Rude Astronauts

by Allen Steele

  KAPLAN: Uh-huh. And did these part-timers have access to all the buildings? Including the storage closet in the main building where the reflex inhibitors were kept?

  CASTLE: Out of necessity, yes, sir, Mr. Kaplan. Of course, the key rings were given to them when they clocked in at the beginning of the day and they turned them back in when they punched out on the time clock. But … ah, yes, they had access to all unrestricted areas of the main compound.

  KAPLAN: And that includes the storage closet in the main building?

  CASTLE: Yes, sir. There were some cleaning supplies which were kept in that closet, so necessarily they had to …

  KAPLAN: I understand. One further question, Mr. Castle, and this goes back to what I was asking you about earlier. Just prior to Senator Chambliss’s visit to the refuge, did you hire any new part-timers?

  CASTLE: Ummm … why, yes. One of our cleaning staff, Mary Ann Shorter, suffered a collision with a hit-and-run driver on the highway. She was laid up in the hospital with neck and back injuries, so we had to find a new person to temporarily take her place. A young guy named Jake … um, Jacob Adderholt. He answered an ad we had placed in the Folkston newspaper and we hired him. As I recall, that was about a week before the senator came to the refuge.

  KAPLAN: And did Mr. Adderholt come to work on the day that Senator Chambliss and his party arrived?

  CASTLE: Yes, he did. In fact, he went out with the rest of the part-time staff on the same Osprey that … oh, good Lord, Mr. Kaplan, you’re not implying …?

  KAPLAN: Mr. Castle, did Jake Adderholt reappear for work at the park following Senator Chambliss’s death?

  CASTLE: Oh, my God …

  KAPLAN: Mr. Castle, please, did Jake Adderholt come back to work after …?

  CASTLE: No, he didn’t, he … oh, my sweet Lord, how could have I known …?

  His paddle dipped again into the dark water. He pulled it straight back to his shoulder, raised it again and absently watched the cool water dribble off the end of the blade, then plunged it forward again into the river. The canal ran straight as a two-lane highway through the low, monotonous swampland; dredged by an industrial explorer in the 1890s in an attempt to form an intracoastal waterway before nature and lack of funds conquered his efforts, the Suwannee Canal was a liquid path through the Okefenokee. Farther downstream it entered the deep bayou of the swamp, a long maze, before it ended at a manmade sill and the mouth of the Suwannee River. But that was a long way from here; they had only travelled the first five miles of the canal, and Denny was already tired.

  He pulled the paddle out of the water, rested across the gunnels behind the pointed bow of the Mad River canoe, tipped back his cap and wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead. The early morning fog had long since been burned off by the rising sun; it was close to noon now and the day was getting warmer. An otter had been racing in front of them for a mile or so, occasionally sticking its furry brown head above the water to look back at them as if to say “Nyah nyah nyah, you slowpoke humans” before diving and racing forward again. The little animal had apparently lost interest in them, though, because Denny hadn’t spotted him in the past half-hour.

  “Out of shape?” Tiffany asked and he looked back over his shoulder at her. She was in the stern seat behind him; he watched as she effortlessly made a J-stroke to keep them in the middle of the narrow canal. “How long has it been since you paddled a canoe?”

  “Longer than I care to remember,” he admitted. About thirty feet behind them, the second canoe was moving down the river. Joe Gerhardt was doing the muscle work in the bow seat while Pete Chambliss steered from the stern. They had fallen behind because the senator had been constantly pausing to scan the area with his binoculars or to take snapshots of cranes, vultures, otters, and gators. If the Secret Service man had minded, though, he hadn’t said anything; like Denny, he had taken off his jacket when the day had become hotter, and now they could all see the Ingram gun slung in the oversized holster under his left armpit. There was also a headset radio slung around his neck; every now and then he had paused to report in, radioing a status report to the compound.

  “Catch your breath,” Tiffany said. “We’ll wait for ’em to catch up.” She pulled up her own paddle and laid it across the gunnels, then checked her wristwatch. “We’ll be stopping on a little island just up ahead, so you’ll get a chance to take a breather.”

