Time Scout

by Robert Asprin

  Kit sharpened his gaze. "He what?"

  Sven widened his eyes innocently, then chuckled. "Well, now, so Grandpa doesn't know all. I'm disappointed-and surprised you hadn't heard. They made a bet. Malcolm thought she'd end up liking the shooting, she said she wouldn't. They bet on it."

  "What in God's name did they bet? Margo's broke. I know. I won't give her an allowance until she's earned one."

  Kit trusted Malcolm as far as any man would with a granddaughter who looked and behaved the way Margo did; but he couldn't imagine what she might have wagered–and given the effect she had on men, he knew the male libido well enough to imagine the worst, even from Malcolm.

  Sven patted his shoulder. "Not to worry. Scuttlebutt has it she bet her life story against a guided tour."

  "Her life story? Huh." The rest of Margo's life story was something Kit would have paid a ransom to hear. "Too bad Malcolm lost."

  Sven grinned. "You said it. There'll be other bets. I'll start her on bladed weapons next, but I'd like her to settle down before then. Think about the Britannia Gate. Might do her some good."

  "Yeah," Kit said glumly, thinking about that billionaire and the fish pond. "But will it do the rest of us any good?"

  Sven just laughed at him. "Your grey's showing, Grandpa. How about a sparring session?"

  Kit considered it, then shook his head. "No, I think I'll take your advice. Which means I'd better hunt up Malcolm before he accepts a job to Mongolia or someplace equally improbable. Thanks, Sven."

  "Don't mention it."

  Kit found the freelance guide working the newcomers who planned to do the London trip. He waited until a curvaceous young thing had turned him down, then approached while Malcolm was looking bluer than a well-aged round of Roquefort cheese.

  "Any luck?"

  Malcolm grimaced. "Nope. Time Tours is getting nasty about sharing business with freelancers."

  Kit made a mental note to "lean" a little on Granville Baxter. There was enough money to be made for everyone. Malcolm's freelance business didn't hurt Time Tours' profits in the slightest. "Tell you what. I'd like to hire you."

  Malcolm just stared. "You? For Pete's sake, why?"

  Kit laughed. "Let's wet our throats someplace and talk business.-

  "Well, sure," Malcolm agreed readily. "Anytime you want to pick up the tab, Kit, you just holler."

  The Prince Albert Pub was the handiest place to sit down and cool their thirst. The interior was a good bit cleaner than most genuine Victorian-era pubs, the prices were moderate for La-La Land, and the place was virtually empty in the post-lunch-hour vacuum. They found a table near the front windows and sat down.

  "Have you eaten yet?" Kit asked, glancing at the menu. "I worked through lunch." Then he grinned sheepishly. "You're a good excuse. I'm playing hooky from paperwork day."

  "Oh, ho," Malcolm chuckled; picking up his own menu. "Better not let Big Brother find out."

  Kit grimaced. "Paperwork sucks," he said eloquently; half quoting Margo. "Hmm ...I haven't had kippers in years.

  "Never could abide them."

  "A Victorian time guide and a born Brit and you can't abide kippers? What's the world coming to?"

  "A better sense of what's edible, hopefully."

  Kit laughed. "Then for God's sake, don't order lunch in medieval Edo."

  Malcolm shuddered. "Once was enough to convince me, thank you. I'll stick to steak and kidneys, any day of the week."

  "Beats some of what I've eaten," Kit agreed. He set his menu down and flagged a waitress. They ordered lunch and started emptying glasses of dark ale.

  "So, what's on your mind?" Malcolm asked.

  "Margo. What else?"

  The younger man just grinned. "Anything in particular or everything in general? Or both?"

  "Both, actually," Kit admitted, "but her lack of progress in her studies, particularly."

  Malcolm's smile vanished. "She isn't stupid, Kit. What's the problem?"

  "Sven thinks she's too hyped on going down time to concentrate."

  The time guide sat back and fiddled with his ale glass, leaving a series of wet rings on the wooden tabletop. "He could be right," Malcolm said slowly. `That probably isn't all of it, but he could have something, there. Going down time is all she talks about."

  "How much time are you spending with her?"

  Malcolm flushed. "Not enough to warrant that tone, Kit. But I worry about her. I figure if she's with me, she's not falling prey to someone like Skeeter. And you know we get sharks through here every time Primary opens."

