by Pam Uphoff
"Stop." Xaero whispered, hearing an odd honking sound and quickly spotting the source. Trev eased the cart to a halt, and then hissed a bit as the rest of them spotted the giants in among the trees.
Their colors blended well with the trees, vertical stripes in greenish brown and brownish green. They were different in detail from the hunchies they'd seen by the Dzi. The largest was a bit smaller than the hunchies, and they all had an odd helmet-like protrusion behind their heads. They had no ears, or exterior ears, at any rate, their eyes were smallish and the edges of their mouths looked odd, single stiff pieces instead of teeth. The honking died down; some of them had large leaves and fronds in their mouths, and as the intruders kept their distance they restarted chewing. A few of the further giants reared up to reach more leaves, but the closer ones were still wary and moved gradually away. Xaero spotted and took quick vids of several smaller ones. "I dub thee BGL Helmet. They come in about four sizes. I wonder if they have a limited breeding season, and reach adulthood in four years?"
They didn't show any of the body language Xaero associated with hunting, not that she knew enough about these animals to judge them by, yet the tactics of the hunt couldn't change by much.
They faded into the trees and Trev moved the cart under the first of the trees. They dismounted cautiously, letting Xaero tap the trees and stir the vegetation as they advanced.
Xaero collected samples of everything the giants had left behind, chewed leaves, feces, and some scales rubbed off on a tree trunk and snapped pictures of foot prints.
They all spread out, taking soil samples and readings as they spaced themselves out in a line and advanced through the woods, marking each sample site.
She started getting glimpses of the small animals of the region, some very lizard like, some with odd broad flat spines or fluffy ones, scrambling through the undergrowth or leaping through the trees. She watched in astonishment as one with brightly colored broad quills frantically flapped its forelimbs and flew from tree to tree.
"Wait'll Albe sees that." T'yedh commented. "He likes anything that flies."
"I guess there's lots of things possible with a thick atmosphere." Xaero said. "I wouldn't have thought flight was metabolically possible, though. Especially in this gravity."
"That's the oxygen level, I'll bet." Trev said.
Xaero nodded and made a mental note to construct some nets when she got back to the Dzi. Trebore showed an impressive ability to defy gravity as he dashed about with map and marker in hand noting sample sites and taking gamma readings. If his expression was anything to judge by, they'd found their mining site.
The honking and thunder from their left froze Xaero for a moment, until she realized what it must be. "Giants coming, get behind large trees, they sound like they're running." She hustled behind one herself as the helmets raced into sight, dodging trees and not much else. The giants poured through their survey area, accompanied, or rather pursued by, a very different type of Blue Giant Lizard. Smaller than the helmets, their heads were shorter, with heavy jaws sporting large teeth. They ran on long muscular hind legs, balanced well forward but their forearms were shorter, with wickedly clawed hands that appeared better adapted to grabbing than weight bearing. And good peripheral vision. The last hunter skidded to a halt and turned to bring both eyes to bear on her.
"Oh sand."
He leaped, and she dodged around the tree. Well adapted to the heavy gravity, he whipped around snapping and grabbing. She ducked the snap, but a claw raked painfully down her arm. It caught for millisplit, but the suit ripped and she leaped away, dodging around the tree again and running for a dense patch of young trees. She felt like she was in a nightmare, as the gravity dragged at her, slowing her feet.
The ear splitting boom barely registered as she threw herself through a narrow gap between trees, but when she looked back the giant was twitching on the ground, very nearly cut in half, with blood and bloody chunks splattered everywhere, including on herself. Trev kept his pistol aimed at it as he hustled up. He looked pale, and huffed in relief as she crawled out of the grove.
"What kind of gun is that?" she asked, surveying the damage.
"What are you doing with a rail gun?" T'yedh demanded, thumping up, but glancing back in the direction that the giants had last been seen. "I thought that was a stunner or I'd have never let you onto the Dzi with it, no matter who authorized it."
Trev snorted. "Gun envy. Your stunner wasn't bothering them at all."
