Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall by Thomas P Hopp
CHAPTER 13
So this is the dwelling place of hoonahs.
Gar, the Kra, cautiously piloted his fighter-walker up to the rear of the house, his hand tense on the firing-control joystick. Only when he was sure there were no hoonahs in the vicinity of the dwelling place or its outlying structures did he relax. Settling his quahka down on its haunches, he opened the canopy.
No hoonahs. That is disappointing. Nevertheless, to be safe from ambush he took his tintza rifle along as he stepped out of the fighter. He inspected the area around the shattered back of the dwelling. It looked as if a tarrocha had been there. The great three-toed tracks on the ground and the gaping hole in the wall of the hoonah structure told the story.
Unfortunate. The tarrocha had probably eaten the inhabitants only a short time before Gar came to look for them himself.
At least I will learn how they lived before the tarrocha made them his meal.
Gar went inside, stepping gingerly over the broken wood and glass, guessing that he had entered a room in which food was prepared. There were countertops large enough to butcher and trim meat, a washing station, and what seemed to be a heating device for food. But all this was of little interest to Gar. He had no great desire to study hoonah eating habits. His dissections had already taught him they were omnivores. It was the social life of the hoonahs that he sought to study, to gain an understanding of their minds—and their souls, if they had any.
Tintza rifle at the ready, he entered the next room. It was larger than the food preparation room with several pieces of sitting-furniture arranged around a small glass table in the center. There was a chair constructed of wooden slats, which responded to his touch by rocking back and forth on two bent rails. Ingenious. And there were large and small stuffed chairs. None of these was remotely like Kra furniture. There was no place to put one’s tail. Peculiar, these hoonahs.
On one wall was a massive masonry structure of round river-stones with a large recess for burning wood. This seemed a primitive way to heat a domicile, but perhaps effective. Above the fire-opening was the sort of thing Gar sought. In a rectangular frame of polished wood was a flat image, a portrait of three hoonahs. A family, no doubt. Two adults sat on a wide stuffed chair with a hatchling between them. Gar presumed the large hoonah was the dominant male of the household and the somewhat smaller one the female. The offspring favored its mother in appearance and so must have been a juvenile female. This smaller creature was wrapped in the embrace of its mother and touched lovingly on the shoulder by its father. Gar’s heart warmed. This is what I have come here for. The behavior revealed in this image suggests intelligence and the same tenderness Kra parents display toward their own chicks. This picture will renew my debate with Oogon and Saurgon. I will take it as proof that hoonahs have feelings, families and home-lives much like ours. It will enable me to win my argument that even lowly hoonahs are worthy inhabitants of Eka, not mere vermin to be swept aside.
The faces of the three hoonahs gave Gar pause. They were unlovely to his Kra sensibilities and curiously contorted, their mouths arching upward with teeth showing. Had the creatures not looked so alien and repulsive to him, he might have guessed their faces registered some sort of pleasure. Most curious. He set his tintza rifle on the glass table and took the image down from its hanging place to inspect the creatures’ mysterious clothing and adornments.
Hoonahs. They will take some getting used to. If Oogon allows any to survive.
Gar attempted to reproduce their facial expression with his own mouth but found his lengthy jaws unable to mimic the odd configuration. He cocked his head from side to side, the better to focus on this intriguing image of hoonah love. It occurred to him that he would sit for such a portrait himself someday soon with Gana and their first nestlings.
His mind drifted momentarily up to Noqui, inside the pyramid and inside a chamber not far beneath the light cannon dome. That was where he had last seen his mate.
Gana, my love, Gar thought, it has been too long since we did the mating dance. The eggs growing within you force you to remain in the fortress above while I do battle against these poor hoonahs. In my dreams I see you settled on our nesting couch, more beautiful than any other Kra female. I half-believe Oogon insisted on attacking now just to separate us at your time of laying. I fear he has a desire for you that he does not speak—one he dare not display in any dance. But I have seen him look at you. His eyes fall too warmly on you, and too harshly on me.
