Free Welcome to the Greenhouse by Gordon Van Gelder Page B

Vancouver.
    The roof was huge, but even so, the ship was too large to land on it. It was too large to land on the shrunken city. Instead it hovered a few yards above where Bunky waited with the Secretary-General, a flock of presidents and prime ministers, a few kings and queens, and one ayatollah.
    From the ship’s flat base, a long, wide ramp uncurled itself. There was a pregnant pause, then the first of the arrivals came down the sloping gangway.
    “That’s some bird,” Bunky said to Number-One. “Twenty-feet, nothin’—that thing goes thirty.”
    “I don’t think it’s a bird,” Number-One said. “It’s got feathers, all right, but those are arms, not wings. And those teeth—”
    The Secretary-General was speaking. She offered a welcome from all the people of Earth, and thanked the newcomers for their kindness in coming to help with the problem of global warming. Bunky stepped up proudly beside her, carefully prepared speech in hand.
    The huge feathered being opened its mouth in a kind of smile, revealing dozens of teeth shaped like curved daggers. Its voice was a series of hisses and squawks, but Bunky heard a translation from an earpiece that connected to a device that was also the result of the communicator schematic the slugs had sent through. He had already made a fresh billion from manufacturing it.
    “We keep telling you,” the creature said, “it’s not a problem—it’s a solution.” It cast its plate-sized, yellow-irised eyes across the crowd of dignitaries, then focused on the king of Tonga. A clawed hand as wide as an armchair scooped up the portly monarch. Then, almost before the king could scream, the foot-long teeth bit off his top half.
    The jaws crunched. A spray of blood, bone flakes, and meat scraps speckled the heads and shoulders of the dignitaries as they turned and fought each other to reach the roof’s single exit. Bunky heard the voice in his ear say, “Hey, didn’t I tell you they’d taste just like
sheeshrak?
Come on, try one!”
    Then the claws closed around Bunky’s torso—he was the plumpest specimen still uncaught—and he was carried to the edge of the roof. He saw the big three-toed feet sink deep into the tar-and-gravel surface with each step. From behind his captor he heard a cacophony of screams and feeding sounds, while the translator conveyed the squabbles over the choicer morsels.
    Soon it grew quiet. He twisted in the thing’s scaly grip and saw it looking out over the warm sea, its nostrils distending as it breathed in the thick and sultry air. Above it, the sky was now full of immense ships.
    The great voice hissed and clacked, the translation duly fed into the billionaire’s ear: “It’s so good to be back. It’ll be like we never left.”
    “Listen,” Bunky gasped, as he was lifted and the bloodstained jaws opened wide.
    A moment later, the translator said, sliding down the dinosaur’s gullet, “Or maybe not
sheeshrak.
Maybe
chikkichuk.”

EAGLE
Gregory Benford
    The long, fat freighter glided into the harbor at late morning— not the best time for a woman who had to keep out of sight.
    The sun slowly slid up the sky as tugboats drew them into Anchorage. The tank ship, a big, sectioned VLCC, was like an elephant ballerina on the stage of a slate-blue sea, attended by tiny, dancing tugs.
    Now off duty, Elinor watched the pilot bring them in past the Nikiski Narrows and slip into a long pier with gantries like skeletal arms snaking down, the big pump pipes attached. They were ready for the hydrogen sulfide to flow. The ground crew looked anxious, scurrying around, hooting and shouting. They were behind schedule.
    Inside, she felt steady, ready to destroy all this evil stupidity.
    She picked up her duffel bag, banged a hatch shut, and walked down to the shore desk. Pier teams in gasworkers’ masks were hooking up pumps to offload and even the faint rotten egg stink of the hydrogen sulfide made her hold her breath. The Bursar checked her out,