Read Online Delta Pavonis by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani - Free Book Online Page B

make them, too. Keep close, keep low and try not to attract attention. Pretend this is a war and we're moving through enemy territory. Until we know more about the habits of these creatures, we'll assume that they attack motion, smell, anything. Try to keep out of sight and keep downwind of the big ones. Don't forget to scan overhead." He thought for a moment. "And don't assume that just because an animal is a vegetarian that it can't be mean. Back on Earth, rhinos and bulls and elephants could be plenty rough when they felt provoked. We're intruders here, so act accordingly. Okay, let's move out, same way as before."
    They reshouldered packs and weapons and began to trek inland, away from the cliffs. Dierdre found herself looking and listening harder than she ever had in her life. Her skin was sensitive to the slightest change in the wind and she sniffed the air for any significant smell. It was amazing to have all her senses and faculties engaged at once and she realized that most people go through life half-dead to the world around them. She wondered if this was part of the appeal that so many people found in war, this atavistic sense of hunting and being hunted at the same time.
    It was oddly quiet in the forest. The loudest noise was the clicking and buzzing of insects. They saw no large animals, but once they startled a family of brightly-striped dinosaurs that had been sleeping in the shade. Everyone jumped at the burst of motion, then laughed nervously as they saw that the reptiles stood no more than knee-high. The little creatures stood on two legs with long tails, serpent-like necks and tiny heads. They fled in panic, tails high, into the forest.
    "I wonder what they taste like," Sims said.
    "We'd all like some decent food," Forrest said.
    "But the rules clearly state that explorer teams are not to kill anything unless they're attacked."
    "Do they say," Govinda asked, "that you can't eat it after it's attacked and you've killed it?"
    Forrest thought a moment. "No, I guess not. Nobody'd thought we'd ever run into edible animal life down here. But, hell, you've lived on tank-raised seafood and synthetic meat all your lives. Do you really think you could butcher an animal for food?"
    "I'm a biologist," Fumiyo said. "Biologists don't butcher animals, they dissect them. Hell, yes, I could cut one up and eat it. The stuff we've been eating the last few months would turn Buddha into a cannibal."
    "Get your minds off your stomachs and back on your surroundings," the team leader ordered. "It's still morning. Let's push on."
    Dierdre wondered if they were reverting to primitives in the primordial surroundings. She had never seriously considered killing a live animal and eating it. She felt she should be revolted at the thought. Instead, it made her mouth water.
    The ground began to slope downward, and just before noon they came to a broad swamp. The trees thinned and for a while it looked as if they had been still on solid ground, but the grasses beneath their feet began to squish. Forrest held up his hand, signaling a stop. They had come to the edge of the treeline and beyond was a field of reeds. Here and there they could catch a glimpse of water. In the distance they could see large, slow-moving animals wading in the shallows.
    "It looks peaceful, if primitive," Schubert said.
    Just before them was a tangle of fallen logs, their roots undoubtedly rotted by rising waters from the swamp, all of them felled in a storm so that they lay with their tops in the same direction, their bark bumpy and scaly. The explorers started when one of the "logs" detached itself and glided into the water, parting reeds as it went until it disappeared.
    "Colin," Forrest called, "can you identify it?"
    "I think it was some sort of crocodilian. They were around at the same time as the dinosaurs. I'd say that that one was more than ten meters long, bigger than the surviving crocs. We'd better stay well back from the water. Crocodilians move fast