mclaughlin saw the fanged head emerge, and his reflexes took over instantly. a streak of flame passed beside the leaping carnivore, exploding into a white-hot blossom of blazing gas as it contacted the pile of dirt on the far side of the pit. the guide ducked and rolled frantically sideward as another spring carried the creature toward him. claws raked the air past his shoulder, and he fired again before the roll was complete and without any sort of aim.
men and beast alike were spattered with white-hot droplets of metal from the seismic recorder as the second shot caught it squarely; and this seemed to be enough for the carnivore. its next leap was away from the men instead of toward them. a geyser of steam and mud erupted beside it as lampert finally got his weapon into action, and before the vapor had been beaten down once more by the rain the animal was out of sight behind the undergrowth. both men sent several shots in the direction of the crackling bushes, but accomplished nothing except the felling of a tree or two and the starting of a bonfire which failed to make any headway against the rain.
convinced that the felodon had gone, the men ran to the pit. lampert did not even take time out to glance at the wreckage of his equipment. there was just enough distance to cover to let each one realize that he had no idea how long the carnivore had been inside, and what the "scraping" sound might have been. both slowed down as they approached the edge, not relishing what they expected to see. but this did not prove to be what they had expected. mclaughlin's face, already grim, turned gray as he saw that his first shot had not merely missed the animal at which it was aimed.
the bolt had struck the pile of dirt which had been left by the digging machinery at the far lip of the pit, and scattered most of it to the four winds. perhaps half a ton had slid back into the hole from which it had originally been removed. there was no telling, from above, what the felodon had done to mitsuitei. the upper half of the archaeologist's body was buried completely, and the rest so liberally sprinkled with dirt that it was not at once identifiable.
the guide, using language strange even to the widely-traveled lampert, leaped the three meters downward without bothering to use the ladder, seized a projecting leg and tried to draw the little man clear of the soil. lampert, equally aware of the possible value of time but feeling that he would do little good with a broken leg, made the descent in the normal manner.
by the time he reached the bottom, mclaughlin had succeeded in dragging mitsuitei almost completely clear. lampert started forward to clear the mud from the still hidden face; then he stopped, and his stomach abruptly heaved, as he realized that the face was not hidden.
it was gone.
mitsuitei had removed the head-gear and gloves from his protective suit for the normal reason—to see and manipulate better. the exposed head and hands had formed the felodon's hasty meal.
the paleontologists saw the helicopter approaching this time, for they were working outside the tunnel. between them on the ledge lay a block of stone some five feet long, two high and four wide—over two tons of material, all told, which had been worked out of the hole rather ingeniously by the men. partial undercuts had been made, rollers worked out of stone by the cutter placed underneath, and the undercutting completed along a plane which sloped slightly upward into the tunnel. of course the block had run off the rollers once it was out in the open, and the men could no more shift it another centimeter than they could return to emeraude without the helicopter; but at least it was more or less accessible by air. they were chipping waste rock from the corners when the flyer appeared.
sulewayo was first up the ladder, unburdened this time. they expected to have further use for the cutter. he noted that lampert was alone in the machine, and promptly asked the question the geophysicist had been dreading.
"where's take? we've found something for him!"
"i'm afraid he won't appreciate it. he was killed a couple of hours ago by a felodon." the news silenced even sulewayo, and the expression on his junior's face actually startled krendall when he climbed through the hatch.
"ndomi! what in—" lampert cut in with the same news he had given a moment before. krendall reacted similarly; then slowly lowered himself into a seat.
he did not ask for details. both men could see that this was not the time to put such a question to the pilot, though neither realized then the personal responsibility that lampert felt over the incident. krendall pulled a small fragment of tuff from his pocket, and looked at it thoughtfully.
nothing further was said until the helicopter landed once more on the river near the "city." mclaughlin and the bundle which held what was left of takehiko mitsuitei were waiting on the bank, and were loaded aboard without a sound.
"it's early. well take him back to emeraude tonight, and come back for your work tomorrow," lampert said, and lifted into the air without waiting for agreement.
