by Adam Carter
She could see damage to the trees, and tracks indicating a large and heavy animal had moved through recently. Since coming to Ceres Garrel had become something of an expert of the local wildlife. She had done her research before arrival, of course, but there was only so much one could learn from books about animals which only lived on one world.
Keeping at a crouch, Garrel moved forward, listening for any change to the noises of the trees. There were forests on Ceres, but these trees only stretched for about a mile in any direction. The noises within each were not too dissimilar, however, and she knew precisely which birds would stop trilling when a predator was at large. She followed the tracks, noting one tree which had been torn from its roots and was now leaning against one of its neighbours. Something large had decided the tree was in its way, and if it could have done that to a tree Garrel shuddered to think what it might do to their camp.
Five minutes later Garrel could smell a freshness to the air which could only mean she was approaching the stream she knew flowed through the woodland. Keeping as low as she could, her rifle levelled ahead of her, Garrel peered through the trees to see she had indeed reached the stream. There was a creature standing there, drinking its fill from the water, and Garrel smiled as she lowered her rifle.
The beast stood at just over two metres from the ground and walked upon four powerful legs which still somehow managed to appear squat. Its bulky body looked cumbersome, flabby even, but this was mainly due to the armour spread across its back. A strange mixture of diamond-hard scutes and dulled protrusions, the creature’s carapace resembled that of a tortoise, the legs extending below adding weight to the analogy. Unlike many of its kind, this specimen’s armoured protrusions did not appear all that spiked, and she had seen some particularly vicious-looking denizens of this world clearly related to this beast. Its body length was probably around the six metre mark, its tail being at least two metres – longer even than Garrel’s entire body. The tail was similarly armoured, consisting in part of fused vertebrae, the tip of which was clumped into what was likely either a mass of bone or compressed hair, like that of a rhinoceros’s horn. She had never seen the tail in action but knew from her research that the creature was able to crush an animal’s skull with a single swipe of that powerful weapon. At the culmination of its short, armoured neck, its head was protected by two large spikes, its sharp beak currently plunged into the water but its eyes ever alert for roving carnivores. An animal was always at its most vulnerable when lowering its head for a drink, and Garrel knew any creature would be wary at such a time. It was something human beings took far too much for granted.
The animal was called a talarurus, and was a part of the ankylosaurid group. These creatures had been so successful they had been there right up until the end of the dinosaurs.
Garrel smiled to herself as she had such thoughts, her eyes never leaving the wonderful creature. Every schoolchild knew of the dinosaur world Ceres, but no one understood it: some didn’t even believe it. Ceres was a world so far away, and it was illegal for anyone to ever go there, so there was never any evidence the dinosaurs even existed. Many in the Jupiter system firmly believed it was all a government conspiracy, that they wanted people to think there were dinosaurs to deflect attention from other secrets they were hiding. Garrel had seen a few of the films they had made about Ceres, but none of them could ever compare to actually seeing one of these things in the flesh.
But she was also more than aware of the dangers these creatures posed. Whoever had put the dinosaurs here had not just brought about the return of the herbivores like talarurus. Ceres had far too many carnivores running loose, and Garrel would have been more than happy to have spent the rest of her days here avoiding them all.
It was sights such as this, watching a harmless wild animal drinking at a stream, that for Garrel made the entire trip worthwhile.
“Sara!”
Garrel’s heart stopped as she recognised the voice as belonging to Tom Allen. Nor was it especially close. She watched in horror as he wandered out of the trees about thirty metres from her, walking backwards, looking all around him and shouting her name far too loudly. He stopped when he noticed the huge lumbering dinosaur not ten paces from him, and almost fell on his backside. The talarurus regarded him with agitation, and Garrel watched the mighty tail begin a swing designed to cow a rival. Garrel watched as Allen scrambled back to his feet. He would do the sensible thing and run, placing as much distance between him and the dinosaur as he could. He would do the sensible thing: he wasn’t stupid.
Allen screamed at the top of his voice for help, falling and making such a mess of rising that he looked very much like a flailing swimmer fighting the rock tied to his feet.
The talarurus was turning towards him now, its tail swinging in wider arcs behind it as a warning. It opened its beak and shrieked at him: a challenge designed to test his reaction. Garrel knew whatever Allen did from this point on would be wrong but did not fancy having to explain to Professor Travers why her assistant was coming home in a body bag.
Bringing her rifle to her shoulder, Garrel sighted the animal but could not find a chink in its armour. She knew she could shoot one of the legs, but the armour seemed designed to protect these also, and she could imagine the creature being able to drop to the ground and bring its legs under the carapace. The animal was also agitated now, moving from side to side, and Garrel knew she would not be able to get in a clear shot. Shooting it and striking its armour would likely only annoy the thing.
