Working Title: Vapor

We were coming in low and fast over the plains north of Hotspot. It was early May, and stormclouds were gathering over the still-white peaks of the Front Range. I had the throttle wide open, the fans making a tooth-rattling moan as I tried to will the skimmer back to U Town before the storm hit. Shaun was in the backseat fiddling with his Syst8, seemingly oblivious to the gathering storm, and below us, a small herd of buffalo was scattering in fear. I felt a twinge of guilt at disrupting the herd--normally I flew the skimmer high and slow enough to avoid that sort of thing--but we needed to beat the storm, and the upper atmosphere was a seething mass of chaotic air being pushed ahead of the front.

"Those fetuses OK, Shaun?" I yelled, shouting to be heard over the fans. He glanced up from his little terminal and craned his neck around to check the monitors on the foamsteel cases in the skimmer's little cargo bay.
"So far so good, Doc," he called up. "Temp is still 5C, and they're all still suspended."
I nodded, but I could feel the knot of worry in my gut tighten. These blackbear fetuses were in a state of temporary suspended animation, but unlike a grown bear, they couldn't hibernate indefinitely. A couple of days at most and then they'd start to die or suffer permanent damage. I'd stupidly let Howard, up in the Black Hills, talk me into stopping over on the way back from New Omaha so I could see some of the wolf specimens he'd been working with, and now we had precious little time to get these fetuses into the incubators at U Town. Clear forecast or no, I was kicking myself for not being more cautious. Spring in the mountains meant a storm could blow up at nearly any time, and there was no way we could take the skimmer into the teeth of a May squall. If we had to wait the storm out, chances are we'd lose more than a few of these fetuses before we could get back, making the whole trip a waste of time and money.