  Denny shifted his butt on the lifejacket; they had long since taken them off and placed them on the hard metal seats. “Lunch?”

  “Maybe,” she said tersely. She was staring off across the grasslands to their right. Tiffany had been laconic all morning. When they had pushed off from the compound just after sunrise, she had done little more than to make sure everyone’s gronker was switched on. Even though the temperature had continued to rise and all the men had stripped down to their undershirts, she hadn’t pulled off her own shirt—which was too bad, since Denny would have liked to see what she looked like wearing only shorts and tank-top. Their itinerary called for them to make camp on Bugaboo Island tonight—who the hell had come up with that name?—then to forge their way through the deep swamp tomorrow until they reached the end of the refuge and, just beyond that, Stephen C. Foster State Park, where they would be pulling out of the river for good.

  If Denny still hoped to have an amorous adventure with her, it would have to be tonight on Bugaboo Island. Yet, somehow, he was beginning to have his doubts. Tiffany seemed aloof today: her refusal to take off her shirt was a bad omen. Maybe she had come to realize that she was one woman about to spend the night with three men and didn’t want to do anything which would seem like a come-on to any of them. But he watched her check her watch again and wondered what sort of schedule she was trying to keep …

  The second canoe was almost abreast of their own when Pete looked through his binoculars to his right and suddenly pointed. “Over there!” he whispered urgently. “There’s the pack!”

  Denny looked around. At first he didn’t see them … then he did, and he involuntarily sucked in his breath. The three long necks of Jason, Freddie and Michael rose above the high yellow grass, about two hundred yards away. It didn’t seem as if they had seen the canoeists as they slowly moved across the floating prairie. As Bernie Cooper had pointed out earlier, the dinosaurs seemed to have learned not to stick too closely together lest their combined weight cause them to sink through the peat moss. It was almost a pastoral scene: the bright clear sky, the noonday sun, the high grass wafting in the soft breeze, the distant figures of the dinosaurs. Like a landscape painted by an insane Winslow Homer.

  As he watched, one of the deinonychi—Freddie, he reckoned, since it was in the lead—suddenly darted forward, its head snapping downward into the grass. A moment later Freddie reared up again, this time with a small animal caught in its jaws; a raccoon maybe, or perhaps an otter which had not moved fast enough. Freddie’s head arced back and they heard the wet leathery snap of its teeth as the unlucky creature was eaten alive. Then the dinosaur kept moving as Michael and Jason caught up with him, their heads slowly swiveling back and forth in search of more prey. The boys were out for a midday stroll. Don’t mind us. Just looking for an appetizer or two before we go have a steer for lunch …

  Denny was distracted by the sudden bump of the bow prodding against the shoreline; while he had been watching the pack. Tiffany had slowly paddled them to the shore. “Get out and pull us up,” she said softly, pulling up her paddle and carefully laying it in the canoe.

  His eyes widened. “Are you kidding?” he protested. “The pack’s right over there!”

  “Get out and pull us up, Denny,” she repeated. The scornful look in her eyes told him that she wasn’t joking, and as the second canoe nosed into the shoreline next to them, Pete Chambliss was already loading a fresh disc into his Nikon. Joe Gerhardt half-stood in the bow, quickly scrambled forward with his hands on the gunnels to keep the canoe steady, and clambered off the front of the canoe onto the groun
d. He shot a look at Denny which relayed an unspoken admonition: “Kid, I’m not going to shepherd your camera-happy boss all by myself. Get moving.”

  “I hope you do know how to use that thing,” Denny muttered back, meaning Gerhardt’s MAC-10. Gerhardt said nothing, but fitted the radio over his head again and murmured something into the mike. Denny laid down his own paddle and carefully stood up to crawl out of the canoe. He managed to get out without tipping the canoe, then he grabbed the prow and hauled the front of the canoe onto the ground.

