PART THREE
CIRCES AND CALYPSOS
SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS
Between the whirlpools
and the ravening monsters,
they must leap for life.
Slava awakened, stretching, and stood up between their chairs. Karil put his arm around her waist.
"Where are we going?" Slava asked.
"To the zoo, I guess. We're going to see the animals."
"What?"
"Don't you remember the dream?"
Slava put her hand to her mouth. "The Keeper!"
"Is that what they call him?"
"Oh my God, I remember." She shivered. "But she was nice."
"She, then. And I certainly hope she's nice. There it is."
They found a deep ravine beside a basalt outcrop--they could easily have flown right by and never noticed anything remarkable. They banked into the shadows and sped down the ravine toward a nearly vertical cliff-face. As they drew near, a door of monumental proportions opened before them, as if a dirigible hangar might open for a gnat.
"Jesus Christ," Loris said.
Karil whistled a bar or two from some classical piece that sounded familiar to Loris.
"What's that?" she asked absently.
"Grieg. The Hall of the Mountain King."
"Can't you be serious?"
"Not when I'm this scared, no."
They shot through the opening into a chamber the size of a Galilean fuel-tanker and hovered as the door slid shut behind them. Light came from panels set in the distant ceiling. Bizarre surface-crawlers lay in the gloom below, like huge, armoured beetles. Loris put the shuttle's spotlight on them.
"No cabs," she said. "They're robots. Look, perfectly colour camouflaged. And with no life-support to maintain, they would only need to cool the processors. They'd be invisible from orbit."
"I hope your friend the Keeper can be trusted," Karil said to Slava as he watched the door seal tight behind them.
"As long as you don't hurt the animals. She promised."
"I wouldn't harm a hair on their little heads. I warn you, though: if one of them tries to eat me..."
"Look at the readouts," Loris said. "Temperature dropping. Composition of the air changing. This is a goddamn airlock."
"For what? Super-freighters?"
"For all I know."
They waited for an inner hatch to open, but nothing happened for several minutes. Then Slava pointed. A ledge had thrust out from the wall several tens of meters from the floor, and a human-sized door opened onto it. They rose to that level and jetted over to land on it.
"I guess they don't want us to bring the shuttle inside," Karil said.
"It's armoured and armed to the teeth," Loris said. "I wouldn't let it in my house either."
"Will you look at these readouts? The air is practically Terran normal. A little too humid, kind of heavy on the oxygen, and entirely too warm, but breathable."
"Well, what are we waiting for? A doorman?"
They rose and went aft to the airlock. Karil stood for a moment before the arsenal cabinet.
"I don't know about that," Slava said.
"I'd feel naked without a weapon," Karil protested.
"You are practically naked, Silly."
"That's true. But look here." He pulled out a pair of utility belts. There was a knife in a scabbard on one side, and a laser in a holster on the other.
"Those are weapons," Slava said.
"No, they're tools. No spacer would be without them." Loris and Karil strapped them on, and Slava had to admit her loved ones looked impressive. The belt suited Loris perfectly, with her tiny shorts and bare midriff, and Karil's gave him the look of a pirate, in his torn pyjama bottoms.
"And we're taking food and water," Loris said.
"Good idea," Karil laughed. "We wouldn't want to eat the animals, would we?"
In the suit-cabinet were spare life-support units for p-suits. Removing the compressed-air tanks and valve-mechanisms left a light plastic hamper with shoulder-straps--a perfect jury-rigged knapsack. Karil and Loris stuffed theirs with water-bulbs and rations.
"I'll take these," Slava said. "For security." She gathered up a few of the light blankets and rolled them into her knapsack.
They cracked the hatch and stepped out onto the platform. The doorway--human height but unusually wide--was the entrance to a tunnel that sloped upward through the solid rock, or more likely burned into the rock, judging by the glass-smooth walls. They set off, illuminated by phosphorescent panels in the ceiling. Some, however, were broken or burned out and there were long stretches of darkness.