"all right," replied krendall, "as long as we come back. i don't think he'd have wanted us to stop. i'm going to find out about those green threads of his, too." lampert nodded in approval. he had already formed a similar determination. for half an hour they flew on in silence.
the felodon, half submerged in swamp water a kilometer downstream from the hill, heard the helicopter hum overhead. it seemed totally disinterested. for just a moment its fanged head pointed upward, then settled back again. there was a burn under its jaw, which had been inflicted by metal spraying from the ruined seismic apparatus. it was more comfortable to keep it under water....
"what was it you found, ndomi, that you thought take would want to see?" lampert broke the long silence.
"it was when we were undercutting to get the block out of the tunnel," sulewayo answered. "it's just some more of his green threads, in the tuff below the fossil. i brought a chunk of the rock showing them—here." lampert nodded without taking his main attention from flying.
"maybe that fossil of yours was intelligent after all, then," he said. "it seems to have died under very similar circumstances to take—just above a set of those green threads. maybe it was a member of a party like ours."
"maybe. it certainly walked erect. the whole body structure shows that. if its brain were large enough and it had some sort of manipulating appendage i'd say it was virtually human—in capacity, that is. it was more of an amphibian anatomically."
"you have the block out in the open. haven't you been able to study the head and limbs?"
"no, damn it." krendall took over from his junior. "that was the big disappointment of the whole find. the specimen seems to be perfect except for missing skull and hands. not a trace of either."
the helicopter wavered slightly in its path, then steadied as lampert forced his attention back to his job. no one said anything for a long time, but everyone was thinking.
someone else was thinking too, but wasn't keeping his thoughts to himself. they were being spoken, and virtually dripped with the thinker's fury.
"you sloppy, lazy parasites! i don't mind being stuck with a job and a deadline, even if it's a report that's due in only fifty years and needs about two hundred for a real conclusion. i'd sooner do it all myself than have some of you loose thinkers butting in! but if i'm to give my whole attention to it so i can produce something that won't be laughed at from here to the magellanic clouds, how about some of you watching what goes on on this planet? i didn't know those creatures were poking around until they began cutting sensor lines! thirty, the protective life we've bred on the surface was your idea; why didn't you put it to work?"
the answering words tried to be soothing.
"thirty was working—"
"dreaming, you mean!"
"but i put one of the guardians on the job for him; it stopped the digging, didn't it?"
"sure, after a lot of damage had been done. do you want to come out in the open and repair my wiring—with those space travelers poking around? if they find you at it, the council won't just laugh at us; they'll excommunicate us and let this new species of intelligence clean us out. why did it take so long for the guardian to do anything?"
"well, i—"
"well, you were dreaming too, weren't you. blast it, you're here to do constructive thinking, not just to entertain yourself. haven't you any self-respect? they actually dug out sixteen!"
"what difference will that make? he's been dead too long to mind it himself, and anyway his brain and sensor connections were decently burned."
"but they wouldn't have had to dig much deeper to get someone who's not dead, would they, ninety-five, my young friend? i suppose when they cut one or two of your sensors you decided it was time to do something. don't interrupt! i'm talking! this planet is supposed to be a quiet place where people can expect to spend a decent number of centuries at a time thinking, without being disturbed. if you're too young or too lazy or just too stupid to do any real thinking yourself, at least you can devote a little time from your casual amusements to making sure that other people can. shut up! you'll do some thinking now or find yourself in real trouble! here's a problem for you to solve, and see that you solve it!
"you will get my sensors repaired, making sure not only that you're not caught at the job by these space travelers but also that they don't realize it's been done. in other words, don't just neatly fill in the hole they made after you've finished, so they can't help knowing they're not the only intelligences on this world. i don't know when they'll be back any better than you do, so you'll have to guess at your own time limit. you can booby-trap your canyon with landslides or anything else to keep yourself from being dug out, but if you fail in either problem and either of us looks likely to be found i personally guarantee you'll be found in the same shape as sixteen. now get to work, and let me think. if you think you can get help or sympathy from anyone else on the planet, good luck to you."
a wave of agreement spread along the countless miles of sensor wiring that extended through viridis' crust, but twenty-five didn't feel or hear it. he had already taken the myriad of tendrils that terminated his arms away from the mosaic console that formed the end of the vast bundles of greenish threads coming through the walls of his cave, and had settled back in his lounging chair. that report—only fifty years to have it thought out—his full attention went back to it.
