Suddenly the triceratops I was looking at moved out of my binoculars’ field of vision. By the time I had refocused on it, it had turned around so that it was facing the other way, its left side to me instead of its right. I put the binoculars down and saw that the two other horned-faces were falling in beside this one, their array of facial armament pointing forward like jousters’ lances. One of the beasts was pawing the ground with its stubby foreleg, looking for all the world like a bull about to charge.
I glanced toward the far end of the valley and my jaw dropped. Three mechanical tanks, each one just a tad smaller than the horned dinosaurs, had appeared near the Het ships. Flat, beetle-shaped, they were painted in a cool aquamarine shot through with veins of red, a color scheme very close to that worn by the triceratopses. On a tank, this surely was camouflage, meaning — meaning what?
Each tank sported a tapering crystal tube, presumably a gun, mounted on a hemispherical turret. The tanks must have come from within the ships, for all three of the pulsing spheres now had their thick-lipped mouths open and their gray access tongues stretched out to the ground.
These tanks were the first machines I’d seen with the Hets, and they seemed incongruous with the living spaceships and dinosaur vehicles, almost as if they belonged to some other alien technology. That impression was reinforced as I noticed that one of the tanks had an open door on its curving side. Although the door measured about two meters by one, the right proportions to comfortably allow a Het riding inside its trusty troodon or brachiator to enter, it was oriented the wrong way, with the long axis parallel to the ground. There was another door just inside the first, forming an airlock-like chamber.
The triceratopses now stood one hundred meters from the tanks, as if waiting for some signal. Many of the other dinosaurs had walked to the near end of the valley, except for poor old mother tyrannosaur. She was flopped on her belly near the spaceships, apparently too tired to move.
It soon became apparent which of the beasts were currently Het-ridden. The trio of small tyrannosaurs stood in rapt attention, as did the giant female T. rex. Perhaps these great theropods were too dangerous to ever let run free. By contrast, the placid hadrosaurs seemed to be unoccupied. One was defecating. Another had ambled off and was using its shovel-like bill to sift through the dirt of the valley floor, apparently looking for roots. About half of the ornithomimids, looking like plucked ostriches, were likely hosting Hets, for they were looking intently at the tableau of tanks and triceratopses. The other half were busy grooming themselves or each other. As for the troodons, most had their bright eyes riveted to the scene in front of them.
Everyone was clearly waiting for somebody to make the first move. The anticipation — of what, I still did not know — was palpable, and I found myself holding my breath. Seconds passed, the buzz of insects in my ears like the drone of an electric motor.
Suddenly the middle tank squeezed off a crystalline projectile. It was hard to see, just a glint of light as it arced through the air. As soon as they heard the gun’s report — a reverberating metallic sound like sheet metal being warped — the trio of horned dinosaurs burst into action. They moved with surprising speed for animals of their bulk, musculature rippling under their gaudy hides. Magnificent, energetic beasts! Even this far away, I felt a rumbling in the soil beneath my belly as they ran. One veered to the right, its body snapping to the side like a sprung mousetrap. The second continued its forward charge, but weaving in a complex pattern as it did so, a mad dance to which only it could predict the next step. The third triceratops, much to my surprise, reared on its hind legs, like a horse whinnying, and let out a multi-note roar. It dropped back to all fours and deked left. The projectile hit where this one would have been if it hadn’t changed course, sending up a cloud of dirt.
The one who’d almost been killed charged even faster, its legs pumping beneath its body. It escaped a second impact by once again rising up on its hind legs, the crystal shell exploding in front of it. Red slice marks appeared on its lean belly as shards carved into the beast’s hide. With its one-ton frilled head lowered and eye horns pointing dead ahead, it rammed into the beetle-like tank. The horns pierced the tank’s plating and there was a sound like a pop can opening as pressure equalized.
The triceratops dug in its forelegs, dropped to its rear knees, and arched its powerful neck, tendons distending, muscles bulging. With massive grunts, it lifted the tank impaled on its horns a meter off the ground and then quickly smashed it down. It did this twice more in rapid succession, and the tank’s hull cracked like an eggshell. Through the broken casing I could see the interior. It was made of an iridescent, amber-colored metal.
Meanwhile, the remaining two tanks were pumping off rounds of glassy ammunition, the whoomp-whoomp-whoomp of their report echoing off the valley walls. The vehicles apparently could move in any direction, sliding left and right, forward and backward with ease. The other two ceratopsians danced to avoid the shells.
One triceratops saw an opening as the transparent gun tube that had been trained on it swung away to take a bead on another horned-face. It charged, head low, bringing its eye horns underneath the tank’s lens-shaped body. With a quick movement, it flipped the vehicle onto its back. The tank’s underbelly, made of that same amber metal, was tightly packed with glistening meter-wide ball bearings, explaining its agility.
I glanced at the watching gallery. Even the unoccupied hadrosaurs had become intrigued by the battle, for they had risen on their hind legs, their tails bending stiffly against the ground. The Het-ridden beasts stood quietly, though, nothing giving away the thoughts of the aliens within them.
Evidently one of the triceratopses had let its attention wander from the fight for a second as well, for I swung my binoculars back just in time to see a crystal projectile explode in a flash of green light against its face. The detonation smashed its neck frill, snapping off its nasal and right-eye horns. They flew into the air like white missiles. Slick with blood, half its skull gone, the thing still managed to charge. How could it move with its brain — ? Of course. A Het rode within the animal. It must be farther back, perhaps stretched out along the spinal cord to better control the creature’s body. I imagined it would be under a lot of pressure now, having to take over the horned-face’s autonomic functions, which must have been about all the beast’s fist-sized brain had been good for anyway. A lumbering corpse, the injured horned-face slammed into the side of the tank, which spun away under the force of the impact.
The triceratops that had earlier impaled a tank had managed to disentangle its face from the twisted wreckage and it, too, charged the remaining armored vehicle. Rearing up on its hind legs, it made a quick, sheering bite with its parrot-like beak, snipping off the crystal gun tube. The two uninjured triceratopses shouldered against the tank, pushing it toward the far valley wall.
The half-headless beast, apparently blind, had collapsed onto its belly, its forelimbs twisted at an angle that would have been excruciating had the animal still possessed a mind with which to register pain. I zoomed in on its shattered skull and saw a phosphorescent blue lump the size of a beach ball — much larger than any of the Hets I had yet seen — oozing out of the splintered bone onto the blood-saturated soil.
I turned back to the remaining tank. The two triceratopses were still butting it with their shoulders, the lens-shaped body denting slightly each time they hit it. Within minutes the dinosaurs had rammed the beetle-like vehicle against the sheer wall of the valley. I lowered my binoculars and surveyed the scene: one tank smashed, another flipped on its back, and a third taken prisoner. Incredible.