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Hume shook his head slowly. "I found something else on Jumala an L-B from Largo Drift intact and in good shape. From the evidence now in existence it could have landed there with survivors aboard." "And the evidence of such survivors living on that exists also?" Hume shrugged, his plasta-flesh fingers flexed slightly. "It has been six planet years, there is a forest where the L-B rests.
Rynch shook his head, wiped his wet face with his arm. It was all his, that was sure, every bit of it. He'd been lucky, the survival manual on the L-B had furnished him with general directions and this was a world which was not unfriendly not if one was prepared for trouble. He climbed up and loosened the net, coiling its folds into one hand, taking the good spear in his other.
Prove it. Find the L-B, retrace the trail of yesterday past the point of the fall which had started all this. Right there was the slope down which he must have tumbled. Above, he would find the den he had been exploring when the accident had occurred. Only he did not find it. His mind had produced a detailed picture of that rounded depression, at the bottom of which the strong-jaw lurked.
But now every clump of trees, every wind-rippled mound of brush promised cover. Vye moistened his lips, diverted his eyes from the skull. "Weathered," Hume said slowly, "must have been here for seasons, maybe planet years." "A survivor from the L-B?" Yet this spot lay days of travel from that clearing back in the plains. "How did he get here?"
Heartened, he pulled at the vine loop, climbed back into the tree. Minutes later he discovered that there were more than two of the beasts waiting quietly about the camp, and that their sentry line ran between him and the clearing of the L-B. He withdrew farther into the wood, intent upon finding a detour which would bring him out into the open lands.
And the Out-Hunter respected him as being man enough to be wary of giving any suspicion of going counter to the agreed plan. Dawn was touching up the main points of the western continent, and he must set this spacer down within a day's journey of the abandoned L-B. Exploration in that direction would be the first logical move for his party.
So I reported to one of the Masters and told him the whole story why I hadn't taped on the records my discovery on Jumala. "When he passed along the news of the L-B to the Patrol, he also suggested that there might be room for fraud along the way I had thought it out. That started a chain reaction. It happened that the Patrol wanted Wass.
The L-B could well be innocently discovered by a client. Every one knows the story with the case dragging through the Ten Sector-Terran Courts now. Gentlefem Brodie and her son might not have been news ten years ago. Now, with a third of the Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz control going to them, any find linked with the Largo Drift would gain full galactic coverage." "You have a choice of survivor?
And there could be no mirror surface in there, surely there could not be?" Yes, things were moving too fast. Hume might be overly cautious but he was determined that no hint of any pre-knowledge of the L-B must ever come to these civs. When they would find the Largo Drift's life boat and locate Brodie, there would be a legal snarl.
This was no time to be plagued by uncertain weather. Somewhere out there Brodie was holed up. He hoped the boy had long ago reached the "camp" so carefully erected and left for his occupancy. The L-B, that stone covered "grave" showing signs of several years' occupancy, was all assembled and constructed to the last small detail. Far less might have deceived the civs in this safari.
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