Free Mid-Flinx by Alan Dean Foster Page A

heavily masked in green. What pelagic growth there was, was thick and cloying.
    The few eroded mountain ranges were completely smothered in greenery, as were the occasional isolated canyons and depressions. Except for disparate shades of that dominant hue, there were only varying densities of white cloud and the isolated patch of blue, struggling to be seen. The
Teacher
soared high above greens so pale as to be translucent, shading to green dark enough to verge on black. Within the tightly constricted palette there was immense variation.
    Instruments searched for an open space in which to set down: the crumbling gray of a high mountain plateau, the baneful yellow of open desert, even the pallid glare of a glacier or ice cap. In vain. Save for the already noted patches of open ocean maintained by a few strong currents, this world was an unrelenting, unremitting green from its equator to its poles.
    “I don’t think there’s much question about the presence of indigenous life,” Flinx commented. “Not of the botanical variety, anyway. That’s certainly noteworthy enough to be included in any records. But you say there’s nothing.”
    “No sir. Only the coordinates and the simple basics already alluded to.” After a period of silence in which man and machine silently contemplated the world below, the ship ventured, “Would you like me to construct a vector to Tehauntepec, sir?”
    Flinx considered. There was no one to talk to here, no convivial strangers with whom to share conversation or debate. After so much time spent in the isolation of space-plus, he was in need of conversation. It was a function of his age as much as his personality. Much easier to observe in isolation when one has turned eighty or ninety and has a store of old conversations to draw upon.
    The voice of the
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interrupted before he could make a decision. “Sir, instruments have detected a metallic anomaly within the surface.”
    “Within?” Flinx’s eyebrows rose.
    “Yes sir. The surface we are viewing is neither uniform nor solid.”
    “Where is this anomaly located?”
    “Behind us now, given our velocity.”
    Could be an old meteorite lying within the vegetation, Flinx mused, or an outcropping of a concentrated ore deposit. Or . . .?
    “Find it again and position us overhead.”
    “Yes sir.” The ship adjusted orbit to comply. Not much later, “We are directly above it now and holding, sir.”
    Flinx examined the surface via the view offered up by the
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’s scopes, eyeing the relevant monitors with interest. All that could be seen was the all-pervasive green, albeit at a higher magnification.
    “I am unable to further resolve the anomaly,” the ship informed him. “It is relatively small.”
    Still a meteorite or ore outcropping, Flinx decided. “There’s nothing about it to suggest that anyone else is here?”
    “No, sir. The communications spectrum for this entire system is completely blank.”
    He considered. “Then take us down.”
    The ship complied, descending slowly to an altitude that would have stunned any observer conversant with the physics of KK-drive technology. Only when they had fallen far enough for Flinx to make out individual treetops did he direct the
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to pause and hover.
    “It’s all like this?” he asked rhetorically.
    The ship replied anyway. “All that I have been able to survey so far, sir. Of course, we have only made a dozen or so passes.”
    “What are our landing prospects in this vicinity?”
    “The local vegetation rises to heights in excess of seven hundred meters, sir. There is some question as to the stability of the actual surface, even if it could be reached.”
    “So there’s nothing?”
    “I have noted the presence of a very few relatively growth-free mountain peaks which rise above the surrounding greenery. These exposed barrens may owe their existence to altitude, the absence of suitable soils, or a combination of factors. There are none next to the anomaly,