  As Nixon began to crawl across the lashed-down camping gear in the middle of the canoe, Denny tentatively took a few steps forward. The mossy ground squished and rolled under his feet as if he were walking on a feather mattress; it was no wonder that it was called trembling earth. Watching his feet, he took another few steps, then his right boot abruptly sank to his calf in the ground as it found a weak spot in the peat moss. He swore and pitched forward, throwing out his hands to catch himself; the sharp, serrated edges of some weeds cut against his palms, making him cuss and flounder some more before Tiffany grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him erect.

  “Cut it out, willya?” she hissed in his ear. “Test the ground with your foot before you put your weight on it … and keep your voice down.”

  “Not that it matters,” Gerhardt said in a slightly louder voice. “They’ve spotted us.”

  Denny looked up again and felt his heart freeze. The pack had stopped moving and now they had each looked around, straight in their direction. As he watched, Freddie began to slowly move towards them, followed on either side by Michael and Jason. Triangle formation, just as Andy the researcher from Team Colorado had said yesterday.

  “This is a really stupid idea,” he said to no one in particular. “Let’s get back in the canoes.”

  But Pete Chambliss was already stepping past him and Tiffany, holding his camera between his hands as he negotiated his way through the tall grass. Joe Gerhardt moved to his side, pulling the MAC-10 from his shoulder holster and cradling it in his hands. “It’s all right,” Tiffany said. “The gronkers will keep them at bay. Don’t worry about them. Just try to relax.”

  “Sure. Right.” Tiffany was already walking away, following the senator and the Secret Service escort. Steinberg looked back once at the canoes—an office in the White House couldn’t be worth this crazy shit—but then he took a deep breath which did little to steady his nerves and stepped into the path made by the naturalist, as the four of them slowly approached the pack.

  Five feet away from the canoes, ten feet, twenty … the three dinosaurs were still moving toward them, and although they seemed to be keeping their own distance, the gap between them had shrunk to only a few hundred feet. They gradually moved through the high grass like reptilian emissaries from a distant time. It was not at all like yesterday, when they had been separated from the pack by the tall platform and the security fence. This was to be a face-to-face encounter, and Denny was all too aware that Freddie was his own height; just tall enough to snap out and tear his head off. They were man-sized, but their relative lack of stature was not deceptive. These were not men, or even alien lizard-men out of some Hollywood space opera. They were born killers; in their own epoch, they had ganged up on dinosaurs four times their size and ripped them to shreds.

  But they’ll stay back, he reminded himself. Tiffany’s right. That’s what the gronkers are for. Team Colorado’s gotten closer than this without any problems. Don’t worry about it. Yet he found that his feet refused to move any further, that he couldn’t look away from the pack as it moved closer, closer … Transfixed despite himself by their awful beauty, he barely noticed that Tiffany had paused to let him pass her.

  Ahead of him, he heard the click and whirr of Pete’s camera as the senator stopped to shoot more pictures. “Absolutely incredible,” Chambliss said softly. “Just wonderful. It’s like they’re just posing for …”

  Then, all at once, the pack charged.

  3. The Smoking Gun

  When he awoke again, it was to cool, crisp sheets against his naked skin, to the acrid smell of antiseptics mixed with the foreign yet unmistakable odor of dead flesh, to muffled voices and a strange pat-pat-pat of some liquid dripping onto a tiled floor.

  “Oh, Christ, there’s not much left.”

  “Do the best you can.” He vaguely recognized Bernie Cooper’s voice. “When the feds get here they’ll want everything in situ that they can get for their …”

  “Feds? Secret Service? Jesus, Bernie!”

  “Secret Service, FBI, Interior, probably the Army and Navy and Air Force too for all I know. … I’ve just been told to keep everyone in the refuge and let nobody leave. It can’t be helped, Bob. The shit’s hit the fan.”

  He opened his eyes to harsh fluorescent lights reflecting off formica and stainless steel. The light hurt his eyes and his head felt as if it were encased in taffy-soft cinderblocks; it was hard to think, but he gradually perceived that he was in the compound’s clinic. Soft pressure across his forehead and the white edge of gauze just above his brow told him that his head had been treated as well. He moved his head to the right and saw that a screen had been moved into place across one half of the room; the voices came from the other side of the screen.