When Gar had last entered their nesting quarters, his intention to approach Gana quietly had been thwarted by the clatter of his breast armor. She had been sleeping, as was her habit lately, but the sounds roused her into a full greeting display. She had half-risen from the nest couch, dipping her breast low and fanning out her arm feathers in front of her. The display of green-on-black iridescence had dazzled his eyes and made his heart pound with excitement. The length and beauty of her arm feathers, which would cover the nest and warm his hatchlings, filled him with pride and desire. His rapture had increased when Gana raised her head atop her gloriously long neck and uttered her greeting call, “Ah-keeah!” She had blinked her ochre eyes with such coy provocation that Gar felt instinctually compelled to start the mating dance. His legs, without so much as a conscious thought, had begun a stiff strut across the floor. He had reflexively raised his own head high, turning his crest right and left in the mating ritual. Finally he had raised his arms to display—
The mood had broken at that moment. He had immediately ceased his dance and Gana had settled back on the nest couch. They had seen the same thing at the same time. Gar’s arm feathers, the long, nest-covering feathers that should have fanned out from his forearms, were gone. Of course they were. Nesting feathers were a hindrance to warriors. They interfered with hand-to-hand combat and fit poorly in the cockpit of a fighter-walker. As all warriors did, Gar had plucked them out. Only the short, black contour feathers remained on his arms. If Gana had not been filled with fragile eggs, she too would have plucked her nesting feathers and prepared for war. But along with those other Kra females who were already pregnant, she was to stay behind. Gar had contented himself with nuzzling her, preening the mane-feathers on the nape of her neck and inhaling her delicate sweet scent one last time. It had been a quiet farewell.
Gar sighed. By now she may have already laid the first egg. He would miss her dearly until the day she came down on one of the last flights, when victory was in hand.
A thumping noise brought Gar back to the present time and place. He wheeled around as the front door of the dwelling swung open. There, not five paces away, stood a hoonah. It wore a green cap and an expression Gar guessed was surprise. It reacted quickly and raised a weapon similar to a tintza rifle, pointing the barrel at Gar’s chest. It shouted hoonah words, incomprehensible, but Gar guessed they were an order not to move. He glanced at his tintza rifle lying just beyond reach on the small table—and held still.
“Don’t move!” Chase had shouted after opening the front door and covering the creature with his rifle. Now he called, “Hey, Kit! Doctor O! Get in here quick.”
Kit came inside, followed closely by the doctor. Both gasped at what they saw. Kit stopped just behind Chase with her rifle at the ready. The animal hissed at the rifles, gaping its reptilian jaws and displaying rows of curved fangs. It arched its long neck and flared a mane of iridescent greenish-black feathers like hackles on a monstrous fighting cock, while its crested head nearly touched the ceiling crossbeams eight feet above the floor.
Uttering a series of frightful cackling sounds, it took a step forward. Chase realized he had approached the creature too closely. He backed up but the pteronychus lunged and with the sweep of a clawed hand, knocked the rifle from his grasp. As the 30-06 clattered into a corner of the room a second swift arm movement caught Chase by the shoulder and threw him roughly to the floor. He landed flat on his back, leaving Kit face-to-face with the monster. She shrank away but raised her rifle and aimed at its face. It took a step toward
her but stopped, realizing it couldn’t reach her before she fired.
“Shoot!” Chase called from the floor.
Kit aimed the 30-30 squarely between the beast’s eyes, backing away and jostling against Dr. Ogilvey, who was right behind her.
“Shoot!” Chase called again but Kit hesitated. She was distracted by what the creature held in its hands. “Of all things,” she murmured incredulously, “it’s got our family photograph.”
After a moment the creature calmed down, its feather mane flattening against its neck. It closed its mouth and cocked its head to one side, giving her a curious, birdish look, blinking its yellow eye at her unthreateningly.
“What are you waiting for?” Chase hissed. “Shoot!”
Instead, Kit lowered the rifle. “We— I don’t want to hurt you,” she said to the thing.
Chase had fallen near the coffee table where the creature’s rifle lay. As the creature faced off with Kit, he surreptitiously got to his hands and knees and then lunged at the coffee table. He grabbed the weapon and leveled it at the creature.
