Carlos sat on his stool as the saw began a new song.
They peeled away the ribs. At first Sylvia concentrated on the lungs: flatter than human lungs, less a pair of bags than a webwork with blood vessels running through them. Arteries and veins were thumb-thick, oversized, capable of pumping blood and oxygen to working muscles at a fantastic rate. She could only shake her head in wonder.
She probed into the gland sacs, flattened organs perching atop the lungs. "What in the world?" she whispered. "Cassandra. Close up." She sliced into them with the tip of her scalpel. The walls were elastic and wrinkled, shrunken to a third the size of the lungs. "Whatever this is, it can hold a lot more than it does right now." A brilliant carmine fluid jellied in the sacs, and she spooned out a sample. "I'm going to run an analysis on this."
Sylvia placed the sample in the spare biothermograph ferried down from Geographic. There was a faint humming sound as it pumped the air from the sample chamber.
Thank God that this apparatus, at least, had been duplicated. So much equipment had been lost; they would have a hell of a time working out this creature's gene patterns now. Its flesh might have to be preserved for years before such apparatus could be replaced.
When the BTG had finished evacuating, the dollop of red fluid was burned in a flash, and a quick band of color flashed across the viewer. Sylvia whistled softly.
" ‘Eh?" Jerry prompted. He looked to the screen where the computer analysis of the chromatography would appear.
Sylvia's voice was pensive. "How can this stuff be biological? It looks like oxidizer for a rocket! Oxygen bonded with carbon, iron, magnesium, but mostly oxygen. I wouldn't have believed it. What's the structure of those sacs?"
"Honeycomb. They were filled with the fluid." He probed with the scalpel, frowned and cut again. "Hah. Muscle bands. Here—here—yep. Set up to constrict the sacs, which would inject this stuff into the blood streams. The duct leads directly into the heart chambers—"
"Super oxygenated blood supplement," Sylvia said. "Which means—"
"Right!" Jerry shouted. "That's it! Supercharger! Good lord, no wonder this thing is so damned dangerous."
"What?" Zack demanded. "What have you found?"
Jerry almost danced with excitement. "This is it. I'm sure of it."
"How can you be so damned happy about how powerful this thing is?"
Carlos demanded.
"Don't you see?" Sylvia shouted.
"See what?"
Jerry brought calm back to his voice. "The monster depends on super oxygenation. That means it's vulnerable. We can kill it."
"Maybe I'm stupid," Zack said. "But I don't see—"
Jerry ignored him. "Cadmann. Was there, say, anything unusual about the amount of body heat from this thing? You've been closer than anyone."
Cadmann paused for a moment, then spoke. "Yes, dammit, there was. When the first one killed Ernst at the blind. It was stalking the calf, and everything was fine. But as soon as we took a shot at it, the temperature went through the roof."
"Enough to cause a flare in your infrared, as I recall."
"Right."
Jerry took a step back from the graying thing on the tables, the dead, cold hulk leaking blood and cloudy fluid drop by slow drop onto the stained tile floor. "And amphibian. We'll never find these things far from water. They need it to dump the heat! Listen. There can't be many of these things on the island—"
Carlos cursed vilely and smashed his pouch to the ground. "I swear to God. The next idiot who says that, I am going to break his face. Shit." He kicked at the plastic skin, squirting liquid out into a puddle. Cursing again, he scooped it off the floor and stormed out of the room.
"Before, it was a guess," Jerry said. He didn't sound worried. "Now we know."
"Know what?"
"There can't be many of them. By many I mean more than a dozen or so.
Cadmann, there's not enough for them to eat! Look at the teeth. A couple of grinders. They can crunch of seeds and grass and bark in a pinch, but they're sure as hell not evolved for eating plants. They want meat, and lots of it, and there just isn't enough meat on this island."
"The pterodons," Sylvia said. "That's why they were so scared of the water! These things hide in the water. The poor pterodons! They have to fish, but they never know, when they dive for a samlon, but what one of these will be waiting for them—"
"Right." Jerry stepped back from the table and dropped his mask. "Look, we can wait for the computer analysis, but we don't really need it, do we? We had a brood of them. Heck, this one might well have been the mother. Picture her swimming over, or floating over on a piece of driftwood, or any other scenario you like. She's already pregnant, with a clutch of eggs ready to be laid. Land her ten or twenty years ago, perhaps, and they proceed to strip the island of animal protein."
"Everything except samlon," Sylvia said.
"Yeah." Jerry looked thoughtful. "And there is our next big mystery. There's no samlon in her stomach. What protects samlon? Maybe our monster only hunts on the land. And by the way—we need a name for this thing. We can't just keep calling it ‘monster.' "
Sylvia forced a smile. "I think Cadmann already named it. ‘Grendel.' "
"Name it be damned," Cadmann said. "You said it was vulnerable. How vulnerable?"
"In a minute," Jerry said. "Damn. It really is a puzzle. These things eat everything. Have eaten everything, they damned near stripped this island clean—Sylvia! It all fits! Dopey Joes in the hills, none near water. Pterodons, nothing else. Everything but the samlon. All right, what keeps the grendels from eating all the samlon?"
"Poisonous?" Sylvia asked. "Or—oh, damn."
"What?"
"Something—I have the feeling I'm forgetting something."
"Can't be important."
"Maybe. Anyway, could samlon be poison to grendels?"
"Doesn't seem reasonable. They ate cattle. We eat samlon."
"Yeah—"
"Or," Jerry said, "maybe Grendel only hunts warm-blooded creatures."
"Given its choice, sure," Cadmann said. "That bitch would eat her own children if she were hungry enough. Believe it."
"I don't know what to believe now. That's what we're—"
Jerry's voice faded out, and Sylvia groped for support as the room seemed to ripple and she lost her footing. Cadmann was under her in an instant, and the last thing that she felt before darkness overwhelmed her was the comforting strength of his arms, and his whispered words: "I'm here."
Sylvia's eyes were open, but totally unfocused. Light and shadow mingled indeterminably. As her senses returned she heard the slow rumble of Terry's breathing, and finally realized that she was in her own bedroom.
Somewhere outside her window men were arguing. She recognized the voices: Stu Ellington and Carlos. Both sounded horribly drunk.
"—the hell, marica? You think you could have done better?"
"—don't have to think. You killed her, you left her and ran, you dickless wonder—"
She heard the sharp, sudden sound of bone meeting bone, and the side of her cabin shuddered as a body slammed into it.
Briefly the shadow of two struggling bodies fell across the window.
She watched the dark, shifting shapes, overcome with a hallucinogenic sense of unreality. Another sharp crack. Gasps, a creak of tortured metal, the stifled sobs of pain and anger. A swift curse in Spanish, and a softer thud. Then Cadmann's voice: "Break it up. All right. You've both had enough. We have a bigger fight than this—"