Beowulf's Children

The little mining drones churned up the soft coal, and a conveyor belt moved it, a chunk at a time, up and over to the refinery. The prefabricated refinery processed the crumbly stuff, turning it into thick dark bricks of protoplastic, the fodder of their building and pharmaceuticals industry. Jessica recognized this sequence: it was a classroom film.

The other showed the refinery setup dead and mangled. Track had lurched out of one of several tu

Joe said, "I'll kiss the ass of the nerd who's good enough to be sending us that!" and added as an afterthought, "Unless it's Edgar."

A real bomb, Jessica thought. Low-yield explosive. Wrecked equipment had forced an expedition.

The eel, too, had forced an expedition to the mainland. Interesting coincidence? Jessica shook her head. No one would do that.

"Touchdown in about nine minutes," Linda said.

Jessica groped in her pocket, began pulling on tough, light gloves.

"I'm ready: Eager, and willing."

"That's what all the boys say." Linda examined her big sister craftily. "You'll probably cut out after an hour or so."

"Ask Joe."

Were Joe's ears turning pink? He said, "Security check, Jess. Make sure the perimeters are secure, and none of the movement sensors have picked up anything. Then we can let the kids down."

"And get them out of my hair. We've got work to do," Linda said.

Jessica scrunched her nose at Linda, and paused to say "goo" to little Cadzie. "Pete Detrich," she said. "You were dating him for a while last spring... "

Linda straightened her back proudly. "I'm not telling, and that's that."

"All right, all right..."

Jessica paused at the door, and then said back over her shoulder—"Zack Moskowitz."

"Hah! His mustache tickles."

Without admitting defeat, Jessica affected a slouch, leaving the room.

Jessica climbed down a narrow spiral staircase into the cargo bay. It was vast and almost empty now, thrumming with engine vibration as they neared the ground. There were six great bay doors of molded high-impact plastic. Four were already open. She took a door next to Justin, who already had the cable attached to his belt-buckle carabiner.

"Race you!" he said merrily.

"What stakes?"

"You make pan biscuits tonight."

"Fine—or you hunt up tubers."

"You're on."

She unlatched and flung her door open. The breeze ruffled her hair, cooled her face. They were fifty feet above the low, bluish grass. Even from here it looked scraggly, surviving where the heavier brush had died for lack of moisture. She tied the line through her carabiner and braced it at her hip, right hand taking the high grip, and threw the rest of the line out over the side. Before it had completely unreeled she launched herself. She looked back up, shadowed by Robor's bulk, its Chinese-dragon facade dropping away from her toward the morning sky, and laughed.

She hadn't been the first out. That was Aaron, as usual, his hours of mountain climbing serving him well. But Justin was coming down fast, and then Katya and Trish and Toshiro, the six of them like a small colony of spiders spiraling to earth. The ropes still dangled sixteen feet above the ground when Aaron reached the bottom of his line. He paused a fatal instant, and she paused watching him, and Justin snapped free and dropped the rest of the way down, hitting and rolling like a paratrooper. He came back to his feet lightly, sporting a bruised face, a shoulder stained with dirt, and a grin of evil triumphant.

Jessica didn't jump. The five of them jumping in concert could wobble Robor's descent.

When it finally came within reach Justin grabbed his line and anchored it to one of the steel loops set into the ground. Katya was next down. She grunted, trying to get her cable into a ring. It wouldn't quite reach as a gust of wind took Robor sideways a few feet. Aaron grabbed the end of his line with his left hand and stretched out to grasp a steel ring with his right. His mouth gaped into an O of strain, and she heard his shoulders creak. But will and muscle and a shift of wind brought the line close enough to the ring for him to attach the mooring clip, and from there on it was easy.

Robor's undercarriage brushed the ground, and secondary lines tied it into place. As Justin walked past her, Jessica slapped him a casual high-five.

"Let's take a look at the processor," he said. She nodded.

The flat was four hundred meters across, rocky and mostly barren. Up a short incline was a second terrace. They scrambled up the lip of the rise, and paused. Geodesic dome. A dozen yards away, a corrugated shed housed the automated processor. Other than those, nothing for two hundred meters in either direction. Nothing... then a rise of mountain, crested with bushes with purple-green, roughly triangular leaves. The dirt beneath their feet was scarred, tread-marked where mini-tractors had carried their loads of plastic bricks back to Robor.

Ordinarily the mining equipment, sheltered beneath its dome of pipes, churned merrily away. But all was silent now.

Jessica turned and looked below her. Robor's dragon shape stirred in the wind, seemed almost to breathe. Its red and green stubby wings struggled to break from bondage. The lower cargo doors were opening, ramps descending. One of the mini-tractors was exiting smoothly.

Below Robor, and beyond, stretched Grendel Valley. Green, wild, twisted with vegetation. And through the very middle of it ran a river. The Styx. Death.

Higher up were plateaus where children of Earth could play. North and east she could see three mountain ranges. The farthest high peaks were lost in the mist. In winter even the lowest would be snow-crested, but today the air was warm and moist, the light and heat of Tau Ceti steady upon them.

Pterodons glided silkily through the peaks, more plentiful here than on Camelot. On the island they ate fish, or darted into the isolated horsemane trees to snatch eggs from a variety of Avalon crab that lived in their tops. She could see other birdlike things. Huge insects, perhaps, dragonflyish things that darted. At half a kilometer she couldn't make out details.

The air was heavy, moist and... well, green.

It smelled alive. It buzzed and hummed and crackled. The very sounds here were different, a low, heavy thrum of life. The area immediately surrounding the Styx was relatively clear, but back a kilometer or so the forest began in earnest, dense enough to satisfy any dreams of childhood discovery.

Joe Sikes trudged up the hill while Linda followed with the tractor.

Cadzie, stretching and looking about, bounced in a sling across her chest.

"What's the schedule?" she asked Joe when he was close enough.

Joe was laughing. "Jess, Chaka just went past me with a kind of a glass shell on his back. It must weigh a to

"It's just the cook pot, Joe."

"He could get something a lot lighter. Is he just showing off his muscles?"

She chuckled.

"Star Born Secrets? Well, never mind. Business first," he said. "We want to take a good look at the processor."

Now the Biters were streaming down Robor's passenger ramps. Twenty kids, the youngest just eleven, bright healthy kids on their first trip to the mainland.

"Stay close together," Jessica called down. "Patrol leaders check packs." She turned back to Joe. "Justin will check and if all's clear, we'll hike in and sleep at the oasis."

"The usual communication arrangements?" Joe was smiling a little, even through his concern.

"Joe. You wound me. It's a sheer accident that those transmitters get switched off every time."