“I think you’d better tell that to the scientists.”
“No doubt they already know,” Jean-Michel said patiently. “I will discuss it with them today.”
“Good. So, how long do we have before the impact?”
When Jean-Michel did not answer, Gus visualized him doing calculations. A map projection made from an orbital image of Cretaceous Earth suddenly flickered onto the table display. Gus pondered the Earth’s landmasses, which were shaped differently than in modern times, then watched as Jean-Michel superimposed a Cretaceous map projection over the modern map. The most notable difference between them was the wide rift between North and South America; in the Cretaceous, the Isthmus of Panama was still far beneath the ocean waves.
The projection changed again as it zoomed in on North America.
“Notice how the North Pole is around 2,500 kilometers away from its modern position,” Jean-Michel said. “It is located on the land bridge connecting Alaska with Siberia. Notice too how the western edge of North America is in a more northerly position than in modern times, while the East Coast rests more to the south.”
Gus nodded as he stared at the table. He spotted a few other differences as well: Alaska and the Yukon were located entirely within the polar region; there was a big sea smack-dab in the middle of the North American continent; while the Appalachians bordered the tropics.
Jean-Michel manipulated the map projection again. This time, he zeroed in on the Yucatan. “The comet will strike here,” he said, pointing to a northern coastal region. “The cometary nucleus is now traveling at twenty-five kilometers per second.”
Gus whistled. That was over one hundred times faster than a jet!
Jean-Michel continued, “As the comet approaches the Earth from the southeast, it will move at an increasingly faster rate because of gravity. Based on its estimated speed and trajectory, the impact will occur in five days. I’ll have the calculations down to the minutes and seconds in an hour or so.”
“When it hits, how will it affect our area?” Gus asked.
“I am...” Jean-Michel’s voice faded momentarily. “Even though your location is thousands of kilometers to the north of the impact site and the curve of the Earth will protect you from the initial shock cloud, the local environment will be devastated by firestorms and later on by acid rain. But since the Valiant will be docked with the Destiny by then––”
“Yeah, I know. We’ll be safe and sound.” Gus looked at the hatch and then glanced back at the com-screen. “Well, I’ll sign off for now,” he added as he stood up and stretched.
“Roger, Gus. I will contact Harry at 1000 hours as planned.”
“Roger that. I’ll remind him.”
Rubbing his eyes, Gus walked across the room, stepped over the threshold of the hatch, and came into the sunlight. He spotted his heavily armed crew near the Rover. Eyes skyward, they were all staring at the heavens. Although the comet couldn’t be seen at this time of day, it didn’t take a genius to know what they’d been discussing.
The hair pricked on the back of his neck as he watched their expressions. He realized he’d never seen any of them look so rattled. He needed to keep them busy.
“Hey, we’ve got to get moving,” Gus said. He turned to Kris and Harry. “You got all the gear?”
“Not quite,” Kris said as she and Harry resumed their work.
Gus’s gaze met Dawn’s and he pointed to the Valiant. “Dawn, you’re with me.”
She gave him a quizzical look and then followed him back inside.
“What is it?” she asked. “You look so serious.”
“I want you to stay here today.” Gus dropped onto a bench and stretched out his legs. He rubbed his eyes again. “Stay here with Tasha.”
“But...?”
“No buts, Dawn. That’s an order. Kris, Harry, and I will be the only ones going out for more specimens.”
“I wish I could go with you.”
“Not with a busted arm, you don’t.”
The heartfelt way she stared at him made him want to take her in his arms and hold her close.
“Gus?”
Her voice brought him back to reality. “What?”
She glanced away.
He knew exactly what she was thinking, and every instinct told him to walk. He thought of all the endless goddamned politically correct bullshit training sessions about affairs between commanders and crewmembers. He’d always had an exemplary record both at NASA and in the military. Times were changing, though, particularly concerning men and women working in space. It seemed inevitable, especially when you realized how long a mission could be. Realistically, no crew could be made up exclusively of married couples, but NASA was still way behind the times. Despite rampant gossip, agency officials wouldn’t officially admit anyone ever had sex in outer space.
Still torn, Gus studied Dawn, drawn to her face, aching for her body. He realized now he had felt close to her for a long time. After Charlotte, he’d wanted a life again. And now, what was stopping him? Hell, NASA didn’t even exist! It was still millions of years down the road. There were no barriers here, nothing to stop their love.
“Is there a future for us?” Dawn asked.
He stood and looked into her beautiful green eyes. “Yes.” He gently kissed her on the lips and then focused on the bruise ranging from her jawline to her neck. Despite Tasha’s gene therapy, it still looked bad. As for her arm, it would be days before the cast came off.
The hatch door opened and the others started to file into the lander. Tasha looked especially formidable as she strode to the gun rack and replaced her rifle and hunting knife.
Gus knew Tasha would have his balls if he touched Dawn now.
“Gus,” Dawn whispered. “I’ll come to your bunk as soon as everyone else is asleep.”
Surprised, he looked at Dawn, but then glanced back at Tasha and thought the better of it.
