The 'Alexander romps with Tyrannosaurus Clan' Scene
One of my favorite subjects is Alexander and the Tyrannosaurs of Pantrixnia. The scenes are fun to write and who doesn't want to read about dinosaurs? In this case Alexander had no intention on an outing in Pantrixnia's dangerous jungle. It happened and now he's stuck in the wilds trying to get back to his cliff side house-the only secure place on the planet. Alexander has a decent relationship with Ralph the alpha male and his son, but Alice and her girls are a different matter, as you'll see.
It was seventy-five feet from the Remvalix nest to the forest floor, but fortunately for Alexander much of that last twenty feet was made up of hanging vines, huge palm fronds, gigantic ferns and finally the loamy moss covered forest floor.
He untangled himself from the fern that caught him, glad to be alive but very aware that he was far from safe. The one thing in his favor was that the eagle hadn’t carried him very far. He couldn’t be more than a mile from his house. Of course, on Pantrixnia a mile might as well be halfway to the Moon.
There was no alternative. Alexander got his bearings and started heading west with the brighter gloom of the distant sun at his back. The space beneath the Pantrixnian undergrowth was a world onto itself. The ferns grew up to twenty feet high and formed a green roof over the forest floor. There were trails of sorts through the ferns, mostly winding around the tough clumps of the fern stalks. The fronds arched up, vaulting over his head like some glowing green catacombs. The spaces were largely clear of debris and he could make good time, but there was always a deadly reason behind anything that seemed easy on Pantrixnia. In this case it was the snakes.
The snakes that moved through the fern undergrowth in the jungle were a meter thick and there was no way he could outrun them. His best hope was to avoid them. That meant getting through the maze of the undergrowth as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the snakes usually hunted at night and either slept or laid in ambush during the day. He could move on with reasonable safety by scanning ahead for bio signs. The way appeared clear. Alexander mapped his route with the compass and map on his compad, a tough panel of transparent aluminum that did what a computer screen could, except of course it was very durable.
He had this area mapped fairly well, but it was impossible to map the trails; they changed too often. Still, all he had to do is to head west from his position for about seven hundred meters and he’d run into the canyon lands. His house was fourteen hundred and thirty-three meters away. Alexander set off at a trot, making as little noise as possible and keeping a wary eye out for ambushes. The first hundred meters went by quickly, as did the second hundred meters. It was a good start. “Don’t get too happy, stick to the plan,” he told himself warily. The plan worked for about five minutes.
It was the tremors that caused him to pause. He knew them all too well. The biometer flashed a warning:
Large life forms within 50 meters to the west.
“It’s at least one T-rex,” he whispered to himself. “The question is which one?” Alexander was covered with burned Remvalix larvae as well as his own sweat and blood. The Tyrannosaurus had an amazing sense of smell designed to pick out the old or sick from a large herd. They could easily pick Alexander out of the ferns. Hopefully they wouldn’t be interested in Remvalix larvae. He wasn’t about to take chances though. Quickly, he grabbed a handful of the soil and rubbed it all over his exposed flesh, hoping it might just buy him some space.
Slowly, Alexander began to move off away from the tremors as quickly as possible, heading north. He could pop out of the undergrowth north of the Tyrannosaur canyon and climb the lower part of the ridge, making his way home from there would be relatively easy. The closer he got to the river the more dicey things would get, but first things first.
The tremors were lingering, and then they seemed to turn and follow him north. Alexander quickened his pace, swallowing hard. “Let’s hope it’s Ralph. Please don’t let it be Alice; if she gets a whiff of me, I’m in trouble.”
Alice and Ralph were his neighbors, and the current inhabitants of Attila’s old lair. Attila passed away nine years ago as a venerable and magnificent bull. Ralph was his son and he didn’t mind Alexander, having in fact grown to adulthood with the human ex-Overlord around. Alice, his mate of five years, however, was the level headed Tyrannosaurus of the family and she didn’t appreciate Alexander in the least.
