Her gaze drifted to the chair Lex had always used at the table, empty now, like her heart. She looked at the bleak expressions of her comrades. They were feeling it, too, the terrible emptiness, but not like her. Lex had been her life.
“Tasha,” Kris gently whispered.
Tasha got to her feet. Her limbs felt like jelly. She stumbled outside, to look at the burial site, the hill rolling down to the wide valley floor. The Rockies towered in the distance, so beautiful.
She was not aware the others had followed her, until Kris took her by the hand.
“Harry and I have got an idea, but it’s for you to decide, Tash. We don’t want to step on any toes.”
Tasha nodded, feeling blessedly drunk, yet knowing she must listen. “Tell me,” she said, hearing the slur in her own words.
Kris squeezed her hand, then let go. “What if we try to create a fossil to preserve Lex’s DNA? If it’s found in your time capsule, it could be compared to his medical records.”
Instantly, Tasha felt more sober; this would provide the answer for her sons. “How would we do this?”
“With tree sap. We can go out and get some resin from a tree – spruce or juniper would be best – and then, if we place a tissue sample inside a sealed vial and surround it with the resin, it might stay viable for a long time.”
Tasha nodded. “I understand. You wish to make amber fossil, don’t you?” When Kris nodded back, she added, “Surely you know it’s highly unlikely Lex’s DNA will be preserved through time.”
“Yeah, Doc, we all realize the odds,” Harry acknowledged. “DNA is fragile, but I think we have something here to consider.”
“So, you’re saying it’s kind of like Jurassic Park?” Gus asked.
“Right,” Harry said. “But Jurassic Park couldn’t have happened, at least not yet. Even though the story was all the rage when we were little kids, Jurassic Park was fiction. The scientists of our time cannot recreate the genome of a T-rex. Then again, some fossils from sandstone sediments have yielded some surprises: proteins and soft tissue.”
Tasha felt as if she were going insane, listening to this drivel about what? Movies? Stupid fossils? But she found she couldn’t speak up. She simply stood there, dumb, listening, feeling drunk again, tears threatening.
“... er, yes,” Kris was saying, “and we’ve even gotten 350 million year old organic molecules from fossilized crinoids, quite possibly the remains of the pigments that colored them. And dinosaurian pigment-loaded structures called melanosomes have been found, too. Remember, amber is even better at preserving tissue than sandstone, so I think we should take a chance and give it a try.”
“We can seal a vial with Lex’s DNA inside the resin,” Harry said. “Maybe it’ll work. Even if there’s a remote chance, we’ve got to attempt it.” He glanced at Kris, who nodded back. “We’d be crazy if we didn’t give it a shot.”
“Enough!” Tasha finally managed to say. “I do not care about details. You have convinced me it is possible.” Her eyes filled with tears and she brushed them away. “I, I shall remove sample from Lex’s body.”
“Are you sure you can do this?” Kris asked. “I could, you know, or Harry.”
Am I truly up to this? Tasha wondered how she could divorce herself from her feelings. But she had to do it. She owed it to her husband and sons.
Harry stood there, watching her, and she saw his grief, too.
“Tasha,” he glanced away and then cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to tell you what to do, but make it something that’ll be more apt to preserve his DNA, something sturdy like a tooth. Maybe one of his back molars.”
“Two molars, Tasha,” Kris added. “The more samples, the better. And some of his hair, because nothing can penetrate intact shafts of hair, not even bacteria. The DNA inside the hair may survive in a better state than that in his molars.”
Harry turned to Gus. “We didn’t get a chance to leave the commemorative plaque on Mars. I think we should put it in Lex’s grave.”
Gus looked to Tasha for her opinion.
Nodding, she turned toward the lander. “I must check Dawn’s arm, then I shall work on Lex.”
“Tasha,” Gus said in a gentle tone. “Maybe later. You need some rest.”
“Nyet, I must keep busy.”
Fresh tears spilled down Tasha’s cheeks as she walked away. I must, she thought, or I shall not survive.
***
Kris followed Tasha into the lander. Not taking his eyes off them, Harry said, “There go two women of vision. That’s a brilliant idea, eh? About the amber fossil.”
“Forget about that for a moment, will you?” Gus said as he turned toward the lander. “I’ve been worrying about something else, about getting out of here. Personally, I think we’re all going to end up like Lex if we stay here much longer.” His gaze was fixed on the hatch. “I saw tracks over there, not far from the stairs.”
“Tracks?” Harry followed the path of Gus’s stare. “What kind of tracks?”
“If I was a bettin’ man, I’d say they belonged to a pair of raptors.”
“Show me.” Harry tried to collect his thoughts as Gus led him to the tracks. This sure didn’t add up. Predators were usually cautious, wary. To get so close to something as big and strange as the lander showed boldness; the only parallel he could think of was when bears raided a campground.
But there was no smell of food here, no reason why raptors would be interested.
Unless they’re stalking us.
Gus halted near the stairs. “Here,” he said, pointing.
