I’m stunned for a moment, suddenly panicking that I’m helping this tribe catch sentient creatures with the ability to mock and tease their captors. On an alien planet, anything is possible.
Then I see the glint in Crat'ax’s eyes. “Oh, you terrible man. They don’t talk at all!”
He grins. “If they could, I’m sure they would say exactly what you said. Except for the big ones, which I suggest we don’t talk about anymore.”
“All right,” I agree. “No more talk about the big splix. And nobody else may know that you tricked me about the splix.”
“Hmm,” Crat'ax says and puts the net away. He comes to sit next to me, putting his hand on my thigh. “Maybe Iwantto tell them about that.”
I place my hand on his chest, still wet from the ocean. “Then I tell everyone that you like to eat big splix. You will have to eat only them for the rest of your life, while I’m always enjoying the small, tender splix and showing you how good they are. ‘Mmm,’ I’ll say. ‘Such sweet splix! Very small and delicious!’”
“Well, I don’t want that.” His other hand snakes around my chest and cups one breast. “How do we solve this problem? If only we could do something to forget about it!”
I laugh and press myself closer until the heat of his body chases away the salt-chilled air. His thumb circles my nipple slowly, deliberately, drawing a soft gasp from me as I tilt my head back, offering my throat to the brush of his lips.
“Perhaps,” I murmur against his jaw, sliding my hand down the ridges of his abdomen until my fingers snake under his loincloth, “we could test how well this boat deals with soft movements.”
“And loud, joyful noises from a woman,” Crat'ax says. “Wemustknow.”
“For safety,” I agree and loosen his loincloth. “Just make sure to keep it up.”
- - -
I sigh comfortably, hearing Crat'ax’s calm, strong heartbeat in my ear as I rest my head on his chest. The alien sun caresses my naked body, but we seem to never get a sunburn from that. Only Riley was sometimes sensitive to the sun, so she preferred sitting in the shade and rarely ventured out to the beach.
A barb hits my conscience. Here I am, joking and flirting, and being expertly made love to by a huge bodybuilder-type alien, while Theodora is probably risking her life looking for me. Or, as a best-case scenario, she’s holed up in the sterile saucer, staying out of view of the dinosaurs, and desperately trying to fix the alien technology in the saucer with no real hope of making it work.
“I will come and get you,” I whisper. “Just wait a couple of days more.” Because I think I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to get her here, to the village. The tribe is better than I thought, and the resources they have are at least on par with Cora’s Borok tribe. I like the ocean-based lives they lead, and the way they seem to make the most of it. The absence of an interfering shaman is also something I appreciate, if Cora’s story about other tribes is true, which I’m sure it is. I think Theodora will like it, too. If I can persuade her to come.
“I didn’t choose this,” I mutter. “I’ll go and get you as soon as it becomes possible. Crat'ax promised, and he’s not one to go back on a promise.”
It helps a little, but I know my guilt will linger and ache until I see Dorie again.
The sun fades and comes back as if a small cloud passed quickly across it. Or…
I open my eyes and turn my head. “Irox!”
In one bounce, Crat'ax pushes me off him, gets to his feet, and grabs his spear. “Stay down!”
The alien predator has nothing to do with the pterodactyl from Earth’s dinosaur past, of course. But it does look like one, withits bat-like wings, long, barbed tail, and elongated head that ends in a sharp, toothed beak the size of this boat.
I have seen one or two of these before, and the sighting always led to us girls sheltering in place inside the saucer for the whole day.
This one has turned around and comes back, starting to circle us.
My whole body jolts as it lets out a terrible shriek.
“It’s trying to scare us,” Crat'ax says calmly. “Just stay down. It will dive and attack. But it will meet my spear.”
Despite his confident words, I hear the tension in his voice. He sees the danger here as well as I do. There are no trees here, no trunks to hide behind. One of those talons could rip chunks of wood off the boat and dump us in the water, where defending ourselves from air attack would be much harder. And that beak… it could pick me up and snap me in half.
I curl up in terror. My new knife won’t do much good, despite its length.
The dactyl suddenly folds its wings to its body and comes diving, giant butcher-knife talons first.
It shrieks again, trying to paralyze us with the terrible sound.
Crat'ax tenses up as he readies his giant spear. But if he misses…