To Alexander’s consternation the tremors followed him and then he heard the crashing of undergrowth under enormous feet. “She’s caught my scent!” He darted to the left just as a hole opened up in the green roof behind him. A roar followed, and Alexander didn’t need to look behind to know who it was, he recognized her voice. “Alice,” he gasped, “of all the days to be tromping through the woods why did it have to be today!”
A huge taloned foot ripped through the ferns, flooding the undergrowth tunnels with the dim gray light beneath the canopy. He had no choice but to run. There wasn’t enough juice left in his blasters to turn her aside. He ducked to the left, taking the slight advantage that Alice was coming from that direction, thereby cutting her off and making her turn six tons of dinosaur to follow him.
Alice gnashed her teeth as Alexander avoided her snapping jaws, but she had evolution on her side. The female wasn’t as large as her mate but she was more than up to the task. Again, the crashing was so close behind him that Alexander didn’t dare steal a glance back. He forgot about everything except sprinting as fast as he could one direction and then another. If he was going to be stomped to death he wanted to make it as hard on Alice as possible.
“This is a helluva way for a Galactic Overlord to die! Lord, if you still have any use for me now is the time to look my way!”
Almost as if in answer Alexander shot out of the green tunnel into one of the already trampled areas of the chase. Alice let out vicious, victorious bark. It was answered by three higher pitched very excited barks of the same timbre. Alexander glanced over his left shoulder and saw three young Tyrannosaurus pups. They were small enough to be cute but large enough to eat him if given them the chance.
“Great—the kids!” and sure enough at Mommy’s direction the seventy kilo monsters jumped excitedly into the chase. They loped along the edge of the ruined undergrowth, their banded green feathers blending in with the ruined vegetation. Their bright yellow head feathers ruffled up with excitement as they headed his way. If Alexander was mismatched in outrunning Alice he was at a horrible disadvantage with the quick, speedy little demon-pups. By themselves they weren’t a problem for him in his armor, but he’d rather not have run into the whole pack of them under the circumstances.
It would be tragic be to be killed by them now; he’d struck up a rapport with little Albert. Cloris and Doris were a different story; they were their mother all over again—the little monsters.
Alexander had about thirty meters on the youngsters, but Alice was right behind him. There she was, all seventeen meters of her, a shadowy winter green with bands of lighter green running across her powerfully muscled back. Her yellow eyes focused right on him. She lunged forward.
He had no choice. In desperation, Alexander sprinted ten meters and jumped, planting both feet in the forest floor and pushing off with his powerful legs. It seemed an insane idea. Even at his best, Alexander was limited by nature, but just as he hit the ground he pressed and held the switch on his belt that activated the gravitic inertial dampener. The idea behind his inertials was to slow down his fall by reducing his gravitic signature in the local gravity field—fancy talk for fooling the planet into thinking he was lighter. Fortunately for Alexander that worked both ways.
He shot up into the air, hearing the sharp snap of Alice’s jaws behind him. Some of her saliva actually caught him on the neck, but that was better than her teeth! He bounded into the air, traveling forty meters in the leap before crashing into the undergrowth in a more or less controlled manner. Rolling to his feet, Alexander sprinted through the fern catacombs again. While he was airborne, he did at least get his bearings. The edge of the jungle and more open ground was forty or fifty meters to his left, and he caught sight of the ridge line with his house. Once he got to rocky ground he’d be safe; the Tyrannosaurs couldn’t climb.
The jungle crashed and groaned behind him. The chase resumed, but fortune didn’t completely desert Alexander. Alice’s rampage opened gaping holes in the fern catacombs and the kids were smart enough to take on Alexander at his own game. They entered the labyrinth as well, pursuing Alexander underneath the cover of the ferns. They quickly caught up to him, but try as they might Cloris and Doris couldn’t bring him down. They trailed on either hip, nipping at him, but their sharp little teeth—little for a Tyrannosaurus—just slid off the hard smooth surface of his armor.
They tried knocking him off his feet by slamming their heads against his hips and ribs, but there Alexander was equal to them. He was heavier than either of them, and this was one time where Alexander didn’t mind hitting girls. He used his armored elbows to strike their heads, making them yip in pain each time he connected. Then Alexander took advantage of the twists and turns in the fern catacombs, ramming into one daughter and then the other, sending them headlong into the thick fibrous bases of the fern clumps.