"The wall is hot in some places and cold in others," Slava said.
"Refrigeration system, I think," Karil said. "You can hear the machinery vibrating. Or it may be running water."
"This is scary. And exciting."
"It is, isn't it?"
"There's another door up ahead," Loris pointed out. "Pale light shining through."
They came abreast of a short archway opening onto a balcony. Carefully, for there was no railing or parapet of any kind, they crept out and peered into the open space of an enormous planetarium dome.
A ceiling like black sky, dotted with stars, soared so far overhead that they could not begin to guess its height, but beneath it lay a vast, dark landscape. A series of interconnected lakes and lagoons reflected the stars, broad stretches of black forest rustled in the wind, carrying the scent of what seemed to be magnolia blossoms and other blooms to their nostrils. They could hear the roar of a waterfall, invisible far below. As they watched in awe, Earth's moon rose over the far escarpment, illuminating the forest and plain, lake and river below.
"How the hell do they do that?"
"I guess they project onto the dome, like in a planetarium. What I wonder is how they can anchor a structure like this and support it under ninety atmospheres. Amazing."
"Is it supposed to be Earth?" Slava asked.
"Sure smells like it."
"It's beautiful," she murmured. "Earth by moonlight. Is the real thing this beautiful?"
"Yes. And this is a damn good reproduction. Karil, this is God's Own Terrarium. As to who built it, and why..."
"Well, whoever they are, they're not afraid of heights. We'll never be able to climb down from here, even in whatever they use for daylight. Wait..." His voice died.
"What is it?"
"I thought I saw something occulting the stars. Birds or bats, maybe, or just my imagin..." He did it again.
"Karil, for Christ sake."
"Sorry. I just noticed that the constellations are wrong."
Loris and Slava examined the bowl of heaven. "You're right," they said in unison, and laughed. "It certainly seems like Earth," Loris went on, "as well as I can tell in the dark, but that's not the sky from Earth, at least in this millennium."
"Yes, and the moon's too big, and rising too fast. And there are some surface details missing--Bruno Crater, for one thing. Still, it's a magnificent job."
"Do we wait for daylight?" Slava asked. "You two must be exhausted."
"That would be the smart thing, I suppose. So we can get a bird's eye view. But I couldn't sleep now. The tunnels are illuminated, so we could try and make our way down to the valley floor. There must be passages."
They started to turn away, but Karil put out his hands to stop them.
"What is it now?"
"Listen. My ears are getting used to the roar of the falls. See if you can hear something else."
They listened, and heard the distant lowing of cattle, or perhaps buffalo. And Karil thought he could hear the cough of a leopard in the night.
"It's the animals," Slava said.
"Maybe it's supposed to be Africa," Karil said. "I'll feel right at home."
"Your own private Africa," Loris said. "You'll never want to leave."
"It remains to be seen," Karil told her, "whether we'll be allowed to. That may be the only reason they let us in: to keep us from going off and telling their secrets."
"Then, this would be a prison."
"I've been in worse. Yesterday, come to think of it."
They turned back into the tunnel and followed its increasingly steep slope down through the rock. Many of the ceiling panels were broken now; Loris took an electric torch from her belt and switched it on. They followed its cheery yellow beam through the blackness.
They walked for what seemed like hours, always descending. The walls continued to vibrate slightly, and a distant rumbling grew louder.
"The mountain's heartbeat," Karil mumbled.
"That's beautiful," Slava said, taking his hand. "Are those your words?"
"No, e.e. cummings: ‘Such was a poet and shall be and is--who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life; and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand.'"
"Hey, Karil," Loris said. She shined the light on the wall.
Beside them, a short side-tunnel led into the dark. Marks over the arch were obviously printed letters, though they bore no resemblance to any Terran language they knew.
"This way to the egress," Karil said.
"What?" Slava's mouth fell open in surprise.
"Just kidding. I have no idea what it says."
