Beowulf's Children
Chapter 20

SCRIBEVELDT AND EDEN HILL

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; 
all chance, direction, which thou canst not see; 
all discord, harmony not understood; 
all partial evil, universal good.
-ALEXANDER POPE

    THREE MONTHS LATER

    Little Chaka watched, as his father took another careful step toward the winged creatures they called birdles. Cane first, then left foot, then right--all slow and smooth and deliberate.
    Three birdles clustered about a low bush whose persimmon-sized fruit had turned from blue to red within the last two days. Only then did they begin to attract the flying crustacea. With the deepening of summer, bushes and leaves, plants and grasses all through the forests were changing color, ripening, exploding into a thousand hues of gold and red, and deep, fertile green. Horsemane trees infested with a hundred varieties of parasite and symbiote blossomed as if offering welcome to a hundred more.
    The largest birdie-a big purple flying wing with spiffy little white wing tips-swiveled an independent eye toward Big Chaka, now only a dozen meters away. Big Chaka was a small man, barely cresting five feet in his tallest years. Time had crowded, shrunken, grayed him, spotted his dark face. His close-cropped, tightly coiled hair receded from his temples, and he needed corrective lenses to read and a cane to walk. A small, unwieldy pot belly swelled the front of his shirts, and his hands trembled when he wrote in the journals he had kept for nearly a hundred and fifty years.
    But he could still move slowly and smoothly enough to approach animals more closely than Chaka would have believed possible. He was still Avalon's premier zoologist. And he was still Dad.
    The birdie watching Big Chaka began vibrating its motor wings. Its foreclaws anchored it to a branch, and the branch began to quiver. A high-pitched whistling whine rose up. The other two birdles stopped eating and began rustling as well. They gripped branches with two forward claws, but the little paddle-shaped wings aft blurred with their vibration. The whine became louder and louder, until the trees rustled with it.
    Little Chaka wasn't alarmed, not even when the call was taken up distantly by first one, and then a chorus. Communicating threat? Summoning help?
    Big Chaka retreated a foot, and then another foot, and the birdles began to calm again. They returned to their meal. The distant droning died away. Silence returned to the forest.
    An almost boyish grin wreathed Big Chaka's face as he slumped back to his son "Not exactly a colony, too much independent action for that. More like small family clusters-maybe three to six. Possibly three sexes, or two fertile and one neuter to watch the nest while the others forage, like Avalon Type Six sea crabs. We'll get samples later." 
    He linked arms with his son as they walked back uphill. "And you call this Eden?"
    Little Chaka nodded. "It's where we take the Grendel Biters. There are things they need to learn about this planet, and this is a good place for it." 
    "I can hear running water. Are there grendels?" 
    "Always assume grendels. Trust me. We don't take chances. But there is a good overhang between us and the river here. The clearest path for a grendel to reach us is over a kilometer of bone-dry upgrade. We have motion sensors strung every twenty meters-nothing larger than a Joey can get up here without alerting us, and we have good people on the grendel guns. They're death. It's safe." He frowned. "Of course, we thought Deadwood was safe, too. But nothing bad has ever happened here."
    Big Chaka nodded. "Things are changing, though." He squinted up at Tau Ceti, a fuzzy ball through high clouds. "Things are changing." He walked carefully along the path. Every few feet he stopped to inspect a leaf, to study a scavenger insectoid hauling away a carcass five times its size, to scrape away a sample of fungus and deposit it in a glassine envelope. Then he made notes in his log, and photographed the sample lying on the open pages of the logbook, with the place he'd found it as background.
    "You know," he said, thoughtfully, "I wish that you could have been on Earth. Then you would understand the wealth spread out in front of you. Everywhere you look, all you have to do is reach out your hand, and there is a new creature, a new plant. Something new, something new." With that faraway expression on his face Little Chaka thought he resembled a wrinkled black Buddha. "Earth had . . . run out of new."
    He smiled crookedly. The smile broadened as he spotted a tiny corkscrew tree growing in the shadow of its parent. "Oh!" he cooed. "A perfect duplicate of its parent-except see, it's a lefty, its trunk spirals in the opposite direction . . . "

