One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing by David Forrest

looked like an eccentric professor at work in the burial chamber of a pyramid. The work became more difficult later, when they had to stretch to reach the ascending vertebrae. As the back arched higher, the bones became larger and heavier. Hettie consulted her watch. It was midnight.
    “Let’s try a leg. Then we’ll call it a night,” said Emily.
    “You sound as though you’re ordering an Aberdeen fried chicken, not dismembering a dinosaur,” sighed Hettie. But, above her, Emily had already begun loosening the huge thighbone. She grunted. There was a creaking noise.
    Hettie looked up quickly, in time to see her dangling from the top of the thighbone as it swayed away from the main structure.
    The metal stay supporting it bent slowly, and gently deposited Emily back on the ground.
    “Great grief, I thought I was about to become the first person killed by a brontosaurus for two hundred million years,” said Emily.
    “Och, you will be if you try doing things on your own.”
    “That’s enough, I suppose,” said Emily. Her nose was twitching at a lower speed than usual. She was tired. “It’s hard work filleting a dinosaur.” She looked behind her at a neatly stacked heap of bones, then sat on one of the largest vertebrae. “We’ll wash and then turn in.”
    The two nannies cleaned themselves as best they could with the damp sponges Emily had packed in the toilet hold-all. Then they snuggled down in their sleeping bags. A few minutes later they were asleep.
     
    A clattering woke them. It was followed by an off- key rendering of “Granada.” The painters were back in the hall.
    “What’s the time?”
    Emily fumbled for her glasses and peered at her luminous pocket watch. There was no light beneath the canvas, even in daytime.
    “Eight thirty.”
    “We’ve got to be away soon,” hissed Hettie.
    It took them twenty minutes to tidy up the interior of the tent. Then they washed themselves again, donned their uniforms, and slid out from under the canvas. The public entrances were still closed, so Emily led the way down to the staircase leading to the basement. She walked confidently toward the smell of food in what appeared to be the kitchen. There were several men inside. She poked her head round the comer just as a chef appeared.
    “Have you got any jobs going?” she asked.
    “Guess not, lady,” he said. “Try later when the canteen manager gets here.”
    “How do we get out, then?”
    “The way you came in,” said the man.
    “I’m lost. I can’t remember.”
    The man pointed down the corridor.
    The two friends made their way past the tinsmith’s shop and the carpentry bay, to the shipping department. Emily paused. “Wait for me. Just a minute,” she told Hettie. She looked around to make sure they were alone, then she reached through the service window of the office and snatched a handful of paper.
    Hettie was horrified. “Emily Biddle, that’s stealing.”
    “Borrowing,” corrected Emily. “They’re only sticky labels. I’ve got to have some for part of the plan.”
    Hettie pushed open the exit doors and the two nannies stood on the loading ramp, in the morning sunlight.
    Emily blinked cheerfully. “I told you . . . it’s going to be easy.” Her face twitched and wrinkled as she grinned. Her pince-nez popped off the bridge of her nose. She twirled them on the end of their cord and started to sing.
    “Rule Britannia... Britannia rules the waves.”
     
    Lui Ho looked at the row of mildewing police uniforms hanging along the wall of the Tse Eih Aei sewer headquarters. He hoped the nanny-ladies wouldn’t take too long over the robbery. Not only did he consider the wearing of capitalist uniforms offensive to the People’s Republic, but he regarded the hire fees of five dollars a day as extortionate.
    “Line up,” Lui Ho ordered his men, who were changing back into their loincloths.
    “Reports, please,” he demanded.
    “We walked the beats, like New York policemen, just as you