Ell Donsaii 13: DNA by Laurence Dahners Page A

one million in hundred dollar bills. Let me know when you’ve got it. Oh, and I’ll also need these drugs.” He handed Wang a list and walked off into the woods, leaving the smaller man fuming on the trail.
     
    ***
     
    Ell said, “Allan, have you landed the little waldo on Virginis 3 yet?”
    “It’s descending now,” he responded.
    “Let’s call him ‘Virgwald.’ Give me a view out of his eyes. You’re bringing him down outside the city, correct?” Although Ell didn’t really care which city he brought it down outside of, she assumed that he was bringing it down near the one he’d first shown her surrounding a bay on the coast. That was the one they’d spent the most time looking at so far.
    The view that popped up on Ell’s HUD showed mostly green landscape, though she could see the blue of the ocean in the distance. Allan said, “We’re coming in at a low slant that should keep us below the horizon until we land about one kilometer from what appears to be the edge of the city.”
    As the view swung in closer, Ell could see that Allan appeared to be bringing the waldo down onto one of the paths that meandered from city to city. At present they were swinging over a large field, or at least what Ell thought looked like a field. It was covered with plants and Ell had the strange feeling that they were cultivated; however, they looked like there were many different types of plants growing in it. Back on earth, Ell was used to seeing fields where all the plants were of the same species, so seeing an area with many kinds of vegetation didn’t fit her expectation. In fact, the field was irregular in shape and undulating. The more Ell thought about it, the more she wondered why she even had the feeling that it was a farmer’s field.
    She decided the plants were too big to call it a meadow and, though not organized, didn’t seem disorganized enough to think of it as being “wild.”
    But, on the other hand, it didn’t seem orderly enough to have been cultivated by a farmer.
    Ell was almost all the way across the field when she realized that there were a couple of animals down there, both of which she thought were gazing curiously up at her. I couldn’t really see their eyes though, so I’m not sure why I thought they were looking at me. Even if they were looking at me, I don’t have any reason to think they appear “curious.”
    Allan brought the waldo down on the path and Ell decided that “path” was the correct word. It wasn’t paved, just a trail where little vegetation grew. At first Ell thought that the vegetation in the area of the path had just been worn away by the passage of many feet. But then she noticed that dirt wasn’t really showing through. She bent forward to get a closer look and realized that the surface was covered with the woody stems of thousands of tiny vines. They had a faint greenish color, but no leaves. She stepped to the edge of the path and saw that the slender little vines seem to merge with the leafy vegetation at the side of the trail. She got the distinct impression that the mini-vines had somehow been made to grow there to suppress erosion.
    After a quick glance around, Ell started walking the waldo toward the city. “Now that we’re on the ground,” she asked Allan, “what’s the gravity and atmospheric composition?”
    Allan said, “0.19 gravities. The atmosphere is composed of 28% oxygen, 61% nitrogen, 6% argon, 4% neon, and less than 1% other gases including carbon dioxide. The pressure is 4.1 atmospheres.”
    Delightedly, Ell said, “We could live here ! And if I strapped on a couple of wings I could fly in gravity this low and atmosphere this thick!” Now if only it turns out that there really isn’t any intelligent life… Or since the grids make it look like they were built by something intelligent maybe there was intelligent life, but they all died out?
    Allen said, “Unfortunately, background radiation levels are high. Although this waldo does