Day of the Dragonstar (12 page)

Calmly he watched for the approach of the silver, turn-of-the-century Rolls Royce of Ada Kadan Mrundi, the Economic Minister of the TWC, and the elder statesman of the Confederation. When Mrundi had been a young man, he had been a fiercely respected leader of Third World objectives, a hero to young boys who called him by his tribal name—“The Simba”—the great lion. But now, the Arab leaders had become disenchanted with their African ally and feared that he would lead them all down a primrose path to economic strangulation at the hands of the white men. The
Jiha
had decided that Mrundi must be eliminated publicly so that the whole world would know that the TWC was not ready to roll over and play dead.

And who else but Marcus Jashad would be the one selected for this monumental task, this important message to the world? Was he not the premier specialist in such matters in perhaps the whole world? To some, he was an international hero, to others, an international criminal. He smiled at the thought. It did not matter what the world thought of him. He knew his job and he knew it well. One of the best, yes . . .

And then, out of the morning mist, came the procession of armored limousines. Through his scope, he watched for the silver Rolls, catching it glinting off the sun’s rays, following it carefully to the front of the palace. Checking his clip and the firing chamber, he drew in a breath and held it, watching the magnified figures of security personnel caper about the opening doors to the vehicles. And then Mrundi was visible in gaily colored tribal robes, surrounded by the press of his bodyguards so that only his shining bald head was visible in their midst.

There would only be seconds before he was carried into the mirrored halls of the palace. Only seconds for the job to be done, but that was all Jashad required. He squeezed the trigger twice, and the weapon recoiled silently as the shells raced to their mark. Jashad grinned as he watched his work through the scope. Mrundi’s shining bald head suddenly exploded like a piece of over-ripened fruit and his party of bodyguards were sprayed with a fine pink mist, expressions of shock upon their faces.

Withdrawing the weapon from the tiny hole in the glass, Jashad dropped it to the floor, where it fell silently onto the carpet. He changed his clothes deliberately, wishing that he had a woman at his disposal. He always felt a need for a violent sexual release after an assignment such as this one, and on some lucky occasions he had been able to punish a young one with his excess energies. The younger the better, he thought with a smile, as he put on dark glasses and left the suite.

By the time he reached the lobby, there was already a subtle hum of confusion and a tinge of fear in the throngs which were moving out into the street. Calmly, he joined them, assuming their mask of apprehension and morbidity, and moved as close as the gendarmes’ barriers would allow. He watched the follow-up until the ambulances and the police vans made it impossible, and then he simply disappeared into the crowd.

* * *

That evening he was in a small fishing village on the coast of Portugal where he would be meeting his contact—a small yacht which would take him across the Mediterranean to Alexandria. At last he would have his rest and his reward—they had promised him
three
ten-year-olds this time. It would be a pleasant cruise indeed.

But when the dinghy pulled up to the shoreline, Jashad could see that something was wrong. He was an expert at reading the faces of men, and he could see that the
Jiha
captain who greeted him carried an unexpected message.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he climbed aboard.

“You know that there’s been a change of plans?” The captain’s expression was of mild confusion and surprise.

“Not really,” said Jashad. “You tell me.”

“Something important has come up. A change of plans, and you will be needed immediately.”

Jashad felt a rush of outrage shoot through. “Is this how they repay me for such a cleanly executed job! When?! And where?!”

The boat slipped into the oily black waters towards not a yacht, but the sleek, low-profile lines of a military gun-boat. The
Jiha
captain shook his head. “I’m sorry, Marcus. But we need you
now.
You are going to the moon.”

THE STEAMY HEAT
of the Jurassic forest hung about Ian Coopersmith. He half-reclined in the broad, firm fronds of a towering, prehistoric fern, where he and Rebecca Thalberg had spent the night in a kind of half-sleep punctuated by the night-cries of predators and prey. It was the morning of their seventh “day” on board Artifact One, and Ian was gradually learning necessities for survival in the harsh, uncompromising environment of Earth’s long-ago past.

Thirty-two kilometers above his head, running the length of the gigantic cylinder-ship, stretched a burning rod of heat and light. Coopersmith had assumed that it was some kind of gigantic fusion reactor—a p-p reaction—perhaps being fed by induction of interstellar hydrogen. Possibly the power source was something more exotic, like the new power kernels—Kerr-Newman black holes with McAndrew shields—or maybe the theoretical quark modulator made fact. Coopersmith could not be certain, but any civilization that could build a ship as magnificent as Artifact One could not be limited from developing
any
kind of technological miracle. The illuminator, as Ian had come to refer to it, operated on a roughly twelve-hour cycle—simulating a never-ending sequence of artificial days and nights. The temperature varied by less than ten degrees Centigrade by Ian’s estimate between the days and the nights, but it was enough of a difference to produce temperature gradients along the length of the cylinder and produce cyclic forms of “weather.”

