"I don't like to, on general principles, but—yes, we could, with actually very little risk. If you have some sort of rock saw whose cutting part can get fine control, I'd be willing to use it for parts of the tunnel away from the actual specimen."
"I have. We'll take you up there first thing in the morning, and I'll go down with you and show you how to use it before going on with Take and String."
"Who holds the 'copter in place while you climb down the ladder, give your lesson and come back?" asked the guide.
"Hmph. I forgot about that. All right, I'll break out the machinery and give the lesson right now." He got up and strode to the helicopter. McLaughlin covered him from the fence to the aircraft, but nothing dangerous appeared. The geophysicist disappeared inside, and returned a moment later with a compact metal case under his arm. The guide holstered his weapon as the gate in the fence closed once more....
Actually, the Felodon was miles downstream. It had spent the day in its chosen lair, apparently indifferent to the doings of the men a few hundred yards away. With the coming of darkness—real darkness this time, for the rain clouds cut off both the moonlight and the night glow from the upper atmosphere—it had emerged, hunted, killed and fed as before, apparently unhampered by the lack of light. By midnight it was back in the same lair, paunch distended, as close to sleep as its coldblooded kind ever came.
VI
The rain was still falling when the clouds lightened once more to the rising sun. Lampert was getting used to navigating the canyon by radar, and was an excellent pilot anyway; so he did not have too much trouble in locating the shelf where Sulewayo and Krendall had been working. Getting the men down to it was not particularly difficult, though rather nerve-racking. Krendall went first, unburdened except for his personal equipment. Then he steadied the ladder for Sulewayo who had the cutter strapped across his shoulders. The steadying hand was needed. Climbing down a rope ladder when loaded "top-heavy" can be an extremely awkward bit of activity. Had the pilot above been any less capable, it would probably have been impossible.
The ledge was wet, but fortunately not particularly slippery. The men set their equipment on the ground at the point where their cut entered the crack in the cliff, and without delay set to work. The tunnel was deep enough now to shelter the one actually cutting from the rain, so at first they took turns at this operation.
The cutting machine Lampert had provided was a sort of diamond-toothed chain saw capable of a two-meter extension. Ordinarily it was not the sort of thing a paleontologist would consider using so close to a specimen; but the men were fairly sure by now of the general extent of the thing they were uncovering. Even so, they used the saw only on the side of their tunnel away from the visible remains. They speedily widened the passage enough to permit them both to get inside and work on the face of the exposed material; but they still used hand tools whenever there was any suspicion that a bone might be about to appear. Work proceeded several times as fast as it had the day before.