Freedom's Landing Part 36

"I'll help," Kris said happily, looking forward to Aarens' reaction when he realized he couldn't pull that sort of an act on a Catteni.

They rappelled down, Kris revelling in the manoeuvre, for she'd always liked this exercise in her survival course.

Joe and Sarah now had Aarens cornered in the garage, behind the two stubby-winged planes nose to tail in the long building. The garage was much higher than it needed to be to accommodate just the two planes. The garage was also lit, so all its functions were controlled from above.

Kris wondered if the planes were also remote control devices.

Maybe that was what the screens beside the control panels were for: remote viewing. Zainal now confronted Aarens, picked him up by the fold of his coverall and carried him, one-handed, to the front.

"No, no, I tell you I won't go. I can't handle heights. I'll faint. I'll be sick all over you " Aarens was protesting, batting vainly at the hand that carried him.

"You are needed up. You will go up!" Zainal told him and then gestured at Joe to bring the spare rope.

Without actually releasing the now violently struggling mechanic, Zainal created a harness that strapped his arms tight to his chest, with loops under his arms for him. Then Zainal fastened the loose ends of the harness to himself and started up the rock-face, hauling Aarens who was flailing hard with his legs to impede his upward progress.

"You'd better use your legs to keep from bruising yourself against the rock," Sarah suggested with objective indifference.

"Ah, I can't. I can't stand heights. Oh, G.o.d, oh, G.o.d, oh G.o.d," and he kept up that litany as Zainal inexorably hoisted him, dangling and banging against the cliff-face.

"Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d." Kris followed behind, not that she could have rescued Aarens, or even wanted to, or would need to since Zainal had the exercise under complete control.

"Oh G.o.d oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d," Aarens' voice rose to an hysterical pitch.

"Keep your eyes shut then, you d.a.m.n fool," Kris advised. "Don't look. Don't look down Aarens did not become sick but he did have an episode of incontinence. Kris was able to move out of the way of it which was as well, as it left a wet streak down the cliff.

The "o G.o.d o G.o.ds' became piteous and hoa.r.s.e but Zainal ignored them and then Bert helped haul the terrified man up onto the shallow ledge and through to the door into the control room.

"Pull yourseif together," Bert said with disgust to the quivering mechanic as he untied the ropes. Zainal was shrugging out of his harness. "This complex goes deep into the mountain, Zainal. Care to have a look?"

"No, I stay here," Zainal said, looking down at the sorry sight Aarens presented. "He must do work." Kris was glad to leave the close confines of the control room because Aarens' accident was smelling the place up.

She didn't know how Zainal could stand it, but the door was left open and perhaps the wind at this height would clean the air and dry Aarens off.

Bert led her out of the control room, through one door and then down a short flight of very wide steps with low risers. Lights came up, brightening slowly, as if slow from disuse, to the same orange glow that shone in the control room. They entered the first room and it was empty of everything but a sort of long pedestal table; no chairs or stools or anything to sit or rest on. The table did look used, with some edges smoothed and some scratches marring its surface. Scratches from what? Bert urged her to the room on one side.

"I don't know if these are beds or what," he said, pointing to large square platforms, built up a foot off the floor surface. "Much less this?" and he showed her an equally large room beyond, which had a square depression in its centre with what seemed to be a drain in the middle. "I can't find any water outlets or hoses or anything." They prowled here and there about the rooms and decided that those that had the same built-in equipment might be sleeping accommodation. The purpose of others was not immediately apparent. Some had large rectangular coffers which defied their attempts to open them. The wall shelving was all above her shoulder height.

"Big creatures? Appendages at this level?" Kris asked, pretending to remove something from a shelf.

"Not been used in yonks," Bert allowed, scuffing the dust on the floor.

"I don't know what this is," Aarens voice said, issuing from somewhere near the ceiling. "No reaction anywhere." Bert and Kris grinned at each other.

"Maybe we better tell them that they're on intercom," Kris said.

Bert shrugged. "Why?"

"Why are you touching the bullets glyphs?" Zainal was saying, a note of concern in his deep voice.

"They're for those torpedo-type gizmos on a rack in the garage," Aarens was saying in a smooth sly tone. "Could be "Don't!" Zainal's command crackled.

