Acorna grabbed the stalk in both hands and plunged the tip of her horn into it, deeply. Her a.s.sault split the stalk. Thus weakened, its top half dropped. Acorna caught the broken plant bulb in her hands, preventing it and RK from hitting the rocks.
Thariinye and Maati, awakened by the commotion, joined their friends, which was just as well, since it took the strength of them all to pry open the bulb of the plant from around RK.
First they saw nothing but his tail, then his writhing back end, the legs jerking and claws churning. But the cat"s legs and flanks were denuded of fur, and raw looking. They could scarcely bear to look as they pried the rest of the plant loose from the animal.
Digestive acids had caused great burns on poor RK"s affected hide. But the cat wouldn"t give up the fight. He still had the strength to squirm so hard that it took all four of them to restrain him while pulling him free of the plant.
(We might have known the only living things the Khleevi would leave behind would be carnivorous plants!) Acorna said, Some of the other plants seemed to leer at them in the dark.
They pulled the injured cat back onto the rocks with them, where all four began laying on horns to poor RK"s denuded and sore-covered body. His ears were the worst casualties of his adventure, and his nose was deeply burned. The cat choked and coughed, making strangling noises, as his throat swelled.
Naturally, for RK"s mouth had been wide open as the cat shrieked his anguish and rage while the plant"s digestive juices poured in to make a meal of him. Acorna, as gently as possible, pried the cat"s muzzle open and inserted the tip of her horn to heal as much of the damage as she could.
In order for all four well-grown Linyaari to bend over one Makahomian Temple Cat, however large and fierce it was for its species, it required a certain amount of contortion that would have been comical to an outside observer. Acorna squatted down so that she put no pressure on her horn as it healed the cat"s mucous membrane, lungs, esophagus, and other internal organs damaged by the juices. Aari rubbed the nub of his still stunted horn gently across the red and weeping stumps of RK"s ears. Maati and Thariinye used their horns to close and heal all of the lesions and restore life to the cat"s damaged exterior, though Thariinye winced in sympathy as he did so.
As RK"s breathing returned to normal and his pulse grew stronger, he began to shiver and Acorna stripped off her shirt and wrapped it around the cat. "Even though the night is warm, he"s chilling without his fur," she fussed maternally and felt a brief flash of affectionate amus.e.m.e.nt from Aari. Handing RK to Maati, who rocked the cat as if her were a baby and crooned to him, she and Aari returned to the palnt she had horned. She sank her horn into it again, stabbing it repeatedly, while Aari pulled and tore at it, until they wrenched the top half of the plant free from the rest of its stalk and carried it back to the flitter. Thariinye had already begun to strike camp. The Linyaari had needed no though talk to be in common accord that they would not remain in this spot for another moment. They were better off in the destroyed stone canyons than here. They needed a less exposed area for RK to finish healing in. Besides, the aagroni) should have the specimen of the plant they"d found to a.n.a.lyze immediately. It was time to head back to the base camp.
Was the strange plant that had nearly killed RK a mutation of some more benign plant that had once grown on Vhiliinyar? Or was it perhaps an infestation that had been a farewell gift from the Khleevi? Best to have it a.n.a.lyzed while the sample was still fresh.
En route, they tried several times to alert the base camp of their unexpected arrival, but surprisingly could rouse no response on their com unit.
"Why doesn"t anyone answer us?" Maati asked the first time their hail was ignored. "That"s funny. I thought Mother said they were going to monitor the com around the clock. Maybe the scientists got their noses into experiments and are ignoring it."
But their subsequent attempts at communication were also unanswered. Acorna once hailed her aunt"s flitter to see if their com unit was functioning. It was - Neeva replied in a sleepy voice. Their party had not tried to reach the base camp and so far their a.s.signment had proven uneventful. Her aunt offered help and shared her concern, even though she tried to sound rea.s.suring.
"I"ll try them from here and let you know if we reach them, Kh.o.r.n.ya," Neeva promised. "Your site is a great deal farther out than many of ours. Perhaps we miscalculated the range of the flitter transmitters?"
But even as the flitter neared the base camp their hails went unanswered.
When they touched down on the site of the former Linyaari graveyard, everything was as still as it had been when the bones of the ancestors were the only inhabitants of the place.
The base camp was dark, the double pavilion provided by House Harakamian for the laboratory silent except for the vague s.n.a.t.c.hes of dreams Acorna caught coming from the inhabitants. Normally Acorna was not able to pick up dreams, but Vhiliinyar was so abnormally quiet, the unguarded thoughts of those who slept were like sharp bursts of song from startled birds.
"They posted no guard," Aari said. "Unbelievable."
(Son! Maati!) His mother woke all at once and sat up on her sleeping pallet. He could see her in his mind"s eye, and through him, Acorna saw her, too. (What is it?)
(We need your advice, Mother. A hostile plant attacked RK and nearly devoured him.)
(What sort of plant?) This was the aagroni, his thought voice husky with troubled sleep, and brusque with trying to separate what he was hearing from his dreams.
(Not of Linyaari origin that I can tell, aagroni?) Aari, the only one of their team to have lived extensively on Vhiliinyar, was the obvious one to answer. (Perhaps it is a mutation?)
(Or some Khleevi monstrosity left behind!) the aagroni said.
(There is an entire forest of them on our site. We will need to remove some portion of that forest in order to safely examine the area.) Acorna said.
(Not before I"ve had a chance to study it!) the aagroni declared.
(No, of course not, but could you please study RK, too, and perhaps find a way to hasten the regrowth of his fur?) This was from Maati in an aggrieved tone. (He is cold and embarra.s.sed without it.)
(Why were we not informed of your arrival?) the aagroni asked. (You should have sent word. We are wasting valuable time.) As he said this he was pulling on his robe with one hand and setting up beakers and trays with the other.