Harry came down on his haunches and examined the ground. There were two distinct track patterns indicating a pair of creatures. At around thirty centimeters long, they were the right size, too. His gaze focused on the distinctive two-toed arrangement, with the second demonlike claw locked up over the third digit. No doubt about it. A pair of Deinonychi. And they had come this close to the lander?
“Shit,” Harry said as he glanced up at Gus.
“My sentiments exactly.” Gus stooped down and plucked two golden brown feathers from the ground. “These look familiar, don’t they?” he asked, a scornful lift to his brow.
“Yeah, I recognize ‘em,” Harry said, thinking back to Dawn’s near-fatal encounter with the Deinonychi pack.
Harry shook his head. Everything was falling apart. “So, Commander, you tell me. Just what do you think we should do now?”
Gus looked off in the direction of the retreating track path. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we need to figure out something – and soon.”
***
After spending a sleepless night hunkered down in the Valiant, Dawn and her crewmates stood together before sunrise on a hill overlooking the great basin. Despite their collective grief, they were watchful and heavily armed against the possibility of an attack by predators. But the minutes passed calmly. By the standards they were used to, the day had started out more peacefully than they’d ever anticipated.
The air wafted over them, damp and cool. In the distance, rising above the forest, the Rockies were cloaked in a soft ruby mist. Down below, the valley floor slumbered in deep, pre-dawn shadows. For a time, silence reigned, but gradually it got lighter and the air began to stir. From the surrounding hills, the shrieks, rumbles, and trills of ten thousand waking dinosaurs echoed on the breeze.
When the eastern sky flamed, Tasha kissed Lex’s shrouded body on the forehead, then watched as the men lowered him into the ground. Dawn fought back tears, hurting from grief and bodily pain; she was a mass of bruises now, and her arm ached miserably, but she would not allow herself to give in to her own suffering. Tasha needed her, she could see that; she appeared to be so overwhelmed Dawn guessed she might not be able to speak.
Clutching a few flowers, Tasha choked back a sob. With a pleading look, she turned to Gus.
Nodding, he seemed to understand her silent request. He slung his gun over his shoulder and consulted his communicator. “Since Lex was not reli
gious, I thought a fitting epitaph would be a quote from the naturalist John Muir.”
Tasha nodded back in thanks, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Clearing his throat, Gus read Muir’s words in a strong, steady voice, “On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.”
He paused, looking into Tasha’s glistening eyes. “We’ll miss Lex,” he went on, “but remember he hasn’t left us. He will live in our hearts, and he’ll always be a part of this beautiful planet.”
Visibly touched by Gus’s words, Tasha kissed him on the cheek, then turned to Dawn. With trembling fingers, she pressed her communicator into her hands. “Please, read this for me,” she said, her voice fragile. “It was Lex’s favorite.”
Wiping her eyes, Dawn tried to focus on the words. It took a moment before she recognized a stanza from The Tempest, the speech by Shakespeare’s character, Prospero.
Dawn took a breath to steady herself and then began to read:
Our revels now are ended: These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
“Balshoy spaceeba,” Tasha thanked Dawn, before her face contorted in grief.
Dawn gave Tasha a hug, holding her tight.
We are such stuff as dreams are made of... The words repeated in Dawn’s mind as she kissed Tasha on both cheeks, then drew away.
Kris stepped forward, holding her communicator. “Jean-Michel will read the Trisagion,” she said, “from the Eastern Orthodox Service, for Lex’s absent family, particularly his and Tasha’s son, Michael, who converted to that faith.”
“Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us,” Jean-Michel softly repeated three times.
There was a moment of silence and then Tasha whispered, “Eternal memory, eternal memory... blessed repose and eternal memory.” She tossed the flowers on Lex’s shrouded form. Finally, she took some dirt and swept it through her hair.
The meaning of the gesture was not lost on Dawn as she recalled Out of Africa and the hero Denys’s respect for traditional Maasai customs. Tasha had mirrored the action of Karen Blixen, by placing dirt in her hair and not sprinkling it on Lex’s grave, going against societal norms in recognition of the independent spirits of the men they loved.
“Farewell, my dear Alexander,” Tasha said in a halting voice. “Farewell.”
And Dawn thought she heard her say something more, a plea barely heard: “Come back to me.”
Shoulders drooping, Tasha turned away and started toward the Valiant.
Weeping, Dawn sat on a boulder, watching as Kris followed Tasha inside the lander. Her broken arm had continued to throb, but now it seemed much, much worse. However, she didn’t want anything for the pain. She wanted to hurt, to feel the depth of her misery.
Dabbing her eyes, she studied Gus and Harry as they took turns filling the burial pit with dirt. One dug, while the other stood guard, gun aimed as his gaze swept over the site. When they’d finished, they covered the grave with fist-sized rocks collected the night before. Soon, the pile reached their ankles, then the level of their knees.
Gus picked up the last stone and set it into place. It was over. Dawn’s eyes filled again. Harry rested his shovel on his shoulder and stared at the burial mound. She could tell he too fought tears.
