Child of Earth by David Gerrold Read Free Book Online Page B

too.
    â€œRight now, we’re working on getting the parts of a launch catapult over there so we can put up heavy satellites.”
    â€œIs that your specialty?” Irm asked.
    â€œUh-huh,” Dando said. “It’s tricky work. It turns out we need a lot more engineers and tech-specialists on-site than we thought.”
    â€œReally—?” said Irm, actually showing interest.
    Dando went on. “We’ve found a number of sites on the equator where we can operate a catapult undetected, including several uninhabited islands. But the problem is getting the people and the equipment there undetected. It means shipping a small town. Do we look for secret harbors and build inflatable ships? Or do we try and move everything by air? We can’t begin serious importation of families without reliable communications in place. Right now, we’re still depending on the spybirds—like the remote probes we showed you.”
    â€œYou need engineers, eh?” Irm said thoughtfully.
    â€œWe need everything. But if you’ve got useful skills in that area, talk to your caseworker.”
    I wasn’t really interested in that part. I wanted to talk about the horses again. “Mr. Dando?”
    â€œYes?” He glanced back at me.
    â€œWhen you’re over on Horse World—Linnea, I mean—are there any dangerous animals?”
    He nodded. “Some.”
    â€œDangerous to great-horses?” I was still thinking of the coyote-lizards from the other dome.
    He hesitated before answering. Finally: “Yes, Kaer, there are things
like wolves, only bigger. The Linneans call them kacks. They hunt in packs, and they’ll track a single horse for days if they have to, worrying it to death, not letting it sleep, rushing in to nip at its legs, until it collapses from lack of sleep or lack of blood. It’s not a pretty sight.” Then he added, “The great-horse isn’t defenseless, though. Mosty they keep to the plains, where they can see across great distances. And they travel in small herds, so they can share each other’s protection. If a kack gets too close, a horse will rear up to stamp it flat. Mosty the kacks look for easier game than horses. They’re much more dangerous to smaller animals. Especially people. But they prefer boffili.”
    â€œOh,” I said.
    â€œYou shouldn’t have to worry, if you’re careful. The people on Linnea have crossbows. Properly handled, a crossbow can be more efficient than a rifle—and you usually get the bolt back. But if you go over there, kiddo, you’ll probably live in a town, safe behind a very tall fence.” He said that to reassure me, but I had bad dreams about kacks for several weeks after that.
    When we got back home, the parents had lots of grown-up talks about Linnea and the other worlds. We kids hadn’t seen much of the other worlds. Apparently, the gate people thought we were best suited for Linnea, and the parents seemed to agree. The Linnean Scout Authority was ready to start training families now, and the other two worlds that New Mexico station was developing wouldn’t be ready for years, and they were nowhere near as habitable.
    Black-World was dry and hard. It looked a lot like Mars, only darker. There wasn’t much life there either. So if anyone went over there at all, they’d have to start almost completely from scratch. The problem was that because there wasn’t much life—just some lichens and little bugs—and there wasn’t much breathable air either. There was atmosphere, but it was mosty carbon dioxide; not enough oxygen in it to live on. So you’d have to wear a respirator every time you went outside. Nobody in the family liked that. Black-World really was mosty an industrial place; there would be mines, and dirty factories, and maybe some observatories and science stations; but not a real colony.
    And Blue-World was mosty water with a few