“Don’t move!” he shouted, but this had the opposite effect. The animal’s hackles flared again and it made another lightning-swift lunge at him. This time Chase was quicker. He squeezed the trigger of the weapon and a bolt of blue-white electricity arced from the barrel, crackling through the air to meet the creature. Lines of electricity danced across its head and chest, convulsing it for an instant. Then it toppled over backwards and crashed heavily to the floor.
Chase released the trigger and the bolt ceased. The pteronychus writhed for a moment with wisps of smoke rising where the electric arc had touched it. Then it lay still.
Chase stood up and looked at the weapon in his hands. “Jeez,” he said, “what is this thing?”
Ogilvey paid him scant attention. Rushing past Kit and bending over the motionless pteronychus he wailed, “You’ve killed it! It was trying to talk to us!”
“Or take a bite out of somebody,” Chase retorted.
Ogilvey knelt and gazed into one of the animal’s half-closed eyes. He listened carefully and then his expression brightened. “It’s still breathing!”
A soft hissing noise came from the creature’s open mouth. Its chest rose and fell inside its breast armor in slow, deep breaths. Its long tongue lolled on the floor.
“Whew,” Ogilvey sighed. “It’s just unconscious.”
Chase set the alien rifle on the coffee table and picked up his own. “There may be more of them around here,” he said. “I don’t want to be taken by surprise again.” He moved swiftly into the kitchen and went out through the hole in the wall to where the creature’s walking machine was hunkered in the driveway. As he scanned the area outside the kitchen, Kit turned and did the same out the front door, shrugging to indicate nothing was out of the ordinary. Chase went in and methodically searched the house, first downstairs and then up.
“The house is clear,” he said as he came down the stairs. Seeing Ogilvey bent over the creature, intently studying every inch of its body, Chase pointed his rifle at it. “Don’t you think we should finish this thing off before it comes to?”
“Absolutely not,” Ogilvey bristled. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“What are you talking about?” Chase protested. “This is the opportunity to be dead.”
“I’m surprised at you,” Ogilvey huffed. “A wildlife biologist—a species reintroduction specialist, no less. How can you fail to take an interest in such a magnificent creature?”
“Right now,” Chase muttered, “I’m worried it’ll take an interest in us as food. Look at those teeth.”
“Yes, yes, the fangs,” Ogilvey said, turning his attention back to the creature. “Teeth can tell you much about an animal.” He began counting fangs. “One, two, three on the premaxillary plus one, two, three, four, five-six-seven-eight on the maxillary. Yes, this is definitely a pteronychus.” He looked up and grinned broadly at Chase, who shook his head dubiously. “Come on, Mr. Wildlife Biologist! You can’t tell me this beautiful specimen doesn’t hold the least bit of fascination for you.”
“Some other time, maybe.”
Ogilvey continued to study the creature, leaning close and adjusting his spectacles to observe one of its hands. “Magnificent unguals! Look at the razor sharpness of those claws. Three digits: a thumb and two fingers. A typical maniraptoran hand. Good for grasping, tearing…”
“Would you cut it out?” Chase fumed. “It just about took my head off with those claws, or didn’t you notice?”
Ogilvey continued his inspection, ignoring Chase and moving to the animal’s feet. “Three-toed, bird-like, with a small dew-claw in back…”
Chase turned to Kit to appeal for reason, but just then a thought struck her. “Hey,” she exclaimed, “we might be safer now that we’ve got a hostage.”
“Hostage?” Chase shook his head. “Seems to me they’re calling the shots around here, not us. And how do you suggest we keep him? Tell him not to knock a hole in the wall without first asking pretty please?”
“Of course not,” she replied. “There’s plenty of wire and chains in the barn. We’ll tie him up.” She motioned for Chase to follow and went out through the kitchen toward the barn. Outside, Kit paused beside the empty fighting machine and pointed at the emblem on the silver fuselage: a pair of crossed sago palm fronds inlaid in dark green enamel. “That design was on the machine that saved us from the utahraptors. Do you think it’s the same driver?”
