Free Sliding Scales by Alan Dean Foster Page A

explained it all to them, and would praise him for his quick and decisive action.
    The aircar hummed to life without hesitation, rose, and turned back toward distant Skokosas. Within minutes it was lost to sight from the canyon's edge. From beneath a pile of broken rock and the dull orange houluwub bush that sheltered it, a hesitant and curious vopolpa emerged. The strange and frightening long-winged thing that had been hunting it had gone. Inflating the pair of thumbnail-sized airsacs attached to its back end, the black-and-purple vopolpa wept its urine and, relieved, drifted off in a direction that would take it away from the canyon.
    Below the rim, all was quiet. Shattered stones that had been broken loose from their resting places lay still. Venting the last cool of the night, fecund soil began to vomit forth small, migrating spores. Those small creatures incapable of flight crept furtively from stone to shadow, bush to jaleeb vine. A finger-long wonudu stole out from beneath the shelter of a multi-trunked but dead sarobbis. Eyeing the ripe, grape-sized molk buds nearby, it scrabbled on its dozen legs in the direction of a hearty, palepink breakfast. From above, the wonudu looked like a large, dead twig blowing in the wind.
    That did not fool the patrolling jolahoh. Spotting the movement on the rocky slope below, it instantly voided the gas contained within all four of its lifting sacs. Dropping like a stone, it landed directly on top of the skittering wonudu, slamming into the tiny herbivore hard enough to break its back. The thick, fleshy pad that ran the length of the jolahoh's belly cushioned the impact, as did the layers of fat surrounding its internal organs. Legs kicking spasmodically, the mortally injured wonudu struggled to bring its sucking mouthparts to bear on its attacker. Pinned beneath the weighty mass of the jolahoh, it was unable to do so. Ignoring the feebly striking head, the jolahoh proceeded to feed on its still-living victim. As a predator it needed neither fang nor claw nor poisonous stinger to hunt and kill: it simply fell out of the sky to land crushingly on top of its prey.
    Both quarry and killer ignored the much larger motionless form that lay nearby. A small flock of yobulbul, their single gas sacs each no larger than a thumbnail, hovered above the pool of blood that trickled from the body's forehead, their long, needle-like proboses allowing them to feed on the crimson puddle without landing. Striking from the other side of the body, a furious serpentine shape inhaled several of them before they could scatter, the dwarf nozzles located at the rear of their tiny forms venting gas as rapidly as their panicked, miniscule muscular contractions could manage it.
    Sharp eyes searching for any other threat to her master, Pip relaxed her pleated wings and settled down on his back. Though she sensed no emotions emanating from Flinx, she could feel his heart pumping beneath her scales. He was still alive. Unconscious and bleeding, his clothing torn and his survival belt ripped away and gone, but alive.Frantic with concern, she had been unable to do anything to break his fall, could only parallel his uncontrolled descent as he crashed and bounced from one ledge to another. Perhaps it was just as well he was insensible. It kept him from seeing that one booted foot dangled over a sheer drop of several hundred meters. Another bounce, another roll, and Pip would no longer have a companion to keen over.
    Perched on his back, the flying snake settled down. There was nothing more she could do. She was empathetic, but not sentient. She could not go for help, or conjure up the emergency medical kit that filled one of the pouches fastened to her master's lost belt, or gather soft fur or other material to staunch his wounds. She could only lie, and wait, and wish, in the quiet but devoted manner of minidrags, for her companion to come to his senses.
    She stayed that way for hours, leaving only once, and then but