‘So here we see a shallow tropical sea extending across all of central North America all the way up through the area that will someday be Canada. The diversity and density of sea life here is fantastic, much richer than we ever anticipated. The ocean is filled with many familiar life forms such as clams, crabs, octopus, shark as well as vast areas of beautiful coral reefs. Over fifty percent of the current and most populous species found here will not survive to our time. These include the beautiful ammonites that we can see right over there as well as trilobites and most of the larger sea predators. Many of the small fish we see right below will eventually evolve to fill in the empty niche’s left behind by those species going extinct.’
‘We are in an area that will become southwest Texas. The abundance of wildlife on land will be traceable in our time through the fossils found in the area although we are discovering many, many more creatures never before seen in the record.’
‘The caverns we just came through are mostly natural fissures in the limestone beds that predate the Cretaceous period. I showed the minor modifications that the Hypsophalidont made in the cave structure. It’s worth while noting that the species tends not to strongly modify their surroundings.’
‘Life here in the cave system has been advantageous for the hypes. The peninsula provides a natural protective barrier from most of the mainland threats. That, by the way, is a major reason why we chose this site. The caves are extensive and natural openings like this to the sea allow them to catch sea life in relative safety.’
‘How do they catch the fish Doctor Anderson?’ Julia Taylor’s daughter asked.
‘Those two over there are fishing. One dives down into the water while the other is a lookout. They’ll come up with anything from shellfish to live animals such as squid, octopus and smaller mosasaurs. Mosasaurs are those toothy porpoise-looking animals that are lying on the side over here.’
‘Some of the younger Hypes have begun to use fishing poles. This is a trick they learned from us and it’s another indication that their way of thinking is undergoing a rather interesting revolution. In the hundred million year history of their race it never occurred to them that you could use equipment like this to go fishing.’
Robert Taylor is obviously disturbed by this statement, ‘Aren’t you concerned about how this may influence the historic timeline? Suppose it changes our own species or history?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean Mister Taylor. You are referring to a phenomenon that many have called the “Butterfly Effect”. The temporal sequence doesn’t work that way. If you step on a butterfly today, here in the Cretaceous, then it will not, for example, rob some animal of a future meal and result in some critical animal’s lifeline dropping from our time. The timeline is not a rigid as a game of billiards, if it were this fragile there would be virtually trillions of trillions of parallel universes to cover all possible occurrences.’
‘The law of Quantum Gravitonics that provides a basis for our company suggests that the flow of time is more like the waters of a stream. If you place a pebble or even a rock in the stream, you will cause some local disturbances. Even with a large disturbance, the stream continues in its flow down its original and inevitable path to our present timeframe just a little over sixty five million years from now.’
‘Oh, you could conceivably create a large enough disturbance to actually block or redirect the timestream. For all practical purposes, no one has actually calculated the size that such a disturbance would have to be since it would have to be inconceivably huge.’
‘Hmm, I see. Are we going to be able to tour the outside labs here on the Station?’
Julia spoke up before Janette could answer, ‘Oh Bob, of course they’ll let us see them. This is much more interesting for both me and the girls so please have a little patience. Julia, will these tunnels be part of the starport and resort tours? They are fascinating travels and we love the Hypes, I guess you call them.’
‘No Mrs. Taylor. You are receiving this tour as a special part of your visit here. We had to ask and receive clearance from the Hypes to let you into the caverns. This is their home and they value their culture and their privacy. Travelers and tourists coming here will have a lot of interaction with the Hypes since they will work with our people in the resort and even act as tour guides but we won’t be turning their home into a tourist attraction.’
‘Now I would like to take you along the cliffs to the south side of the plateau. We’ll be travelling through tunnels and along a rather narrow trail so please be careful. I assure you the view is quite spectacular and you’ll see the drastic change in sea life to the south as we travel this path that is so near the water’s surface. After that we’ll return and have a nice lunch that Mary Li has prepared. I do believe you’ll find it interesting since all of the food-stuffs are plants indigenous to the time period. Ah yes, we also have standard supplies for those less adventuresome.’
‘After lunch we can split into two parties. You can have some free time if you wish. We only ask that you stay within the center compound area. If you get a call on your Hive Tab please follow instructions and get to the nearest secure habitat. I need to remind you that we still have not removed the problem of those two intruders of yesterday.’
‘Those who would like to continue the tour can accompany me to the science labs. If you are interested in seeing the progress of our experiments and meeting the people conducting the research then meet me over at my table when you are ready.’
‘If there are no questions then please follow me.’
A little later, Susan Esque walked over to the lunch counter where Robert Taylor had just picked up a sandwich, ‘So you think that scrumptious sandwich is turkey do you Robert?’
‘Actually Susan I had one last night and it’s pretty good, tastes like turkey.’
‘Oh? Not chicken?’
‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. No, in this case it tastes like turkey but I know it’s Hadrosaur. Have you had a chance to talk with Justin Rather about our little venture?’
