Skeen's Search by Jo Clayton

her. Working quickly despite her growing fatigue, she finished setting the spikes and began slipping the caps on them, dogging them down with practiced ease, doing a swift check of power packs and circuits. When she was finished, she flipped on the system and moved around the ring, checking the web with a reader, making sure she’d left no holes and that every sector was functioning as it ought. Rubbing at the back of her neck, working her shoulders to ease the ache in the muscles, she moved to the shelter and looked around. The water comber next, so I can fill the tank. Then the miniskip. I should get that ready while it’s still light, don’t want to go fiddling around, dropping things in the dark. She stretched, yawned, groaned. Damn cat, Djabo bite her tail, she should be here helping me, not off playing somewhere. She grinned ruefully. And don’t you wish you were out there with her. She started to turn off the web so she could get the water comber set up out by the lake but arrested the motion when one of the cutter heads swung around and a beam pulsed once, stabbing into the shadow under the trees. Wild shrieks, hasty rustles, then whatever it was went rapidly away. Skeen frowned. She shut off the general field but left several of the cutter heads on independent sweep, then she went to check with the Lander to see how the survey was getting on.
    Crimson twilight. The sun a series of rubies laced between black peaks.
    â€œSkeeennn.” It was a whispered wail outside the perimeter.
    â€œAbout time you got back.” Skeen opened a gate between two spikes, pointed them out to the blackness under the trees. “Between here and here,” she said. “Come straight to me.”
    It was the pale body of the Pallah that strolled into the ring. Timka looked exhausted and more than a little hung over. “Did you bring my clothes?”
    â€œIn the shelter. You hungry?”
    Timka winced, shook her head.
    â€œBellyache?”
    â€œI overdid the hunting. A lot.” Timka rested a hand on her stomach; its shallow curve had acquired more definition and there was a drumtaut look to the skin that underlined what she’d said.
    â€œCould be some of the life here is toxic. You want to watch what you eat.”
    â€œThat’s no problem. If something starts making me sick, I just shift and leave it behind.”
    â€œMin.” Skeen started for the tent, “You’re shivering. There’s plenty of water, some of it hot, you can wash off that damn dust and get comfortable. Lander has finished sorting the survey and done the printouts. I’ve skimmed over them and I think I know where to look, I want to see what you think.”
    They sat cross-legged on the shelter floor leaning over a low extruded table examining a relief map of the northern continent.
    â€œMines are black,” Skeen said, “farms, green. Administrative centers, flitter fields, that kind of thing, gray. What’s interesting to us are these red blotches. Those are life-readings the Lander got not connected to any of these other centers.”
    There was a flurry of loud noises outside the shelter, the flare of cutter beams visible through the round windows of the shelter’s largest living space. Timka shivered. “Aren’t we being, well, rather noisy?”
    â€œThe satellites? Dormant volcano, that takes care of the heat. Heavy deposits of iron ore, that masks our metals, enough anyway for the crude sensors the Kliu have up there. Wouldn’t make it with Petro’s stuff, but we don’t have to worry about that, she’s on our side. The light show out there? Most of it’s round the edges of the clearing where the canopy is thickest. Not a lot of light is going to leak out. Even if it does, we’ve still got our best defense, the Kliu mindset. Whatever they happen to see, they’ll explain away because it’s not possible to have intruders on the ground.”