The girls fell down, momentarily out of the fight, squawking in anger at this prey animal that fought back. That left Albert. Glancing back, Alexander saw the Tyrannosaur male trailing him. Albert was named after Einstein because he seemed to be the thinker of the group. Whereas his sisters simply bit things, Albert studied them, as if trying to file them away for future reference, and then he bit them. He was, after all, a Tyrannosaurus.
“Are you going to leave me alone Albert or do I have to knock you around too?”
Albert simply barked at him.
There was an answering bark from somewhere outside the fern catacombs. It was Mommy. Alice was not happy. She couldn’t see her kids, and worse, she knew what usually hid in the fern catacombs. Her kids were just Scooby-snacks for the snakes of Pantrixnia. In her desperation, she rampaged back into the undergrowth, but as she was afraid of unknowingly trampling her kids, she smashed though a full twenty meters ahead of Alexander.
It worked.
There was Alice ahead of him and all three kids behind him. With no choices left, Alexander hit his inertials and jumped for all he was worth. He cleared Alice’s fearsome head, barely, and landed twenty meters beyond her in a relatively clear area beyond the edge of the jungle. The entrance to the Tyrannosaur canyon was just to his left behind an outcropping of basalt and some ferns. He landed in a running lope, basically a triple jump, boom, boom and boom he hit his inertials. Alexander soared fifteen meters high into the heavy moist air, easily clearing the four meter ferns and coming down in a smooth arc—right into the jaws of Ralph.
The eight ton male was coming to see what all the fuss was about, just in time to pluck Alexander out of mid air. The exiled Galactic Overlord came to a jarring stop in Ralph’s warm, slobbery mouth, lying like a bone in the maw of the galaxy’s mightiest hunter.
Instinctively, his hands grabbed the scaly snout. He stared into the huge yellow eyes of the carnivore and in as soothing a voice as possible, he pleaded, “That’s a good boy Ralph, easy boy!”
Ralph growled and experimentally bit down on the ex-Galactic Overlord. Alexander felt the pressure, but his armor was a hard carapace of Plasteel. It was as supple as leather until energy or pressure was applied; then it stiffened to a steel-like rigidity. The Plasteel could take even the crushing force of a Tyrannosaurus bite—in theory.
“Ralph, don’t,” Alexander warned.
Ralph, seemingly surprised at how hard Alexander was, bit down a little harder.
“Bad dinosaur!” he exclaimed, swatting Ralph on the nose. The bull male growled and bit down hard. Alexander felt it, but the armor was holding. That was not the most pressing of his problems, however. Alice was coming around the corner, barking excitedly, staring at Alexander’s head like it was an olive. “Damn it Ralph!” he cursed and fired his right blaster at Ralph’s snout.
Nothing happened. He forgot about discharging it in the Remvalix nest.
He fired the left one, a bit of desperation creeping into his demeanor.
The blaster was low on power and on its fan setting, but it was enough to burn the bull’s sensitive nostrils. Ralph roared and tossed Alexander as far away from his singed nose as possible. Alexander flew down the canyon, landing hard on the solid rocky floor. He rolled groggily to his feet in time to see the entire Tyrannosaurus family after him. As fast as he could, Alexander ran into the canyon, turning the bend with them hot on his heels. At the end of the canyon was the waterfall, where he hid from Attila in his earlier adventures. It wouldn’t help him now, but forty meters above it, sitting over the waterfall that Frank Lloyd Wright could never have imagined, was Alexander’s own version of Falling Waters.
With Alice literally breathing down his neck Alexander hit his inertials one more time, jumping for his life. He flew up and out of her reach, but his legs couldn’t carry him all the way up. He flew up and up and then began to come back down. He hit the wet cliff face hard, grabbing at the trailing vines with all his remaining strength. They held.