Chase shrugged. “He was probably saving us for a midnight snack.”
She broke into a grin. “You’re incorrigible. But there’s something special going on with this guy, don’t you think?”
Chase thought for a moment but nothing sensible came to mind. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get those chains.”
In the barn’s tack room they gathered some hoops of baling wire and several lengths of heavy chain. Kit even found an old padlock and key to secure their hostage. When they brought the gear into the house, Ogilvey was still kneeling beside the unconscious dinosaur, which lay between the coffee table and the fireplace. He stared at it in overawed silence. As they set the shackles down in a pile near the pteronychus, Ogilvey smiled. “I can’t believe what this old scientist’s eyes are privileged to see.”
He addressed the beast itself. “It’s astonishing that you and I should meet in the flesh. You don’t know how long I’ve worked, how often I’ve wondered what you would be like.”
Kit and Chase built a makeshift manacle from the baling wire and chain, which they used to bind the animal’s wrists. Then they ran a longer chain through the manacle and wrapped it around the nearest of the sturdy pine-trunk columns that supported the ceiling beams. Not until they had run another length of chain around both ankles and looped it around the post did Chase finally feel comfortable pausing to take a good look at the creature. He and Kit sat down on the couch while Ogilvey, ever the professor, began a running discourse.
“What we have here,” he grinned, “is the height of dinosaurian evolution, the counterpart of what Homo sapiens is among mammals.” He leaned over the creature, nearer than Chase thought sensible, his owlish eyes round with excitement. “It seems more like a bird than a reptile, doesn’t it? Yes!” He answered his own question. “Rather like a big, beautiful cassowary with just a bit of crocodile thrown in for teeth and tail. In fact,” he held up a rhetorical finger, “it is indeed an intermediate stage between those two, evolutionarily speaking.”
He moved to the head, from which the tongue still lolled and the eyes remained closed. “This crest is every bit as tall as a cassowary’s. Perhaps a bit taller. And these facial colors, glorious! Look at the yellow stripe of skin and short feathers surrounding the eye, and these stripes of black, orange and scarlet on the crest.” He moved a finger just above each feature as he described it, his nearness to the formidable jaws causing Chase to shake his head.
“But the teeth,” he went on, “are muc
h more advanced than crocodilian teeth, most assuredly the teeth of a theropod dinosaur.” He moved his pointing fingertip a fraction of an inch above them. “Note the recurved shape, the serrations along the edges, much like steak knives. Perfect for cutting flesh.”
Kit shuddered. “All that and intelligent too.”
“Yes, highly intelligent, from the look of that machine outside. But notice the variety of feathers,” Ogilvey enthused like a child looking over a new toy. “Nothing I excavated ever had a trace of feathers. The fossilization process rarely preserves them. But look at this fellow. He’s got black contour feathers over most of his body, just like a crow. They must be for heat retention.” He lifted one of the animal’s hands and felt the scaly dark brown skin. “Yes, it’s as warm-blooded as a bird.”
Chase pointed at the breast armor encasing the creature’s chest. “There’s a bit of Roman warrior about him too.”
“Yes!” exclaimed the professor. “Torso enclosed in shining silver metal. Shoulder guards, breastplate and two flank plates, all inlayed in ornate green enamel designs highlighting the contours of the armor and the body it covers. This crossed palm-frond design, inlayed over the heart—it looks familiar.”
“That’s the armor we saw up close on the one who came to look for us in the temple,” said Kit. “It must have been this one.”
“Yes,” said Ogilvey. “Yes, yes, of course. But I feel I must be dreaming. Here is the height of Cretaceous evolution, come to visit me. I could never have hoped to see this, though I’ve worked all my life.” Words failed the paleontologist. He choked up and went a little dewy-eyed, drawing a handkerchief from a pocket to wipe his steamed glasses. Putting them on again, he leaned near the creature’s face. “How can you be back on earth with us?” he said. “I have a million questions.”
Suddenly the creature’s eyelid opened. Startled, Ogilvey fell over backward. Chase grabbed his rifle and covered the animal.