Beri glared. "A dozen supersonic needles in a closed cabin is nothing to take lightly."
"Which is why it wasn't charged or loaded until this morning." Trev retorted, nudging the nearest piece of the hunter giant. "I don't think a stunner would have been sufficient. I'll have to thank my paranoid Guards for being paranoid and over arming me."
The rest of the group came up, shocked and pale, but all present. "Xaero, is that your blood or the giant's?" Trebore asked, bringing her attention back to her arm.
"Mostly the giant's I think, but it did get me with a claw." The environmental suit was slashed from shoulder to elbow, she pulled it back and could see the elastic suit slashed as well, and a long bleeding gash. "Well, maybe it's mostly mine. As soon as the adrenaline wears off that's going to really hurt."
Arto grabbed her med kit and sprayed an antibiotic coagulant all down the length of the cut. Trev pulled his out and grabbed a roll of bandage. "It's just skin deep," she gulped with relief, feeling a bit light headed as she thought of just how bad it could have been. "Just wrap it over everything, to stop the bleeding." She held the arm out without too much trembling.
Trev shook his head and covered the cut with a thick pad and then wrapped her entire upper arm under the loose environmental suit then taped the rip to seal it.
"We'll head for the Dzi and the doctor immediately." Trebore said, stopping as she shook her head.
"Finish the survey, we're nearly done. And I want some samples from this hunter here." She grinned through increasing pain, "C'mon, I'm a lawyer, you know you want me to suffer."
Trebore shook his head. "Oh, tough fem, eh?" he looked around at the survey area, "All right, you got it, but you also have to be honest when you need to quit and head for the doc."
They didn't let her work, so she took vids as she walked along with the very vigilant sample takers. The land dropped down into a swamp within a hundred strides, and Trebore announced that his gammas had dropped off so there was no point in discovering if Big Blue's water plants were as benign as the land varieties. Xaero stiffly bent and took a murky water sample and plucked two nearshore plants before retreating to the hunter's remains.
Somewhat to the dismay of her fellow explorers, she decapitated the creature, took both hands and feet, and several skin samples, especially where the scales rucked up into broad flat spines over the shoulders and down the arms. They were flexible, and as much as she could feel through the gloves, soft. The mottled brown and white scales and blades seemed a better match with the drier plains, and she wondered if that was their regular habitat. "I wonder if these blades are like Cheeper fluff? Mutated scales," she asked no one in particular.
"They do look a bit like brooding down, don't they?" Trebore answered. "But they're in the wrong place, and something that big couldn't sit on eggs anyway."
"Yeah." she agreed, taking pics of its exposed innards, and ripping it open further. "Heart, lungs, gizzard, intestines, uterous, so it's a female, but no sign of a pouch. Damn, this thing looks like a Mars critter. Couple of other organs, kidneys? Liver? This is spooky."
"What do you mean, spooky?" Trebore eyed the viscera distastefully.
"Umm, sorry, that wasn't very scientific. The internal organs are surprisingly recognizable, although the resemblance to some types of Martian organs may well be superficial and misleading."
"I see. Spooky."
She took quick samples of everything, then felt guilty when she had to get the others to hump most of the weight back to the cart. S
everal of them were limping, but no one was complaining. She was about ready to stop being such a good example of stoic pain tolerance; much though she hated to admit it, she was getting a bit shaky. She told herself it was probably more a psychological reaction than physical, but by the time she eased herself into the cart she was feeling definitely unwell.
Trev hefted the head. "Hey, I want to mount this on my wall, like an Old Fashioned Big Game Hunter."
She could see the strain around his eyes, even through two helmets, and fell in with his attempt to distract her. "It's museum bound you lug." She brandished a clawed hand, "Much though I'd like to make you a trophy necklace of teeth and claws."
The others snickered, and quickly loaded the body parts and geologic samples into the cart.
Trev handed his rail gun to Beri and took the controls for the trip back. They made good time, following their own tracks and were back to the Dzi well before nightfall.
