Predator

8

“What have you found?” Hunter asked Chad. Hunt er was still standing, though Chad and Jane had both found seats on the ground where they could lean against tree trunks. Chad had been calling up various lists of dinosaurs on his belt computer.

“North America was full of dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous Period.” Chad frowned at the little screen on his belt computer. “I think this one might be a good recommendation for our trap.”

“What is it?” Jane asked.

“Stegoceras,” said Chad. “Common in this time and place. It will look fairly dangerous, because it has a heavy, spiked dome on its head. However, it was-is, I mean-an herbivore, and it’s only a couple of meters long and half a meter high, so it won’t pose an extreme danger.”

“Does it look like a goat?” Jane asked.

“No. Look at the line drawing here on the screen.” Chad handed the belt computer to her. “See, it runs on two legs. It looks more like a goat-sized duck wearing a bowl on its head.” He grinned.

“You’re right.” Jane laughed. “But it does look like it could ram you if it were mad.”

“Strictly an herbivore?” Hunter moved to look over her shoulder. “Not an omnivore that might decide to try a couple of large mammals for lunch on a whim?”

“Herbivore,” said Chad.

“I think I can accept this,” said Hunter. “My robotic strength should be more than a match for its strength if it chose to attack a human. So under these controlled circumstances, my interpretation of the First Law will allow us to use a stegoceras.”

“In that case,” said Chad, “we have to catch one.” He clipped the belt computer back on and got up. “Any idea where our safari guide went?”

“I turned up my hearing sensitivity when he left,” said Hunter. “I have been listening. He is still slowly moving away from us westward. I would say that he is safe.” Hunter opened one of the packs and drew out two coils of rope. He tossed one to Chad.

Chad looked at the coil of rope in his hand and started tying a loop in one end. “Isn’t Steve supposed to do the physical labor around here?”

“Steve is looking for water,” said Jane. “That’s also a duty of his.”

“I will use my enhanced hearing to pick out footsteps that are not Steve’s,” said Hunter, also tying a lasso. “Chad, you can help me identify what species of dinosaur we find. Then the two of us will have to rope him.”

“You have another rope?” Jane asked. ‘‘I’ll try it, too.”

“All right.” Hunter took out another and threw it to her. “But your first duty as roboticist is MC Governor. I want you to stay within sight of the perimeter in case he appears here soon. If you can lasso a stegoceras, go ahead.”

“Thanks a lot,” Jane said, laughing. “That’s what I get for going into robotics, huh?”

“If you see him, or anticipate any danger, yell for me,” said Hunter. He hesitated, then pointed behind Chad, to the north. “This forest is teeming with animals of all kinds, many of them two-legged and roughly the right size, allowing for individual variation. But I hear one likely prospect fairly close in that direction.”

“Let’s go see,” said Chad.

“The First Law requires me to go first,” said Hunter. “Stay close and move quietly.”

Chad nodded.

Hunter moved forward, studying the ground with magnified vision in order to place his feet in the spots that would make the least noise. At the same time, his enhanced hearing told him that a two-legged dinosaur was moving very slowly only about twelve meters ahead. The footsteps were gentle and infrequent, meaning that the dinosaur was not really going anywhere. Hunter guessed that the creature was feeding on leaves or perhaps avoiding a carnivore.

Chad, right behind him, was not nearly as quiet. Still, since their quarry was not fleeing, Hunter concluded that the paleontologist was handling himself well enough. Hunter had to move around a thicket and then a couple of very large, heavily branched trees. By the sounds of movement, the dinosaur was soon only about two meters ahead, standing still.

Hunter moved to one side and waved for Chad to come up next to him. Then Hunter pointed soundlessly through the dense forest cover. All they could see at this point was the long, green, angled slope of the creature’s back. Its head was down low, behind the brush.

“It’s too big,” said Chad softly. “I don’t think that’s a-look out!”

Suddenly the dinosaur leapt through the bushes at them, flashing rows of long fangs.

