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Zack held the door for her as she entered the dining hall. She asked him, "How's Carlos?"
"Sleeping it off. Stu has a busted lip. Well earned, if you ask me."
Virtually every adult male, and half the women, were clustered in the hall. The walls and ceiling of the hall were illuminated with views of the Colony and points south. Cadma
He stands there—does he know just how arrogantly he's standing there? But the rest of them, they're taking it seriously. They accept it. I never saw him like this before. In his element. The bad time is over for Colonel Cadma
One of the wall videos wavered, and Cadma
"We'll be using a portable holo system," he continued. "Rachel will carry it into the first assault—and I want her to stay back. The idea here is to perfect a system. If we make any mistakes, we want the camp to know it fast. If we do it right, we can be sure that the National Geographic people will be interested. This will head back to Earth along with the rest of the data on grendels. George, Jill, you'll bracket the pool here, and here—"
Sylvia looked at the maps. One was a digitized thermal breakdown representing fresh water, hot springs and vegetation.
On the other wall was a contour map, and on a third a wildlife vector. Greatest concentrations of samlon had been detailed. Four of the water holes had been identified as likely hidey-holes. These had large populations of samlon, and no hot springs nearby. Grendels would want cold water to dump heat into. Distance from the other holes was an important factor. Any creature as voracious as a grendel had to be extremely territorial, requiring substantial hunting ground.
Sylvia found her eyes drawn time and again to the center maps. The Colony.
A small area, really. Terribly small when examined in contrast to the entire island. Barely two square kilometers.
The view from the Geographic made hollow their assertions of mastery.
From that perspective, how very little change they had wrought.
So presumptuous had been the children of Earth. When all was said and done, might not this new world, this terribly old world, swallow them and their folly, leaving nothing behind but bones? Bones, and some films beamed back to an Earth that might or might not send others this way again. Earth was rich, and jaded.
She touched her belly, trying to sense the slumbering life within. It shifted, kicking, and suddenly she felt awesomely small and vulnerable. What was she doing here? What were any of them doing here? All she could think of was the image of that hideous beast twisting through the searchlights, sprinting forward like a windup toy with a broken spring. Bathed in flame, skin coated in jellied gasoline. By all sanity dead, but living still.
God in heaven.
Then there were the Knights of Avalon, men and women descending into the caves beneath the northern ravine. There, in the abysmal darkness, confronting a larger, more powerful version of the first beast. Armed with better weapons, more certain knowledge, and something else: the kind of foolhardy courage that had lured men beyond the edge of shadow since time immemorial.
Now forty grim determined men and women waited, armed and ready. Waited to follow the camp's only true warrior into hell if need be, to stand between Sylvia's unborn child and the hideous grasp of a grendel.
Suddenly her eyes blurred with tears, and an unbidden, heartfelt prayer echoed in her mind.
God be with you, Cadma
Because the Devil has already dealt himself in.
Chapter 21
KILLING GROUND
Chance favors the trained mind.
LOUIS PASTEUR
Carlos wiped his forehead with the back of a gritty hand and adjusted his throat mike. "Martinez here. In place."
The water hole was situated eighty miles north of the Colony, an hour's flight by Skeeter. Just a wet spot hidden by bushes, forty feet long by half that wide, one he would never have believed could be sixty feet deep. Some ancient seismic activity had torn the rocks apart and the Miskatonic had filled the hole. That was long ago. A monster lurked there now. Probably, Carlos reminded himself; but in his heart he knew.
You're there, and I have come to kill you.
The clearing was roughly horseshoe-shaped, narrowing into an eastern bottleneck where the stream trickled in from the main river. The overflow bubbled up over a western rise of crumbled stone and disappeared into a marsh.
Probability 78 percent. Those words had sounded encouraging back at the camp, but here at the killing ground, with twenty hunters surrounding the hole, that 22 percent uncertainty looked as big as Mucking Great Mountain.
In just a few minutes they would know. Carlos stared at the chill depths. Grendel, Grendel, are you there? Grendel, we have come to kill you, he thought; but all that Carlos had seen so far were samlon flashing like silver shadows. Be here.
Be here and die. Die slowly, die and taste death—
"You okay, amigo?" Hendrick Sills asked.
Carlos flashed a quick smile at his companion. "Si, compadre." He let
Bobbi's image fade, forgot the still, pale face and the memory of a last desperate kiss shared beneath a shelf of rock.
No mistakes this time. Twenty men and women surrounded this hole. We have enough weapons to kill a tyra
The satchel team stood by. Three men: on signal they would run forward to throw eight kilograms of explosives into the hole, then run away as the charge sank until either the depth fuse or the timer detonated it. The hydrostatic shock would either kill or drive it out of the hole. Hendrick Sills, their chief engineer, had verified that there was no other exit.
And then? Well, Cadma
"Can you believe this?" Hendrick demanded. "Ten light-years from home. When my grandparents took the solar system we didn't have anything like this to fight. Just physics, just our own ignorance. Another goddam star and we're standing here like a Stone Age tribe facing a tiger."
"They are strong, these grendels," Carlos agreed. "But—" Hendrick gri
Carlos gri
"And well enough," Hendrick said.
"And well enough. The objective is to kill them. And that we will do."
His comcard spoke. "Carlos, this is Cadma
"As I'll ever be, amigo."
"Let's do it, then. All units, general alert. Stand by."
The semicircle of armed men and women looked to their weapons, then waited.
"Alpha team, go!"
Three men ran forward, one of them George Merriot, still limping from his burn wounds. Ten feet from the sinkhole they paused. One stood with flame-thrower ready as the other two swung the heavy satchel they held between them. "One, two, three, go!" The dark brown box arced out toward the swampy hole. "That's it!" the team leader called. "Run away!" They were laughing as they rejoined their comrades in the line facing the hole.