Kit clapped her hands and laughed at the flustered paleontologist. “A million questions, Dr. O? Why don’t you ask him!”
So this is the dwelling place of hoonahs.
Gar, the Kra, cautiously piloted his fighter-walker up to the rear of the house, his hand tense on the firing-control joystick. Only when he was sure there were no hoonahs in the vicinity of the dwelling place or its outlying structures did he relax. Settling his quahka down on its haunches, he opened the canopy.
No hoonahs. That is disappointing. Nevertheless, to be safe from ambush he took his tintza rifle along as he stepped out of the fighter. He inspected the area around the shattered back of the dwelling. It looked as if a tarrocha had been there. The great three-toed tracks on the ground and the gaping hole in the wall of the hoonah structure told the story.
Unfortunate. The tarrocha had probably eaten the inhabitants only a short time before Gar came to look for them himself.
At least I will learn how they lived before the tarrocha made them his meal.
Gar went inside, stepping gingerly over the broken wood and glass, guessing that he had entered a room in which food was prepared. There were countertops large enough to butcher and trim meat, a washing station, and what seemed to be a heating device for food. But all this was of little interest to Gar. He had no great desire to study hoonah eating habits. His dissections had already taught him they were omnivores. It was the social life of the hoonahs that he sought to study, to gain an understanding of their minds—and their souls, if they had any.
Tintza rifle at the ready, he entered the next room. It was larger than the food preparation room with several pieces of sitting-furniture arranged around a small glass table in the center. There was a chair constructed of wooden slats, which responded to his touch by rocking back and forth on two bent rails. Ingenious. And there were large and small stuffed chairs. None of these was remotely like Kra furniture. There was no place to put one’s tail. Peculiar, these hoonahs.
On one wall was a massive masonry structure of round river-stones with a large recess for burning wood. This seemed a primitive way to heat a domicile, but perhaps effective. Above the fire-opening was the sort of thing Gar sought. In a rectangular frame of polished wood was a flat image, a portrait of three hoonahs. A family, no doubt. Two adults sat on a wide stuffed chair with a hatchling between them. Gar presumed the large hoonah was the dominant male of the household and the somewhat smaller one the female. The offspring favored its mother in appearance and so must have been a juvenile female. This smaller creature was wrapped in the embrace of its mother and touched lovingly on the shoulder by its father. Gar’s heart warmed. This is what I have come here for. The behavior revealed in this image suggests intelligence and the same tenderness Kra parents display toward their own chicks. This picture will renew my debate with Oogon and Saurgon. I will take it as proof that hoonahs have feelings, families and home-lives much like ours. It will enable me to win my argument that even lowly hoonahs are worthy inhabitants of Eka, not mere vermin to be swept aside.
The faces of the three hoonahs gave Gar pause. They were unlovely to his Kra sensibilities and curiously contorted, their mouths arching upward with teeth showing. Had the creatures not looked so alien and repulsive to him, he might have guessed their faces registered some sort of pleasure. Most curious. He set his tintza rifle on the glass table and took the image down from its hanging place to inspect the creatures’ mysterious clothing and adornments.
Hoonahs. They will take some getting used to. If Oogon allows any to survive.
Gar attempted to reproduce their facial expression with his own mouth but found his lengthy jaws unable to mimic the odd configuration. He cocked his head from side to side, the better to focus on this intriguing image of hoonah love. It occurred to him that he would sit for such a portrait himself someday soon with Gana and their first nestlings.
His mind drifted momentarily up to Noqui, inside the pyramid and inside a chamber not far beneath the light cannon dome. That was where he had last seen his mate.
Gana, my love, Gar thought, it has been too long since we did the mating dance. The eggs growing within you force you to remain in the fortress above while I do battle against these poor hoonahs. In my dreams I see you settled on our nesting couch, more beautiful than any other Kra female. I half-believe Oogon insisted on attacking now just to separate us at your time of laying. I fear he has a desire for you that he does not speak—one he dare not display in any dance. But I have seen him look at you. His eyes fall too warmly on you, and too harshly on me.
