Dust fluttered about them as the skeeters touched down, and the penned chamels brayed even louder.
Jessica climbed up the ramp to look down at them. "Get along little doggies," she sang to herself. "It"s your misfortune . . . "
"All right!" Justin said, slapping his hands together. She jumped, startled-he had made his approach silently. "What"s left on the chart for today?"
"We"ve done enough work for today." Her back still ached from digging trike pits, but she had to love him. What an eager beaver. It was getting easier to relate to Justin. The bad times, at least the really bad ones, seemed behind them.
"I think we"ve got time to lay for the spider devils. What do you say?"
She peered up into the sky. Tau Ceti was still bright and high. "We"ve got five hours of daylight. Have a spot in mind?"
Chaka raised a huge finger. "How "bout the heavy patch, about two klicks from where we trapped the chamels?"
"Some folks would say we were too close to water," Justin reminded him.
Jessica laughed. "Older folks. I"d bet."
"Yup."
Chaka waved nonchalantly. "We"ll use motion sensors and a backup team.
Thermal, if you want them, Justin."
"Well . . . the spider devils seem to like the area. Grendels would eat them if they could catch them." He pitched a rock off across the horizon. "I guess we can handle it."
Jessica slapped him on the back. That"s my unbrother. "Sounds like a plan."
As Justin and Jessica ate lunch a pair of skeeters rose and swept away toward the east. Another came in with a load of chamel chow.
"Quite an operation," he said.
The fences were already sealed again. Unlike the main camp, here there were no pa.s.sive boundaries-but they did have an electrified fence, twenty-four-hour guards, movement sensors, and a fortified, grendel-proof shelter.
The shelter was Quonset-hut-shaped, and certified grendel-proof by Colonel Cadmann Weyland. Jessica felt an odd mixture of security and disgust when she remembered the way he had tested the crystal-filament-reinforced plastic constructions . . .
Memory: Blackship Island was gray and rocky, just a spur, really. It held one of the relay stations constructed between Camelot and the mainland. A skeeter pad. Emergency supplies. A stormproof shelter.
The waves shot foam high into the air where they slapped up against the rocks that day. Jessica looked up at her father where he sat beside her. His face seemed as gray as the rock, as gray as the sky.
They had said little to each other since the day she planted the disrupter in his home. The day she had betrayed their relationship.
Two skeeters flew in from the north, their flight patterns carefully timed and synchronized, one flown by Evan Castaneda and the other by Aaron. Cargo hoists with specimen slings hung beneath each skeeter.
Jessica"s heartbeat accelerated at the thought of what was about to happen.
Cadmann spoke casually. "Let"s have Skeeter Seven first." Aaron"s craft hovered overhead, and wenched down its load.
Eleven feet of fang and gray scales and claws and spiked tail lay in that sling. A grendel. Type 6 was the color of gray mud; otherwise not very different from the now extinct Camelot grendels, but with a down-turned double hook at the tail . . . and a solemn, brooding mouth, where holos of the Camelot horrors showed a demon"s grin. Chaka strode up to it, hunkered down, and peered into its eyes.
They were open, staring, sightless.
Or were they? Could anyone really say what was happening in the depths of its quasi-reptilian mind? They knew enough to be certain that a few volts of electricity trickling through its sleep centers would keep it quiescent.
"The jaw," Chaka said. "The hinges. See what I meant? Its bite gets more powerful leverage than the Camelot grendel, but it takes a smaller bite."
Her father was holding his breath as he examined the grendel. Given any excuse, he would kick the grendel, shoot it, inflict some indignity upon it that would be one one-millionth as devastating as what had happened to him all those years ago.
But it wouldn"t happen-her father was not a man for futile gestures.
The grendel slumbered on.
Chaka nodded, and Cadmann waved the motionless cargo back into the air. Aaron raised it, and then dropped the bundle down through a hatch in the prefabricated dome. If this test went well, these domes would eventually dot the mainland.
This dome was twenty feet in diameter and seven feet high, made of prefabricated sections that slotted together in minutes. They had spiked and chained it into the rock.
Cadmann cut the line. Skeeter VII spun away and landed on its triple size pad. Aaron bounded out, his long, tanned face intense.
"Any problems?" Cadmann asked.
"No. Not really," Aaron replied. A slight edge of anxiety belied his words. "She"s been on ice for seven hours, waiting for your call. Ca.s.sandra identified the grendel hole, and then we just trapped the b.i.t.c.h."
b.i.t.c.h? Jessica thought. He"s never called a grendel b.i.t.c.h before. He said that for Dad.
Cadmann nodded. "All right. Let"s do this."
Skeeter II swung into position. Its winch distended, to lower a second grendel into the shelter. They detached the wire.
They sealed the shelter, closed the door, and bolted it shut. Skeeter II landed.