The roars and screaming twenty meters beneath him said the rest. He hadn’t improved his relations with his neighbors but he was still alive. Weary to the point of exhaustion, Alexander climbed the vines to his deck, eager to get inside the house before anything else happened. At last, he pulled himself to the top of the railing. He was almost there! After checking one last time for eagles, he glanced down at the Tyrannosaurus family.
“Sorry guys, I’m not even a mouthful anyway!”
It was seventy-five feet from the Remvalix nest to the forest floor, but fortunately for Alexander much of that last twenty feet was made up of hanging vines, huge palm fronds, gigantic ferns and finally the loamy moss covered forest floor.
He untangled himself from the fern that caught him, glad to be alive but very aware that he was far from safe. The one thing in his favor was that the eagle hadn’t carried him very far. He couldn’t be more than a mile from his house. Of course, on Pantrixnia a mile might as well be halfway to the Moon.
There was no alternative. Alexander got his bearings and started heading west with the brighter gloom of the distant sun at his back. The space beneath the Pantrixnian undergrowth was a world onto itself. The ferns grew up to twenty feet high and formed a green roof over the forest floor. There were trails of sorts through the ferns, mostly winding around the tough clumps of the fern stalks. The fronds arched up, vaulting over his head like some glowing green catacombs. The spaces were largely clear of debris and he could make good time, but there was always a deadly reason behind anything that seemed easy on Pantrixnia. In this case it was the snakes.
The snakes that moved through the fern undergrowth in the jungle were a meter thick and there was no way he could outrun them. His best hope was to avoid them. That meant getting through the maze of the undergrowth as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the snakes usually hunted at night and either slept or laid in ambush during the day. He could move on with reasonable safety by scanning ahead for bio signs. The way appeared clear. Alexander mapped his route with the compass and map on his compad, a tough panel of transparent aluminum that did what a computer screen could, except of course it was very durable.
He had this area mapped fairly well, but it was impossible to map the trails; they changed too often. Still, all he had to do is to head west from his position for about seven hundred meters and he’d run into the canyon lands. His house was fourteen hundred and thirty-three meters away. Alexander set off at a trot, making as little noise as possible and keeping a wary eye out for ambushes. The first hundred meters went by quickly, as did the second hundred meters. It was a good start. “Don’t get too happy, stick to the plan,” he told himself warily. The plan worked for about five minutes.
It was the tremors that caused him to pause. He knew them all too well. The biometer flashed a warning:
Large life forms within 50 meters to the west.
“It’s at least one T-rex,” he whispered to himself. “The question is which one?” Alexander was covered with burned Remvalix larvae as well as his own sweat and blood. The Tyrannosaurus had an amazing sense of smell designed to pick out the old or sick from a large herd. They could easily pick Alexander out of the ferns. Hopefully they wouldn’t be interested in Remvalix larvae. He wasn’t about to take chances though. Quickly, he grabbed a handful of the soil and rubbed it all over his exposed flesh, hoping it might just buy him some space.
Slowly, Alexander began to move off away from the tremors as quickly as possible, heading north. He could pop out of the undergrowth north of the Tyrannosaur canyon and climb the lower part of the ridge, making his way home from there would be relatively easy. The closer he got to the river the more dicey things would get, but first things first.
The tremors were lingering, and then they seemed to turn and follow him north. Alexander quickened his pace, swallowing hard. “Let’s hope it’s Ralph. Please don’t let it be Alice; if she gets a whiff of me, I’m in trouble.”
Alice and Ralph were his neighbors, and the current inhabitants of Attila’s old lair. Attila passed away nine years ago as a venerable and magnificent bull. Ralph was his son and he didn’t mind Alexander, having in fact grown to adulthood with the human ex-Overlord around. Alice, his mate of five years, however, was the level headed Tyrannosaurus of the family and she didn’t appreciate Alexander in the least.
To Alexander’s consternation the tremors followed him and then he heard the crashing of undergrowth under enormous feet. “She’s caught my scent!” He darted to the left just as a hole opened up in the green roof behind him. A roar followed, and Alexander didn’t need to look behind to know who it was, he recognized her voice. “Alice,” he gasped, “of all the days to be tromping through the woods why did it have to be today!”
