Read Online Venus Rising by Flora Speer - Free Book Online Page A

certain Tarik was right about the birds;
they were intelligent, and they did communicate in some way. She
had known the bird wanted her to touch it, and she had not wanted
to resist. Accepting these factors meant going against all her
training, and against Jurisdiction laws. This strange planet,
combined with Tarik’s dangerously subversive ideas, were changing
her thought patterns, and it was most unsettling.
    They resumed their journey downstream, Narisa
keeping a wary eye on the overhead vines as well as looking for
unfriendly beasts on the ground, but they saw nothing, nor did the
bird return.
    The sun had set into a lavender and orange
dusk when the forest ended abruptly and they found themselves at
the edge of an immense lake. In the far distance a purple mountain
rose, crowned in white. To their left the stream they had been
following turned into a low waterfall, then wended its way through
a brief stretch of grasses and blossoming water plants, and at last
emptied itself into the lake. Beyond the stream the land rose in
rocky tiers until tall cliffs loomed over the lake. To the right of
where they stood, the land was flat and heavily forested, edged all
along the shore by clean white sand. Narisa thought there was an
island in the lake, but it was growing too dark to see well. All
was still. Not even a breeze stirred the placid water of the lake.
There was no sign of life.
    Narisa turned toward Tank, looking at him
through the deepening dusk. “What do we do now?”

Chapter Four
     
     
    What they did was sit upon the soft white
sand and eat one wafer each out of their dwindling supply of
compressed food, washing down the inadequate meal with water from
the stream.
    “Half rations,” Tarik said, measuring each
bite of his meal carefully to make it last as long as possible. “We
will continue in this way, one wafer at every meal for each of us
tomorrow, and again the next day until evening, when we divide the
last wafer in half and try to sleep hungry. In the meantime, we
will look for something edible.”
    “How will we know what is safe to eat?”
Narisa wondered. “We have no equipment to test possible food
sources.”
    “We couldn’t test the water, either, but that
hasn’t harmed us so far. We’ll just have to take our chances with
the food, too.”
    “Perhaps,” Narisa began, scooping sand into a
mound to serve as a pillow, “just possibly, what the birds eat
might be safe for us, too. If we could discover what they eat.”
    “Why, Narisa, are you becoming flexible about
regulations?” he teased.
    “I see no reason to starve to death if there
is food nearby,” she replied stiffly. “Will you take the first
watch, or shall I?”
    “There’s little point in standing watch,” he
said. “We are defenseless. But on the chance that danger might
come, I’ll stay awake first.”
    Narisa lay down on the sand, and Tarik moved
to sit beside her, his knees drawn up with his arms resting on
them. He was so close to her that she could feel the warmth of his
body. She repressed the desire to touch him. There was no need for
physical assurance, she told herself. She could be quite certain he
would remain exactly where he was until it was time for him to
waken her so he could sleep. Tarik had always been a dependable
first officer.
    “It’s not so very dark,” she murmured,
letting her mind drift toward slumber. “There are two moons. That’s
what the computer said back on the pod. Two moons around this
planet.”
    “How romantic.” There was lazy humor in
Tarik’s voice. “But there are very few stars. Have you noticed?
‘The night has a thousand stars, and the day but one.’ From where
we are, that appears to be precisely the case. Only a
thousand.”
    “Clouds of hydrogen gas blocking the light
from the others.” Narisa heard his low laugh mocking her
matter-of-fact response just before she gave herself up completely
to sleep….
    She was on Belta, and the silver river, edged
with gently