The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall Read Free

to reach. Then they turned to the winter-held north. By then, Liu had become a bit paranoid about the lack of larger life-forms. So far, all they had seen were some reptiloids, scaled and basking.
    “Quite large enough, thank you,” Shavva had remarked, narrowly escaping the attentions of a ten-centimeter-thick, seven-meter-long example.
    They also saw a great many more of Liu’s flying barges.
    “Wherries, that’s what they were called,” he said suddenly that afternoon. “Vessels that were used to ferry stuff between the English isle and the European continent. Wherries, and call ’em the biggest life-forms seen in the report. Maybe the term’ll stick.” Liu rarely exercised that EEC team prerogative.
    There were two identifiable types of the large avians, with raucous calls and the aggressive manners of predators; brilliantly plumed smaller fliers, a thousand types of what Shavva called “creepy-crawlies,” both inland and littoral. They had also found eggshells on southern beaches, shards littering what were apparently sand-buried nests. Of the egg layers, or the previous occupants, there were no signs.
    They did discover interesting fossil remains, a good fifty thousand years dead and gone, in an extensive tar pit; one specimen was intact enough to expose the ground-down dental machinery for grazing, suggesting that these fossils could have been the ruminants Liu wished to see. While the short, greenish spiky vegetation looked somewhat like grass, it wasn’t, for it had no silicates, was visibly triangular in form, and was more blue than green.
    “I want to see those grazers now, too,” Liu said firmly. But he was somewhat relieved to find the necessary variety of life-forms at a different epoch on the planet.
    They also located a diamond pipe just below the surface in the major rift valley fault. Rough stones, one as large as Shavva’s fist, were pried out of the soil. The team kept several as souvenirs; they were not particularly valuable otherwise, for the galaxy had produced many gemstones more exotic than these, though diamonds remained useful in technology for their durability and strength.
    “I find it rather a relief not to have to be constantly on guard,” Ben said on their third night, when Liu began again on the disappearance theme. “Remember Closto, the L.A. in our last tour? I kept holding my breath, waiting for something else to latch on to me.”
    Liu snorted. “Absence is as ominous as presence, in my tapes.”
    “Could have been an axial tilt, you know, and what’s now the ice caps were their homegrounds,” Shavva suggested. “They got caught in the blizzards and froze. We do have ice cores, which could very well produce tissue and bone fragments.”
    “Well, this P.E. has only a fifteen-degree axial tilt; the probes set the magnetic poles very near the ecliptic north and south, maybe fifteen degrees away from tilt.”
    “We’ll know when we get back to the ship and have a chance to study things. Are today’s samples ready to go back to Castor?”
    “Yeah, but I wish the fardles he’d sent us back his conclusions. He’s had time.” Liu scowled as he handed his latest containers to Ben to pack in the case to be launched back to the spacecraft.
    “Maybe they all moved north,” Ben said in a spirit of helpfulness.
    “To winter?”
    “This continent’s not in full summer yet.”
    “Well, it’d never get hot enough to fry things, not with the prevailing winds this continent’s got.” Liu refused to be mollified.
    On their way north they paused on the largest of a group of islands: basaltic, riddled with caves, bearing the profusion and lush growth common to tropical climes. They noted several unusual reptilian forms, more properly large herpetoids of truly revolting appearance.
    “I’ve seen uglier ones,” Ben remarked, examining at a safe distance one horny monster, seven centimeters broad and five high, which waved tentacles and claws in an aggressive manner. They