"I'll be in in a minute," she called, hopping down from the back of the tractor. She paused at the doorway to turn up her collar, then ran out in the direction of the corral.
Maybe Mary Ann was right. His was a minority opinion. Madman Weyland sees bogeymen in every corner-while crops grow, animals thrive and tame earthworms enrich the soil with their bodies and their wastes.
When he thought of these things, he should have thought of life, instead of a dog that had never come back, and a mangled chicken cage . .
.
It loved a rainy night.
It could always move about on land, slowly, lazily, and tolerate the heat for hours at a time; but movement at hunting speed required a quick kill, then a frantic race to the river to shed the terrible heat within. Night and rain extended its time on dry land.
It had changed when it became an adult. Its mind and senses adapted for life out of water; but from birth it had been intensely curious. Frustratingly, there had been nothing for its curiosity to chew on. Birds and swimmers were its world, a prison for its starved senses, until the intruders introduced it to the world beyond the rock wall.
They were so strange! They built angular nests. They tottered on their hind legs or attached themselves to creatures with hard, weirdly scented, tasteless shells. Sometimes they would let themselves be swallowed up by them, much like swimmers would. They lived with creatures even stranger than themselves.
On the first night it had killed a four-legged thing. The dog had run after it rather than fleeing. It had played with the dog, dancing around it and watching its antics. When the game grew tiresome, it tore out the animal's throat. The blood was thick and hot and delicious.
Afterward it had felt overheated. It had hooked its tail spines into the dog's throat and dragged the corpse back toward the river, where it could cool itself and eat at leisure.
Sport! Swimmers were never such fun. The flying things that sometimes fed on them were too much of a challenge. It thought about that night, and pleasure rippled through its body.
There had been another night when it broke through prickly barriers, following a tantalizing scent.
The nest of wood and thin tough vine had resisted only for a moment, and then it was among them, one thick paw and its wedgelike head squeezed into the box. What noise they had made! They had tried to fly, but badly. None were fast, none could fight. It was not even sport. It was only feeding... but feeding was its own reward, and anything that didn't taste like a swimmer was food for thought.
That was days past. Now it watched something that looked to be good sport.
A single invader was walking out by the rows of thorned vines that protected a group of four-legged grass-eaters. The invader looked frequently up at the clouds, no doubt enjoying the fall of rain, and shook water out of the dark fur on its head.
The invader never looked behind the tarpaulin-sheltered jeep parked to the side of the grazing land. The man walked to within ten feet of it, leaned against the fence with one arm outstretched and spoke to one of the grass-eaters.
The grass-eater walked clumsily to the fence and licked something out of the man's hand. The man turned and took a step toward the jeep.
The creature's limbs trembled, tingled, its blood singing with anticipation. Come. Just another step...
Disappointment washed through its mind as the man turned at the call of another of its kind and ran torpidly back toward the lights.
Ah, well. There was still the grass-eater.
It was near the thorned vines, chewing at something on the ground. It was plump-more than twice as large as the dog, almost as large as the creature itself-but that was no worry. It could feel that the grass-eater was no fighter.
The creature crawled forward until its flat, roughly triangular head peeped from behind the jeep. A raindrop spattered directly into its eye, and its ocular covering thickened momentarily.
The calf chewed the handful of alfalfa sprouts Mary Ann had brought it. The rain was just beginning to chill its skin, and soon it would head for the metal-roofed shelter in the corner of the pasture to huddle for warmth with its brothers and sisters.
There came a rippling cooing sound from beyond the fence, and the calf pressed against the wire until it felt the first touch of pain. It lowed plaintively. It shuffled at the fence, afraid to press forward, reluctant to retreat.
The shape was a massed shadow flowing around the curve of the jeep. A squat, flattened shadow with disklike, unblinking eyes and a dolphin's smile.
The creature burbled happily.
The calf backed away. Sudden, uncomprehending fear pumped adrenaline into its system, sent it stumbling backward toward the shelter. The creature waddled with almost comic clumsiness up to the fence, sniffed at the wire, bit at it experimentally, drew back.
The other calves had picked up the scent of fear, and two of them poked their heads from the shelter, looking out through the rain, making deep braying sounds. Calling for the protection of the herd, for the adults, for the bull! But there were only calves.
The rain had grown into a downpour now, and Tau Ceti, already low on the horizon, had disappeared behind massive, inky clouds. The wind whipped the droplets almost sideways. The young grass was pelted down and mired itself in the mud. Back in the camp, one of the lights flickered, dimmed, then strengthened again.
Lightning arced jaggedly in the sky, and the calf saw, without comprehending, that the wire was broken, curled back inward, shivering in the wind.
A thick shadow squatted in the grass a few feet ahead of the break. It had eyes that glistened, hypnotically vast.
It crept slowly forward, even as the calf loped toward the shelter. There were eight of them beneath the sheet metal, packed against each other now, the shared heat of their bodies no match for the wind or the rain or the sudden, crippling fear.
The shadow was closer now, very close, immediately in front of the shelter. Great webbed claws landed pad first, then hook-nailed toes gripped the ground to pull it along the grass on its belly. Rain pelted against its skin and unblinking eyes as it seemed to evaluate them, choosing.
They crawled over each other, bleating their terror to the wind and the night. Two of them began chewing at the wire at the back of the enclosure, ignoring the pain in their lips and gums, thinking only of the thing that crept in the darkness, eyes wide, unceasing grin opening to reveal rows of chisel teeth.
Cooing to them, it sprang.
It landed among them, lashing out with claws and teeth. The screams, the smell of alien blood, the terrified eyes that rolled, flashing white in the darkness: it would remember all of these things, and study its memories later, analyze the prey's habits and its own mistakes. Its ancestors had needed such caution. The prey they had evolved to hunt were more devious, more dangerous than any calf.
It snapped and tore at them in the confines of the shelter. Despite their weight it smashed them out of the way, flicking its tail with stunning force, ripping wet strips of flesh from the bone. Finally it fastened its teeth deeply in one warm neck, worrying until the skin and cartilage parted and blood spurted warmly into its mouth. The calf trembled. Its last sound was a strangled bleat of despair.
The others fled the shelter, escaping through the break in the wire, running out in all directions.
The calf's chest heaved as it lay on its side, heart struggling to beat, to stave off the shock of pain and massive blood loss. Its killer folded its legs and lay down next to it, peering into its eyes as it died, watching them film, the lids falling for the last time.