“I won’t be long,” Harry told Gus as he wiped his face on the back of his sleeve and then walked away. He called over his shoulder, “I must see to the animals. They weren’t fed last night.”
Gus nodded. “Take your time,” he said, a fresh edge to his voice. “I need to talk to Dawn.”
He came alongside the boulder where she sat and stared into her eyes. His expression was inscrutable to Dawn.
“I’ll miss Lex,” she said. “Harry will, too.”
“Yeah. Sure. Especially if he needs something, like a root canal.”
Dawn felt surprised by Gus’s cynical tone. “I think you’re being way too hard on Harry. It’s not his fault Lex died.”
Gus frowned. “Have you figured out why we’re here? Was there a point to Lex’s death?”
“I don’t know. The Keeper must want something.”
Gus stared at the sling on her arm. “You could have died. That T. rex was about to eat you. If it hadn’t been for the cannon...” Momentarily, he lost his voice. “We got complacent, and with complacency comes accidents.”
“Gus, no one is to blame.”
“I am.” He shook his head in self-disgust. “I’m a damned poor excuse for an astronaut, and a lousy commander.”
“Gus, no. You’re the best.”
“No, Lex was the best, the best damned man I ever knew. And now he’s gone. I blame myself for his death. And I blame the Keeper. I wonder what that alien bastard thinks now.”
“I doubt he knows what’s happened.”
“Oh, I figure he knows, but he doesn’t care. He’s not human.”
Dawn hesitated. “I think he has feelings.”
“That’s bullshit.”
She ignored his bluntness, deciding to tell him her secret. “Gus, I think you’re wrong. When the Keeper came to me that night, when he entered your body, I could tell he was glad to be alive. He wanted to...” As her voice faded, she felt her cheeks flame.
“What? Finish what you were sayin’, Dawn. He wanted to what?”
“Touch me.”
“Touch you?”
“Yes. In a strange way, I think he wanted to be close to me.”
“Are you crazy? That’s pure bullshit!”
She gaped at him, and he bit his lip.
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically. He reached out, wiping a strand of hair from Dawn’s brow, his touch gentle. “I think I’m losing it. Forgive me. It’s not your fault.”
“You sound jealous.”
Frowning, he withdrew his hand. “I am not jealous. But I think we’ve got to get out of here. We’re all going crazy.” He got to his feet. “There are two alternatives. We can go north to the Arctic. Harry said something about it the other day, something about that being the safest place for us here on Earth. He doubts many dinosaurs live that far north, except in high summer. He said there’s some evidence hadrosaurs went up there, perhaps looking for pines and firs, but it’s probably too cold and dark for them the rest of the year.”
“And the other alternative?”
“We can go back to Mars. Since there’s radio silence, it’s reasonable to assume no one lives there in this epoch. We can start a colony there. Begin terraforming the planet. Change history.”
“You’re serious?”
“What other choices do we have?” Gus sounded angry again. “What ideas do you have?”
Dawn grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Okay. Calm down, will you? We’ll talk it over with the others. You’re right. We can’t wait around here forever. The Keeper may never reappear.”
“I hope he doesn’t.” Gus shivered slightly, eyes searching the distance. “I don’t want him inside me again.”
She let go of his hand. “Neither do I.”
There was no response.
Dawn glanced up and caught Gus’s expression. With an intense look, he probed the
sky.
She followed his stare. In the southeast, a bright star had appeared out of nowhere, about thirty degrees above the horizon. Her first thought was that a supernova caused the light; otherwise, how could they see it in the daytime?
She took a closer look. Immediately, she understood she was not seeing an exploding star.
A blazing trail of light hung in the heavens – a comet!
After exchanging an amazed look with Gus, her gaze veered back to the sky.
“Do you remember what the Keeper told me?” Dawn asked. “About how the co-pilot should watch for something?”
“Yes. Now we know what he meant.”
She stared at Gus, saw his darkening expression. “Gus, I think he was warning us, wasn’t he?”
“Or taunting us.”
Dawn’s gaze fell on the cold fire of the comet’s tail. Was it true then? Had the Keeper sent them back to the time of the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, to the actual K/T Event?
Dawn blinked once, then twice, and turned to Gus. “I can’t believe this.”
He looked long and hard at her, and then, in a grim voice, said, “Believe it.”
Chapter 19
O, Wonder! How goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That hath such people in ‘t!
~William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Gus squinted at Jean-Michel’s image projected onto the table. “If we’re goin’ back to Mars, we’ll need a few more animals.”
“And DNA, Commander. We’ll need many samples of DNA.”
“Uh huh. I guess the ship will be something like a regular Noah’s Ark, won’t it?”
“You must take a variety of plant DNA, also. For example, trees for future sources of wood. And lichen and blue-green algae to begin terraforming Mars, and algae for dietary protein production. Also, any type of ancestral vegetation that can be genetically manipulated to produce new flora.”
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