Varian took a second, longer look at fang-face, wondering why the creature had eschewed the more succulent herbivores for a mere mouthful of man—and saw why. A thick lance was lodged under the beast’s right eye. Just short of a fatal thrust, it wobbled up and down, providing the wounded pursuer with a smarting reminder of revenge. Occasionally, snarling in pain, it batted at the lance but railed to move it. Varian wondered what sort of point the hunter had used, and marveled at the strength which must have been at the back of a thrust that had placed the point so deeply in the beast’s eye socket.
The runner had to be a descendant of the mutineers: he’d the build, if not the overdeveloped musculature of someone raised on a heavy gravity planet. He’d made a very clever throw. Varian might object, as a xenob, about causing injury to any creature, but clearly she had to rescue the young hunter. He was quite the most superb young man she had ever seen.
Unfortunately she had no equipment on the sled to effect an air rescue. Not even a vine. She could hover just above the surface and coax him into the craft, but the speed of the thunder lizard was daunting. If he demurred … Why should he? Surely his parents—grandparents? great-grandparents?—must have passed on some version of their origins. Airborne vehicles would not frighten him out of his wits. On the other hand, any man who would take on a fang-face single-handed, would not easily be frightened, even of something of which he had had no previous experience.
She wheeled the sled to come up behind him, matching its speed to his phenomenal running stride.
“Climb aboard. Quickly!” she shouted as she hit the canopy release.
His powerful stride faltered and he nearly fell. But, instead of altering his course to come alongside, he spurted off at a tangent.
“Do you want to be eaten by that monster?” She didn’t know if he failed to understand her or thought her some new menace. Surely the language couldn’t have mutated in a few generations. Or was it more than a “few?” She tried again to bridge the distance and again he swerved.
“Leave me!” he managed to shout, the effort to speak and keep up his pace visibly slowing him.
Varian raised the sled above him and reduced speed, trying to understand his startling reluctance to be rescued.
The runner appeared mature, surely in his third decade, though the exertion in his face might just make him appear older. He’ll never make it to the bloody bluff, Varian decided with the detachment of her Disciplined state. So, let him pursue his goal or, rather, be pursued to his own purpose. She could make a timely intervention if it was required.
The fang-face had obviously never seen an air sled, or its brain could not register more than one nuisance at a time, for as Varian swung in its direction, it paid her no heed. Passing over it, Varian took note that the lance near its eye was not its only injury. Blood was pumping from several wounds in such quantities that Varian wondered how much more it could lose before collapsing.
She circled just as the wounded animal staggered for the first time, roaring loudly. There was no 36
Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet II – The Survivors doubt in her mind that the creature was weakening. She set the sled above and slightly behind fang-face, ready to intervene if the man had overestimated his ability to out last his victim.
She had time to notice details of the runner on the screen. He wore little, mainly what appeared to be scraped hide covering his loins. Stout hide footwear was lashed tightly up to the knee of each leg. He wore a broad belt that Varian would swear had been part of a lift-belt unit once, from which several large knives and a pouch hung, flapping against the runner’s legs. A tube was secured across his back, but she couldn’t guess its function. In one hand he clutched a small crossbow, certainly a good weapon for piercing the hide and bone of most of the monsters that walked Ireta.