DS02 Night of the Dragonstar (13 page)

Phineas continued looking out the viewing port, and Mikaela began to wonder if maybe she had inadvertently touched upon a still tender spot. “Well, not really,” Phineas said after an awkward pause. “But I think we understand each other now. “

“You think you ‘understand’ each other now?” Mikaela laughed again. “Why, Phineas, is that a euphemism for saying that you two had one last fling in the sack?”

Phineas became visibly rigid in his seat, and he refused to look away from the port. Bad signs, thought Mikaela, as she decided to press her advantage. “Phineas, I’m talking to you. Is there anything wrong?”

He finally looked up at her, appearing for an instant like a small boy who had been caught doing a terrible thing. “Yes, I heard you. I was just thinking how uncannily perceptive you paleontologists can be with such a paltry amount of physical evidence.”

Mikaela laughed at his little irony, instantly wondering if he had indeed fallen into Rebecca Thalberg’s bed while they had been on Earth together. It wouldn’t bother her if he had. She was happily above such petty jealousies, feeling secure enough in her own person to know that most people got what they deserved in terms of treatment from others. If Phineas felt the need to check out Becky one last time, then there had to have been a good reason for it. Whatever it was, Mikaela felt she could deal with it.

She was about to tell him this, in so many words, when the driver interrupted with a message.

“Colonel, there’s something up ahead.”

The OTV had just cleared the swampland and was trundling up a long slope peppered with ginkgoes and thick protoferns. Something had emerged from the vegetation and was blocking the path of the lead vehicle. Even from a distance, the creature looked large and imposing.

“Slow down. Signal the others,” Kemp said. Then, turning to Mikaela: “What is that thing?”

She climbed into the gunnery bubble and studied the beast through the telescopic sight. It was a theropod, but not one she could readily identify. The carnivore stood on two powerful hind legs, balanced by a thick tail. Its large head with its half-open mouth and sharp teeth signaled the potential danger it represented.

“Take it a little closer,” Mikaela said. “Let me get a better look at this guy.”

The OTV moved on at a cautious pace. The dinosaur in its path showed no signs of bolting, as they often did in the presence of machinery. Mikaela was surprised by the beast’s outlandish coloring—thick bright yellow and orange stripes, accented by black speckling. The beast’s hide seemed out of synch with the rest of the subdued forest colors. As the OTV drew closer, Mikaela could see that the creature was four to five meters in height and appeared to be a cousin of the Allosaurus family. There was a pronounced sagittal crest running from its snout to the back of its head—a skull formation she had not seen previously. There was something about the look of the creature that she didn’t like. She had a feeling of intense d
é
j
à
vu, and her first impulse was to implore Phineas to turn them around and get them out of there.

“Well, what is it?” he was asking.

Mikaela shook her head. “I don’t know. Some kind of predator, but I don’t recognize it. We’re still running across secondary species. This is probably one of them.”

“He doesn’t seem to want to get out of the way, sir,” the driver said.

Kemp motioned to one of the armed guards. “Rhoades, get up there in the bubble and be ready to give him a few bursts.”

Mikaela climbed down from her perch to allow the guard to replace her as Phineas leaned forward into the control cabin and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “All right, let’s just go around him and see what he does. Give him enough room to run if he wants to. If he attacks, we’ll have to cut him down.”

Mikaela touched his arm. “Phineas, you know I don’t like to do that.”

“Neither do I,” he said coolly. “But if it comes down to it, I don’t have any choice.”

The driver accelerated, and they trundled quickly toward the brightly colored carnivore, who stood his ground like a war memorial statue. As the OTV grew closer, Mikaela could see that the speckled markings on the beast’s hide were not natural colorations, as she had assumed from the greater distance, but running sores.

There was a deadly familiarity to the cancerous wounds that made her heart leap into her breast.

Maneuvering smartly, the driver whipped the OTV to the left of the creature, who stood watching the beetle-like vehicle lumber past. The beast tilted its great head, staring at them with a large, flat yellow eye. It seemed to be searching the clear blisters for signs of life. As the lead vehicle moved past, it began to advance on the second one in line.

