course she hadn't been by herself. She'd explained the situation to Daniel, and after only a few minutes at the astrogation computer he'd found the world and begun plotting their course. They made a good team.
"The dominant predator . . . ," she said, cueing the next image. "Ranges up to thirty-five feet in length."
"Ho!" said the Count. "Yes, a fine trophy! Yes!"
Austine had called the animal a dragon. For her amusement Adele had checked a zoological database for Cinnabar and its client worlds; she'd found over three thousand species called "dragon" alone or in combination. For all that, the name fit well in this case.
The pictured creature rested on a point of rock, its head turned toward the camera—which must have been at a considerable distance, judging from the lack of image resolution. Its body was snakelike but it had a pair of strong clawed legs at the point of balance and, barely visible, a pair of slender arms folded against the upper body. The eyes were faceted, set to either side of a great hooked beak.
"The creatures, the dragons . . . ," Adele said, switching to the next image. "Fly. You can't see it very well, but the source says that the animal extends translucent plates, she calls them feathers, out more than a yard along its midline all along its body."
The dragon in flight was little more than a twisting shimmer in the sky with a dark line running down the middle of it. Adele had allowed her software to sharpen the image somewhat, but going farther than this would've