"Sheri S. Tepper - The Companions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

quarters. The PPI team could not possibly decide anything sensibly when too many
people in it, including Drom himself, were consistently guilty of delight, guilty of
spending seasons at a time lying half-buried in mossy softness, frittering away years
while smelling joy in the air as though each moment were eternal!

Oh, yes. PPI had disported itself, at least those given to disporting had done so, and
when certain puritans among them had questioned this nonchalance toward duty, Drom
himself had allowed it to go on. Hadn't he commanded and hadn't they served as the
PPI team on Jungle, twelve years ago, when eleven of their fellows had vanished into
that overgrown weed patch leaving no sign, no signal, no nothing to mark where they
had gone or what had taken them? Hadn't they had nightmares afterward, as though
from a lasting poison that affected only the sleeping mind? Hadn't they gone directly
from the Jungle to Stone, where they'd been daily dust-dazzled, sun-staggered,
half-melted by the heat? On Stone, even PPI personnel could not touch the surface or
allow the surface to touch them, but it was a great-grandmother lode of rare ores, the
most profitable new world found in a century. Still, living things had been found in
stranger environments, and years had spun by in baking chaos and a madness of mining
machines, while PPI went through the motions of searching for indigenous life so that no
one, no people could accuse them of slacking their duty.

After all that, didn't they have some pleasure coming, some relaxation? He had thought
so, said so, though what they had earned and what was appropriate were two different
things. The truth was they would not be allowed to remain on Moss no matter what they
reported or found or believed. Those who didn't die here would be sent somewhere else
quite shortly. Where that place might be and how well or badly they would live there
could depend significantly on the overall profit or loss coming from these three planets.
Profit or loss, defeat or victory, fines or bonus pay hinged upon what was found here, in
this system. Jungle had been a total loss; Stone a bonanza; and Moss was an enigma.
Finding an intelligent race on this planet, or, if there was none, being able to say so
definitively would make the planet bankable. It would put them on the high plus side,
the very high plus side. Everyone knew that, but even now, after all this time on Moss,
that basic question remained unanswered. Until it was answered, what was the place
good for?

Nothing that made money. Retirement, perhaps. Several of the PPI people originally
assigned to Moss had been old-timers. They had communicated with colleagues near
retirement, and some of the oldsters had arrived, "assigned to temporary duty," and they
had been followed by others yet. The installation had been enlarged, at first, to house
additional personnel, though no additions had been needed recently. The PPI
contingent roll was three or four times longer than the rolls of those surveying any other
known world. Of course, the rolls were only paper. The people, bodily, were seldom to
be found.

Was there an intelligent race on Moss?

"... if the flame folk are intelligent, there's a bonus," he said, dreaming into the silence of
the room.

"I know," said the young lieutenant from his seat before a bank of monitors. "That's what
the ESC expert said. If they're intelligent, we profit."