Now, thinking in nanoseconds, Hunter could see his mistake. The basic shape of this dinosaur was the same as that of the stegoceras, but it was larger than he had judged by the sound of its footsteps. The long, blunt snout was filled with sharp teeth, incisors instead of molars. Its forearms ended in three-fingered hands with long claws. In short, this was a carnivorous predator. Its lack of movement had not signified feeding or hiding, but that it was lying in wait for the two of them.,

Chad spun around, ducked, and threw himself to the ground. Driven by the First Law to protect him, Hunter threw his lasso over the long snout and narrow head of the dinosaur and yanked it tight. He braced his feet against the ground and pulled with all the robotic strength in his body. The dinosaur fell heavily to one side, crushing a small tree under it. Now Hunter could see that the dinosaur, when standing, was about a meter and a half high, much bigger than a stegoceras.

“Run!” Hunter shouted to Chad, who scrambled up and took off. “Warn Jane! Climb a tree!”

The lassoed dinosaur had scrambled to its thick, powerful hind legs. It ran at Hunter, teeth bared again, its long claws raking the air. Hunter, with the advantage of robotic reflexes, dodged to his right, cocking his right arm. As the dinosaur closed on him, he slipped farther to the side and slammed his fist against the side of the creature’s head.

The power of the blow knocked the dinosaur’s head to one side. It stumbled, shifting around to face Hunter again. Hunter leapt as high as he could, grasping a branch just thick enough to bear his weight. As the dinosaur lunged, he swung up over it and pulled himself high enough to reach another branch.

Hunter had been able to see from the dinosaur’s body that it was a runner, not a climber. The creature’s long, slender legs had some leaping ability, which it now used futilely. Its jaws snapped below Hunter’s dangling feet and its short, skinny forearms were not long enough to reach up very high at all. Then it eyed him angrily and stopped to watch him, twitching its long, heavy tail.

Even now, Hunter was still holding the end of the rope. He began pulling. If he could hoist the dinosaur off the ground, it would be helpless.

Soon the rope was taut and the dinosaur began pulling back. Now, however, it had its strong legs braced on the ground and it began to walk backward slowly. By contrast, Hunter could not pull too hard for fear of losing his balance in the tree and falling out.

For a long moment, the robot and the dinosaur were at a stalemate. Then, suddenly, the rope snapped. Hunter caught his balance in the branches, still holding most of the rope.

The dinosaur, with the loop of the lasso around its neck and only a short, broken end of rope dangling from it, showed its teeth and moved around the base of the tree.

Even from his high vantage point, Hunter could not see Chad. However, he could hear the paleontologist frantically yelling for Jane to climb a tree. The dinosaur was not interested in Chad. It was still watching Hunter, not realizing, of course, that a robot was entirely inedible.

“It is still here watching me,” Hunter shouted. “Chad, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, Hunter,” Chad called back. “Jane and I both climbed up a tree by the camp.”

“You are both safe, then?”

“We’re fine,” Jane shouted breathlessly. “But what do we do now?”

“What do you think, Chad?” Hunter asked.

“Just a minute. I’m checking my belt computer.” He was silent for a moment.

Hunter, who had moved to a standing position in the Y of two stout branches, looked down again at the predator. The dinosaur was standing patiently at the base of the tree. Its tail had stopped moving.

“It might be a velociraptor,” Chad called. “That’s a certain predator with the right overall size and body type. I didn’t get a very long look, of course. A lot of bipedal dinosaurs that existed had much the same appearance. That’s why it resembles a stegoceras. The only trouble is, velociraptors have only been found in Mongolia. That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist here. It just means we don’t know.”

“How long do you think it is going to stay here?” Hunter shouted.

“I have no idea,” yelled Chad. “That kind of behavior is too subtle to learn from fossils.”

“I see,” Hunter muttered. “Better get comfortable. Do not even consider climbing down without telling me.”

“No problem,” Jane shouted.

Hunter coiled the rope and slipped it over one shoulder. The patient predator below him had not moved. It was hungry and thought it could outwait its prey.

