The Winds of Altair by Ben Bova

Author:Ben Bova [Bova, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780765328311
Google: BHjr2bjl0EAC
Amazon: 0765328313
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1973-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

If sheer determination could change a world, the scientists and students of the Village would turn Altair VI into a new Eden.

The entire Village was mobilized for the battle against nature. Believers and secularists worked side by side to tame the wilderness of the savage planet below them. After months of studies and preparation, the students leaped into the struggle with wholehearted enthusiasm. The scientists, who had spent those same months actually observing the planet and trying to deal with it, were more cautious.

New landing parties were organized. The rusting, crumbling equipment from the first camp on the beach was inspected, repaired, refurbished. Many of the pieces were brought back to the orbiting Village to be virtually rebuilt. Many others were simply discarded; the air of Altair VI, rich with methane and sulfur compounds, had ruined the equipment beyond any hope of repair.

As the weeks went by, the landing teams learned that the apes were migrating at this time of the year, heading southward to avoid the coming cold and storms of winter. One of their main migration paths took them directly through the beach on which the humans had established their camp.

"They're being very obliging," Peterson reported to Bishop Foy. "They're coming right to us."

"God's will," the Bishop murmured. "Nirvan is our help and our protection."

The migration was a time of feasting for the wolfcats, who culled the feeble, the sick, the unwary cubs from the families of apes as they trekked southward.

Peterson found that the wolfcats were too successful. "They're in competition with us," he told Carbo. "We want the apes as helpers, but they want them for food."

So Carbo and his hastily-trained teams had to tranquilize wolfcats, too, and implant them with probes. Even when they did, however, few of the students aboard the Village could control a hungry wolfcat. The migrating apes were still being decimated.

The landing teams suffered casualties, too. Like all explorers, they constantly discovered new ways to die.

A biologist made the mistake of stepping on a trigger vine while sampling the flora at the base of the hills that overlooked the beach. The thorny arms of the plant snapped him into their deadly embrace, ripping his suit in a dozen places. His lungs were burned out by the methane-laden air before the vine's poisons could work their way into his bloodstream.

Two zoologists, a husband-wife pair, simply disappeared into the murky darkness one day as they trailed southward to map the apes' migration route. Radio contact was lost in about an hour, and they were never found again.

Dr. Polchek himself was nearly killed when a female ape, frantically defending her already-tranquilized cubs from the terrifying strange aliens, cracked his helmet with a powerful swipe of her paw before he could reload his tranquilizer gun and knock her down. Carbo and another scientist were close enough to get to Polchek in time.

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