Freedom’s Choice Read Online Free Page A

branches fanning out, and were covered in needlesduring the warmer weather. Specimens did grow in some of the hedgerows that lined the mechanicals’ fields but only as single trees, not in copses like these, and certainly not as many groves as could be seen from their vantage point. A pungently scented breeze cooled their sweaty faces.
    â€œIt’s as good as Shangri-la,” Sarah McDouall said, beaming down at the valley. “It’s lovely. So peaceful, so…”
    â€œSecret?” Joe supplied. “I wonder what else we’ll find down there.”
    â€œWhy, there’s space for hundreds here,” she said, ignoring his implicit pessimism.
    â€œHmmmm,” Zainal murmured, obviously sharing Joe’s caution. “Slav?” he asked the Rugarian, who was shielding his eyes as he surveyed the valley.
    Slav shrugged.
    â€œFek?” Zainal turned to the Deski, who showed no exertion from the difficult ascent. The Deski were such natural climbers that Kris had wondered if their home planet was nothing but perpendicular surfaces. Actually, their oddly shaped hands and the soles of their feet became slick with a sort of adhesive substance which gave them purchase on sheer surfaces and their unusually jointed arms and legs permitted them to assume postures that would have broken human limbs.
    Fek had assumed her intensive listening posture, almost as if her hearing organs were extending themselves from the side of her head, wide open to experience the slightest of sounds.
    â€œWind. Water. Small noises,” she said, shaking her head to indicate a lack of obvious danger. “No livings.” Without waiting for Zainal’s signal, she started to descend. He shifted the heavy coil of rope he carried, rubbed the sweat off his face, and followed.
    Fek found the easiest descent for the rest of the party, zigzagging down some of the sheerer boulders, whichshe would have managed quite easily with her natural advantages. But she, too, stopped where sheer-sided stone angled sharply outward.
    â€œI’d say that looks like something was meant to stay in there,” Kris said.
    â€œTwenty-five meters slanted at fifteen degrees or more,” Whitby said. “So we rappel down.” He unloosed his pick, found a piton, and started hammering it in, while Zainal removed the coil from his shoulder to rig it for the drop.
    Once again, Kris thought as she took her turn at the descent,
That silly survival course comes in handy in my new life on Botany.
All of them, even Fek, grinning for all she was worth as she rappelled, made it safely to the floor of the valley.
    â€œLeave,” Zainal said when Whitby would have released one of the three ropes used. “We may need to get out quickly.”
    Leila immediately armed herself with her crossbow and looked around warily.
    â€œIt’s full daylight, Lee,” Kris said, reassuringly. “So even if our thudding on the ground here aroused anything, we’re safe as long as the sun shines. Me, I’m for that stream.”
    One bend of the meandering water was not far from them and, though Leila did not put up her crossbow, they all approached the stream. Sarah as team medic used one of the testing strips on a cupful.
    â€œPotable,” she said, and dipped her cup back in to bring it full to her mouth, though she sipped carefully.
    The other humans did likewise, then rinsed their sweaty faces in the cooling water. Fek and Slav, who never seemed to need much water, remained alert, listening and looking for any dangers unseen from the height. Then both knelt to take a sample mouthful directly from the stream, as they preferred to drink.
    â€œThis place looks almost too good to be true,” Sarahsaid, breaking off a branch from a nearby shrub and smelling it. “One of the burnables, and growing all over the place,” she said with an expansive gesture of her hand up the length of the valley. They could just make