Yet it still seemed to her that Cal was not only courageous, but right. She could abide by the decision, made that way. Veg, long us he had known Cal, loyal as he was, did not understand. Nothing would be settled if he got there 'in time'.
She turned to find Orn - yes, that was the name that fit - standing behind her. He was close and quite formidable, suddenly, with myriad tiny scars showing on his legs and beak, and some feathers not completely grown out to replace lost ones. He could have struck her down easily while she stood bemused, but she sensed no hostility in him.
Hesitantly she reached toward him, experiencing an overwhelming need for companionship of any type. She was alone now, on a strange world, without any genuine hope of seeing either man again. Cal's mission was suicidal - but so was Veg's. It might be that the only company she would know henceforth would be that of the big birds.
Orn opened his mighty beak and caught her hand within it - and did not bite. She felt the knife edges of his jaw and knew that her fingers could be severed cleanly by its vicelike compression. But the touch was token.
Then Orn dropped her hand and returned to his nest. It was as though he had touched her in comfort, but not remained to make an issue of it. She was deeply grateful for the gesture.
She roused herself after a time and foraged for edible roots on the main body of the island, since her supplies would not last indefinitely. Her heart was not in it, but she did have to eat. She found a lone banana plant, but the fruit was not ripe. It was afternoon, and she knew nothing of the progress of the two men. She might have expected Circe to stay with her, but the manta was away on some other business. The rapport she had thought she had with the creature of Nacre was fading.
A second tremor came - a stronger one. The ground did not shudder, it rocked. It was as though the soil had turned liquid, and she was riding the waves. She kept her feet with difficulty.
She had a sudden and ugly premonition of what such a quake would do to a nest built on a rock, and to the fragile eggs within that nest. She ran swiftly back to the peninsula as the motion of the ground subsided.
The site of the nest was chaotic. Both birds were standing beside the rock, fluttering their vestigial wings. The worst had happened.
They did not challenge her as she approached, too upset, she realized, to maintain their guard. The nest was damaged but largely intact. The eggs -
Fragments of thick shell projected up, and white and yellow jelly filled the base of the main cavity. The eggs had been shattered by the quake. The birds seemed stunned by the calamity. She visualized the mutilated corpses of human babies in place of the smashed eggs, and thought she understood how the Orns felt.
But one shell appeared to be intact. Aquilon touched it hesitantly with a finger and found it warm and firm. It was eight or nine inches long and slender in proportion, the surface rough. She reached both hands around it and lifted the object out, careful not to let it slip in the slick fluid around it.
Both birds were still, watching her helplessly. 'This one's all right,' she said.
From somewhere in their throats came an incredulous, hope-dawning cooing.
She carried the egg to a dry hollow and set it down. 'Keep it warm,' she said. 'You can make another nest.' She backed away.
After a moment the female - Aquilon thought of her as Ornette - came over and studied it. Then, in a kind of nervous collapse, she sat on it.
But one crisis had passed only to lead to another. The odor of the broken eggs had attracted a predator. Sleek and very long in the water it came - a giant crocodilian reptile, not closely related to the modern crocodiles of Earth but similar externally and every bit as dangerous. Twenty feet from snout to tail, it hauled itself out of the water at the rocky mouth of the inlet and scrambled overland toward the nest.
Orn charged it, squawking loudly and beating the air with his wings, but the armored reptile only snapped sidelong at him and continued without pause. Nothing Orn's size could hurt it seriously; that was obvious.
Would it stop with the nest? Aquilon knew it would not. It must have swum over from the main swamp, for she had seen nothing like this near the island before. The duckbill would hardly have been so casual, either, had it sniffed this predator. Perhaps the quake had jolted it from its accustomed beat. It was hardly in a mood to be reasonable by any mammalian or avian definition. Now that it was here, it would pursue all food available - and that meant the third egg, and the bird protecting it, and probably the stranded bipedal mammal, herself, as well.
Aquilon fetched her quarterstaff. She held it by one end and ran at the crocodilian as though she carried a lance. The forward end struck the creature's leather-tough neck and bounced off, denting it only slightly but delivering a severe hit to her.
The long head swung about, jaws gaping. Aquilon braced herself and swung the pole like a club, striking that snout resoundingly. Unhurt but annoyed, the reptile charged her, its horrendous teeth leading.
Fighting instinctively, she drove the quarterstaff lengthwise into its mouth. To her horror, the entire pole disappeared that orifice, and the snapping jaws barely missed her hand. She scrambled back.
But it was enough. The crocodilian coughed and shook head, pained by the object in its throat. Unable for the moment either to swallow it or spit it out, the monster abruptly plunged into the water. It swam to the rocky inlet mouth, jammed itself between the stones so violently that it left scrapings of flesh and departed. As it passed from view, she heard its teeth clashing together as it sought vainly to bite down on obstruction anchored neatly between the dental rows.
Aquilon sat down hard, discovering herself panting desperately. She had expended more energy than she realized during the excitement, and was nearly exhausted. But she had won: Her omnivore heritage had come to her rescue and she has driven off the predator.
