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Jerry almost danced with excitement. "This is it. I'm sure of it."
"How can you be so damned happy about how powerful this thing is?"
Carlos demanded.
"Don't you see?" Sylvia shouted.
"See what?"
Jerry brought calm back to his voice. "The monster depends on super oxygenation. That means it's vulnerable. We can kill it."
"Maybe I'm stupid," Zack said. "But I don't see—"
Jerry ignored him. "Cadma
Cadma
"Enough to cause a flare in your infrared, as I recall."
"Right."
Jerry took a step back from the graying thing on the tables, the dead, cold hulk leaking blood and cloudy fluid drop by slow drop onto the stained tile floor. "And amphibian. We'll never find these things far from water. They need it to dump the heat! Listen. There can't be many of these things on the island—"
Carlos cursed vilely and smashed his pouch to the ground. "I swear to God. The next idiot who says that, I am going to break his face. Shit." He kicked at the plastic skin, squirting liquid out into a puddle. Cursing again, he scooped it off the floor and stormed out of the room.
"Before, it was a guess," Jerry said. He didn't sound worried. "Now we know."
"Know what?"
"There can't be many of them. By many I mean more than a dozen or so.
Cadma
"The pterodons," Sylvia said. "That's why they were so scared of the water! These things hide in the water. The poor pterodons! They have to fish, but they never know, when they dive for a samlon, but what one of these will be waiting for them—"
"Right." Jerry stepped back from the table and dropped his mask. "Look, we can wait for the computer analysis, but we don't really need it, do we? We had a brood of them. Heck, this one might well have been the mother. Picture her swimming over, or floating over on a piece of driftwood, or any other scenario you like. She's already pregnant, with a clutch of eggs ready to be laid. Land her ten or twenty years ago, perhaps, and they proceed to strip the island of animal protein."
"Everything except samlon," Sylvia said.
"Yeah." Jerry looked thoughtful. "And there is our next big mystery. There's no samlon in her stomach. What protects samlon? Maybe our monster only hunts on the land. And by the way—we need a name for this thing. We can't just keep calling it ‘monster.' "
Sylvia forced a smile. "I think Cadma
"Name it be damned," Cadma
"In a minute," Jerry said. "Damn. It really is a puzzle. These things eat everything. Have eaten everything, they damned near stripped this island clean—Sylvia! It all fits! Dopey Joes in the hills, none near water. Pterodons, nothing else. Everything but the samlon. All right, what keeps the grendels from eating all the samlon?"
"Poisonous?" Sylvia asked. "Or—oh, damn."
"What?"
"Something—I have the feeling I'm forgetting something."
"Can't be important."
"Maybe. Anyway, could samlon be poison to grendels?"
"Doesn't seem reasonable. They ate cattle. We eat samlon."
"Yeah—"
"Or," Jerry said, "maybe Grendel only hunts warm-blooded creatures."
"Given its choice, sure," Cadma
"I don't know what to believe now. That's what we're—"
Jerry's voice faded out, and Sylvia groped for support as the room seemed to ripple and she lost her footing. Cadma
Sylvia's eyes were open, but totally unfocused. Light and shadow mingled indeterminably. As her senses returned she heard the slow rumble of Terry's breathing, and finally realized that she was in her own bedroom.
Somewhere outside her window men were arguing. She recognized the voices: Stu Ellington and Carlos. Both sounded horribly drunk.
"—the hell, marica? You think you could have done better?"
"—don't have to think. You killed her, you left her and ran, you dickless wonder—"
She heard the sharp, sudden sound of bone meeting bone, and the side of her cabin shuddered as a body slammed into it.
Briefly the shadow of two struggling bodies fell across the window.
She watched the dark, shifting shapes, overcome with a hallucinogenic sense of unreality. Another sharp crack. Gasps, a creak of tortured metal, the stifled sobs of pain and anger. A swift curse in Spanish, and a softer thud. Then Cadma
There were a few more muttered words, then the voices faded. The shadows dissolved before the sweep of the searchlight, melded into the darkness, and once again the night was still.
Sylvia rolled over and hit the light. Terry reached for the trapeze bar above his head and pulled himself upright. "You're awake."
"Only when I heard the racket." Her head buzzed hollowly. Somebody tranked me...
"Damn. Listen—you haven't had a full night's sleep for three days, and I want you to get one. You've been ru
His hand slipped from her chest to her belly, the warm, gentle swell there, and she suddenly realized the truth in his words. Both of her needed rest. And food. Now that the adrenaline rush had slowed, she could hear the dull roar of hunger and fatigue. The tension had masked it. The tension of waiting, of helplessly watching the search for Carlos and Bobbi. Of watching Cadma
There had been, could have been no rest.
But now...
Terry was right.
"Carlos and Stu just needed to get it out. They'll probably cover each other's backs tomorrow. There's nothing anyone can do for it." He ran his hands lovingly through her hair, scratching her scalp with the tips of his nails. "And anyway, I'm here to make sure that you don't go ru
For an instant she thought of arguing, then fatigue completed what tranquilizers and low blood sugar began, and she slipped back into a light and fitful sleep.
When Sylvia finally emerged from the caverns of narcosis some ten hours later, the camp was on full alert. The minefields beyond the perimeter fence were activated. Current pulsed through the wire. Sylvia's skin hummed if she approached it too closely.
She wrapped her sweater around her more tightly and headed through the thin morning fog toward the communal dining hall.
In the midst of total alert she felt a curious security: the Colony was not pitted against human enemies. It's only an animal. Intelligent as a gorilla. Maybe as intelligent as a primitive human. Doesn't matter. It can't use tools! It's only an animal. We—Cadma
A tiger in the dark room is a monster. Turn on the light, and it is just an animal. Cadma