Flame Tree Planet by Roger Elwood

Author:Roger Elwood [Elwood, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0570031443
Publisher: Concordia
Published: 1972-12-31T21:00:00+00:00

How Bright the Stars

LEIGH BRACKETT

It was a hellish world to be wandering on, this second planet of Barnard’s Star. In fact it looked almost exactly as Jerry Baird had always pictured hell. The sun was red and angry, capable of intense heat. There were volcanoes and fumaroles, pits of bubbling mud, geysers, and great plumes of steam that smelled of sulphur. It was a restless, bad-tempered world, at least in these parts, and Jerry had no good feeling about it.

The PPS (Preliminary Planetary Study) team had spent more than a year encamped on this sparsely populated world, by a Grllan village called Beautiful Water because of the incredibly clear, cool lake that was there, with ferntrees leaning over it and green hills all around. The Grllan lived partly in brush shelters and partly in dens hollowed out beneath the twisty roots of the trees. They were almost, or not quite, human, depending on how you looked at it, but they were friendly, and the team had learned a lot from them about life on Barnard II.

They learned some more on that subject when a fiercer and more predatory clan came down from the hills. Trouble began almost at once and ended with the team camp and almost all of its equipment in ashes. The folk of Beautiful Water had hidden the Earthmen in the deep bush until their wild cousins went away. After that, with the everpresent danger of the predators’ return, with no radio and no means of getting help, and with no prospect of continuing their work, the team had decided to trek out.

The decision was not taken lightly. Earth Base was 500 miles away.

They had been able to save only one thing of value from the camp, and that was the small case of microtapes which contained all the records of their research. The case was assigned to Dr. Felter, the vulcanologist, to be carried as part of his load.

On the morning of departure, with the red sun just glaring up over the hilltops, turning the mists to fire and the lake to blood, the Earthmen took up their makeshift packs and the clumsy water bottles made from sections of a giant joint grass. The Grllan, grunting and clicking mournfully, were still bringing parting gifts of roots and seeds and squirming things from the lake. Nobody was very cheerful, but nobody was crying.

Suddenly Dr. Felter threw down his pack, plucked out the case of microtapes and shoved it into the hands of Wainwright, the xenobiologist. “You take it,” Felter said. He went over to a fern-tree log and sat down.

Dr. Baird, team coordinator and physician, turned to him and said, “What’s wrong, James? Not well?”

Felter shook his head. “Just lazy. I don’t have to walk that far to die.”

Jerry saw his father’s jaw tighten. But Baird spoke quietly.

“It’s too soon to lose heart. We’ll make it.”

“If you do,” said Felter, “send a flier back to get me.”

“We need you,” Baird said, with a note of cold iron in his voice.

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