Allen seemed to have entirely given up trying to get back to his feet and was staring in horror at the thing bearing down upon him. Whatever had to be done, Garrel knew she had to do it all herself.
Stepping out from the trees, Garrel swung her rifle back across her shoulder and pulled a pistol from a holster at her belt. Holding the gun away from her, she fired two shots into the ground. The explosive discharge from the gun proved enough to startle the animal, which had never before heard such an unnatural sound, and as it turned its head from Allen she shouted, “Go! Get out of here.”
She felt only empty satisfaction as Allen scampered away, for by this time the talarurus was turning its entire body to face her. Behind its bulky form, the brutal tail swung mercilessly and Garrel knew it did not matter at all whether this animal intended to eat her. She knew full well that by necessity it was the herbivores which often grew the largest and were gifted with the most violent defences.
At the moment the great ankylosaurid was just looking at her with small, beady eyes. She considered running but had no idea the speed of this creature; nor was she willing to find out by simply running away from it. She struggled to think of what she had to hand, but aside from her pistol and her tranquiliser rifle her armament was pitiful. She still carried the knife she had confiscated from Allen, but all three weapons combined would not grant her a single hope against the thing before her.
The talarurus reared back its head and released a dull-pitched bellow which reverberated throughout the trees. Garrel felt her legs begin to lose their strength, but she knew this was the intention. It was an animal used to being wary while it watered, and today it had found a confrontation. It was reacting as she would have expected any animal to in a similar situation, and she fought furiously for the way out of this. She considered climbing a tree, but felt the talarurus might just smash the tree to toothpicks and her along with it.
Backing off a few paces, very slowly, Garrel hoped the thing would just go back to its drinking. However, the animal was far too agitated by everything that had happened and as it lowered its great head, raising itself on its rear legs, Garrel watched the tail go up into the air. She knew what was coming and that her chance of survival was diminishing rapidly.
Then she remembered that some large herbivores, like the elephant, had poor eyesight. She had no idea whether the same was true for ankylosaurids, but felt she had no other options. If she had something which would attract its attention, something bright and col
ourful, she might be able to deflect its charge.
Looking down, she suddenly remembered her bright yellow trousers and immediately tore at her belt and kicked off her boots. Unfortunately the talarurus chose that moment to bellow another challenge and charge.
Garrel fled, stumbling through the underbrush as she attempted to tear her trousers from her. Her legs were not designed for such multitasking, however, and she felt her foot twist in the material and she fell. The air exploded above her and she was showered by shards of wood as the lethal tail of the talarurus smashed through a tree and would have turned her head to paste had she not stumbled. Garrel looked back in horror as she ankylosaurid regained its balance after the assault and renewed its charge.
Tearing her trousers free at last, Garrel ran as fast as she could, holding them up to the side and waving them fiercely. She could feel the ground tremble behind her as the beast gave chase, but she was searching for something while she ran and knew that waving her trousers in the air was not sufficient to save her. Then she saw it approaching: precisely what she had been looking for. It was a natural ditch formed by the corrosion of excessive rain. They had been having terrible storms lately, and trees had been uprooted, rocks had been moved, and mudslides had formed ditches. Pouring as much speed into her legs as she could, Garrel ran for the ditch and leaped. As she left the ground she tossed her trousers and gained the relieving satisfaction to see them snag on the low branch of a tree. Then she was crashing into the ditch and pushing her back against the soil and mud, her breath catching in her throat.
Above she could hear the angry roars of the talarurus and the crashing of the woods as it tore into the offending trees. Branches struck Garrel like insane hail, and she gasped as she saw an entire tree slam into the ground where the animal had toppled it.
And then there was silence.
She waited a full minute before rising and risking a peek over the side. Of the talarurus there was no sign, but the woods had taken a terrible beating. Trees had been felled and the ground itself had great rents where the beast had slammed its armoured tail into the mud. Hoisting herself up the ditch, she wandered tentatively over to a splash of yellow in the foliage. Gingerly she lifted what was left of her trousers, but she was only holding one leg and could see no trace of the other. The material had been shorn through with the skill of a surgeon and she could only imagine that once it had attacked her garment with its tail the ankylosaurid had bitten through with its beak.
Tossing away the useless leg, Garrel wondered how she was ever going to find Allen in all this madness.
“Are you all right, Sara?”
She watched him scramble across the ground, almost tripping on several occasions, and felt like clobbering him. She was also extremely relieved to see him alive.
“I think we found out what the animal was,” Garrel said. “Let’s head back and tell Travers she doesn’t have anything to worry ...” Her sentence drifted off when she realised Allen had stopped several metres from her, his eyes wide and staring once more. In all the terror she had almost forgotten why he would be doing that. “You really need to get a girlfriend, Allen.”
“Sorry. I ... I wasn’t staring.”
