They walked at a fast pace, despite their unfamiliarity with the ground. Ryan was eager to see as much of the local area as possible, and as the miles went by, they found themselves doing just that. It was not a cheerful walk, however. Although there was no evidence to suggest that death had already become widespread, they passed several corpses along the way. Some were large, some small. The half-eaten remains of what could only have been a juvenile sauropod lay sprawled on the ground in one place, its long neck and tail stretched out. It looked pitifully tiny, and did nothing to improve either scientist's deteriorating mood. Both men were well aware that they were nothing but helpless witnesses to the situation, but that did not stop them from feeling that there ought to be something they could do. A dead baby, predictably, only made matters worse. Stephen crouched down beside it, and made a good show of trying to maintain his scientific objectivity.
"Have you still got my camera?" he asked. Cutter nodded. "You should get some shots of this. We've not seen many babies so far."
"Yes." The camera stayed in his pocket, however. He didn't want to record this scene. Stephen certainly didn't press the issue, and as they walked on again, he lapsed into silence. Ryan and Smoky seemed to sense their mood even if they didn't share it, and remained quiet themselves. Only when they found another body - this time the fresh carcass of another hadrosaur - did the silence break.
"I suppose we should be glad that we haven't seen our vast herds after all," said Cutter, as he paused to look down at the slumped beast. "One body on its own isn't so very bad."
"It probably left its feeding ground through desperation, just like Edmond did," said Stephen. "The herds will be elsewhere. I think I can live without seeing what they're going through right now."
"My sentiments exactly." Cutter was thinking back to his enthusiasm when they had first discovered their dead Edmontosaurus. He couldn't feel the same about its cousin before him now. Not now that he knew how it had died. "Come on. Let's get out of here. With luck this will be the last body for the time being."
It wasn't, although it was the last dead dinosaur. Birds were strewn about the place, as well as one or two mammals - tiny creatures, the perfect size to be stowed away as specimens for later study. Neither Cutter nor Stephen picked them up. The situation was leaving them both increasingly miserable, and Ryan couldn't help but wonder if he shouldn't have left them behind. Smoky moved into the lead, pulling ahead as the rest of the party began to move more slowly, his eyes scanning the horizon for anything that might be zeroing in on the various dead bodies. Silence fell again, and this time it was Smoky who ended it, calling back to the others that he had found some sort of nest. It was extremely large, but clearly long abandoned, the eggs inside broken open by something. Hurrying to catch up, Cutter crouched down for a better look, poking at one of the shards of shell with a ballpoint pen.
"Hatched or eaten?" asked Stephen, bending down beside him. His flaming branch lit up his old friend's suddenly excited face, and encouraged him to smile as well.
"I don't suppose there's any way to tell. I can't see anything nearby that might have been used to break the eggs open, but we still can't rule it out." Carefully picking up one of the large pieces, Cutter handed his branch to his companion so that he could stow the shell away. It would make a good specimen for study back at the university. "I wonder whose nest it was."
"Something big," guessed Ryan, his expression suggesting that he would far rather they did not stand around for long. "And probably extremely hungry by now."
"Oh, it's gone, captain." Cutter turned around, staring out into the gloom all about them. "There are some bits of spider's web on the shells, quite old themselves by the look of it. Whoever laid these eggs will have moved on."
"Bird or dinosaur?" wondered Smoky. The professor nodded.
"Good question. Can anybody see any tracks?"
"Yes, quite a few." Stephen pointed at several footprints on the ground. "They're all recent, though. Very recent, some of them. I doubt they're anything to do with this nest."
"Then keep your eyes peeled. And look up, Hart, not down." Ryan gestured ahead. "Come on. There's been enough dawdling. I want to get as far as we can before it's time to head back."
"We're right with you, captain." Cutter took a moment more to look at the construction of the nest, then rose to his feet, retrieving his lighted branch. It was beginning to burn low, the flame deepening to a dark red that rather resembled sunset. Ryan scowled at the sight.
"Oh for some pitch to dip these things in." He reached over, relighting Cutter's branch with his own. "Perhaps we shouldn't go much further after all. These sticks aren't going to keep burning for very long."
"Just a little longer?" Cutter was aware that he was in danger of sounding like a small child begging its father, but he didn't care. He wanted to see where they were; he wanted to see more of this world. A few broken eggs in a nest was more than he could ever once have dreamed of seeing, but he knew that it was not enough. Not now, when the only dinosaurs he had seen had been dead ones. Just a little further. Just a little more. Ryan perhaps agreed, or possibly he just didn't want to argue. He nodded his head.
"We'll go on for a bit. Sing out if your sticks start to burn low, though. We don't want any of them to go out."
"Thank you, captain." Cutter found that he was relieved. He didn't want to walk past that dead baby sauropod again so soon, and certainly not without having seen anything first that might lighten his mood. They had not gone far, however, before an almighty bellow rang out around them, making even Ryan start in surprise. His hands tightened around his rifle, and he turned in a circle in search of the source of the noise.
"What the-?"
"I have no idea." Cutter, perhaps unsurprisingly, looked more fascinated than afraid. "Though I would dearly love to find out. What do you think, Stephen?"
"I hate to guess." His colleague tilted his head on its side, hoping for a repeat of the noise, though none came. "Would you say it was more a shout or a roar?"
"A shout, I think." Cutter was frowning, searching for necessary adjectives. "More ringing in tone than a roar would be, at least by my definition."
"Shout, moan, roar, shriek, what's the bloody difference?" Smoky looked uncharacteristically shaken. "Stuff of nightmares, that was."