Before the beast had moved very far, the guard fired off a warning burst of slugs, which ripped up the dark loamy earth at the dinosaur’s hind claws. It reared back, snapped its head in the lead vehicle’s direction, then, apparently thinking the better of it, leaped off into the deep folds of the forest. It disappeared within an eyeblink, and Mikaela marveled at how quickly the large creature had been able to move.

“Looks like we scared it off, Colonel,” said the guard in the turret.

“Keep an eye out for it, just the same. I don’t want him coming back in the middle of our party.”

The guard nodded and smiled as Phineas looked back at Mikaela. “There now, we didn’t hurt the fellow, did we?”

“Phineas, that was a mutant ... like the one that attacked me and Penovich.”

“What? How can you be sure?”

She explained to him the significance of the open cancers on its hide.

“Then we should be extra watchful once we get out and get set up,” he said flatly.

Mikaela was a bit stunned by his stony reaction. “You mean you’re still going to let them go through with the shoot?”

Phineas shrugged. “Why not? This is the last full day of shooting. I don’t want to muck up the schedule now. Besides, I’ve got a fully armed platoon out here. Nothing’s going to happen that we can’t deal with. They’re just a bunch of big dumb beasts.”

“Well, at least let’s put some distance between us and that last one,” Mikaela said. “Tell the driver to take us up to the farthest quadrant on the plateau, all right?”

“If it will make you feel better, fine.”

* * *

Riding in the third OTV, along with an armed guard and several members of the film crew, were Neville and his nurse, Ms. Wilkins. With each lurch of the Omni Terrain Vehicle, Neville’s stomach threatened to let go of its moorings and come heaving up his throat. God, he hated this mess.

The OTV pitched violently from side to side as it negotiated a ravine, then began climbing forcefully up a long sloping grade that opened onto a great plateau. Where in hell were they going to stop? How much more churning and shaking was necessary for this silly movie? His LM equipment jostled about in the knapsack at his side, and he managed only a weak smile at Ms. Wilkins who (damn her!) seemed to be having the time of her life.

Neville hated the whole ordeal. He had found spaceflight a physically and mentally straining experience, lacking all of the excitement and flair that he had so often imagined. Riding up to the Moon in one of those claustrophobic ships possessed the thrill of being accidently locked in a steam bath. And if that wasn’t enough, they then packed him off to this terrarium in the sky, which was absolutely teeming with the most vicious, insidiously ugly, disgusting, and vile beasts to ever walk the Earth.

Watching the holograms had been bad enough, but when that constipated colonel invited him to join the shoot in the Mesozoic preserve, how could he have turned down such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (How? Very easily
—
if he’d had any balls at all.) But then he would have had to deal with the image problems of such a stance. How would it look for a writer of his stature to tell everybody how much he loathed all this gosh-gee-wow crap?

Not very good.

And so good old Long Jack had smiled and jumped up and told the colonel that he couldn’t wait to get a look at those wonderful dinosaurs firsthand.

And they had just seen their first one.

Ole Long Jack wasn’t so senile that he hadn’t noticed the lead vehicle swinging around to avoid a big meat-eater, then take a few potshots at the hideous son of a bitch. Christ, those things gave him the creeps. Just the thought of being picked up in those strong, purposeful little forelimbs, being scrutinized by one of its dumb saucery eyes, and then being popped whole, a light snack, into the stinking, fetid maw ...

It was enough to make him want to vomit.

“Are you all right, Dr. Neville?” asked his nurse, who was monitoring his LM readouts.

“What? Of course I’m not all right. We’re riding through the most hostile environment the Earth has ever seen, and you’re asking me such a question. Why couldn’t I just slip into a nice, comfortable, schizophrenic episode, be totally oblivious to this whole horrible trip.”

Ms. Wilkins chuckled. “Oh, Doctor. I think you’ve got the wrong spirit of the whole thing. Try thinking of it as a trip to an amusement park or something like that.”

“There’s nothing amusing about this whole mess. If I didn’t have this stupid image to uphold, I would never have consented to such a thing. Oh, if old John Campbell could see me now! He’d choke on one of those cigarettes of his.”

