“We’re coming!” Triv’s shout finally encouraged her.
She bent to look more closely at Kai’s wounds. He appeared to have been attacked by something or something’s that sucked blood for as she eased a shred of his coverall from his chest, she saw the pattern of pin point marks on his skin, each with its own jewel like tear drop of blood. And that awful stink! Worse than anything that Ireta had inflicted on her before except, she realized now, that she remembered that frightful odor. It was not easy to forget: oily, marine, and utterly disgusting!
“Is it safe to approach?” Triv asked, poking his head over the cliff edge.
“It hardly matters, does it?” Lunzie replied, heaving herself onto the vine-covered surface.
26
Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet II – The Survivors
“They’re not aggressive now,” Varian said in a well-projected voice, keeping her tone sweet. “I’d just move slowly.”
“My intention, I assure you. How bad is Kai?”
“He’s unconscious now. Must have Disciplined himself to get back.
He seems to have run into a bloodsucker.”
“Faugh!” Lunzie’s face wrinkled in distaste and she pinched her nostrils. “What’s that smell?”
“Kai.”
“Your fliers don’t seem to like the smell any more than we do,”
Triv remarked.
“Let’s get him out of the sled while they’re snooting the wind,” Lunzie said. “I really can’t see enough through the blood.
Triv and Varian slipped into the sled to hoist out the unconscious geologist. Triv grimaced at muscles slow to respond to his commands as they guided the limp body out to Lunzie.
“That stink would suffocate a man,” Triv remarked, taking deep gulps of fresher air. “Oh ho, what’s wrong here?” He bent back inside the sled. “Did he drop this thing? Every malfunction light on the control panel is lit.”
“Krims! I was hoping we could fly him down to the cave in the sled,” Varian said.
“I wouldn’t advise it until I can get behind the control panel.”
Triv flicked off the power and closed the canopy.
Lunzie deftly peeled away the tatters of the coverall to disclose the hundreds of tiny punctures that had pierced Kai’s skin, each one filled with blood. Varian removed the trouser legs.
“Even his boots are perforated,” she told Lunzie. “I don’t remember telltagging anything that could do this.”
“You think he’d smell it coming,” was Lunzie’s dour comment.
“Watch it, girls, we’ve got company. Hey …”
At Triv’s warning, Lunzie and Varian looked up and received a giff-borne shower in the face as a flight of giffs skimmed over them and each emptied its filled throat pouch on the little group. Most of the unexpected drenching fell on Kai’s exposed body, leaving it clean of blood momentarily.
“Well, what d’you make of that?” demanded Triv. “Ah there’s more coming! No, they’ve got leaves!”
As deftly as the shower had been delivered, the thick green leaves dropped about Kai.
“What are they trying to tell us, Varian?” Lunzie wanted to know.
“They know that stink, Lunzie. They could know what attacked him.
They must be trying to help us.”
“They’d attack with claw and wing,” Triv said thoughtfully, “not water and leaves.”
“But they did attack you and Kai …” Lunzie began.
“This time they saw us all come from the cave.” Varian seized one of the leaves and held it up to the giffs remaining beyond the sled. “What do I do with it?”
Lunzie picked up a leaf, crushing the pulpy tip in her fingers, sniffing and sneezing at the odor of the sap.
“One thing sure, it smells a lot better than he does. A neutralizer?”
“Varian! That big one …” Triv pointed and they looked at the largest of the giffs, who could have been the Middle Giff of the cave inspection, crushing a leaf in its talon and smearing it on its chest fur.
“What might work on giffs, might not work on us, but I’ve nothing else …” Lunzie muttered and tentatively squeezed sap over the oozing punctures on Kai’s shoulder. “Well, what d’you know?
27
Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet II – The Survivors It’s a styptic! Quick, both of you, get to work. Even if the leaves only stop the bleeding, it’s something!” She tasted the sap then. “Oooo. Bitter, bitter. Alum like. Good. Now if it could also neutralize—whatever bit Kai is toxic as all … Hell!”