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“Did you hear that Park?” Chuck
asked.

“Roger,” Park replied. “Did these
drop bears wreck the buggies?”

It turned out they had. The
explorers had chosen this spot to camp for the night. It had a pleasant view
and the evolved eucalyptuses smelled pleasant. They had lit a small campfire,
mostly just for the light and to toast marshmallows on when suddenly one of the
drop bears had attacked. Just as credulous tourists in Australia might have
been warned in a by-gone age, the vicious creatures dropped out of the trees on
top of their victims. A second drop bear soon joined its mate and killed
several humans before the rest had scattered. Then having no further humans
nearby to attack they had unreasoningly attacked the two buggies, tipping them
over and rolling them down the hill. Biologists later decided the drop bears
had seen the buggies as invaders as much as the humans had been and that the
bears had done what they had to clear the buggies out of their territory.

Park had just absorbed the
explanation when both Sartena and Iris spotted a second drop bear in the
branches and shot their weapons at it. Iris had a standard slug-thrower, but it
was Sartena’s laser rifle that finished the beast off.

“We’ve got this copse cleared out
for now,” Park told both Chuck and Lucy. “I think it’s safe here for the rest
of the day at least. We need to go through the wrecked buggies and salvage what
we can. How many are unaccounted for?”

“We lost three to the bears,
sir,” the woman with Chuck responded. “Two more got away with broken bones. But
all five of us are alive.”

“Good,” Park replied. “Chuck,
rush them back to Sanatis. Lucy’s team and mine will do what we can here and
meet you there. We’ll video conference with Karen Mizumi first thing in the
morning.”

“Three dead,” Mizumi shook her
head sadly in her holographic image. “This almost doubles our total number of
casualties over the years.” The video conference was over, but Park realized
she still needed to talk about it, so he had shooed the others out and settled
down to a private conversation.

“We may have gotten complacent,”
Park told her. “We may not have explored all of Pangaea by a long shot, but
we’ve come to know the dangers. We may not know every creature, but we know how
to recognize the dangerous ones. In Australis it is like starting all over
again. This was a beginner’s mistake we made here.”

“We should have expected
predators in trees,” Mizumi agreed. “I doubt we would have made that mistake in
Africa.”

“In Africa we would have expected
jaguars,” Park told her, “not that there are jaguars in Africa these days, but
none of us expected carnivorous koalas, but maybe we should have. We should
have at least been on our guard more. We saw a lot of strange creatures and we
saw some of them taking defensive measures. We should have realized there were
more than the bipedal neocrocs to worry about. We gathered up as many of the
bones as we could, but it seems drop bears aren’t picky eaters.”

“I’ll make the arrangements
here,” Mizumi promised. “How are the rest of the team members?”

“In shock,” Park replied. “Both
team leaders were killed, leaving them effectively without a leader. They
performed fairly well under the circumstances, though. With only the bare
minimum of equipment and three badly wounded comrades, they were making their
way back to the coast in the hope of signaling a passing Mer.”

“The Mer have no settlements
anywhere near there,” Mizumi commented.

“No, but they do fish in the
Strait of Australis,” Park pointed out. “For that matter, when they got there,
maybe they would have built a boat and sailed back to Sanatis. It’s a long
coast line but the jump from that northern cape on Australis to Sanatis is
shorter than the trip Ernest Shackleton made to South Georgia and in a much
kinder climate as well.”

“They did do well, didn’t they?”
Mizumi agreed.

“They did,” Park nodded. ‘That’s
part of why I was looking for individuals when I founded the Exploration Corps.
Exploring is dangerous work and we couldn’t afford to have anyone in the Corps
who couldn’t think for him or herself, you know. Any of us could be in mortal
danger at a moment’s notice. Having to wait for a leader to give orders can be
lethal. Besides, we’ve had plenty of missions on which the nominal leadership
had to change hands.

“Anyway,” Park went on, “they did
well. And all of them have already volunteered to be in the next expedition to
Australis.”

