“Wow,” he whispered to himself.
8
“What have you found?” Hunter asked Chad. Hunt er was still standing, though Chad and Jane had both found seats on the ground where they could lean against tree trunks. Chad had been calling up various lists of dinosaurs on his belt computer.
“North America was full of dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous Period.” Chad frowned at the little screen on his belt computer. “I think this one might be a good recommendation for our trap.”
“What is it?” Jane asked.
“Stegoceras,” said Chad. “Common in this time and place. It will look fairly dangerous, because it has a heavy, spiked dome on its head. However, it was-is, I mean-an herbivore, and it’s only a couple of meters long and half a meter high, so it won’t pose an extreme danger.”
“Does it look like a goat?” Jane asked.
“No. Look at the line drawing here on the screen.” Chad handed the belt computer to her. “See, it runs on two legs. It looks more like a goat-sized duck wearing a bowl on its head.” He grinned.
“You’re right.” Jane laughed. “But it does look like it could ram you if it were mad.”
“Strictly an herbivore?” Hunter moved to look over her shoulder. “Not an omnivore that might decide to try a couple of large mammals for lunch on a whim?”
“Herbivore,” said Chad.
“I think I can accept this,” said Hunter. “My robotic strength should be more than a match for its strength if it chose to attack a human. So under these controlled circumstances, my interpretation of the First Law will allow us to use a stegoceras.”
“In that case,” said Chad, “we have to catch one.” He clipped the belt computer back on and got up. “Any idea where our safari guide went?”
“I turned up my hearing sensitivity when he left,” said Hunter. “I have been listening. He is still slowly moving away from us westward. I would say that he is safe.” Hunter opened one of the packs and drew out two coils of rope. He tossed one to Chad.
Chad looked at the coil of rope in his hand and started tying a loop in one end. “Isn’t Steve supposed to do the physical labor around here?”
“Steve is looking for water,” said Jane. “That’s also a duty of his.”
“I will use my enhanced hearing to pick out footsteps that are not Steve’s,” said Hunter, also tying a lasso. “Chad, you can help me identify what species of dinosaur we find. Then the two of us will have to rope him.”
“You have another rope?” Jane asked. ‘‘I’ll try it, too.”
“All right.” Hunter took out another and threw it to her. “But your first duty as roboticist is MC Governor. I want you to stay within sight of the perimeter in case he appears here soon. If you can lasso a stegoceras, go ahead.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jane said, laughing. “That’s what I get for going into robotics, huh?”
“If you see him, or anticipate any danger, yell for me,” said Hunter. He hesitated, then pointed behind Chad, to the north. “This forest is teeming with animals of all kinds, many of them two-legged and roughly the right size, allowing for individual variation. But I hear one likely prospect fairly close in that direction.”
“Let’s go see,” said Chad.
“The First Law requires me to go first,” said Hunter. “Stay close and move quietly.”
Chad nodded.
Hunter moved forward, studying the ground with magnified vision in order to place his feet in the spots that would make the least noise. At the same time, his enhanced hearing told him that a two-legged dinosaur was moving very slowly only about twelve meters ahead. The footsteps were gentle and infrequent, meaning that the dinosaur was not really going anywhere. Hunter guessed that the creature was feeding on leaves or perhaps avoiding a carnivore.
Chad, right behind him, was not nearly as quiet. Still, since their quarry was not fleeing, Hunter concluded that the paleontologist was handling himself well enough. Hunter had to move around a thicket and then a couple of very large, heavily branched trees. By the sounds of movement, the dinosaur was soon only about two meters ahead, standing still.
Hunter moved to one side and waved for Chad to come up next to him. Then Hunter pointed soundlessly through the dense forest cover. All they could see at this point was the long, green, angled slope of the creature’s back. Its head was down low, behind the brush.
“It’s too big,” said Chad softly. “I don’t think that’s a-look out!”
Suddenly the dinosaur leapt through the bushes at them, flashing rows of long fangs.
Now, thinking in nanoseconds, Hunter could see his mistake. The basic shape of this dinosaur was the same as that of the stegoceras, but it was larger than he had judged by the sound of its footsteps. The long, blunt snout was filled with sharp teeth, incisors instead of molars. Its forearms ended in three-fingered hands with long claws. In short, this was a carnivorous predator. Its lack of movement had not signified feeding or hiding, but that it was lying in wait for the two of them.,
Chad spun around, ducked, and threw himself to the ground. Driven by the First Law to protect him, Hunter threw his lasso over the long snout and narrow head of the dinosaur and yanked it tight. He braced his feet against the ground and pulled with all the robotic strength in his body. The dinosaur fell heavily to one side, crushing a small tree under it. Now Hunter could see that the dinosaur, when standing, was about a meter and a half high, much bigger than a stegoceras.
“Run!” Hunter shouted to Chad, who scrambled up and took off. “Warn Jane! Climb a tree!”
The lassoed dinosaur had scrambled to its thick, powerful hind legs. It ran at Hunter, teeth bared again, its long claws raking the air. Hunter, with the advantage of robotic reflexes, dodged to his right, cocking his right arm. As the dinosaur closed on him, he slipped farther to the side and slammed his fist against the side of the creature’s head.
The power of the blow knocked the dinosaur’s head to one side. It stumbled, shifting around to face Hunter again. Hunter leapt as high as he could, grasping a branch just thick enough to bear his weight. As the dinosaur lunged, he swung up over it and pulled himself high enough to reach another branch.
Hunter had been able to see from the dinosaur’s body that it was a runner, not a climber. The creature’s long, slender legs had some leaping ability, which it now used futilely. Its jaws snapped below Hunter’s dangling feet and its short, skinny forearms were not long enough to reach up very high at all. Then it eyed him angrily and stopped to watch him, twitching its long, heavy tail.
Even now, Hunter was still holding the end of the rope. He began pulling. If he could hoist the dinosaur off the ground, it would be helpless.
Soon the rope was taut and the dinosaur began pulling back. Now, however, it had its strong legs braced on the ground and it began to walk backward slowly. By contrast, Hunter could not pull too hard for fear of losing his balance in the tree and falling out.
For a long moment, the robot and the dinosaur were at a stalemate. Then, suddenly, the rope snapped. Hunter caught his balance in the branches, still holding most of the rope.
The dinosaur, with the loop of the lasso around its neck and only a short, broken end of rope dangling from it, showed its teeth and moved around the base of the tree.
Even from his high vantage point, Hunter could not see Chad. However, he could hear the paleontologist frantically yelling for Jane to climb a tree. The dinosaur was not interested in Chad. It was still watching Hunter, not realizing, of course, that a robot was entirely inedible.
“It is still here watching me,” Hunter shouted. “Chad, can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Hunter,” Chad called back. “Jane and I both climbed up a tree by the camp.”
“You are both safe, then?”
“We’re fine,” Jane shouted breathlessly. “But what do we do now?”