With Faranth’s assist, Bay was agile enough to settle herself quietly behind Sorka. She would never admit that she was pinched fore and aft between the ridge. Mariah gave her usual squeak of protest.
“Now, Mariah, Faranth’s perfectly safe,” Bay said, and looked over to see that Pol was settling behind Sean. The young dragonrider’s grin was very broad as he winked at Bay. Well, this time it really is an emergency, she told herself. A woman trapped in her home with small children and unidentifiable menaces prowling outside.
“Hang on tight now,” Sean said as always. He pumped his arm in the signal to launch.
Bay suppressed an exclamation as Faranth’s upward surge pushed her painfully against the stiff dorsal ridge. Her discomfort lasted only a moment, as the golden dragon leveled off and veered leisurely to her right. Bay caught her breath. She would never get accustomed to this; she didn’t want to. Riding a dragon was the most exciting thing that had happened to her since . . . since Mariah had first risen to mate.
Calusa was not a long trip by air, but the flight was tremendously exhilarating. The dragons hit one of the many air currents that were the result of Picchu’s activity, and Bay clutched at Sorka’s belt, stuffing her fingers to the knuckle in the belt loops. Flying on a dragon was so much more immediate an activity than going in the closed shed or skimmer. Really much more exhilarating. Bay turned her head so that Sorka’s tall, strong body shielded her from the worst of the airstream and the dust from Picchu that seemed to clog the air even at that altitude.
The journey gave Bay time to ponder what Mary had said about “beasts.” Red Hanrahan bad reported a late-night entry into the veterinary laboratory. A portable bio-scan had been missing without being logged out, but as the bio lab was always borrowing vet equipment, the absence was dismissed. Later someone had noticed that the order in which the frozen ova of a variety of Earth-type animals were stored had been disarranged. It could have happened during the earthquakes.
Ted Tubberman had been very busy in his discontent, Bay thought grimly. One of the strictest dictums of her profession as a microbiologist was a strict limitation of genetic manipulation. She had actually been surprised, if relieved, that Kitti Ping Yung, as the senior scientist on the Pern expedition, had permitted the bioengineering of the fire-dragonets. Had Kitti Ping any idea of what a marvelous gift she had bestowed on the people of Pern?
But for Ted Tubberman, disgruntled botanist, to tinker with ova—and he had not at all understood the techniques or the process—to make independent alterations was intolerable to her, both professionally and personally. Bay knew herself to be a tolerant person, friendly and considerate, but if Ted Tubberman was dead, she would be tremendously relieved. And she would not be the only one. Just thinking about the man produced symptoms of agitation and pure fury which made Bay lose her professional detachment, and that annoyed her even more. There she was on dragonback, a marvelous opportunity for peaceful reflection, with only the noise of the wind in her ears, with all Jordan spread below her, and she was wasting contemplative time on Ted Tubberman. Bay sighed. One had so few moments of total relaxation and privacy. How she envied young Sorka, Sean, and the others.
She was astonished to see Calusa in the next valley. It was a sturdy complex, built by the Tubbermans as headquarters for their stake acres. The galvanized roofs of the main buildings had grown to a dull dark gray from the repeated showers of volcanic ash that Picchu Peak deposited wherever the wind blew. But Bay had scarcely had time to notice that when Sorka’s cry of astonishment blew back to her.
“Jays, that building’s a shambles!” Sorka pointed to her right, and Faranth abruptly turned in response to an unspoken request. The dorsal ridge bit into the soft flesh of Bay’s crotch, and she gripped Sorka’s belt more tightly.
“Look!” Sorka was directing her gaze downward.
Seventy-five meters from the main house, there was a roofed compound with separate enclosures along an L passageway, forming two sides of a fenced-in area. One of the outside walls and several of the interior partitions were smashed, and a corner of the roofing had burst outward. Bay could not recall if there had been any more earthshocks reported in that area to cause such structural damage. No other building was damaged.
As the dragon once more changed direction, Bay grabbed at Sorka, felt the girl’s reassuring fingers on hers, and then they were down.
“I do like riding Faranth. She’s so very graceful and strong,” Bay said, tentatively patting the warm hide of the dragon’s neck.
“No, don’t dismount,” Sorka said. “Faranth says there’s something prowling in there. The dragonets will have a look. Whoops!”
The air was suddenly full of the chitterings and chatterings of angry dragonets. Bay’s Mariah shrieked in her ear.
“Now, now, it’s all right. Faranth won’t let anyone harm you.” Bay held up her arm for her gold, but Mariah joined the investigating fairs. Bay was astonished to realize that the dragon was growling, a sensation she could also feel through her body contacts. Faranth turned her impressive head toward the compound, the many facets of her eyes gleaming with edges of red and orange.
A pierceing yowl was clearly audible and then there was silence. The excited fairs swirled back over the two dragonriders’ heads, chittering and chattering with their news. Faranth looked up, her eyes wheeling as she absorbed the dragonets’ images.
“There’s some kind of very large spotted beast out there,” Sorka told Sean. “And something else that is even larger but silent.”
“We’ll need trank guns, then,” he said. “Sorka, have Faranth call up some reinforcements. Marco and Duluth, if possible; Dave, Kathy—we may need a medic. Peter’s Gilgath is sturdy, Nyassa won’t panic, and ask for Paul or Jerry. I think we should evacuate Mary and the two children until the beasts can be captured.”
Her ordeal ended, Mary Tubberman wept copiously on Bay’s shoulder. Her son, Peter, usually a cheerful seven-year-old, watched poker-faced and taut with anxiety. His two little sisters clung together on a lounger and would not respond to Pol’s efforts to comfort them, though he was generally very deft with children. Mary did not resist the suggestion that she move to a safer location.
“Dad’s dead, isn”t he?” Petey asked, stepping right up to Sean.
“He could be out trying to recapture the beasts,” kindhearted Bay suggested. The boy gave her a scornful look and went off down the corridor to his room.
The dragon reinforcements arrived with the trank guns. Sean was pleased to see them landing in the order they had been drilled in. Sean gave Paul, Jerry and Nyassa the trankers and sent them off on their dragons to see if they could find and disable the escaped animals.
Leaving Sorka to help the Tubbermans assemble their gear, Sean and the others, armed with the pistols, cautiously approached the wrecked compound. Inside the building, the reek of animal was heavy and mounds of recent dung littered the place. They found Ted Tubberman’s mauled and gnawed body pitifully sprawled outside his small laboratory.
“Fardles, nothing we have kills like that!” David Catarel exclaimed, backing out of the corridor.
Kathy knelt by the corpse, her face expressionless. “Whatever it was had fangs and sharp claws,” she remarked, slowly getting to her feet. “His back was broken.”
Marco grabbed up an old lab coat and some toweling from a rail and covered the corpse. Then he picked up the remains of a chair, made of one of the local pressed vegetable fibers that were used for interior furnishings. “This’ll burn. Let’s see if we can find enough to cremate him here. Save a lot of awkwardness.” He waved in the direction of the main house. Then he shuddered, clearly unwilling to move the mangled body.