Chap. 131 Turn In

Chap. 131  Turn In

"Good to see you, K'ndar," Raylan said. 

"And you, Raylan. I didn't think the survey of Western would take so long, but..it did. I've brought you a number of specimen bags. I need some more time to transcribe my field notes, though," K'ndar said.

"We're still processing Greta's samples, but D'mitran just needed to download, so he's already gone home to your weyr. Bet you're eager to do the same," he said.

"Yes, I am. But while I'm waiting, tell me about the paladen skeleton recovery."

"Ah," said the tech, "You can leave your sample bags there, I'll show you what the team did."

K'ndar tucked all the sacks alongside the reception desk. "Siskin…stay with the sacks. On watch."

The blue fire lizard hissed and curled up on the sacks, eyes whirling amber. 

Raylan cocked an eyebrow.

"Um…that's really not necessary," he said.

"Perhaps not, but while at the Observatory, someone went through all our sacks while we were out in the field."

Raylan gasped. "What…what…did they take anything?  Who did it, do you know?"

"I have no idea who, but whoever it was, they didn't take anything. I think it's probably because it was just rocks in Greta's sacks, and plants in mine. We think it was someone who knew we were out surveying, and thought we might have found artifacts and stored them in the sacks." he said.

"Noooo, oh, I hope it wasn't one of the staff. I can't believe it would be, there's only limited access to the site and everyone is vetted beforehand.  It's not like here, where anybody can come," Raylan said, distressed.

"As far as I know, the person who did the searching isn't a staff member. In fact, D'nis told me that Rahman and the rest of the staff were pretty upset by the idea. We have a good idea it was someone off the supply ship Stella Maris, and I can give you a good description of the man."

"Let's go into the drafting shop, then, we have software that can generate a picture. The supply ships are usually contracted with captains we know and have certified, but they come from all over Pern, so we don't always see them face to face.  The ship, that name is familiar to me, although I don't have anything to do with the contracting. But I'll pass this on to the Council, and let them get to the bottom of it," Raylan said. 

"So now I put Siskin on guard on the sacks, just out of a sense of precaution," K'ndar said.

Once again, K'ndar was glad of his fire lizard's memory. When the artist asked him to describe the spy, all he had to do to get the fine details exactly right was by asking Siskin to  show the man's face.

"That's amazing," the girl said, smoothing out an eyebrow on the face she'd generated on her monitor screen. "To have that sort of memory, and you can call on it? It must be like having two sets of memory."

"Three," K'ndar said, "My dragon's is here in my brain, too."

Plenty of room in here Raventh snarked.

K'ndar roared.

Raylan and the girl looked at him.

"My dragon just made a snide little comment about my having a lot of room in my brain," he said, laughing.

Raylan nodded. The girl was amazed.

"Dragons have a sense of humor?"

"Well, mine does. He's like a kid brother to me. Especially now, now that we no longer are stuffing them full of firestone, Raventh's mind has developed in big leaps. It's almost as if the firestone was a potion that numbs them to the danger of thread, but it also numbed their intelligence," he said. 

"That's what my wife says about her dragon," Raylan said, "but I thought it was just Motanith being a scamp. To add to the 'fun', her fire lizards are incredibly quick to pick up on things."

The girl sighed. "I always wanted to ride a dragon, and now I think I want a fire lizard." She spun the monitor around. "Is this your man?"

K'ndar was astonished. It was almost perfect.  "That's him, aye, it's him," he said, pushing the image to Siskin. Siskin yeeped an affirmative. "My fire lizard recognizes him. Even so, check with Greta, her fire lizard, Roany, saw him, too. You have a lot of talent, ma'am, that's amazing." 

She blushed, and smiled. 

"Should I send this to the Council?" she said, looking at Raylan for approval. 

He nodded. "You know what you're doing, you needn't ask for my permission. You're here because you're good at your job." 

She smiled again, proud of her talent.

"Come on, K'ndar, let's go look at the paladen," he said.

It was in another shelter, a big one. 

The skeleton was laid out neatly on the floor.

"We've got it all scanned into the database. It's 95% complete, the only parts missing are the last little bits of tail bone, a toe bone or two, and, oddly, the atlas, the part of the neck that connects the skull to the spinal column. We're creating a copy of the entire skeleton, so that we can store the original for further study, and will still be able to display it  in the museum…which still has to be built, so it will be here for a while."

K'ndar wondered if he should relate where the atlas bone went.

"Can you, um, regenerate the atlas bone?"

"You mean, recreate it  without seeing it? Yes, we can, just by conjecturing how it fit into the spine end and the foramen magnum, the part of the skull where it attached.  Judging from the structure of the entire skeleton, the atlas probably didn't serve much more than support for the skull. The paladen couldn't turn its head side to side, for instance, and had very little range in up and down. It's really not that big a problem, it's just odd that it's missing," Raylan said.

Being that B'rost and Lindea, both of whom knew where the bone was and still had neglected to tell him, K'ndar kept his knowledge to himself. 

"It looks a lot bigger, here in a building where we're not out in the open," he said.

"Aye," Raylan said, stroking the enormous skull, "It was quite a find, it was." 

"Can I come back and take a longer look, later?" K'ndar asked, suddenly wanting to get things turned in so that he could go home.

"Of course, just ask one of us to escort you. Now, I believe that the intake team has cleared Greta, and so I would like to see what YOU have brought in those sacks of yours," he said.

