Free The Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes

affectionately. "Zack—don't try to be everywhere at once. We'll take care of this." He started to protest, and she turned his chin, examining his bloodshot eyes. "You get any sleep?"
    "Usually I count sheep. You wouldn't believe what was vaulting the fence last night—"
    Jerry peeled back the outer tarp.
    "Sheez!" Sylvia moved back from the sudden stench of unrefrigerated flesh. It smelled wet and suncooked and corrupt: the kind of odor that conjures an image of hungry flies and heavy spices; the smell that permeates a back-street butcher shop on a warm summer afternoon.
    Zack was trying to back out of the room, but the sight and moist sound as the tarp was peeled away held him transfixed. As the last layer of cloth left the corpse, he grunted in disgust and turned his head.
    One of the calf's legs was gone. Another was broken, chewed almost completely through, hanging at an angle. A hideously raw wound gaped in the center of the body. Skin and muscle had been ripped away, ribs snipped cleanly or shattered, jagged edges jutting through the flesh. The bones were grooved and splintered as if something had tried to push Ginger sideways through a wheat thresher.
    Marnie hooked a gauze mask around her ears. "All right, Jerry, start the camera." Her voice had a lisp that turned "Jerry" to ‘Sherry', although she pronounced each word with extreme care.
    Jerry looked up at the ceiling. "Cassandra. Program. Autopsy assistant. Run."
    A glowing crystal at the end of a gooseneck extension snaked down from the ceiling. The video camera paused patiently as Jerry adjusted a collar at the top of its neck. Its red eye winked on. "Okay. Program is running. Recorders on. Go, Marnie."
    Marnie wheeled over the tray of instruments and pulled on rubber gloves. The stomach wound swallowed her arms to the elbow.
    "I note puncture marks around the throat without further damage inflicted there. Buttocks and abdominal muscle removed. I suggest that death was caused by severing of the jugular and carotids, but that the attacker dragged his prey to safety, and there consumed the, ah, missing tissue and internal organs." Her delivery was precise enough to compensate for much of the mushiness of her lisp. Years from now this would be seen all over the Earth.
    "The bones are neatly sheared—almost too neatly, I would think.
    Jerry, take a look at this."
    Her husband came to her side and pulled on a pair of plastic gloves. "Sylvia," he said quickly. "Get on the console and follow us with the camera." The glowing crystal wound its way to Marnie's shoulder and perched there, peering. "What have you got?"
    "Just a moment." Sylvia fiddled with the controls: suddenly the abdominal wound was floating in front of her, in living color. Her own stomach rolled, and she leached some of the color from the video stage. Little of this would be seen by Earth's billions. Too much blood. Maybe there was an underground market?
    Jerry's hand walked into the image, pointing at a rib that hadn't been ripped away. His scarecrow body moved smoothly now, in familiar habit patterns. "We have bite marks here—" His fingers traced several notches. "I want a projection based on bite radius, jaw pressure and overall strength. Whatever killed Ginger had power. It had to move her fast."
    "I'm not doing anything useful," Zack said. "I'm going over to Control to check the infrared returns." No one answered. "I just hope to hell something has come up."
    As soon as he was out of the room, Marnie looked up. "Nothing yet? Not a flicker?"
    Sylvia shook her head. "Nothing. Not one of the Skeeters has picked up anything larger than a turkey."
    "And Cadmann's still out there looking?"
    "First out, last back. You know Madman Weyland." The torn flesh disappeared from the video stage, replaced by a two-dimensional column of numbers. Sylvia turned to the computer monitor. "Cassandra. Imaging." As she talked her words and numbers were transformed into lines of color. She manipulated them with an