Chapter 97: Look Death in the face

The huge beast stood up on its hind legs rising to its full height. It was nearly ten meters tall and its skull alone was three times the size of Sarah. If it wanted, it could have crushed her like a bread stick. "Shoot it now!" Ian yelled at Roland. The hunter didn't hesitate and quickly pulled the trigger followed by his men. The darts crossed the clearing in a split second and hit the dinosaur's skin. Normally they would have had to stick deeply and would have had to narcotize the beast instantly. Instead they bounced off its skin as if they had hit a granite wall and fell to the ground useless. The dinosaur didn't even seem to have noticed them. It lowered its head to Sarah and let out a snort. Sarah didn't move a single muscle. Despite her fear, she still managed to think clearly. She knew that if she ran away the predator moved by its instinct would have chased her; in that case she would have had no chance of escape. She had to wait until it lost interest in her on its own. The dinosaur didn't seem irritated or aggressive, just curious: with a little luck it would have just let her go very soon. After all, for such a large predator, eating a human was not different then swallowing a nachos. Unfortunately Roland, Ian and the other members of the group weren't of the same opinion. Under heavy prodding from the professor Malcolm, the hunter put on his rifle and fired a couple of shots. But to his surprise, these too bounced off the dinosaur's skin as if nothing had happened. For Roland this wasn't conceivable. It was one thing to stop a tranquilizer dart, another thing was a bullet. That should have been impossible, even for an animal that possessed some sort of bone armor. Again the dinosaur didn't seem to have realized that it had been hit, but the sound of the shot wasn't unnoticed. The animal's head turned to where the humans were and its eyes narrowed. Even though it hadn't felt the pain of bullets, loud noises were a sign of hostility to any animal. Realizing that the dinosaur could attack her companions at any moment, Sarah acted impulsively and began waving in front of its eyes: "Hey! Here! Here!" Although the human voice couldn't be defined as comparable to the sound of a rifle shot, it was still high enough to disturb the subtle hearing of predators. Sarah's action was enough to bring the dinosaur's attention back to her, but this time its behavior showed evident aggression. Sarah quickly tried to back away, but the animal didn't seem willing to let her go: with a single breath it generated a wall of air so strong that it made her lose her balance and fall on her back. Meanwhile, Nick was desperately trying to restrain Ian, who seemed intent on standing between his girlfriend and a more than nine-meter tall carnivorous dinosaur. No one else seemed willing to intervene: even Roland was running out of options. But just as the creature seemed ready to devour whole Sarah, Neytiri suddenly abandoned her hiding place and ran alongside the woman. At that sight the humans were shocked; Ian himself stopped fighting for a moment. The dinosaur stopped, although it didn't abandon its hostile nature. The Neanderthal knelt until her hair touched the ground and with one hand forced Sarah to do the same. "Great King of the Forest!" she screamed. "Forgive us for our actions! We didn't want to disturb your sleep. If you allow us to live, we will leave here immediately. Please forgive our arrogance!". Roland wanted to slap himself in the face. Damn the Neanderthals and their absurd beliefs! The wild woman really believed that this monster was a deity. Now two people risked their lives instead of just one. Nevertheless... The dinosaur swung its head back a few meters. It looked for a long time at the two women kneeling on the ground, as if it was evaluating the situation. Then it let out a loud roar, so powerful that the leaves of the trees trembled. Next, it left the clearing casually and walked towards the direction where the footsteps of the alamosaurs led. Sarah and Neytiri stood still until they no longer heard the dinosaur's heavy footsteps. After ten intense minutes, they finally got up. Nick finally let go of Ian, who rushed like a fury towards his girlfriend. Roland let out a sigh of relief: he had seriously feared the worst. Sarah let Ian scramble her properly and spend the next half hour screaming at her how she was reckless, stupid and lacking of common sense in at least a million different ways. Of the whole conversation she didn't understand even a tenth of what her boyfriend was saying: after what she had just experienced, Sarah's mind was somewhere else. Her heart was pounding and her brain had partially detached from the rest of her body. She only managed to nod at Ian's words every few minutes. She felt as if she had just looked Death in the face. Only when her fiancé had finished his interminable rant did Sarah turn to Neytiri. "Thank you. You saved my life" The Neanderthal shook her head. "The