End of an Era (19 page)

"Miles?"

He looked at me, a hint of calm returning to his face. "God, that felt good." A pause. "I’m in control now, I think. Do me a favor: don’t ask me any more questions about the Hets. Even the memory of their hatred for life is enough to drive you out of your skull."

"Don’t worry," I said. "I’ve—"

Something funny about the light levels from outside -

I started to turn -

Wham!

The
Sternberger
shook under a tremendous impact, the hull reverberating, the sound of water in the partially empty tank beneath our feet slapping in a giant wave against one side of the timeship. I staggered, trying to keep my balance. Through the glassteel over the radio console, I could see something dark and gray, like a flying wall, pulling back, farther and farther, bits of sky now visible above it, the brown of the mud plain starting to peek out below it, the gray wall retracting more and more…

A tail. A dinosaur tail. The part that had connected with the timeship was almost twice as high as a man. The tail was flattened from side to side, a giant tapering structure covered with wrinkled gray leather. It was still pulling back and back, until finally the creature it belonged to was fully visible.

A sauropod, a member of that giant quadrupedal group typified by what most people still called
Brontosaurus
, standing out there on the mud plain, perpendicular to the crater wall, its elongated tail balanced by a similarly long neck rising up and up into the sky, ending in a tiny block-shaped head. In between neck and tail, a vast gray torso like the Goodyear blimp supported by massive column-like legs…

Sauropods were rare in the Upper Cretaceous, and none had ever been found in Alberta — too wet for them, according to one school of thought. Still, at this time there was
Alamosaurus
in New Mexico,
Antarctosaurus
,
Argyrosaurus
,
Laplatasaurus
,
Neuquensaurus
, and
Titanosaurus
in Argentina, and a handful of others in China, Hungary, India, and elsewhere. I supposed that if the Hets needed a living crane, flying one in presented no problem for them. Although they’d been nicknamed thunder lizards, sauropods had massively padded feet. This one, despite its size, had obviously had no trouble sneaking up on us.

The tail had finished pulling back and now was reversing its course, slicing through the air toward us, zooming in to dominate the view out the window -

The first impact clearly had been just a warm-up. Klicks and I went flying when the tail connected with full force. He landed in a heap by his crash couch; I ended up smashing into the washroom door panel. I tried to rise to my feet and looked over at Klicks, who was bracing himself against the fake wood-grain molding around the edges of the radio console. His eyes were closed as he listened to that inner voice once more. "They’re going to take our timeship one way or another," he said.

A third impact by the sauropod tail again knocked Klicks and me to the floor, something neither of us was in any condition to endure. I put my hand to my face and it came away wet. My nose had started bleeding again. Two more blows from the giant’s tail dislodged the
Sternberger
from its perch atop the crater wall. I’d thought it had been bad going down that slope in the Jeep, but at least I’d been strapped in and had had the benefits of the vehicle’s shock absorbers. This time, loose pieces of equipment flew around the cabin as our timeship skidded down the crumbling earth. Klicks and I were tossed like rag dolls in a clothes dryer, bruising elbows, banging knees, twisting limbs. The
Sternberger
finally, mercifully, came to a stop on the mud flat, tilted at a bit of an angle. We staggered to the window.

Dinosaurs were moving in from every direction. A dozen dark red juvenile tyrannosaurs clustered along the shore of the lake, their bird-like feet giving them excellent traction in the mud. Seven triceratops tanks, garish in their blue and orange camouflage, lumbered in to form an arc to the southwest, heads bent low so that their mighty eye horns stuck straight out. Next to them stood the gargantuan gray sauropod with its skyscraper neck and a tail that seemed to go on forever. Thirty or so troodons milled about, hopping from foot to foot, their stiff tails bouncing up and down like conductors’ batons. Goose-stepping in from the west were five giant adult females of the species
Tyrannosaurus rex
.

Standing behind the others, one duckbill reared up on its hind legs. It was a member of the genus
Parasaurolophus
, just like the famous specimen we had at the ROM, a meter-long tubular crest extending back from its skull. At first I couldn’t fathom what that cow-like reptile was doing here. I’d imagined the Hets simply raised duckbills in herds to feed the fighting carnivores. But then the hadrosaur let out a series of great reverberating notes, its crest acting like a resonating chamber. The tyrannosaurs dispersed and I realized that the duckbill was calling out the orders of the Het general riding within it, the hadrosaur’s thunderous voice carrying for kilometers.

I looked at our Jeep, over by the western base of the crater wall. The two tires I could see from this angle were completely flat — pierced open, I suspected, by triceratops horns.

A troodon stepped up to the window that Klicks and I were looking through. It stood on tippy-toe to see in, its pointed muzzle just coming to the bottom of the glassteel. The beast regarded us for a few seconds, gave its weird one-two blink, and then spoke, its raspy voice audible through the air vents around our roof. "Come out now," it said. "Surrender the time-ship. Do these things or die."

The maximum a siege could last would be twenty-two hours; after that, the
Sternberger
was going home regardless. We could comfortably wait that long since we had plenty of food and water. But it seemed pretty clear that the Hets weren’t just going to hang around outside until the Huang Effect reversed states. They intended to be on board when that happened, bypassing their own extinction.

Klicks ran to get our elephant guns but he shook his head as he passed one to me. "We could pump every bullet we’ve got into that sauropod and probably not even slow it down."

From outside, the troodon’s gravelly voice shouted: "Last warning. Out now."

Klicks grabbed the red tool chest he had heaved through the air earlier and stood upon it, its sheet-metal construction caving in a bit under his weight. He jammed the butt of his rifle into the wire mesh that covered one of the air vents at the top of the curving outer wall, clearing the mesh away. Then he turned the weapon around and pointed the muzzle out. But despite his craning, there was no way he could see out the vent to aim.

