To Clear Away the Shadows by David Drake

Author:David Drake [Drake, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: military, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781481484022
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

ZEMLYN’S WORLD

A day out from Zemlyn’s World Rick entered the bio lab. Harry looked up and called, “Hey, Gimpy! How’re you getting on?”

Doctor Veil was in the main lab discussing what she took for an anomaly with Mahaffy (who kept saying, “Sir, the sequencer is working perfectly.”). Veil said, “Lieutenant Grenville! Very good to see you after your difficulties.”

“That’s thanks to Harry here,” Rick said, “at least from what the riggers on the starboard watch tell me. Doctor Veil, I realize I must owe a great deal to your forbearance that he was free to do that. Thank you.”

“I was glad to provide any help I could to Lord Harper,” Veil said. She cleared her throat and added, “And your support of the Biology Section is noted and appreciated also, Grenville. Is there anything we can help you with?”

“Actually, I’m here hoping to learn a bit about animals on Zemlyn’s World,” Rick said. “I gather there’s no political situation, which is why Captain Bolton chose Zemlyn as our next base.”

“There’re no permanent settlers on Zemlyn’s World,” Harry said. “I suppose that’s what the captain is thinking about. Guarantor Porra personally owns the planet. It’s not part of the Alliance of Free Stars. He leases the Grinder concession to a consortium, and the staff on the planet is on contract.”

“The Grinders are the most interesting things on the planet,” said Doctor Veil, “and not just economically. They’re warm-blooded marine creatures which crop algae from rocks in the far north. There is a very similar creature on Broadstairs, twenty light-years away, and the algae they feed on is very similar to a Broadstairs variety also. We intend to take genetic samples of both animal and plant to compare with file records of those from Broadstairs.”

“So they’re hunted for their pelts?” Rick said, staring at the holographic image Harry was projecting above his workstation. Without the human added for scale, the Grinder could have been a small caterpillar rather than an animal twenty feet long. It was shown swimming by undulating the fins fringing the sides of its flattened body.

“Oh goodness, no,” Doctor Veil said. “Male hormones are gathered in the breeding season. They’re used to make an anti-aging drug which is very widely sold within the Alliance and to some degree more widely yet.”

“There’s a problem in the Cinnabar sphere,” Harry said, grinning. “Given that the profits go straight into Guarantor Porra’s pocket.”

“The literature is mixed about the effectiveness of Zemlite,” Doctor Veil said. “Some people swear by it, especially those who admit using it themselves. I haven’t made an exhaustive study. But”—she gestured to the image of the Grinder—“the fact that the creatures and their food source have been transplanted here from Broadstairs implies that the Archaics thought that the hormones were valuable.”

Or thought that the creatures themselves were ornamental, Rick thought. Or that they tasted good, or a hundred other hypotheses, most of them not involving the Archaics. He noticed that Harry was carefully avoiding a response to his superior’s enthusiasm.

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