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Fierce Embrace [MultiFormat]
eBook by Bud Sparhawk
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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: The Gobi desert reveals a truth about Tyrannosaurus Rex and, in the face of an advancing storm, two rival paleontologists find their theories, and their relationship, put to the test.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Return of the Dinosaurs, ed. Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, 1997
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2002
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [92 KB], eReader (PDB) [36 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [24 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [22 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [70 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB], hiebook (KML) [83 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [57 KB], iSilo (PDB) [19 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [25 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [53 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [36 KB]
Words: 6878
Reading time: 19-27 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
The thick, steamy air was heavy with game scent as his slim figure weaved its way soundlessly through the brush. Somewhere ahead he could detect the sounds of something moving toward the river, something that might end his gnawing hunger.
Searching this near the crumbling edge of the cliff was dangerous during the rainy season. But his hunger had become overpowering, and the river bank was where he could most easily find the delicious, slow animals. He'd almost been killed just a few days earlier when the beast he'd been pursuing had been swallowed whole by an avalanche of thick red mud. It had barely missed him.
* * * *
Hans Koenig was bursting with news of his find as he headed back to camp. The late summer sun beat down on his ever-present hat--only an idiot failed to take precautions in the sun-drenched Gobi desert.
But Mark Norvall, the head of the expedition, wasn't nearly as excited as Koenig. "A new tyrannosaur specimen is very interesting, Hans," he'd said sadly. "But we won't have time to excavate your specimen. Just cover it up, mark the site, and we'll try to get it on the work plan for next year's dig. It'll be a great draw for grants."
"At least let me get an estimate of what we've found," Koenig pleaded. "I've finished all of my assignments already and can spare the time."
Norvall rubbed his scruffy red beard. "All right, but I want those workers back on our other sites tomorrow. We have obligations to our backers and time is getting short."
By mid-afternoon the diggers had exposed the top of a tyrannosaur skull and a nearby sharp edge of a shoulder blade. Koenig felt a thrill of discovery as he realized that this could mean that he might be standing over a complete tyrannosaur specimen, and a large one at that! "Let's dig around and see what else we can find," he ordered.
Two of the more careful diggers made an exploratory trench where he estimated the nose of the Rex to be. There was the side of another skull less than a meter away and just a little deeper. He carefully troweled and brushed the packed sand away between the two. Just beneath the fore part of the original skull he found another bit of bone.
"Looks like the edges of a vertebra," Norvall said as he glanced over Koenig's shoulder. "Looks like we've found another pair locked in mortal combat." There were several in this area. "What was it?"
Koenig dug furiously, exposing ever more of the other skull. It was a second, smaller tyrannosaur.
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