The Mystery of Ireta Read Free

Ireta’s odorous atmosphere took Kai’s breath away. He’d forgotten to replace the deodorizing plugs he’d removed while in the shuttle. The plugs helped but not when one was forced to breathe through his mouth, as he was while running to join Paskutti’s rapidly forming squad.
    Though the heavy-worlders under Paskutti’s direction had had farther to come, they were the first to arrive at the assembly point as Kai and Varian belted down the slope from the shuttle to the force-screen veil lock. Paskutti shoved belts, masks and stunners at the two leaders, forgetting in the urgency of the moment that the casual thrust of his heavy hand rocked the light-framed people back on their heels.
    Gaber, the cartographer who was emergency duty officer, came puffing down from his dome. As usual, he’d forgotten to wear his force-screen belt though there was a standing order for those belts to be worn at all times. Kai would tag Gaber for that when they got back.
    “What’s the emergency? I’ll never get those maps drawn with all these interruptions.”
    “Forage party’s in trouble. Don’t wander off!” said Kai.
    “Oh, never, Kai, never will I do anything so simple-witted. I assure you. I shan’t move from the controls one centimeter, though how I’m ever to finish my work . . . Three days behind now and . . .”
    “Gaber!”
    “Yes, Kai. Yes, I understand. I really do.” The man seated himself at the veil controls, glancing so anxiously from Paskutti to Varian that Kai had to nod at him reassuringly. Paskutti’s heavy face remained expressionless, as did his dark eyes; but somehow the heavy-worlder’s very silence could indicate disapproval or disgust more acutely than anything he might have growled.
    Paskutti, a man in his middle years, had been in ship security for most of his five-year tour with EEC. He had volunteered for this assignment when the call had gone through the mother ship for secondaries to assist a xenob team. Heavy-worlders often took semi-skilled tours on other worlds on the EEC ships as the pay was extremely good. Two or three tours would mean that a semi-skilled individual could earn enough credit to live the rest of his or her life in relative comfort on one of the developing worlds. Heavy-worlders were preferred as secondaries, whatever their basic specialty might be, because of their muscular strength. They were paid to be the muscles of humanoid FSP, generally a comment made respectfully, since the heavy-worlders were not just muscle men but numbered as many high-ranking specialists as any other humanoid subgroup.
    There was, however, no question that their sheer physical presence—the powerful legs, the compact torso, massive shoulders, weather-darkened skin—provided a visual deterrent that prompted many sentient groups to hire them as security forces, whether merely for display or as actual aggressive units. Contributing to the false notion that heavy-worlders were ill-equipped with mental abilities was the unfortunate genetic problem that, though their muscle and bone structure had adjusted to bear the heavy gravities, their heads had not. Consequently, at first glance they did look stupid. Away from the harsh gravity and climactic conditions that bred them, heavy-worlders also had to spend a good deal of their time in heavy-grav gyms to maintain their muscular strength and to enable them to make a satisfactory adjustment when they returned to their home worlds. Perversely enough, the heavy-worlders were intensely attached to their natal worlds, and most of them, having made their credit balance high enough to retire in comfort, happily returned to the cruel conditions that had developed their subgrouping.
    Paskutti and Tardma had joined the expedition out of sheer boredom with their shipboard security duties. Berru and Bakkun as geologists had been Kai’s own choices since it was always good to have a few heavy-worlders on any team for the advantage of their physical attributes.