Polymath by John Brunner Page B

to get as far as possible before having to camp for the night, partly to avoid making a ceremony of the departure. Lex had walked two or three miles up the riverbed to reconnoiter, to a hill which gave a good view of the next several miles still, and knew the going was fairly clear to start with. But for this, he might have postponed their leaving. A wind off the sea was piling up the clouds which had been on the horizon yesterday, the sun was hidden, and as the clouds approached the land they began to be carried upward.
    With luck they might not spill their rain until they were over the high ground inland, then move on before Lex and his companions caught up. But they spread a pall of gloom over the first stage of the trip. Once or twice they had to use handlights even though dawn was long past. At least, however, it wasn’t raining.
    The people they were leaving behind might have been more pleased if it had been. It would have meant fresh water for washing, as well as the scant ration for drinkingprovided by Aldric’s solar stills… which in any case could not last long unless the sun came back.
    The contrast with the going at the end of last summer was amazing. This time it was far tougher. Newly-sprouted plants of all kinds fringed the river and a network of roots meshed out from the banks. The disappearance of the water had left them dry and fibrous, and the rotting bodies of freshwater animals were piled in what had been the last puddles. At first there were stands of quite tall timber on either side—trees twenty to fifty feet high, draped with an incredible tangle of creepers, vines, and plants for which no names had yet been invented. The river narrowed and its course grew steeper; then the trees were replaced by sucker-rooting shrubs only half as high, but equally festooned with creepers.
    The mud had dried out and gave a good footing. They made fair progress throughout the morning. Around them were strange noises: oddly-shaped birds, yellow-gray and brown, shrilled and boomed, carapaced insects hissed and stridulated, and sometimes there were bubbling grunts which suggested that some large creature had been taken by what passed for its throat and was being strangled.
    Lex and Baffin took turns to lead, their energy guns at the ready. Lodette was walking next, her bright eyes darting from side to side, warning them out of her specialized knowledge when they approached poisonous growths such as blisterweed or halting them cautiously when she spotted something not previously encountered. Now and then she used up one of the irreplaceable cubes for their only camera. More than five hundred had been rescued from the ship, but almost all had already been expended by Bendle’s team.
    Zanice and Aggereth, both apprehensive, followed her, and Minty and Aykin walked companionably at the rear, Aykin toting the heavy radio and accumulator on his broad back.
    It was nearly noon when one of the unpleasant bubbling grunts broke from a few yards away, and they stopped dead on seeing branches flail as though a monster were thrashing about in the shrubs. Lex heard Aggereth’s teeth chatter for a second before he clamped them firmly together.
    Gun in hand, he advanced to the side of the riverbed.
    Over his shoulder he said, “Lodette, we haven’t run across any big carnivores, have we?”
    “No. And the environment typically wouldn’t support any. A beast over say fifty pounds’ weight would be too heavy to be arboreal among such thin branches, and too bulky to move fast through this undergrowth. You’d expect to find the big carnivores in savannah-type country.”
    “Then what’s that?” Lex said, and was surprised to hear his voice steady.
    Peering out of the mesh of vines and creepers less than ten feet from him was the head of an animal. It was identifiable as a head only because of its gaping mouth; evolution here had not elaborated so many organs out of the basic gastrula as on most human-occupied planets. The hide