by GARY DARBY
“No,” Dason answered drawing a breath, “just routine observation.”
TJ chimed in with, “Dason, did you hear the cat roars? They sounded pretty close to you.”
Dason grimaced in answer. “Yeah, she’s just mad at someone for waking her up from a nap.”
“And how do you know it was a she?” TJ quipped.
“That’s easy,” Sami replied. “Lady kitty-cats are always bad tempered.”
“That’s enough,” Dason ordered. “TL, out.”
Dason headed in the general direction that would put him near the river’s curve. He paralleled the river at some distance to avoid the huge aqua-beast’s haunt before turning back toward the water again.
Pushing through waist-high undergrowth, Dason caught a glimpse of sunlight sparkling on the water. Seeing the river’s curve, Dason felt sure he was at, or near, his starting point.
He touched his comms button. “Team, in sequence, what is your status?” In rapid succession, came the responses.
“Path in position. Let’s either get moving or take another siesta,” Sami declared.
“Flanker One, time to get this done,” TJ answered.
“Flanker Two, positioned, let’s do this,” Shanon replied.
Nase finished with, “Center’s ready.”
“You know the plan,” Dason instructed. “Check LS setting; remember it should read 6.5 on the beta scale. Let’s get the Xee this time so we can go home. Scouts Out.”
Their response deepened Dason’s feeling that the team didn’t appreciate the fact that their antagonist had outsmarted them so far, and they wanted to turn the tables.
Dason took his Life Sensor out, checked the setting and activated the device. An essential Star Scout tool, even with its limitations, the sensor allowed them to pinpoint a creature’s specific bio frequency even through dense foliage. It allowed the scouts to “see” farther than they could with their own natural vision.
Dason slogged along, all the while dripping sweat. His high school course catalog listed “Intro to Star Scouts” as: “Preparatory course. Instructs the student in the basic skills, techniques, and standards of Star Scout Command. Course requirements include fieldwork at Terra, the Solar System, and off-world locales.
“Requires coordination with other faculty members to make up missed schoolwork. Satisfactory completion awards student one-half credit toward physical exercise requirements for graduation.
“Final exam is no-notice deployment star side. Prerequisite for acceptance into Star Scout enlistment.”
Dason had his moments on the trail when being back in Mrs. Graden’s Old Style Dance course, enduring her sharp tongue and constant critique of his utter lack of rhythm just to earn his other half-credit in physical exercise seemed good.
But Dason had made it this far and wasn’t about to give up now. Besides, it was that last sentence in the course description that mattered to any novice.
To be a full-fledged Star Scout you had to first complete the novice course. Failure to finish or a down-check from the Scoutmaster meant no enlistment, no matter your accomplishments in other areas.
And everything, everything they did in the course led up to the No-Notice Final Exam. Pass that, accept the offer of enlistment and the Arrow of Light was yours to wear.
Almost three hours later, having come close several times to their quarry but missing each time, TJ stepped around a giant ivy-covered tree to find the alert display on her Life Sensor rapidly blinking.
Swinging the instrument around, she peered at the small screen and her eyelids narrowed from what she saw. She had an intense signal to her left, and she bobbed her head in satisfaction, causing her short ash blond hair to bounce.
In a frustrated whisper, TJ whispered to herself, “Got you, and this time you aren’t getting away.”
She sidestepped in that direction, moving slowly, keeping low to the ground. The thin ground foliage in this area made her going easier than having to push through the normal deep thickets, but it provided less concealment.
Five minutes and some forty meters farther, the signal grew stronger and remained on the same azimuth. She nodded in satisfaction; the steady bearing meant either it wasn’t moving or moving right at her.
She hoped for the former because that could mean the XT either slept or fed. If so, her goal of observing and cataloging the star creature would be a lot more straightforward.
The next few minutes should tell her which.
Lightly, she trod forward a few more steps and stopped. The signal was stronger and not moving. Good!
Kneeling, TJ considered making a call to the team but decided not to until she could assess the situation a little better. The animal seemed to be very wary and skittish, and she wanted to get a little closer and have eyes on the thing before she transmitted.
She started forward again when the directional orientation to the animal shifted. The animal was moving, though the tiny bearing change meant the beast’s movement was very slow and deliberate.
Stopping, TJ lowered herself, keeping a wary eye on her surroundings while watching which way the XT went.
She scooted to one side, braced her back against a tree trunk and eased completely down to the ground. She decided to rest for a while while waiting to see what the creature would do.
TJ glanced up at the slender trees that reached skyward. A gust of wind swirled the brilliant sea green, gold, and ginger-colored leaves in never ending patterns. The tallest limbs ended in large puff like balls of leaves that swayed with the wind.
The young woman wasn't at home in this wilderness, would never be; the very real perils kept her jumpy.
Still, even in the midst of danger, the rain forest's beauty had a certain mesmerizing quality even though it was so different from the ornate halls of her far-off home.
Her lips turned up in a faint smile as she examined her mud-splattered uniform, her dirty hands, and grimy fingernails. She shook her head thinking of how her prim and proper parents would react if they could see their youngest daughter.
