Ireta 02 - [Dinosaur Planet 02] - Dinosaur Planet Survivors Read Online Free Page A

for antiseptic splashes and a couple of pain sprays, rolled up two of the thin thermal blankets to transport any fruit they found, and left without another glance at Tor.
    Varian had been busy, too, looping long thick vines tightly about the shuttle’s stern docking bars.
    “If we’re anchored here, we’re not apt to get blown about in that wind. Wish the rain would let up, but it looks about middayish. There’re only two giffs, and I can’t always make them out in this rain. Any movement from Tor?” She took the items Kai handed her and disposed of them in her pockets. She knotted the blanket about her shoulders. “Here’s your vine. Remember, Kai, don’t look down!”
    She leaped for her first handhold, wrapping her legs about the thick stem of the vine and began to shinny up.
    Kai discovered that he had an almost irresistible need to look down, especially when his vine started rolling along the upper edge of the cliff. Despite Varian’s efforts to anchor the vines, the wind smacked him against the stone. Nevertheless, he reached the top just as Varian did. Thunder crashed and cracked across the sea behind them.
    Varian pointed to the sheets of rain slanting across the open water. “We could get swept off if that squall’s as heavy as it looks.”
    Kai needed no urging and followed her across the cliff top to the doubtful shelter of the vegetation.
    Suddenly Varian began to strip, throwing her boots, pouch, and blanket under the thick leathery leaves.
    “Wow! That rain’s shower force!” she cried. Shedding her coverall, face upturned, she stepped into the pelting rain. Discarding his clothing, Kai ventured more warily into the heavy rain. Then Varian was scrubbing his back, using her coverall as a towel. She guided the fabric to just that point between the shoulderblades where sweat made his skin itch.
    “Wow!” she cried again in triumph. “Sand we can use as an abrasive—just don’t rub too hard,” she shouted at him through torrent and thunder.
    They scrubbed themselves and each other, occasionally half-choked by the water as it streamed out of the heavens and bathed them. Except for his lingering feeling that it was ridiculous to be jumping about in a rainstorm on a cliff to get clean, Kai would have thoroughly enjoyed the improvisation. There was some truth in Varian’s accusation that he had been sheltered in ship life. Before the mutiny, he had not been so exposed to elemental Ireta. There’d always been the sled or the compound and the safety of the forcescreen. Today he was naked before the onslaught of a violent phenomenon on a primitive planet.
    “Unless we’ve slept through a magnetic field slip,” Varian yelled at him, “the sun ought to be out soon. Our overalls will dry in zero elapsed! I hope before we fry in our bare skins.”
    She was giving her suit one last rinsing when the shower passed, and the sun streamed through the cloud cover. Wringing their suits, they flapped them out as they splashed back toward the thick forest verge. They laid the suits out on the vines, just beyond the shade.
    “Oh, I feel much better, Kai, much better,” Varian said. She squeezed water from her hair and stroked it from her body with her hands. Then she reached up to her hair again. “You know, I think it’s longer. If we only knew the rate of growth of hair during cryogenic sleep,” she said, examining a lock carefully. “Well . . .” She shook her head again, droplets falling on him as she turned, head back and eyes closed against the brilliant sunlight.
    “We can’t tolerate that sun long, girl,” he said as he guided her into the shade.
    She caught at his hand, her fingers moving to his wrist, prodding the site of the break.
    “Even that fracture isn’t telling any tales. If you’d been an animal patient, I’d say the break was old enough for the extra calcium to have been reabsorbed.” Suddenly her face looked bleak in the filtered light of the sun Arretan. “Kai, haven’t