“Well,” Varian began brightly, “we were lucky enough to find hadrosaur nuts …”
“Were you now?” Lunzie’s dry humor had survived cold sleep.
While Varian tried to sell the two on the merits of the pithy nuts, she tried to hide her growing apprehension over Kai’s delay. Kai might ascribe some loyalty to Tor but she couldn’t. It would be just like the creature to find the bloody core and bounce off with its treasure, ignoring Kai’s welfare. Still, Kai would have had to disinter the sleds and check over the console. It could have taken a long time to find the sleds. Her anxiety sharpened her hearing and the giffs’ cries were audible. Without explanation to Triv and Lunzie, she made a sudden running leap to a vine, swinging out to see what alarmed them. The haze had thickened but the muffled whine of a sled was music to her ears.
“He’s back. He’s back,” she cried as she ran to the vines anchored to the shuttle and began shinnying up. She was just pulling herself onto the cliff when the blunt snout of the two-man vehicle emerged from the obscuring haze and wobbled erratically in her direction.
Krims! Was the thing damaged. “Lunzie! Triv! Get up here!”
25
Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet II – The Survivors What was Kai attempting? The sled angled down, not as if he was attempting to circle and land in the cave. The flight angle was wrong. What was he doing? Reminding the giffs of the first peaceful visit they’d had from humans? No, not with the sled swinging like that. Glare kept her from making out the pilot behind the canopy. The giffs were alarmed, too, taking to the air in flocks. Some began to circle to investigate. The bow of the sled dipped again and, as Varian watched from the cliff edge, her heart in her throat, its forward motion was braked so fast that the vehicle fell rather than descended, bumping along the vines until she was afraid that momentum would carry it over the cliff. She even put out her hand in an unconscious gesture. With a final grind, the nose of the sled caught on the vines and it slowed to a halt. Then she could see that Kai was slumped over the console.
Forgetting any caution for the circling giffs, she clambered over the edge and reached the sled just as the first of the giffs landed. She eyed the creature over the stained and scratched canopy. The giff reared back, its wings half extended, the wing talons spread but, as she caught her breath and braced herself for an assault, a long warbling note restrained the giff. The creature’s talons closed and its wings relaxed slightly.
She had time, then, Varian thought, to get to Kai. She pressed the canopy release and, once the plasglas had cracked open, she pushed to speed the retraction.
“Kai! Kai!”
“Kaaaiiiii! Kaaaaiiiii!” The giffs mimicked her as more landed and ranged themselves on either side of the first one.
At that moment, Kai moaned. Ignoring the giffs, Varian bent into the sled to tend to his body slumped over the console. A putrid stench now rose from the opened cockpit. Shuddering in revulsion, she hauled Kai upright. And shuddered again, mastering the wave of nausea that swept her. Kai’s face was a mass of blood. What was left of his overall was matted against his bloodied flesh. The whole front of him was a bloody mess.
“LUNZIE! TRIV! HELP!” She screeched over her shoulder.
“UNNNNZZZZI IVVVVELLLLL.” The giffs picked up the sounds.
“Shut up! I don’t need a chorus!” Varian yelled at them to relieve the horror that she experienced looking down at her co-leader. He moaned again.
Her fingers hunted for the pulse against the carotid artery. Slow, strong and regular. Strange. No, he’d been exerting Discipline. How else could he have returned to the cliffs in his condition.
Had Lunzie heard her? She glanced warily up at the giffs and was astonished to see that every head was turned away and the bodies seemed to be withdrawing from the sled. They looked, for all the world, as if they were avoiding an unpleasant smell. And so they were, for the stench still rose from the sled, and mostly from Kai. Could she risk leaving him and going to the cliff edge to hurry help.