Aghast would be an understatement.
A little smile played on TJ’s lips while she imagined a deep plunge into the crystal clear waters of her private bath. She sighed to herself, thinking how good the warm liquid would feel as it flowed over her tanned body.
Several strokes would take her to one end where she would sit in the full-sized marble whirlpool and let the dozens of jets soothe her body.
Her smile broadened as she thought of how the bath would be followed by a total body massage, followed of course, by an all-out raid on the always well stocked pantry.
Followed, of course, by zipping over to New Hollywood or perhaps Ballywood and seeing the latest theatre or movie production. Then she’d . . .
Warm wetness splashed on her upturned, heart-shaped face. She scrambled to her feet, embarrassed to find she had almost dozed off in her daydreaming.
TJ glanced upward through the openings in the tree canopy. Dark, moisture-laden rain clouds now gathered to pour out their deluge on the forest.
And with the dense gathering of clouds and rain, coupled with the lowering sun, the forest would turn into a dusky twilight that made visual sightings difficult and elusive.
TJ grimaced and muttered, “You couldn’t wait to make it rain for a half hour—that’s all I need, is a half hour.”
She reached into her front pack and brought out her snooper goggles. She didn’t like wearing the eyepieces, but under limited visibility conditions, it made sense.
The apparatus operated both in ambient light and the infrared, or IR, spectrum. Using the ambient feature during nighttime operations, the device gathered star- or moonlight and magnified it thousands of times, turning darkness into near-daylight conditions for the wearer.
But right now she needed the IR, or thermal capability to help her see the animal's radiated heat in the intense rain. She programmed the device to register only mammal-like creatures. With a practiced hand she pull
ed the device on her head and powered up the goggles.
The rain became torrential and soaked her camouflaged clothing. Feeling the wetness under her uniform, she thought of how the uniform’s clothing tag read “water resistant.”
“Water resistant—yeah, right,” she grumbled. “Maybe in the middle of the Sahara Desert.”
She did a quick scan, but the goggles showed no animals in her immediate area, even though the LS signaled that the creature hadn’t budged. Reading the display, she took slow, cautious steps to close the distance between her and the creature.
Peering at the display on the LS, she frowned at the readout. This says I’m almost on top of the thing, she thought. And it’s right in front of me. She started to take another step when she stopped dead in her tracks and sucked in a breath.
Or it’s right above me.
TJ didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. In a slow, deliberate movement, she raised her head. The previous sightings had placed the animal on the ground, but that didn’t mean the brute couldn’t climb a tree.
How did Grolson describe the extraterrestrial? “Near-ground-dwelling.” If that were so, then it might be sitting on a limb just above her and she might have put herself right under the beast.
To her immediate front stood a stand of large, full-limbed trees whose abundant emerald cover spread and blended with the canopy from neighboring hardwoods. The higher branches rocked in the breeze, but the lower limbs swayed only a little.
Tilting her head upwards, TJ scanned the leafy boughs. A tree dweller I’m not, she thought, but if I were, I wouldn’t be up in those gyrating upper branches, but lower down where things are a bit calmer.
She stepped behind several large and verdant bushes whose banana-shaped leaves curled outward and provided excellent cover.
With silvery raindrops pelting her, she knelt in the soggy mud peering up into the swaying tree’s branches. The splattering rain obscured her vision, so she flipped the goggles back down.
She took her time to scan each tree from bottom to top. Finishing one tree, she turned to survey the next.
As if a giant flower had blossomed before her eyes, the infra-red view pieces exploded in an irregular pattern of yellow and orange. The colors wavered until the small device fine-tuned the image into sharp focus.
The XT!
TJ smiled to herself. Gotcha! She thought, now stay put for just a few minutes.
The animal sat on a large branch, protected by an overhang of crisscrossing branches. It didn’t move and had its head down.
To TJ, it appeared asleep. She raised her eyepieces but in the drenching rainfall couldn’t make out the beast’s silhouette against the dark foliage.
Confident that the splattering raindrops would mask her movement, TJ took a few paces through the wet growth and settled behind a flowering head-high bush.
Pulling one large banana leaf slowly down so that she had a small opening framed by darkish triangular leaves, TJ peered upward.
She could see the creature’s head and upper torso but not its lower body. It wasn’t the optimal view that she had hoped for, but it would do until she could find a better vantage point.
TJ reached into her torso pack and removed her finger-sized recorder. Turning it on, she aimed its miniscule focal eye at the extraterrestrial animal sitting on its perch.
Within a few minutes, the diminutive camera’s miniature recording brain blinked a red light that turned fixed. She gritted her teeth. A single steady red light meant that something was wrong with the cam’s inner workings.
There was little she could do as the electronics were sealed. The only thing she could try was to insert a new button-size film-pac in the camera and try to film again.
No sooner had she closed the tiny film-pac door than the red light came on again. A steady light shone.
She pushed the on-off button several times hoping that would work, but like a malevolent one-eyed genie inside her recorder the red light stared at her.
“Of all the stupid—” She stomped one foot in frustration and backed out of her hiding place to retreat behind a large tree.
