The visit to the zoo was one of several, which continued until Lampert, Mitsuitei and the two paleontologists were able to identify each of a dozen animals which were most concerned in the death rate of Viridis. Apparently McLaughlin was not the only guide who did this. The zoo was equipped to give a “final examination” in which any creature the guide desired could be seen on a television screen from viewpoints quite different from those obtained in front of the cages. McLaughlin proved hard to satisfy.
Lampert did not blame him. He knew a lot about Viridis, of course. He had not only read of it in ordinary reference material, but had done much of the laboratory work on drill cores brought from the planet. His name had been one of those attached to the report giving the probable age of the planet’s crust. At that time, however, the mental picture he held had been of continent distribution, rock strata, zones of diastrophic stress and the like. The question of the appearance, or even the existence, of plants, animals and people had simply never risen to conscious level in his mind.
That had changed, shortly before his arrival. The tramp spacer which had brought him and his group to Viridis had had to orbit about the world in free fall for several hours while its obsolete drive elements “cooled,” and the passengers had examined the planet.
Lampert, oddly enough, had been as much impressed by the night side as by the sunlit hemisphere. The latter had shown, at twenty thousand kilometers, a fairly standard land and water pattern. The most unusual thing about it had been the almost perfect uniformity of the land coloration, a light green which bespoke, or at least implied, a virtually complete covering of vegetation.
By the time the ship had circled to the dark side, however, it was much closer to the surface; and Lampert would have expected to make out luminous sparks and patches of towns and cities by the hundreds.
He saw just two, and was not really sure of those. For the rest, the planet was a vast, gray-black circle occulting a portion of the Milky Way. It was not absolutely black, either. Its contrast with the background of the galaxy was diminished by the glow in the upper atmosphere arising from the recombination of water molecules dissociated during the day by Beta Librae’s fierce ultraviolet light. The center of the circle was darker than the edges, where the line of sight penetrated through more of the luminous gas.
But even this sight, unusual as it was, did not affect Lampert as much as the lack of city lights. He had done field work in lonely, wild places before, of course; but until now he had always had the feeling of being in an island of wilderness more or less surrounded by civilization. On Viridis it was the civilized spots which formed the islands. And very small islands they were. There was no known native intelligent race, and settlements of alien races such as the men from Earth were still few and far between.
So Lampert was prepared for McLaughlin’s care in readying the group for its trip. He was even glad of it, though he would probably not have admitted to being at all afraid of the venture. He would simply have said that it was nice to have a guide who took his responsibilities seriously.
* * * *
That of course, did not mean that Lampert was intending to disavow any of his own responsibilities. He, like McLaughlin, had been keeping a careful eye on the other members of the group, looking for the signs of impatience or ill temper which could be the seeds of serious trouble if the journey were prolonged. He had come to tentative conclusions about this during the flight from Earth, but was pleased to see that, apparently, men who could stand the enforced companionship of a tramp spacer were also able to retain their senses of humor in the steam-bath environment of Viridis.
Sulewayo, of course, had seemed safe from the first. A man who has spent his formative years in the Congo rain forests where his ancestors had lived for generations was ideal for this world. His sense of humor was extremely durable. Lampert suspected that it might sometimes be a little too good. Mitsuitei, the archaeologist, had once or twice appeared to resent some of the young fellow’s remarks, though not to an extent where Lampert had felt the need for introducing his own personality into the matter. Krendall, nearly twice Sulewayo’s age, seemed to be a check on the younger man anyway; he was a member of the same profession, and Sulewayo would have been the first to admit his respect for Krendall’s work in the field. Under the circumstances, Lampert felt that the group was well matched.
Whether it would be able to do the job it had undertaken was another matter. The news reports had spoken glibly of the expedition which was going to “solve the mysteries of Viridis once and for all.” Lampert, like any other scientist, knew perfectly well that the solution of the present crop of mysteries about the planet would almost certainly be achieved only at the cost of creating an even greater number of new ones. Even the guide, who was admittedly no scientist, had expressed a similar opinion, though his was based on a general pessimism bred of familiarity with the planet. However, he had undertaken to get them to the sort of country they wanted; and from then on the problem solving was not his affair.
The scientists, whatever may have been their feeling about matters of personal safety, were eager to start, which tended to cause rapid progress in McLaughlin’s animal recognition school. Another factor tending toward the same result was that there was little in Emeraude for such men to do, except learn. The town was still small. It had a spaceport and airport, which furnished little entertainment, docks which could amuse for a while but not indefinitely, and warehouses which were completely uninteresting to geologists, paleontologists and archaeologists. There was no museum. The numerous specimens of mineral, animal, and vegetable matter collected on the planet invariably wound up on outbound spacecraft. The zoo, which the town maintained for purely practical reasons, was about the only thing that was left.
In consequence, not many days passed before all four scientists were able to meet McLaughlin’s requirements. Sulewayo was annoyed by the guide’s addition of a short postgraduate course in edible flora and fauna, but admitted that the knowledge might well be useful. However, he made no secret of his satisfaction when McLaughlin finally announced that, as far as he was concerned, the journey could begin at any time.
All four rechecked their equipment—that of Lampert was by far the bulkiest—and, everyone satisfied with the group’s ability both to live and to work in the steam bath that was the world of Viridis, they watched the harbor on which Emeraude was located shrink and blend into the rest of the shoreline behind them. Within a few minutes only the restless surface of Green Bay was visible through the ever-present haze....
* * * *
The jaws of the Felodon abruptly stopped moving and its forelegs straightened, bringing the fanged head up and away from the kill it had just made.
If a man had been there he would neither have seen nor heard the disturbing factor, for a thunderstorm a few miles to the west was emitting an almost continuous growl and the towering trees shut out nearly all the sky. Nevertheless the beast appeared to sense something out of the ordinary. It twisted its short but supple neck ceaselessly, rocking its head from side to side to bring first one eye and tympanic membrane to bear on the jungle roof, then the other. Sometimes it froze motionless for a long moment, and a watcher would have sworn that its minute brain was struggling with a thought. If this were the case, the thought must have been both unusual and unpleasant, for under normal circumstances nothing short of overwhelming force would have driven a Felodon from its meal. Now, however, the hind legs slowly straightened and the creature came erect. For another moment it stood motionless, took a step or two away from the body, and stopped again.
Abruptly, as though in defiance of some impulse, it turned back, lowered the murderously armed head and tore a huge mouthful of flesh from the carcass. Then, like a child leaving the cookie jar as its mother approaches, it leaped away into the underbrush, still swallowing.
Its speed was high and it did not have far to go. The jungle thinned in a few hundred meters to the point where some sky became visible, and a short distance further the riotous plant growth vanished completely to give place to an open beach. Here the creature stopped and repeated its search of the hemisphere overhead.
This time it found