Loris stepped forward and cast a beam through the arch, out over a broad expanse of black water. The far wall was beyond the beam's range, but the artificial moonlight reflecting off the water revealed that they were in a huge grotto. Waves lapped at the cave walls with a dismal sucking sound that echoed beneath the arch of the roof.
Slava moved closer to Karil. "It's getting cool," she explained.
Karil smiled as he put his arm around her. Slava had a reputation for bravery to live up to now, but this place made even his flesh crawl.
"We must be on the valley floor. That's the lake out there." Loris played her beam over the near walls. "There's a ledge around the perimeter. Do you want to chance it?"
"In the dark?"
They went back into the tunnel and followed it. In a moment they were up against a wall of rock, blocking their way. There was no sign of a door.
"Transverse fault," Slava said.
"What?"
"I know geology. I come from a long line of rockhounds. There was a slip here, and the tunnel was cut off."
"Christ, I wonder how long this tunnel's been here. I suppose it's back to the grotto." When they had returned, Loris played her light over the wall once again. "Look, there's another tunnel over there." It was just a short distance along the ledge. "Do you want to wait for daylight?"
"It's a pretty wide ledge. And we've got the light. Besides, we're almost there now. What do you think, Slava?"
"I'm not afraid," she said too quickly. She had already taken out a blanket and wrapped it about her shoulders. They were all chilled now in their scanty attire and were looking forward to making their way out of the clammy tunnels.
"Here. Take my hand."
They crept along the ledge, following the beam of Loris' torch. After a while, the ledge widened into a platform that sloped down into the water.
"You could launch a boat..."
Everyone froze instantly as they heard the sound of a heavy body in the water. Loris flashed her light onto the black surface, and they saw a series of widening ripples. Waves lapped against the ramp at their feet.
"This may not be the best place to hang around in the middle of the night," Loris suggested.
"There's an opening here."
They climbed the ramp to slightly higher ground and entered a tunnel. The walls and floor were covered with moss, and there was a rumbling up ahead that increased in volume as they approached.
They rounded a turn and Loris' torch played over a gigantic cataract. Torrents of water poured from a great sluiceway in the cliff-face above--perhaps ten meters in diameter--and thundered past them. She shot the beam downward, but it was swallowed up in mist, swirling like a whirlpool. Directly across the falls, the passage continued.
"There must have been a bridge at one time."
"Pretty slippery place for a bridge."
"No," Slava said, "the tunnel was built behind the falls. It's eroded back and cut it off."
"My God. How old is this place?"
"In any event, we can't go on," Loris said. "I'm not particularly anxious to pass by that pool in the dark again. So why don't we duck back into the tunnel a little way where it's drier--and quieter--and get some rest. Maybe in the daylight we can figure out how to go on."
"Yes," Slava said. "You two must be half-dead."
"After being totally dead," Karil laughed, "it's a vast improvement."
They went back a few dozen meters and spread one blanket on the soft mossy ground, huddled beneath the other one. Slava felt warm and safe, curled up like a cat between Karil and Loris, both of whom dropped off to sleep immediately. In a moment she followed them.
***
When Slava awoke, there was light on the walls beyond the tunnel's curve in both directions. She stood and stretched, ran her fingers through her hair, and knelt to rummage through the pack. She took out three containers of coffee and three of scrambled eggs, broke the heat-seals, and set them down on a rocky place to cook.
"That smells good," Karil said.
She kissed him and gingerly offered him a still hot container.
"Mmm. Wonderful."
Slava kissed Loris awake and waved breakfast under her nose. She grunted in her usual morning way and ate. Karil's eyes studied Slava, and he got that look on his face. She found herself blushing and picking at her pyjama top as she knelt before him.
"You look great, Slava. Doesn't she look great, Lor?"
Loris mumbled in agreement, drinking her coffee. "Yep," she said. "A babe in the woods."
"I have to go to the bathroom," Slava said.
"No, you don't," Karil said. "You have to piss."
