The Mystery of Ireta: Dinosaur Planet & Dinosaur Planet Survivors

KAI heard Varian's light step echoing in the empty passenger section of the shuttlecraft just as he switched off the communications unit and tripped the tape into storage.

"Sorry, Kai, did I miss the contact?" Varian came in out of breath, her suit dripping wet, and bringing with her the pervasive stench of Ireta's "fresh" air, which tainted the filtered air of the shuttle's pilot cabin. She glanced from the unlit communications panel to his face to see if he was annoyed by her tardiness, but a triumphant grin cut through her feigned penitence. "We finally captured one of those herbivores!"

Kai had to grin in response to her elation. Varian would spend long hours tracking a creature in Ireta's damp, steaming, stinking jungles -- hours of patient searching which all too often proved unproductive. Nevertheless, short of resorting to Discipline, Varian found it nauseatingly irksome to sit still in a comfortable chair through a Thek relay. Kai had wagered with himself that she would manage to avoid the tedious interchange with some reasonable excuse. Her news was good and her excuse valid.

"How'd you manage to capture one? Those traps you've been rigging?" he asked with genuine interest, though those same traps had taken his best mechanic and kept him from completing the seismic grid his geologists needed.

"No, not the traps." There was a hint of chagrin in Varian's tone. "No, the damned fool creature was wounded and couldn't run away with the rest of the herd." She paused to give her next statement full emphasis. "And, Kai, it bleeds blood!"

Kai blinked at her announcement. "So?"

"Red blood!"

"Well?"

"Are you a biological idiot? Red blood means hemoglobin . . ."

"What's odd about that? Plenty of other species use an iron base . . ."

"Not on the same planet with those aquatic squirmers Trizein's been dissecting. They have a pale viscous fluid." Varian was fleetingly contemptuous of his failure to recognize the significance. "This planet's one mass of anomalies, biological as well as geological. No ore where we should be striking pay dirt by the hopper-load, and me finding creatures larger than anything mentioned in text tapes from any planet in all the systems we've explored in the last four hundred galactic-standard years. Of course, it may be all of a piece," she added thoughtfully, as she pushed back the springy dark curls that framed her face.

She was tall, as were so many types born on a normal-gravity planet like Earth, with a slender but muscularly fit body which the one-piece orange ship suit displayed admirably. Despite the articles dangling from her force-screen belt, her waist was trim, and the bulges in her thigh and calf pouches did not detract from the graceful appearance of her legs.