"It makes a difference in guessing what made the noise, not to mention the how and the why of it," Cutter told him. "Animals make all kinds of noises. Fear, rage, alarms of all sorts, mating displays, or just ordinary social calls between the members of a group. It helps to try to guess what the message in the call might be, especially if we're going to be headed anywhere near it."
"Big noise, big animal," said Ryan, with typical bluntness, and eyed his rifle somewhat doubtfully. By now they had all encountered animals that could not be stopped by gunfire, and here their other defensive options were rather limited. Besides their rifles and fire sticks, the best that they had to use were Stephen's dissecting knives. It was not encouraging.
"Don't tell me you're nervous, captain," said Cutter. His smile was gently teasing, but there was resolution in his eyes, and it was a resolution that Ryan had come to know. Cutter wanted to see what had made that noise, and short of trussing him up, or knocking him out, there would be little that anybody could do to stop him. He nodded slowly.
"A little. Some of us have a working self-preservation reflex. Still, I did say that we could go on a little further, and I don't see any clear reason to turn back now."
"Thank you." This time there was real sincerity in the professor's blue-grey eyes, but Ryan merely raised an eyebrow.
"Don't get your hopes up. We both know that that sound might have come from miles away. I'm not walking for hours on the off chance that we'll see something." He quickened his pace slightly. "Besides, unless you have much better hearing than I do - which I doubt - then we still don't really know which direction to aim for."
"I'm not so sure about that." Stephen was still studying the ground, glancing up every now and again to check the way ahead. "There really are rather a lot of tracks here, you know. As far as I can see, they're all heading in the same direction."
"A local food source that might still exist?" asked Cutter. Stephen nodded.
"Possibly, yes. Or something else. Think African Bush."
"You mean..." Cutter's eyes widened, and Stephen grinned.
"I can't promise anything, but it's the best theory I've got. Of course the position of that nest seems a bit odd if I'm right."
"Not necessarily. It was an old nest. Perhaps this didn't become such a popular thoroughfare until recently." Cutter looked rather sad again. "The world's been going through a lot of changes recently, after all."
"Yeah." Stephen's own smile faded, and Cutter banged him on the back.
"Come on. Reflection later. For the time being, let's just go and see if your theory is correct." He sped up, leading the way with Stephen at his heels, the pair of them beginning to chatter like excited schoolboys on a day trip. Ryan shook his head.
"What was all that about?"
"No idea, sir." Smoky shrugged his powerful shoulders. "I suppose we still have to follow them, and make sure they don't get eaten?"
"We ought to, yes." Eyes sweeping the landscape, Ryan searched for some clue as to what might have got the two scientists so excited, as well as keeping a customary eye out for danger. For a moment, as he hurried to follow the others, he thought that some great shape had moved far off to his left - but whatever it was, if it was anything at all, it was gone before he could be sure if he had really seen it. He frowned.
"Wretched darkness. Trust us to wind up in a place like this."
"At least it's not as dark as real night." Smoky made a quick sweep of the area through the night sights of his rifle. The field of vision was too limited to be an effective method of watching for danger, but it did give him a fairly good idea of what to expect from the terrain ahead. "Looks like a line of trees further on. Stretches quite some way." He scowled. "Visibility's not that good, though. The ground's up and down all over the place from now on."
"Great." Ryan took a quick look himself through his own rifle, but found that his companion was right. It was too hard to be sure of the land before them. "Is that a forest ahead? I hope they're not planning on going in there if it is. It'll be hell to keep watch in all those trees."
"You want me to stop them?" offered Smoky. Ryan hesitated, then shook his head.
"No loud noises. Leave them on a long leash for now. Just be ready for trouble. If there's one thing that those confounded Ryanosauruses showed me, it's that there's no point worrying about some giant monster coming to eat you when something small can come crawling up out of anywhere. Like out of a forest."
"Right." Smoky turned away, eyes rapidly searching their limited horizon. "Still, at least we haven't heard that awful noise again."
"I wouldn't go speaking too soon if I were you." They went on again, even more carefully now. Beneath their feet the ground became more damp, more muddy, and the tracks that Stephen had been following became more pronounced. They were spectacularly diverse - even the characteristically sceptical Captain Ryan could admit that; and some of them were quite unnervingly large. Somehow this time it came as no surprise when the great bellow of earlier came again, and so very much louder this time. Such a cry belonged in a place where a world of strange creatures had left such footprints in the mud.
"Something tells me we're about to see what's making that noise," said Smoky. He didn't exactly sound happy about it, and Ryan didn't really blame him.
"Something tells me you're right." They were closer to the trees now - close enough to see that it was not a forest that they were looking at all, but a jumbled collection of greenery thrusting up from thick, cloying mud. Some of it was still green, clinging to life while around it the other plants turned brown and died. Green, brown or otherwise, it was all tattered, having clearly been fed upon over a long period of time. Everything looked chewed. Having been some distance ahead, Stephen and Cutter had already reached the copse, and were pushing through it. Somehow it did not seem a good idea to shout out to them. Instead Ryan and Smoky hurried after, having to be careful of their footing now. The mud caught at their boots, and tried to hold them, and around them the mess of footprints made the going uneven and awkward. They struggled on, reaching the trees moments after the scientists; but much, much less prepared for what they were about to see. Smoky gaped, staring out at the gloomy world that lay before them. "Bugger me," he breathed, not exactly tastefully, eyes widening at the sheer scale of the view. "It's a sodding waterhole!"
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