Riddlepigs and the Cryla

Description

As a girl, Portia Oakeshott dreamed of caring for the reconstructed dinosaurs roaming the preserve near the south pole of her home planet, New New South Wales.

As a new hire at the dino company, Portia’s first call sends her to an isolated farmhouse and across the perimeter into the preserve itself, in pursuit of a rogue carnivore, a female Cryolophosaurus. A cryla.

Amid a forest of ferns and cycads, Portia learns a lesson never taught by her professors at veterinary school. A lesson in what “caring for dinosaurs” really means.

Previously published in Analog, Jan/Feb 2021.