His nurse laughed as he forced himself to look back out the viewing port. The yellow and orange striped bastard had vanished after they’d taken a few shots at it, but old Long Jack didn’t trust the foul-smelling suckers
—
no way. It was probably skulking along in the bushes right next to their caravan, just waiting until they stopped so it could jump out and scarf somebody for lunch. Jesus, they were disgusting.

He watched for any sign of it, but nothing appeared as the caravan crested the rise and fanned out across a high, wide plateau. Rocks and primitive trees dotted the landscape like small oases in the middle of a desert, but there was no sign of the party crasher in the striped suit. Old Long Jack would continue to keep an eye peeled, to remain as paranoid as possible, yessir.

* * *

Mikaela touched his arm, indicating that the caravan had reached an ideal spot for the shoot, and Kemp signaled his driver to halt. The rest of the OTV sparked in a formation reminiscent of the wagon trains of the American Old West, and the crews started jumping out and setting up their gear.

“All right,” Phineas said, looking at Mikaela. “Let’s get this over with. You’re going to be in the first scene with Williamson, aren’t you?”

She smiled and climbed up to the entrance hatch, then flashed her beautiful eyes upon him. “Why, Phineas, can’t you tell? When was the last time I went out into the jungle with my makeup on?”

He just smiled as he watched her leave the vehicle and join the members of the film crew who were assembling around director Les Lasky and his narrator/interviewer for the project, the famous British stage actor Alistair Williamson.

Jumping down, Phineas sought out Neville. He wanted to keep the old guy by his side, and therefore out of harm’s immediate way. He was eager to hear the famous writer’s impressions of the magnificent alien ship and its interior world.

“Jacobs,” he said to the closest guard. “Get the perimeter-watch set up and have somebody bring Dr. Neville up here.”

The IASA soldier saluted and moved off. Phineas watched the production get rolling. Lasky was quick and efficient, and he knew what he wanted from all his people. He was easy to understand, and he was sure to have everyone prepared before he started the cameras rolling. He was a consummate pro, and the documentary was going to have a very polished, very crisp feel to it.

“Colonel,” a voice crackled in Phineas’s helmet mike, “this is Martino. I’ve got a blip coming this way. Land based, pretty good sized. Might be our friend from before. Whatever it is, it just cleared the rise.”

“All right, Sergeant, I copy that. Keep me posted.” Kemp directed a team of marksmen to fan out beyond the perimeter watch and head off whatever it was that was homing in on them. Overhead, a squadron of Pterodactyls glided about, watching the strange activities below, staying in the area like a flight of vultures waiting for a kill.

“Okay, Colonel, we have a visual ... it’s the same guy we ran into before. Coming this way.”

Phineas flipped on the PA in the OTV and alerted the film crew, who had already begun filming Alistair Williamson interviewing Becky and Ian. Instantly their cameras swung around and picked up the IASA forces fanning out against the approaching carnivore. Kemp knew this was going to make great footage for the broadcast, full of danger and immediacy. Ian Coopersmith, true to his reputation, cast off the role of film star in an instant, reaching for an automatic weapon and joining in the deployment of troops. Becky, also a veteran of the Mesozoic way of life and death, decided to move off with the film crew behind the OTVs.

Looking across the expanse of the plateau, Kemp could see the creature closing in. It jogged along with a long-legged stride, a fearless advance punctuated by much swinging of its large head and a vicious snapping of its jaws.

Neville closed in on Phineas with a look of abject panic on his face. He moved with surprising agility, despite the extra baggage of dangling LM tubes and wires. His nurse scrambled behind, carrying his porta-pak, in a desperate effort to catch up with her charge.

“Don’t you think you should be shooting that son of a bitch?” Neville asked.

Phineas reached out to give the old writer support as he practically collapsed into his arms. The alarm beepers on the porta-pak LM were all clamoring for attention, joining together in a weird, atonal, medical/ musical composition. “Take it easy, Dr. Neville. It’s going to be all right. My men have got everything under control.”

“Disgusting creature,” Neville muttered.

“Dr. Neville,” his nurse said between gasps. “Please, you shouldn’t get yourself so excited.”