    He was that way as they headed back up to the mine, hobbling here and there, studying this, commenting on that-never complaining about the distance or the grade, although some of it must have been exhausting. Chaka's emotions were torn. On the one hand, he was still nervous about the entire area. On the other hand, it was wonderful to see his father every day, exploring with him, and hearing him lecture, just as he had day after wonderful day when he was a child.
    They were three kilometers from the mine, far enough around the first bend in the trail that they couldn't be seen. Big Chaka sat down on a rock and loosed one of his shoes. 
    "Tired, Father?"
    "No, I think I have something in my shoe. Son, tell me about this base camp you're setting up." 
    "Well, it's not so much me setting it up-" 
    "I know. Aaron seems to be in charge, and I have noticed that he needs no advice from my generation." He inspected the inside of his left shoe. "Of course, he wasn't offered much advice by Colonel Weyland." 
    "I noticed that."
    "You and everyone else." Big Chaka sighed. "Inevitable, I suppose." 
    "Dad, it's no big deal."
    "Not to you. Of course not. But to us--Son, when we first came here we ignored Cadmann Weyland's warnings, and we were very nearly wiped out. Since then we've got in the habit of consulting him." 
    "Your talisman," Little Chaka said.
    "Talisman, wizard-of course he is none of these things. But I am told you have decided on a location for your base camp. Indulge me by telling me of it."
    "Sure. It's something over three hundred and twenty kilometers north of here, in the mountains but there's a large flat area. No big streams but a lot of springs and little streams. The flat is a meadow."
    "Yes, I know the area," Big Chaka said. 
    "Sir?"
    "From the maps. It looks dangerous. There is a forest nearby."
    "Only a small forest, but it's a forest. Tender leaves. Very edible. Dad, there are Joeys in the rocks, and ground animals in the forest. I don't think a grendel has ever been there." 
    "It will put you right at the edge of skeeter range." 
    "Until we get the solar collectors set up," Little Chaka said. "But it faces south, and we've got big rolls of Begley cloth. We'll get it spread out, and there's sunlight most days. It won't be long before we generate enough power to recharge the skeeters there." He rubbed his hands together. "Then we can do some real exploring. Another hundred and fifty kilometers and we're at the edge of the Scribeveldt!" 
    "That I envy," Big Chaka said. 
    "Well, you could come with us-"
    Big Chaka laughed gently. "You know better. I would not be welcome among your friends." He put his shoe back on and fastened it. "Be careful, son. We don't know what killed Joe Sikes and Linda Weyland, but we are very sure of what killed nearly every one of us during the Grendel Wars. Don't be so concerned about an unknown danger that you ignore a known one. Now we ought to be getting back-" He stopped to look at a colorful lichen. "In a moment."

    Little Chaka was still a little nervous about these side trips. They were too far from Deadwood's reinforced Kevlar shelters for his comfort. But Big Chaka won that argument, as his father usually did.
    On their first day at the mine site, he had wandered far afield, to the very edge of the tree line. "Chaka," he had said. "Look at the density, only five hundred meters from the death site. Nothing has razed this. There are Joeys in the trees, and birdles, and these little insect fellows. Whatever killed Joe and Linda also ate the dogs. Ate all of the organic material in their clothes. It was a freak occurrence. In truth, this is probably the safest place on the planet now-this particular lightning won't strike here again for quite a while." When his son seemed unconvinced, he added, "If you're worried, carry a couple of Cadmann's survival sacks with you."
    "I'm worried. Grendels can't bite through the Kevlar, but a bite could still crush a bone-"
    "You have grendels on the brain. You studied those skeletons as carefully as I did. No pressure had been applied. No broken bones. No tooth marks. Scrapes, yes, something scraped the meat from the bones, but it was small, not the teeth of a grendel. Whatever killed Joe and Linda was no grendel-unless that grendel had cooked them for hours and then sucked the meat off the bones."
    Chaka grimaced at his father's morbid imagery. So what was the danger? The Kevlar sacks should theoretically protect from an acid cloud, or . . . or whatever the hell it was that had killed their friends. The current guess was something biological rather than chemical. A memory stirred in his mind, something from an old science-fiction novel about giant protozoans lurching out of the swamps of Venus to digest unwary space folk. There were movies of large bloodsucking monsters among the stars.
    He didn't really believe that, but invisible death had eaten two members of his family under Cassandra's very nose, and the only clue was traces of speed on the bones. Speed meant grendels, but how? A fascinating puzzle, if only it hadn't been real.

