Perhaps some time he'll give you permission.

It had been a month since Alisher had suggested that she ask Commander Cenz for permission to go on a shore team. For one month she had been asking and Cenz had denied it.

"I'm sorry," he had told her, with the same patience the tenth time as the first. "We are pressed for time and these missions are crucial parts of understanding Ko's biosphere. You do not have the relevant training to justify your presence."

He always sounded regretful; she wondered if he had heard just how much she had wanted to see the lifeforms on Ko.

They weren't dinosaurs, it was true. But they were like dinosaurs, the closest thing she'd ever get to seeing a real-life dinosaur.

It wasn't, she had to admit, an important quest for humanity or !Xomyanity or any other -anity. Except perhaps for her sanity. How could she be this close and yet be denied the chance to see dinosaurs?

Today, Cenz had, it seemed, taken pity on her.

She owed it to Alisher. He had recommended her. "We're just going on a field check of some equipment," he said. "I'd appreciate having even a novice medic along, and otherwise it's a small team, so there's space on the craft."

"Very well," Cenz had said with some gravity. "Nor, please stay close to your team and follow all instructions."

"Sir, yes sir!"

Cenz had seemed amused. "Just call me Commander or Cenz. Take care, Nor."

The trip ashore was more difficult than she expected.

The winds were high enough to make a hovercraft inadvisable, and a boat would be crazy on the waves being whipped up.

There were only three others besides her; Alisher, and two techs.

They took an elevator down, far farther than she expected. When the door opened, they were in a very small chamber. The air was heavier here, she could feel it.

"Into here," Alisher told her, pointing towards a ladder down a small tube.

It was cramped inside, their gear already stowed. The rest of the team got in, and the vehicle started by itself.

There was a low rumbling, and she looked to Alisher quizzically. "What is this?"

"Sea crawler," he told her. "When the waves are too high and winds too crazy, we use this. It goes along the ocean bottom, avoiding all that. And then we just crawl out onto shore."

That was pretty cool, but it did make Apollonia wonder just how deep they were right now. She looked around the tiny cabin nervously.

But the trip wasn't that long; only ten minutes later, lights on the panels turned green and the hatch opened.

They were ashore, just within the tree line, and nearby was a landing pad with a hovercraft. Drones moved their equipment over.

The crawler was just that; a wide and flat treaded vehicle that still had seaweed and mud stuck to it.

They got in the hovercraft and started skyward.

The winds were far calmer beyond the trees, and while the craft rocked slightly as it took off, its flight became considerably calmer as it flew inland.

"How far are we going?" she asked.

"About seven hundred klicks Southwest," Alisher told her. "Bottom of the island."

"Big stuff down there," one of the techs said. Her name tag said Hawa.

"Like what?" Apollonia asked quickly.

She saw Alisher's eyes flicker to her, and something like regret in them. She felt abashed.

Hawa didn't seem to catch that. "Oh, there's some Thumpers down there that we estimate at-"

"Thumpers?"

"Just what we nickname any big creature we don't see that takes those earth-shaking steps," the other tech, Liu, chipped in.

"They do it intentionally," Hawa said. "We think it's some kind of territorial claim; walk hard and warn everything around how big you are just by how much you shake the ground. Makes it hard to really get an estimate of their size, but we think some are over twenty tons."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Wow," Apollonia said.

"We won't see any of those, don't worry," Alisher said, watching her.

Apollonia didn't say anything; she didn't want to give away just how much she did want to see a big Thumper.

The trip was surprisingly quick, just a couple hours.

"Prepare for landing," Alisher said.

"Hey, there's a Thumper!" Hawa cried.

Apollonia crowded over. "Where?!"

"Damn, sorry, it just went out of view," Hawa said. "It's kinda hard to pick out, actually. The ones around here are really long, kinda like a sauropod but stretched out and with an extra pair of legs-"

"Prepare for landing," Alisher repeated, his voice a little firmer.

"Oh, right."

Apollonia strapped herself in.

There was an artificial clearing. There was equipment set up already on a concrete square. Some parts poked into the sky like antenna, but others were clustered around the bottom. It almost looked like a giant mechanical flower, Apollonia thought.

As they approached, a swarm of drones came out from a hive-like box at one side, scattering out in all directions.

Had to be their cover, she thought. The drones that kept the wildlife away.

They landed.

As soon as the doors opened, she could hear the sounds; riotous music from the jungle. Animal life of all kinds calling out to each other, singing, in a melody-less symphony. There were things like crickets, repeating the same tune, but also things like birds making more complex songs, and deeper grunts or howls from individual larger animals crying out. Every sound was different from anything she'd heard from any documentary about Earth, but combined they were startlingly familiar.

She felt no wind at all, the air was utterly still. The humidity on the land was so intense that she had to quickly adjust her mask. It felt like a compartment with a water leak, tolerable only because of the cooling suits.

But this wasn't just damp station air; there were incredible scents, almost overwhelming. There was a musty smell like she remembered from the forest on Earth, but others as well - acrid, disgusting, lovely. It was almost as dense as the air itself.

"Everyone remain in visual range," Alisher ordered.

"I'll stay close," she said.

The other two nodded, and Alisher looked to her. She smiled back.

"Sitrep?" he asked one of the techs after a moment.

Hawa had a tablet out. "We've got some damage to some cables and the data collectors, but the perimeter guard is in good shape. Pickets are still spreading out, but no contacts yet. We are clear to work."

"Already, let's get to it. Liu, start on those cables, I'm going to take a look at the collectors."

"What about me?" Apollonia asked.

"Stay with Liu, but come back if I call you," Alisher told her.

Liu had started away, towards the edges of the clearing, and Apollonia hurried to catch up with him.

