“Problem?” Chad asked. “Can’t you find the spot?”
“Oh, I’ve found it,” Anders replied. “But something’s changed since Stephanie and I were out here.” He read off the location, then pointed. “See? Looks as if a flock of some sort of avians has decided this series of cliffs would make a perfect autumn aerie.”
“I’ve got a good visual on them,” Toby commed in. “I think your avians are rock ravens. Karl told me about them when we went out to do some traditional gliding a couple of weeks ago.”
Still listening, Anders called up the SFS ranger’s guide on his uni-link. The information available was depressingly brief. Like most lifeforms native to Sphinx, rock ravens were structured on a hexapedal model. In this particular case, that worked out two sets of wings and a single pair of powerful talon-tipped legs.
The wingspan was about a meter wide, and their feathers seemed to change color between shades of blue and brown, depending on their surroundings. No one had yet had time to study whether the color variants indicated different species or whether some other factor was involved. That was it.
“The rock ravens weren’t there when you were here before?” Christine asked.
“Nope. All that was here were a bunch of purple moths—like I told you when I showed you Stephanie’s clue.”
“They weren’t here when Steph and I came out to—” Jessica cut in, then stopped. “I guess I’ve got to admit that I know where the prize is hidden,” she continued after a moment. “Anders has pinpointed it exactly, so it’s not like I’m helping him cheat.”
“I’ve got a different angle on the cliff from Toby,” Chet said. “Jess, is what we’re looking for wrapped in purple?”
Anders shifted screens on his uni-link and saw that the star indicating Chet on his map was drifting higher than the rest of them.
“Yep.”
“Then I’ve spotted it, and you’re right, Anders has pinpointed the target. There’s something wedged in a cleft down there, right where the rock ravens are thickest.”
“What a lousy coincidence!” Toby said, his voice full of sympathy.
Anders cleared his throat. “Actually, it may not be a coincidence. It’s possible the rock ravens were drawn here by the swarms of lavender hexaflies—or because they came to prey on the creatures that came to eat the hexaflies.”
“The circle of lunch,” Chet quipped. “I always thought that would be a better name than “circle of life.’ So, how do we scare them off?”
Anders shifted the sights on his flying goggles for long distance. He’d honed his skill at this when he went gliding. Stephanie’s capacity for aerial acrobatics went far beyond what he could manage. Rather than slow her down, he sometimes preferred to switch to counter-grav mode and drift on the winds, observing the land below. Now he focused in on the area where the rock ravens were thickest.
Looking at the flock, Anders could understand why some long-ago colonist had given the birds (“bird analogs, not birds,” he heard his father pedantically lecturing in his head) the name “rock raven.” They definitely belonged to the group that possessed beaks and feathers—a group which included mountain eagles and finches—rather than the more bat-like flyers like the condor owls. Where condor owls were covered with a fine down, these rock ravens had the Sphinxian equivalent of feathers—hollow quills with outlying veins that captured the air. The rock ravens were nicely streamlined, too, with wedge-shaped tails that gave them extra finesse as they dodged and dove, sometimes skimming right up against the rock face before looping around into open-air.
“They don’t look too dangerous,” he said. “I mean, they don’t have nasty hooked beaks, so I’m guessing they’re omnivores or scavengers rather than hunters. I can’t really get a good look at their feet, though, so it’s hard to say.”
“Karl said something…” Toby’s voice faltered. “I can’t remember what.”
“Did he say they were dangerous? Christine asked. “I mean, do they have poison or spines or something that might make up for them not being super huge?”
“Naw, nothing like that,” Toby assured her. “It was something about them being migratory and moving into lower areas when winter came on. Something like that. I’m pretty sure he didn’t say anything about them being dangerous.”
Anders wondered if he imagined the warble of doubt in the younger boy’s voice, but when none of the others questioned Toby, he figured he must have. After all, they knew Toby a lot better.
“Here’s my idea,” he said. “Stephanie wouldn’t like it very much if we hurt—or even really disrupted—the rock ravens, not just to get a present. So how about I go in alone? I’ll grab whatever’s there, then get out.”
“I don’t want to give away too much,” Jessica said, “but I can say that what Stephanie left is small enough for one person to pull out. Still, wouldn’t you like some of us to fly cover?”
“Or maybe go in for you?” Toby added. “Like you said, Stephanie wouldn’t like it if any of the rock ravens got hurt and, well, you’re not the best flyer here.”
“I am,” Anders replied, “the worst. I know that. You know that. More importantly, Stephanie knew that. I’m sure she wouldn’t have set up something I couldn’t handle. So I’m going in.”
He didn’t want to admit it, but he was actually nervous about taking his glider in among all those birds. However, he also didn’t want to give anyone a chance to talk him out of it. Stephanie had set this up for him, not for the whole gang.
Shifting his goggles back to normal range, he readied himself for the maneuver. He knew that Christine or Jessica would have managed a fancy dive, but he figured prudence was best. He’d drop down to the level of Stephanie’s purple whatever, then go in on a flat horizontal course until he came up alongside. He’d grab it and get out. Then they’d all scatter and the rock ravens could go back to doing whatever it was rock ravens did.
Perfect.
Except, as with most plans, it didn’t work out quite that way.
The rock ravens didn’t react until Anders was on their level and speeding toward them. Then, rather than scattering as he’d figured they would, they bunched up. Not wanting to hurt them, Anders started braking. That would have been a bad idea with a traditional glider, since he’d risk losing loft as well as speed, but he had the counter-grav unit to compensate.
He’d managed to slow up before he reached the flock. Then, to his horror, the flock came at him. The sounds they made were more like the shrill shrieks of a peacock than the hoarser caws and croaks of Old Earth ravens. They penetrated into his inner ear, creating a sensation of vertigo. His body felt as if he were wobbling, falling, even as his intellect assured him that the counter-grav unit had to be keeping him aloft.
The rock ravens were all around him, mobbing him, beating at him with their wings, pecking indiscriminately at the glider’s fabric, his clothing, the exposed skin of his face, their hard beaks tapping against his goggles. He felt hot beads of blood coursing into streams. The edges of the feathers rasped against his skin, causing a small pocket of his brain to guess that whatever made the side veins was stronger and coarser than the material of terrestrial feathers.
For a long and terrible moment, overwhelmed on all sides and all senses, Anders found it nearly impossible to think. He was aware of the voices of his friends shouting at him on the open channel of his new uni-link, but he couldn’t make out anything over the shrieking of the rock ravens. He had to get free of the flock before they drove his faltering glider into the edge of the cliff. The counter-grav unit couldn’t stop that.
The cliff face swirled and danced in front of him. The shrieking in his ears reverberated louder and louder. Buffeted by angry aviforms, Anders struggled to find a way to avoid certain doom….