Chapter 33
There were flying things that sailed through the air with lazy, undulant grace—until they swooped. They were all great, flexible wing, long, sharp beak and huge, bulbous eyes. These creatures, the humans soon discovered, were attracted both by movement and by color. They saw one of them dive from the air onto a shocker, saw it stunned into immobility and, slowly, slowly enveloped by the crawling plant. They were attacked themselves, three times. On the first two occasions pairs of the creatures were easily driven off by the slashing jet of fire from Su Lin’s lighter, set to maximum intensity. The third attack was by a solitary flyer, hungrier or more aggressive than the others. It came boring in, vicious beak extended, like some nightmare airborne lancer, until Su Lin, standing her ground, succeeded in blinding it. (Her favorite technique, thought Grimes with a shudder. I’d sooner have her on my side than against me. . . .) Whining shrilly the thing veered away, flapping clumsily, and fell into the river. Almost immediately its struggling body was attacked by the denizens of the stream—and very shortly thereafter a covey of aerial predators swooped down, not (of course) to rescue their mate but to prey upon the aquatic carnivores that were ripping his (?) body to shreds. Long, writhing, segmented, many-legged bodies were impaled on the sharp beaks, carried into the sky and then dropped from a great height to fall with armor-shattering impact onto a rocky outcrop on the far side of the water.
“That could have happened to us,” muttered Sanchez, at last tearing his eyes away from the distant, grisly feast.
“But it didn’t,” said Grimes, “Thanks to Su Lin. But I suggest that, from now on, we move very slowly. It might help.”
It did—but working in slow motion was tiring. And although the flying things now seemed to be ignoring them (perhaps they were intelligent and had come to the conclusion that the strange, two-legged beings on the island were better left alone), there were other . . . nuisances. There was a sort of huge worm that, unexpectedly, would extrude its blind head from the mossy ground and attempt to fasten its sucker mouth upon their booted feet and ankles. There was a small army of crab-like things, each with a carapace all of a meter across, each armed with a pair of vicious looking pincers, that marched out of the stream and up the hill in military formation, that milled about in confusion on finding the way blocked by the wreckage of Fat Susie, that finally made its way around the stranded airship and then down the hill and into the water.
There was a straggler.
This Grimes killed with the laser pistol. The smell of roast crab made his mouth water.
“That was very foolish, Commodore,” chided the girl. “The rest of them might have come back to attack you.”
“But they didn’t, did they? And I’m very fond of crab.”
“These things only look like crabs. Their flesh might be poisonous to us.”
“There’s only one way to find out. Standard Survey Service survival technique. You take only a very small taste of whatever it is you’re testing. If, at the end of an hour, you’re suffering no ill effects then it’s safe and you can tuck in.”
While he spoke he was using his knife to lever up the top of the carapace, like a lid. The smell was stronger, more tantalizing. He scooped out a pea-sized portion of the pale pink, still steaming, flesh with the point of the blade. He was raising it to his mouth when she put out a hand to stop him.
“No, Commodore. Not you. You’re the Governor. I’m the guinea pig.” Her long fingers plucked the morsel of meat from the knife, brought it to her mouth. “H’m. Not bad, not bad at all. Now, I’ll put this thing in the shade. If I’m still healthy at the end of an hour it will be our lunch . . .”
Slowly, painstakingly they continued to make their way about the wreck. They found that a relatively large area of the solar energy collecting screens on top of the envelope was undamaged. Power would be no problem. Hopefully neither food nor water would be—as long as they could fill buckets from the river without being dragged into it and eaten. (None of them had any desire to see the things that had attacked the downed flier at close quarters.) They might even, constructing a raft or canoe from the dirigible’s metal skin, be able to get away from the island by crossing the stream or by drifting down-river. But what then? Could they hope to make their way overland or by water to human settlement? So far they had seen only a small sample of the Unclaimed Territory’s flora and fauna, and only those creatures that operated by day.
What came out at night?
Yet, thought Grimes, there just could be a way. It all depended on what was in the workshop, what materials there were for making emergency repairs. Too, they would have to gain access to the wrecked control car so that they could study the charts.
“I’m still alive,” said Su Lin, breaking into his thoughts. “It’s lunch time. I can whip up some mayonnaise, and . . .”
But when they went to pick up the crab-thing they found that the worms had gotten to it first, sucking the shell dry and empty.