Tropic of Creation Read Free Page B

sailed in a massive, bleached globule, carrying its load of moisture far out of reach. The other side of the planet must sprout these things, Eli thought. In that great shallow ocean, animal life, marinelife, might flourish. Given half a chance, Geoff Olander would be wading in that shallow sea right now, prodding at mats of algae, sampling pillows of bacteria, with something close to rapture.
    Given the hand Geoff Olander was dealt on this temporary stop, the parched fossils of this hemisphere would have to do.
    Eli found Geoff and his daughter in a deep, wind-scoured ravine revealing slabs of crumbling stone and, in the near distance, the hump of another hexadron, half caved-in with age. Geoff waved to Eli—a brief, cheery hello—and bent over his work once more. Sascha held a sack half her size, the satchel of their finds.
    “How’s pickings?” Eli asked Sascha.
    “We have five bags of specimens,” she said. “Great definition, full body skeletals.” She rummaged in the satchel for an example.
    Geoff shaded his eyes, looking up at Eli, with the same piercing blue eyes as his daughter. “Not reining us in, I hope?”
    “Might be best if you stayed in camp,” Eli said. “A precaution.”
Against what? Against the social taboos of an overprotective mother?
But he let Geoff draw his own conclusions.
    The man looked down the ravine with longing. “Best site we’ve found so far.” He tapped at a slab of rock with his small hammer, sloughing off a crumbling layer of mud. Then he sighed and stood up. “Couldn’t you give us a few hours?”
    Feeling Sascha’s eyes burn a hole in his back, Eli said, “As soon as you can, then.”
    Geoff snorted, but said civilly enough, “Caught between two Olanders, eh?”
    Eli was saved from answering by Sascha sidling between them, shoving a transparent specimen bag into Eli’s hand. It contained the remains of a small creature, ajumble of dust and bones. “Nice fossil,” Eli said, playing the dolt, goading Sascha the way she seemed to love.
    “It’s not a fossil. It’s a skeleton. Real bones. We found the whole skeleton together, and it looked rather like a frog, except for spinules on the back.” She traced the long spinules with her index finger. “I found it, so I might get to name it. Something
olanderi
. Or, I could immortalize
you
, Captain. I could make this one something
dammondi
. If you were nice and gave us an extra day to make scientific history.”
    Geoff raised an eyebrow, daring Eli to deny her.
    Eli found himself smiling. “I’ll take your request under advisement.”
    “Kiss of death,” Sascha declared, gently placing the bag in her satchel like a fine piece of porcelain.
    “A lot of bones here, then, Mr. Olander?” Eli saw for himself that the ravine was littered with them.
    “Yes, a world of them. A biologist’s dream.”
    “Then the place had life once,” Eli said, meaning the bones, but looking at the hexadron.
    “Still does, somewhere, I expect. Drought’s driven them off.” Geoff twisted a bone fragment in his hand, a narrow span with an odd socket joint.
    Eli knew it was more than an odd bone to Geoff—it was the chance to pierce a mystery or leave it forever buried. But he saw it in Geoff Olander’s eyes more than in the bones.
    “We’ll never come back here,” Geoff said softly. No challenge to Eli’s authority.
    “I doubt it.” The planet was so far off the service routes that the
Lucia
was lucky to have found Marzano and her crew at all.
    Geoff sighed at the waste. “Five, six billion years of life—and all we have is what’s in those sacks. I’d almost stay behind, you know?”
    Eli knew. Knew that urge to bend the rules when they needed bending.
    Nearly overhead now, the yellow sun lapped up the very shadows at his feet, wrung sweat from his hairline. Down the ravine, the ancient hexadron still had a metal glint beneath the baked-on dust. He gazed at the thing, his mind looking for ways to bend the