Cadmann squeezed her hand and stood.

"Where're you going?" Mary Ann whispered. "Can I-?"

He shook his head, and in the dark it seemed that he smiled.

Ernst was on his feet. Cadmann pushed him down into his chair (even he wasn't strong enough to do that to Ernst against resistance) and whispered in his ear. Then he was gone into the milling press at the back of the dining hall. Mary Ann heard the door open and shut, but wasn't sure whether or not he'd left.

She cursed herself. You could have said or done something. He's just not a farmer, and he feels like the third glove in a pair...

And that thought was depressing. If she hadn't been able to make him feel needed in the six weeks they had been sleeping together, she wasn't sure what she was going to do.

Dorothy and her friends were crossing the poppy field in a flood of yellow Earthly sunlight. There was sudden, inappropriate laughter from the back of the mess hall, and Marnie McInnes said, "How did she get out?"

"Flying monkeys!" a joyful cry from Alicia Clifton. Ernst's teeth gleamed in the flickerlight. Both had returned to a world in which it was all right to be a child.

"Damn!" The veterinarian's curse cut through the laughter. Someone triggered a handlamp, and there was a scream, and a cry of "Turn on the damned lights, somebody. We've got a problem!"

Mary Ann was out of her chair before the lights came up. She worked her way to the back of the hall. A circle of people had formed around one of the calves, and as the light strengthened, she could see that the poor thing was wobbling, barely able to stand.

Blood drained down its legs, and skin hung from its ribs in a fold, exposing the bone. It looked at her and staggered, almost collapsing into her arms, smearing her with water and blood.

A scream split the driving sound of the rain: "The fence is down!" and lights all over the camp blinked to life. Coats were grabbed, and rain hats.

Mary Ann ran out into the mud and the bleeding sky, pulling on her coat as she went. They moved across the compound in a broken wave, running north to the grazing grounds. She splashed through puddles, slipped in mud, blinded by the rain. There was a scream to the left: "I found another one." She saw Jean Patterson struggling with a weak, terrified calf, wrestling it to the ground.

Mary Ann wiped the rain out of her face, tilled her head against the wind and, panting, headed for the swarm of hand-lamps buzzing around the fence. The wire was broken. It was ripped away from the posts, almost as if a jeep had been driven through it. The corrugated metal shelter was a shambles, and the corral was empty.

Desperately, in confusion, she began looking for tracks, spoor, anything. She recognized the wild laugh that came to her lips for the hysteria it was. In this rain, a herd of mastodons could have tromped through, and there simply wouldn't be any trace.

Cadmann was already at the shelter and stirring at the ground. A flash of lightning revealed a mass of blood and tissue working between his fingers. He grimaced in disgust. "No dog did this."

There were more yells, as more of the calves were found staggering in the darkness, braying into the wind. Zack puffed hard as he ran up. "What happened here, Weyland?"

"Hell if I know, and I don't think we're going to find out until morning, either."

"Take the calves over to the horse corral. They'll keep." Zack bent, looked at the metal. The sheeting looked as if it had been ripped with a power tool. "Jesus Christ. What could do something like this?"

Cadmann shook his head, but when he looked up at Mary Ann, there was both concern and vindication in his frown, a mixture that made her feel uneasy.

"What happened here?" Zack whispered again.

"I can tell you what happened," Terry said. Mary Ann whipped her head around at the ugly tone of his voice.

"What happened is that someone's been predicting trouble, and now we've got it. Happy, Weyland?"

Mary Ann wanted to spit in his face, ashamed that someone had spoken aloud the words she was whispering to herself. Instead, she balled up her hands and shouted, "Just go to hell, Terry!"

"To hear your boyfriend tell it, we already have."

Then he turned, walking away into the rain. Mary Ann knelt beside Cadmann, putting her arm around his shoulders.

He was shaking.

Chapter 5

AUTOPSY 1

What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,

That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,

make yourselves scabs?

SHAKESPEARE, Coriolanus

The Skeeter autogyro hummed up from the bank of the Miskatonic, crested the gorge and pivoted slowly, hovering. Its shielded tail rotors beat a curtain of dust from the ground.

Tau Ceti crawled towards the western mountains, a tiny glare-point momentarily eclipsed by the tarpaulined shape swinging from the belly of the gyro. Zack Moscowitz shielded his eyes against the glare with one hand, with the other held the veterinary clinic's door open. Sylvia Faulkner and Jerry Bryce emerged running. The doctor kept ahead of the dust cloud. He waved the Skeeter along the approach corridor between the animal pens and the shops.

Jerry must have come straight from his bed. His eyes were puffy; his unruly brown hair looked like the brambles that circled the plain. Sylvia wondered if he would be able to handle tonight's work.

"Where ‘d they find Ginger?" Zack coughed dust, hawked and spat.

Sylvia flinched. That kind of rudeness was totally out of character for Zack. "Half a kilometer upriver. Barney spotted it on his third flyby."

The Skeeter's engine whined, laboring as it hovered. Surely an illusion: the two-man craft could handle a ton of cargo. The calf's remains shuddered on the nylon palate as it spooled down, until palate and corpse flattened against an aluminum gurney.

Sylvia and Jerry wheeled the gurney into the clinic. The bulge beneath the tarp was not the shape of a calf. This wasn't going to be fun.

Stamping feet thundered in the horse pens as the colts and fillies backed as far away as they could. They tossed their manes, snorting, nostrils flaring. Zack sympathized totally. "No, it doesn't smell pretty, does it?" He stood back as the cart was wheeled up the ramp into the clinic. Sylvia guided, Jerry pushed. "I still can't believe this is happening." He eased the door shut behind them.

Jerry took the cart the rest of the way in. Sylvia watched as the Skeeter dipped toward the western wall of brambles. "We haven't found anything on the infrared?"

"Nothing but turkeys and pterodons," Zack said quietly. "I've been checking every half hour. Nothing on visual, nothing on audio, nothing on infrared or radar. For a hundred square kilometers." He wagged his head in disgust. "I don't know what to think. If there's something out there, it means trouble. But if there isn't anything out there... did you say who found this?"

"Carr."

"Yes, right. May I?" She handed Zack the clipboard and he jotted a note to himself. His handwriting, neurotically neat at the best of times, looked machine-printed.

Sylvia took his arm affectionately. "Zack—don't try to be everywhere at once. We'll take care of this." He started to protest, and she turned his chin, examining his bloodshot eyes. "You get any sleep?"

"Usually I count sheep. You wouldn't believe what was vaulting the fence last night—"

Jerry peeled back the outer tarp.

"Sheez!" Sylvia moved back from the sudden stench of unrefrigerated flesh. It smelled wet and suncooked and corrupt: the kind of odor that conjures an image of hungry flies and heavy spices; the smell that permeates a back-street butcher shop on a warm summer afternoon.