“A what?” Santee wanted to know.
“There was a fabled animal mentioned in some of the old books on Terra. Had a single horn in the middle of the forehead, but the rest was all horse. Well, here’s a horse with two horns-a duocorn instead of a unicorn. But those things we saw feeding here-they were pretty small to bring down an animal of this size.”
“Unless they carry a burper, they didn’t!” Dard, in spite of the odor, leaned down to inspect that stretch of spine beyond the loose skull. A section of vertebra had been smashed just as if a giant vise had been applied to the nape of the duocorn’s neck!
“Crushed!” Kimber agreed. “But whatever could do that?”
Cully studied the body. “Mighty big for a horse.”
“There were breeds on earth which were seventeen to twenty hands high at the shoulder and weighed close to a ton,” returned Kimber. “This fellow must have been about that size.”
“And what is big enough to crunch through a spine supporting a ton of meat?” Santee wanted to know. He went back to the sled and picked up the rifle.
Dard back-trailed from the evil-smelling bones. Several paces farther on he discovered what he was looking for, marks which proved that the body had been dragged and worried for almost half of a city block. And also, plain to read in a drift of soil across the street, prints. The marks cut deeply by the hooves of the duocorn were half blotted out in places by another spoor-three long-clawed toes, with faint scuffed spaces between, as if they were united by a webbed membrane. Dard went down on one knee and flexed his own hand over the clearest of those prints. With his fingers spread to the fullest extent he could just span it.
“Looks like a chicken track.” Santee had come up behind him.
“More likely a reptile. I’ve seen a field lizard leave a spoor such as this-except for the size.”