On Ice Page 3

  *

  As she walked, compass in hand, her mind fell into survey mode with reassuring ease, cataloging observations to append to the official survey once she reached the camp. She vocalized softly out of habit, even though the com which she'd normally use to record everything was broken.

  "It's morning by the sun, so I must have been unconscious overnight. I'm surprised to see no sign of the grazers that we were monitoring just yesterday. From the high-altitude station-keepers, it seemed that their herd was large enough to to take several more days passing through. Did the Ice badger attacks scare them onto another, less hazardous course?"

  Technically, she wasn't supposed to speculate on reasons and causes, but she always did. It kept the team entertained, when they each came up with pet explanations for anomalous data, and then argued them back and forth. Sometimes they even wound up finding more evidence because of it. Alenn was still uncomfortable with that deviation from protocol too, but they were working on her.

  "The cave I woke up in was full of grazers, as well as me. In the fall, the Ice badgers must deviate from their normal behavior in order to benefit from the migration, and the influx of food that it brings. But how did it put us all to sleep?"

  A few more minutes of walking and thinking brought her to a tentative conclusion. "There are a few known cases of venomous mammals, whether through use of poisonous plants or their own secretions. Earth moles are even known to sedate worms and keep them in a larder close to their den. If the Ice badgers have some sort of natural tranquilizer in their teeth or claws, that would explain both how they accumulated a larder of living grazers and why they're immune to our tranquilizers."

  Her stomach turned at the thought of what could have happened if she hadn't woken up when she did - or if the kittens had decided to change the order of their menu.

  "I must, must, remember to warn Survey that the Ice badgers have this ability. Colonists attacked by Ice badgers are not necessarily dead, even if they appear non-responsive."

  If he thought she was already dead, Donly wouldn't even have argued about trying to rescue her. Her imagination painted a picture of the Ice badger dragging her limp body through the woods to its den, and she shuddered.

  She looked around, determined to distract herself from increasingly disturbing thoughts of her experience and its implications. "Huh, undergrowth in this part of the forest is putting forth green shoots, unlike the other areas surveyed. Maybe this region is more sheltered from winter storms?"

  She shook her head, discarding the idea. "Unlikely. I'll need to check with the others, and see if they have any data that explains the difference." Her com would have had all of the data available, as well as several analytic functions to provide extra layers of information. Of course, if her com was still functioning, she could have just called base camp to report her escape, and skipped the walk.

  Jade sighed, and took a few minutes to stop and stretch, enjoying the freshness of the air and the soft warmth of the sun dappling the ground through the tree branches. Now that she wasn't running for her life, the quiet noises of the forest suffused her with a welcome sense of well-being.

  It would have been a pity to miss this walk, she decided, just to get back to camp a little quicker.

  Their five-day schedule had been so rushed that she hadn't had much chance to enjoy the experience of being on an unsettled planet. She had filed a suggestion when the assignment first came through that they take a full two weeks for the followup, but wasn't surprised when it was ignored. After all, she'd been arguing for years that a standard survey should take at least a month, with no result.

  Sure, in the standard two weeks a survey team could catalog species, evaluate edibility and standard resource types, and get a snapshot of climate and weather, but it wasn't enough time to really get a feel for how an ecosystem worked.

  If their first transit to Ice hadn't been in the middle of an impassable winter storm, they wouldn't even have been doing this follow-up survey. The colonists would have faced their first winter with no warning of just how bad it could get.

  She shuddered at the thought of that storm, and set off again at a brisk pace. Nice as the day was, she had no desire to be left behind to face the winter.

  When her ears caught the sound of flowing water, all her attention focused on the thirst that had temporarily faded into the background. Now she sped up, pushing through underbrush and bushes with no concern for what she might trample or break on the way.

  The sound of water grew ever louder, ever more tantalizing, but every time she expected to see the river just past a rise in the land or a thick growth of trees, there was nothing but more trees beyond.

  Jade slowed, trying not to cry. Whether or not her eyes would even produce tears at this point, she couldn't let herself break down before she reached water. In a distant way, she knew that she was still suffering from the effects of dehydration and the Ice badger's poison, and that was why her mind and attention kept wandering. She also knew that if she wandered too much, or let herself lie down and rest, she would die before she found the river.

  "It's got to be there," she told herself. "I know that if I go southeast from the rockfields where we surveyed the Ice badgers I will hit the river eventually, and once there I'll be able to find the camp. Besides, I can hear it!"

  A few breaths later, the urge to cry faded a little, and she started forward again at a more sustainable pace. The sound of flowing water kept growing louder, until it drowned out birdsong and even her own comments to herself. The river she knew wasn't big enough or fast enough to make so much noise, but she kept going, trying not to listen to her growing doubts.

  Finally, she started to feel moisture in the air, along with the deafening noise of falling water. She pushed through yet another patch of young growth and pulled up short at the sight before her.

  A white wall of falling water stretched out across the breadth of the river, falling a good ten meters into a vast, churning cauldron before rushing away in leaps and bounds over the rocky river bed. The sound and force of it took her breath away.

  Directly in front of her, water eddied just inches below the bank she stood on. She grabbed a slim tree trunk for balance, and dipped her other hand into the rushing water, letting it pull her arm back before resisting the flow enough to cup her hand and bring it to her mouth.

  The water was cold enough to numb her hand in seconds, but clear and refreshing. At this point, she probably would have drunk mud and thought herself lucky, but the cold, clear water felt like heaven as she swallowed down mouthful after mouthful and splashed it across her face.

  Sated for the moment, she sat back on her heels to contemplate the impossible sight before her.

  The river she knew did have waterfalls and rocky areas. It would never be easily navigable, but nor was it as wild as the one before her. The sheer volume of water passing in front of her every second was probably more than the river she was used to carried in a week.

  On the other hand, if there had been a second river within a day's hover journey of the portal site, she would have known about it. There were a handful of small streams that fed into the larger river, but no other significant bodies of water.

  So, either the Ice badger had somehow transported her to an entirely different region… or this was her river.

  Looking around at the riverbanks and rock formations, she thought she even knew where she was, a kilometer or so downstream from the camp and portal site. There had certainly been evidence that the river ran significantly higher on occasion than what they had seen, but they had all assumed that such floods would only happen in the springtime, with snowmelt from the distant mountains.

  Jade froze at the thought, but then shook her head. That idea was about as plausible as the thought that an Ice badger could carry her further away than they had surveyed with the hover and remotes. No, she was weak, but she could only have been out for hours, maybe a day.

  For now, she would take a proper
Survey approach. The river had flooded, and she didn't know why. She would observe further while using it as a landmark to find her way back to camp. The sun was starting to lower in the west, and it would be good to have shelter, food, and companionship before nightfall.

  Using a branch to pull herself back to her feet, she started the last leg of her trek home.