Geoff Broman, a young scout-trainee, had been out to the planet Obsidian on training missions twice. He'd experimented with using a harmonica to see how interested hadrosaurs were in the sounds he could make, something like the fluting sounds they made with the hollow, bony horns on the top of their heads. The sounds could be a kind of language, or maybe a way for them to keep track of where their mate or babies were in dense forest. He'd discussed his ideas with Dr. Panter at the U of M extension at Timeron Village.
Experimental language wasn't something he knew much about, but almost no one else knew much about it either, he thought to himself, cracking a small smile as he thought about it! The idea that therapods might be intelligent, or even quasi-intelligent, was a totally new concept; no one living knew how smart they might be. The triceratops herd that had migrated up out of Jurassic Valley on Brandywine, seemed to be able to figure some things out; they had walked among the mixed scouting party as if it were no big thing!
His focus for this trip would be to see if he could approach and communicate, how ever poorly, with