Tubb, EC - Dumarest 08 - Veruchia (HTML)_hbf.html by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Five

Against the sky the raft was a black mote topped with a glistening bubble, the rays of the setting sun turning the transparency into a glowing ruby. Dumarest watched it as it almost vanished from sight, seeing it turn, realign and grow as it came towards him. Three times he watched as it traversed the area and then, cold beginning to penetrate his clothing, he turned and entered the hut.

Inside it was warm and bright with glowing tubes. Veruchia looked up from where she sat at a table poring over her maps and associated data.

"Has it landed yet, Earl?"

"Not yet."

"Why do they take so long?" She was, he noticed, beginning to show the strain. Weeks of intense effort had edged her temper and thinned her face. "If they increased the speed they could cover the area that much faster. We haven't time to take things easy."

"Izane knows what he's doing." Dumarest looked over her shoulder at the sheets on the table. A contour map of the region was covered with a mass of tiny marks, some in clusters, most widely scattered, "Is this the preliminary scan?"

"Yes." She watched his face. "All right, you don't have to say it. I'm wasting my time."

"I didn't say that."

"But you thought it. You all think it. Earl, am I being a fool?"

"No, just impatient."

"For success, yes." Her hand slapped at the papers. "I was so sure the ship would be found in this region. I would have gambled on it. Centuries ago this was a warm area and a logical place to have founded an early settlement. The weather changed. The cold would have driven them further south towards where the city is now. The ship, left behind, would have become buried with snow. The snow would have turned to ice. Logical, isn't it?"

It was more logical that those who had arrived in the ship would have torn it apart for needed materials, but he didn't say that Legend claimed that the vessel had become a shrine, an object of veneration, but who could trust legend? Facts became distorted over the passage of years.

"You're tired," he said. "You should sleep."

"Later. Hasn't Izane landed yet?"

"He will report when he does." Dumarest studied the map again. The raft held an electronic device which sent pulses into the ground. Reflected they revealed any distortion in the material below. With careful calculation both the nature and size of any buried object could be determined. "Did they check on that object found at Wend?"

A second raft had reported a find.

"It was a subterranean storage compartment. Empty, waterlogged and about three hundred years old. It was the only possibility we found. I've sent the raft over to the Elgish Sea."

"The site you decided was the lowest in order of probability?"

"Yes." She looked at him curiously. "That's an odd way to put it. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a cyber. That's the way they talk, always so carefully precise. You've met cybers?"

"Yes," he said bitterly. "Too often.

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