Chap. 82 Further Exploration

Chap. 82  Further exploration

Now that they'd established a reliable baseline for at least part of the steppe, D'mitran, D'nis and K'ndar decided to continue its survey and exploration. This time, B'rost came with them. 

In the time since the end of Thread, he'd been devouring anything he could read regarding geology.  This added to the scope of the scientific data collected, although there wasn't much in the way of geological formations on the steppe. But he had also learned how to read the topography and identify rocks, sediment layers and stones.

"We shouldn't need to use your family's cothold as a base camp anymore, " D'nis said to K'ndar, "now that we have at least a dozen benchmarks set out, we'll just go between to the furthest out."

"Where I left one of the criminals," K'ndar said, a bit hesitantly.

"Aye. If that bothers you, we could leave you here, create a new one a hundred kilometers out, and then have you go between to that one."

"No, sir, I'll be okay. I want to learn them all."

Tacked up and with equipment ready, the four went between.

Thankfully, there was no sign of the man K'ndar had marooned. They took readings just as a precaution. "If we were ever here by night, I could use the moons as triangulation points," D'nis said, adjusting the sextant.  D'mitran tried to establish a link with the Yokohama with the data link he'd been given by K'ndar.

Amazingly, he got one almost right away. 

"This is odd," he said, looking at a satellite image of the steppe, "from here, it looks as if there's a lake, way out there. I'd guess it's, oh, two hundred kilometers from here. Funny thing is, it doesn't show up on maps, or other images."

K'ndar looked at it. He couldn't get a close up.

"Maybe it's 'vernal'. Meaning, it's only there during the rainy season."

"But…that doesn't start for another month. And look at the steppe, it's bone dry right now."

"Wellllllll, then, let's go take a look!" B'rost said, eagerly.

"Not that easy, B'rost. If you note, it's quite a ways off to the west of the line we're creating. This first expedition is merely creating benchmarks in a straight, due south line. It's easy to get lost out here, even with dragons," D'mitran said. 

"Well, let's make those two hundred kilometers, we've got the time, and then we'll make a decision to take a perpendicular path. Let's do that. Me and Rath, we'll fly..oh, twenty kilometers due west, and then if we don't see it, turn around and fly back," B'rost said.

"I keep thinking of that dead brown we saw a few week ago. Somehow, someone made it here…but never made it back. And none of the weyrs can identify who made the harness buckles. Part of that is that no one ever considered making a list of different styles of buckles. "

 D'nis was wary, and a bit concerned about B'rost's brashness. His courage was a bit foolhardy, but..that was so typical of blue dragons. He'd have to be watched a bit closer until he learned to balance exuberance with common sense.

Or maybe, I'm just getting old, he thought.

"Maybe he was an Oldtimer? Sick and tired of being sick and tired so just went between to suicide…and then changed his mind mid between? Ended up here?" B'rost said, plainly itching to make the trip.

"Either way, he and the dragon died. Or were dead, but we've never been able to find out where one goes between without a vision of where we're ending up. That's a good way to die."

"Hmmm. That's an interesting theory. It would make sense, in a way. The Oldtimers are dying off like insects. Most of them are fairly old, and probably suffering from too many flights." D'mitran said, fiddling with the link.

K'ndar and B'rost busied themselves making cairns and dragonstones. D'nis used his molecular camera, both to document the survey information and, unknown to the two young riders, taking photos of them. He was beginning to appreciate the camera. And enjoy it. 

Once they reached the two hundred kilometer mark, they looked out towards where the 'lake' was. They couldn't see it, but there were well worn trails, left by the animals of the steppe.

"SOMETHING knows there's something out there," K'ndar said. He used his binoculars at maximum magnification to look in the direction of the suspected lake. So far out was the sight that it was on the horizon, but he could see something moving. Tiny little specks, that may have been heat waves, or insects in front of his nose or…birds?

"Birds. WAY out there, but there are birds."

"Hmmm." D'nis stood, thinking. He was the unofficial leader of the expedition, and he was being especially cautious. But B'rost wasn't.