Although Coopersmith had been a tactical engineer for most of his professional career, he had a modicum of survival experience in the outdoors, thanks to vacations spent camping in the American Northwest. Though he was not expert, he possessed enough knowledge to have, thus far, kept him and Thalberg alive. Water could be found, in stream-fed lakes, underground “springs” —which in reality must have been vast storage tanks and recycling systems—and, if need be, swamps or rainpools. Food was found in a large variety of greens and fruit-clusters that they observed the herbivorous dinosaurs eating. Early on in their wanderings, Ian decided that they would eat no fruits or seeds that they did not see the lizards consume themselves. So far, at least, they had not poisoned themselves. On the second day, he discovered a mineral deposit of flint, which he used to chip at the steel edge of his belt-buckle, and from that point on, he and Rebecca had fire if they needed it. She had kept reminding him that they would require protein in their diets to maintain their stamina and strength, and the fire would help make left-over carrion from a felled herbivore more palatable.

They had their first taste of Iguanodon on the fourth day, and to their surprise, it was not the taste-horror that had been imagined.

During their week in the jungle lowlands, Ian had been able to make some elementary observations about the behavior of the dinosaurs, which had helped them survive. If seemed as though the daily routine of life among beasts was a neverending cycle of feeding, sleeping, copulating, and eliminating. The fleshy herbivorous creatures such as the Diplodocus, Iguanodon, Brachiosaurus, and Trachodon remained near the swamps, rivers, and lakes, and seemed to do most of their feeding and copulating during the day-cycles. In their numerous encounters thus far with the herbivorous dinosaurs, Ian had noted that the large creatures were quite skittish and almost afraid of the humans—when they noticed them at all. It seemed that the plant-eaters possessed such low levels of intelligence that they usually failed to detect Ian and Rebecca even when they blundered into their midst. They seemed to depend more on their sense of smell and hearing than on sight, and were only dangerous if you remained in their path as they clumsily waddled along.

The carnivores were another story altogether.

Having seen how quickly and savagely the Gorgosaurus and the Allosaurus had devastated the exploration team, lan and Rebecca had a fearful but healthy respect for the meat-eating species. From long-distance observation, Ian had noted that the predators normally were less in evidence during the middle of the day-cycles, and it was not uncommon for them to be found lying in a clearing, dozing loudly at these times. The carnivorous dinosaurs did their principal feeding at night, relying on a super-keen sense of smell, remarkably sharp night vision, and incredible quickness. Ian reflected upon his early books of childhood on dinosaurs which often referred to them all as lumbering and slow. Nothing could be further from the truth in regard to the meat-eaters—they were swift without a doubt. It was difficult to sleep for the first few evenings because of the nocturnal feeding habits of the predators, and the darkness was constantly being shattered by their savage cries, and the bleating, sheep-like sounds of their victims being literally eaten alive.

Because of the feeding patterns, Ian and Rebecca had taken to spending their nights in the highest trees, usually proto-redwoods, giant ferns, and the occasional large ginkgo. They could easily find something taller than the largest of the meat-eaters, which would be approximately ten meters. At least Ian had not seen anything larger than that, but he could not be sure that some truly monstrous Tyrannosaurus did not prowI only in the darkest of nights, and had yet to be seen by them. He did not wish to think about such things.

It had been bad enough adjusting to the sounds of the night, especially when they would be anchored into the treetops, held in by “safety harnesses” which Ian had fashioned from vines, and some large beast would stagger into their particular tree, shaking them from their half-sleep with earthquake immediacy. There had also been one occasion when two bipedal carnivores (Ian had not the presence of mind, nor sufficient light, to identify them) had smelled them as they slept in the high limbs of a proto-redwood. The scent of such helpless, fear-struck morsels had driven the carnivores into a mindless frenzy, for they remained at the base of the tree for almost the entire night, endlessly attempting to scale the tall, thin tree. Leaping, ripping, and tearing, they continued until Rebecca was driven to the edge of hysteria. They had no choice but to hang in the darkness, hoping that the terrible claws would gain no purchase, that the knife-edge jaws would not come flying up out of the damp night. As the dawn had grown closer, the two predators gave up their attempts and searched for more accessible prey, but when Ian descended from the tree an hour after the daycycle had begun, he was shocked to see the deep gouges in its base, literally thousands of claw-slashes left as a monument to the savage intensity of the hunters.

They had spent the first three days trying to retrace their panicked flight through jungle back to the entrance hatch where they had first come upon the beasts, but this had proved fruitless. They had entered the Jurassic forest at nightfall, and spent several maniac-hours running mindlessly through the darkness, climbing trees only to find them unsuitable, or searching for outcroppings of rock that might have a small fissure or cave. Ian and Rebecca had failed to identify and remember any significant landmarks that might have helped them recognize the approximate location of the small clearing by the swamp, and the smaller knoll where the hatch had opened. There was the additional problem of learning to plot one’s position on a landmass that had no celestial features other than the longitudinal shaft of energy going down the center of the ship. This was good for achieving a “north-south” orientation, but little else. With a landmass that curved away and up in both “east” and “west” directions, it was difficult to readily deduce one’s position.