    They made good time the rest of the way back to the mine. His father accepted little help, even when sweat beaded his brow and the breath whistled in his throat. Long before dusk they found themselves hiking up the final approach. The hum of machinery was clear at half a kilometer-repair and restoration were well under way. A thin stream of smoke and screams of tortured metal told that some large piece of equipment was being ripped out and refitted. His father was blowing a little on the upslope, but Chaka had released his son's arm and was stalking bravely up the side of the hill.
    Little Chaka was bouncing like a balloon. Free at last! He had forgotten what it felt like to climb around in the mountains without that damned cook pot on his back.
    Sylvia Weyland waved her arms as they came up over the rise. Smelting metal was a sharp tang in their noses. Cranes and scaffolding hovered about the new mine shack. A dozen workers hustled about, carrying, loading. Grafting. A new and stronger shed was being erected, and Sylvia, biologist turned engineer, was the week's gang chief, and would rotate back to the mainland with the arrival of Robor. 
    "How was the walk?" she yelled.
    "Great!" They were a little closer now, and voices could be dropped. Sylvia looked tired and a little sweaty, but satisfied. She and her crew worked fast. Two new steel frames had been fitted into place on the structure that would house permanent, grendel-proof shelters for mines and miners. Atop it was an antenna to serve as a backup relay for communications between the mainland and the base camp Aaron called Shangri-La, now under construction three hundred and twenty kilometers away.
    "I'm not seeing as much of the local biology as I'd like," Big Chaka complained as she approached him for a hug. "My son is just too protective. I'm not a child." 
    "We're just taking the mountain back," Sylvia said. "Our resources are still split. Let's just say that we'll all feel a lot better when you've categorized more of the life around here, but there are unavoidable risks attached. You're the only father Little Chaka has; is it surprising he's a bit"-she grinned-"possessive?"
    His father looked up at Little Chaka owlishly. "It wasn't so many years ago that I carried you up into the highlands on my shoulders. Now, you could carry me, and with less effort." Then he smiled. "I suppose that every man wants his son to grow up. Mine just grew up a little further than most."
    Little Chaka glowed with pride, touched with only the slightest tinge of sadness. He was just beginning to really understand that one day his father would no longer be there to talk to, to share with.
    But until that time, he could give thanks that they had had so much time together. That they had been able to share so much.
    The Robor misadventure had not damaged their relationship beyond repair. He wasn't certain how he would have withstood that. Even now, there was a slow coiling of anger and resentment and self-contempt surrounding the whole issue. Self-contempt for allowing himself to be talked into it. Resentment toward Aaron Tragon. Anger, unresolved and smoldering, over the death of Toshiro.
    But if his relationship with his father had been damaged . . . 
    He didn't want to think about that. He would have felt far more self-contempt. Far more resentment. 
    Far more anger toward Aaron.
    He wondered, somewhat darkly, what he might have done about that. But he had to get back to Shangri-La and plan the expedition to the Scribeveldt, and there was no time at all for such thoughts.