  Kit knew. He relaxed. "Yeah, don't we just? Any feel for how she's coming with her lessons? Ann and Sven are underwhelmed."

  Malcolm shook his head. "No, we don't talk much about her studies, not the bookwork part of them. Mostly she asks questions about my experiences down time or what I know about yours. She's ..." He hesitated.

  "She's what?"

  "I don't know. Guarded, I guess. She doesn't let the thorns down long, if you catch my drift."

  "Tell me about it. She sleeps on my couch, eats my food, showers in my bathroom, and about the only thing I can get her to relax and talk about is how much fun it is living in La-La Land. Do you have any idea how many obscure television celebrities that girl knows by sight?"

  Malcolm chuckled. "Really? Well, she did want to be an actress. But then, what little girl didn't at some point in life? As I recall, my sisters went through the `I'll die if I'm not an actress' phase shortly after the "I'll die if I don't have a horse' phase and the `I'll die if I'm not an Olympic figure skater' phase."

  Kit grinned. "I didn't have any sisters. Sounds like I missed out on all the fun. But seriously, Margo and I have had only one real heart-to-heart since she's been here and what I found out then ..." He shook his head. "She's so full of hurt, she doesn't want to talk about any of the million or so silly little details I'd give the Neo Edo to know"

  Malcolm sighed. "I figured as much. What are-" He paused, visible startlement passing over his mobile features, then pressed a hand to the back of his ear. "There's no gate due to cycle-is there?"

  Kit felt it too: that subharmonic sensation which heralded a gate opening nearby. Whatever it was, it was out of phase-and from the feel of it, this was one big gate.

  "New gate!"

  "Right.

  They scrambled for the door and all but collided with the Prince Albert's owner. "Where is it?" Peg Ames demanded breathlessly. She was holding her head. "Mother Bear, that's going to be a big gate. That hurts."

  It did, too, much worse than the Porta Romae – which was La-La Land's biggest active gate. 'Eighty-sixers converged on the Commons at a dead run from storefronts, even from residential corridors. Several carried scanners designed to search for the unstable fields that heralded a gate's arrival in the temporal spatial continuum. Tourists looked bewildered. They huddled in groups, holding their ears. A klaxon's strident SKRONNK! echoed off girders and concrete walls in a mad rhythm. Someone had sounded the special alert siren activated only during station emergencies. Last time that siren had sounded, the semi-permanent unstable gate under the Shermans' coffee shop had endangered the lives of more than a dozen rescue workers.

  Station Security converged from various points around the Commons. Several men and women in innocuous grey uniforms arrived in their wake, carrying everything from capture nets to tranquilizer rifles and riot shotguns. Discreet black lettering across grey uniform pockets read Pest Control. Their stalwart corps had risen considerably in status ever since an outbreak of Black Death on TT-13-and that wooly rhinoceros fiasco on TT-51-had been traced to station managers' refusals to pay for adequate pest control services. Nobody argued now with anything a Pest Control officer requisitioned.

  Bull Morgan, a stocky man who wore his suit like a casino pit boss wore a scowl, shouldered his way through the crowd, a fireplug on legs. Worry had creased his brow above a nose broken in one too many fist fights. Mike Benson, head of La-La Land's security, followed in the St
ation Manager's wake, blue eyes narrowed as he scanned the air for the first telltale sign of the new gate's location: He spoke urgently into a walkie-talkie.

  Bull high-signed someone with a scanner. "Has anybody-?"

  "Oh, shit!

  A dozen scanners were pointed straight upward.

  Then the ceiling opened up. A chronometer board vanished into blackness. The air dopplered through the whole visible spectrum in a chaotic display. Kit clamped hands over his ears in reflex action, even though the gesture did nothing to damp out the sound that wasn't a sound. Everyone tourists and 'eighty-sixers alike, backed away from the area, leaving wrought-iron benches empty near the center of Victoria Station. The gate widened, ragged and pulsating unsteadily near the edges It shrank visibly, then expanded with a rush like an oncoming freight train, only to collapse back toward its center again just as fast.

  It didn't take a sophisticated scanner to determine this gate's condition. It was visible to the naked eye.

  "Unstable!" Malcolm shouted.