After three days of wandering hopelessly through the interior, Coopersmith had suggested that they not continue to search for the hatch. It was possible that it had been accidentally closed by the inadvertent actions of some dinosaur, or perhaps some automatic mechanism had sealed it after some predetermined amount of time. If it did remain open, it was doubtful that he and Rebecca could find it without risking a terrible death. From his observations, Ian had learned that the most dangerous places to be were near the marshes and lakeshores—for it was here that the herbivores huddled for food and drink, and that drew the predators. The hatch, as Ian reminded her, was perilously close to a natural feeding ground, and he would just as soon avoid it as not.

His reasoning was not unsound, because it was only logical to assume that Copernicus Base would eventually send another exploration team into the ship, and that if he and Rebecca could survive until the next team arrived, then they would be saved. Ian further reasoned that the best way to remain alive would be to do those things that would keep them as far from the predators as possible.

And so on the fourth day, they had begun, at Ian’s suggestion, following the topography as it sloped gradually upwards to a highland of sorts in the direction of the ship’s engines. The higher ground seemed safer, since the rivers ran down to the lakes and marshes below and drew the dinosaurs with them. It had been Coopersmith’s vague plan to work their way toward the rear end of the ship in the hope of finding some sign of entrance into engine rooms or perhaps the alien crew section of the ship. If they could gain entrance to the business end of the ship, they might be able to use the communications equipment to contact Copernicus. If that proved impossible, they would at least have a haven from the predators of the interior.

They had traveled in a “southerly” direction, using the illuminator as their rough guide, for three days, and with each passing cycle they learned more about the magnificent world within the ship. The world-shaping aliens had been meticulous in their reconstruction of an early-Earth environment. Ian and Rebecca passed gorges, mudflats, raging white-water rivers, placid streams, impenetrable forests, jagged peaks in the highlands, and even volcanoes in various stages of eruption. The interior was a miniature Earth in every respect save the land mass, which curved and flung above their head some sixty-five kilometers distant. It was, in one sense, a primitive paradise. Ian found that he had mixed feelings about a world so untouched by the hands of man.

He stirred slowly as he came to full consciousness, feeling the tightness of the vine-harness he had fixed the previous evening. For the first few hours of the day-cycle, his muscles would be screaming at him, in defiance at being shackled to the limbs of the trees. Looking up several branches, he saw Rebecca sprawled and tied upon the broad fronds of her own limb. She was still sleeping and he hesitated in waking her, though it was important that they use all the daylight hours wisely.

“Becky . . . “ he said softly. “It’s time for breakfast.”

The dark-haired woman jumped fitfully and was instantly awake. She looked down at Ian with large brown eyes. He was surprised at how attractive she looked after a week without a proper bath, hair conditioners, and the other things which women put to such good use.

“Ooh, God . . . I can’t believe I’m still alive,” she said lazily.

* * *

Ian chuckled as he began unfastening his harness, “Are you fully expecting to wake up one morning and discover that you’re
dead?”

Becky laughed. “No. I want to wake up and find that this has all been the proverbial bad dream, and that I am back home in Copernicus.”

“Why Copernicus? Why not go the whole hog, as they used to say, and be back in Kansas?”

“Ian Coopersmith . . . I do believe you’re setting me up for the old ‘Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore’ line . . .”

He smiled impishly. “Well, maybe I was . . . Sorry about that. Do you need some help getting untied?”

“No, I’ve got it. What did you say about breakfast?”

“I just said it was
time
for it. Never said a word about what it was going to be.”

“As usual. When are they going to start providing menus around here?” Becky pulled the last vine away from her, and held on tightly to the thick limbs which supported her, slowly inching towards the trunk of the giant fern.

“I think they’ve been serving the same menu here for a long, long time,” he said. “Come on, let’s get down and see what we can find. Some scrambled Pterosaur eggs, perhaps. Or maybe some nice fresh leftovers . . .”

Ian worked his way down the tree’s trunk, then waited for Becky to follow. She was quite agile and plenty strong for someone her size. As far as taking care of herself, Ian felt that she was doing a more than adequate job. She rarely had trouble doing any of the tasks that needed to be done. In the week they had been thrown together, Ian had come to respect and admire her. On the few social occasions he had met her when she was dating Phineas Kemp, Ian had to admit not being too impressed by Rebecca Thalberg. She had seemed somewhat pushy in social situations, and had the annoying habit of constantly reminding people that she was a top-flight surgeon and Biomed specialist. Ian now wondered if being under the penumbra of Kemp’s many accomplishments made Becky feel impelled to assert her own individuality in any way she could.

As she reached the loamy, sponge-like soil, Ian was already glancing about warily, listening for the sounds of heavy footfalls and thrashing foliage. The forest seemed quiet for the moment and he suggested that they shoulder their few supplies and move out. For the last day they had. been heading across a rise in the land that was now beginning to slope downward toward what appeared to be a very lush, green valley. From the heights of the treetops Ian had seen a large river cutting through the center of a depression. He would have preferred to avoid the valley because of the higher dinosaur population that would be found near the waters, but the valley seemed so vast that it would take them several extra days to circumvent it.