"Oh, this is silly. I'm going out there to take a look. Stay here , everyone, I won't go out any more than 20 klicks, and we'll come back. I'll set up a cairn, if you like."

"Ummmmmmmm," D'nis said. It would have to be done sometime, but…he was being cautious. 

Before he could say yay or nay, B'rost made a running leap and was aboard Rath.

Keep in contact, please Rath said to Corvuth and the other dragons.

Rath, being a blue, was the fastest of the four dragons. They were soon out of sight.

"Blue riders. Don't know if I'd have done that," D'mitran said shaking his head. They sat down in the shade of their dragons.

In a little while, the dragons reported.

Rath says it is a lake, it is covered with birds, it appears to be another ten kilometers out.

B'rost has made a distinctive cairn. I have the coordinates. When we come, he will make the next flight out.

The three men looked at each other. "Well, what can it hurt? We can always go home after this," D'mitran said.

D'nis shrugged. "Okay. But we'll take data when we get to his spot first, THEN head for the lake."

"Aye, sir," both K'ndar and D'mitran said.

From the air, they could see the lake, and K'ndar, looking through his 'nocs, had a far better view.

B'rost was impatient. But he held himself in check until D'nis and D'mitran had taken all the data.

I can see the shoreline. I'm going between, it's faster than flying Rath said, and again, before D'nis could approve it, B'rost and Rath had launched and disappeared.

He sighed. Sometimes I wish I'd not brought him…but we DO need someone willing to take the risk. There are old riders and bold riders, but seldom are there old, bold riders, he thought, but …this was a new day, and he was probably being far too careful. 

But he hated losing people.

He worried for nothing.

Here is a strange rock formation to use for navigation. The lake is here. There are birds and wherries EVERYWHERE Rath reported.

The three made the last ten kilometer jump between.

K'ndar was amazed. He'd never seen so many birds in one spot in his life. They were screeching and circling the lake. Many of them would skim the surface, snatching up fish.

The lake itself was fairly shallow. You could see where the water had been, and retreated to its present size. 

How in the world did fish get so far out, he wondered. The shore was covered with their bones, feathers, scat, dried scales, dead birds, and the imprint of thousands upon thousands of foot, hoof, and pawprints.  A bit further from the shore there were bones from horses, cattle and pronghorn. Obviously the carnivores hunted here regularly. But fish? Fish don't fly. Either they had a way of surviving the dry months, or? How did they get this far out in the first place?

B'rost knew what was going on. "lt's spring fed. I'm sure it gets smaller and smaller as the summer wears on, but in the rainy season, look…it gets bigger."

D'nis took readings, and D'mitran input them into the datalink. "My link to the Yokohama is so faint, I think I'll have to wait until we're back at Landing to input it reliably. But even so, I can record the data."

  K'ndar walked along the shoreline annotating what he saw in his notebook and waving the insects away when he had a free hand. The air was thick with them, as well as the birds. The lake water was clear…and warm. He saw schools of tiny fish and invertebrates crawling on the bed. As he watched, birds would skim the surface and snatch larger fish.  I need to bring a net, he thought, so I can catch some of these. He tried using the microscope part of the binos but the refraction of the water destabilized the image, making him woozy. 

B'rost walked around, a geologists' hammer in his hand, fairly useless as this was all sand and soft mud. He examined the 'odd stone' more closely. It was basalt, as was everything else, but…

But. 

"Umm, D'nis? D'mitran? Come and look at this," he said, not believing his eyes.

K'ndar came with. B'rost pointed at a spot on the rock. He dug away at the lichen covered spot until he had a larger area uncovered. 

It looked like lines. 

It looked like engraved, straight as an arrow letters. No stone chisel or hammer had made these. Despite their age, the lines were still neat.

"Obviously, someone was here. A VERY long time ago," D'nis said, a bit awed.

K'ndar looked at the lichen. "I'm no expert," he said, his heart pounding with excitement, "but lichens, like these, take forever to grow."

"And the rock itself is heavily weathered and eroded. Only, I think, because these marks are on the downwind side of the rock from the prevailing winds, are they still here. Or parts of them. I think…" B'rost said, just as excited.

