Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

one more datum.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The G star that seems to be Sol happens to be at the exact center of the sphere of radio clicks that’s growing our way. As if it were the focal point.”
    “Original Man!” Bram whispered. “He has come back!”
    Jum Davd shook his head. “That doesn’t seem likely. We’ve had the longfoots in between. We may be about to meet the next contender on the evolutionary treadmill. Or Smeth may be right. It may be a natural phenomenon. In any case, we’d better go see.”
    He picked up the remaining pair of saddlebags and slung them over his own shoulder. The other walkers in the caravan, feeling the tug of the rope, struggled to their feet. In a few minutes, Bram and Jun Davd were following the swaying line of biotransports down the well-scuffed trail to the staging area.
     
    There were plenty of willing hands at the other end to help the caravan unload. Ame was there, supervising the lashing of some bulky crates to an enormous wooden frame whose booster rockets, bolted to the corners and along the sides, must have added up to a hundred thousand pounds of thrust. Bram also spotted his son, Edard, clambering around at the top of a mountain of freight, unfurling a cargo net. Edard saw him and took a nicely calculated leap that brought him floating down to within a foot of where Bram and Jun Davd were standing.
    “Hello, Father. Hello, Jun Davd. What have you got there? Documents mostly? If you have anything fragile, I’ve got room for it with my stuff. I’m riding with the supercargo this load, and I can keep an eye on it for you at the other end.”
    Edard was fair and slender, with a suggestion of epicanthic folds at the corners of his eyes that must have come from mama-mu Dlors after skipping a generation. Bram was sorry that Edard had never met his partial gene grandmother; Dlors had elected to remain on the Father World. As a dancer, she had been part of the musical world, and she would have been as proud of Edard as if she had been any latter-day grandmother contributing a full complement of grandmotherly genes.
    “You’re going to ride that thing?” Bram asked, casting a dubious eye at the rickety pile. “In nothing but a space suit?”
    “It’s only a few hours to Yggie now, and the super’s got an extra bottle of air he’s willing to share,” Edard said cheerfully.
    Ame sauntered over. “Everybody’s hitching rides now,” she said. “I’m going to ride up with my last load, too. I’m saving the delicate stuff for then.”
    Edard cast a glance upward to where the silver shape of the space tree hung overhead. “Got to take advantage of Yggie’s favorable position while it lasts. Look at these mountains of souvenirs around us. It’ll be half a Tenday before we load it all, and then we’ve got to get the walkers and heavy equipment up there, not to mention packing up our own personal odds and ends.”
    Bram conceded the point with a nod. Before coming down to the surface on this final trip, he had given the order for Yggdrasil’s rotation to be stopped. The tree’s inhabitants could put up with weightlessness for the few days it took to make the final transfer of goods. The swarms of cargo pallets were landing all over the branches. The limited docking facilities at the hub were being reserved for passenger vehicles.
    “I’ll accept your offer with thanks,” Jun Davd said to Edard. “Here, give me a hand with these boxes of instruments. Be careful—there’s a lot of glass.”
    Edard pitched in, and he and Jun Davd made a number of soaring trips in tandem to the top of the heap with boxes slung between them, while Bram unloaded the walker. Fifteen minutes later it was done. The cargo net was tied down securely over the mound of bales and crates, and the supercargo, after inspecting all the fastenings, walked all the way around the wooden platform, checking the weight distribution at intervals with a jack arrangement that lifted the whole thing off the ground. .
    While they waited, Bram said to Edard, “What have you got there?”
    Edard’s face lit up. “Musical instruments. Hundreds of them, all gathered into one place by the longfoot archaeologists. We would never have been able to collect them all ourselves in twenty years of digging! This is my fourth load. Bramfather, the violin—and the other stringed instruments—are entirely different from the way we’ve conceived them! They had only four strings, and they were played with