The Mystery of Ireta_ Dinosaur Planet & Dinosaur Planet Survivors - Anne McCaffrey [41]
From every direction fliers converged on the catch. Some landed, wings slightly spread, to waddle in an ungainly fashion toward the shimmering piles of fish. Others swooped, filled their throat pouches and disappeared into their cliff holes. For all the varied approaches, the dispersal of the catch occasioned no squabbling over choice of fish. As the four watched, there were periods when no fliers were picking over the fish. They did seem to be selective.
“Sharpen the focus on the viewer, Bonnard,” said Varian. “Let’s get some frames of what they didn’t eat . . .”
“Those fringe things, the small ones.”
“Maybe that’s why the fringe fliers were after us. They’d taken their young . . .” said Terilla.
“Nah!” Bonnard was contemptuous. “The fringes hadn’t eyes, much less brains, so how could they be sentimental about their young?”
“I dunno. But we don’t know that they aren’t. Fish could have emotions. I read somewhere that . . .”
“Oh you!” Bonnard gestured her peremptorily to silence.
Varian turned, worrying that his attitude might bother the child since his tone was unwarranted, but she seemed unperturbed. Varian promised herself a few choice words with Bonnard. And then vetoed the notion. The young of every species seemed to work things out among themselves fairly well.
She peered into the viewer herself, to see the rejects. “Some aquatic creatures are capable of loyalties and kindness to their own species, but I’d say that the fringe organism is too primitive yet. They probably spawn millions of eggs in order for a few to survive to adulthood—to spawn again. Our fliers don’t include them in their diet, though. Nor those spiny types. Bonnard, you’ve been helping Trizein and Divisti: take a good look! Seen any of those in the marine samples we’ve given them?”
“No. New ones on me.”
“ ’Course, we sampled from the main oceans . . .” Most of the fliers had disappeared now and only the rejected specimens were left, to rot on the stone.
“Varian, look!” Bonnard, again at the screen, gestured urgently. “I’ve got it lined up . . . look!”
Varian pushed his hand aside as he was so excited he was obscuring the view. One of the small fringers was moving, in that strange fashion, collapsing on one side and flipping over. Then she saw what had excited Bonnard: unsupported by water, its natural element, the internal skeleton of the creature was outlined through its covering. She could plainly see the joints at each corner. It moved by a deformation of parallelograms. It moved once, twice more, and then lay still, its fringes barely undulating, then not at all. How long had it survived without water, Varian wondered? Was it equipped with a dual set of lungs to have lived so long away from what was apparently its natural element? Was this creature on its way out of its aquatic phase, moving onto land?
“You got all that on tape, didn’t you?” Varian asked Bonnard.
“Sure, the moment it started moving. Can it breath oxygen?”
“I hope it can’t,” said Cleiti. “I wouldn’t want to meet that wet sheet in a dark dripping forest.” She shuddered with her eyes tightly shut.
“Neither would I,” said Varian, and meant it.
“Couldn’t it be friendly? If it wasn’t hungry all the time?” asked Terilla.
“Wet, slimy, wrapping its fringes around you and choking you to death,” said Bonnard, making movements like his horrifying image.
“It couldn’t wrap around me,” Terilla said, unmoved. “It can’t bend in the middle. Only on the edges.”
“It isn’t moving at all now,” Bonnard said, sounding disappointed and sad.
“Speaking of moving,” said Varian, glancing toward the one bright spot in the gray skies, “that sun is going down.”
“How can you tell?” asked Bonnard sarcastically.
“I’m looking at the chrono.”
Cleiti and Terilla giggled.
“Couldn’t we land and see the fliers up close?” asked Bonnard, now wistful.
“Rule number one, never bother animals when feeding. Rule number two, never approach strange animals without first closely