“No,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Tasha would kill me.” He grinned. “Once your cast is off... you don’t want it getting in the way, now do you?”
“Okay, but I don’t exactly need my arm, do I? I mean, we could both adapt.”
Gus turned and studied Dawn’s eyes. They were twinkling.
***
The day went slowly for Dawn. Then finally, when evening came and she was sure everyone had fallen asleep, she got out of her bed and headed for Gus’s cubicle. The more she thought about it, the more she refused to believe he’d really meant it when he said they needed to wait for her cast to come off.
She hesitated at the window, looking out at the night sky. The comet’s diaphanous tail filled the heavens. Doomsday. Not much time left.
More than ever, she felt the need to be with Gus.
A sudden movement outside caught her attention. She squinted at something – a figure – standing in the shadows. Her heart pumped faster. Deinonychus?
No, it looks sort of... human? She did a double take. What the heck is that?
She stumbled to the wall near the hatch, in the process knocking over some equipment, and then hit the switch for the outdoor floodlights. Racing back to the window, she pressed her face to the glass and caught sight of the creature just as it started moving off, heading for the bushes.
Dawn heard some commotion as her crewmates left their bunks, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the thing outside. A flash of astonishment surged through her mind as she studied its naked body, with its green skin and the crest of multi-colored peacock feathers jutting from its head, like an elaborate, old-style, punk rock hairdo.
Suddenly, the creature faced her and raised its right hand, as if in fond farewell. Is it waving at me? Dawn thought in bewilderment.
In the next instant, it ran off, disappearing into the brush.
What was that? Dawn felt a cold, immobilizing chill race down her backbone. As her fellow astronauts came alongside, Gus’s voice startled her out of her paralysis.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
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“I don’t know,” Dawn said, trembling. “It was a creature... oh, I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Try,” Harry urged.
“I saw some kind of weird dinosaur. It had feathers on its head.”
“A raptor?” Harry asked, exchanging a look with Gus.
Dawn shook her head. “No. I think it was aware. I mean, I could swear it waved goodbye.”
“Huh?” Harry asked, gazing outside.
“I’m not going crazy, guys. I can draw it.”
“Nyet,” Tasha said. “You will not. It is painkillers. They can do things to brain. Forget this nonsense and go back to bed.”
Kris pointed at the window. “We could go outside and take a look around.”
“No way,” Gus said. “No one is to go out there now.” He frowned at his crew. “Do you understand? Those are my orders. No one goes outside.”
Dawn still felt unnerved. “I wouldn’t go out there if I were you,” she told Kris.
Gus forced a smile. “Come on, Dawn. Do as Tasha says and lie down.”
His gaze lingered on her face as he put an arm around her shoulders and led her back to her bunk.
***
The moments ticked by and still Tasha stared out the window, recalling the puzzled look on Dawn’s face. What had she seen? Was it a delusion, or had something actually been standing outside the Valiant?
Kris and Harry had started talking about their plans for the next few hours, but by this time Tasha only half-listened as she tried to spot tracks near the stairs.
She could see no footprints there. From this angle, the ground appeared to be undisturbed.
Tasha paused, letting her gaze roam on to the bushes. Then, quite unexpectedly, she realized she was gazing at a face partially hidden by foliage. She blinked with incredulity, for it looked exactly like Lex!
With a chill, she recalled an old Russian belief; after death, the soul did not travel to heaven straight away, instead lingering for a time on the Earth.
The wind came up and the leaves trembled. In the next moment, the face vanished. Tasha stood there, rooted to the spot, heart thumping, considering the possibilities.
The face had seemed so real. But could it have been Lex? How was that possible?
Immediately, Tasha’s analytical mind dismissed what she had seen. She knew human beings had the propensity to see the images of faces in commonplace things, such as clouds and shadows and in the patterns of leaves. And yet...
It was only after the Sun was high in the sky that Tasha remembered where she was, and wondered if she would ever know what had truly been out there.
Chapter 20
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
~William Butler Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds
Australopithecus afarensis. Australopithecus sediba. Australopithecus anamensis. Ardipithecus ramidus. Sahelanthropus tchadensis.
All were ancient hominid species that had lived, propagated, and died in Central Africa and the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. Au. afarensis had walked on the savannas with a humanlike gait some three and a half million years B.C.E., while Au. ramidus ranged over a mixed savanna/woodland environment a million years before that. Au. sediba, with its versatile hands, made tools around two million years B.C.E. All were descendants of an ancient lineage going back to the time when hominids and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor, sometime between six and seven million B.C.E.
But here, in the late Cretaceous, hominids hadn’t yet evolved. Here, the ancestors of the human race were part of a future world, some sixty million years off.
Ancestors. The future. What paradoxical thoughts!
Dawn rested in her bunk, her tablet on her lap. Biding her time by surfing her e-encyclopedia, she tried to put the impending cometary impact out of her mind, but her brain refused to cooperate, roaming instead to another worry – Gus, Kris, and Harry had left hours ago on their quest for more specimens. This time, however, they had gone after dusk, because Harry believed some of the smaller dinosaurs were active then. Despite the fact there was a slight risk predatory dinosaurs occasionally hunted in the dark, they probably resorted to nocturnal behavior only when stalking wounded prey. So, Harry reassured her, everything would be okay; the odds were good the crew would return safe and sound.