  Kit just nodded and hoped to hell nothing fell through it from a height of five stories. Even the floor pulsed angrily in the backlash of subharmonics. The gate widened savagely once more. Blackness swallowed more and more of the ceiling, crept outward and engulfed the upper level of the nearest wall, taking catwalks with it. Biggest damned gate I've ever seen ....

  Ragged light flared: lightning bolts against a backdrop of black storm clouds, seen in miniature through the gate's distortion. For a split second, Kit glimpsed what looked for all the world like a rain-lashed seacoast. Then driving rain spilled into TT-86. Tourists broke and ran for cover under the nearest storefronts. Kit narrowed his eyes against the sudden deluge. Another wild gust of rain burst through, soaking them to the skin. He lifted a hand to protect his eyes –

  Something enormous crashed through.

  "LOOK OUT!"

  Whatever it was, it let out a scream like a frightened schoolgirl then plunged five stories toward the floor. Kit threw himself backward as it dropped straight toward them. A long, sinuous body impacted messily less than three feet away.

  A gout of blood and entrails spattered Malcolm. "Aw, bloody damn!"

  Another drenching gust of rain blasted through the gate, washing spattered onlookers clean. A trail of gore and broken bone stretched twenty feet across cracked cobblestones and smashed benches. Before Kit could cast more than a cursory glance at it, another dark shape dove through. This one was winged.

  "Holy-"

  A defiant scream like bending metal echoed through the Commons. A smaller winged shape darted through the black madness, then another and another, until a whole seething flock of wildly gyrating winged things darted frantically amongst the girders. Lightning sizzled through and struck a catwalk near the fourth floor. Blue fire danced across steel gridwork. Thunder smashed through the station, shattering upper-level windows. Class tinkled in sharp slivers on the cobbles.

  Then the gate collapsed.

  It vanished, almost in the blink of a stunned eyelash. A final drizzle of rain drifted down in a bewildered sort of mist to settle into forlorn puddles. Silence–profound and complete reigned for a full heartbeat. Then someone pointed and someone else screamed. An enormous shape with leathery wings skimmed low above the crowd. Kit dove instinctively for the floor.

  My God...

  Its wingspan was nearly the size of a Learjet's. It snapped a long, sharp beak with a clacking sound like striking-two-by-fours and passed less than a foot above the nearest "streetlamp."

  This time, 'eighty-sixers broke and ran. A silver underbelly caught the lights as it winged around toward the ceiling. Dark markings in black and grey mottled its back and wings. An enormous, broad vertical crest was patterned like a moth's wings, with huge eyespots and scarlet streaks. It snapped at a tourist on the third floor and narrowly missed her head. The woman screamed and hugged the catwalk. Pest Control tracked it with shotguns.

  "DON'T SHOOT IT!" Bull yelled. `TAKE IT ALIVE!"

  Half a dozen Pest Control officers swore, but dropped shotguns in favor of big capture nets. Kit scrambled up and grabbed the edge of the nearest net. Malcolm latched onto another section and lifted it in readiness for the beast's next pass.

  "What is that thing?" a nearby Time Tours employee gasped.

  The enormous animal soared toward the ceiling on thirty-foot wings, scraping a catwalk with one wingtip.

  Sue Fritchey said calmly, "Looks like a Pteranodon sternbergi to me. Damned near as big as a Quetzalecoatlus-and that's the biggest pterodactyl we know about. That gate opened right into the Upper Cretaceous. Here it comes Ready ...wait... wait. . "

  Kit hung onto his nerve and faced down a lethally sharp beak as the giant pterosaur swooped directly toward them. The head and neck alone were longer than Sven Bailey was tall. Kit's lizard-brain, that portion of the human cranium that controls fight-or-flight reactions, was screaming "RUN!" at the top of its lungs.

  Kit ignored it.

  Sue was still cautioning them, "Wait ...almost ...almost... NOW!

  A dozen men heaved the big net. It tangled in wings. Another net hit it, settling over the sharp beak and soaring crest. The huge pterodactyl came down hard in a mass of screaming, struggling beak, wings, and claws. Someone fired tranquilizers into it, three shots in rapid succession. Bull Morgan darted over to help hold the nets. A powerful wing lifted Kit off the ground then flung him back toward the shattered cobbles, but he hung onto the rope. Malcolm came loose and vanished from Kit's immediate awareness. Kit thought he heard a cry of pain and an explosive curse, but he was abruptly confronted by a baleful scarlet eye and a snapping, up curved beak that severed half-inch hemp fibers like spaghetti strings.

