Margo thrilled as the dawn came up, spreading fingers of light across the heart of Africa. Beneath their floating platform the distant Drakensberg mountains snaked away southward along the rugged Wild Coast. Directly below, the Limpopo glinted in the early light, a treacherous ribbon of water navigable only during flood stage. According to her ATLS readings, they had emerged in early December, the beginning of the summer season in this part of sub-Saharan Africa. Far to the south, clouds boiled up over the mountains. Flickers of lightning split the predawn sky as the Drakensbergs roared with another of their legendary storms.
Fortunately, Margo's route lay to the north, following the Limpopo valley in its long, arcing curve through the Drakensberg foothills. With any luck, they'd avoid the worst of the summer storms. Margo peered over the side and grinned even while pulling her jacket tighter. The crystalline chill of the high air invigorated her. The river valley below was a vast carpet of green rising steadily into the foothills. Animals moved in the early sunlight. Vast herds rippled like brown rivers. She wondered what they were. She understood being hungry; but how could anyone hunt such beautiful animals for sport?
She glanced at Koot and wrinkled her nose. He hunted for sport and scuttlebutt had it he'd guide down-time safaris, too, but he probably knew what those herds were. She could ask, anyway. "Koot?"
The grizzled Afrikaner glanced back without speaking.
"What are those?" She pointed.
"Wildebeest," he said shortly, "and Cape Buffalo. Very nasty. Most dangerous animal in Africa, the Cape Buffalo. Crocs in that river. Hippos too. Good you decided against rubber rafts."
The sarcasm was heavy enough to weight down the airship. Margo trimmed their attitude by adjusting the amount of ordinary air contained in ballonets inside the hydrogen bag. Her argument with Koot on the subject of air versus water transport had been short, violent, and conclusive. He'd won. That was all right. Flying was more exciting, anyway.
Up in the "bow" the Welshman, too, stared at the tremendous herds. Then he glanced at the hydrogen bag and shivered. Margo felt a moment's pang of pity. What must it be like for him, coming into a time and place where everything he saw smacked of "witchcraft" and left him fighting to hide his fear? She wondered if Goldie had been right to include him. He needed the work, clearly; but he was having such a difficult time adjusting, Margo would have preferred to leave him on the station and hire someone a little more familiar with modern languages, machinery, and philosophical concepts.
Then she, thought about their ultimate destination and grinned. Soon she would fulfill a goal she'd set herself the day her mother had died. A few weeks from now, Margo was going to walk into that prison hospital in Minnesota and show her father just how incredibly wrong he'd been about her, her dreams, everything.
Sunlight flooded the landscape and streamed through the triangular lifting wing which carried them forward into adventure, burning away all trace of bitterness.
Today is the most beautiful, perfect day of my life! Margo consulted her compass, corrected the direction of the propulsion fans, and came about on the right heading.
She thrilled at the touch of the controls. This was her airship, her expedition, her success come to life.
At last, something she had planned was going exactly as it should!
Finding the Seta gravel deposits Goldie had identified was so easy Margo spent the next several days gloating over her success. They anchored the balloon, broke out digging equipment, and busied themselves excavating ore from the potholes along the Limpopo River bank.
When she encountered her first inch-wide sapphire, Margo whispered, "Oh, my God..."Then at the bottom of the pothole, they hit diamonds. "Oh, my Gad..."
Even the Welshman grinned ear-to-ear as he worked.
They removed yard after cubic yard of matrix, piling it carefully onto the gondola platform, and began hauling it upriver to the site Goldie had marked on her map. Margo had trouble finding that spot. She hovered over the Shashe River, studying the lay of the land, trying to correlate what she saw with Goldie's chart and navigational notations. She finally took an aerial snapshot with the digitizing camera that was part of her personal log, scanned in Goldie's map, and made the best correlation she could.
"There," she decided.
She took the airship down and they buried the first load. They made trip after trip, digging out pits on Goldie's future landholding, seeding them with diamondiferous matrix and returning for another load. It was slow work, because the matrix was heavy They couldn't lift much at one time. A week passed, blurred easily into two, then three. The January rains of summer hit, flooding their little camp and forcing them onto higher ground. The heat was stifling. Using filter straws which blocked out pathogens, they drank boiled water which had cooled enough to swallow, grinned like fools, and went back to work
Margo was thrilled her digitizing camera did double duty as a video camera. In her spare moments, she filmed vast herds of antelope, wildebeest, and zebra which stretched away across the grassy veldt Nearer the river, where trees and scrub grew up, they saw graceful giraffes browsing in the treetops. At night the grunting cough of hunting lions sent shivers through her. Hyenas' wild cackles mingled with the cries of water birds and the bass roar of hippos in the river.
They fished to supplement their supplies. Kynan Rhys Gower and Koot van Beek dined on grilled antelope which Koot brought down. Kynan even joined the hunt, grinning as he transfixed a silver and black gemsbok with a cloth-yard shaft. He cut the long black horns for souvenirs. That night he and the Afrikaner gorged on roast gemsbok. Margo wouldn't touch anything but the fish and her own supplies. Watching them butcher their kills only reminded her of the Roman arena -- and that killed her appetite and curiosity at one fell swoop.
"No, thank you," she said primly when offered a morsel.
Koot just rolled his eyes heavenward, muttered, "English," and kept eating.
Elephants appeared in glorious great herds, coming down to the river to drink. Monkeys screamed and chattered in the trees and darted in to try thieving their supplies. Margo laughed and chased them away. In the hay-colored grass of the high veldt, she could even see cantankerous rhinos and long-snouted, suspicious baboons. Those she steered clear of, having no desire to tangle with a horned tank locked on permanent bad temper or an intelligent primate that lived in structured tribal groups, ate a diet that included meat, and sported fangs long as her fingers. But everything else was fair game, both for Margo's camera and her unbounded delight.
They'd nearly finished their work when Margo learned her first valuable lesson about scouting. She and Kynan had left the river, Kynan to hunt his dinner and Margo to stretch her legs and sightsee a little, leaving Koot to guard the camp. Margo carried the carbine slung over her shoulder, but only because Koot always pitched a fit if she didn't. Game was so plentiful Kynan never had to go far and Margo was usually thrilled by whatever they found within a few dozen yards of the campsite. Margo was creeping through tall grass with her digital camera, edging toward a herd of springbok, when it happened. She heard a snort and glanced around to see a massive Cape Buffalo. The bull stood solitary against the skyline.
Oh... What a gorgeous animal!
He stared at her through dark eyes, not more than seventy-five yards away. His nostrils flared. He thrust one foreleg out, stiff-legged, as though posing. She lifted the digital camera and snapped a shot. Ooh, perfect ... The bull snorted and lowered his head The horns were enormous, sharp-tipped, beautiful.