by David Boyle
“Holy shit!” he yelped, the pains in his knees all but forgotten. Blending with the backdrop of trees, the long-necked sauropods were browsing on leaves twenty or more feet above the ground. Hayden made out the curve of their backs, the sinuous necks, and the heads that seemed but swollen lumps on the ends. He’d seen the pictures…. “What’s a better word for enormous?”
“And I thought that thing yesterday was big,” Ron said, gawking from the canoe. No one was paddling. “Sixty feet, Bull?”
“Shit yeah… maybe more.”
The wind swirled out from the forest, damp and smelling of rot. Waves slapped the Tripper, the raft in its wake lolling in the swells.
Ron twisted on his seat. “Decision time, people.”
“About what?” Hayden said, catching immediate stares. “We’re committed in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Uh huh,” Charlie said, staring to shore. “And what about them?”
“I’m sure as hell not going to wasting ammunition on them. Hell, rocks would have the same effect, for all the good it’d do.” Ron hollered back to Wheajo. “We can keep going, or park ourselves back on the island. Your call.”
“Recall that your friend had a similar encounter.”
“Mark’s overnighter.” Ron nodded, he and Charlie holding the canoe steady against a swell. “Yeah, they were here that time too.”
“Apparently. These or similar animals. And while we must refrain from arousing their curiosity, I believe we may continue.”
The mountainous animals gave no indication of having seen them, or simply didn’t care. Nonetheless cautious, no one spoke as they paddled to shore. They lugged the raft as high onto the beach as possible, then secured it with a rope tied to the roots of a stunted bush clinging to the bank. Two paddles went underneath, and whatever driftwood was nearby piled on top to dissuade curious onlookers.
Raft secured, they hauled the Tripper up and over the bank and began the long nerve-wracking journey through the forest and down to the river.
*****
Tony bit down, then picked away the shell. “How far did you say it was?”
“Eight, maybe ten miles.” Mark checked the fit, then set to work carving the notch a bit wider. “I am a little surprised they didn’t fire up earlier,” he said, glancing at the waiting gap where McClure’s tent would soon be.
“Another question to add to the list.”
A rustle drew Mark’s attention. Their watch dinosaur was on the prowl again. “Am looking forward to having them home again.”
Camp had undergone some minor if important upgrades in the last few days. One tree stand was finished and the second nearly so, as were two chairs and a tabletop that needed to be raised, Mark busy at the moment working on chair number three. Tony had scoured the island south of the trail to the channel, and over the course of two days had discovered a couple of plants that, while not visually appetizing, had tubers that were at least edible; three trees with nuts that looked promising; and that Mike was using deadfalls across the channel to hunt the hills west of the island. That Charlie’s pet hadn’t simply kept going was a thoroughly intriguing, if not unwelcome surprise.
Tony considered the dinosaur hunting the brushy vegetation ringing camp. “I’m curious about what his reaction will be when Charlie gets back.”
“Considering how he pretty much took the place over, me too. Little thief.” The dinosaur pranced after a butterfly, snapping as it flitted just out of reach.
“You can blame him all you want, but you needed to be more careful. You knew he likes fish.”
“Uh huh. And needing to keep an eye on whatever I’m working on isnot what I signed up for.” The dinosaur strutted past their dwindling woodpile. “And why the Reds? I mean, shit. There were five different kinds to choose from… and which one does he steal? The one that tastes the best.”
“He’s a connoisseur.”
“It’s not funny. I don’t know if it’s possible to develop a sweet-tooth for fish, but if he has, he better frickin’ figure out how to catch his own!” Mark stabbed a nearby log with his scuba knife, then grabbed a stick from the fire. “Where are you, shithead?” The dinosaur’s head popped up, puppy eyes searching.
