When she opened her eyes, Nancy saw the creature whose discovery was the culmination of her career slowly slip into the swamp water.
The head was looking directly at her. The face, seen full on, was a bright dayglo orange paint splatter that shaded to black just behind the brow ridges. It looked as if it were wearing some abstract Halloween mask. The face was dull, but the eyes were growing sleepy.
They were goat eyes, the pupils squared. The pupils were squeezing into vertical slits as the orange lids slowly dropped over them.
The head was swaying snakelike from side to side, like a sleepy cobra trying to match the snake charmer's rhythm.
It went haroooo, in a low, sick voice. Its tongue was green and forked, the dentition gray and worn from eating jungle roughage.
Then, dimly, although he was standing at her elbow, Skip King yelled, "Skip King, king of the jungle, bags another brute!"
Nancy jumped to her feet and slapped him so hard he lost his balance and his bush hat.
"You jerk!" she screamed. "Look what you've done."
King lay there, holding his face. "My job. I did my job."
The beast's head was dropping by stages.
"Your job! You agreed to be a corporate observer. Nothing more!"
"I didn't see you take up arms when we were in danger."
"The idea was to film it in the wild first. Document its habits. Now we've lost the opportunity forever."
"Skip that biology crap. This is bring 'em back alive. Frank Buck time. Man stuff."
The saurian head came up, wavered, and sank anew.
"Not unless we do something fast," Nancy said in a lower register.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at the poor thing. He's passing out on his feet."
"That is the idea," King said stiffly.
"In the middle of the swamp? If his head goes under, he'll drown. And all because you had to draw first blood!"
Skip King got to his feet. He wiped his sweaty brow and squinted through the bright afternoon air at the beast's slow struggles.
"Maybe it's amphibious," he murmured.
"Those are nostrils at the tip of its snout, not gills," Nancy spat. "It's no more amphibious than you are."
"You sure?"
"Yes!"
King's mouth dropped open. "Oh God."
"Now do you understand?"
"Understand? If that thing dies, it'll be my job! We gotta do something!"
"Wonderful. Now you're getting it." Nancy swung on Ralph. "Thorpe, any help you might render would be appreciated."
"Right." He turned to the natives and shouted out Bantu orders. Instantly, the natives dropped their rifles and pulled short machetelike swords out of their native clothing.
They went to work on the trees on either side of the creature. The boles were thin. They surrendered quickly. It was lucky for the expedition that they did.
Soon, the long thin boles were in the water, floating. The natives jumped in, completely without fear, and pushed the logs toward the wavering head.
"Magnificent!" Nancy said. "It could work."
The PR officer hovered close. "Should we be filming this, Mr. King?"
"And film my career going up in flames?" King spat. "I'll fire the first man who uncaps his lens."
The videocams remained capped.
More trees crashed down. Soon, there was a logjam, and slowly, the great beast known to the Bantu as N'yamala surrendered to the powerful narcotic coursing through his massive system.
The eyes closed completely before the chin settled onto the logjam. There was a breathless moment before they knew if the logs would support its weight.
Nancy closed her eyes and clasped her hands together. She was praying.
Everyone else held their breath.
"Somebody tell me to open my eyes if it's good news," Nancy said earnestly.
"Just a mo, Dr. Derringer."
Then Skip King made a guttural throat noise that almost brought hot tears to Nancy's eyes.
It was followed by him saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
"You can look now, Dr. Derringer," Thorpe said quietly.
Nancy opened her blue eyes. The beast stood in the middle of the pool, still on his feet, like a preposterous elephant, but with his long serpentine neck undulating along the scattering of logs, where it had come to rest.
The head had plopped on a thickest part of the logs. Swamp water lapped at the lower part of the upper lips, but the nostrils rode high above the water, where they quivered and blew out air that smelled faintly of mushrooms.
"Thank goodness," Nancy breathed. And she was so relieved her knees began shaking and she let herself down onto the muck to give her legs time to calm down.
She was in no position to stop what happened next.