“Hah!” Mizumi smiled. “I’m
tempted to get in on that trip myself. Well, we’ll see, but I suppose we had
better let everyone heal up before we select the next teams. Thanks for talking
to me, Park. I know you’re a busy man.”

“Not that busy,” Park denied,
“but Marisea is itching to show off her home town.

“Enjoy yourself,” Mizumi told
him. “When should we expect you home?”

“Tomorrow evening,” Park promised
as he cut the connection. He looked around the room. It was nothing special,
just a hotel room that was not entirely unlike any other hotel room he had ever
stayed in. Even the painting on the wall might have hung on the wall of any
Days Inn, if the hotel had been specially decorated for a science fiction
convention. The painting was machine-manufactured and a nature scene, but one
depicting animals and plants that had not yet evolved in the Twenty-first
Century. But it took a second glance to notice that. Park wondered how many of
his fellow humans of the past would have taken that second glance and how many
there were for whom this painting would have just been some color on the wall.

He smiled, stood up and opened
the door. He stepped outside and let the door close, knowing the lights would
go out automatically. Then he made his way to the café downstairs where he knew
Iris, Sartena and Marisea were waiting.

“Park!” Marisea greeted him,
jumping up from the table.
 
Cousin had
been on her lap, and now jumped down from the
 
seat and was attempting to climb Park’s leg. “Are you ready to see my
home?”

“Sounds great,” Park replied,
picking Cousin up and letting her sit on his shoulder..

“Well,” Marisea hedged, “not my
actual home. Dad sold the house years ago and put our stuff in storage until we
moved to Van Winkletown, but I grew up here.”

“We know,” Park chuckled. “So
what are you going to show us? You’re old school?”

“Ha!” Marisea laughed, taking
Park by the arm, “I was tutored until University. But I’ll show you my favorite
park, the museums and a bunch of other great stuff. C’mon! I even rented a suspensor-boat
so you can keep your feet dry.”

Park knew Marisea was not kidding.
Most Mer cities, he knew, were semiaquatic with the older homes and buildings
actually having their foundations build under water so that the first floors
were only a few inches above the mean high tide line. It meant that it was not
unusual for the lower levels of such places to be awash during storms and lunar
high tides, but the Mer did not generally mind this. There was nothing on the
lower levels that might be harmed or even moved by the influx of tidal waters.
The lower levels were commonly used for gatherings and easily cleaned.

Only half the buildings in most
Mer towns were built in the water. The other half, mostly the business district
and official administrative buildings had their foundations on dry land. Most
hotels for visitors did as well and thanks to suspensor technology, the Mer
used their anti-gravity belts to be as comfortable getting around on land as
they were in the water.

Sanatis, however, was entirely
built in the water along the shore of a large bay. It was a very old-fashioned
city – some claimed it was the oldest Mer city although the claim was widely
disputed. Mer boats were built to be amphibious, a useful trait when a waterway
could instantly become a paved road, but the only paving in Sanatis was on the
runway at its aerospaceport. This old city reminded Park of Venice and its
canals although the architectural style was more strongly reminiscent of New
Orleans.

Marisea led them through the
Sanatis Museum of Natural History, where there were new exhibits in place that
showed the world of the Van Winkle Humans. It was a very popular exhibit and
there were lines waiting to get in. Park and Iris decided they didn’t need to
see that. “We lived it,” Iris chuckled. So, instead, Marisea showed them to
wings where the evolution of the previous few million years was displayed.

“It’s interesting to see
evolutionary change from the point of view of a people who have existed long
enough to actually watch it happening,” Park commented.

“We don’t live any longer than
you do on the average,” Marisea laughed.

“But I meant that the Mer have
existed and kept records that long,” Park clarified.

“The records are somewhat
disjointed when you go back a few thousand years,” Marisea countered, “but I
supposed you don’t need a day-by-day account to watch new species develop.”