By Hunter’s internal clock, after forty-two minutes and twelve seconds, the dinosaur finally moved out of sight. Hunter’s enhanced hearing told him, however, that the creature was still nearby, hoping that Hunter would come down out of the tree. Another one hour and seventeen minutes passed before the dinosaur actually gave up and wandered away a substantial distance.

At this point, Hunter decided he could risk returning to the ground under the Third Law, but he still wanted to find out if the dinosaur would return before he was willing to tell Chad and Jane to come down. Still listening for the predator’s footsteps, he dropped to the ground and quickly hiked back to the landing site. There he found the two of them about three and a half meters up in a tree, sitting uncomfortably.

“My hearing tells me the predator is gone,” said Hunter. “I will move you to the ground.”

They both began a careful descent. In a few minutes, Hunter had lifted Jane down safely and was just lifting Chad out of the tree when he heard an unusual noise. He set Chad down and turned to focus his attention. Two bipeds were running quickly in their direction through the underbrush; by their footsteps, Hunter knew that one was Steve.

“Hunter!” Steve yelled. “Hunter, look out!”

Instantly, Hunter lifted Chad back into the tree. As Steve raced toward them, Hunter raised Jane again also. Steve finally came into view, stumbling over a tree branch and staggering forward as he regained his balance.

“Over here!” Hunter ordered. “What is it?”

Steve was too out of breath to speak. Hunter did not have time to lift him before a dinosaur the size of a large dog charged out of the brush. Steve dodged behind the tree trunk.

In the same moment Hunter braced himself to fight off the dinosaur. It was much smaller than the velociraptor. In fact, by its size and the hard dome on its head, he quickly recognized that this was a stegoceras.

Hunter immediately revised his tactics. This was the herbivore that they wanted to use to trap MC Governor. He wanted to capture this stegoceras if he could.

The stegoceras darted around Hunter, but he shifted to block it. Then the stegoceras stopped to look him over. Hunter slowly slipped the coil of rope from his shoulder and tied a loop on one end.

“Hey, Chad!” Steve gasped, between breaths. “Give me your rope. Drop it down here.”

“All right. Here!”

As Hunter prepared to lasso the stegoceras, he heard the rope drop behind him. A moment later, Steve came up on the other side of the stegoceras with a newly-tied lasso. The small dinosaur hesitated, aware that it now had two enemies, neither of which was running away.

“Let me go first,” said Hunter. “I cannot let you take an unnecessary risk.”

“I can follow your lead,” said Steve.

Hunter nodded. “Get ready to throw. I am going to move up on this side and try to lasso it. If it dodges your way, maybe you can surprise it.”

“Ready,” said Steve.

Hunter advanced in two slow, precisely measured steps. Then, as the stegoceras glanced toward Steve, Hunter threw his loop. With the distance judged by his careful robotic eye and his throw governed by his exact body motion, the loop dropped over the dinosaur’s head and settled around its neck.

“Got him!” Chad yelled enthusiastically.

Hunter tightened the loop. As the stegoceras reared back, Steve ran forward and lassoed their prey again. Then they pulled their ropes taut, holding the stegoceras in place as it pulled and yanked.

While Hunter had all his attention focused on holding his prey lassoed, his hearing told him of sudden bipedal footsteps behind him, about nine meters away.

“Look!” Jane shouted frantically.

“It’s MC Governor!” Chad yelled. “It must be! What do we do?”

Hunter glanced back over his shoulder. He saw a short, slender human form standing perfectly still, watching him. Then the stranger turned and ran the other way, quickly disappearing into the dense forest cover.

“Stay where you are,” Hunter ordered. He could not release the rope without endangering Steve, so that First Law concern overrode all his other duties. The stegoceras had to be gotten under control before any of them did anything else.

Steve had already backed up to a tall, young tree. He quickly ran the end of his rope around the trunk several times, holding it firmly. Then he tied a simple knot to hold it. “There, Hunter. Do the same with your end. Give it enough slack not to strangle it.”

“Understood.” Hunter backed up to another tree and quickly tied his rope as well.

The stegoceras still jumped and pulled, but it was tied firmly now.

“How about getting us down?” Jane called.