Riu pitched the expected fit and made her stay in the airlock after decontamination (rather more uncomfortable than the day before, with the ripped suit) and the exit of the other explorers. He kicked Trev out without a sign of deference and closed himself in to scrub the slash repeatedly.
"The bacteria we've cultured just out of the air and soil thinks Martians are edible. Fortunately they are as vulnerable to our antibiotics as Mars germs, so there shouldn't be a problem." He hemmed and hawed a bit and finally decided to stitch the cut. "You're healing remarkably quickly so I don't want to wait. If there's any sign of infection we can take these right back out."
Xaero shuddered at the thought, and submitted to two splits of careful stitchery, taking her mind off it by watching Nyx dissect the Hunter's head in the largest glove box. The brain he held up for her admiration was surprisingly small for the size of the critter. The hunter had been easily triple her length and weight, but the brain was much smaller than a Martian's. Good, we still haven't killed a sophont.
"I really ought to keep you in isolation," Riu fussed. "But since we've cultured native species bacteria from the Dzi's air I suppose it's pointless."
"Well, we all had our doubts about how well decontamination would work." Xaero said. "I suppose it came in on me the first outing?"
"Or the air exchange wasn't complete, or this morning with all the speeches and everyone trooping in and out. After that is when I put out the culture dishes." He shrugged ruefully, "This way we get the good or bad news sooner. Speaking of which, how did the uranium survey go?"
"Well, I think. Trebore's got plenty of samples, and a surface survey over a fairly large area that had the highest gamma readings. I expect he'll want to head back with the drill and or seismic instruments tomorrow."
As they exited the airlock, Trebore was in full swing, drafting everyone for the next day's work. "Xaero, do you have any ideas about how to handle those giants without Trev blasting them into messy heaps all over the work area?"
"How many stunners do we have? Does anyone," she looked pointedly at Beri. "Know how to tune them? Or detune them as the case might be?"
Beri looked thoughtful. "A detuned stunner can produces headaches instead of unconsciousness. Do you think we could cause them enough pain that they'd leave instead of attacking? I'd hate to have to admit I'd detuned a stunner to the point it was fatal."
"I don't think the DMS will arrest you, as long as you only shoot Martian Eating Alien Giants. I don't know how we'd manage to test it, though," she admitted. "We might be better off running electrical wires on posts."
"Hmm, well, I've never actually tuned a stunner," Beri admitted. "But I know how it is done."
Trev, who'd been trying to look unconcerned while hovering over her, snorted. "I'd better do it."
Xaero snickered. "Picking locks and now retuning stunners. Does your mother know the sorts of things you learned while you were a policeman?"
"I certainly hope not."
While Trebore finalized his plans for the next day, Trev and Beri put their heads together over two stunners and some spare parts from something else. The results had an awkward dial on the left side of the chamber.
"They're set for constant emission, at the moment. Not the usual short bursts. So they are dangerous just from that standpoint." Trev said. "If whoever is firing will keep the pistol aimed at the giant and the trigger depressed while slowly turning this dial, hopefully we'll see a reaction. If and when you do, stop and don't touch the dial again, we'll take some measurements and see about customizing a batch for giant slaying—or scaring—purposes."
"If we can get close to some giants like the helmets, we should have time to experiment." Xaero said. "Those hunters, on the other hand, are going to be risky."
L'on, Trebore and Riu all crossed their arms in identical stubborn gestures.
L'on was apparently their spokeslizard. "You are going nowhere tomorrow."
Xaero stared indignantly, then her common sense cut in. She nodded glumly. "Well, I need to catch up on analysis and classifications. Sand, I need to start storing samples. This stuff will keep half the biologists on Mars busy for decades." She started thinking of everything she needed to complete in half a tenth, and suddenly running off to a mining site started looking like a waste of time. "Do you want to leave one of those here?" she nodded at the altered stunners, "I could try them on a variety of small critters."
Trev looked relieved at her sensible attitude and handed on over. "Try it especially on any small relatives of the giants, if there is such a thing."