After the museum, she brought
them to one of the city parks. Like the streets of Sanatis, her parks were all
expanses of salt water. Here and there, mangrove-like trees had been planted,
but rather than having been allowed to grow wild, it was obvious that
groundskeepers had been carefully arranging those trees so as to keep the
watery fields and pathways of the park open. However, with their wide arrays of
stilt roots, the aquatic trees also provided an excellent hedge in places where
one field was intended to be curtained off from another. The trees, like most
life on Pangaea, were not exactly like their ancestors on Twenty-first Century
Earth. These had wider and stronger branches than mangroves Park and Iris were
acquainted with

Marisea pointed out the
waterslides, but admitted that her favorite childhood pastime was to sit up in
one of the trees and read. Park realized that having been home-schooled, as
well as following her father around the world on various expeditions, Marisea probably
had not played with other children her age very often. It explained why she had
seemed so mature in spite of her age when they had first met. It was not that
she had no socialization experiences growing up, but that she had mostly
socialized with adults and other children who spent similar time in adult
settings. Psychologically, Park realized that might have been detrimental to
Marisea’s mental health, but she seemed to have come through it unharmed, but
perhaps that was why she sometimes displayed almost childish delight in some of
the smaller joys.

They were just ordering dinner at
Marisea’s favorite restaurant, a place that made something that seemed
suspiciously like a seafood pizza, when Park’s torc chimed. Several others in
the restaurant turned to glare at him. It was customary to turn off the sound
on one’s torc when in a restaurant or theater. He tapped the side of the torc
at a specific spot that would keep the call private and answered. Marisea and
Iris watched Park face fall from smiles to serious frowns for the next minute,
unable to hear the conversation due to the privacy field.

Finally, Park broke the
connection and told the women, “Better get our meal boxed up to go. That was
Patty Theoday. Someone just tried to assassinate Arn.”

“Park!” Arn greeted him warmly as
he entered Arn’s and Patty’s large apartment. All the Van Winkletown Department
heads were there as well. Arn’s right arm was bandaged and in a sling and
instead of shaking Park’s hand, Arn clapped him on the shoulder companionably
with his left hand. “Iris, Marisea, thank you for coming so quickly. Come to
think about it, how did you get here so fast? It’s not quite two in the
morning.”

“We left the buggy in Sanatis,”
Park explained. “Marisea pulled a few strings and Prime Garytis loaned us his
private jet. We just landed a few minutes ago and rushed over.”

“Remind me to send a note to
Prime Garytis then,” Arn remarked, “but thank you, Marisea.”

Marisea nodded. In her arms, Cousin
reached out toward Arn and almost whimsically, he picked the small primate up
and said, “It’s nice to see you too, Cousin.” He smiled and after a moment,
handed the pet back to Marisea.

“You all know what happened,”
Park told them as he and Iris found a place to sit, “but we just got here. What
happened?”

Several people started talking at
once as though they were each eager to be the one to relate the tale. Park
noted each of them and mentally filed them in his “Do Not Trust” file. Arn,
however, held up his hand for silence and a moment later began to speak.

“We were on our way to lunch in
town,” Arn explained. “I’d been working in my office all morning, but Patty
decided I needed to get out.”

“Janice Bowie has a new barbecue
place in town,” Patty explained. “I hear her pulled grazer meat is better than
anything done with a pig or a cow.”

“I’ll have to check it out,” Park
commented, “Assuming it wasn’t a case of the sauce being too spicy.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Arn admitted,
“We never got there. We were down on Purchase Street, between Main and Second
when a man, walking down from the other direction, pulled out a laser pistol.

“He shouldn’t have waited until
he was within arm’s reach,” Arn went on. “I acted instinctively and deflected
his weapon arm just as he pulled the trigger. He still winged me, though.
Fortunately, Patty used to teach Taekwondo. She disabled him and called for
help.

“The man was arrested and carted
off to the new police station,” Arn went on, “but he was dead on arrival. No,
Patty didn’t hit him that hard. We suspect he used poison to suicide.”

“But who was it?” Park asked.
“And why did he try to kill you?”