_____________________________________________________________________

"Oh, this is great," Raylan said, enthused. They were back in the reception area. K'ndar relieved Siskin of his guard duty. The blue fire lizard was on the examination table, watching K'ndar empty sacks with great interest. 

Raylan sorted through the plants carefully. "These, I'll send to the botany lab right now. Our taxonomist should be able to ID them. You did a fine job in keeping them whole, this one looks as if you picked it this morning," he said.

K'ndar grinned. His mind grappled with the concept that it was this morning but they'd been picked a month ago…do I say it that way? No. He didn't want anyone to know he'd gone back in time to get them. Unwittingly, but still…

"I had to get some more, a crawler'd gotten into the sack and ate the first batch," he said. 

"Arrrggh," Raylan said, aggravated.

"But Siskin caught and ate it. That's probably why he's so interested in unpacking the sacks…maybe there's another tasty crawler in it? Eh, little friend?" K'ndar said.

Siskin chittered in agreement. 

He pulled the skeleton out of the sack, laying the bones in a semblance of order. 

"Oh, this is in BEAUTIFUL condition. How lucky to find it cleaned but otherwise undamaged!" Raylan said.

Siskin chipped, proudly. "Siskin found it," K'ndar said, giving his intelligent blue the credit he was due.

"WELL DONE, Siskin, YOU found this, good lad, smart boy!" Raylan grinned, reaching out  unconsciously to give the blue fire lizard a scratching. 

Siskin backed up, hissing softly and spreading his wings in alarm. 

Raylan snapped his hand back.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so used to Francie's lizards," Raylan said-to Siskin.

"Siskin. He belongs to Coora. And Keeso and Sisi," K'ndar told the blue.

Siskin sighed, drawing in his wings. He thought about it for a moment, then he bent his head to Raylan's fingers. 

"Sorry, K'ndar, I wasn't thinking," he said.

"That's okay. I don't think he'd hurt you," K'ndar said.

"Me neither, but I'm so used to that trio of pranksters of Francie's, I'm just one of the weyr, to them. Maybe it's because I saw them hatch, though they all impressed on her," Raylan said. 

Then he returned to the skeleton.

"Beautiful. Just beautiful. It looks complete, it's all here," he said.

"Do you know what it is? We saw an animal that had the same teeth, we saw it twice, and I got a drawing of it. If it's the same animal, the thing can FLY."

"Fly? Like a dragon? Or like a wherry?"

"No, it glides. No wings. It had a flap of skin, in between fore and hind legs, stretched it out like a sail. It ran right between me and Rahman and jumped off the cliff without a moment's hesitation and sailed, it even gained altitude in the wind, all the way across the strait. It's not a native, it had to have been brought here, like the horses and other Terran animals. But I've never seen anything like it in the book, or even heard a thing about it. Right now, I am guessing it is only on the Western continent," K'ndar said.

 He dug out the pertinent notebook from his backpack and showed him the sketch. 

"Huh. I've never heard of such a creature. Please tell me you got…"

"A sample?" K'ndar grinned, "I did. I have a tuft of its fur. Right…here," and pulling the precious tuft out of a pouch.

Raylan took it, carefully, feeling how fine it was, as light and insubstantial as gossamer. 

"Wow. This is fine, fine fur. It's even softer than mink. It's soft, and…shiny?" He twisted it in the light, but got only a bit of shine, as the sample was fairly small.

"Yes. It looked silver, like metal to me, but it can change color, because Rahman saw it but said it looked black, to him."

He pulled out another sack. "This might have some of its scat, too. It was on top of the caisson, in with a bunch of avian guano, but is obviously NOT from an avian." K'ndar added.

"OK. This goes to Miklos, right now," Raylan said, delighted. 

It was as if the DNA technician had never left his microscope. Scraps of half eaten meals were at his elbows, and his clothing looked as if he'd slept in them. He was a bit…rank, too. The man gave out the same monosyllabic grunt of acknowledgement, and stretched out the same hand for the sample without removing his eyes from his scope. 

K'ndar shook his head, wondering. How could someone live like this, he wondered. The man had no life, it seems, but no matter, he hoped that soon, he'd know what the flying animal was. 

"Any other goodies for me?" Raylan asked, as they returned to the reception desk.

"I have to transcribe my scribbles into new notebooks, for you, that will take a day or two," K'ndar said.

"Need blank notebooks?"

"I'm ALWAYS needing blank notebooks, but I do have enough, I think, to turn over to you," K'ndar said.

"Let's keep you ahead of the game. We're starting to churn 'em out, now, due to a lot of demand, and we're always happy to have them brought back in full of data." Raylan reached under the desk and pulled out several notebooks.

K'ndar took them with a feeling of gratefulness.

 
"Funny," he said, "Something as simple as a notebook, but so valuable to me."

Raylan nodded. "Think of it, in a generation, the kids growing up now, they won't understand how precious something like paper was to us."

K'ndar felt odd, thinking of that. He wasn't much beyond being a kid himself, but suddenly he was feeling like…an old man.

"You go on, now, K'ndar, go home, relax and hopefully by the time you've transcribed the data, we'll know just what that creature is. That, and Francie's been itching to talk horses with you, and I bet you'd like to ride Donal again," Raylan said.

"I will, I hope so, and I want to," K'ndar said.