"That doesn't mean much," said Hakim. "Imagine a Station being set up in, say, Sussex. In one month—barring the animals that go with civilization—you would hardly expect to find anything larger than a fox. And nowadays you'd be hard put to it to find a fox, at that."
"Not quite apt, Hakim," Fenner said. "Because in Sussex a larger predator—Man—has cleared away all his lesser rivals. Is it possible that something has swept this region clean, and perhaps only a last few survivors are now hanging about? Perhaps they're delighted to have us visit them, eh?"
He cracked the knuckles of his long, bony fingers, and strode restlessly to the iris. "I'm going to think about it, too," he said.
Gorsline, as if with a sort of clairvoyance, said, "Don't go jumping into things, Luke."
"No, no, of course not."
Fenner went out into the corridor. There was a faint odor of pine that blew from the air conditioner, and contrasted oddly with the almost hospital bareness of the hall. He walked down to his own room, musing, and glanced through the large window at the Orphic landscape.
As the Station's head ecologist, it was his duty to evaluate a great many aspects of the survey which might not be apparent even to the chief. For instance, assuming there were such a predator in the neighborhood, what might be the probable results of trying to exterminate it? Or what was its relationship to a region in which there were so many winged creatures—"birds," they called them for the sake of simplicity, although they were actually flying marsupials and some very large insects—and so few ground animals that might serve as its prey? Was it itself winged, or, he asked himself, did its mind-paralyzing ability serve to pluck birds out of the trees?
He stiffened. Even while his mind had been busy with the subject, he had been automatically scanning the view with the involuntary precision of his profession. From the Station, the cleared ground sloped away to a cluster of tall tree-ferns whose upper branches, long and drooping like greatly oversized date-palm fronds, brushed the mossy earth. And among those branches Fenner had seen something long and glossy move swiftly.
All his attention focused at once on that spot. In the same instant, he whipped out the tiny binoculars he always carried in a side pocket, and put them to his eyes.