charlot was a very, very clever man. He was also ill, a fraction narrow-minded, and attacking the problem from what might just prove to be the wrong direction. I had the feeling that if only Charlot, Capella, and Holcomb could get together in a bug-free environment we could work out a satisfactory agreement. Just a little co-operation all around.

”Here we are,” said Johnny.

We were right out at the edge of the field. If all went Caradoc's way, the main terminal would be here, and the hole into whose depths we were staring would contain the foundations of s.p.a.ceport officialdom. I shone the flash down into the hole.

”Lousy place to dig foundations,” I said. ”That rock down there's all soft and crumbling. They'll have to dig deep.”

”They have dug deep,” said Johnny, as he scrambled down into the pit. He was right-it was a fair way down.

”Are you sure we can get out again?” I asked him.

”I did it this afternoon,” he rea.s.sured me. I hoped he Was right, and I followed him down.

”Here,” he said, sc.r.a.ping at the wall of the pit with his fingertips. ”s.h.i.+ne the light along... there, and ...

there...”

All I could see were marks in the soft rock.

”There must have been a lot more of it,” said Johnny, ”but they smashed it up with the shovel. It'll all be up there in the rubble, but I don't suppose there'll be anything identifiable. But the shovel didn't crush this bit here, you see-the face has crumbled away-the rock is very soft, like you said. This land was a lot lower once- it was probably reclaimed from the sea, very slowly. It might have been swampy once.

Here, you can see what I mean just here ... that line there, and that one. Here's the foot, and over here's the eye.”

It clicked. He was showing me petrified bones. The thing in the pit was a fossil. I shone the light over the whole length of the creature, and back again. The head part wasn't too clear, but I could see what I needed to see. And the foot made it definite.

It was the fossil of an extinct animal.

With claws and teeth.

9.

We climbed out of the pit without too much difficulty, getting very dirty in the process, and began to walk slowly back to the Hooded Swan.

”Is it important?” asked Johnny.

”You bet your sweet life it's important,” I told him. ”It's so simple... the Paradise syndrome, of course, it misled us all. The perfect world, an innocent, unspoiled, young Earth. And it looked like a real Garden of Eden- created to order, fresh off the production line....

”Only it's not fresh. It's not primitive. It's not young. It's far older than Earth. Of course there's evolution here. It isn't that it hasn't started-it's stopped. Sure, everything's been the same for a million years or more. Sure n.o.body and nothing dies-now. The evolution's over- it's stabilised. Something's stabilised it.

Something's run the whole of life on this world into a rut and is keeping it there. Of course there's a selective agent-the reason we haven't found it is because it's not active. It has no selecting to do. Or it had none, until Caradoc ...”

”Grainger!”

The shout came from halfway across the field. Nick delArco was running to intercept us. He'd just come back from town and he'd come in a hurry. Something had happened. Things were beginning to happen all over the place.

”You'd better get the maiden out,” he said, as he arrived at a distance where he didn't have to shout.

”We have to get into town quickly. I'll get Charlot. Just wants him. There's a war about to start.”

”What happened?” asked Johnny.

Nick had already turned, and was heading for the Swan. Almost unconsciously, we broke into a run to keep pace with him. He looked back over his shoulder, and said: ”One of the Caradoc men murdered a native. Aegis is howling for blood. The witnesses won't talk. Just's sitting with his finger over a volcano. There'll be more murder done unless Charlot can sort it out.”

By the time he had finished telling us all this we were up into the belly of the s.h.i.+p, and Charlot was coming out to find out what all the commotion was about.

”Get the buggy out,” I told Johnny, as delArco began to go through it all again. I leaned back against the bulkhead and began to wipe dirt off my hands on to my s.h.i.+rt.

I figured I just about had time to change my s.h.i.+rt.

-So much for the chance to have a quiet little talk with everybody, said the wind.

A promising diplomatic career, nipped in the bud, I commented.

-It's saved you from yourself, he said. You'd have been a cast iron certainty to botch it up.

Nonsense, I replied. With you to help me out, how could I possibly have failed?

He laughed. Laughing parasites feel very strange. It really kills a conversation.

I was appointed to drive the iron maiden-a testimony to my position as official transportation executive rather than to my skill at ground zero driving. Nick, with his long experience of groundhogging on Earth, might well have got us there a shade faster.

When I drive, I worry too much about other things on the road-like the four pedestrians who pa.s.sed us, going the other way. They weren't running, and they weren't in my way, but I worried anyway. I didn't see why anyone should be going to the field at that time of night while all the action was in town. I couldn't see who they were, but I was suspicious.

”Hey,” I said. ”Do you think we ought to have left somebody back at the Swan? ”

”Why?” It was Johnny who questioned me-probably because he knew that if anyone had to go back it would be him.

”Because four shadows just pa.s.sed us on their way out there.”

”They can't get into the s.h.i.+p,” Charlot a.s.sured me. ”Even if they wanted to.”

”We shouldn't have left her alone,” I said. ”We're on an alien world.”

”Keep driving,” said Charlot.