"I have to pee."
"Close enough. Come on." He started to get up.
Loris pushed him back and rose. "I'll go with her," she said. "I know what you're like in the morning. We'll never get into the dome that way."
The women set off down the passage toward the pool. In a moment, Karil heard Loris' voice:
"Jesus Christ! Karil!"
He leapt to his feet and pounded down the passage, nearly colliding with them at the edge of the water. The pool was sunlit near the grotto's mouth in the distance, but still murky in its depths. They could see out into the great blue lake, the shores lined with jungle vegetation as thickly as any Amazonian riverbank. Climbing out of the water onto the sloping shelf, no more than a few meters away, was a monstrous crocodile.
In his childhood, Karil had seen plenty of crocs, but not like this. It was at least 15 meters long. Behind it, other crocodilian heads of similar size were breaking the surface of the pool.
"Don't hurt the animals," Loris snorted. "You know these things, Karil. Can we get by it?"
The creature took a sluggish step forward.
"I wouldn’t chance it. They don't look like it, but they can run like the Devil. It's still not warmed up yet, but--no."
"Well, at least it can't get into the tunnel after us. Never fit."
It stepped forward again and opened its jaws. There was a hiss like an evacuating airlock.
"Look. Oh, Christ, it's got babies."
Smaller crocs--about the size of a normal adult--appeared beside it. There was no doubt about these fitting into the tunnel, and no doubt about their intentions. They were climbing over the adults in their haste to get at the observers. Loris' hand brushed the grip of her laser.
"You can't kill them!" Slava said. "You promised."
"Forget it, Lor," Karil said. "You might get one or two, but we'd still be lunch. We have to get the hell out of here."
They made their way quickly back down the tunnel, Karil and Slava snatching up their gear as they passed and found themselves at the brink of the cataract again. Below them, it thundered into a roiling pool--terrific undertow, no doubt, but it looked deep enough--and then roared off in white water around a bend in the chasm. Eventually, the river must flow into the lake, but how far away and what conditions might appear first, there was no way to know.
In any event, the tunnel across the way was too great a leap, and the walls were clearly not climbable without mountaineering equipment. Karil turned to shout to Loris and saw Slava flattened against the wall, peering down into the maelstrom. She looked at him with terror in her eyes.
"You're about to tell me you can't swim," Karil said.
She nodded dumbly, eyes wide with fright.
"Oh, Slava," Loris said.
"I grew up in one little colony," she wailed. "I've never seen so much water in my life."
Behind them, there was a hiss and the slap of reptilian feet on stone. A pointed snout appeared around the corner, followed by a heaving body. Having polished off the scrambled-egg appetizer, the creature was looking for the main course.
"Take your choice, Slava."
She stepped forward from the wall and stood beside them.
"Here," Karil said. He slipped her arms through the straps of the pack so that it hugged her breast, rolled up the blankets and inserted them into the straps. "This is air-tight. It'll keep you afloat. And these blankets are full of air too. Okay?"
She nodded and smiled tentatively. Karil kissed her and tossed her, shrieking, into the thundering waters. He and Loris swan-dove after her. The current seized them, thrust them deep into the water, tumbled them end over end, and swept them downstream.
When Karil's head broke the surface, he searched frantically for Loris and Slava. Loris' dark head was nearby; he wasn't worried about her. Slava, buoyed up by her flotation device, was ahead of them, vanishing around the bend. They struck out after her with powerful strokes and came up on each side of her.
"I couldn't see you," she coughed. "I thought you were..."
"Shh. That's all right."
They swept down stream, bobbing in the current. The river opened up and became a sluggish stream flowing through marshland. At one point a flowered meadow sloped down to the water's edge, and they could scramble up onto the bank.
Karil helped Slava remove her flotation device and lay the blankets out onto the grass to dry. He looked about them. The marsh seemed interminable, like the famous Sud of the upper Nile. The meadow behind them and the forest beyond were still draped with morning mist, gloomy and mysterious.