A huge taloned foot ripped through the ferns, flooding the undergrowth tunnels with the dim gray light beneath the canopy. He had no choice but to run. There wasn’t enough juice left in his blasters to turn her aside. He ducked to the left, taking the slight advantage that Alice was coming from that direction, thereby cutting her off and making her turn six tons of dinosaur to follow him.
Alice gnashed her teeth as Alexander avoided her snapping jaws, but she had evolution on her side. The female wasn’t as large as her mate but she was more than up to the task. Again, the crashing was so close behind him that Alexander didn’t dare steal a glance back. He forgot about everything except sprinting as fast as he could one direction and then another. If he was going to be stomped to death he wanted to make it as hard on Alice as possible.
“This is a helluva way for a Galactic Overlord to die! Lord, if you still have any use for me now is the time to look my way!”
Almost as if in answer Alexander shot out of the green tunnel into one of the already trampled areas of the chase. Alice let out vicious, victorious bark. It was answered by three higher pitched very excited barks of the same timbre. Alexander glanced over his left shoulder and saw three young Tyrannosaurus pups. They were small enough to be cute but large enough to eat him if given them the chance.
“Great—the kids!” and sure enough at Mommy’s direction the seventy kilo monsters jumped excitedly into the chase. They loped along the edge of the ruined undergrowth, their banded green feathers blending in with the ruined vegetation. Their bright yellow head feathers ruffled up with excitement as they headed his way. If Alexander was mismatched in outrunning Alice he was at a horrible disadvantage with the quick, speedy little demon-pups. By themselves they weren’t a problem for him in his armor, but he’d rather not have run into the whole pack of them under the circumstances.
It would be tragic be to be killed by them now; he’d struck up a rapport with little Albert. Cloris and Doris were a different story; they were their mother all over again—the little monsters.
Alexander had about thirty meters on the youngsters, but Alice was right behind him. There she was, all seventeen meters of her, a shadowy winter green with bands of lighter green running across her powerfully muscled back. Her yellow eyes focused right on him. She lunged forward.
He had no choice. In desperation, Alexander sprinted ten meters and jumped, planting both feet in the forest floor and pushing off with his powerful legs. It seemed an insane idea. Even at his best, Alexander was limited by nature, but just as he hit the ground he pressed and held the switch on his belt that activated the gravitic inertial dampener. The idea behind his inertials was to slow down his fall by reducing his gravitic signature in the local gravity field—fancy talk for fooling the planet into thinking he was lighter. Fortunately for Alexander that worked both ways.
He shot up into the air, hearing the sharp snap of Alice’s jaws behind him. Some of her saliva actually caught him on the neck, but that was better than her teeth! He bounded into the air, traveling forty meters in the leap before crashing into the undergrowth in a more or less controlled manner. Rolling to his feet, Alexander sprinted through the fern catacombs again. While he was airborne, he did at least get his bearings. The edge of the jungle and more open ground was forty or fifty meters to his left, and he caught sight of the ridge line with his house. Once he got to rocky ground he’d be safe; the Tyrannosaurs couldn’t climb.
The jungle crashed and groaned behind him. The chase resumed, but fortune didn’t completely desert Alexander. Alice’s rampage opened gaping holes in the fern catacombs and the kids were smart enough to take on Alexander at his own game. They entered the labyrinth as well, pursuing Alexander underneath the cover of the ferns. They quickly caught up to him, but try as they might Cloris and Doris couldn’t bring him down. They trailed on either hip, nipping at him, but their sharp little teeth—little for a Tyrannosaurus—just slid off the hard smooth surface of his armor.
They tried knocking him off his feet by slamming their heads against his hips and ribs, but there Alexander was equal to them. He was heavier than either of them, and this was one time where Alexander didn’t mind hitting girls. He used his armored elbows to strike their heads, making them yip in pain each time he connected. Then Alexander took advantage of the twists and turns in the fern catacombs, ramming into one daughter and then the other, sending them headlong into the thick fibrous bases of the fern clumps.