At that moment Garrel did not even much care. She was too tired to argue, and motioned for him to precede her. They needed to get back to camp before the storms began anew, but there was no way she was going to have him gazing at her backside the entire journey.
CHAPTER TWO
It was raining. It was raining a lot. As Professor Diana Travers scribbled in her diary, she paused, scrubbing out what she had written. When she came to publish her discoveries she did not want to have to set it off with a boring description of the weather. Only begin a piece of prose with a description of the weather if it has some colossal impact to what would come later, she had been told. Staring out the window at the torrential downpour, she felt perhaps it might give her reason to begin her notes with a mention of the weather after all.
Travers set down her pen and reached for the flask of coffee which was keeping her going through the night. She was forty-two and married to a load of dead bones rotting in the ground. She had no children, no family to speak of, and aside from a love of Greek poetry very little in her life at all. She was a short woman with very little regard to her appearance. As such she always dressed in utilitarian attire, which usually meant anything hard-wearing, considering how much of her time she spent on digs. Her hair was short and flat, dark with hints of premature grey. Her glasses were hardy but not from any fashionable make, and she would not have been able to say who had produced any of her clothes.
She had always wanted to be an archaeologist, although it was something her parents had discouraged. Most of the archaeologists she had met in her time, especially during her student days, had gone into the profession because they held an obscene interest in history and in piecing together ancient societies. They had also held more than a passing interest in money, which was something Travers had never much cared for. So long as money got her to the next dig, she did not think of it at all. It was neither money nor history which drove Travers, however. It was not the ancient societies which inspired her passion. What Travers was interested in was Time.
Time was at the very heart of everything archaeologists did. They worked in the present so they could learn from the past and build a more knowledgeable future. Their work was slow, taking as long as it needed to, for the rock beneath a person’s feet seldom agreed to give up its dead so easily.
Travers had become interested in time when her grandmother died. Young Travers had only been five at the time, yet while her family were grieving Travers had instead examined the situation and reached a conclusion. People were born, they lived and they died. Once the first had happened, nothing could prevent the final, but it was the middle that had sparked Travers’s imagination. People lived, and it did not matter what they did while they lived, because they would still ultimately die.
Time was the most powerful force in the Universe. Time created and Time destroyed. And it did not care what happened between those two because there was nothing anyone could do against it. As she grew older Travers learned about the various religions of the solar system, most of which went back thousands of years to Earth. She had met so many people entirely devout in their beliefs of certain deities watching over their actions, and yet Travers had never heard a single tale of such a being more powerful than Time. Surely even the gods would be destroyed by Time, since at the death of the final human being those gods would be forgotten. And even an omnipotent being could not be considered a god if there was no one left alive to worship it. Gods needed to lord over the living, otherwise they were just ordinary.
Putting any of this into her diary would, of course, not be such a good idea. The animosity between religion and science stretched back farther than Travers could trace, and while she may have held strong opinions on both, neither was especially detrimental. Faith was all well and good, but Travers liked to examine the facts herself before reaching a decision. That was the thing she had always liked about science. In science there were no answers, merely speculation. Theories. And as soon as a theory was disproved, a new theory could be proposed and tested. After all, even gravity was in essence still a theory. If someone somewhere discovered a place where gravity did not operate, it would prove that gravity did not exist at all, and she could only imagine the scramble of scientists trying to work out what really drew smaller objects towards larger ones. Travers had long hoped to be able to make a similar discovery with Time.
There was one other important aspect Time had for Professor Travers. It was such an important factor because when the expedition to Ceres had been financed, it had been agreed that they would adhere to a strict schedule; a schedule she was no longer even certain she would be able to make work for her.
Presently, Travers was in her laboratory, running some tests on rocks she and her assistant had torn from the world. They had run all the initial
tests upon the rocks of the surface, but these had been excavated from a quarter mile down. They were throwing up some interesting results, many of which Travers had not expected at all. It seemed Time was perhaps something equally as important to Ceres.
“Why are you looking at fossils when there are dinosaurs running around outside?”
Travers looked up from her microscope, knowing she wasn’t getting any more work done tonight. Professor Albert Monroe was a few years older than Travers, thin, excitable and even when dressed in shorts and a T-shirt one could smell his wealth about his person. Being inside as they were, Monroe wore one of the many suits he had opted to bring with him. Travers was annoyed that she had been forced to leave important equipment behind for the sake of weight and space, yet Monroe had been given free rein to bring whatever he pleased. It was, however, his money which had financed the expedition, and Travers had found herself having to be far more pleasant to him lately than she had ever intended.
It wasn’t as though Monroe was even a real professor. He had simply bought the title to add to the various others he had before his name, and the letters which followed. His titles were the beginning, his letters the end; Time did not care what happened to the man between.
“It’s raining outside,” Travers told him simply, hoping he would pick up on her mood and leave her to it. “They’re not going to be running around in the rain.”
