Thorne continued up. His feet slipped. His arms ached. He climbed.
Sarah was reaching down to him.
“Come on, Doc,” she said.
Her hand was extended.
Fingers reaching toward him.
With a metallic whang! the mesh ripped on the connector, and the trailer dropped down ten feet, the coils widening.
Thorne climbed faster. Looking up toward Sarah.
Her hand still reached down.
“You can do it, Doc….”
He climbed, closing his eyes, just climbing, holding the rope, gripping it tightly. His arms ached, his shoulders ached, and the rope seemed to become smaller in his hands. He twisted it around his fist, trying to hold on. But at the last moment he began to slip, and then he felt a sudden burning pain in his scalp.
“Sorry about that,” Sarah said, and she pulled him up by his hair. The pain was intense but he didn’t care, he hardly noticed, because now he was alongside the accordion connector, watching the coils pop free like a bursting corset, and the trailer dropped lower but she still pulled him, she was immensely strong, and then his fingers touched wet grass, and he was over the side. Safe.
Beneath them, there was a sharp series of metallic sounds – whang whang! whang! -as the coiled metal rods snapped one after another and then, with a final groan, the trailer broke all connection, and fell free down the cliff face, growing smaller and smaller, until it smashed on the rocks far below. In the glare of lightning, it looked like a crumpled paper bag.
Thorne turned, and looked up at Sarah. “Thanks,” he said.
Sarah sat heavily on the ground beside him. Blood dripped from her bandaged head. She opened her fingers, and released a handful of his gray hair, which fell in a wet clump onto the grass.
“Hell of a night,” she said.
The High Hide
Watching through the night-vision glasses, Levine said, “They made it!”
Kelly said, “All of them?”
“Yes! They made it!”
Kelly began to jump and cheer.
Arby turned, and grabbed the glasses out of Levine’s hand.
“Hey,” Levine said. “Just a minute – ”
“I need them,” Arby said. He spun back around and looked out at the dark plain. For a moment, he couldn’t see anything, just a green blur. His fingers found the focus knob, he twisted it quickly, and the image came into view.
What the hell is so important?” Levine said irritably. “That’s an expensive piece of equipment – ”
And then they all heard the snarling. It was coming closer.
In pale shades of luminous green, Arby saw the raptors clearly. There were twelve of them, moving in a loose cluster through the grass, heading in the direction of the high hide. One animal was a few yards ahead and seemed to be the leader; but it was hard to discern any organization in the pack. The raptors were all snarling and licking the blood off their snouts, wiping their faces with their clawed forearms, a gesture oddly intelligent, almost human. In the night-vision glasses, their eyes glowed bright green.
They did not seem to have noticed the high hide. They never looked up toward it. But they were certainly headed in that direction.
Abruptly, the glasses were yanked out of Arby’s hands. “Excuse me,” Levine said. “I think I’d better handle this.”
Arby said, “You wouldn’t even know about it, if it wasn’t for me.”
“Be quiet,” Levine said. He brought the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and sighed at what he saw. Twelve animals, about twenty yards away.
Eddie said quietly, “Do they see us?”
“No. And we’re downwind of them, so they won’t smell us. My guess is they’re following the game trail that runs past the hide. If we’re quiet, they’ll go right past us.”
Eddie’s radio crackled. He hastily reached to turn it down.
They all stared out at the plain. The night was now calm and still. The rain had stopped, and the moon was breaking through thinning clouds. Faintly, they saw the approaching animals, dark against the silver grass.
Eddie whispered, “Can they get up here?”
“I don’t see how,” Levine whispered. “We’re almost twenty feet above the ground. I think we’ll be fine.”