The girls fell down, momentarily out of the fight, squawking in anger at this prey animal that fought back. That left Albert. Glancing back, Alexander saw the Tyrannosaur male trailing him. Albert was named after Einstein because he seemed to be the thinker of the group. Whereas his sisters simply bit things, Albert studied them, as if trying to file them away for future reference, and then he bit them. He was, after all, a Tyrannosaurus.
“Are you going to leave me alone Albert or do I have to knock you around too?”
Albert simply barked at him.
There was an answering bark from somewhere outside the fern catacombs. It was Mommy. Alice was not happy. She couldn’t see her kids, and worse, she knew what usually hid in the fern catacombs. Her kids were just Scooby-snacks for the snakes of Pantrixnia. In her desperation, she rampaged back into the undergrowth, but as she was afraid of unknowingly trampling her kids, she smashed though a full twenty meters ahead of Alexander.
It worked.
There was Alice ahead of him and all three kids behind him. With no choices left, Alexander hit his inertials and jumped for all he was worth. He cleared Alice’s fearsome head, barely, and landed twenty meters beyond her in a relatively clear area beyond the edge of the jungle. The entrance to the Tyrannosaur canyon was just to his left behind an outcropping of basalt and some ferns. He landed in a running lope, basically a triple jump, boom, boom and boom he hit his inertials. Alexander soared fifteen meters high into the heavy moist air, easily clearing the four meter ferns and coming down in a smooth arc—right into the jaws of Ralph.
The eight ton male was coming to see what all the fuss was about, just in time to pluck Alexander out of mid air. The exiled Galactic Overlord came to a jarring stop in Ralph’s warm, slobbery mouth, lying like a bone in the maw of the galaxy’s mightiest hunter.
Instinctively, his hands grabbed the scaly snout. He stared into the huge yellow eyes of the carnivore and in as soothing a voice as possible, he pleaded, “That’s a good boy Ralph, easy boy!”
Ralph growled and experimentally bit down on the ex-Galactic Overlord. Alexander felt the pressure, but his armor was a hard carapace of Plasteel. It was as supple as leather until energy or pressure was applied; then it stiffened to a steel-like rigidity. The Plasteel could take even the crushing force of a Tyrannosaurus bite—in theory.
“Ralph, don’t,” Alexander warned.
Ralph, seemingly surprised at how hard Alexander was, bit down a little harder.
“Bad dinosaur!” he exclaimed, swatting Ralph on the nose. The bull male growled and bit down hard. Alexander felt it, but the armor was holding. That was not the most pressing of his problems, however. Alice was coming around the corner, barking excitedly, staring at Alexander’s head like it was an olive. “Damn it Ralph!” he cursed and fired his right blaster at Ralph’s snout.
Nothing happened. He forgot about discharging it in the Remvalix nest.
He fired the left one, a bit of desperation creeping into his demeanor.
The blaster was low on power and on its fan setting, but it was enough to burn the bull’s sensitive nostrils. Ralph roared and tossed Alexander as far away from his singed nose as possible. Alexander flew down the canyon, landing hard on the solid rocky floor. He rolled groggily to his feet in time to see the entire Tyrannosaurus family after him. As fast as he could, Alexander ran into the canyon, turning the bend with them hot on his heels. At the end of the canyon was the waterfall, where he hid from Attila in his earlier adventures. It wouldn’t help him now, but forty meters above it, sitting over the waterfall that Frank Lloyd Wright could never have imagined, was Alexander’s own version of Falling Waters.
With Alice literally breathing down his neck Alexander hit his inertials one more time, jumping for his life. He flew up and out of her reach, but his legs couldn’t carry him all the way up. He flew up and up and then began to come back down. He hit the wet cliff face hard, grabbing at the trailing vines with all his remaining strength. They held.
The roars and screaming twenty meters beneath him said the rest. He hadn’t improved his relations with his neighbors but he was still alive. Weary to the point of exhaustion, Alexander climbed the vines to his deck, eager to get inside the house before anything else happened. At last, he pulled himself to the top of the railing. He was almost there! After checking one last time for eagles, he glanced down at the Tyrannosaurus family.
“Sorry guys, I’m not even a mouthful anyway!”
