Dawn of Procyon Read Online Free PDF Page B

turned out, he’d only been momentarily dazed when he’d face-planted after being knocked from his feet. As he lay there regathering his wits, he heard the Toad’s footsteps receding as it ran away with the comms module, and that realization helped to brush away the last of the cobwebs from his mind.
    He knew he couldn’t let it get away.
    He struggled to his feet, then stood there wobbling as he fought to regain his equilibrium.
    The Argoni wasn’t anywhere he could see.
    He looked about frantically, certain that he had lost all sense of direction when he’d been knocked on his butt. He saw the wreckage of the scout down the slope, the footprints left by the Argoni in the dirt. He followed them over the crest of the ridge, but after a few paces, they abruptly ended.
    What in the . . . ?
    Okay, so this thing is the size of a Sumo wrestler, can run like an Olympic sprinter, and also make itself vanish at will.
    That is so unfair.
    But as he stood there, Landry figured out what had happened. The final footprint in the trail was deeper than the rest, as if the Toad had exerted more effort on that last step.
    As if it had jumped .
    Not far away, there was a cluster of knee-high and waist-high boulders that dotted the landscape. He figured the Toad must have leapt onto them and used them like stepping stones in order to mask its escape route.
    But if that were the case, Landry should still have been able to see it out there. He had a wide-open view in most directions for hundreds of meters, and yet the Argoni was nowhere in sight.
    “It’s still out there,” he said to himself. “It’s hiding. Behind a boulder. Waiting.”
    He shifted uneasily, rubbing gingerly at the point of his shoulder, the place that had borne the brunt of his collision with the Argoni.
    He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that the Argoni hadn’t gotten away completely.
    On the one hand, that meant there was still a chance of getting the antenna back. On the other, he might have to face up against the creature again.
    The linebacker from hell.
    It had killed Gus. He knew that for certain. The injuries Gus had sustained weren’t consistent with a crash. The Argoni had come looking for them, and had used that chitinous blade to crack Gus open and slice him up.
    It must have missed Landry lying in the cockpit somehow. He’d lucked out. But it wasn’t going away for good. It would come back for him.
    “Hey!” he yelled, “I know you’re there!” He felt like a scared little kid cowering in his bed at night, screaming at an imaginary monster in the dark. “Step out and I’ll bust you up!”
    Good job, Landry. It must be shaking in its size twenty-six boots right now.
    He checked his oxygen supply again and saw that he was down to three percent, barely fifteen minutes. And here he was wasting his breath yelling at a bunch of rocks.
    Landry moved forward, retracing the footprints in the dirt left by the alien. He clambered up onto a boulder, then jumped awkwardly to the next, trying to figure out which path it might have taken.
    He found that it wasn’t an easy job hopping around. Not in the EVA suit.
    The Toad was far more nimble, far stronger than he was, and that begged the question: Why hadn’t it finished him off?
    Landry struggled for balance as he leapt to the next boulder, then stopped to consider.
    Because it likes to play with its food?
    “Hey, you ugly freak! I’m coming for you!”
    There was no response, no movement from amongst the rocks.
    Procyon A was getting lower in the sky, turning blood red.
    Of course it’s not coming out. Why would it risk trying to kill me? I’m going to be dead in a few minutes anyway.
    He looked about. It was hopeless, all right, and the alien was just one in a long list of problems.
    He and Gus had gone out on an unsanctioned excursion, removing the transponder on purpose so that no one would know their location. Gus had even taken the extra precaution of flying low to avoid