    The Scribeveldt was a vast oval of highland plain that began at the foothills 350 kilometers northeast of Shangri-La Base Camp, and stretched for over two thousand kilometers to the north and east from there. A long, sluggish river that someone had dubbed the Zambezi ran from north to south a little to the west of the plain's centerline. It was a river with few tributaries, and effectively divided the Scribeveldt into two unequal portions. Both parts of the veldt were covered by thick grassy stalks that grew up to waist height, and were sometimes covered with tiny yellow flowers.
    It was called the Scribeveldt because when they first examined it from orbit it appeared to be covered with cursive alien script written in broad lines with faded ink, close-mowed curving stripes that approached each other, merged, then diverged. They had to be animal tracks. For the past year the trails had hardly come together at all, as if they were deliberately avoiding each other.
    The Scribeveldt ended in a forest that covered the foothills. A few year-round streams ran through the forest, none more than a few inches deep. The Scribeveldt and forest had been examined from orbit for years, and one thing was certain; there were a number of animals on the veldt and within the forest, but except for a narrow band near the big river, there were no grendels,

    The hunting blind was at the edge of the forest. Jessica quietly pushed aside a wisp of brush that obscured her view and peered out at the peaceful herd of chamels grazing quietly a half-kilometer away. Her war specs magnified them until they seemed close enough to touch.
    One of the male chamels raised its head and looked right at her. Clever little sucker, aren't you? You can't see me or hear me. Do you smell me?
    He had a gazelle's grace and the thin, sensitive neck of a giraffe. His feathery-gray, insectile antenna trembled in the still air, sniffing. Would it alert the other eleven? Human beings were new to the mainland, but chamels often reacted with fear-and-flight response to any new stimulus. So far neither the males nor the heavy, rhinolike females nor the three St. Bernard-sized "pups" had panicked.
    Jessica lay in her blind pit as Cassandra analyzed the image in the war specs and bounced data to Shangri-La 150 kilometers away.
    "Do we want it?" she whispered.
    "I'm drooling." Chaka's voice was eager. He was in one of the other blinds, probably out of direct sight of the herd, but his war specs could display Cassandra's downlink. "Protective coloration's almost perfect."
    Jessica checked: naked eye, war specs, then naked eye again. Damned good. What did the chamels do? Scan the environment with their noses, and adjust the protective coloration for a potential predator's perspective? The creatures were less conspicuous than their own shadows, a perfect predator-proofing strategy.
    Strange, Jessica thought. We aren't just thinking about grendels any longer. There are other things out there. We've got to lose a whole generation's worth of bogeybeast stories, or we'll never survive.
    "These are winners. Fast, and strong, and senses are sharp. Hungry, too. Haven't stopped munching leaves since they arrived."
    Chaka's voice was thoughtful. "The trick will be keeping the herd together. We want to protect the family dynamics, if we can."
    "Cassandra," Jessica whispered. "Note the brush, and the type and quantity and maturity of the leaves being eaten. Special note of the grazing patterns of the little ones."
    They'd had to add modules to Cassandra in order to keep up with the flow of data. That had sparked yet one more debate: should their computer power be used for information processing or manufacturing? It was settled only when Zack took the side of the Second. "We can live without more consumer goods, but we can't live without knowledge," he'd said, surprising many of the Second. Everything was so new, so rife with possibilities and problems. Love her as they might-Avalon had little tolerance for errors.
    Aaron's voice: "The net is ready. Repeat. The net is ready."
    She grinned. This was going to be fun. A week of preparation. And now . . .
    "On my count," she said. "Three . . . two . . . one . . . go!"
    Four balloon-tired dirt trikes exploded from meticulously constructed blind pits. The twelve chamels whipped about, startled and outraged to find they weren't Avalon's only masters of camouflage.
    The beasts took off toward the east. Jessica revved her trike, hit a mound of earth, and exploded up into the air. She slammed down with a spine-jarring bounce. The roar of the hydrogen engines, the exhilaration of the chase, her own adrenal flush all dizzied her deliciously.
    The chamels were wheeling like a flock of birds. Jessica spun around the outside to head off a move eastward. Chamel defensive strategy would keep the pups in the center, actually making them easier to herd.
    Hooves and wheels churned up clouds of yellowish dust dimming Tau Ceti. Jessica fell slightly behind the herd as they thundered now toward the northern horizon. She cleared her throat of dust and said, "On track, Justin."
    "We 're ready for you."
    The brush here was harsh and scraggly, unappetizingly brown except for tufts of tough purple grass. Even as she watched, the skin coloration of the beasts began to shift to match the sparse foliage. 
    Beautiful.
    "Two klicks from target," she yelled. "Keep it tight!"