When Gar had last entered their nesting quarters, his intention to approach Gana quietly had been thwarted by the clatter of his breast armor. She had been sleeping, as was her habit lately, but the sounds roused her into a full greeting display. She had half-risen from the nest couch, dipping her breast low and fanning out her arm feathers in front of her. The display of green-on-black iridescence had dazzled his eyes and made his heart pound with excitement. The length and beauty of her arm feathers, which would cover the nest and warm his hatchlings, filled him with pride and desire. His rapture had increased when Gana raised her head atop her gloriously long neck and uttered her greeting call, “Ah-keeah!” She had blinked her ochre eyes with such coy provocation that Gar felt instinctually compelled to start the mating dance. His legs, without so much as a conscious thought, had begun a stiff strut across the floor. He had reflexively raised his own head high, turning his crest right and left in the mating ritual. Finally he had raised his arms to display—
The mood had broken at that moment. He had immediately ceased his dance and Gana had settled back on the nest couch. They had seen the same thing at the same time. Gar’s arm feathers, the long, nest-covering feathers that should have fanned out from his forearms, were gone. Of course they were. Nesting feathers were a hindrance to warriors. They interfered with hand-to-hand combat and fit poorly in the cockpit of a fighter-walker. As all warriors did, Gar had plucked them out. Only the short, black contour feathers remained on his arms. If Gana had not been filled with fragile eggs, she too would have plucked her nesting feathers and prepared for war. But along with those other Kra females who were already pregnant, she was to stay behind. Gar had contented himself with nuzzling her, preening the mane-feathers on the nape of her neck and inhaling her delicate sweet scent one last time. It had been a quiet farewell.
Gar sighed. By now she may have already laid the first egg. He would miss her dearly until the day she came down on one of the last flights, when victory was in hand.
A thumping noise brought Gar back to the present time and place. He wheeled around as the front door of the dwelling swung open. There, not five paces away, stood a hoonah. It wore a green cap and an expression Gar guessed was surprise. It reacted quickly and raised a weapon similar to a tintza rifle, pointing the barrel at Gar’s chest. It shouted hoonah words, incomprehensible, but Gar guessed they were an order not to move. He glanced at his tintza rifle lying just beyond reach on the small table—and held still.
“Don’t move!” Chase had shouted after opening the front door and covering the creature with his rifle. Now he called, “Hey, Kit! Doctor O! Get in here quick.”
Kit came inside, followed closely by the doctor. Both gasped at what they saw. Kit stopped just behind Chase with her rifle at the ready. The animal hissed at the rifles, gaping its reptilian jaws and displaying rows of curved fangs. It arched its long neck and flared a mane of iridescent greenish-black feathers like hackles on a monstrous fighting cock, while its crested head nearly touched the ceiling crossbeams eight feet above the floor.
Uttering a series of frightful cackling sounds, it took a step forward. Chase realized he had approached the creature too closely. He backed up but the pteronychus lunged and with the sweep of a clawed hand, knocked the rifle from his grasp. As the 30-06 clattered into a corner of the room a second swift arm movement caught Chase by the shoulder and threw him roughly to the floor. He landed flat on his back, leaving Kit face-to-face with the monster. She shrank away but raised her rifle and aimed at its face. It took a step toward
“Shoot!” Chase called from the floor.
Kit aimed the 30-30 squarely between the beast’s eyes, backing away and jostling against Dr. Ogilvey, who was right behind her.
“Shoot!” Chase called again but Kit hesitated. She was distracted by what the creature held in its hands. “Of all things,” she murmured incredulously, “it’s got our family photograph.”
After a moment the creature calmed down, its feather mane flattening against its neck. It closed its mouth and cocked its head to one side, giving her a curious, birdish look, blinking its yellow eye at her unthreateningly.
“What are you waiting for?” Chase hissed. “Shoot!”
Instead, Kit lowered the rifle. “We— I don’t want to hurt you,” she said to the thing.