There wasn't even grass here; some had started to grow up, but had been cut down within just a few centimeters of the ground.

It felt wrong, in a way. There were signs of creatures that were all gone now. They had depopulated this whole area for their convenience.

"What does this station do?" she asked Liu as she caught up with him.

The man glanced up at her briefly. "It takes genetic samples from the life around here, studies the local ecology."

"Just for curiosity?" Apollonia asked.

"Well, we hope that in a few thousand years we can utilize this information to help recover the biosphere of the world faster than it would otherwise. Life is important, isn't it?"

Apollonia found herself surprised - more so that she had been thinking so cynically than the reality.

They came to the edge of the clearing, and Liu squatted down to look at one spot. There was something gray just under the surface. Metal, she realized. It had been damaged.

"Some Thumper came through here," he said.

"Really?" Apollonia asked, her heart beat picking up. So far this trip had been surprisingly dull.

"Yeah. This is a footprint," Liu said, tracing out a shape in the ground.

Apollonia could see the depression, but it took her a moment to puzzle out the footprint itself. It was different from any dinosaur print, more round with six projections.

"Kinda weird. Why did it come here?"

"Dunno. Curious, maybe? Xenobiology isn't my forte," Liu said.

Apollonia stepped deeper into the jungle.

"Careful," Liu said. "There are sudden drops and it's easy to get hurt falling down them."

"I can just do a sonar scan to find those," Apollonia said, feeling proud she'd learned this one. It seemed so obvious that they should have thought of it themselves . . .

"What? No, don't do that!" Liu said after a moment.

"Oh, too late. Why not?" she asked.

Liu's face went white. "Our sonar pulses are audible to the Thumpers. They . . . usually come when we set them off."

Her eyes widened. "Uh . . ."

Alisher's voice came over the radio. "Who just did a sonar pulse?"

Liu looked at her, and Apollonia took a moment to reply. "It was me. Sorry, I didn't want to fall down a hill . . ."

Alisher's voice sounded calmer as he spoke again. "It's okay," he said. "We should have warned you. Just stay vigilant for Thumpers. Liu?"

"I can get this done quickly, sir," the man said.

He went to his work, and Apollonia looked guiltily out towards the jungle.

She didn't hear or see anything, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Hawa had said they could be quiet if they wanted.

Then, she felt it.

It wasn't a thump like a footfall, but a low rumbling - so low that she could not really say she was hearing it, but feeling it.

In its wake, the jungle became quiet, the entire natural symphony falling quiet.

"Oh, I don't like the sound of that at all," Liu said. "I think it's still five kilometers out."

"It sounds awesome," Apollonia said.

Liu kept working, the sound of tools on metal the only noises now.

Then she felt a thump. It was soft, but quickly there was another. There was a rhythm to them, two sets of three close together, then a pause before another.

"Do you hear that?" she said.

"Yeah. I think that might be a gigapede."

". . . you guys suck at naming these things," Apollonia said.

Liu looked annoyed, and Apollonia felt a little chagrined. This man didn't know her well enough for her to joke like that.

"Sorry, just a bad joke," she mumbled.

"Okay," Liu said. "I'm done. Boss?"

Alisher's voice came back. "Almost done here. We have a gigapede en route, two minutes out according to the drones."

"Well, crap, if it comes trampling through here it might damage what we just fixed," Liu said.

"I know. I don't want to cut things this close anyway, so I'm sending some sonar drones out to hopefully pull it away from here."

"Okay. We'll get the ship prepped," Liu said. "Come on," he said to Apollonia, waving her along.

She went after him. She had kind of hoped they'd get to see this gigapede after they took off.

"Sorry for messing things up," she said.

"Not your fault," the man replied. "We didn't tell you what not to do."

She had a feeling that he actually blamed Alisher, which pissed her off on some level. But giving another look at the man and remembering her own wrong cynicism from earlier, perhaps he didn't really blame anyone.

As he got in the hovercraft, she stopped to look around again. It felt like this might be the last time she got to come out here. She should remember it.

Once she got in, she took out her tablet. "Show me a gigapede," she said.

An image appeared; it was nothing like a dinosaur. It was almost like a huge worm, but with six legs. Down its flanks were rows of tentacles. They were wide at the base, narrowed rapidly, and seemed to move independently.

"See? It's not named poorly, it's like a centipede. But huge," Liu said.

Apollonia didn't have the heart to disagree. She could definitely come up with a better name, given a few minutes. Nothing popped into her head right now, though.

"It's . . . weird," she said.

"Yeah," Liu said. "Life here is a lot more varied than on Earth. There's three main branches of terrestrial life on Ko; there's the setopods, which have six primary limbs and multiple secondary limbs. Some of them get quite big - ones like the gigapods are generalist feeders and really territorial. There's also the quadropods, they're a lot more like the familiar mammals and reptiles. The really big ones of those are all predators. I think the !Xomyi come from that lineage. And there's also the Micropods, which remained small."

"Sounds like you know a lot," Apollonia said.

"It's just basic information. I bet more investigations would find a lot more complexity." He frowned. "It's unusual for two main lineages to have both survived, though. On Earth the giant insects died out long ago and the tetrapods took over all the large niches early on."

"Uh-huh," she said. "How big is this sucker?"

Her system spoke. "Average length is between twenty and thirty meters."

"Shit! That's huge!"

The doors opened, and Alisher got in in a hurry, followed by Hawa. "It's headed away, but let's get out of here before it comes back."

The ship was ready, leaping into the air easily. Apollonia watched as the security drones returned to their housings, and she looked out as much as she could to maybe get a glimpse at the gigapede.

But she couldn't find it, or any other large creatures, out before they began to pick up speed and it all became a blur.