Great King of the Forest has allowed us to live. I didn't do anything" she replied, again thanks to Nick's translation. "Yeah. I understand" Sarah replied. Being a biologist, she knew that much more likely the dinosaur had simply let them go because it considered them unappetizing or perhaps too strange preys. After all, animals were habitual, especially predators: they generally preferred to not eat something they didn't know, at least when they had a wide range of alternatives available. "Woh. I mean... wow" Eddie kept looking in the direction where the dinosaur had disappeared. "Damn. Have you seen it? It was huge. It was magnificent. It was..." "... terribly dangerous" Ian interrupted in his usual optimistic way. "Let's go back to the boat before it decides to turn around" "I agree. For today I say that we have had enough emotions" Roland gave him support. Although he was eager to hunt that dinosaur, he needed to rearrange his ideas before doing anything. "Let's go back and then we'll think about what to do". Nobody objected. Everyone had been exposed to too many scares for just one day. The group quickly turned back and returned to the boat. Although they had abandoned the predator's apparent hunting territory, however, Roland set up guard shifts for greater safety. Hardly anyone was able to sleep that night, particularly Sarah. The next day, at the first light of dawn, the woman asked Ian: "You need to get in touch with an old friend of yours" "Who?" the professor Malcolm murmured rubbing his eyes. "Alan Grant" was his girlfriend's answer. Ian wrinkled his nose in confusion. "It's not a problem, but... why?" "Because there are too many incomprehensible things about that animal. Have you ever seen a dinosaur bouncing bullets off its skin?" Sarah snapped. "I need the help of a subject matter expert" Even though Sarah was a biologist she was still quite inexperience; she had in fact graduated well ahead in the years, since for part of her life she had worked as a photographer to pay for university. Even though she was fresh out of school, she lacked experience. And when a new species was discovered, there were too many variables to take into account, especially if it was so strange. Sarah had therefore decided that it was better to ask for help from those who had worked in that field for years; after all, the discovery was already his, he could share it with others. Ian nodded. "Okay, I'll call him. But why him? I told you how much he hates being disturbed..." "Yes, but you also told me about his honesty. So I know he won't try to scam me and publish the discovery in his name" Sarah replied. Unfortunately, the academic world was full of such people: recent graduates had to be very careful about sharing their discovery with an older person, because that person could easily have stolen their jobs and passed it off as their own. This happened in any scientific field, from medicine to chemistry. And often it was useless for the defrauded poor to protest: the academic world preferred to agree with the most famous person and at most paid compensation to keep silent on the matter. In practice, they gave money to the cheated, immortality to the cheater. This was mostly the case with women. As on Earth, also in the world of Eden the female sex had had to submit to the male for centuries. Only a few isolated communities such as Neanderthals were women valued. Fortunately, in the modern era, patriarchy was finally starting to disappear, but in the scientific sphere, women were still viewed in a very skeptical way. If there was a dispute over a discovery, the academic world would almost always agree with the man, unless the woman had irrefutable proof. This is why Sarah was unwilling to call her old teachers or some other university wig, even though all of them were competent and could have helped her. He then decided to turn to a longtime friend of Ian's. Alan Grant was a respected biologist who had been conducting dinosaur studies for fifty years and according to Ian was a very honest person. Although sometimes the attitude of her boyfriend gave Sarah the urge to strangle him, she trusted his judgment: she knew that the infamous Professor Malcolm did not give her trust without reason. Ian understood his girlfriend's thoughts, so he gladly accepted. "I'll call him at noon. Now he is in the Montain and over there at this time it is the middle of the afternoon, so he will surely be in the middle of the desert studying some coelophisis, so it is useless to call him. I'll wait until it's late in the evening over there when he gets back to his trailer. Who knows what leaps for joy he will make in hearing my voice again... " Sarah was pretty sure that any scientist in the world seeing a phone call from Ian Malcolm appear on their cell phone would destroy the device in order not to answer it, but Alan Grant, despite all his flaws, considered Ian a friend... at least in the opinion of the professor Malcolm. Professor Grant's opinion... had not yet been revealed.