Read Ireta 02 - [Dinosaur Planet 02] - Dinosaur Planet Survivors for Free Online Page B

strayed to register the reassuring absence of menace stampeding from the plain. Kai hadn’t realized how that event had branded itself into his subconscious. He would have to try Discipline in sleep that night. He couldn’t have an inhibiting incident crop up, possibly to interfere later with situations on different planets at an awkward moment.
    “Where?” Tor had emerged from the vehicle and trundled beside him.
    Kai pointed to the site of Gaber’s dome, bleakly remembering that they had had to leave Gaber’s body. It, too, had been returned to dust. In space, he had always wondered at that archaic burial phrase. It was appropriate here.
    “The core was there!”
    Tor slid down the slope, the unevenness of the surface posing no problem, but Kai noticed that the Thek left a steaming trail. He followed and the stone was still hot enough for the heat to penetrate Kai’s thick boot sole.
    “Here?” The sound grated out of Tor as the Thek stopped in the designated site.
    “This was the site of the geology dome, the main shelter was precisely here,” and Kai walked to the position. “The individual accommodations were across that part of the compound.”
    Then he stared at Tor because that was the longest plain speech he had ever made to a Thek and he wondered if the creature absorbed statements not couched in the shortspeech they preferred. He opened his mouth to structure the explanation properly when a rumble from Tor stopped him.
    Not for the first time, Kai wondered if the silicon life-form might have a hidden telepathic ability. Now that he thought of it, you always knew what a Thek wanted to find out despite its succinct speech. You could distinguish a command from a question that required a yes or no answer, yet there had only been the one or two cue words to elicit a response.
    Tor was on the move again, this time in an obvious search pattern. An extremity in the shape of a broad flange was poised just above the surface of the dusty compound floor. The Thek progressed ten meters in one direction, abruptly turned and examined the adjacent strip.
    Clearly any effort on Kai’s part would be redundant, so he strode down the slight slope to where the veil opening had been. Only the stub of the heavy-duty plastic column remained, and gouges proved it had been subjected to treatment its designer had never envisaged.
    Kai knew that the mutineers had moved the sleds from the original parking site. They would have had to do it manually since Bonnard had hidden the power packs. Kai stood, raking the surrounding area with calculating eyes. There was no telling now how wide a swathe the dead hadrosaurs had made. He was also certain that the mutineers had grossly underestimated the scope of the stampede. Still, the mass of animals would have had to funnel through the narrow rock gorge leading to the compound. The sleds would have been taken to a place reasonably secure, which suggested uphill but nearby. The sleds were weighty, even for the muscles of heavyworlders. And they’d been somewhat rushed, having hoped to fly the four craft out of the area.
    Kai struck off to his left where the heavily vegetated land slanted upward. He looked back toward the compound and saw Tor moving steadily on its search pattern. He wouldn’t be inconveniencing the Thek if he pressed his own search. He rather supposed that Tor would have a time locating the core no matter how efficiently it worked. There was always the possibility that the mutineers had retrieved the object.
    He devoutly hoped that they hadn’t also retrieved the sleds. Or spitefully damaged them beyond use. But Kai reasoned the sleds would have been too valuable for wanton destruction. The mutineers would have been positive that they’d catch up with the people they considered inferiors: whom they’d left without any survival equipment. Nor would Paskutti have been easily deterred from an exhaustive search for the missing power packs. Which might well explain the