For a second, she considered her situation and then decided that since her recorder wasn’t working, the only thing she could do was to get one of her teammates here fast and use his or her thumb-size camcorder to finish the job.
Edging around the trunk so that she could keep an eye on the beast, she keyed her communicator to speak with Dason and report her status.
Suddenly, the creature bolted upright on its perch and stood on its two hind legs. Its head swung in TJ’s direction to where TJ could examine the thing.
Its head and face reminded her of an oversized mouse, except that instead of a cone-shaped nose, this beast had a flattened, upturned nose. And if any mouse had long needle-sharp teeth like this creature, cats would soon learn to hunt other prey.
Two muscular-looking forelegs dangled in front of its gray, hair-covered body. At the end of each arm like foreleg were supple metatarsals, which to her mind would be useful in grasping things.
Most striking were the creature’s ears. In size, they reminded TJ of baby elephant ears. When she first saw the brute, the ears had been folded behind its body and resting on its back.
Now the ears snapped forward and unfolded to their full extent. Each auricle had tiny tubular projections that jutted out several centimeters.
The animal faced her; its large, limpid dark eyes centered on the tree where TJ crouched. Its ears twitched forward until they formed an almost convex shape. She could swear that the thing listened for her even through the splattering rain.
In her excitement at watching the XT awaken, TJ forgot to stop pressing the send button and the communicator continued to operate.
In one fluid motion, using its powerful hind legs, the beast launched off the branch to the ground and sped through the forest opposite TJ. Before the creature disappeared, she caught a fleeting glimpse and saw that its ears, fanlike, folded behind the head and along its back.
TJ rocked back on her haunches and frowned in disappointment. She let out a long breath and shook her head. “So close,” she mumbled to herself. She might have gotten a few minutes of camcorder observation before it stopped working, but it wasn’t enough to meet mission criteria.
She spoke through her cheek mike, “This is TJ. I have a visual sighting and a partial recording event of our target.”
“Good job!” Dason enthused. “Do we meet part one of the exercise cataloging criteria?”
TJ looked at the recorder just to make sure and blew out a puff of air. “Negative, I have less than three minutes of observation on the cam, and mine has stopped working, so someone needs to get over here and complete the recording.”
“Understood,” Dason replied. “What are your coordinates?”
“I’m at 616 by 302 off the beacon. The Xee left my area on a bearing of 243 degrees. It was running pretty hard, so it’s a good hundred meters or more from my position by now.
“And I might add, for us to keep up with it, we’re going to need personal thruster packs. That thing is fast.”
“Got it,” Dason replied. “You follow the trail, and we’ll close the loop around you. Let us know if it changes direction.”
He paused and then directed, “Sami, fast-pace it, see if you can head the XT off and herd it back towards us."
“Way ahead of you,” Sami answered. “Started my intercept when TJ gave the bearing.”
“Nice,” Dason replied. “Nase, Shanon, swing on your left flank for a hundred meters and then return to your original bearings.”
“Team,” TJ went on hurriedly, “couple more things on the XT. This thing has a wicked set of large canine incisors, upper and lower. I don’t think we’re dealing with an herbivore.
“My guess is that it’s dangerous if cornered, so I recommend not getting too close.
“Also, the way it reacted to me, it must have extraordinary hearing. It heard me even through this downpour, and
I was a good fifteen meters away.”
“That’s good to know,” Dason replied, surprise evident in his voice. “Shanon, Nase, Sami, did you copy TJ’s description of the Xee?”
“Roger,” they all replied.
“Everyone use extreme caution when approaching our target, and remember what TJ said about its hearing ability, so keep it quiet.”
After listening to Dason’s instructions, TJ tried her cam once more, but it refused to work.
The sharp crack! from a breaking branch caused her to whirl around.
The OutLand creature tore through the underbrush at full speed, huffing like a charging grizzly with its bearlike mouth opened wide.
She didn’t even have time to draw her knife against the onrushing monster before it was upon her.
Chapter Fifteen
Star Date 2433.056
The Planet Alistar
Dason felt a brief sense of elation that his plan had worked. He thought for a second and then keyed his communicator. “TJ, give us a readout every hundred meters so we can adjust the closure loop. If we nail the XT one more time, we’ll be sleeping in our own beds tonight.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Sami replied. “A real pillow instead of a rock to lay my head on!”
Dason couldn’t help but smile at Sami’s enthusiasm. He waited for TJ's reply, but none came. “TJ, this is Team Lead, did you copy my last communication?”
He again listened for TJ’s reply, but she didn’t answer. Puzzled, he asked Sami, “Path Finder, did you hear a response from TJ?”
“Negative. I heard you, but not TJ,” Sami replied.
Dason’s concern at TJ’s lack of response was instant. Loss of radio contact with a teammate happened on occasion though it was an uncommon occurrence.
The little communicator devices were very reliable. Their one drawback was limited transmission and reception range.
However, TJ's report on the star beast worried Dason. She described a formidable XT, one that warranted extreme caution.
Dason trusted that TJ wouldn't do anything foolish. Still, the variables of death or severe injuries often entered the Star Scout equation without warning.