Chase had fallen near the coffee table where the creature’s rifle lay. As the creature faced off with Kit, he surreptitiously got to his hands and knees and then lunged at the coffee table. He grabbed the weapon and leveled it at the creature.
“Don’t move!” he shouted, but this had the opposite effect. The animal’s hackles flared again and it made another lightning-swift lunge at him. This time Chase was quicker. He squeezed the trigger of the weapon and a bolt of blue-white electricity arced from the barrel, crackling through the air to meet the creature. Lines of electricity danced across its head and chest, convulsing it for an instant. Then it toppled over backwards and crashed heavily to the floor.
Chase released the trigger and the bolt ceased. The pteronychus writhed for a moment with wisps of smoke rising where the electric arc had touched it. Then it lay still.
Chase stood up and looked at the weapon in his hands. “Jeez,” he said, “what is this thing?”
Ogilvey paid him scant attention. Rushing past Kit and bending over the motionless pteronychus he wailed, “You’ve killed it! It was trying to talk to us!”
“Or take a bite out of somebody,” Chase retorted.
Ogilvey knelt and gazed into one of the animal’s half-closed eyes. He listened carefully and then his expression brightened. “It’s still breathing!”
A soft hissing noise came from the creature’s open mouth. Its chest rose and fell inside its breast armor in slow, deep breaths. Its long tongue lolled on the floor.
“Whew,” Ogilvey sighed. “It’s just unconscious.”
Chase set the alien rifle on the coffee table and picked up his own. “There may be more of them around here,” he said. “I don’t want to be taken by surprise again.” He moved swiftly into the kitchen and went out through the hole in the wall to where the creature’s walking machine was hunkered in the driveway. As he scanned the area outside the kitchen, Kit turned and did the same out the front door, shrugging to indicate nothing was out of the ordinary. Chase went in and methodically searched the house, first downstairs and then up.
“The house is clear,” he said as he came down the stairs. Seeing Ogilvey bent over the creature, intently studying every inch of its body, Chase pointed his rifle at it. “Don’t you think we should finish this thing off before it comes to?”
“Absolutely not,” Ogilvey bristled. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“What are you talking about?” Chase protested. “This is the opportunity to be dead.”
“I’m surprised at you,” Ogilvey huffed. “A wildlife biologist—a species reintroduction specialist, no less. How can you fail to take an interest in such a magnificent creature?”
“Right now,” Chase muttered, “I’m worried it’ll take an interest in us as food. Look at those teeth.”
“Yes, yes, the fangs,” Ogilvey said, turning his attention back to the creature. “Teeth can tell you much about an animal.” He began counting fangs. “One, two, three on the premaxillary plus one, two, three, four, five-six-seven-eight on the maxillary. Yes, this is definitely a pteronychus.” He looked up and grinned broadly at Chase, who shook his head dubiously. “Come on, Mr. Wildlife Biologist! You can’t tell me this beautiful specimen doesn’t hold the least bit of fascination for you.”
“Some other time, maybe.”
Ogilvey continued to study the creature, leaning close and adjusting his spectacles to observe one of its hands. “Magnificent unguals! Look at the razor sharpness of those claws. Three digits: a thumb and two fingers. A typical maniraptoran hand. Good for grasping, tearing…”
“Would you cut it out?” Chase fumed. “It just about took my head off with those claws, or didn’t you notice?”
Ogilvey continued his inspection, ignoring Chase and moving to the animal’s feet. “Three-toed, bird-like, with a small dew-claw in back…”
Chase turned to Kit to appeal for reason, but just then a thought struck her. “Hey,” she exclaimed, “we might be safer now that we’ve got a hostage.”
“Hostage?” Chase shook his head. “Seems to me they’re calling the shots around here, not us. And how do you suggest we keep him? Tell him not to knock a hole in the wall without first asking pretty please?”
“Of course not,” she replied. “There’s plenty of wire and chains in the barn. We’ll tie him up.” She motioned for Chase to follow and went out through the kitchen toward the barn. Outside, Kit paused beside the empty fighting machine and pointed at the emblem on the silver fuselage: a pair of crossed sago palm fronds inlaid in dark green enamel. “That design was on the machine that saved us from the utahraptors. Do you think it’s the same driver?”
