Delta Pavonis by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani Page A

rating," Forrest answered. "That thing was a dinosaur. A real, Earth-type dinosaur. I think it was a triceratops. Right, Colin?"
    "Looked like it. That family had a lot of members, but that looked like the classic triceratops. The bones could be those of a diplodocus, but that'd take more detailed study."
    "You're talking an impossibility," Hannie said. "This has to be some sort of parallel evolution."
    "It's about as likely," Forrest said, "that we'd run into human beings speaking English. Evolution shouldn't be that parallel. Something big and vaguely reptilian, yeah, maybe. But not one of the classics like a triceratops."
    "Or a stegosaurus," said Govinda, helpfully. "If we see a stegosaurus, we'll know for sure we're onto something weird."
    Forrest was about to say something sarcastic when his comm unit beeped. "Talk to me," he said.
    "Ray!" It was Fumiyo, Team B's leader. "Something just flew over us! You won't believe this, but it looks just like one of those pterodactyls or pteranodons or whatever the hell they were in Paleo class!"
    "Wait'll you see what we just saw," he answered. "Bring Team B back to the splitup point right away. We'll rendezvous there. Things have taken a radical change."
    "I saw one of those flying lizards last night," Dierdre said. "With my viewer."
    "Then why didn't you say . . ." Forrest stopped himself. "Oh, yeah, well. . . . Come on, people, we're heading back."
    Two hours later they were back at their beach camp, everybody looking subdued. They ran holos of the creatures they had seen. The flying reptile had a pale underside, but its back was yellow and the head a brilliant green. The back of the head was graced with a finlike crest.
    "As I recall our comparative zoology classes," Fumiyo said, "bright colors aren't characteristic of very large animals, back on Earth. Drab colors or camouflage were the norm. Why is that triceratops's face so gaudy?"
    "Maybe it's a sexual display," Colin said, "like some birds. Dinosaurs are supposed to be closely related to birds."
    "This is all sort of dodging the major question, isn't it?" Dierdre said. "Shouldn't we be wondering just what the hell dinosaurs, for God's sake, are doing on a planet a good many light years from their place of origin, millions of years after their supposed extinction?"
    "I'll confess that the question crossed my mind," Forrest said. "Unfortunately, we suffer from a severe lack of data."
    "So what do we do?" Fumiyo asked.
    "What do we do? We're explorers, aren't we? So we explore."
    "You mean," Govinda said, slowly raising an arm and pointing to the top of the plateau, "we go up there, where all the dinosaurs and stuff are?"
    "Sure," Forrest said, "why not?"
    "We're out of touch with the mainland and the orbitals," Schubert pointed out.
    "Remember what I said this morning? About how, if you're going to explore, you have to take risks? Besides, this may be the best thing that could have happened to us."
    Everyone looked puzzled, but Dierdre thought she could see what he was getting at. "You mean, why should we share the glory?"
    For the first time, he looked at her with approval.
    "Right. Listen, people, if we report what we've seen, what's going to happen? This is probably the most important discovery since Derek Kuroda found the Rhea Objects years ago. It may be the key to how this screwy planet works. Do you think an exploration this important would be left to us?" He looked around, saw expressions of dismay, then anger. "That's right. The glamour boys would descend on this place like locusts, with their tame newsies in tow. We'd be hustled off to some new godforsaken hellhole to explore while they made sure nobody remembered we were the first here. I say, let's go in there and do a complete survey, gather all the data we can and when it's all in we shoot the whole thing straight up to Avalon, bypassing the Survey bureaucracy entirely."
    "We could be jailed for that," Hannie said.
    "Let's blame it on the sunspot activity,"