    Justin wheeled the skeeter around the outside of the herd and drove a stray male back to the center. The chamels traversed a long stretch of brown gravel. They changed colors wildly as the terrain changed, and from his aerial perspective it seemed the ground itself was flowing like a river. It was easier to track the herd by dust cloud than by direct observation.
    Everything was right on schedule. "In position. Have visual contact with corral."
    "Yippie-yi-oh-tie-yay." Jessica's voice. He knew she was grinning.

    Jessica dropped her plaid bandanna across her face as she cut toward the middle of the herd. They parted for her like the Red Sea. As the trike jolted through the grass, making almost sixty klicks an hour, she could reach out to either side to touch a chamel. Damn, they were beautiful beasts! Fast, strong, agile-and intelligent. The pups darted through the herd seeking pockets of adult protection. The trike's roar blended with the steady rolling thunder of their hooves. They wheeled left to avoid a log, and she jerked her handlebars to follow.
    A commotion to the right: Aaron Tragon, mounted on Zwieback, the chamel Ruth had tamed for him. They burst out of the trees just ahead of the herd.
    The herd wheeled, confused for a moment . . . and then followed.
    Jessica yelped her pleasure. Damn. He had been right again. Chamels were extreme olfactory sensitives. Pouches on Aaron's mount carried an overwhelming dose of chamel pheromones. Whammo-Zwieback became an instant alpha. Their herding instincts and trainability boded well. Chamels were an odd hybrid of horse and ostrich, with wide, fleshy mouths and thin, strong legs.
    The trike jounced savagely as they crossed the last rise. Ahead of them was the corral, seven feet tall and a quarter kilometer around.
    "All right. Let's keep it tight, keep it tight-" 
    It was hardly needed. The chamels followed Aaron through the open gate. Jessica turned aside at the last second and the chamels charged past her into the pen. Once inside they realized they were trapped. They snorted and tossed their heads, but there was no way out but the gate, and Chaka was already swinging that shut before Jessica could dismount and dash over to help him.
    She ran up the short ramp leading to the edge of the corral.
    The new twelve had joined fifty chamels captured over the previous week. The new ones snorted restlessly, but even as they did, their skin changed color, matching the beaten ground beneath their hooves.
    Aaron swung off his mount, and grabbed for the ladder.
    He slipped, and fell back to the ground. Jessica's fist went to her mouth. For a moment, fear locked her into immobility.
    The adult chamels reared back: unmasked, Man's smell was very different from their own. Two of the adults turned their backs, and began to kick.
    She had seen this behavior before. A ring of chamels to protect a pup, the heavy, hard, sharp hooves striking out over and over again. It wouldn't work against a grendel, but cameras had watched the creatures surround a bear-sized predator and literally kick it into pulp.
    Aaron scrambled up to the ladder, spun as one of the hooves caught him alongside the shoulder, and leaped upward. He got two rungs up before another hoof caught him in the thigh. He grunted but kept going, and was out of range a moment later, lips curled into a satisfied smile. She could see where his jeans were dusted and cut by the striking hoof.
    Chaka helped him up over the top, and he thumped down heavily. He swept Jessica up for a big, warm kiss, then gave a victory wave to the circling skeeters.
    Dust fluttered about them as the skeeters touched down, and the penned chamels brayed even louder.
    Jessica climbed up the ramp to look down at them. "Get along little doggies," she sang to herself. "It's your misfortune . . . "
    "All right!" Justin said, slapping his hands together. She jumped, startled-he had made his approach silently. "What's left on the chart for today?"
    "We've done enough work for today." Her back still ached from digging trike pits, but she had to love him. What an eager beaver. It was getting easier to relate to Justin. The bad times, at least the really bad ones, seemed behind them.
   "I think we've got time to lay for the spider devils. What do you say?"
    She peered up into the sky. Tau Ceti was still bright and high. "We've got five hours of daylight. Have a spot in mind?"
    Chaka raised a huge finger. "How 'bout the heavy patch, about two klicks from where we trapped the chamels?" 
    "Some folks would say we were too close to water," Justin reminded him.
    Jessica laughed. "Older folks. I'd bet." 
    "Yup."
    Chaka waved nonchalantly. "We'll use motion sensors and a backup team. Thermal, if you want them, Justin." 
    "Well . . . the spider devils seem to like the area. Grendels would eat them if they could catch them." He pitched a rock off across the horizon. "I guess we can handle it." 
    Jessica slapped him on the back. That's my unbrother. "Sounds like a plan."

