H.M. Hoover - Lost Star (9 page)

Pok-pok was one of those rare games that sentient species could play together. It was a mongrel mixture of tennis and amalfi netball. Humans could play in conventional style. The amalfis wore breathing gear to keep from exhausting themselves in this dry atmosphere.

Tolats never played pok-pok or any other game except their own, which was called "lump!" The smallest tolat could jump ten times its own length and frequently did so.

Since the game was being played on the landing pad, it was interrupted by the airtruck's arrival. Only Dr. Farr and the tolat medic were aboard. It was hard to tell about the tolat, but Dr. Farr looked tired.

"Your colleagues will recover," Dr. Farr told the group that ran to meet them. "They were out of shock when we left. Zizzori has a fractured topshell. Both he

and Zarr will need extensive resheathing on their fore-claws and grippers. They were badly scorched. Tsri Zahr is going to stay with them for a day or two until the prosthetic shell is molded."

After Dr. Farr excused himself and went to his quarters to bathe and change, the tolat contingent gathered around the tolat medic to question him further, translators off. The only thing Lian understood was repeated reference to Tsri Farr.

No one felt like resuming the pok-pok game once the crowd broke up. The players went off to take their respective showers. Lian was beginning to get butterflies in her stomach at the thought of telling Dr. Farr about the dome and the lumpies. Her hands were icy as she toweled and dressed. There was no point in putting it off.

Buford was stretched out in the sun in front of Dr. Farr's door when she got there—a band of vivid orange against the gravel. His antennae quivered at her approach, but he did not move. The door was open, and she could hear the man talking; apparently he had a visitor. Not wanting to disturb him or Buford, she was turning away when he called out, "Lian?" and came to the door.

"I—could I talk to you later—privately?"

"Surely. But why not now? I'm finishing my personal log entry. It'll only take a few minutes more." He saw her look at Buford. "Don't mind our watch worm. Just step over him."

"Do you—like him there?" she said as she made sure her feet cleared the millipede by a wide margin.

"Shhh." His voice lowered to a stage whisper. "Buford's very sensitive. Many staff members don't want him around. He finds this traumatic since he is accustomed to lumpie attention."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

Dr. Farr's eyebrows angled up. "Buford?"

"No. Lumpies. I don't really want to tell you, but I think I have to. Lumpies are—an intelligent species. This city is theirs."

Dr. Farr's expression went blank. He searched her eyes for a moment, then reached over and pulled up a folding chair for her. "You
are
serious?" he said, and when she nodded, "What makes you think so?" As he sat down on the edge of the bed, she saw him turn the log recorder back to "on."

"Shall I begin at the beginning?" she asked for the benefit of the recording.

"I think that would be best."

"Yesterday I was on top of the dome—the center of the eye?—and I heard the same music that I heard before."

He frowned at that but did not interrupt. In fact, he said nothing for the ten minutes it took her to relate the basic story.

When she had finished, Dr. Farr sat there on the bed, still staring at her in expressionless silence. Lian's hyperactive imagination darted in all directions. Was he wondering if she was sane? Angry because she hadn't told him yesterday? In shock?

"You will see that no harm comes to the lumpies?" she said.

At that he stirred and took a deep breath. "Forgive me for sitting here like a lump—" he said. "Poor choice of words—I'm sorry. Of course we'll protect them—if they need it. What I was wondering was if I should tell the others or investigate this myself."

"Oh, I think you'd better tell them," Lian said. "They'll overlook my secretiveness. But yours would be seen as an attempt to gain personal glory."

"I see you are familiar with research personalities," Dr. Farr said. "Behind each dispassionate scientific mask lurks an egomaniac." He paused as another thought occurred, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its customary warmth. "This isn't an elaborate joke, is it, Lian? A hoax on the archaeologists?"

It was her turn to frown. "Why would I do that?"

"We know nothing of each other," he said. "And few jokes seem as enduring as the manufacture of extra-

culinary cultures for gullible archaeologists and anthropologists to discover. If you knew how many mummies of little green men we are offered, how many fabulous artifacts are carefully manufactured for our benefit. For you to make such an extraordinary find with absolutely no training . . ." He suddenly stopped, and the only sound in the room came from the insects singing in the grass outside. "With no preconceived ideas to blind you"—the words were almost whispered to himself— "no knowledge to be ignored, no innate hostility toward strange animals. ... I want to see this place before dark!"

Of course they all had to see it immediately. The sun was beginning to make long shadows in the woods. A herd of nalas was feeding on the vines at the edge of the dome. They crashed away into the underbrush, panicked by this parade of chattering strangers.

Although she watched for them, she saw no lumpies anywhere and hoped none were in the old building. None were.

At the entrance to the halls, the staff let her lead the way. She was not sure if their deference was due to politeness, because it was her discovery, or timidity, since with the sun low the entrance looked like a very black cave.

"The ceiling glows a little when the lumpies are in here," she told them.

This caused the tolats to talk excitedly among themselves.

"There will be no bringing lumpies here against their will," Dr. Farr announced, and added with a look at the tolats, "just in case the idea occurred to you."

Only a few had electric torches on their belts, and the inspection tour was cursory. Lian led them perhaps a third of the way in. That took more than an hour because each open door had to be peered into and the unidentified contents discussed. One thing they decided immediately was that this hall been repeatedly flooded. Those few rooms they could enter were full of soil and

vegetable matter from which furniture and other artifacts protruded.