‘Yeah and the news is not good. The detailed disposition of shares in GraviDynamics is, as you know, a tightly held secret that Mark has chosen to keep from even us board members. I lightly broached the idea about buying majority ownership with Justin since he seems to be the one closest to generation of our 10k annual report to the shareholders. Justin said I was wasting my time.’
‘Apparently the majority of voting shares are held between Mark and Matt Zoeller. There is no way we can buy up a majority unless one of them sells or dies so that the bonds go through probate. That would give us a chance to grab control since they own only fifty-one percent of the stock.’
‘Have you checked on who would be inheriting their stock? I don’t see how you could find out.’
‘You are right. We can’t find out but we could tie up the distribution in the courts. We could then force an issue vote in the company and by the bylaws they would have to vote using only free and clear stock. Apparently that leaves us free to issue additional stock and with his estate tied up in probate we could swing a majority purchase.’
‘Suzan, are you suggesting that we orchestrate an accident?’ Robert asked as he looked around.
‘You’ve seen yourself. This is a very wild venture. People have died already. We may get lucky or we may simply have to be on our toes looking for the opportunity.’
‘What’s wrong with being number two? The passage through the portals is free and open to anyone with spaceflight technology.’
‘We’d be limited because GraviDynamics holds the patents for the Gravitonics Drive. We would always be second place even if we survived and they didn’t refuse to sell to us. No, second place would take us years to overtake them. Don’t wimp out on me now Robert. We are this close and there are no laws here, no forensics system to track us down. Accidents happen we have simply have to help one along.’
‘I assume you are targeting Mark then. Matt hardly ever leaves his office and lab. In a
ddition, most of his work is theoretical so we can’t even push for a lab accident.’
‘Look, keep your eyes and ears open. We do have help here if we need it. I’ll tell you more about it later.’
* * * * *
Charcoal dark down flutters lightly in the warm breeze, a brief movement that betrays the existence and presence of the predator. Her muscles are set tense against her lightly boned frame ready to react in a second. She begins breathing rapidly, pumping air through body and bones. This is nature’s unique turbocharged design to pump oxygen into her bloodstream in preparation for an explosive response. preparing her body for a brief second of violent release that will catapult the lithe mass of muscle nearly into flight. Switchblade-like claws are held back, ready to be flung forward, gutting their prey with lightning swiftness as a mouth full of teeth quiver lightly and deadly claws prepare to penetrate for the rapid end to the hapless victim’s struggles.
She can smell the prey as they approach. Feel their movement through the high grass and sense the sharp edges of their fear. Their passage is quiet but the heat of their bodies grows with each step felt through the movement of the very ground beneath her feet.
Only a few more steps! Just one more and … now! She explodes from the grass. Flinging herself at the leader with a cry designed to inject frozen fear in her prey. Her arms, legs and gleaming teeth swing forward. Talons rise to the attack, reaching ahead to grab, rip and tear into the soft flesh of her target.
The suddenness of the attack, the fearsomeness of the cry startles him into a second of immobility. His eyes open wide as he turns in surprise. Reaction sends his arm back and then flings it forward. It strikes the charging blue ball of blind fury throwing the creature off into the bushes with a startled cry of pain and shared surprise.
‘Goddamn blue stupid parrots. Don’t they realize we’re almost twice their size and five times their mass?’ Anton Dotschkal cursed quietly as he resumed his trek. He didn’t even watch as the dinosaur got up and fled off into the brush screaming at him in defiance. ‘Just when you’re trying to move quietly these idiots come screaming out at you.’
David pulled up behind him as they pushed through the jungle, ‘They are dinosaurs Anton, not parrots. They’ve never interacted with humans before so give ‘em a break.’
‘Stupid parrots with teeth and claws as far as I’m concerned. Dinosaurs are supposed to be big and scary. “Give ‘em a break” my backside.’
Anton could hear a soft chuckle from Ed Saren moving behind David. It didn’t help his humor at all.
The path through the chest-high brush was easily enough travelled. The problem is that you can’t see anything at all that might be hiding in the grass. ‘Push it Anton! We’ve got to get up to that wooded ridge before those Black Ghosts arrive. Hopefully they were able to shake those big guys chasing them.’
‘This is a fine kettle of fish. We don’t even know where they are, when they’ll be here and who’s all coming to the party. They could slip by us in this high grass with no problem.’
‘I think we’ll see them in the grass. They are being chased and they don’t expect us to be waiting for them. Damned if I know why we can’t communicate with Alex though.’
‘Ok, let’s climb up on this rocky high ground. Hey, look at that, a big tortoise.’
‘Focus Anton, they’ve been around for a long time.’ David chides as he pulls up onto the rocky ground. ‘We need to set up here. We’ll place ourselves on the northern side of this mound and wait. They should be along in fifteen to twenty minutes at the most.’
Ed walked over toward the western tip of the rocky rise, ‘Cheeze, this whole area is like living in a terrarium. Every place you put your foot there’s something crawling, flying, scuttling or running by.’
‘Well, I like it when they run by you and not at you. At least we haven’t run into anything really nasty.’
David whispered over, ‘Cut the jabbering. They’ve got real good hearing as well as sight and smell.’
