Nonetheless, he felt bad and wished his parents had never sent him to this planet to begin with. You couldn’t expect someone who’d never driven anything to know how to operate a chase boat.

“Way to go, greenhorn,” the big sailor snarled angrily.Įlijah knew it wasn’t his fault. All that remained was a circle of ever-widening ripples. Daggoo glared at Elijah, and then at the spot where the beast had been. The chase boat drifted silently on the ocean’s surface. This time the engine coughed and stalled.Ī small cloud of white smoke rose from the engine compartment. The chase boat shuddered, and the next thing he knew, they were starting to reverse! He pushed the lever forward again. Daggoo stumbled backward, just managing to catch himself before he fell.Įlijah quickly yanked on the thruster. Suddenly, the engine’s hum became an angry whine and the chase boat lurched forward. As he gradually nudged the lever forward, a humming sound came from the engine compartment and the boat began to slowly creep ahead.ĭaggoo frowned, then nodded sharply, signaling that he wanted to go faster. He placed one hand on the cold steel wheel and the other on the thruster lever. Back on the ship, he’d heard talk of terrafins, rare and mysterious creatures only recently discovered here on Cretacea. His heart beating its way up into his throat, Elijah stepped uncertainly behind the controls. Otherwise, there was far too much likelihood of accidents. Back on Earth, anything this large was strictly autonomous. “Get us closer,” he hissed.Įlijah had never operated a chase boat. In the bow, Daggoo silently wrapped a large, rough hand around the grip of the tag pole. The span of its black wings was at least 12 feet. Instead, he quietly crept toward the bow of the chase boat.įifty yards away, a creature floated on the blue ocean surface as if napping while it absorbed the sun’s heat through the black hide of its back. The big sailor with the dyed yellow hair and flame tattoos rising from his eyebrows didn’t answer. _ “Will you look at that,” Daggoo muttered.

Fiction by Todd Strasser | Illustrations by Michal Lisowski

The beast of cretacea by todd strasser