It had taken only days for the dinosaur to worm its way into their hearts, despite its thievery, their multi-hued treasure presently investigating the foliage. The head twitched, searching, then vanished in the leaves. Mark tossed the stick, Mike quickly up and staring. “It’s in there alright. Go get it kid!” The dinosaur darted off like a feathered terrier, Mark settling by the fire and working the knife loose. “Stupid shit.” One more notch and he could start assembly.
Tony turned the nuts he was roasting, a knot of ferns rustling when the dinosaur pounced. “What was that about stupid?”
Mark glimpsed the tail of a lizard before it disappeared down the dinosaur’s gullet. “Like I said, he can find stuff to eat on his own.” The knife started clicking again, woodchips falling around his knees. “Been what? An hour since you noticed the compass?”
“About,” said Tony, amused by Mark’s abrupt change of subject. “The needle was on the mark when I got up, so they had to have turned the dawzon on sometime after that.” They’d wondered whether Wheajo’s errcot could reach the island, and, on the off chance it could, had mounted Mark’s compass to a pole and stuck it in the ground near the hanger tree.
Mike trotted over and stared at the treat dripping juices into the fire.
“Don’t even think about it,” Mark said, brushing at the dinosaur’s snout. “Go on, get! You had your lunch. Now it’s our turn.” He turned the skewer, sniffing, then glanced at the glow showing through the trees. “I didn’t realize how late it was. Sabrefang must have gotten a late start.”
“Either that or she’s hunting somewhere else.” Tony looked at his watch, which at the moment displayed 1:45. “Let me get this straight. It’s been three days, which means I’m supposed to add an hour… or subtract one?”
“Subtract,” Mark said, whittling. “The day is shorter, remember?”
“And that’s because of the moon?”
“Yes.” Mark had gone through most of this before, and realized he was about to again. “Though if you really want to get technical, it’s because of the tides.” The moon had been receding from the earth ever since its creation, some four billion years earlier. The jury was still out, but the evidence was building to support the theory that the earth had been hammered by a planetoid the size of Mars, and that part of the debris left over from the collision had gone into orbit. Theories varied about how long it had lasted, but for a time Earth had been a ringed planet. The debris was part earth and part planetoid, and most of it eventually fell back, the portion that didn’t coalescing to form the moon.
“The earth was getting blasted all along, by asteroids mostly, and also by comets. A guy named Whipple—Fred, if I remember right—came up with the name dirty snowball back in the late ‘40s or early ‘50s. Comets, it turns out, are nothing more than flying icebergs with a dash of crud thrown in to hold it all together. Melt the ice and what have you got…?”
“Water.”
“By the friggen gigaton. And there were lots and lots of comets. Slammed into everything… the earth, Mars, the moon. Everybody got dinged. But lucky us, the earth was just the right distance from the sun, so the water that got dumped here stayed. Comets rained down for millions of years. Hell, hundreds of millions probably. And in the end… presto change-o…! Earth had oceans.
“But there’s this big ole moon floating around, tugging on all that water.”
“You mean the tides.”
“Exactly… the tides. Except way back then they were humongous because the moon was so much closer. And you can’t have mile high tides crashing into continents without dissipating a lot of energy. There’s lots of factors at work here Tony, and the exact mechanisms go way the hell over my head. I’ll call it friction for sake of simplicity, which I’m sure isn’t altoge
ther right, but the friction generated by all that water sloshing tends to slow the earth’s rotation.
“You catch what I’m saying?”
Tony nodded. “I think so. Keep going.”
“So the moon slows down how fast the earth turns on account it’s raising these huge tides… and the earth slows down the moon on account it’s got lumps because it never totally differentiated. Story goes the moon isn’t big enough to have melted all the way through.”
“This is confusing.”
“Yeah, it is,” Mark said. “And don’t get me wrong… I didn’t come up with this on my own. Been lots smarter guys than me working out the details for oh… hundreds of years. Apollo changed a lot of things, the important one here being that afterward people were able to get really accurate measurements on how far the moon is. Measured year after year, people found that the moon is drifting about a half inch farther away from earth every year. The thing to remember is that the earth and moon right after the collision had a given angular momentum. And that total—”
“Hold on there. Why the distinction?”