D'nis took pictures, K'ndar sketched, and D'mitran aimed the datalink at the markings in order to save it for examination later. 

"That, and it doesn't appear as if it gets submerged.," B'rost said. He began to dig away at the lichen. K'ndar knelt and helped. In a little while they had uncovered what they thought was the entire marking. 

"These look like they were cut using the same power tools the Ancients used to carve the stones on the first weyrs," B'rost, said,tracing them with his fingers, "and…well, look, does this look like EE  and down here ' ITE    /   to you?"

The others looked, and perhaps being pre-primed, thought they could see EE  ITE   /, too. 

D'nis sighed. This was, probably, the end of the day's work. They had to talk to Landing and the Yokohama before the day was through.

The computer hemmed and hawed over the photos of the rock for a few moments.

Then it produced an image, cleaned up and magnified.

The letters HAD been engraved, not cut. 

They said "EEC  SITE 7"

The computer then paged a synopsis of a report.

"Ben Turien, EEC geologist, reports. Site 7 Survey of this circular patch, finds it unlike those found at other spots on the continents. In this case, circular patch is a spring fed, freshwater shallow lake. Endemic lifeforms include invertebrates, both aquatic and terrestrial, crustaceans, and fish. No obvious watercourses or riparian zones. Vegetation sparse, interspersed with basalt rocks and boulders. No obvious signs of mineral deposits other than leachates (non alkaloid). Soil, water and biological samples collected. Navigational data taken. Large basalt column engraved. Due to extreme shortage of survey personnel, no more data or samples taken at this time."

They looked in amazement at each other. Elene and Raynal were astonished, as well.

"Ben Turien. He was a geologist with the very first explorers with the ''Exploration and Evaluation Corps.' He and three other people were the very first humans to walk on Pern," Elene said, in an awed, almost reverent tone.

"Do we…do we know when  or how long ago?" B'rost began.

"Well, they had a different system of numbering years, so it wouldn't make any sense to us..but I believe this stone was probably engraved at least 20 years before the first colonists arrived. I have no idea how the EEC operated, or how long it took to file a report like this one, so I’m just guessing," Raylan said, 'but this is the first time I think anyone has actually FOUND something like this. Congratulations, B'rost, but in this case, I think it's only right that the boulder stay where it is. Now we know where it is, we can go back out there and do more research. But for the moment, we can give you credit. "

"Call it B'rosts' Boulder?" K'ndar asked.

"Unofficially, yes. We're still creating a museum catalog, with data, and we're not sure how to name things…or even if we should. This boulder appears to be a little too large for it to be removed, anyway. Maybe that's a good thing, it might keep Toric's people from taking it away."

B'rost swelled with pride. He felt a geologist's kinship to Turien.

"Hmm. Maybe that's what that brown dragon rider was attempting? But he was a long way from this lake." D'mitran said. 

"Maybe he got lost, but…dragons don't normally get lost.  But …why would he have died?" B'rost said. 

They all shook their heads, puzzled.

"Being 'vernal' means that it dries up for part of the year. This one is spring fed, but I imagine it still dries up to almost a trickle. K'ndar, our budding biologist, will have to do some research on how the fish and other creatures manage to survive dessication, but…if they were there then, over 2500 years ago, and they're still there NOW, whatever method they use works," Elene said.

"Biologist? I'm a biologist?" K'ndar asked. 

"That's what I'd call you. You've already demonstrated a knack for understanding ecological concepts, such as predators keeping prey numbers down, so that the grass isn't destroyed, and you were the first one in THIS office to bring up the question as to how the aquatic life survives the dry spells. That sounds like a 'biologist' to me," Elene said. 

Raylan couldn't resist.

"By the way, D'nis? Your data on latitude and longitude taken by sextant?"

"And D'mitran's datalink," D'nis said, giving the brown rider his due.

Raylan grinned. 

"Given that any sextant isn't going to be as accurate as whatever the EEC used-and given that the planet will wobble on its axis in 2500 years, and the sun may have been in a different place…your readings were only one degree off. That's pretty impressive!"