“A duocorn?” mused the pilot.
“A what?” Santee wanted to know.
“There was a fabled animal mentioned in some of the old books on Terra. Had a single horn in the middle of the forehead, but the rest was all horse. Well, here’s a horse with two horns-a duocorn instead of a unicorn. But those things we saw feeding here-they were pretty small to bring down an animal of this size.”
“Unless they carry a burper, they didn’t!” Dard, in spite of the odor, leaned down to inspect that stretch of spine beyond the loose skull. A section of vertebra had been smashed just as if a giant vise had been applied to the nape of the duocorn’s neck!
“Crushed!” Kimber agreed. “But whatever could do that?”
Cully studied the body. “Mighty big for a horse.”
“There were breeds on earth which were seventeen to twenty hands high at the shoulder and weighed close to a ton,” returned Kimber. “This fellow must have been about that size.”
“And what is big enough to crunch through a spine supporting a ton of meat?” Santee wanted to know. He went back to the sled and picked up the rifle.
Dard back-trailed from the evil-smelling bones. Several paces farther on he discovered what he was looking for, marks which proved that the body had been dragged and worried for almost half of a city block. And also, plain to read in a drift of soil across the street, prints. The marks cut deeply by the hooves of the duocorn were half blotted out in places by another spoor—three long-clawed toes, with faint scuffed spaces between, as if they were united by a webbed membrane. Dard went down on one knee and flexed his own hand over the clearest of those prints. With his fingers spread to the fullest extent he could just span it.
“Looks like a chicken track.” Santee had come up behind him.
“More likely a reptile. I’ve seen a field lizard leave a spoor such as this—except for the size.”
“Another dragon—large size?” Cully suggested.
Dard shook his head as he got to his feet and started along that back trail. “This one runs, not flies. But I’m sure it’s a nasty customer.”
There was a scuttling to their left. Santee whirled, rifle ready. A small stone rolled from the top of the nearest pile of rubbish and thudded home against the yellow teeth of the skull:
“Somebody’s getting impatient over an interrupted dinner.” Cully ended with a laugh which sounded unnaturally loud in those surroundings.
Kimber went back to the sled. “We might as well let him—or her—or it—come back to the table. There are,” he glanced around at the ruins, “altogether too many good lurking places here. I’ll feel safer out in open country where I can see any lizard that big before it sees me!”
But when they were air borne Kimber did not turn inland, instead he followed the curve of the bay on to the northwest. The ruins beneath them dwindled to isolated houses—domed or towered—in better repair than those situated in the heart of the city. Beneath them now were brilliant patches of flowers long since returned to the wild. Little streams made graceful curves through what Dard was sure had been pleasure gardens. Fairy towers, which appeared too delicate to withstand the pull of the planet’s gravity, pointed useless fingers up at the cruising sled.
Once they flew for almost half a mile above a palace. But here again a curdled crystalline blotch cut the building in two. None of what they saw gave them any desire to descend and explore. Here the trees grew too high, there were too many shadows. The tangled pleasure gardens and wild grounds were good lurking places for terror to stalk the unwary.
The broken city faded into the green of the rolling country and the aquamarine of the sea. Fewer and fewer domed houses broke the green-and those were probably farms. Here were birds as if the haunted horror of the city was gone. The seashore curved again but Kimber did not follow it west. He veered to the east, to cross fields of which the old regular patterns were marked by bushy hedgerows. It was in one of these that they sighted the first living duocorns, four adults and two colts, but all four well under the size of the monster whose skeleton had attracted their attention in the city.
These animals were uniform in color, showing none of the variations in marking possessed by Terran horses. Their coats were a slaty blue-gray, their unkempt manes and tails black, and their bellies and the under portions of their legs silver. The horns were silver with the real sheen of the precious metal.
As the sled droned over them, the largest flung up its head to issue a trumpeting scream. Then, herding its companions before it, it settled into a rocking gallop up the sloping field to the hedge at the far side beyond which was a grove of trees. With graceful ease all of the fleeing animals leaped the hedge and disappeared under those trees, nor did they come out on the other side of the grove.
“Good runners,” Cully gave credit. “Do you suppose they were always wild—or the descendants of domestic stock? Bet Harmon’d like to have a couple of them. He was pretty fed up when he found we couldn’t bring those two colts he had picked out.”
“The big one was a fighter! D’yuh see him shake them horns?” demanded Santee. “I wouldn’t want him to catch me out in the open walkin’.”
“Odd.” Dard had been watching the far end of the grove and was now puzzled. “You’d think they’d keep on running. But they’re staying in there.”
“Under cover. Safe from any menace from the air,” Kimber said. “Which suggests some unpleasant possibilities.”
“A large flying danger!” Dard whistled as he caught Kimber’s idea. “A thing maybe as big as this sled. But it would be too big to fly on its own power!”
“Bigger things than this have flown in Terra’s past,” the pilot reminded him. “And it may not be a living thing they fear—but a machine. Either way—we’d better watch out.”
“But those flying things were far back in our history,” protested the boy. “Could such primitive things exist along with man-or whatever built that city?”
“How can we say what may or may not have survived here? Or—if that city was destroyed by radioactive missiles- -what may have mutated? Or what may fly machines?”
Since the duocorns remained stubbornly in hiding, the sled gave up investigation and flew east, the setting sun behind them and long afternoon shadows stretching to point their path.
“Where we gonna camp?” .Santee wanted to know. “Out here somewheres?”
“I’d say yes,” Kimber said. “There’s a river over there. Might find a good place somewhere along it.”
The river was shallow and its waters were clear enough for them to be able to sight from the air the rough stones which paved its bed. An uneven fringe of water plants cloaked the shore line until climbing ground provided bluffs. The sparkle of sun on ripples flashed up from a wider expanse as the sled reached a place where the graveled bed flattened out into a round lake. The stream spattered down from heights to feed this, forming a miniature waterfall, and there was a level stretch of sand unencumbered by rocks which made a good landing for the sled.
Cully stretched and grinned. “Good enough. You know how to pick ‘em, Sim. Even a cave to sleep in!”
The space he pointed to was not a real cave, rather a semiprotected hollow beneath an overhang of rock. But it gave them a vague sense of security when they unrolled their sleeping bags against its back wall.
This was the first night Dard had spent in the open under a moonless sky and lie found the darkness discomforting—though stars made new crystal patterns across the heavens. They had a fire of river drift, but beyond that the darkness was thick enough to be smooth between thumb and forefinger.
The fire had died down to gleaming coals when Dard was shocked awake by a howling wail. The sound was repeated, to be either echoed or answered from down river. Above the rumble of the fall he was sure he caught the clink of disturbed gravel. Another ear-splitting shriek made his heart jump as Kimber flashed on the beam of a pocket torch without moving from beside him.
Pinned in that beam hunched a weird biped. About four feet tall, its body was completely covered with fine silky hair which arose in a fluff along its back and limbs, roughened by its astonished fright. The face was three-quarters eyes, round, staring, with no discernible lids. There was no apparent nose above an animal’s sharply fanged muzzle. Four-digit hands went up to shield those eyes and the thing gave a moan which arose to a howl. But it made no attempt to flee, as if the strange light held it prisoner.