The Mystery of Ireta by Anne Mccaffrey

Author:Anne Mccaffrey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Interplanetary Voyages, Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Ireta (Imaginary Place), General, Dinosaurs
ISBN: 9780345467218
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2004-01-02T10:00:00+00:00

4

THE rain, combined with a dismal heat mist, made the site more desolate than she remembered it. She’d spotted a stand of fruit trees on the final leg of her journey and, hovering the sled, had picked the upper branches free of succulent ripe yellow globes. Consequently she felt less weary when she glided the sled to land on the square of the old secondary camp. And it did look ancient.

The original dome, which would have been comfortable for two people, was missing but the space it had occupied was an ovoid barren of all growth in the center of an octagon of long stone buildings. Tiny plants now grew in cavities where windblown dirt had accumulated. The buildings had been so well built that Varian wondered why the mutineers had moved. Of course, just then the rain kept the insects away, but there would be a superb panorama of the surrounding plains, not that she supposed the heavy-worlders had indulged themselves that way. Most of the visible buttes supported crowns of trees, heavily vined, but the area adjacent to the octagon had been cleared several meters on all sides and covered with a concrete which, to be sure, was now cracking as the more tenacious vines reclaimed their customary dominion. Beyond that apron was lush growth, but the buildings—she couldn’t call them homes or houses because of their forbidding aspect—claimed her attention first.

As Varian approached the nearest, she saw that the windows had been glazed yet when she rubbed away grime, she could barely see through the dense and irregular glass. When her eyes had compensated for the gloom, she could see the interior had been stripped of everything but the stone shelving set into the corners of each room. The only door was made of stout wooden panels, coated with some glossy substance which obviously protected the wood against the depredations of Ireta’s insect life. Set above the handle of the locked door were four metal tumblers, coded to some pattern, for the handle would not move at her touch although the tumblers rolled easily under her thumb. A cursory examination of the other seven buildings told her they were identical: four rooms, two on either side of an entry hall. The windows were too narrow for any but a young child to climb in or out of. With such stoutly built dwellings, why had they moved? There was plenty of room for expansion on the bluff top.

She went beyond the octagon and saw outbuildings, two with chimneys well blackened even after decades of scouring rain. One proved to be a forge and marks on the concrete behind it indicated the complete removal of another installation, as well as the squat thick form of a kiln. What power would they have used for the forge? Water? Up here? No, but there was no shortage of wind! She had become so accustomed to the buffeting of the almost incessant breezes that blew from moderate to gale force through the course of every Iretan day, that she’d almost missed the most obvious and easiest power source.

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