“I guess that settles any debate concerning where we start.” I smirk near the front of Teddy Jackson’s line of supplies and mudders.
Teddy winks. “Cheer up, Zane. Taking an open path is better than chopping our way into the grove.”
I again think back to all those journals of Teddy Jackson’s adventures I enjoyed reading as a boy. The first rule emphasized in those chapters was to always establish your terms on the hunt. Should that prove impossible, rule two motivated the hunter to recognize the positive that might be found in even the worst of situations. First thing in the morning, the three of us took a Spartan sentry for an escort and tested the cliff wall of the grove with our robots’ sensitive scanners, searching for corridors through which we might enter the thick jungle. We failed to find any possible point of entry after several hours of searching, and it was a disappointing blow to realize how little our Spartans’ powerful array of radar and radio waves penetrated the cliff of grove. When I regrouped with Marlena and Teddy, I was certain we would have to wrestle for every inch forward as we joined with the mudders and swung laser scythes at the glowing, orange growth. Yet, just as I started to communicate my failure to find a path with my colleagues, Teddy pointed to a wide pathway that opened when I gave up hope.
“I like this expedition less and less with each passing moment,” Marlena whispers at her father’s side. “That grove seems to be toying with us, and that means it’s intelligent. Maybe we’re better off letting whatever beast is lurking in that grove alone, because the obliterators have no right to destroy anything that displays such sophisticated thinking.”
Teddy squeezes Marlena’s hand. “The obliterators might not realize what’s out here. We’re here to help them find out as much as we’re here to hunt a creature. We have to know what the grove hides on Tybalt.”
My eyes sheepishly peek away when Marlena shoots an appraising glance in my direction. Her eyes that morning hold little charm. They don’t glimmer with that playful sparkle I so enjoyed during those nights we spent together while drifting on her father’s star yacht. Her eyes are piercing, and they’re reading every feature on my face to see if I’m holding anything back from her.
Teddy and I have shared nothing with Marlena concerning the science station swallowed by the grove, nor of Dr. Amberson and the obliterators’ plans for a new Eden. I don’t consider it my place or duty to tell Marlena of the obliterators’ suggestion that we stop at nothing to remove Dr. Amberson’s obstruction to their plans. I’m only here to cover the story, not to keep Marlena informed of all the details. Still, Marlena knows we conferred with the obliterators while she floated in that healing canister, and I know she suspects her father’s holding something back from her.
“We’ll set one of the Spartans at our vanguard,” speaks Teddy, “and we’ll use its sensors to give us any indication it can of our surroundings.”
A few hand signals place all the other components of Teddy’s expedition into proper position. Teddy looks a bit like a toddler as he walks in the shadow of the Spartan that rolls into the grove at the front of our procession. Marlena and I fall directly behind Teddy, and a second Spartan, with its assault cannons raised and sweeping back and forth over our heads, moves at our heels. The mudders assemble the remainder of our column, a few slowly driving the motorized wagons carrying the bulk of our camp’s supplies, the rest marching two abreast, packs slumping their shoulders, as they too enter the grove’s orange glow. Our final Spartan occupies a station in the very rear, keeping its guns pointed behind us while its tracks push it into the jungle.
Teddy starts whistling a melody, probably some marching song his father taught him on some other interplanetary safari decades ago. My stomach curls with trepidation, but that bearded hunter can’t be any happier. Teddy’s about to take his first steps on the adventure he’s waited years to experience again following the passage of the League’s Law of Extermination.
“You’re going to get one hell of a story, Zane.” Teddy shouts over his shoulder. “Everyone on Earth is going to love reading this tale over and over again, and you and Harold Higgins are going to be made very, very rich. Zane, I’ve got a feeling this grove’s going to lead us right to that monster I’ve come all the way to Tybalt to kill.”
I don’t respond. I doubt Teddy’s euphoria would hear a single word of caution from me, from Marlena, or from anyone else out here amid the stars.