"It's early. Well take him back to Emeraude tonight, and come back for your work tomorrow," Lampert said, and lifted into the air without waiting for agreement.
"All right," replied Krendall, "as long as we come back. I don't think he'd have wanted us to stop. I'm going to find out about those green threads of his, too." Lampert nodded in approval. He had already formed a similar determination. For half an hour they flew on in silence.
The Felodon, half submerged in swamp water a kilometer downstream from the hill, heard the helicopter hum overhead. It seemed totally disinterested. For just a moment its fanged head pointed upward, then settled back again. There was a burn under its jaw, which had been inflicted by metal spraying from the ruined seismic apparatus. It was more comfortable to keep it under water....
"What was it you found, Ndomi, that you thought Take would want to see?" Lampert broke the long silence.
"It was when we were undercutting to get the block out of the tunnel," Sulewayo answered. "It's just some more of his green threads, in the tuff below the fossil. I brought a chunk of the rock showing them—here." Lampert nodded without taking his main attention from flying.
"Maybe that fossil of yours was intelligent after all, then," he said. "It seems to have died under very similar circumstances to Take—just above a set of those green threads. Maybe it was a member of a party like ours."
"Maybe. It certainly walked erect. The whole body structure shows that. If its brain were large enough and it had some sort of manipulating appendage I'd say it was virtually human—in capacity, that is. It was more of an amphibian anatomically."
"You have the block out in the open. Haven't you been able to study the head and limbs?"
"No, damn it." Krendall took over from his junior. "That was the big disappointment of the whole find. The specimen seems to be perfect except for missing skull and hands. Not a trace of either."
The helicopter wavered slightly in its path, then steadied as Lampert forced his attention back to his job. No one said anything for a long time, but everyone was thinking.