They could see no crocodiles in the water, but there were huge herons wading along the shore, other birds stooping and keening overhead, frogs and great turtles sunning themselves nearby, and butterflies and dragonflies flitting among the lily pads.
Above it all soared a blue sky, into which a bright yellow sun was rising over the simulated horizon, surrounded by the multi-hued clouds of a Terran sunrise. The heat seemed to come from everywhere in the blue vault of heaven at once, the only hint that they were not on Earth. Karil lay on the grass, gazing up at the white clouds, the distant figures of birds on the wing.
"Can you beat out the vault of heaven, as He does, hard as a mirror of cast metal?" he said.
"What?" Slava sat up and looked at him.
"On what do its supporting pillars rest? Who set its cornerstone in place?"
"Loris, that's the Bible he's quoting."
"Don't encourage him, or you'll be getting the Qur'an next."
Karil rolled over and kissed Slava on the nose. "He created the heavens and the earth to manifest the truth and fashioned you into a comely shape."
"See?" said Loris.
"Slava," Karil went on, "do you have any idea how delicious you look? Soaking wet, in that..."
She began to cry.
"What's the matter? We're safe now. We're in a cunning garden, watered by running streams."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"About what?"
"I'm sorry I'm no help to you. I'm sorry you have to worry about me all the time, just like Loris said you would. I'm sorry I'm such a burden."
Loris sat up and put her arm around her. "Look, Slava, we wouldn't have found this place if it wasn't for you, all right? We all take care of each other. The Three Musketeers and all that."
"Yes," she sniffed, "but you're both so..."
"Oh, come here." Loris took her face in her hands and kissed her. Slava put her arms around Loris' neck and pulled her down to a passionate embrace, as Karil watched in astonishment. Then Slava turned and put out her arms for Karil. He bent to kiss her.
Loris put her hand on his arm, stopping him.
"For pity's sake, Loris! I've been in prison for..."
"You were wondering who the Keeper is?" Loris said.
"Yes..."
"I don't know either, but I think I've figured out her favourite author."
"Who's that?"
"One of your favourites too. Victorian Romantic? Florid prose? Exotic settings?”
"You mean Burroughs? Because this is like Pelluci...?" He turned and saw what Loris was looking at.
A flock of winged creatures was soaring overhead, like condors, or more like enormous bats. They were pouring out of a high cave in the mountains beyond the lake and spiralling down toward the water's surface. When they skimmed over the water, dipping their long bills or sharp talons to scoop up fish, he could see them plainly--skeletal bodies, reptilian heads, great wings of stretched skin.
One of them settled to a half-sunken log nearby, a huge fish wriggling in its jaws, and folded up its enormous wings. It eyed them for a moment, its crested head cocked in puzzlement, and evidently deciding the strange new creatures were of no particular consequence, tossed the fish into its gullet and gulped it down. Then it spread its great stretched-skin wings, and took off with a rush of wind.
"They're goddamn dinosaurs," Karil said.
"Pterosaurs," Slava said.
"What?"
"The winged ones are not dinosaurs at all. They're pterosaurs." She stared at the departing creature as if mesmerized. "This one's a Pteranodon. Upper Cretaceous. Shallow seas over Kansas. Extinct 65 million years ago."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"There was a huge library on Geology in Jubilee. I was fascinated by a book on the Terran Mesozoic, full of beautiful creatures." She shook off her daze and turned to Karil and Loris, her face glowing with rapture. "Don't you see? That's why the Keeper spoke to me: she saw my love for extinct creatures. These are the animals she was talking about. This whole place must be..."
A horrible cacophony of honks and bellows erupted behind them, and they whirled about. Dozens of huge monsters--tens of meters in length--emerged from the wood into the open meadow and advanced toward the water. They waddled on powerful hind legs and smaller forelimbs, and sometimes stood up on their hind legs to look about. Huge heads with duckbills or bulging skulls or bony crests swivelled on wrinkled reptilian necks, and long tails swayed behind to help keep their balance.