Mark realized he’d blundered past an important point. “That’s a good catch, Tony. I said ‘after the collision’ because there’s no way to know how fast the earth was spinning originally. Or how big, how fast, and from what direction the planetoid was coming from. For all anyone knows, the impact could have made the earth spin faster, or slower.”
“Essentially, this planetoid you’re talking about reset the clock.”
“Exactly,” Mark said, pointing with his knife. “See… you are catching on.
“And the total amount of angular momentum from that day to this has remained pretty much constant. There’s three main components to consider: the angular momentum of earth, the moon, and the earth-moon system.”
“Because they’re revolving around one another,” Tony said. “Like skaters holding hands.”
“Good analogy. Only one’s fat and one’s skinny, so the center of rotation is skewed toward the earth. And there’s this gravitational interaction working to slow the two of them down. Reduce the angular momentum of either body, and it’s got to go somewhere, right? And it does. Into the angular momentum of the earth-moon system… the two of which have been drifting apart since the day we got hammered.
“The way I see it, things had to slow down big time once the moon settled into staring at the earth with one face all the time. Which, if you think about it, had to be pretty dramatic, the moon stopping its rotation, then rotating back and forth like a watch spring slowing down. Anyway, the separation’s been driven by the tides thereafter because the moon’s angular momentum eventually bled down to as low as it could go. So the length of the day we’re experiencing here and now is because the moon is closer. You’d need some really sophisticated instruments to see the moon getting smaller, but she’s slipping away from where we stand even as we speak.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
Tony smiled. “Very.”
“The really funky part is that she’ll keep right on drifting until….” Mark caught himself, staring thoughtfully at his knife. “Here's one for you. Will the length of day keep getting longer? Or will it eventually settle down and stay there?”
“I’m just the system’s guy. You’re the astronomy buff. You tell me.”
Mark ran his thumb along the blade. “Best I can tell, I’ve given you all the pieces….” He scrunched one eye. “Yep, they’re all there. Tony, I think I’ll let you figure that one out by yourself.”
Tony was blinking. “You can’t do this.”
Mark grabbed a nut off the table, “Sure I can,” and popped it into his mouth. Mike’s head appeared above the ferns. “Come’ere you little shit,” he said, patting his thigh. The predator trotted over, sniffing expectantly. “Ever notice how he’s always hungry?” he said, stroking the dinosaur’s near velvety smooth neck.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“What subject?”
36
There was no telling whether the sky had actually stopped misting, or in exactly which direction they were going, other than down. The wind in the canopy promised to make life miserable once they hit the river, though it never had quite the moxie to reach all the way to the ground, leaving to them the chore of knocking down the accumulated wetness that, even with rain gear, had soaked them to the bone shortly after entering the woods. Hayden was quick to note that ‘slippery when wet’ had probably first been coined on a portage such as this, and without much convincing had gotten the okay from Charlie to let Ron and Wheajo fan into the lead. Though the portage was going smoothly, it was not without interruption; twice already they’d had to wait out browsing dinosaurs who seemed taken with having a drink with their meal. Yet with no sign of the river and the haul to complete, Bull had recently sent the last bunch scattering like long-tailed antelope when he’d flung part of a log in their direction.
The drag had since continued, down and around and sometimes over the plentiful deadfalls, scouts leading the drag-liners with the cargo-laden Tripper scraping quietly in between. Always with dinosaurs to serve as their eyes and ears on the forest, a turn of the head or a lingering gaze on their part enough for either Ron or Wheajo to call a halt to their progress.
As was presently the case.
Wheajo was on a log with the spear over his head, and hadn’t moved for going on thirty seconds. Scanning the forest, Ron was still looking when he caught Charlie squirming. He shrugged. He didn’t know what the holdup was either.
Wheajo slowly lowered his arm. “Animals are approaching.”
