Star Trek - KLV - The Unsettling Stars by Alan Dean Foster

Author:Alan Dean Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2020-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

9

The unremitting howl that was the wind from above and kept them pressed to the ground died with a suddenness that left the three Starfleet officers gasping. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. Which, in effect, was exactly what had happened. As soon as the Perenorean device was shut down, normal atmospheric equilibrium returned and the wind stopped.

Rising slowly to their feet, the battered visitors and the injured Perenorean saw that Spock’s supposition had been correct. Not only was the sky overhead devoid of predatory flyjaws, so was the air above the winding river, the forest, and the mountains that demarcated the far boundaries of the settlement site. The few remaining flyjaws that had managed to survive the horrific and consistent down rush of air were fighting to gain altitude as they dispersed in all directions, desperate to escape to anyplace where the weather was stable and the winds less likely to suddenly turn mad.

The stench of death that was beginning to rise from hundreds of crumpled flyjaw bodies reminded everyone in the colony that construction would have to pause until a settlement-wide cleanup could be completed. While the relieved and more than slightly dazed SiBoronaans stumbled about on their pseudopods, struggling to recover mentally as well as physically from the swarm’s attack, the Perenoreans set to work. Before the last dispirited flyjaw had disappeared into the distance, the settlement site filled with a quiet frenzy of activity.

Perenorean medics tended to the wounded, and the respectful removal of the deceased. As other settlers set to the disagreeable task of removing piles of dead flyjaw bodies, McCoy marveled at the calm being displayed by the colonists.

“You’d think they did this sort of thing all the time.”

He gestured toward a peculiar vehicle that was vacuuming up broken corpses several at a time and depositing them in its capacious, bulbous interior. Designed and built to remove construction debris, it had been quickly modified to deal with the unexpected avalanche of organic detritus instead. A pair of Perenoreans followed patiently behind, picking up and tossing into the ventral vacuum chute the smaller body bits that the vehicle missed. Though these “smaller bits” consisted of heads, entrails, pieces of wing and other body parts, the two Perenoreans never blanched. The fact that their seven-fingered hands and lower legs were slick with flyjaw gore did not appear to trouble them in the slightest. It was a scene that was being repeated throughout the colony.

“At this rate,” an admiring McCoy commented, “they’ll have the whole site cleared by tomorrow.”

“They are indeed proceeding with remarkable efficiency.” Hands folded behind his back, Spock was following the cleanup with as much interest as the doctor. “In fact, from what we have been able to observe, it would appear that the Perenoreans are a people who go about every task they take on with equal eagerness and expertise. If they do not know how to do something, they are quick to ask, and even quicker to learn. I have never heard of a species that learns so fast and so thoroughly.

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