Chase shrugged. “He was probably saving us for a midnight snack.”
She broke into a grin. “You’re incorrigible. But there’s something special going on with this guy, don’t you think?”
Chase thought for a moment but nothing sensible came to mind. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get those chains.”
In the barn’s tack room they gathered some hoops of baling wire and several lengths of heavy chain. Kit even found an old padlock and key to secure their hostage. When they brought the gear into the house, Ogilvey was still kneeling beside the unconscious dinosaur, which lay between the coffee table and the fireplace. He stared at it in overawed silence. As they set the shackles down in a pile near the pteronychus, Ogilvey smiled. “I can’t believe what this old scientist’s eyes are privileged to see.”
He addressed the beast itself. “It’s astonishing that you and I should meet in the flesh. You don’t know how long I’ve worked, how often I’ve wondered what you would be like.”
Kit and Chase built a makeshift manacle from the baling wire and chain, which they used to bind the animal’s wrists. Then they ran a longer chain through the manacle and wrapped it around the nearest of the sturdy pine-trunk columns that supported the ceiling beams. Not until they had run another length of chain around both ankles and looped it around the post did Chase finally feel comfortable pausing to take a good look at the creature. He and Kit sat down on the couch while Ogilvey, ever the professor, began a running discourse.
“What we have here,” he grinned, “is the height of dinosaurian evolution, the counterpart of what Homo sapiens is among mammals.” He leaned over the creature, nearer than Chase thought sensible, his owlish eyes round with excitement. “It seems more like a bird than a reptile, doesn’t it? Yes!” He answered his own question. “Rather like a big, beautiful cassowary with just a bit of crocodile thrown in for teeth and tail. In fact,” he held up a rhetorical finger, “it is indeed an intermediate stage between those two, evolutionarily speaking.”
He moved to the head, from which the tongue still lolled and the eyes remained closed. “This crest is every bit as tall as a cassowary’s. Perhaps a bit taller. And these facial colors, glorious! Look at the yellow stripe of skin and short feathers surrounding the eye, and these stripes of black, orange and scarlet on the crest.” He moved a finger just above each feature as he described it, his nearness to the formidable jaws causing Chase to shake his head.
“But the teeth,” he went on, “are muc
Kit shuddered. “All that and intelligent too.”
“Yes, highly intelligent, from the look of that machine outside. But notice the variety of feathers,” Ogilvey enthused like a child looking over a new toy. “Nothing I excavated ever had a trace of feathers. The fossilization process rarely preserves them. But look at this fellow. He’s got black contour feathers over most of his body, just like a crow. They must be for heat retention.” He lifted one of the animal’s hands and felt the scaly dark brown skin. “Yes, it’s as warm-blooded as a bird.”
Chase pointed at the breast armor encasing the creature’s chest. “There’s a bit of Roman warrior about him too.”
“Yes!” exclaimed the professor. “Torso enclosed in shining silver metal. Shoulder guards, breastplate and two flank plates, all inlayed in ornate green enamel designs highlighting the contours of the armor and the body it covers. This crossed palm-frond design, inlayed over the heart—it looks familiar.”
“That’s the armor we saw up close on the one who came to look for us in the temple,” said Kit. “It must have been this one.”
“Yes,” said Ogilvey. “Yes, yes, of course. But I feel I must be dreaming. Here is the height of Cretaceous evolution, come to visit me. I could never have hoped to see this, though I’ve worked all my life.” Words failed the paleontologist. He choked up and went a little dewy-eyed, drawing a handkerchief from a pocket to wipe his steamed glasses. Putting them on again, he leaned near the creature’s face. “How can you be back on earth with us?” he said. “I have a million questions.”
Suddenly the creature’s eyelid opened. Startled, Ogilvey fell over backward. Chase grabbed his rifle and covered the animal.
Kit clapped her hands and laughed at the flustered paleontologist. “A million questions, Dr. O? Why don’t you ask him!”