Ron cocked an ear, the distant rumble seemingly more felt than heard. “Relax, Wheajo. All that is, is thunder.” He checked ahead. “The worst of the carry-overs are behind us. Can’t see it yet, but get past the trail, and we’ll be home free.”
“And none too friggen soon,” said Charlie, leaning into the rope. “Move it, Prentler. This place gives me the creeps.” The Tripper started forward, yet hadn’t traveled its own length when dinosaurs started poking up across the hillside. Sporadic drops splattered down.
Ron noticed the quiver in the bushes. “It’s an earthquake!”
Hayden eased off on the rope, the ground vibrating beneath his feet. “How about that?” he said, intrigued. “I’ve never felt an earthquake before. Interesting how it—”
“And you still ain’t,” Charlie said, dropping the rope and reaching for the holster, goose bumps pimpling his arms. “McClure… you see ‘em?”
“Yeah,” Ron said in a low voice, peeling the rifle’s strap from his shoulder. “Wheajo, I suggest you and that spear of yours find a tree. Prentler, you too. And lose that rain gear.”
A moment’s hesitation was all Charlie needed. “It’s yellow!” he snarled, stabbing a finger south. “And whatever those are might see it!” A hazy patch was swallowing the forest, the bobbing heads of frilled dinosaurs cresting the rise.
Hayden stared for a second. “There’s a whole herd of them!”
It was raining again, pouring actually, the trees releasing their loads with the wave of thumping hooves. They scrambled for refuge, Hayden still busy settling in when the first of the dinosaurs lumbered past. Rusty brown and with a single long horn jutting from their snouts, the animals at times ran three abreast, their pig-like grunts slurring together as they galloped along the forest highway.
Ron spotted Charlie peering from behind a tree. “You were wondering why it was so wide?”
The bushes bordering the trail shimmied as if roiled by the wind of a passing freight train. “Not anymore,” he shouted.
The downpour ended as quickly as it had begun, the hillside throbbing with the footfalls of an endless column of beasts. Bellows sounded like the baying of hounds in the distance.
And still the herd thundered past.
The roars sounded again, sharper, crisper. Unmistakably closer.
“Everybody down!” Ron shouted, the words barely out when heads loomed among t
he trees opposite the rise; three high and two low, the one-horns galloping in between. Ron glanced at Wheajo, then from Charlie to Hayden. “Stay low, and stay still. Nobody panics… they’ll fly right by us.”
Surprise was on their side—For a change—yet whether two or five, Ron knew that anything more than one was too many. Too many damn predators and not enough fire power. Short on ammo? Hell, even that didn’t matter. There’d be no time to reload. No, surviving the next fifteen seconds boiled down to whether the bastards had eyes for anything other than the one-horns.
Twenty footers, give or take, and god-awful ugly, the predators made up in numbers what they lacked in size. Swerving through the trees, two were busy harassing the herd, one on each side, lunging and snapping, their grotesquely knob-headed companions following at a distance. Watching for….
Us, he thought morbidly, crouched behind the trunk. Charlie was pressed with his back against a tree, revolver drawn, shaking. Hayden just beyond him, head down, his arms wrapped around his knees.
The ground shook, the air laced with the scent of fear as the wild-eyed ceratopsians lumbered on and on. The first of the group jinxed through the trees, tails flagging behind bodies streaked black over tawny, the nearest of the two flashing past just yards from Wheajo.
Ron pressed to the trunk, the rifle snugged across his cheek, the herd’s passage quashing any chance of hearing the oncoming killer. Crunches sounded. Or not….
A head slipped past not eight feet away—eyes on its quarry, daggers lining its jaws—a triply-taloned foot slamming the ground an instant later. Then quickly the other, five yards beyond….
Three strides, and the last of the ring-tails crested the rise. Ron, then Wheajo got warily to their feet, watching as the predators paced the herd into the distance. Charlie eased the hammer down, Hayden nearby with the spear quivering in his fists, his back still pressed to a tree.
