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very much. "With a sufficient number of those things each in line of sight you
could have a near-instantaneous transport system covering the whole world."
"I wouldn't like to try a system that big, Doc," Raven replied. "Sooner or
later one of 'em would hav'ta go wrong."
"I have more equipment coming. We'll wait for it, then I'll need some help
setting up." He looked around. "It's actually quite attractive. I have lived
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the past twenty years cooped up inside a giant rock or in the bowels of
spaceships.
I had almost forgotten what it's like to have a sky, and greenery, clouds, and
weather. It's almost-disorienting. I didn't expect this. I'm feeling somewhat
phobic about wide open spaces."
Raven shrugged. "Better get used to it. You're supposed to be the superior
one, above all these weaknesses we mortals suffer, Doc. I think the rest of
your stuff's here. Let's get it and get cracking. Jeez! I feel tired as hell.
I'm havin' trouble just walkin'."
"I, too. I'm in worse shape than you, I suspect. I haven't been under more
than
six-tenths of a gee since before Melchior. I-I'm dizzy. I'm going to have to
sit down for a moment." He settled down on the rock and sighed. "Stupid of me.
I
never really considered this. I was too busy worrying about the transport."
Raven sat, too. He felt like he'd been working for two straight days at hard
labor and he had only walked four meters away from the modified fighter
sitting there on its leg struts on the rock just behind them. "Well, maybe we
ain't gonna do a whole hell of a lot real fast, Doc, but we can do something
while sitting. Who wants the honor of being the first to breathe the new air?"
"Be my guest," Clayben responded.
Raven sighed, adjusted his suit control to "maintenance mode," then touched
the fastener plates and cautiously removed his helmet. He took a breath, then
relaxed and hooked the helmet on his neck strap. "Whew! Like gettin' hit by a
soakin' wet wool blanket! Boy, is this hot! Crazy feeling. The suit's still
got some air conditioning and insulation, but my face is hot as hell. I'm
sweating like a stuck
Pig."
"The air-smells-all right?"
"As a matter of fact, it doesn't. There's an undercurrent of something-a
mixture of things-that smells a little putrid. Not enough to make you sick or
anything.
I guess I can get used to it. Figure it's from being on mostly oxygen?"
Clayben wearily unfastened his helmet and took it off, then took a deep breath
and wrinkled his nose. "I see what you mean. No, it's not that. That is
clearly salt water over there-you cannot imagine how long it has been since
I've smelled that smell-and it's mixing with the smells of the jungle." He
sighed. "Well, all
I want to do is sleep for a week, but I think we'd better get things set up
here and take our preliminary measurements. Then I think we should encamp and
sleep in shifts until our bodies adjust to this gravity before exploring very
much-
if mine ever does adjust."
"I think they are birds, but they never come close enough to really tell."
Raven was clad now in an improvised loincloth, which consisted of two towels
draped, one front and one rear, over his gunbelt.
"We must go into the jungle at some point," Clayben said. He was wearing a
pair of shorts, a pullover T-shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. He was still
terribly uncomfortable and very slow, and beginning to wonder if he'd spent
too much time in low gravity to ever get used to full weight again, but he was
still fascinated and excited about being on a new and remote world. Even
during the night, agonized by muscle cramps, he still found it impossible not
to stare up through holes in the clouds to a star field that was much denser
than the one he'd known. "We will need more than these spore and insect
samples, fascinating as they are. From my analysis, I suspect that those
birds-or whatever they are-are not quite what we expect at all."
Terraforming was an incredibly complex science and one that Master System had
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had to learn from scratch. Mars had been far easier than planets like this
one;
there the process had involved mostly adding or transmuting to water, planting
dense growth, and letting things take their course. But even there a complex
chain of interdependent species of plants and animals had had to be modified
and stabilized so that the ecosystem would remain in balance.
Not a single one of the flying and crawling insects they'd managed to trap
here was familiar, but they seemed to fill the same not-always-obvious roles
that their Earth ancestors had back on the home world. Unfortunately, some of
them bit, and of those some had defensive or offensive toxins causing itching,
but none of the bites suffered by Clayben and Raven had been more than minor
nuisances.
The heat and humidity were still hard to take, and the gravity was murder, but
at least they had grown used to the alien smells in the air and hardly noticed
them anymore. Raven was certainly delighted about one thing: Finally he could
smoke his cigars again without worry. His endless supply of half-smoked cigars
had baffled Hawks until the latter had heard about and understood enough about
the transmuters. Raven had a way of making the things duplicate his cigars,
but the only model he'd had was the last half of one brought from Earth. He
had a huge supply made from that half a cigar-and all were duplicates of it.
He hoped that the others would never discover that he was using the food
transmuters to make cigars, or that they wouldn't mind if they did find out.
By the end of the second day, Raven felt well enough to do some exploring, but
it was clear that Clayben simply wasn't up to it. He might, in time, adapt to
a gravitational pull that was actually very slightly less than the Earth on
which he'd been bora, but that was by no means certain and definitely not
imminent.
Unwilling to trust Clayben alone with the fighter and all his gear, Raven
called for reinforcements. "I want Warlock and Nagy down here as quickly as
possible,"
he told them. "We need to get moving."
The newcomers, who arrived with fresh supplies, seemed to do a lot better with
the sudden weight than the first two had. Nagy explained that in light of the
problems, Star Eagle had induced a spin that gave some measure of gravity to
the ship. Warlock and Nagy still felt some strain, but after a good night's
sleep in the makeshift tent, they seemed to be in as good shape as Raven was.
It was a bright, sunny day. They had actually watched rainstorms in the
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