But if anything were to happen to Gus tonight, or to any of my friends...
Don’t go there. Dawn put her tablet aside and let her thoughts wander back to the previous morning. Gus had been so sweet after she’d seen the strange dinosaur standing outside. He made her a mug of tea and patiently listened to her rather distracted recitation of the previous events.
And just when she’d begun to question her own sanity, he relented and went out with Harry and Kris, looking for tracks. Sure enough, they’d found a scattering of trampled footprints. Harry thought they were something like the tracks made by carnivorous dinosaurs – the so-called theropods – because the prints had their small toe depressions on the inside, not the outside, of the foot.
“See?” Gus told her. “As for the wave of its hand, I bet it was just happenstance. The beast couldn’t have meant anything by it.”
Gus was probably right. Besides, he wasn’t the patronizing type. It just seemed like the thing had waved goodbye.
She smiled, feeling a little better, but then the creeping doubt reentered her mind. She struggled with it, only to have it replaced by a horrible sense of foreboding. Gus, she thought miserably. I know I won’t get any rest until you’re back here with me.
Dawn tried to push aside her fears. Feeling wide-awake, she turned, staring at the wall, edgy and restless. Since the entire night stretched before her, she needed to find a way to keep occupied.
In her mind’s eye, she conjured up an image of Tasha, soundly sleeping in her bunk. She played with the idea of monitoring the crew’s progress over the com-link in the main cabin, or maybe she could use the computer’s art program and draw the creature she’d seen that morning.
Then she imagined Tasha again and decided against getting out of bed. If she got up, she could make noise. This might be the first good night’s sleep Tasha had gotten since Lex’s death, and Dawn was loathe to disturb her.
With a yawn, she went back to her tablet, scanning the text until she spotted another article about paleoanthropology. After skipping over the first few pages, she found herself staring at the reconstructed faces of an afarensis family. With their powerful, jutting jaws and low, sloping foreheads, they were primitive and apelike, yet also compelling. The sculptor’s lifelike rendition captivated Dawn; the promise of humanity shone in the eyes of Au. afarensis.
After skimming the article, she studied a picture of the famous Laetoli footprints. Anthropologist Mary Leakey and her team found the remarkable 3.56 million-year-old fossils in Tanzania in the 1970s. A group of hominids, perhaps two or three individuals, had walked northward across a layer of soft, wet, volcanic ash, leaving a path of tracks, which had hardened into stone. Additionally, a variety of animal tracks and raindrop patterns had been imprinted on the ash layer. With this find, Leakey helped to confirm humanity’s remote ancestors had been capable of moving like modern human beings, upright with free-striding gaits.
Studying the picture of the Laetoli tracks, Dawn wondered if perhaps the hominids were a family moving together across the African plain. She read some of the text. From the track patterns, it appeared the maker of a smaller set of prints – a female, no doubt – had stopped and looked over her left shoulder, perhaps reacting to some perceived threat or momentary disturbance.
Quite distracted by now, Dawn regarded the picture of the footprints with fresh enthusiasm. Here was something she could identify with. She visualized the hominid female, perhaps walking with a child resting on her hip. The female had halted in mid-stride and cast a glance behind her. Had she heard the rumble of a distant volcano? Was a predator lurki
ng nearby? Or was she leaving her homeland, taking one last look before striking out for new horizons?
For all eternity, the fossilized footprints held their story, capturing a human act which would otherwise have been lost in the vastness of time.
Dawn closed her eyes again and imagined walking along Oak Creek. It was a silvery, moonlit summer’s eve, with a balmy breeze passing through the red rock canyon. The dogs were up ahead, busily sniffing, and Gus strolled beside her. Between them was a child, a little towheaded girl. They held her hands as they walked parallel to the stream. As they moved along, they left three sets of footprints.
Eyes still closed, Dawn realized the daydream had made her feel homesick again. But now, she understood the happiness she shared with Gus had changed things in a profound way.
Together, they would make a future. And if they didn’t leave their tracks on Earth, then they would somehow, someday, make footprints beneath the glow of two opalescent moons.
In the red sands of Mars.
PART FOUR
Chapter 21
Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky...
~William Shakespeare, Henry VI
“Hey, wake up, sleepy head. Come see what we got.”
Dawn’s eyes opened. Gus stood in the doorway of her cubicle, looking excited. Her gaze lingered on the strong cut of his jaw, covered with a swath of thick, reddish-blond stubble.
She smiled sleepily. “What time is it?”
He looked at his watch. “0240.”
“But it’s so early.”
“We got one, Dawn. A few hours ago.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked as she threw back the covers and rose to her feet. She moved closer to him and caught his scent, fresh, clean skin, yet with a faint trace of manly aroma, all Gus. Pulse quickening, she forced aside her feelings and reached for her robe.
Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel) Page 22