At the cost of the only weapon she had. Well, she could make another.
Was this the type of creature she was striving to protect from Earth's ravages? A twenty-foot, merciless egg-eating carnivore?
With this in the water, and others like it - had Veg even made it to the shore?
Dusk was coming - where had the day vanished! - and with it the pteranodons. Aquilon got up, still too tense to eat, and began to walk to the tarpaulin on the other side of the peninsula.
Orn blocked her way. She stared at him blankly, then tried to step around. He blocked her again, herding her back by spreading his wings. They were larger than she had thought; their total span, tip to tip, was about five feet. Far too small to enable him ever to fly, but handsome in their own right. The under surfaces seemed almost to glow. Some of the feathers had been freshly broken off, courtesy of the crocodilian. But Orn's manner was not threatening.
She turned and walked toward the makeshift nest, now buttressed by bits of moss Ornette had found within reach. Orn followed. She got to her hands and knees beside Ornette, then curled up and lay beside the huge bird. Orn settled down at her exposed side, spreading one wing to partially cover her body. It was like a thick, warm blanket - and yes, it made her feel immeasurably safer.
No - this was what she was fighting to save! This unique, intelligent family, related to her only in spirit.
Comfortable and secure between the two great warm bodies, slept.
XVI - CAL
It was mind against matter. The mind of man against the itter of reptile. One would prove itself superior in this test, and to that one would go this world. That was the way it had to be. Except for one small factor -
Tyrannosamus rex - the tyrant lizard king - charged down on him, banishing that speculation. Yet in this moment of confrontation he had an aberrant vision of Aquilon, so lovely she blinded even his mind's eye. She would have understood this, had she known of it, and perhaps she also would have approved. Had he known this opportunity would arise, he could have arranged to avoid the schism in the human party. But Veg would not have gone along. The big man tended to overlook the nuances of interspecies moral
ity, and so relied on conformance to a simplistic code. Thou Shalt Not Kill - except when threatened. And who could say what constituted a legitimate threat? The corollary was taken as Thou Shalt Not Eat the Flesh of Any Member of the Animal Kingdom - forgetting that man was a natural predator, owing much of his progress to his diet. So how could such a code solve or even ameliorate the myriad problems of the species? No matter; conform.
All this, in fragments, while Tyrann crashed toward him, head swaying from side to side for balance, eyes fixed on target. The reptile was now within a hundred feet: twice its own body length, five times its height. It was moving forward in a roughly straight line at some twenty miles per hour, ten tons of malevolence. Perhaps it was disappointed in the size of its quarry, hardly worth the effort - but this did not slow it.
No, Veg would not have understood. So it had to be this way: a battle without witnesses, except for the alien mantas. If he lost, his friends would assume he had been suicidally foolish. If he won, lucky. But he knew, and that was what counted.
Time to stop reminiscing and start competing.
Cal waited until Tyrann was within a single body length, calculating the time factor. Fifty feet at twenty miles an hour would be about a second and a half until contact - too brief for fine adjustments on its part. The maneuverative advantage did not lie with size. At that critical point - fifty feet - Cal dodged to the side.
His velocity from a standing start was slower than that continuing motion of the dinosaur, but he had a smaller distance to go. He covered only fifteen feet before the six-inch teeth clashed where he had been, and another ten by the time the tremendous thigh and foot rocked the ground behind him; But the margin had been sufficient.
Tyrann, discommoded by the miss, drove his nose into the dirt and came to a roaring halt. He lifted his mottled head, dewlap stretching, small eyes peering balefully about while leaves and twigs tumbled wetly from his jaws. It took him a moment to realize what had happened, but not a long moment. He was a predator, and few of that ilk were stupid or slow when hungry. He had been fooled once by a seemingly petrified morsel, but now he knew it for one of the quick-
footed mammals, and he would not underestimate its agility again.
Cal, meanwhile, had made it to the nearest large palm tree, holding his quarterstaff aloft. He had won the first pass by utilizing his advantage of mobility. His shorter neural chains permitted faster responses; the distance from his brain to his feet was a fraction of the corresponding connection in the dinosaur. But the overall advantage remained with Tyrann, who could outrun him on the straightaway and catch him when the dodging slowed.
Of course even that was not clear-cut. Tyrann had a great deal more mass to sling about, and a sprint would wear him out rapidly and overheat his tissues. Cal could probably outrun in the long run, if he survived the short run.
The reptile sniffed the air and oriented on Cal's tree. There, too, was a weapon: the predator's well-developed nose. There was room in that huge head for capacious nasal chambers, and though the gleaming teeth were superficially impressive, they were dependent on the functioning of that nose. The eyes and ears were less important, since Tyrann was not a sneaker. He required one sure way to locate his prey, and the nose was it.
Fortunately for Cal, the sense of smell was ineffective as a guide to the whereabouts of a fast-maneuvering creature. Cal could not hope to hide long or steal away any great distance, but right now he could force the carnosaur to use his less effective senses. That was the function of his brain: to divert the contest to his opponent's weaknesses, his own strengths, and thus prevail.