  “If they want us to leave everything alone until they get here, then why are we …?”

  “Because I don’t want us to look entirely incompetent, that’s why. It’s going to be bad enough as it is without … look, I know they’re in bad shape, but I want at least a preliminary autopsy performed before they get here, so just …”

  “I can’t do that, Bernie. You know I can’t. I could lose my license.” A slow intake of breath. The sound of a sheet being pulled back again. “God damn, just look at him. This is one fucking mess we’re in. Did we get everything from the site?”

  “Everything. Their personal effects are over there … the survivors, too, and we’re not to touch them under any conditions. Especially not the gronkers, although we could only find the one belonging to the Secret Service guy.”

  “Where’s the … no, don’t tell me. I’d rather not know.”

  The slow pattering continued, just under the sound of the voices. He looked down, peering beneath the bottom of the screen. He could see two pairs of shoes on either side of the wheels of a gurney. Blood was pooled at their feet, seeping into the cracks of the white-and-tan tiled floor, dripping from the tabletop above.

  “What about the other two? Nixon and … aw, what’s his name, the senator’s flunky?”

  “Shaddup. He’s right over there. They made it out okay. I thought the kid had a concussion, but it was just a bad cut and shock. She had to be stitched up some but otherwise she’s fine. I saw her out in the corridor just a few minutes ago.”

  Tiffany. He had to tell someone what was going on. He opened his mouth to speak, but all he could manage was a dry, inaudible rasp. As he swallowed, trying to get his voice to work again, he heard the sound of a sheet being pulled forward again.

  “Let’s get out of here. I haven’t seen anything like this since I interned in an emergency room. Where is everyone, anyway?”

  “Down at the dock. We managed to get Freddie’s body out of there before the animals got to it. I didn’t want it on the landing pad, so that’s the only place we can examine it.”

  “More attention being paid to that damn lizard than …”

  He heard them walk across the room, then the sound of a door opening and swinging shut. Tiffany. He turned his head again, saw another gurney parked next to his own, but the covers were pushed aside and there was a warm dent in the sheets where she had once lain. She was gone … but he had little doubt that she would return. He had seen the look on her face in the Osprey.

  He had to get up. Get up, get dressed, go tell someone what he knew before she came for him. Denny sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and stumbled to the sink across the room. He cupped some water in his mouth and swallowed grat
efully; his throat was no longer quite so parched, his head a little clearer. He was naked; second order of business to get on some clothes. Didn’t the doctor say that his stuff was over there?

  He walked across the cold floor to push aside the screen. Two bodies lay side-by-side on adjacent gurneys. He fought back the urge to vomit and was thankful for the sheets that covered them; he could tell that not much was left of either corpse.

  There were four large plastic boxes on the counter under the medical cabinets; in them was the clothing he had worn, plus those belonging to the others. As he pawed through one of the boxes, groggily searching for his undershorts, he found the gronker he had been wearing. The one marked NIXON; he picked it up, stared blearily at it, then placed it on the counter and reached into another box. Here, the one Tiffany had worn, marked STEINBERG. Good; he would need to show them to Cooper and the others to convince them of his story.

  He placed her gronker back on top of her clothes, then returned his attention to his own clothing. He was about to step into his trousers when he heard the curtain slide back behind him. Denny began to turn around when the hard muzzle of a .22 Beretta was pressed against the side of his head and he heard Tiffany Nixon whisper, “Don’t move.”

  He gasped involuntarily, but froze in place. “Tiffany,” he murmured, not daring to even look back at her. “Figured you might be …”

  “Shut up,” she hissed. “Just get dressed.”

  The barrel of the revolver was removed from his skull and he heard her step away. He glanced across the counter, looking for something nice and lethal to throw at her. “Don’t even think about it,” Tiffany commanded, her voice raised a little more loudly now. “The building’s empty, so no one will hear if I shoot you in the back. Just hurry up and get dressed. We’re going for a little walk in the swamp, you and I.”