(We tried to send a message, but no one was receiving.) Aari informed him with an edge of disapproval, (probably because you were all asleep.)
(Liriili didn"t answer? But she was standing sentry, supposed to answer any hails. How often did you try?)
They a.s.sured him they had tried often enough that if Liriili had been alert, she would have heard them. It occurred to Acorna that the contrary former administrator might have ignored them simply because she disliked all of them except that Acorna had been very specific about the carnivorous plant and the terrible injuries to RK. Liriili had an odd partiality for the Makahomian Temple Cat odd because she liked almost nothing else, not because RK wasn"t loveable. The former vi-izaar might well berate Acorna"s team for failing to take proper care of the feline, but she would hardly ignore requests to stand by to a.s.sist with his emergency treatment.
The mystery of Liriili"s absence was temporarily forgotten as the aagroni took charge of RK, who, with four Linyaari horns to heal him, was purring madly most of the time, except for growls when he went to lick his furless body. His sudden condition clearly perplexed and upset the cat, and he glared at the anxious faces around him, his expression murderous, as if demanding to know who had made off with his coat. Maati stroked the cat"s head with one finger while the aagroni a.n.a.lyzed the fur on his tail to see if it could be restored more quickly than nature alone would permit.
The plant specimen commanded the attention of the other scientists.
Acorna, still uneasy, wandered around the laboratory and sleeping quarters, but nowhere did she see Liriili curled up in a corner, neglecting her duties in favor of sleep.
As she left the pavilion, Aari emerged from the cave where he had once taken refuge until rescued by Becker and RK.
(She"s not there.) he answered Acorna before she could ask. (It is as if the planet has swallowed her up, Kh.o.r.n.ya. I know every rock in this area and she is simply not here. I cannot see, hear, smell, or read her. Of all the places on Vhiliinyar, this is
the one where I would most feel our people could be safe. And yet... she"s gone.)
They combed the area around the base camp, continuing to call Liriili with their voices and their thoughts, to sniff for her scent, to listen for an unconscious movement or moan.
Then Acorna suddenly realized they hadn"t checked the base camp flitter, which was where the com unit would be. Feeling foolish, she headed for it. Surely not even Liriili would be so inconsiderate as to enter the relative comfort and privacy of the flitter and, while she was supposed to be standing sentry, turn off the com unit so her rest would be undisturbed. But with the ex-viizaar, one could never be certain.
As Acorna opened the flitter hatch, she could plainly hear, however, that the com unit was on, and the base camp being hailed.
"Basecamp, this is the flitter wii-Baiakiire (small Balakiire). Come in, please."
Acorna flipped the toggle. "Melireenya!"
"What"s happened, Kh.o.r.n.ya? We"ve been trying to raise the base camp for hours. We "were so worried we were about to abandon our mission and board the flitter and investigate ourselves. Has some freak storm wiped out the base camp already? Or maybe it was a ma.s.sive equipment failure that prevented them from responding?"
"Neither," Acorna answered. "The base camp is fine, for the most part. Everyone here was asleep. Liriili was in charge of the com unit for the night shift, but she seems to have abandoned her post. None of the scientists have seen her since they retired for bed. We"ve been looking for her, but wherever she went to avoid her work, it is a good hiding place. We have looked extensively, and as far as we can tell, she isn"t in the laboratory or the cave, and we can"t find her anywhere in the vicinity. She appears to have vanished."
"Oh, dear," Melireenya said. "Isn"t that just like Liriili? She can"t even handle a simple task like com duty without causing an uproar. She"s our shipmate, and we foisted her on the scientists. I suppose that makes her our responsibility. We"ll be en route at once and come to help you search. Normally, I"d guess she just wandered off to avoid working, but if you cannot find her, something might be wrong."
Acorna, still scanning the area, nodded to the com unit, then realized that it did not actually have a video component. "That will be fine," she said. "We will be glad of the a.s.sistance. We should find out what has become of her. If it were anyone but Liriili, I would be frantic. I"m beginning to wonder if the Khleevi haven"t left behind a number of nasty b.o.o.by traps for us."
"I"m afraid you might be right," Melireenya said. "We"ll be there as quickly as we can. Now that I think about it, just disappearing without a word or a trace is completely unlike Liriili. She would never be so accommodating."
Acorna smiled at her aunt"s small joke, but was inclined to agree.
Many hours later Acorna looked at her gathered friends and shook her head. "I have nothing to report. We can find no trace of Liriili, or of her body. Our infrared sensors pick up no trace of her heat signature, and our DNA scans of the planetary surface are negative. She apparently never left this camp. She can"t have been buried in an avalanche or have fallen into a creva.s.se, or have been engulfed in a volcanic cataclysm, or been consumed by any unknown life forms that might have survived the Khleevi, as traces of her skin or hair or bodily fluids would have been found on any path she would have taken to the areas where those disasters might have occured. And, though the scientists were sleeping when she vanished, surely they would have heard any mental or vocall calls for help if Liriili had issued them. I believe that, whatever happened to Liriili, it happened with her cooperation, and perhaps at her instiagation."
"Hm," Miiri, Aari"s and Maati"s mother said, "I agree. Knowing Liriili, I think it is far more likely to a.s.sume that somehow or other she has left the planet than that she has managed to vanish into thin air as a result of foul play. I do have one possibility to suggest. The equipment we brought for this mission is aimed at detecting objects on or below the planet"s surface, not ships overhead. The flitters and shuttles have the standard suite of detection devices, certainly, but our attention has been concentrated here, upon this planet. It is possible that somehow an orbiting ship might have sent down a shuttle and that Liriili boarded it."
"Why would she do that?" the aagroni asked.