Just then they heard a rumbling that echoed up from below. With one accord they ran back to the control room.

Zainal was standing over the p.r.o.ne body of d.i.c.k Aarens, his right hand still clenched in a fist. In his left hand he held the comunit, its "on' light glowing.

"I decked him," Zainal said. Then he pointed to the panel where one pf the bullet depressions shone red.

Was red always the colour of alarm?

"He pressed it. It go off."

"Thanks, Zainal," Joe's voice could be faintly heard from the comunit. "We moved. The right way. Thing launched in a blaze and we'd've been all too close to its exhaust.

Wait till I get a hold of that Aarens!"

"You'll have to stand in line,' Kris said, pulling the comunit over to her so that she could register her priority.

"When he comes to, that is." She toed the p.r.o.ne body.

"What did he think he was doing, Zainal?"

"Make trouble," Zainal said.

"Oh!" That was from Bert Put because Kris was shocked into immobility by the very thought of deliberately summonmg the mecos' makers, and having to answer to whatever used solid rock as a bed and ate at a table without sitting and had shoulder-high storage units.

"Oh my G.o.d!" she finally said, leaning weakly against Zainal.

"Maybe good idea after all," he said at length, nodding his head.

"Then we know worst, or best."

"How could it be best?" Kris asked, very glad when Zainal put a supporting arm around her, his fingers tightening briefly on her shoulder, encouragingly.

"First, best to know. Second, fun to find out who makes mechos." He grinned at her exclamation of protest.

"If the condition of this place is any evidence, no one or no thing has been here in a long time, Zainal," Bert said, shaking his head. "Wish I could have seen it go," he added sorrowfully.

"Ask Joe when we get down again."

"And what do we do with sleeping beauty?" Kris asked, prodding Aarens' shoulder again.

Zainal took a deep breath and then let it out.

"It'd be more fun to lower him down when he knows he's up high," Bert said with a malicious expression on his usually pleasant face.

"And listen to the O-G.o.d-O-G.o.d-O-G.o.ds for hours?" Kris said.

"Well, if I promise not to touch anything, can I stay up here and see if I can figure out any more of what that panel controls?" Bert asked.

Zainal shrugged and looked at Kris. "I don't see why not, NASA-man,' she said with a grin.

"First, we report to Mitford," Zainal said.

"He's not going to like this," Kris said, shaking her head.

"Especially since I think we were probably supposed to prevent just such a thing happening.

To her surprise, Mitford took somewhat the same att.i.tude Zainal had: he wouldn't have authorized sending a message, if that was indeed what Aarens had managed to do. But he was, in a way, relieved that it had gone off "And if your guys are watching this planet, Zainal, it's going to give them a shock."

"There is that," Zainal replied.

"Should we come back to the Rock, Sarge?" Kris asked.

"Might as well, but on your way back check out the other sites on the part of the map I gave Bert." Then Mitford signed off.

In the end, Zainal lowered the unconscious Aarens down the rockface, with Kris guiding the strapped body's descent. It wasn't what she'd rather have done with Aarens but that would have been playing the game on his level. Sarah and Joe loaded up a sack of food, water and furs which Zainal then hauled more carefully up to Bert. He would leave his comunit with Bert so the MS could stay in contact.

"Tell Bert there's no real rush for him to come down," Joe said to Zainal on the com, winking at Sarah in a conspiratorial fas.h.i.+on.

They decided not to untie the unconscious Aarens but put him in the Hopper, between the seats. Sarah flung his fur over him.

"It may stink in the morning but that's his problem,she said.

"There's stew for supper," she added. "Just the four of us." Then Sarah smiled, a different sort of knowing smile. It didn't take a moment for Kris to catch on and she grinned back, nodding her head.

"We could stand our watches together tonight. Be sort of cosy, wouldn't it?"

"Great idea," Kris said, her eyes wandering over the area to see where she would place hers and Zainal's blankets and furs.

Certainly far enough away from Aarens to be able to ignore any complaints from him when he finally came to, and far enough not to impinge on the privacy of Joe and Sarah.

"I hear Catteni make great lovers," Sarah went on conversationally.

