The Mystery of Ireta_ Dinosaur Planet & Dinosaur Planet Survivors - Anne McCaffrey [27]
Between the camp and the plateau they were heading for, with its coarse ground cover, not quite grass and not really shrub or thicket, was a wide band of rain forest through which Mabel’s ilk passed and where a fang-face was liable to lurk. Far to the east were clouds, signs of volcanic activity. Occasional claps of thunder, not meteorological in origin, rumbled to the sensors of the sled.
They spotted one set of circling scavengers and landed to investigate, but the prey had long since been reduced to a bony structure. Any evidence of beast-gouging was long gone. The dead weren’t carrion long on Ireta. Tenacious insects were riddling the skeleton with industrious pinchers so that even the bones would be gone in the next day. The tougher skull was intact, and Varian, first spraying with antiseptic, examined it.
“One like Mabel?” Paskutti asked as Varian turned the skull from side to side with her boot.
“Crested at any rate. See, the nasal passage extends . . . I’d say Mabel and her kind smell a lot better than they see. Remember her performance this morning?”
“Everything smells on this planet,” replied Paskutti with enough vehemence to cause Varian to look up. She thought he was being humorous, but he was deadly serious.
“Yes, the place stinks, but if she’s used to it, she’d catch the overlying odors and take appropriate action. Yes, it’s her nose that’s her first line of defense.”
She took some three-dimension close-ups and with some effort broke off a piece of the nasal cartilage and a sliver of bone for later study. The skull was too cumbersome to transport.
The scavengers remained aloft, but as soon as Varian lifted the sled, they descended as if they hoped the intruders had discovered something they’d missed on the well-picked carcass.
“Waste not, want not,” Varian muttered under her breath. Life and death on Ireta moved swiftly. Small wonder that Mabel, grievously wounded though she was, had struggled to stay on her feet. Once down, the wounded seldom rose. Had she done Mabel any favors, succoring her so? Or had they merely postponed her early death? No, the wound was healing; the gouging teeth had not incapacitated muscle or broken bone. She’d live and, in time, be completely whole again.
The sled was approaching the general grazing area where they’d found Mabel. Varian cut out the main engine, settling it to hover. The herd was there, all right. Varian caught sight of the mottled hides under the broad and dripping tree leaves, downwind of the creatures. They’d been too precipitous before and scared the herd off, with the exception of Mabel who hadn’t been able to run fast enough.
Varian wondered at the intelligence level of the herbivores. You’d think this species would have learned to set out sentinels, the way animals on other inimical worlds did, to forewarn the main herd of the arrival of dangerous predators. No, the size of the brain in that bare skull had been small, too small, Varian realized, to guide the great beast. A tail brain, perhaps? Long ago, far away, she’d heard of that combination. Not uncommon to have a secondary motor control unit in so large a beast. And then the nasal passages had pushed the brain case back. More smell than sense, that was Mabel!
“I see one, flank-damaged,” said Tardma, peering over the port side. “Recent attack!”
Varian sighted in on Tardma’s beast and suppressed a shudder. She saw the bloodied mess of flank and wondered at the stoicism of the injured beast, chomping away at tree leaves. Hunger transcending pain, she thought. That’s the dominant quest on this planet, the ease of hunger.
“There is another one. An older wound,” Paskutti said, touching Varian’s shoulder to direct her attention.