Free Delta Pavonis by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani

when they're hunting and it'd be almost on top of you before you could see or hear it."
    "You heard him," Forrest said. "We stay well within the trees, not where the growth is dense. We want to be able to see what's coming."
    "Hey, look at that!" someone said, pointing. A hundred meters away, one of the flying reptiles was plunging toward a patch of open water. Just before it hit the surface, the broad wings warped downward, braking the fall. The elongated head darted out on its serpentine neck and then jerked back in a spray of water, clutching something silver and wriggling between the rows of back-curving teeth. With a flapping of leathery wings, the pterodactyl flew inland toward a range of steep hills just visible in the distance.
    "Damn!" Govinda said. "That was beautiful!" It was amazing to see the animal world in action. Even for those who had been on earlier expeditions, it was impossible to respond to alien wildlife as to this scene from the past of their own planet. Even the best of the educational holos could never deliver the feeling of actually witnessing the real thing.
    Keeping within the treeline, they sought a way around the swamp. Once, they tiptoed around a small herd of triceratops. The immense beasts paid them no heed, continuing placidly if noisily to munch the grass and brush. About half of the adult specimens lacked the brilliant coloration of the animal they had seen the day before. The immature members of the herd were likewise drab.
    At noon Forrest called a halt and they sat in a wide circle with guards posted well away from the main group. He ordered Schubert to try a comm check.
    "Absolutely no contact at all," Schubert reported happily. "We're getting nothing but static."
    "Great. Let's hope it stays that way for a few days. I want to get a good look at this place. We need to find something really significant before we report in."
    "Significant!" Fumiyo said. "What could be more significant than what we've found already?"
    "What we've seen so far," Forrest waved an arm to take in their surroundings, "is tantalizing. We have some idea of what we're seeing. We still don't know how, when, who or why."
    Dierdre put down the pine cone she had been studying. "You want to find signs of the aliens who did this? Artifacts?"
    He nodded. "Or the aliens themselves. They could still be here, you know."
    "That would definitely get our names in the history books," said Gaston, a dark, squat man from Avalon. "First contact. We've been talking about it for years."
    "But are we the ones to handle it?" Fumiyo wanted to know.
    "I can't think of anybody better," Forrest said. "Do you think our superiors are any smarter than we are? Hell, no. They just have seniority. When it comes to first contact, nobody has any experience, so that's not even a factor."
    Everybody seemed to think that made sense. If their judgment was questionable, they had no lack of self-confidence and healthy egotism.
    Something had been bothering Dierdre for most of the day, but she hadn't been able to sort it out from a host of other confused impressions. Now it resurfaced and she realized what it was.
    "Hey, boss, I just thought of something. Those bugs that've been eating on us act like they like warm blood, but we've seen nothing here but reptiles. Did mosquitoes and dinosaurs coexist?"
    Forrest cocked an eyebrow at Colin.
    "Hard to say. People still argue over whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded or not. In any case, there were mammals around through most of the dinosaur period—little ones, like rats. Whether there were enough of them to support swarms of blood-sucking parasites, I don't know. Maybe nobody does. Insects rarely leave fossils behind."
    "Parasites," somebody repeated. The very idea was horrifying. Generations spent in the controlled environments of the asteroid colonies had eliminated any tolerance for such horrors of the natural world.
    "Weren't there all kinds of horrible diseases you could get just from being dunked in