The Companions Read Free

improper.
    The only remedy for this infraction was to stay out of the forest, to confine himself to quarters. The PPI team could not possibly decide anything sensibly when too many people in it, including Drom himself, were consistently guilty of delight, guilty of spending seasons at a time lying half-buried in mossy softness, frittering away years while smelling joy in the air as though each moment were eternal!
    Oh, yes. PPI had disported itself, at least those given to disporting had done so, and when certain puritans among them had questioned this nonchalance toward duty, Drom himself had allowed it to go on. Hadn’t he commanded and hadn’t they served as the PPI team on Jungle, twelve years ago, when eleven of their fellows had vanished into that overgrown weed patch leaving no sign, no signal, no nothing to mark where they had gone or what had taken them? Hadn’t they had nightmares afterward, as though from a lasting poison that affected only the sleeping mind? Hadn’t they gone directly from Jungle to Stone, where they’d been daily dust-dazzled, sun-staggered, half-melted by the heat? On Stone, even PPI personnel could not touch the surface or allow the surface to touch them, but it was a great-grandmother lode of rare ores, the most profitable new world found in a century. Still, living things had been found in stranger environments, and years had spun by in baking chaos and a madness of mining machines, while PPI went through the motions of searching for indigenous life so that no one, no people could accuse them of slacking their duty.
    After all that, didn’t they have some pleasure coming, some relaxation? He had thought so, said so, though what they had earned and what was appropriate were two different things. The truth was they would not be allowed to remain on Moss no matter what they reported or found or believed. Those who didn’t die here would be sent somewhere else quite shortly. Where that place might be and howwell or badly they would live there could depend significantly on the overall profit or loss coming from these three planets. Profit or loss, defeat or victory, fines or bonus pay hinged upon what was found here, in this system. Jungle had been a total loss; Stone a bonanza; and Moss was an enigma. Finding an intelligent race on this planet, or, if there was none, being able to say so definitively would make the planet bankable. It would put them on the high plus side, the very high plus side. Everyone knew that, but even now, after all this time on Moss, that basic question remained unanswered. Until it was answered, what was the place good for?
    Nothing that made money. Retirement, perhaps. Several of the PPI people originally assigned to Moss had been old-timers. They had communicated with colleagues near retirement, and some of the oldsters had arrived, “assigned to temporary duty,” and they had been followed by others yet. The installation had been enlarged, at first, to house additional personnel, though no additions had been needed recently. The PPI contingent roll was three or four times longer than the rolls of those surveying any other known world. Of course, the rolls were only paper. The people, bodily, were seldom to be found.
    Was there an intelligent race on Moss?
    â€œâ€¦if the flame folk are intelligent, there’s a bonus,” he said, dreaming into the silence of the room.
    â€œI know,” said the young lieutenant from his seat before a bank of monitors. “That’s what the ESC expert said. If they’re intelligent, we profit.”
    â€œAn intelligent race is a market,” Drom mused. “And a new market is worth money, once you find out what it wants and needs.”
    Bar Lukha considered this through long moments of silence, saying at last, “But the Mossen don’t need anything.”
    â€œHow do we know?” Drom asked. “The Mossen don’t talk. They don’t do anything but