“How fast are they going now, Varian?” asked Bonnard for the xenob had been carefully matching the forward motion, staying behind but above the fliers.
“With this tail wind, I make it twenty kph, but I think they’ll gain air speed with all this reinforcement.”
“They’re so beautiful,” said Terilla softly. “Even hard at work, they’re graceful and see how they gleam.”
“They look as if they were travelling in their own personal sunlight,” said Cleiti, “but there’s no sun.”
“Yeah, what’s with this crazy planet?” said Bonnard. “It stinks and there’s never any sun. I did want to see a sun when I got a chance.”
“Well, here’s your moment,” said Terilla, crowing with delight as the unpredictable happened and the clouds parted to a glimpse of the green sky and the white-hot yellow sun.
Varian laughed with the others and almost wished that the face-masks didn’t adjust instantly for the change in light. The only way she knew that there was sun at the moment were the shadows on the sea.
“We’re being followed!” Bannard’s amused tone held a note of awe.
Huge submarine bodies now launched up and slammed down on the shadow which the air sled cast on the waters behind it.
“I’m glad we’re ahead of them,” Cleiti said in a small voice.
“There’s the biggest crazy I’ve ever seen!” Bonnard sounded so startled that Varian turned round.
“What was it, Bonnard?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my born days, Varian.”
“Was the taper on it?”
“Not on that,” said Terilla, apologetically. “Forward, on the fliers.”
“Here, let me have it, Ter. I know where to point.” Bonnard assumed control and Terilla moved aside.
“It’s like a flat piece of fabric, Varian,” Bonnard was saying as he sighted across the stern of the sled. “The edges flutter and then … it sort of turns over on itself! Here comes another!”
The girls gave small squeals of revulsion and delighted fear. Varian slewed round in the pilot seat and caught a glimpse of something grey-blue which did, as Bonnard said, flutter like a fabric caught in a strong breeze. She caught sight of two points half-way up one side (like claws?), then the creature flipped over, end for end, and entered the water with more of a swish than a splash, as Cleiti put it.
“How big would you say it was, Bonnard?”
“I’d judge about a metre on each side but it kept switching. I’ve got good tapes of that last leap. I set the speed half again higher so you can play back for more detail.”
“That’s using your head, Bonnard.”
“Here comes another! Rakers! Look at the speed on that thing!”
“I’d rather not,” said Terilla. “How does it know we’re here? I don’t see any sort of eyes or antenna or anything. It can’t see the shadows.”
“The fringes?” asked Bonnard. “Sonar?”
“Not for leaping out of water,” replied Varian. “We’ll possibly find out how it perceives us when we can replay. Rather interesting. And were those claws I saw? Two of them?”
“That’s bad?” Bonnard had caught the puzzled note in her voice.
“Not bad, Bonnard, but damned unusual. The fliers, the herbivores and the predators are pentadactyl which isn’t an unlikely evolution, but two digits on a side flange?”
“I saw flying longies once,” said Cleiti in a bright helpful voice. “They were a metre long and they undulated. No feet at all, but they could ripple along in the air for kilometres.”
“Light gravity planet?”
“Yes, Varian, and dry!”
The sun had slunk behind the clouds again and the thin noonday drizzle settled in so that the others laughed at her sour comment.
“Digits are important in evolution, aren’t they, Varian?” asked Bonnard.
“Very. You can have intelligent life, like those avians, but until a species becomes a tool user, they don’t have much chance of rising above their environment.”
“The fliers have, haven’t they?” asked Bonnard with a broad grin for his play on words.
“Yes, Bonnard, they have,” she replied with a laugh.
“I heard about them being in the rift valley, with grasses?”
Bonnard went on. “Is this why they got that type of grass? To make the nets?”