Her heart beating with anxiety, Melodic pushed the library ladder around on its rails until it was in the row she wanted. She climbed up. On the top shelf, in the dim space just below the ceiling, sat an old wooden crate with Mongolian script stamped on it. A faded label read:
Protoceratops andrewsii egg clutch
Flaming Cliffs
Access No 1923-5693A
W. Grainger, collector
The wooden lid looked nailed shut, but it wasn't. Melodic lifted it, laid it aside, and then pulled up a layer of straw matting.
Nestled among the eggs of a fossil dinosaur nest were the copies of the CD-ROMs Melodic had burned containing all her data and images. Next to it was a tiny plastic case containing three wafer-thin sections of the original specimen, too small to have been missed.
Leaving the CDs in place, Melodic removed the plastic specimen case, replaced the straw matting, refitted the lid, climbed down the ladder, and rolled it back to where it was before.
She carried the case back to the polisher, removed one sliver, and fixed it to a polishing plug. When the epoxy had dried she began to polish it, aiming for a perfect, microthin section, enough to get some really good images out of the transmission electron microscope. It was exacting work, made all the harder by the shaking of her hands. Several times she had to stop, take a few deep breaths, and tell herself that there was no reason for the killer to come back, that he had gotten what he was after, and that he could have no idea that she had made duplicates of her data. When the specimen was ready she carried it into the TEM room to turn on the machine and let it warm up. As she did so, she noticed the logbook open next to it. The last entry, written in a bold, slanting hand, leapt out at her:
Researcher: I.Corvus
Locality/Specimen number: High Mesas/Chama River Wilderness, N.M. T.Rex. Comments: Third examination of remarkable T. Rex. Vertebral fragments. Extraordinary! This will make history. I.C.
Third examination? She flipped back in the book and found two other entries, both written at the bottom of the page where Corvus had obviously found some blank lines. She had suspected something like this, but not quite so blatantly. The bastard had planned to rip her off, lock, stock, and barrel. And being the nice, eager technician she was, she'd almost let him. She went into the SEM room and flipped through the logbook there, finding a similar number of phony entries. So that's what he had been doing in the lab late that night: stealing her work and doctoring the logbooks.
She found herself breathing hard. Almost from the time she was in first grade she wanted to be a scientist, and as she got older she had cherished the idea that science was the one field of human endeavor where people were altruistic and worked not for themselves but for the advancement of human knowledge. She had always believed science was a field in which merit was awarded where due.
How naive.
There was only one way to insure credit and protect herself from the killer at the same time: finish up her research and beat the murderer into print. If she submitted her results to the online section of the Journal of Paleontology, they would be peer-reviewed and published electronically within three days.
Naturally, she would give due credit to Corvus for his contribution, which was minor enough-he supplied her with the specimen. Where the fossil had come from, who it belonged to, how he had gotten his hands on it-these were questions beyond the scope of her work. Sure, there would be controversy. The specimen might be stolen, or even illegal. But none of that was germain to her work: she'd been given a sample to analyze and that was what she had done. Once her research was in print, there'd no longer be any point in killing her.
And then she could write her own ticket.
2
IN POSITION BEHIND the large boulder, Maddox shifted his weight, stretched out his foot, and rotated it, trying to get the stiffness out. The sun felt like a hot anvil to his bare back. The sweat was trickling down his scalp, neck, and face, stinging his cuts. The wound in his thigh throbbed viciously-it was now definitely infected.
He blotted his face, blinked the sweat out of his eyes. His tongue felt coated with rust, his lips cracked. Christ he was thirsty. Twenty minutes had passed and the Broadbents hadn't showed. He took a look through the scope, sweeping it up and down the empty canyon. Had they taken a detour he didn't know about, or found water? If that was the case, they might have turned and headed north toward Llaves. If he had lost them-
And suddenly there they were.
Fitting his eye to the scope and resting his finger on the hot curve of the trigger, he forced himself to relax, waiting until they reached the range of two hundred yards. He could see the butt of the gun in Broadbent's waistband. He wouldn't even have time to pull it out, let alone fire it. And even if he did, it would be useless at two hundred yards.
In another minute, they were in position.
He squeezed the trigger, firing a protracted burst, full-auto, the weapon kicking. He looked up, and saw them both sprinting back up the canyon. Both of them.
What the hell- ?
He'd missed. He returned to the scope, tracked the woman, fired another burst, another-but the bullets were kicking up sand ahead of them, each round high as his quarry ran zigzagging toward the canyon wall. They were going to escape around the lee of the canyon bend.
He rose with a roar of frustration, putting the gun on semi, scrambling down
the talus slope. He stopped, knelt, fired again, but it was a stupid shot-they'd already gotten into the lee of the stone wall.
How could he have missed? What was wrong with him? He stretched out his hand, unclosed the fist-and was shocked by how much it was trembling. He was exhausted, thirsty, injured, probably running a fever-but, still, how could he have missed? Then it hit him. Unaccustomed to shooting at such acutely high angles, he had overcompensated for the bullet's drop-off. He should have fired a practice round and then zeroed in. Instead, he rushed his shots.
Still, he had a chance. The canyon had sheer walls-they were trapped. He could still kill them-if he could run them down.
Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he charged down the slope and sprinted after them. In a minute he rounded the bend. He could see them three or four hundred yards ahead, running, the man helping her along. Even at that distance he could see she was weak. Both of them were fading fast. No wonder: she hadn't eaten in thirty- six hours and they must be at least as thirsty as he was. On top of that, she was limping.
He ran after them, not fast, but keeping to a sustainable pace. The sand was soft and it made running difficult, but this worked to his advantage. He loped along, conserving his energy, sure he could wear them down in the long haul. At first, in their panic they ran fast, lengthening their lead, but as Maddox kept up his steady pace they began to falter and lag. One, two, three more bends he pursued them. When he rounded the third bend he could see her struggling, the man supporting her. Maddox had narrowed the gap to less than two hundred yards. Still, he didn't push himself, didn't speed up. He knew now he could outlast them: he would get them after all. They disappeared around another corner. When he rounded it, they were even closer. He could hear the man talking to Sally, encouraging her as he helped her along.
He dropped to one knee, aimed, fired a burst on auto. They threw themselves down, and Maddox seized the opportunity to gain significant ground. They scrambled back to their feet but he'd closed to less than a hundred yards.
She fell and he helped her up. Forty yards now. Even with his shaking hands it was a no-brainer. Broadbent tried to encourage her, but she staggered-and then they just gave up. Turned and faced him defiantly.
He aimed, thought better of it, walked closer. Twenty-five yards. Flicked off the auto, knelt, aimed, and fired. Click! Nothing. The full-auto bursts had emptied the magazine. With a roar, both
of them were sprinting at him full bore. He fumbled for his pistol and got off a shot, but the woman was on top of him like a wildcat, grabbing his pistol with both hands. They fell together, struggling over the pistol, and then he got the gun and rolled on top of her, pressing it to her head, fumbling to get his finger through the trigger guard.
He felt a gun on the back of his own head. He could see it was Broadbent's .22.