Scotty looked for and found written symbols everywhere. She greeted each new find with a yell of delight. "I was becoming afraid we'd find nothing," she told Lian, "that I had perhaps wasted three years. But it's wonderful! Marvelous! Intricate! Look at that doorway—see that sign? Isn't it beautiful?" And with that she hugged the girl out of sheer exuberance. "I can hardly wait to get in here tomorrow."

Like the professionals they were, they touched nothing, waiting for the time and tools to examine the site properly without risk of damage through haste. All were pleased and excited by what they saw, especially the artwork on the walls. The dome they would save for tomorrow. If a lumpie could not be persuaded to open the door, the tolats were sure they could bypass the switch.

Oncoming twilight drove them out into the woods again. As they walked back to camp, Lian noticed a subtle change in attitude. Before, almost no one had paid any attention to her. Now, to her great surprise, a
tolat
suggested she be made an honorary member of the expedition. All the other tolats gave their hissing version of three cheers, and the amalfis joined in. "We must sew expedition patches on your jacket sleeves," said Dr. Farr. "You've surely earned them."

But some of the human members of the group, once the first excitement of discovery had passed, seemed resentful and were none too discreet about showing their displeasure. "I find it hard to believe that your find was serendipitous," one man said. "I understand you've been on Balthor quite a while? Long enough to cover a lot of territory?" And a woman said, "I understand you fly alone a lot. This must have been one of your favorite camping places?"

"Why don't they believe I never saw this place until two days ago?" Lian asked Scotty.

"They don't want to," Scotty said. "You have to consider that this expedition includes five renowned

cxlraterrestrial archaeologists. Their grants and their reputations are based on what they find. You arrive, a complete amateur, and two days later announce a major discovery. You can't expect them all to appreciate your success."

Lian thought that over to see if she should be sympathetic. She decided she wasn't. "I'm not going to publish anything."

Scotty grinned. "Well, in that case," she said, "maybe they'll forgive you someday," and they both laughed.

From where Lian
and
the three lumpies
sat
, the
tolats up on the dome looked like crabs dragging push brooms. Actually they were removing vegetation with long-handled vaporizers. Under the vines and a thin layer of soil, the tolats had found the dome was not frosted opaque but a transparent glassy substance.

On the north side a crew was preparing to wash off the glass. The airtrucks had carried up a pump and plastic bags full of water.

At dawn the tolats had rushed to the dome, confident they could get inside. But when they came back for breakfast, they reported they could not activate the gate switch or bypass it. After yesterday's accident there was no question of blasting through. Since the lumpies were nowhere to be found at that hour, the tolats had attacked the problem from the outside.

"Is central unit covered with shield?" one of the engineers had asked Lian at breakfast.

"It's a clear housing. Most of it—" was all she got to say before they started talking among themselves.

This dome was exciting them considerably, but they would not say why. That they thought it important was evident by their temporary lack of interest in what lay beneath it.

The rest of the staff was now mapping and photographing the halls and rooms below. Lian would have liked to be with them, but the lumpies created a problem. Like householders when workmen invade the home, the lumpies wanted to see what was going on—so long as Lian was there. The entire colony followed her everywhere she went, which admittedly did make for crowded hallways and difficulty in moving equipment and lighting.

After overhearing several derogatory remarks aimed at the gentle but curious creatures, Lian decided to go outside with them. Lumpies might not understand these languages, but she was almost certain they would pick up the ugly tone in them.

On her way out she was stopped by the photographer, who thanked her for leaving and spoiled it by adding, "To be honest, I—uh—well, some of us are upset by them. I'm sure you understand. They've always been fat dumb animals. Now we have to stop and remember they aren't. They're getting in my way. I mean, they
look
so stupid!"

"They don't!" said Lian, instantly angry. "How would you look gray, bald, a hundred pounds heavier, and naked? Would you like it if I looked at you then and said, 'Wow, a fat dumb animal'?"

"You don't understand," the man said. "I was trying to be polite, to explain—"

"No," said Lian. "You were trying to be forgiven for bigotry."

That exchange and what prompted it was still bothering her an hour later as she sat watching the tolats work. This complete dismissal of the lumpies from the beginning, when they had first been given their name, puzzled her.

Was it because they suggested a human, with their

big sad eyes, clown smile, and dumpy figure, that humans laughed at them? And if the humans laughed, then did that give other sentient species the freedom to express chauvinistic disdain for lumpies similar to the contempt they felt for humans but dared not express?

There was a definite comfort in the purity of astrophysics, she thought. There were no emotional elements. She suddenly understood more her parents' passion for their work. It shut out things like this ... it shut out the problems of normal life. And some of the joy.

Cuddles touched her shoulder and, when she glanced up, patted her cheek comfortingly and then pointed toward the dome. The push broom crew had finished, and the second crew had started the pump. A hose had been rigged in the already cleaned center so that water sprayed up like the horn of a trumpet and fell, to flush down the surface of the dome. That the water made the surface slick was obvious by the way the workers began to slide off it.

The airtrucks droned back and forth with dripping water bags hanging from the hoists on both ends. Slowly red soil darkened to wet mud, then to a thick liquid that gravity flowed downward. The glassy surface below began to shine through. It appeared almost black and reflected the rainbows dancing in the spray overhead.

Cuddles and Poonie were having a long conversation, evidently discussing the dome, since they kept nodding in its direction. They got up, walked through the wet grass and mud, and tried to peer in. From past experience Lian suspected this was one-way glass—that one could see out of the dome but not into it. They touched the surface several times and appeared to be taking its temperature.

"I wonder," said Lian, and got to her feet. "Does that absorb radiation? Is that what powers the energy cells ... or part of them?" That would explain the tolats' interest. If the computer was still working, there had to be some reason why it was still working. If they