Maybe.
Tyrann charged the tree. It seemed ludicrous to imagine weakness in connection with twenty thousand pounds of predator, or of strength in his own hundred pounds. But - that was the thesis he intended to prove.
Tyrann knew about trees. He did not bite the palm or crash to it. His forelimbs, smaller than his own great toes, were less; they were hardly more than toothpicks projecting from neck. Literally: Tyrann cleaned his teeth with those vestigial, two-clawed arms, though even that made him contort is neck to make the connection. So it seemed that he could not get at Cal, so long as the man kept the broad trunk between them.
Not at all. The dinosaur turned and swept his massive tail against the trunk. The tree vibrated; loose fronds dropped, forcing Cal to cower. A spearlike dry seedpod plunged into the ground next to his head: the thing was a yard long and well pointed. He jumped away from the tree, realizing how hazardous its cover was - but stopped, realizing that that was what Tyrann intended.
The tail itself whipped around, a scarred column of flesh, and caught him smartly on the hip as he was trying to get back to the palm. Its force had been broken by the trunk, and its vertebrae did not permit much flexibility, but the residual nudge was enough to send him lurching away from his cover again. His quarterstaff was jolted wide, and he had no chance to recover it. Now he lacked even token armament.
And of course Tyrann was ready. He pounced.
Cal ducked under the dinosaur, avoiding the gaping jaws again by the surprise of his motion. Tyrann had anticipated his flight away from him, and had compensated accordingly. Cal bounced off the hanging skin of the reptile's neck, scraping his arm against the horny creases, and jumped for the tree again, panting.
He was thankful he hadn't tried to escape by climbing the palm. He would have been an easy target for that tail. Tyrann could not use it to reach or clutch or coil, but that brute banging against the base of the tree would have shaken almost anything loose.
Tyrann swung around again, watching Cal with one eye. The tail lifted, swung.
Cal didn't wait for it this time. He sprinted away from the trunk, eyes open. As the tail struck and whipped over, he threw himself down flat and let the tip pass over him. Immediately he was up again and running for the next tree, legs and lungs straining.
Tyrann let forth a bellow that sounded like gravel being dumped on a metal roof. He followed. Cal didn't stop at the tree; he passed it and angled for a small forest of firs he saw a few hundred feet ahead. His breath rasped in his throat, saliva streamed back across his cheek, and a pain in his side blossomed into a square foot of agony, but he could not stop.
The dinosaur was impeded by the trees, since he had to circle them with wider clearance, but still was making better speed. His two feet came down like pile drivers, shaking the earth with an oddly measured beat
Cal's heart was pumping harshly, and now his entire chest aflame. He saw that he could not make it to the pines, the spruce. Tyrann should be getting winded himself by this time - but it seemed that the dinosaur's strides were so long that this pace represented walking, not running, and so was not tiring. Cal dived behind a leaning oak and propped himself against it, too fatigued to do more than watch Tyrann.
But here he had a fortunate break. The small-brained reptile had forgotten his quarry's predilection for changing direction, and charged on by the tree. Then, realizing the error, Tyrann cast about, but could not immediately recover contact. The smell of the mammal was stronger behind than ahead, and that did not make immediate sense to the reptile.
Cal slid around the tree, aware that the accidental respite thad probably saved his life. But he knew very well that the war was not over; this was only an intermission, and a momentary one.
Tyrann got his bearings and approached the tree. This time he waited to see which way Cal would bolt, not aware that the man had scant energy left to move at all. Yes, the dinosaur learned by experience - but not quickly enough, in this case. He lunged ahead when caution was best, and practiced caution when the direct approach would nab the prize. But that was his handicap: he was bright enough for a reptile, but hardly in the intellectual league with a man.
The truth was that Tyrami would be better off giving up on Cal and looking for some careless upland-dwelling baby Brachiosaurus; those young did not reside in the water until their developing mass required it, and by then their numbers had
been thinned to the verge of extinction. The adult female Brachs made annual pilgrimages upland to lay their eggs, and they too would be easy harvest for Tyrann. But this dinosaur had determination; he had settled on Cal as prey for the day, and would not give up. Cal respected that; this was a worthy opponent, over whom a victory would be meaningful.
By the time Tyrann decided that the prey was not going to move, Cal had recovered the better part of his wind, and the pain in his bowels had abated. Oddly, he felt stronger than ever, as though tempered, as though his exertions had been pouring energy into him rather than drawing it out. This was possible: his weakness had been a symptom of an Earth-nurtured psychological syndrome, rather than anything initially physical. At Nacre he had tasted his first hint of freedom from it, aboard that sparsely populated world and with staunch companions. On Paleo he had his second experience - and though there were elements of disharmony, the overall effect was beneficial. And by this very chase he was resolving the last of that internal conflict. The long agony of indecision was over; he would prove himself - and his species, and his genus, family, order, and class - or die. He did not need to cripple himself any longer.
Of Man and Manta Omnibus Page 39