Behind them came other creatures, with squat bodies and enormous heads adorned in a bewildering variety of plates and horns. They trotted in pachyderm-like leisure, keeping the young always in the centre of the herd.
Slava began to jump up and down in delight. She rattled off a string of polysyllabic names, oblivious to the fact that Karil and Loris were dragging her into the rushes. They pushed her down behind a rock and crouched beside her as the wary creatures lumbered past into the lake.
"You were right, Lor," Karil said. "It's a terrarium, all right. In fact, it's a herpetarium, and it's 65 million years old."
"How can it be? No change? No evolutionary pressure?"
"Maybe not, in a controlled environment like this. Maybe they breed them true, keep them from mutating and evolving."
Slava had not appeared to be paying attention, but she said, "All these died out in the Upper Cretaceous Extinction. The Keepers must have seen it coming."
"Why bring them here? Why Venus of all places."
"Maybe they weren't sure Earth would survive. Life had been nearly wiped out several times before that. Maybe they were going to terraform Venus, or just hide them for a while. I can't think of a better place to hide." She laughed and pointed. "Look, they're fighting over a mate. That's what all those plates and horns are for. Protection, of course, but mostly for display."
Karil watched a pair of torosaurs, as she called them, squaring off and shaking their huge horned heads at one another.
"Speaking of protection," Loris said, "I'm beginning to feel pretty exposed out here."
"They're all herbivorous," Slava told her.
"So are rhinos," Karil said, "but if I saw a three-ton rhino with babies, I'd go the other way. Besides, wherever you find herbivores in herds, you find predators around."
Slava was in a daze again. She turned to Karil with an expression of pure bliss on her face.
"Tyrannosaurus!"
"Your favourite, I'm sure," Loris snorted. "But just now I think we'd better put some distance between us and all this meat."
Slava nodded distractedly.
"We need our stuff," Karil said, and crept out of concealment.
"For God's sake, be careful," Loris called out.
Karil crept toward the water's edge, snatched up their gear and started back toward the rushes. A great bipedal beast goose-stepped toward the water, blocking his way. It looked down at him with a surprisingly duck-like expression and honked--a curious French-hornlike sound that seemed to echo within its elaborate coloured crest.
"I know, I know," Karil said. "These goddamn mammals are always underfoot."
Loris started forward. "Watch out. It's like a three-ton ostrich. Watch those feet."
"I know, Lor. Of the two of us, which one has ridden an ostrich? Hey, you wanna get out of the way, you ugly sonofabitch?" Karil shouted. Loris shouted too, waving her arms.
It backed up, honking like a traffic-jam, and turned away.
"Look out!"
The creature’s tail swung toward Karil and knocked him off his feet. He got up in time to see another creature lumbering his way--a four-footed, ten-ton behemoth with a parrot-like beak, a huge plate fringing its head, and three enormous horns.
"Oh, no. I'm not arguing with you, my friend," Karil said. "You can go anywhere you want." He raced toward Loris and Slava and dove for cover.
"That was Triceratops," Slava told him.
"I know. I'm not entirely stupid. I know Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus..."
"That was Jurassic," she said. "A hundred million years too soon."
"Not too soon for me. Come on." Loris and Karil helped her out of concealment, and they skirted the meadow toward the deeper forest. Karil looked back to see Loris grinning to herself.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing. It's just that Slava's giving you a taste of your own pedantic medicine, that's all."
They passed by pairs of parasaurolophus nodding at each other like courting birds, pachycephalosaurs crashing their domed skulls together like bighorn rams, various types of ceratops facing off, snorting like steam engines and pawing the ground and shaking their huge baroque headgear at each other.
They slipped into the cooler forest--more like elephant parkland, in truth, for the undergrowth was trampled and munched and the trees were gashed and stripped. Smaller ostrich- or goose-sized bipeds scampered here and there, darting away at their approach, snapping at dragonflies, chasing each other through the trees.