  One of the Pest Control officers darted in with a coil of rope and risked hands in order to rope the sharp beak shut. A twist of the pterosaur's neck lifted him off the floor and sent him flying, but the ropes around its beak held. The tiny crimson eye rolled murderously; then, slowly, that wicked little eye began to close. By the time the tranquilizers had taken effect, Kit was bruised and battered, but La-La Land had quite a zoological prize.

  "Good work," Bull said, panting slightly. "What're those?"

  He pointed toward the ceiling.

  Sue Fritchey was studying the smaller winged figures perched now amongst the rafters-through her field glasses. "Those over there are Ichthyornis, looks like. Little primitive birds, beak full of teeth, about the size of a seagull. Fish eaters. They'd be about the right time period and ecosystem to come through with a sternbergi. Must be twenty of 'em up there. And over there," she swung the glasses around, "we've got about fifteen little pterosaurs the size of crows. Hell, I have no idea what those are. Those, either." She'd swung the glasses around toward a pair sitting by themselves near the rafters. "They look like predators of some sort, but I'm not sure. Could be fish eaters, but the beaks look wrong. Far as I know, there's nothing in the fossil record anything like what I'm seeing."

  "Are there enough of any of those things for a breeding colony?" Bull asked sharply

  "Maybe. Those two by themselves, probably not. Those pterosaurs, though, and the ichthyornis flock... Close to critical failure of the gene pool, of course, but we've rescued species from that close to the brink. Depends on the number of breeding-or gravid females up there. It's hard to sex birds without plumage differences to go by and I'm not seeing any. And I have no idea how to sex pterosaurs."

  Nobody cracked the obvious jokes.

  "Any danger to the tourists?" Bull asked, glancing unhappily at the damage and the white-faced tourists still cowering in storefronts.

  "Dunno. Probably not, unless the animals feel threatened. I doubt they would unless somebody went after 'em: Birds, anyway, aren't as violently reactive as, say, killer bees, although the pterosaurs may be. Not as likely, but we just don't know." "Then we don't disturb them until we get additional expert advice," Bull decided. "Next time Primary cycles, send for whoever you need Those things eat fish?
Okay, stock all the fish ponds in the station and keep 'em stocked. Watch the little buggers and let me know if they put anybody in danger. Well, more danger than being spattered with dinosaur droppings."

  The Pest Control crews chuckle Sue Fritchey said, "They're not dinosaurs, they're pterosaurs and protobirds. But don't worry, we'll handle it."

  Bull nodded, then glanced at Malcolm and Kit. "Thanks for the help, boys."

  "Glad to pitch in," Kit smiled. "It's not every day even I get to wrestle a giant pterodactyl to the ground."

  Bull chuckled "Point taken. You all right, Malcolm?.

  Kit looked around. The young guide was nursing his wrist. "Yeah, just bloody bruised."

  Bull peered closely at the wrist, which was visibly swelling. "Have Rachel look at it and don't argue. My tab. I'll call her."

  Malcolm sighed. "Thanks, Bull. Me and my lousy luck."

  Kit grinned. "Don't think you get out of this job so easily."

  Malcolm gave him a sour glance. "What job? You haven't even told me what it is, yet."

  Kit formed a sling from Malcolms shirt and suspend his wrist at chest height. "What I had in mind was nurse-maiding Margo through the Britannia Gate."

  Malcolm stared, then eased the sling into a more comfortable position. His eyes had already begun to glow. "Are you serious?"

  "Dead serious. Speaking of dead, what the devil was that thing?" He jabbed a thumb at the creature which had fallen through the ceiling. Judging from the remains, it had been all teeth, tail, and claws. Several tourists had crowded closer already.

  Sue Fritchey waded in. "Sickle-claw killer of some kind, about the size of Utah raptor, but a different species from the look of it. We didn't know they'd survived that late into the Cretaceous. Just be real glad it's dead"

  Malcolm shivered absently. "Am I ever. Say, that thing is warm!" He leaned over for a better look.

  Sure enough, heat was rising from the dead sickle claw.

  "Yep," Sue said, moving back after a cursory glance. "Get back, please."

  "But, it's warm! Surely you can appreciate what this means for the scientific debate over ornithischian endothermy!"