Jessica noticed Cadmann"s expression. No doubt about it, he was enjoying this. "Shall we go?" he asked.
There was no hesitation. Chaka climbed in with Evan. Cadmann and Jessica chose Aaron"s skeeter. The autogyros retired to a prudent distance.
"Ca.s.sandra," Cadmann said. "Visual."
A square of holographic window opened. Suddenly, they were peering into the dome.
The two sleeping grendels were curled in their nets, looking almost peaceful. The larger one was gray, the smaller a mossy greenish brown. That one was a Type 3. Her tail was a crown of spikes. Her long toes were built for climbing trees. Unusual: most grendels couldn"t climb.
She looked to be easy meat for the gray.
Cadmann cleared his throat. "Ca.s.sandra," he said. "Please record all angles."
"Yes, Cadmann." It seemed to Jessica that Ca.s.sandra"s voice sounded just a little like her mother"s.
"Terminate current."
"Yes, Cadmann," Ca.s.sandra said.
Cadmann took a deep breath. He seemed very peaceful.
"Trigger speed," he said.
A small aerosol can on the inside of the dome began to spray a pink mist.
Speed was the grendel secret. It was an oxygenating agent rivaling rocket fuel in potency, a chemical secreted in sacs in the grendel"s back. Grendels running on speed burned energy faster than any creature born of Earth.
And the smell of speed was the smell of a challenger. It triggered a territorial response, a hyperexcited combat readiness more powerful than any mere hunting mode. It drove grendels insane.
The can hissed as its contents were released.
Above the dome, the humans hovered in their skeeters. Waiting.
The smaller grendel woke first.
They watched its eyes widen. Its tongue darted in and out twice.
"It should have flashed." Cadmann sounded puzzled.
The green grendel should have flown instantly to the attack. Instead, the first thing it did was retreat, banging into the wall, thrashing and hissing. It scrabbled, seeking a way out, finding none. Finally, it turned and faced the larger beast, its spiked tail raised a little from the ground almost, like a scorpion"s.
"That"s very odd," Aaron said quietly. "It almost seems to be thinking, doesn"t it? Judging the odds?"
"It knew it couldn"t win," Jessica said.
Cadmann looked at them from the corner of his eye, but said nothing.
Then the gray grendel woke.
Its eyes snapped onto the green one, and in that moment the smaller grendel sprang.
The screen became a blur of blood and fang. Blood clotted the camera.
They could see nothing.
"Ca.s.sandra. Aerial view." From above, the walls shuddered and shook, but held.
"Take us down," Cadmann said.
By the time that they touched down, the screams from within the shelter were almost as loud as the rotor.
Cadmann took his rifle down from the side rack, and examined the charge. Lethal.
The noises from the shelter were dying down now. One last sobbing roar rose to a hissing crescendo. Then there was a crack, followed by a series of wet crunching sounds. Then a single, dying hiss.
Jessica stared at the holographic image. "Good G.o.d."
"When two tigers fight," Cadmann said, "one dies, and the other is crippled. Chinese proverb." The raw satisfaction in his voice frightened her.
Aaron nodded. "What now?"
"Open the gate," Cadmann said.
Aaron approached the dome. Scarlet oozed from between the cracks at the bottom of the dome. Something within the dome made a rhythmic wheezing sound.
"Open it, dammit."
Aaron unbolted the door, and swung it open.
The air thickened with the blended stench of speed and scorched alien blood.
The interior of the dome was smeared with viscera. The smaller grendel was reduced almost to chunks. The larger had been ripped open. Her intestines spilled out in gray coils. She bit at them, snapping and chewing with a blunt, bloodied snout. She made crying sounds.
The grendel raised its head unsteadily, staring directly at Jessica.
Jessica raised her rifle and shot it once in the head with an explosive dart. With a short, sharp, ugly sound the grendel"s head splashed open, spattering blood and brains for meters in every direction. The ruined body quivered once, and then was still.
Cadmann peered inside, and nodded in satisfaction. He slapped the outside of the dome.
"Every joint held," he said calmly. "This dome is officially p.r.o.nounced grendel-proof."
Jessica bent over and vomited.
Chapter 21.
THE ROUNDUP.
Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
FRANCIS BACON, "Of Nature in Men," Essays
Justin sometimes felt as if he were tap-dancing through a minefield when he talked with Jessica. There were subjects that were simply taboo: Her relationship with Aaron. Her relationship with Cadmann. Her relationship with Justin.
Ouch.
Katya had come over with a plate of beans. She pinched him again.
He let his pensive mood fade. "Hi, Kat."
She bowed, and sat next to him. Her flannel shirt rubbed against his shoulder. Tau Ceti was particularly fierce, and the distant mountains wavered in the heat.