"There's all sorts of small critters rustling in the brush. I need to put out traps." She said, turning toward the rear compartment. "Hmm, I'm going to have a problem with the environmental suits, aren't I?"
"Nah, it's already fixed." Zila displayed the patched arm. "Now, you getting into it with a sore arm, that'll be something else again."
***
Zila proved right the next morning. Xaero was stiff, sore and bruised and her right arm was very stiff and twinged every time she bent it. It didn't show any signs of infection however, so she decided to suit up.
She cannily detached both arms of the elastic suit before she started pulling it on. She didn't have any spines on her arms to endanger the integrity of the environmental suit, after all. Her tail was a pain, and as the spines got longer up her backbone, getting them safely flattened got progressively harder. She made it out before the miners departed, so she was able to place her traps under Trev's protective watch, and also promised to not collect them until he returned. They had the drill mounted on the back of the cart, and the crates of the seismic mapper strapped onto that. Zila and Aura squeezed into the front with Trev, and Trebore rode in the back with his new toys, watching the load anxiously. They started off at a circumspect speed, and Xaero turned to an inspection of the plants around the Dzi.
Her arm hurt enough to keep her vigilant, and she three times headed up the ramp and into the airlock at a stirring in the high trees. The comm system was on. She listened to the others and occasionally joined the conversation. They all came out at one time or another, but seemed to find the open alien landscape intimidating and didn't stay long. L'on and the engineer, S'jen were popping short antennae out all over the ship, something to do with the return transfer mechanism, but apparently they were just testing at this point and didn't want to leave anything deployed that could be damaged.
Her collection of pots spread out; native plants, root systems, soil and all, alive and ready for transport. With luck she'd be able to determine their water, mineral, light and atmospheric needs over the next days, and they'd survive transfer back to Mars. She talked Nyx into cobbling together a fine net on a hoop and handle and collected small lizards of three sorts and more insects. She gazed wistfully at the higher brush to the west and the trees beyond, but before she could even be seriously tempted she heard a familiar thunder of running giants. She retreated quickly to the ramp, and as the giants broke out of the trees, she retreated all the way into the airlock where she watched, one h
and on the close button, while three of the larger hunchies fled a hunting pack of the same species as yesterday's close encounter.
The hunters were concentrating on one animal; its sides and legs were already bleeding from dozens of slashes, and as she watched, one hunter leaped and grabbed with teeth and fore legs, while its powerful hind legs raked one of the hunchie's legs, digging deep and bringing it down. It leaped up, but half collapsed as the leg gave under it, a critical tendon damaged beyond use. The pack closed in, going for the neck now, and quickly finished the animal.
"Sand, did one of you get that on vid?" Xaero asked.
"Got it in all its bloody details," Albe assured her. "Man, those critters can really pack away the meat, can't they?"
"No kidding!" The five hunters were indeed stripping the carcass at a rapid pace. "Keep the vids going." Xaero studied the hunters' interactions, and quickly spotted the alpha. He, she or it allowed only one other hunter to eat near him. A mate? The alpha of the other gender? That one and two others had more of the scale blades than the other two, which seemed identical to the one they'd killed yesterday. So, that one had been female, apparently fertile. Odd that the males had more of the specialized scales, but as Trebore had said, they were too large to sit on eggs like a cheeper. The blades must be for some other purpose, and if they were sexually dimorphic, most likely it had something to do with breeding. Or it could be an age difference, although the smallest of the five had a fine display of blades, so perhaps the sizes and blade differences were just the normal variation within the species.
As she watched, the smallest male, if that was what it was, got chased off by the second theoretical male. The small one retreated, bending its head to the side and dipping its muzzle. An appeasement gesture? Maybe it was young, a pseudo with low group status? One of the maybe-females chased it further and it retreated, but rather than the head movements it had used before, it shook itself indignantly, and fluffed up all its blades across its shoulders and down its arms and started prancing around, waving its arms and ruffling the scales.