Monster Media 1994 #1/monster.zip/monster/MAGAZINE/SM9403.ZIP/DESERT.S

Text File | 1994-03-27 | 8KB | 128 lines

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 NOVEL EXCERPT░░░░░░░░░░░░░░LORDS OF THE DESERT░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░Robert McKay
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                     an excerpt from chapter 5 of the novel
                                 *Desert*
                               by Robert McKay

        [This excerpt is taken from my electronic manuscript, and not
    from the disk-published edition.  To obtain copies of the
    electronically published novel, write to HMS Press, POB 340, Stn.
    B, London, Ontario N6A 4W1 CANADA.]

                             ---------------------------

        Ship Captain Rithmar Dana, of the Confederated Planets Navy, had
    found himself faced with a choice.  He had been ordered to bring the
    newly-discovered planet Quozara - known to the explorers as
    Desert, since it was one great planetary erg broken by occasion
    groups of mountains - into the CP.  Political considerations made
    the union vitally important, but the planetary government had
    rejected the overture.  When that news reached Dana's superiors,
    he was authorized to use military force, including nuclear weapons,
    if that was what it took to bring Desert into the Confederated
    Planets.
        Yet Dana could not bring his conscience to accept such an
    action.  After wrestling with himself for several hours, he wrote a
    letter resigning his commission and sought out the head of the
    planetary government.
        Granted Quozaran citizenship and outfitted with a sand crawler,
    clothing, money, and other necessities, he chose to travel across
    the sand to another mountain group, further away from the site of
    the CP landing.  The journey was uneventful at first .  . .
        The fourth day out, however, Dana had a touch of excitement.
    Having left the mountain group behind, he had ceased keeping a
    lookout for wildlife, often sitting in the living area of the
    crawler with a book, checking occasionally to make sure that the
    autopilot was functioning properly.
        On one of these navigation checks, he glanced out the windshield
    and saw a barely discernible plume of dust rising from the sand
    ahead and a little to the right.  Settling down in the driver's
    seat, he examined the plume, and found that it was on a converging
    course.  It wasn't a whirlwind - that mini-tornado of deserts all
    over the universe - for it wasn't moving fast enough, nor was it
    spinning.  It could only be some sort of living thing, and about the
    only possibility he could think of would be a Quozaran in a sand
    crawler.  He sat in the seat, absorbed in the disturbance, knowing
    that he was so ignorant of the details of Desert geography that he
    couldn't even guess where a crawler might be headed.
        Shortly Dana's crawler topped an exceptionally tall dune and he
    caught sight of the cause of the rising dust.  It wasn't a crawler -
    it was a scuffling, dark, moving mass.  Although the animals usually
    haunted the areas around the mountain groups, a herd of gorzaka was
    crossing the open sand.  He remembered vaguely that such migrations
    might occur when game became scarce, although like terran snakes
    these lizards, having once eaten, didn't need to feed again for some
    time.  Having developed on an infernally hot world, and being
    completely unrelated to Earth reptiles, they were more than
    "cold-blooded." Their temperature was not that of the surrounding
    environment, but several degrees cooler, partly because of a slow
    metabolism and partly because of sophisticated heat-dissipating
    adaptations.
        Dana watched the herd in fascination, until he realized they
    were nearly upon him.  Not wishing to risk collision with one of the
    two-ton beasts, he shut down the crawler and sat back to watch.  He
    knew the monstrous lizards, though they avoided man, seemed not to
    recognize vehicles as potentially dangerous, and would treat his
    crawler as they would treat a natural feature.  The herd was upon
    him.  The hot odor of the beasts swarmed into the crawler, reminding
    Dana of snakes on Earth and, imported, on his home planet Vorath.
    In the lead was a massive female - as Dana could tell by the
    drooping crest on the underside of the tail - whose hide bore the
    scars of combat.
        Desert was a world of predators, and the creatures which were
    large enough to make a satisfying meal for a gorzaka could also, if
    given the opportunity, put up a stiff fight.  The gorzaka rarely
    fought among themselves, for energy was too precious to waste on
    such useless battles, but they routinely fought their prey to the
    death.
        Following the lead female came the rest of the herd.  The
    animals were enormous.  The description in the survey party's report
    hadn't prepared Dana for the sheer physical impact of a lizard that
    could make a ground car look small.  The heavy tails dragged the
    ground, occasionally giving a flip that send great gouts of sand
    flying through the air.  The ophidian odor was a sustained blow; it
    was no wonder that before resigning the ex-captain had been able to
    catch a whiff on the night breeze, even over miles of burned sand
    and scorched rock.  Several young were scattered through the herd;
    al- though the gorzaka laid eggs and didn't know which mother had
    produced which litter, the young tended to stay with the parent herd
    for a year or two, until they became large enough to hunt on their
    own.
        Suddenly a shadow loomed in the windshield.  Startled, Dana
    stared up at a massive lizard coming down the slope of a dune
    directly at the crawler.  It was too late to move the vehicle, and
    anyway there was no place to go, for the crawler was surrounded by
    the enormous beasts.  The lizard turned slightly at the last minute
    to avoid the "boulder" in its path, and its shoulder, still above
    Dana's eyes as he sat in the cab, brushed gently against the hull.
        The crawler shook as though it had been struck full tilt by a
    bulldozer, and dust sifted down from the ceiling.  A leg like a
    pillar stomped down in front of the crawler, the tail ground past in
    its furrow, and the creature was gone, leaving a very shaken human
    in its wake.
        None of the other lizards came so close to the crawler, and
    eventually the herd passed over the dunes and out of sight.  Their
    dust plume stayed in the windless sky for 30 minutes or so, while
    Dana sat shaking in the driver's seat.  He knew that had the giant
    lizard been aroused, it could have smashed through the crawler's
    hull with ridiculous ease.  He was thankful that except when hunting
    the gorzaka were stolid, imperturbable beasts, difficult to an-
    tagonize.  Their adaptations for surviving in the furnace heat of
    Quozara required them to reserve their bursts of violent activity
    for those times when it was absolutely necessary; promiscuous
    exertion could overwhelm their heat-dissipating mechanisms and
    condemn them to roast in their own hides.
        Dana only made 320 miles that day.  He had been making good time
    until his encounter with the gorzaka, but after he left them
    behind in the erg he decided to stop, even though the sun was still
    well above the horizon.  Walking out onto the sand away from the
    crawler, knowing that his footprints wouldn't be blown away until
    the sunset wind, he hunkered down in the shade of a dune and
    contemplated the mighty force of nature he had seen.  He wasn't
    given to emotional demonstrations, but he nearly wept with wonder
    at the glorious creations that the universe held.

                             -end of excerpt-
                       Copyrights owned by Robert McKay