Our Lady of the Sauropods

Robert Silverberg Our Lady of the Sauropods

I keep telling myself that none of this is really happening. Only I can’t quite convince myself of that.

August. 0750 hours. Ten minutes since the module melt-down. I can’t see the wreckage from here, but I can smell it, bitter and sour against the moist tropical air. I’ve found a cleft in the rocks, a kind of shallow cavern, where I’ll be safe from the dinosaurs for a while. It’s shielded by thick clumps of cycads, and in any case it’s too small for the big predators to enter. But sooner or later I’m going to need food, and then what? I have no weapons. How long can one woman last, stranded and more or less helpless, aboard a habitat unit not quite five hundred meters in diameter that she’s sharing with a bunch of active, hungry dinosaurs?

My escape still has me shaky. I can’t get out of my mind the funny little bubbling sound the tiny powerpak made as it began to overheat. In something like fourteen seconds my lovely mobile module became a charred heap of fused-together junk, taking with it my communicator unit, my food supply, my laser gun andjust about everything else. And but for the warning that funny little sound gave me, I’d be so much charred junk now, too. Better off that way, most likely.

When I close my eyes, I imagine I can see Habitat Vronsky floating serenely in orbit a mere 120 kilometers away. What a beautiful sight! The walls gleaming like platinum, the great mirror collecting sunlight and flashing it into the windows, the agricultural satellites wheeling around it like a dozen tiny moons. I could almost reach out and touch it. Tap on the shielding and murmur, “Help me, come for me, rescue me.” But I might just as well be out beyond Neptune as sitting here in the adjoining Lagrange slot. No way I can call for help. The moment I move outside this cleft in the rock I’m at the mercy of my saurians and their mercy is not likely to be tender.

Now it’s beginning to rain—artificial, like practically everything else on Dino Island. But it gets you just as wet as the natural kind. And clammy. Pfaugh.

Jesus, what am I going to do?

0815 hours. The rain is over for now. It’ll come again in six hours. Astonishing how muggy, dank, thick, the air is. Simply breathing is hard work, and I feel as though mildew is forming on my lungs. I miss Vronsky’s clear, crisp, everlasting springtime air. On previous trips to Dino Island I never cared about the climate. But, of course, I was snugly englobed in my mobile unit, a world within a world, self-contained, self-sufficient, isolated from all contact with this place and its creatures. Merely a roving eye, traveling as I pleased, invisible, invulnerable.

Can they sniff me in here?

We don’t think their sense of smell is very acute. Sharper than a crocodile’s, not as good as a cat’s. And the stink of the burned wreckage dominates the place at the moment. But I must reek with fear-signals. I feel calm now, but it was different as I went desperately scrambling out of the module during the meltdown. Scattering pheromones all over the place, I bet.

Commotion in the cycads. Something’s coming in here!

Long neck, small birdlike feet, delicate grasping hands. Not to worry. Struthiomimus, is all-dainty dino, fragile, birdlike critter barely two meters high. Liquid golden eyes staring solemnly at me. It swivels its head from side to side, ostrichlike, click-click, as if trying to make up its mind about coming closer to me. Scat! Go peck a stegosaur. Let me alone.

The Struthiomimus withdraws, making little clucking sounds.

Closest I’ve ever been to a live dinosaur. Glad it was one of the little ones.

0900 hours. Getting hungry. What am I going to eat?

They say roasted cycad cones aren’t too bad. How about raw ones? So many plants are edible when cooked and poisonous otherwise. I never studied such things in detail. Living in our antiseptic little L5 habitats, we’re not required to be outdoors—wise, after all. Anyway, there’s a fleshy-looking cone on the cycad just in front of the cleft, and it’s got an edible look. Might as well try it raw, because there’s no other way. Rubbing sticks together will get me nowhere.

Getting the cone off takes some work. Wiggle, twist, snap, tear—there. Not as fleshy as it looks. Chewy, in fact. Like munching on rubber. Decent flavor, though. And maybe some useful carbohydrate.