The Death of Sleep

With Bonnard as Varian's record taper and with the possible alteration of the camp in mind, Lunzie assisted Trizein in his studies of the now-obsessive anomalies of Iretan life-forms.

Today's first task was to lure Dandy into the biologist's lab so he could take measurements of its head and limbs, and samples of hair and skin from the shy little animal. The beast kicked and whistled when Trizein scraped cells from inside its furry ears. Lunzie took it back to its pen and rewarded it with a sweet vegetable. She stayed a moment calming and caressing it before returning to Trizein, who was peering into the eyepiece of a scanner. He gestured her over in excitement.

"There is something very irregular about this planet," he said. "You just compare these two slides: one from the marine fringes and the other fresh from the little herbivore." Obediently Lunzie looked and he was right; the structures represented radically differing biologies. "Judging by the eating and ingesting habits, I have no doubt that the square marine fringes are native to this planet but Dandy and his friends don't belong here.

"I have a theory about the primitive yeasts we've been documenting," Trizein went on in a semi-lecturing mode. "It's been plaguing me all along that there was something familiar about the configuration."

"How can that be?" Lunzie asked, racking her brains. "I'll grant you that the Ssli are a tad like the fringes but I've never seen anything like Dandy before."

"That's because Dandy is the primitive form of an animal you're used to in its evolved state: the horse. The Earth horse. The species is not only pentadactyl, it is perissodactyl."

"That's impossible!"

"I'm afraid there's no other explanation though it doesn't explain how the creatures got here - he couldn't have evolved on this planet, but here he is."

"Someone had to have conveyed the stock here," Lunzie mused.

"Precisely," the biologist said. "If I were to ignore the context and study only the data I've been given, first by Bakkun, and now from this little fellow's living tissue, I would have to say that he is a hyracotherium, a life-form which became extinct on old Earth millions of years ago!"

The sound of the sled interrupted them. Lunzie hurried to the shield controls to admit Varian and Bonnard. She informed them that Trizein had news that he wanted to share with them. It was his triumph and he should be allowed to enjoy it by himself. The absentminded biologist was seldom outside his laboratory except to eat or to visit with Lunzie or Kai and had been largely unaware of the other facets of the team.

To the amazement of his small audience, he displayed the disk showing an archival drawing of a hyracotherium from his collection of paleontological files. There was no doubt about it: Dandy was unquestionably a replica of an ancient Earth breed from the Oligocene era.

"Let's see if there's more alike than just the furred beasts," Varian said, leading Trizein to the viewscreen. Varian promptly sat the bemused biologist down to watch her tapes of the golden fliers. Trizein launched into raptures as the graceful creatures performed their aerial acrobatics.

"No way to be certain, of course, without complete analysis, but this unquestionably resembles a pteranodon!"

"Pteranodon?" Bonnard made a face.

"Yes, a pteranodon, a form of dinosaur, misnamed, of course, since patently this creature is warm-blooded…" One by one, he identified the genotypes of the beasts Varian and the others had recorded. Each of the Iretan samples could be matched to a holo and description from Trizein's paleontological files. He did point to some minor evolutionary details but they were negligible alterations.

Fang-face was a Tyrannosaurus rex; Mabel and her breed were crested hadrosaurs; the weed-eating swamp dwellers were stegosauri and brontosauri. The biologist became more and more disturbed. He could not believe that they existed just on the other side of the veil which he himself never crossed. When Varian gave him the survey tapes she'd compiled, he shook an accusatory finger at the screen.

"Those animals were planted here."

"By who?" gasped Bonnard, wide-eyed. "The Others?"

"The Theks planted them, of course," Trizein assured the boy.

"Gaber says we're planted," Bonnard added.

Trizein, in his mild way, was more saddened than disturbed by the suggestion. He looked to Varian.

"We're not planted, Trizein," the young co-leader assured him and gave Bonnard a very intense and disapproving glare.

Kai was urgently summoned back from the edge of the continental shield to hear Trizein's conclusions, leaving Bakkun alone on the ridge. Varian particularly wanted Kai separated from the heavyworlders, for by the time he returned, Trizein had given her even more disturbing news.

Paskutti had asked Trizein to test the toxicity of the fang-face flesh and hide, a question which was not mere idle curiosity. Varian now had films of a startling atrocity. That day, Bonnard had led her to Bakkun's "special place." It proved to be a rough campground where five skulls and blackened bones of some of the fang-faces lay among the stones.