The Green Odyssey

Sometimes he was allowed to try target practice from the crow's nest on the grass cats or the huge dire dogs. These latter ran in packs of half a dozen to twenty, and would often pace the Bird, howling and growling and sometimes running between the wheels. The sailors had quite a few tales of what they did to people who fell overboard or were wrecked on the plains.

Green shuddered and went back to his target practice. Though he ordinarily was against shooting animals just for the fun of it, he had no compunction about putting a ball through these wolfish-looking creatures. Ever since he'd been tormented by Alzo he'd hated dogs with a passion unbecoming to a civilized man. Of course, the fact that every canine on the planet instinctively loathed him because of his Earthman odor and did his best to sink his teeth into him, strengthened Green's reaction. His legs were always healing from bites of the pets aboard.

Often the 'roller would cruise through grass tall as a man's knee. Then suddenly it would pass onto one of those tremendous lawns which seemed so well kept. Green had never ceased puzzling about them, but all he could get from anyone was one or more variations of the fable of the wuru, the herbivore bigger than two ships put together.

One day they passed a wreck. Its burned hulk lay sideways on the ground, and here and there bones gleamed in the sun. Green expressed surprise that the masts, wheels and cannon were gone. He was told that those had been taken away by the savages who roamed the plains.

«They use the wheels for their own craft, which are really nothing but large sailing platforms, land-rafts, you might say,» Amra told him. «On these they pitch their tents and their fireplaces, and from them they go forth to hunt. Some of them, however, disdain platforms and make their homes upon the 'roaming islands.'»

Green smiled but said nothing about that fairy story because disbelief excited these people, even Amra.

«You'll not see many wrecks,» she continued. «Not because there aren't many, for there are. Out of every ten 'rollers that leave for distant breaks, you can expect only six to get back.»

«That few? I'm amazed that with such a casualty ratio you could get anybody to risk his fortune and life.»

«You forget that he who comes back is many times richer than when he sailed away. Look at Miran. He is taxed heavily at every port of call. He is taxed even more heavily in his home port. And he has to split with the Clansmen, though he does get a tenth of the profit of every cargo. Despite this, he is the richest man in Quotz, richer even than the Duke.»

«Yes, but a man is a fool to take risks like these just for the remote chance of a fortune,» he protested. Then he stopped. After all, for what other reason had the Norsemen gone to America, and Columbus to the West Indies? Or why were so many hundreds of thousands of Earthmen daring the perils of interstellar space? What about himself, for instance? He'd left a stable and well-paying job on Earth as a specialist in raising sea crops to go to Pushover, a planet of Albireo. He'd expected to make his fortune there after two years of not-too-hard work and then retire. If only that accident hadn't happened…!

Of course, some of the pioneers weren't driven by the profit motive. There was such a thing as love of adventure. Not a pure love, however. Even the most adventurous saw Eldorado gleaming somewhere in the wilds. Greed conquered more frontiers than curiosity.

«You'd think the ruins of 'rollers would not be rare, even if these plains are vast,» said Amra, breaking in on his reflections. «But the savages and pirates must salvage them as fast as they're made.»

«Your pardon, Mother, for interrupting,» said Grizquetr. «I heard a sailor, Zoob, remark on that very thing just the other day. He said that he once saw a 'roller that had been gutted, by pirates, he supposed. It was three days' journey out of Yeshkayavach, the city of quartz in the far North. He said their 'roller was a week there, then returned on the same route. But when they came to where the wreck had been it was gone, every bit of it. Even the bones of the dead sailors were missing.»

«And he said that that reminded him of a story his father had told him when he was young. He said his father told him that his ship had once almost run into a huge uncharted hole in the plain. It was big, at least two hundred feet across, and earth had been piled up outside, like the crater of a volcano. At first that was what they thought it was, a volcano just beginning, even though they'd never heard of such a thing on the Xurdimur. Then they met a ship whose men had seen the hole made. It was caused, they said by a mighty falling star…»

«A meteor,» commented Green.