Slava wandered in a dream, Karil and Loris crept warily. The heat increased as the mock sun mounted the dome of heaven. Even in the forest shade, the heat was exhausting.
"Freeze," Loris said.
"I'd love to," Karil whispered. "What is it?"
Loris pushed aside the foliage and they saw a predator crouching over its kill in a clearing. It was perhaps three tons in weight, with powerful hindquarters, a great sail on its back, and a huge head armed with sickle teeth.
"That's a Dimetrodon, right? I've seen pictures."
"No, Silly," Slava laughed. "They were Permian, and not even dinosaurs. This is Spinosaurus, an African species. The continents were already separate, so the Keeper must have gathered them from all over the world."
It rumbled like a big cat as it ripped huge chunks of bleeding flesh from its still-quivering kill and gulped them down. Winged reptiles of vulturous aspect spiralled down out of the sky and settled in the treetops to watch. Smaller carnivores appeared from the shadows and hung back, just out of reach, squealing and snapping like jackals.
Quietly, the observers faded back and moved on, carefully skirting the clearing.
The sun was high in the sky, and they were faint from the heat by the time they reached the edge of the forest. A grassy plain stretched toward the distant mountains.
"We'd have to be crazy to cross that in daylight," Loris said. She glanced up into the treetops. "Tell me, do dinosaurs climb trees?"
"I don't think so," Slava said. "I never heard of any that did. A few gliding lizards, maybe."
"What about those winged scavengers we saw?"
"Well, they may have a ten-meter wingspread, but they only weigh a few kilos. I don't think they'd try to lift a body our size. Unless we try to grab their kill or disturb their nest, I don't see why they'd attack us."
They found a climbable tree and worked their way to a sturdy crotch at least ten meters off the ground and sheltered by the canopy, where Karil built a chimpanzee nest. Slava clung to a limb and peered out across the plains.
"There may be sauropods out there," she said. "Not a lot, maybe, but I think this could support a small herd."
"That's nice, Dear."
She turned and saw the nest. "This is nice," she said, flopped down on the bed of branches and leaves, and squirmed with delight. "Thank you for bringing me here," she said. "I'm so glad I met you."
"I'm glad I met you too," Karil said. "Otherwise I'd be looking for stegosaurs."
She stretched out her arms to both of them. They flopped down beside her, and she began to shower them with kisses, working her way over Karil's bare chest and Loris' bare midriff, untying the latter's knotted shirt to kiss her breasts.
In the cool shade of the treetops, Karil and Loris explored her body. Lost in bliss, Slava did not know who was doing what to her--whether the lips on her nipples, or the fingers inside her, or the tongue working its way up her inner thigh belonged to Loris or to Karil.
Together, they were as graceful and co-ordinated, as practiced, as a sculptor's two hands shaping soft clay, as expert and efficient as a pilot and astrogator nudging their ship into orbit. They moved slowly, never getting in each other's way, though they sometimes kissed as they met changing places over her body. Slava did not know that this exquisite ballet of theirs was as famous in the communes of Mars as it was in the corridors of Ganymede's Rim District, and that she was far from the first to apply for the post of their Ship's Pet.
Finally, the pressure of Loris' pubis on her own was replaced by Karil's and she felt his gentle penetration. Slava erupted in prolonged, whimpering, shuddering delirium, crushing her mouth to Loris' own, weeping tears of joy, and finally subsiding in panting exhaustion.
Then, in the noonday heat, they slept in each other's arms while the treetop swayed, the dragonflies buzzed among the leaves, and the Keeper's creatures prowled the forest floor below like phantoms in a Cretaceous dream.
One small dinosaur--about the height of a tall man--stepped out of the shadows and looked up, blinking its nictitating eyelids. To its infra-red vision, the three human beings were clearly visible in their nest above. It made a complicated series of clicking sounds, then listened for a moment. Then it turned and melted into the foliage again.