Whatever the reason for its quiescence, he felt that it would be safer to keep still. His knees appeared to have gone through the layer of mud and to be resting on rock; his first panicky idea that he might be pushed down and drowned in the stuff had evidently been overdramatic. He stayed where he was.
After about five minutes—having nothing else to do, Craile had been counting seconds—the bonehead suddenly pushed itself up from the tree trunk (causing Craile’s end of it to sink under him) and floundered to its feet. It turned ponderously, hissed, and waddled out of sight.
Craile hauled himself up on to the tree trunk, and froze. The gap where the cycad had stood framed something never seen before by man.
The bonehead that had stepped in the fire appeared to have won by default, and had evidently claimed the prize; or, considering their relative positions at the end of the battle, been claimed. Male and female formed a group balanced on five supports; two thick triangular tails, curled around one another; and three legs. The fourth—the pair were so twined together that Craile could not be sure to which of them it belonged—was bent sharply at the knee, raising the foot so that it rested on the partner’s hip.
They were remarkably still. Occasionally one uttered something like a muffled belch, which the other immediately echoed. Once, the whole group suddenly rotated around the entwined tails, and then was still again. Craile was beginning to wonder whether they planned to make a night of it when the one with the raised foot suddenly disengaged it, staggered a couple of steps away, and collapsed on all fours. The other immediately started up the slope at a rapid waddle, whereat the fallen one got its feet under it, rose, and set off even faster in pursuit.
Craile sighed deeply. Relief was tempered by frustration—he had lost any chance of getting back to base before dark.
He began crawling carefully along the fallen cycad. About two-thirds of the way along he reached the point where it rested on the edge of the low, rocky platform from which he had fallen. A couple of yards farther on it tilted under his weight and he fell forward over the section of trunk where the bonehead had struck. The bark, and a layer of wood beneath it, had burst open, leaving a splinter-edged depression. Putting a hand into it while pushing himself up, Craile found himself groping in slimy pulp. He swore wearily, wiped his hand on a relatively mud-free part of his tunic, and rolled off the trunk.
The cycad seesawed back to its former portion. Craile sidled cautiously between the ball of torn-up roots and the whiplike branches of a bush beside them; took a look around without seeing any lurking dinosaurs, and emerged into the clearing.
He found with annoyance that his legs shook. He was thirsty, his back and shins were coated with mud, and to reach base he had to walk four or five miles uphill. When he got there he would be faced with a barrage of questions and the answers would display him as a fool.
Maybe he could use his encounter with the boneheads as a distraction?
Ten to one they would think he was making it up. No. Tell them to mind their own business, why not? If he chose to come back after nightfall with mud all over his clothes, what had that got to do with anyone else?
With the wet legs of his trousers flapping against his shins he set out on the long walk home.
Fortunately the rhynchosaurs—or possibly the boneheads themselves—apparently did a good deal of trekking between the boneheads’ fighting-ground and Observation Hill. There was a well-beaten track, which presently joined another that Craile thought he recognized. After a mile or so this was confirmed; he came to a waterfall which he had definitely seen before. He knelt and drank, refilled his water bottle, and was about to step under the fall when he realized that the mud on his clothes had begun to dry up and flake away. He took them off, therefore, before immersing himself thankfully in the pool at the base of the fall.
Clean, and partly revived, he picked off as much mud as he could from his trousers, climbed into them, and began on his tunic.
The back was one huge splotch of mud, flaking a little round the edges, but mostly still wet. He rubbed it over a patch of horsetails and got a fair amount of it off. The front…
What the hell was that whitish goo? He rubbed a little of it between his fingers. It was thick and sticky, like starch paste.
Starch!
He had a sudden flash of memory; New Guinea; a demonstration laid on for tourists, of how to make flour from sago palms in the traditional way. Hadn’t there been something in. the pamphlet they were handing out about the other species of trees which could be used in a similar way? And weren’t some of those trees cycads? He seemed to remember that they had been mostly a last resort, when food ran short; but so what? Food—starchy food—was short here and now.
Was the stuff really starch? He didn’t see what else it could be. Better Displace a sample back to 2089 for lab testing, but—
Oh, hell. The fallen trunk was at least a mile back along the way he had come.
Of all the things Craile did not want to do, wasting the effort that had got him this far, and adding the same again, doubled, to the four miles of trudging that already lay between him and base—and supper and bed—was, at this moment, top.
In forty minutes or less the daylight would be gone.
Why not go back for a sample tomorrow? Come to that, there were probably specimens of that type of cycad much closer to base…
Unfortunately all cycads looked pretty much the same to him. Some had enormous cones which spilled pollen all over the place, and some didn’t; but he had an idea that that was a matter of gender, or possibly of maturity; not species. No, he would have to go back to the boneheads’ arena and find the one that had been knocked down, but tomorrow would do.
Wouldn’t it… ?
With something like a groan, Craile turned and started back along the way he had come.
He had marked it clearly enough and was making good time when a sudden and prolonged thrashing began in the undergrowth to one side. What with, on the one hand, the possibility that he had found a source of starch, and on the other his fatigue, he had more or less forgotten that this was bonehead country… The noise stopped. He could see no disturbance among the branches, probably he had just heard a large rhynchosaur settling down for the might. Not that it was a good idea to fall over one of those in the dark; they could give you a nasty bite. In fact—
No. He was not going to give up, trudge home and come back tomorrow. To hell with common sense.
He went on, treading carefully; even so he arrived at the clearing sooner than he expected. Craile was aware of a creeping sensation around his backbone as he crossed the naked rock; but no boneheads appeared. He found the fallen cycad and dug into the splintery mess where the bone-head had struck. The goo turned out to be the result of the impact; in the less damaged area nearby the center of the trunk was filled with a much firmer pith, about the consistency of raw potato. He dug out a section with his knife, weeded out a few splinters, and bit a piece off.
It was tasteless, but not too bad. He chewed it cautiously. Yes, surely, starch. He moved the bolus to the back of his mouth…
Was there, or was there not a faint bitterness there? He took a cautious sip from his water-bottle and chewed some more… Definitely bitter. Probably an alkaloid of some sort. He spat it out hurriedly, rinsed his mouth, and spat again.
Hell and damnation. He sat down heavily on the trunk, which sank a little under his weight. The stuff was useless, after all. Beaten by the evolutionary arms-race. Cycads 1, Craile 0… All that effort wasted. He had a strong impulse to sit where he was and try taking root himself.
Something crept into his line of sight. A shadow. The Sun was preparing to go down.