    As Justin and Jessica ate lunch a pair of skeeters rose and swept away toward the east. Another came in with a load of chamel chow.
    "Quite an operation," he said.
    The fences were already sealed again. Unlike the main camp, here there were no passive boundaries-but they did have an electrified fence, twenty-four-hour guards, movement sensors, and a fortified, grendel-proof shelter.
    The shelter was Quonset-hut-shaped, and certified grendel-proof by Colonel Cadmann Weyland. Jessica felt an odd mixture of security and disgust when she remembered the way he had tested the crystal-filament-reinforced plastic constructions . . . 

    Memory: Blackship Island was gray and rocky, just a spur, really. It held one of the relay stations constructed between Camelot and the mainland. A skeeter pad. Emergency supplies. A stormproof shelter.
    The waves shot foam high into the air where they slapped up against the rocks that day. Jessica looked up at her father where he sat beside her. His face seemed as gray as the rock, as gray as the sky.
    They had said little to each other since the day she planted the disrupter in his home. The day she had betrayed their relationship.
    Two skeeters flew in from the north, their flight patterns carefully timed and synchronized, one flown by Evan Castaneda and the other by Aaron. Cargo hoists with specimen slings hung beneath each skeeter.
    Jessica's heartbeat accelerated at the thought of what was about to happen.
    Cadmann spoke casually. "Let's have Skeeter Seven first." Aaron's craft hovered overhead, and wenched down its load.
    Eleven feet of fang and gray scales and claws and spiked tail lay in that sling. A grendel. Type 6 was the color of gray mud; otherwise not very different from the now extinct Camelot grendels, but with a down-turned double hook at the tail . . . and a solemn, brooding mouth, where holos of the Camelot horrors showed a demon's grin. Chaka strode up to it, hunkered down, and peered into its eyes.
    They were open, staring, sightless.
    Or were they? Could anyone really say what was happening in the depths of its quasi-reptilian mind? They knew enough to be certain that a few volts of electricity trickling through its sleep centers would keep it quiescent.
    "The jaw," Chaka said. "The hinges. See what I meant? Its bite gets more powerful leverage than the Camelot grendel, but it takes a smaller bite."
    Her father was holding his breath as he examined the grendel. Given any excuse, he would kick the grendel, shoot it, inflict some indignity upon it that would be one one-millionth as devastating as what had happened to him all those years ago.
    But it wouldn't happen-her father was not a man for futile gestures. The grendel slumbered on.
    Chaka nodded, and Cadmann waved the motionless cargo back into the air. Aaron raised it, and then dropped the bundle down through a hatch in the prefabricated dome. If this test went well, these domes would eventually dot the mainland.
    This dome was twenty feet in diameter and seven feet high, made of prefabricated sections that slotted together in minutes. They had spiked and chained it into the rock.
    Cadmann cut the line. Skeeter VII spun away and landed on its triple size pad. Aaron bounded out, his long, tanned face intense.
    "Any problems?" Cadmann asked.
    "No. Not really," Aaron replied. A slight edge of anxiety belied his words. "She's been on ice for seven hours, waiting for your call. Cassandra identified the grendel hole, and then we just trapped the bitch."
    Bitch? Jessica thought. He's never called a grendel bitch before. He said that for Dad.
    Cadmann nodded. "All right. Let's do this." 
    Skeeter II swung into position. Its winch distended, to lower a second grendel into the shelter. They detached the wire.
    They sealed the shelter, closed the door, and bolted it shut. Skeeter II landed.
    Jessica noticed Cadmann's expression. No doubt about it, he was enjoying this. "Shall we go?" he asked.
    There was no hesitation. Chaka climbed in with Evan. Cadmann and Jessica chose Aaron's skeeter. The autogyros retired to a prudent distance.
    "Cassandra," Cadmann said. "Visual."
