“We’re coming along fine.” She spoke so low that he had to strain to hear her in this thin air. “Thanks to you.”
“Oh, that wasn’t much.” Curiously, he didn’t blush. Rather, he felt the ghost of a chill.
“It was plenty.” Ralph’s words came firm. He, too, was a leader. “Damn few men could have done what you did, or would have dared to risk their necks like that.”
“I did try to talk him out of it,” Eva said in a dulled voice.
“A heroic action,” Ralph went on. “You saved us several extra hours of suffering. Please don’t think we’re ungrateful. Still, we can’t help wondering. Why?”
“Your lives,” Dan answered. “Or, maybe, worse, brain damage.”
Mary shook her head. “That wasn’t at stake, dear, once you’d located us,” she said gently. “We could have waited awhile more.”
“I couldn’t be sure of that,” he said, with a slight upstirring of anger that she should be thus withdrawn. “I didn’t know how long you’d been marooned, and you just might have been among those people whose pressure tolerance is abnormally low.” As low as mine is high.
“We aren’t,” Ralph said. “But anyway, it was quite an exploit, and we owe you our sincerest thanks.” He paused. “And then you flew back at once, not even stopping to rest. I stand in awe.” He chuckled, though his heart wasn’t in it. “Or, I will stand in awe as soon as the doctor lets me out of bed.”
Dan was glad to shift the subject. “My job, after all.” He drew up a chair to face Eva and them. It was good to sit. Hour upon hour had drained him. (The flight from here to the valley again, through air that in places had gotten heavily turbulent; the hovering above the rampage; the squinting and studying, while the agony of the herd tore in him almost as if it had been his own; the final thing he did; and not even his triumph able to lift the weariness off his bones, during the long flight back.) Maybe he should have caught some sleep after his return, before coming here.
“Was it the terasaur you were concerned about?” Mary asked. “Eva told us you were going back to them, but she didn’t know more than that herself.”
He nodded. “Uh-huh. They’re an important part of the environment. I couldn’t pass up this chance to learn more about them, and try to save what was left.”
Eva half rose. Something of the woe behind her eyes disappeared. “Did you?” she cried.
“I think so.” A measure of joy woke likewise in him. “Frankly, I feel more like bragging about that than about a bit of athletics at a rope’s end.”
“What happened? What’d you do?” Eva reached toward him.
He grinned. The tide of his pleasure continued to flow. “Well, you see, terasaur do go rather wild in rutting season. The cause must be a change in body chemistry, whether hormonal or pheromonal we don’t know—but we do know how micro amounts of such substances will affect animal behavior, humans included. Now, this herd wasn’t mating and its antics were crazy even for that time of year. However, there were certain basic similarities. I wondered what new factor might have triggered the madness.”
He stopped for breath. “Go on!’” Eva urged.
Dan sought Ralph’s gaze. “Petroleum is complicated stuff,” he said. “Besides long-chain hydrocarbons, it contains all sorts of aromatics and the chemists alone know what else. In addition, your jet fuel probably has polymers or whatever, produced in the course of refining. My idea was that in among those molecules is one, or a set, that happens to resemble the terasaurian sex agent.” Mary drew a gasp. “Not your fault,” Dan added hastily. “Nobody could have known. But it does underline the necessity of learning everything we can about this planet, doesn’t it?”
The blond young man scowled. “You mean… wait a minute,” he said. “A few bulls drifted near our car, probably just curious. They got a whiff of unburned fuel dissipating in the exhaust; we’d left the motor idling as a precaution—what we thought was a precaution. That whiff was enough to make them charge, cutting us off from the car. Then, when the first tank was ruptured and fuel spilled out by the hundreds of liters, it drove the entire herd into a frenzy. Is that what you mean?”
Dan nodded again. “Correct. Though of course the total situation was wrong, unbalanced, for the poor beasts. The molecules involved must have similarities but no doubt aren’t identical with their natural gonad stimulator. Besides, it’s the wrong time of year and so forth. No wonder they ran amok. Suppose someone injected you with an overdose of any important hormone!”
“It’s an interesting guess. Are you certain, though?”
“The biochemists will have to check out the details. But, yes, I am certain in a general way. You see, I flitted back to the site, where they were still rampaging. I ignited the spilled fuel with a thermite bomb. It went up fast, in this atmosphere. Almost immediately, the herd started to calm down. By the time I left, the survivors had returned to their calves.”
“M-m-m—”
“I know why you’re glum, Ralph. Your family business is getting set to produce oil-fired motors. And now it’ll have to do a lofrmore research first. What’s at stake isn’t merely the terasaur, you realize. It’s every related species, maybe the entire lowland ecology.”
“That’s why you were so anxious to save the herd,” Mary said low. “Eva’s told us how you insisted.”
“Oh, I didn’t have any definite ideas at that time,” Dan replied. “Only a—general principle.” His mood drooped. Trying to lift it, he said, “This doesn’t mean your father’s project has to be cancelled. Once the chemicals have been identified, I’m sure they can be taken out of the fuel.”
“Indeed.” Ralph forced a smile. “You’ve done us a considerable favor, actually. Besides the rescue, you’ve saved us a number of further losses like this.”
“But you didn’t know!” tore from Mary.
Dan started half out of his seat. “What’s that?”
“You didn’t know—then—and anyway, even if you had known, there are other herds—” She began to weep.
Appalled, he went to her, knelt by her bunk, and gripped her hand. It lay cold and moveless in his. “Mary, what’s wrong?”
“I was afraid of this… what Ralph and Eva were getting at… before you came… don’t you see? You, you care so greatly about this land… that to save a part of it… you’d risk—”
“Not your life, ever!” he exclaimed.
“No, I s-s-suppose not… but your own!”
“Why shouldn’t I, if I want to?” he asked in his bewilderment.
Her look was desperate upon him. “I thought—I hoped—All the years we might have had! You risked those!”
“But… but Mary, my duty—”
In long, shuddering breaths, she mastered herself enough to say, with even the ghost of a smile: ” ‘I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov’d I not honour more.’ Dan, I never really sympathized with that attitude. Or, at least, I think two people have to share the same, well, the same honor, if they really want to, to share each other. We belong to different countries, you and I. Can you understand?”
He shook his head as he spoke, harshly. “No. I’m afraid I don’t.” He rose to go. “But you’re still exhausted, Mary. I’d better not keep after you about this, or anything. Let’s talk later, shall we?”
He stooped above her bed, and their lips touched, carefully, as if they were strangers.
Though the air outside was hot and damp, a rising wind roared in treetops; and over the lake came striding the blue-black wall of a rainstorm that would cleanse and cool.
Nobody else was in sight when Dan and Eva left the guesthouse. Nonetheless they did not continue on among the neighbor buildings, but went down to the shore. The water chopped at their feet. Afar, lightning flashes were reflected off its steeliness, and thunder rolled around heaven.