Anton suddenly goes quiet, crouches down and hisses two short bursts through his teeth. When David and Ed look over he points into the brushland down in the shallow depression before them. On the other side of the field, about as far up as they can see, animals are fleeing from a clump of grass and trees like water flying from a rock thrown into a stream. One of the trees is shaking like a bobber with a fish on it.
‘Company’s coming. Let’s settle in.’ He whispers as he moves over into a protected position.
* * * * *
‘Well, it helped to have a few of these, “feathers” you called them? They are quite amazing if you look at the fine structure of their construction. Ah, be careful there Mark. Yes, that’s it, move over this way.’
Mark was surprised that Marty Feldman had the presence of mind to even warn him as he walked across the darkened laboratory. ‘Minefields Dan, follow my steps.’
‘Minefield? Oh, yes I see. You don’t have to warn me, Marty’s reputation precedes him. This is the first time I’ve been in your lab Marty so I do appreciate the warning.’
Marty flowed easily across the semi-darkened laboratory. Unconsciously weaving in and out of metallic arms, wires and some other indefinable creations hanging from the ceiling and extending out from the bench tops. The lab hummed and wined with the power escaping from a dozen experiments. A subtle smell, a little sour and a little sweet in nature, hung in the air. ‘That’s enough of the wisecracks. This is a working research laboratory not some room in the Franklin Institute where school children can romp free and play with the toys. Now look and pay attention, this is serious. This instrument is a confocal microscope. We can see real time colors and 3D images using it rather than the old fashioned electron microscope like that one over there.’
They moved over toward a corner of the lab that was set up with a pair of GraviDynamics display plates. Marty flipped on the power and an image of one of the Black Ghost’s plumes appeared between the two plates.
‘Why isn’t this directly tied into our Hive Tab network Marty? That would be easier for us to view and we could save the images.’ Mark commented as he bent down closer to the small image floating before him.
‘You wouldn’t give me approval to bring one along because of space limitations. So I had to build this microscope from spare parts after we got here. It’s good enough for my use, no need to get fancy and waste time.’
Mark heard Dan quietly laughing behind him. He turned and looked at Dan with a frown.
Dan stepped forward, ‘Marty, let’s get to the point. What …’
‘Don’t put your hand down on that optical bench Dan! You’ll knock the optical train out of alignment. You guys are like bulls in a china shop! Come here.’ He dialed the image of the feather up to the point that a small segment grew to fill the entire display. A complex image of fine lines, radiant with colors, shimmers before them with thousands of small ridges running parallel to each other. Marty tilted the field slightly and rings of color began to form across the field, they seem to float in the space above the feather.
‘We would not have been able to see this with an SEM, that’s a scanning electron microscope for you Dan. That’s because the wavelength of the electron beam is too small and too monochromatic, we would only see the fine structure on the ridges.’
‘This confocal microscope uses visible light to look at areas that are actually smaller than the wavelength of the light used by the microscope by using scanned slit imaging. Quite a neat trick if you think about it but the basic technology has been around for over two hundred years. Ok, enough background. Let’s get back to our discussion.’
‘These aren’t like the feathers that any of us are used to looking at. Their structure is different, some parts are simpler and others are more complex than those of a modern bird. Additionally, the Black Ghost feathers are considerably more complex than those I looked at from the Hadrosaurids and the pigmy Tyrannosaurs from up in Blackbird Valley.’
‘You
mean the things we call “Blackbirds” right?’ Dan asked.
‘Right. I’m not going to waste our time by performing a comparative analysis. Just examine this image. These thick veins are the barbs of the feathers. Between them are flat placements called barbules that are basic to forming the flat flight-surface in the wing structure of our modern birds.’
‘Now that’s where the similarity ends. These barbules are nothing at all like the ones found in modern bird feathers. They are much more sharply defined and merge with the barbs through a series of extremely fine sinew within the barb. Stresses presented across the sinew cause the structure of the barbules to either bunch together or flatten. What’s amazing is just how uniformly they move. The barbules bunch to form the fine pattern of parallel lines you see here. The very pattern we are looking at is formed by sinew that I’ve stressed by inducing a small excitation field into the feather.’
Mark bent in a little closer to the patterns floating before him, ‘This is absolutely fantastic Marty. The placement of these ridges is so precise it looks manufactured.’
The image suddenly disappeared. Mark jumped back in surprise and looked at Marty. Marty is staring at Dan in the grey low light of the laboratory but he addressed Mark, ‘If you are going to bring people into my laboratory then please select those who can handle themselves responsibly. Daniel, didn’t I tell you not to lean on that optical bench!’
Marty managed to push around Mark and gently moved Dan away from the bench. He reached over and a thin blue beam flickered over across the flat surface. Marty lightly turned a knob on one of the instrument mounts on the table. There was a snap in the air and the sharp smell of ozone lightly filled the room. The image of the feather flickered into life and then disappeared. Marty touched another component and a second crackle filled the air. The image of the feather returned, floating serenely in the air before them.
Hunter's Moon (Cretaceous Station Book 2) Page 30