"You have?"

"Yeah. Back on Earth, I knew a couple of girls who took up with Catteni . . on purpose, to find out what they could," Sarah hastened to add.

"Ah, line of duty," Kris said.

"Well, the word I got was that giving out was not the hard part of the job." Sarah winked at Kris, and waited a moment, evidently wanting some indication of how Kris accepted the information. "In fact, they used to come home smiling. Oh, I know there were plenty yelling rape, and I heard all about Patti Sue, and I know some of the rougher types were brutal. But Zainal's different. Oh my word, but he's different and if I hadn't met Joe . . ." Sarah's smile was enviously wistful.

Then her expression changed to her usual forthright candidness. "What I'm trying to say is, don't worry about liking Zainal that way, Kris.

And I think you do like him."

"Hmmm. I think I do, too, Sarah. And thanks." Then, while Sarah went back to the fire to stir the stew, Kris watched Zainal rapelling down the faade, his movements deft and graceful. But then she was accustomed to his size and she certainly was no longer going to be worried about what other people thought.

Still it was good of Sarah to speak up as she had. Especially since a lot of people now on Botany had mentally paired Zainal and herself off a long time ago. She watched while he untethered himself, neatly coiled the rope for future use and then entered the garage. She watched him have a good look at the launch tube that had released the capsule and the other lour sitting in their tubes. Ventilators had come on when the missile had surged out of the garage so that the fumes had dispersed, but he sniffed, trying to decide what fuel had been used, she thought. Then he inspected the rest of the puzzling cabinets, panels and equipment.

He settled himself on the sloping stubby wing of the last plane and took some bark paper and his carbon pencil out of a thigh pocket.

She joined him when he began to make accurate sketches of the interior.

"Is Bert doing the same upstairs?"

"Upstairs?" Zainal asked, puzzled. When she pointed upwards, he grinned. "Yes. We get it all down for Sarge.

For report." Kris liked watching Zainal work, the deft way his fingers moved, big but not clumsy. She thought of how they would move on her, while they stood their double watches that night, and s.h.i.+vered with antic.i.p.ation.

He had considerable skill as a draftsman because he only needed a quick glance before he sketched in a whole section accurately, frowning as he held the sketch up against the model to be sure he had done it with precision.

"You're a man of many talents, aren't you, Zainal?" she said when he had finished the lob.

"Not so many," he said in an abstracted tone. Then he put pencil and paper to one side and, catching her arm, pulled her against him, all his attention on her.

"How about standing a double watch with me tonight?" she asked, almost coyly. She disliked "coy' because girls who are five-foot ten don't do "coy' well but Zainal had changed many of her att.i.tudes.

He ruffled her hair which was growing long again and would soon have to be braided or it would get in the way.

"I can possibly do that, he replied amiably.

"Sometimes, Zainal," she began, tsck-tscking in surprise, "you sound more American than I do."

"That's good?"

"I mean, it's great you've learnt English so well so quickly."

"I like to learn something else quickly and well," he said and nuzzled her neck, biting her ever so gently.

"Are lovebites part of a Catteni wooing?"

"Wooing?" he asked against her neck.

"Making love."

"I think so. I have not loved a Catteni." His phrasing made her catch her breath. If he hadn't loved a Catteni, did he love her? Don't be stupid, Kris girl. He's an Ema.s.si where he comes from and has met Eosi. He's too important for a girl like you from ol' backwater-"f-the-galaxy Terra. But her arm, of its own accord, tightened around his neck and she kissed his cheek. His smooth cheek.

"Don't you Catteni ever need to shave?" She had no idea what possessed her to ask a question like that then, but that was her all over.

He laughed down at her. "Shave? Ah, take off face hair. No face hair on Catteni." Then he rubbed his cheek against hers.

"HEY, YOU HAIRY LOT," Sarah called from the campfire, unaware of the topic of their conversation.

"DINNER!" Zainal slipped his arm about her waist and pushed her off towards the fire and their dinner.

"When we stand watch tonight, I do not think we stand long," he said so only she could hear him, "though of course it can be done that way, too."

"Whatever," she managed to reply though the idea fascinated her.