Dinosaurus Planet Survivors
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Dinosaur Planet #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Dinosaurus Planet Survivors». Краткое содержание книги:
Varian had been busy, too, looping long thick vines tightly about the shuttle’s stern docking bars.
“If we’re anchored here, we’re not apt to get blown about in that wind. Wish the rain would let up but it looks about middayish. There’re only two giffs and I can’t always make them out in this rain. Any movement from Tor?” She took the items Kai handed her and disposed of them in her pockets. She knotted the blanket about her shoulders. “Here’s your vine. Remember, Kai, don’t look down!”
She leaped for her first hand hold, wrapping her legs about the thick stem of the vine and began to shinny up.
Kai discovered that he had an almost irresistible need to look down, especially when his vine started rolling along the upper edge of the cliff. Despite Varian’s efforts to anchor the vines the wind smacked him against the stone. Nevertheless he reached the top just as Varian did. Thunder crashed and cracked across the sea behind them.
Varian pointed to the sheets of rain slanting across the open water. “We could get swept off if that squall’s as heavy as it looks.”
Kai needed no urging and followed her across the cliff top to the doubtful shelter of the vegetation.
Suddenly Varian began to strip, throwing her boots, pouch, and blanket under the thick leathery leaves.
“Wow! That rain’s shower force!” she cried. Shedding her coverall, face upturned, she stepped into the pelting rain. Discarding his clothing, Kai ventured more warily into the heavy rain. Then Varian was scrubbing his back, using her coverall as a towel. She guided the fabric to just that point between the shoulder blades where sweat made his skin itch.
“Wow!” she cried again in triumph. “Sand we can use as an abrasive just don’t rub too hard,” she shouted at him through torrent and thunder.
They scrubbed themselves and each other, occasionally half-choked by the water as it streamed out of the heavens and bathed them. Except for his lingering feeling that it was ridiculous to be jumping about in a rain storm on a cliff to get clean, Kai would have thoroughly enjoyed the improvisation. There was some truth in Varian’s accusation that he had been sheltered in ship life. Before the mutiny, he had not been so exposed to elemental Ireta. There’d always been the sled or the compound and the safety of the force screen. Today he was naked before the onslaught of a violent phenomenon on a primitive planet.
“Unless we’ve slept through a magnetic field slip,” Varian yelled at him, the sun ought to be out soon. Our overalls will dry in zero elapsed! I hope before we fry in our bare skins.”
She was giving her suit one last rinsing when the shower passed, and the sun streamed through the cloud cover. Wringing their suits, they flapped them out as they splashed back toward the thick forest verge. They laid the suits out on the vines, just beyond the shade.
“Oh, I feel much better, Kai, much better,” Varian said. She squeezed water from her hair and stroked it from her body with her hands. Then she reached up to her hair again. “You know, I think it’s longer. If we only knew the rate of growth of hair during cryogenic sleep,” she said, examining a lock carefully. “Well…” She shook her head again, droplets falling on him as she turned, head back and eyes closed against the brilliant sunlight.
“We can’t tolerate that sun long, girl,” he said as he guided her into the shade.
She caught at his hand, her fingers moving to his wrist, prodding the site of the break.
“Even that fracture isn’t telling any tales. If you’d been an animal patient, I’d say the break was old enough for the extra calcium to have been reabsorbed.” Suddenly her face looked bleak in the filtered light of the sun Arretan. “Kai, haven’t we got something to gauge time against?”
He put both arms about her and held her tightly against him, kissing her cheek and stroking the wet spikes of her hair.
“We’re alive, Varian, and we survived a mutiny. Help, however uncommunicative, has arrived. Meanwhile…”
He gathered her against him positioning his hips against her pelvic bones, making his hands gentle in caress. She responded with soft movements of encouragement. Her kisses were sweet and Kai began to wonder why nothing was happening to certain reflexes. He wasn’t surprised, or offended, when he felt her shoulders begin to shake with amusement.
“Bones have healed,” Varian said in what was almost a wail against his cheek, “muscles are great, but why aren’t we in complete working order? We’re only ancient objectively, not subjectively!”
Her utter dismay announced in laughter made Kai hug her more tightly, half in apology, half to steady himself because he, too, had to laugh at their situation.
“If you only knew how often I’ve wanted you all alone to myself, young woman…”
“Oh, Kai, I do know. I’ve felt the same way. It’s bloody frustrating… Ooooh, that wind is mean!” She reached hurriedly for her blanket to wrap around them. The vegetation had sharp edges which the wind lashed against their bare skins. “And we’d better turn our clothes over. I think they’re done on that side.”
She darted out but instead of just turning the clothing, she gave each a quick snap and returned with them, handing Kai his.
“If we don’t wear ’em, something else’ll crawl inside,” she said, giving a little shudder at the tiny insects she had just shaken out of their suits.
As Kai inserted a leg into a damp trouser, he muttered about the durability of the wrong things.
“Let’s start foraging, Kai. And I’d like to secure our vines to the cliff top some way. Ah, what do I spy here?”
“That’s not fruit,” her co-leader replied, frowning at the cluster of brownish oval objects growing just above their heads.
“True, but the hadrosaurs used to make for such clusters, and poor Dandy loved ’em. Ah, and right beyond are fruit trees.”
It didn’t take long to collect enough fruit and nuts to fill their blanket rolls so they secured their burdens across their backs, out of the way for climbing, and started across the open vine-covered cliff top.
“Giffs are out for a wing stretch,” Varian said, waving her hand. “I know it’s silly to suppose… Hey, they see us. They’ve changed flight angle.” She stopped, admiring the sight. “You know, if they actually remember us, we can’t have slept that long!”
“Varian…” Kai felt his mouth drying as he reached for her hand and began to pull her backwards toward shelter. “That doesn’t look like a welcoming party!”
“Kai, don’t be afraid. We never did them any harm. They couldn’t…” Then she was backing right beside him, no longer able to deny the menace in the attitude of the golden fliers who dove straight at them, necks extended, beaks slightly parted.
Kai and Varian reached the safety of the thick foliage just as the giffs veered off.
“They sure can maneuver,” Varian exclaimed, though her admiration was couched in a voice made shaky at the narrowness of their escape. “But why, Kai? Why? Oh, Krims! What would have made them aggressive at the sight of humans?” She slumped down against a convenient tree trunk.
“The answer to that has to be ‘other humans,’ doesn’t it?” He spoke gently because he knew how much Varian had admired the beautiful, inquisitive golden fliers. It was plain that the attack distressed her.
“So we can take it as printed that Paskutti and his friends penetrated this far… and didn’t find us!”
“And were aggressive enough toward the giffs that the memory hasn’t faded.”
“So it could be recent memory? Okay, but if the mutineers hurt the giffs, getting this far, why has the cave been hidden? And how long did it take these to grow?” She thumped the thick vine cable beside her. “After all, we had to go cryogenic because the impassable chasm at this edge of the cliff stood between us and the vegetable matter we needed for the processor.” She scrambled to her feet and began following the vine growth away from the cliff. “Whoops!”