The First Jumper (first draft version)

The First Jumper 07: Discovery

Gerleesh barely managed to stop the ship before it plunged into the ground.  Sighing again, she settled down to land at the broad end of a long valley.  Several types of fauna appeared to be in it, and she wanted to examine some of them more closely.

This was her fifth planet to survey.  She had encountered neither a planet capable of sustaining her people, nor any sign of other Tarshen, but the atmosphere on this particular planet was just about perfect.

She did not know why she was continuing the surveys.  There was no one who could use the information.  Yet she had to do something, and this was what she had been trained to do.

She knew she was getting careless.  She had almost died on that landing, and she had come into the atmosphere far too fast.  Yet it did not bother her.  All alone in a universe wider than she had ever appreciated, she was moving with less motivation, each passing day.  Eating was becoming more difficult, and all she wanted to do was sleep.

She landed her ship at the end of a jungle, where it was met by short grass.  As her ship creaked and cooled around her, Gerleesh began taking more detailed measurements of her surroundings, before getting ready to set foot on the fifth alien world in as many months.

Part of her was surprised at her initial findings, but she could not get herself to be excited.  What was the use of anything?

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Little Bear dashed frantically to the left in the long grass, as he heard the tigers crunch into it.  He was not following either of his companions, and he was running faster than he had done in his life.

Then he heard a scream behind him, and knew that at least one of his friends had been caught.  The tigers had been running, not hunting, but they would not turn down a meal, if one appeared under their paws.

He had no thought of turning back.  He had no chance of fighting even one sabertooth.  He had never heard of one man killing a sabertooth alone.  He was still a boy, not really a hunter or warrior, and there were two of the fearsome beasts.

When he reached the relative safety of the jungle, Little Bear kept running.  If a tiger was truly behind him, he should be scrambling into trees, but he couldn’t make his feet stop running.  As he ran up the hill, the smells told him that the wind was now blowing downhill--back toward the tigers.

Well up onto the ridge behind him, he swung to his right, and slowed to a steady run.  He was crossing the wind, now, but it was safer than running upwind, as he had been doing.

His mind went back to the scream he had heard.  He had heard only one scream.  His other friend might have survived, or he might not have had time even to scream.  The tigers had only been a bound or two away when the boys had started moving.

Running across the wind, Little Bear was giving his other friend, if one was out here, a chance to catch his scent, and come find him.

After a few minutes, he climbed into a tree to rest, high enough that a tiger couldn’t reach him, in case they were looking for him.

He could not allow himself to dwell on the tragedy.  His father’s stern words came back to him, on his first trip to Moon Rock and the Cave of Flying.

“You must watch, always,” he had said.  The seven-year-old Little Bear had been watching a caterpillar eating a leaf, and had not noticed the leopard.  His father had walked them right up to it, before it had burst out of its tree with a snarl, running off.

Little Bear had been terrified by the cat.  It was no threat to an alert warrior, his father had told him, but a boy Little Bear’s age was the perfect size for it to see him as food.