    A square of holographic window opened. Suddenly, they were peering into the dome.
    The two sleeping grendels were curled in their nets, looking almost peaceful. The larger one was gray, the smaller a mossy greenish brown. That one was a Type 3. Her tail was a crown of spikes. Her long toes were built for climbing trees. Unusual: most grendels couldn't climb. 
    She looked to be easy meat for the gray.
    Cadmann cleared his throat. "Cassandra," he said. "Please record all angles."
    "Yes, Cadmann." It seemed to Jessica that Cassandra's voice sounded just a little like her mother's. 
    "Terminate current." 
    "Yes, Cadmann," Cassandra said.
    Cadmann took a deep breath. He seemed very peaceful. 
    "Trigger speed," he said.
    A small aerosol can on the inside of the dome began to spray a pink mist.
    Speed was the grendel secret. It was an oxygenating agent rivaling rocket fuel in potency, a chemical secreted in sacs in the grendel's back. Grendels running on speed burned energy faster than any creature born of Earth.
    And the smell of speed was the smell of a challenger. It triggered a territorial response, a hyperexcited combat readiness more powerful than any mere hunting mode. It drove grendels insane.
    The can hissed as its contents were released.
    Above the dome, the humans hovered in their skeeters. Waiting.
    The smaller grendel woke first.
    They watched its eyes widen. Its tongue darted in and out twice.
    "It should have flashed." Cadmann sounded puzzled.
    The green grendel should have flown instantly to the attack. Instead, the first thing it did was retreat, banging into the wall, thrashing and hissing. It scrabbled, seeking a way out, finding none. Finally, it turned and faced the larger beast, its spiked tail raised a little from the ground almost, like a scorpion's.
    "That's very odd," Aaron said quietly. "It almost seems to be thinking, doesn't it? Judging the odds?" 
    "It knew it couldn't win," Jessica said.
    Cadmann looked at them from the corner of his eye, but said nothing.
    Then the gray grendel woke.
    Its eyes snapped onto the green one, and in that moment the smaller grendel sprang.
    The screen became a blur of blood and fang. Blood clotted the camera. They could see nothing.
    "Cassandra. Aerial view." From above, the walls shuddered and shook, but held.
    "Take us down," Cadmann said.
    By the time that they touched down, the screams from within the shelter were almost as loud as the rotor.
    Cadmann took his rifle down from the side rack, and examined the charge. Lethal.
    The noises from the shelter were dying down now. One last sobbing roar rose to a hissing crescendo. Then there was a crack, followed by a series of wet crunching sounds. Then a single, dying hiss.
    Jessica stared at the holographic image. "Good God." 
    "When two tigers fight," Cadmann said, "one dies, and the other is crippled. Chinese proverb." The raw satisfaction in his voice frightened her. 
    Aaron nodded. "What now?" 
    "Open the gate," Cadmann said.
    Aaron approached the dome. Scarlet oozed from between the cracks at the bottom of the dome. Something within the dome made a rhythmic wheezing sound. 
    "Open it, dammit." 
    Aaron unbolted the door, and swung it open.
    The air thickened with the blended stench of speed and scorched alien blood.
    The interior of the dome was smeared with viscera. The smaller grendel was reduced almost to chunks. The larger had been ripped open. Her intestines spilled out in gray coils. She bit at them, snapping and chewing with a blunt, bloodied snout. She made crying sounds.
    The grendel raised its head unsteadily, staring directly at Jessica.
    Jessica raised her rifle and shot it once in the head with an explosive dart. With a short, sharp, ugly sound the grendel's head splashed open, spattering blood and brains for meters in every direction. The ruined body quivered once, and then was still.
    Cadmann peered inside, and nodded in satisfaction. He slapped the outside of the dome.
    "Every joint held," he said calmly. "This dome is officially pronounced grendel-proof." 
    Jessica bent over and vomited.