It was the first thing either of them had said since dawn, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears. But Romana stood up and looked too. "It is."
David felt a wash of relief. Stratus had moved faster than he'd hoped; it was just now edging toward noon, and the rescue party was already there. He squinted, trying to make out the details more clearly, and was slightly disappointed to see that there were just two skybaxes approaching. They only rated four Dinotopians?
Romana kicked the charred remnants of the fire over the mesa edge, the better to free up a landing space, and then both cadets went to stand near Freefall. The skybax clucked softly at David, who got the message and shook his head. Freefall still wanted him to apologize, but he had nothing to apologize for. Aside from making Romana doubt her place in life.
It's not my fault, he wanted to say again. But saying it a thousand times wouldn't help anything.
A minute later, Strongwing and Zenith touched down with expert grace, and their riders dismounted with the same. Galen, striding over to them, removed his helmet and said, amused, "Cadets! Got a little lost, huh?"
"Emergency landing, sir," Romana said.
Lorna, who had also removed her helmet, stopped in front of Freefall. "He was injured?"
"Apparently, ma'am," David said, before Romana could. It was his skybax; he should be the one they talked to. He was mildly annoyed that she'd tried to usurp control of the conversation in the first place. "Something in his wing. A muscle or something."
Lorna gave both wings a quick but thorough once-over. Freefall was surprisingly docile throughout the whole thing, David thought. Usually, he was more paranoid around other people, and had a tendency to jab his beak at them. With a four-foot beak, that was no small gesture.
"I don't see anything," she said, dusting off her hands. "There's no swelling on the joints or tendons. I suppose it's possible that he could have strained it without any visible damage, or the bruises from the crash are obscuring it..."
"Could he make it back under his own power?" Galen asked, coming to stand with her.
"Maybe, but I don't know if we should risk it," Lorna answered. She was frowning at Freefall in an absent, clinical sort of way, like a veterinarian. David wondered how well an Outer World vet would handle a skybax patient, and decided it would be worth seeing.
Galen nodded. "Sky galley?"
"That looks like our only option," Lorna said. She turned to David. "How does that sound?"
As Freefall's partner, he was automatically expected to know more about the skybax than anyone else. And Freefall, shaking his beak, was not interested in flying anywhere.
"Sounds good," David told her.
Galen nodded and pulled his helmet back on. "We'll go get one."
"You go," Lorna said to him. "I want to examine Freefall more closely."
Her partner flashed her an easy smile and loped off to Strongwing. Moments later, the mesa's top was washed with the downdraft of their liftoff, and David turned to keep one hand on Freefall's side while Lorna examined him.
"I never thought anyone would connect with him," Lorna said, crouching at Freefall's feet and making small talk. "He's an independent one, aren't you?"
Freefall cawed and bobbed his head.
"And an albino," she went on, now talking mostly to herself. "Extraordinary. There hasn't been an albino skybax in the canyons for years."
David crouched down too, relishing the chance at normal conversation. "How many years?"
The question brought Lorna up cold. She stopped gently testing the tendons of Freefall's left foot and sat back, scratching her head. "Honestly? I'm not certain. Romana's the historian - Romana?"
Romana, standing some distance away with her arms crossed over her chest, said stiffly, "Not since the year before Oolu's father gained Master status."
"A good hundred years, then," Lorna said, nodding. She resumed her examination of Freefall, but David caught her giving both of them discreet glances.
He was starting to understand why Karl had wanted to get off the island. And he was starting to wish that he'd tried to go with him.
But he said nothing about that, or about the palpable tension between himself and Romana, and instead kept up a brisk, Freefall-centered conversation with Lorna until Galen and Strongwing came swooping back, this time with Stratus flying alongside. The sky galley creaked in a good twenty minutes later; primarily relying on the wind as they did - they were really nothing more than blimps, Dinotopia-style - the galleys couldn't hope to match a full-grown skybax for speed, even when they were being pushed faster by the human-powered propellers.
It took a concerted effort by all the humans on the mesa to bring the galley to anchor, and David, who had never done this particular activity before, found himself scrambling to get his rope tied properly. Romana wound up neatly plucking the rope from his hands and tying it off herself, all without a word or a flicker of emotion.
Once that was done, the others began lowering and securing the makeshift litter that would move Freefall from the mesa to the galley. It looked not a little like the stretchers used in the Outer World to move dolphins and orcas from one tank to another. For the first time, David wondered how the dolphins felt about that.
He decided to give Freefall a last-minute pep talk. "All right, I'm coming with you, so don't worry. But getting you in there is going to be a bit complicated. Hang tough and be cool, okay?"
Freefall screeched, tossing his head and giving David a look that plainly said, 'Duh.'
The crewmen in the galley began hauling the stretcher upwards. David guided it unntil it was too high for him to reach, and then he took a deep breath and started climbing up the rope ladder that would take him into the galley.
The ladder swayed, a lot, and his hands slipped all over the wooden steps and rough rope until he figured out a better way to grab the stupid things. He did not look down. "Down" was a mesa twenty feet away, with a canyon floor two hundred feet below that. Looking down would be suicide.
He half-fell, half-flung himself over the side of the sky galley just as Freefall was unloaded. The skybax squawked, stoically enduring the indignity of riding through the skies. David was just starting to get his equilibrium back when a sharp whistle echoed up from the mesa.
He looked over the edge of the galley's hull with some caution.
"We're flying back," Lorna called up, sliding her helmet on, and behind her Romana was doing the same. Galen was already casting off the mooring lines, and David felt the galley lurch.
"Right," he called back, not looking down as much as possible. "Thanks."
Lorna flashed him a bright smile, visible even with the distance. "Breathe deep!"
Galen repeated the phrase, waving. Romana said it too, but with a noticible lack of enthusiasm.
"Fly high," he called back, and then got away from the edge before the vertigo made him dizzy enough to fall over it.