"The ocean lies," Cadmann muttered.
"What?"
"I was just wondering if anything has surfaced yet."
"Nothing notable. Not so far." The screen flickered again, and a roughly fish-shaped outline flashed darkly across the display. A wave of liquid crystals, and the silhouette became an animation. A statistical table ran its estimate column along the edge.
Andy watched the figures hawkishly, then relaxed. "Twenty meters along the side, surfacing fifty kilometers east of Landing Beach. Totally aquatic, Zack—I've seen these before. They don't pose a threat to anything on the land."
Zack traced a finger across the image. "Keep me posted. We can't have damage to one of the Minervas." To Cadmann: "We can get a lot more precise than that."
"I was just about to ask—but you've made a good start."
"We need more, a lot more. All the intelligence that we can gather."
He paused a careful moment, then asked, "What can you report from the highlands?"
"That's what I was hoping to talk to you about. Mary Ann and I have kept journals. I have skins from six different small animals, and botanical samples. I want to trade my knowledge of the island for other services. I'll map the interior, let you know anything that I find. In exchange, I want medicine and more vitamins. Mary Ann said Avalonian soil doesn't have the right mineral balance."
The computer zoned up on another large, shadowy form. This one was smaller than the first, but was tracked moving in toward the island. It broke the surface of the water for a moment, cresting, then dived deeply. The video image was lost.
"We need you, Cad. We have to assume that the thing we killed was one of a set. If there's more than one, then there's lots. We're not slowing down expansion. We can't. I swear that this colony is going to be a city one day. But we have to be more cautious. You're best qualified to check our defense plans and suggest alternatives. If you don't want to stay here, I won't try to change your mind. We need a test outbacker. Someone to give us an idea of how an individual family would fare in the south country beyond Mucking Great. Someone is going to do it eventually, and no one is better suited than you. What do you say—be our guinea pig?"
"I already am that. But outback guinea pig sounds better than hermit."
"Same situation, different definition."
Cadmann's face split in a grin. "Bureaucrats. Damned if you can't take misanthropy and turn it into a virtue."
"Damned straight." A huge weight seemed to have been lifted from Zack. The creases in his forehead vanished, and he sighed deeply. "Oh. Cad, will you take back some tools to take rock cores? We're hoping we'll find an iridium layer."
"Iridium?"
"Maybe not iridium, but something widespread, with the makeup of an asteroid. Evidence of a Dinosaur Killer. Something that simplified the ecology."
"Huh. Maybe. What about the monster itself? That thing sure didn't act like a carrion eater, and what else would have survived an asteroid strike? Have you finished the analysis of the corpse?"
"Oh, sure, corpse. Well, we lost a lot of equipment in the fire. Some we repaired, some we worked around, but... anyway, Greg cremated too much of the monster. You can hardly blame him, but we've been analyzing charcoal! What we get is a picture of something that has a cell structure similar to the samlon or pterodons. Closer to the samlon; pterodons have a lot more quick-twitch muscle fiber. We'll be interested in looking at your samples. Half a dozen? Damn. You've found more in seven weeks than we did in the year we've been down. You probably want to talk to Sylvia about that."
Cadmann just watched the screen for a while longer, and then nodded.
He turned and left the room. Zack followed him out.
The sun was high, and Cadmann shielded his eyes with one hand. Workers hustled around the quad. They were setting tables and stringing an orange-and-green banner along the west edge of the courtyard—
"Celebration?"
"Sure—anniversary of Waking Day. Don't you remember?"
"I guess that I reckon time in terms of Landing Day."
"Most of them weren't even awake when we were down here. They outnumber us, Cadmann."
"I guess they do at that." He stretched and picked up his backpack from the com-shack stoop. "Where's Sylvia? I guess we should talk."
The creature hovered in the air above the holo stage, only a fourth its actual size, but still too vivid for Cadmann's taste. He could almost smell its wet lizard stench, feel its heat, see Ernst's blood drizzling out of its mouth.
Marnie said, "The creature is amphibian, and the major speculation is that it swam over from the mainland or that it was carried by driftwood."
Cadmann repressed a shudder and forced his mind back into the discussion. "Fifty miles! That's a long swim. Why are you so sure it's not native to the island?"
"Not enough food. Not enough variety of food for a sound ecological base. Not enough of them, either. A stable population needs numbers. Any pair of anything produces one pair that survives to breed, on average." Sylvia shut down the projector, but the thing still hovered before his mind's eye.
Marnie was examining a Joe carcass. It lay in the middle of a dissection tray, its fur lusterless and limp. She flipped it over on its back, and pressured the paws, hawing as the dark little claws slid out. "You say that you're domesticating these?" Marnie's lisp was still a bit jarring to Cadmann, but she was so totally unselfconscious of it that he felt momentary shame.
"Raising them, at least. It's Mary Ann's project. You'd need a lot of furs to make a bed cover. They're not all that sweet-tempered. Something like a mink. Anyway, it's something else that's bothering Mary Ann."
"She told me."
With the gleaming tip of a scalpel, Marnie drew a line down the middle of the dead Joe's pink, furred belly, then gingerly peeled away a layer of skin to inspect a fatty layer beneath.
Sylvia sat on a stool with her knees pulled up flush with her swollen stomach. She looked like a pregnant elf perched on a mushroom.
"In general," Marnie continued, pinning the flap of skin back, "we don't know a hell of a lot more now than we... should have known before. Built for speed. Incredibly strong. The thickness of the bones gives it enormous leverage. The skin is like armor plating. My point is that as underprepared as we were, we were very lucky." Some silent message passed between Marnie and Sylvia, and Marnie slid the dissection tray into a refrigerator.
"I told Jerry I'd meet him at the breeding pond," she said, smiling shyly. "I'll see you both later." She slipped quietly from the room, leaving Cadmann and Sylvia alone.
They stared carefully at the empty stage, and silence hung in the room.
"Cad..." she began.
He leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms, eyes thoughtfully half-lidded. "You know, it gets so damned quiet up there in the mountain. Sometimes, when the air is really still, and the dogs are asleep by what's left of the fire, I look down from the mountain, and I can just hear sounds from the Colony. Machinery. Maybe singing. Maybe the mill. Maybe animal sounds. It sounds warm, and so damned far away." He looked at her. She was close enough to touch, but he didn't. "It feels like everything is getting farther all the time."
"I miss you, Cadmann. I didn't know how much I would."
"Yeah. How is Mary Ann?"