"We could shoot out the main hatchway," I said, but no sooner had I done so than I heard the outside latch lifting. I leapt through door number one and skidded down the ramp that led to the outer door, hoping to jam it shut, but before I got there it was kicked open, swinging inward on its hinges. A dancing troodon jumped in, its sickle claws clicking on the metal ramp. I braced my rifle against my shoulder and fired into the thing’s chest. It was blown backward out the door by the blast, but a moment later a second troodon jumped forward to take its place. I fired at it, too, winging it. But I was sure that the Hets had more dinosaurs than I had bullets.

While I was reloading, the second troodon made it through the mandrill’s mouth, one three-fingered hand covering its wound. Klicks barreled past it, running down the ramp to the main doorway, trying to force it shut, but the arm of a third troodon scrabbled for purchase around its edge. Meanwhile, as I rushed to reload, the injured troodon that had made it inside scurried up the ramp and into the habitat. I followed it up. It tried to negotiate its way around the two crash couches to get at me. I fired both barrels into its torso. The creature slammed backward against our equipment lockers and slumped to the floor. The stink of gunpowder filled my nostrils.

I looked back. Klicks had managed to push the main hatchway almost shut, but a troodon arm still stuck around the edge. I heard the crack of breaking bone as Klicks threw his massive shoulder against the door, but the beast held on, its opposable claws snapping open and closed.

I ran for the equipment lockers next to the dead troodon and found the metal box containing my secondary dissection kit. I hurried down the ramp to join Klicks in the cramped access-way. While he continued to fracture the invader’s arm with brutal body slams to the door, I used my bone saw to hack through the limb. Blood spurted everywhere. At last, the arm fell to the floor, twitching, and Klicks and I forced the main door shut. I then dashed up the ramp into the habitat proper and relayed boxes and pieces of equipment down to him. He rammed them up against the door as a barricade. It wouldn’t hold for long.

The main doorway had been our one aperture for firing at the troodons. No — wait! I could shoot through the instrumentation dome. I scrabbled up the ladder into the cramped space. The vertical slit was still open. I rotated the whole thing to bring the opening around to face west, stuck the barrel of my elephant gun through the slit, and squeezed off eight rounds as fast as I could reload. The gunshots echoed deafeningly inside the glassteel hemisphere. Three of my shots missed completely. Three more found solid targets, killing the closest of the troodons. The last two injured a pair of the dancing beasts, hitting one in the right leg, the other in its left shoulder. Both collapsed to the ground.

The parasaurolophus was bellowing commands at the top of its lungs, the two separate nasal chambers that ran through its trombone-like crest each producing separate notes, harmonizing with itself. Apparently responding to the order, one of the triceratopses charged the
Sternberger
, its haunches pumping up and down as it ran. The ship rocked under its impact, and I was almost knocked off my feet. I tried to kill the horned-face, but my bullets just nicked tiny shards off its bony neck frill. Still, it was something of an impasse: no troodon could approach the ship without me picking it off.

The parasaurolophus barked again. Moments later the sky went dark. A great shadow passed over me. A huge turquoise pterosaur, its vast furry wings spanning a dozen meters, was flapping its way toward the instrumentation dome. Judging by the curving snake-like neck and the incredible size, this was either
Quetzalcoatlus
or a close relative, a genus known to range from Alberta to Texas at this time. I scrambled to reload, but in my panic sent the box of shells spilling across the floor, half of them rolling out the opening for the access ladder. By the time I was ready to fire, the dragon filled my field of view. My shots tore holes in its turquoise wings, but the pterosaur continued to swoop in, its claws sounding like chalk on a blackboard as they scrabbled for footing on the smooth metal hull of the
Sternberger
.

The head with its long narrow beak slipped through the observation slit, poking at me from the end of a serpentine three-meter neck. I scrunched myself back against the far wall of the dome. Holding the rifle in both hands, one on the painfully hot end of the twin barrels, the other on the wooden butt, I tried to ward off the creature. Fat chance. Moving with eye-blurring speed, it seized my gun in its jaws and twisted the weapon free with a sharp jerk of its neck. Before I realized what had happened, the beast had taken to the air again, the rifle clamped in its beak. My hair whipped in the breeze caused by the downward thrust of the immense blue-green wings.

There was no point in staying in the dome. I closed the slit, then backed down the ladder. Klicks was pushing the food refrigerator down the ramp that led to the exterior door. I guess he intended to use it to strengthen the barricade.

My heart jumped. "Oh God—"

"What is it?" Klicks said, looking up.

"Your leg."

A grapefruit-sized mound of phosphorescent blue jelly was throbbing on the shin of Klicks’s khaki pants. It must have come from the troodon I’d killed earlier, the one slumped by the equipment lockers next to where the fridge had been. Klicks frantically undid his belt and pulled the trousers off, flinging them across the accessway. They hit the wall with a wet splat and stuck. But the Het had been having no trouble percolating through the cotton weave and some of it was still on his skin. Klicks was near panic. I grabbed a scalpel from my dissection kit and scraped the dull edge of its blade across his shank, gathering up pieces of Martian. After each stroke, I flicked the knife, sending dabs of blue jelly flying into the dissection-kit box. A minute later I looked up. "I think I got it," I said.

"All of it?" Klicks sounded desperate.

"Well … most of it, anyway. Let’s hope there’s enough Deliverance left in your system to prevent what did get in from interacting with your cells."

"What about that?" he said, pointing at his pants.

I got a pickax and used it to knock the trousers off the wall into a stasis box, then tossed in the dissection kit as well and slammed the silver lid shut. We went up the ramp and back into the main habitat.

Suddenly the ship rocked again as a pair of white triceratops horns burst through the side of the hull. The Hets must have learned from their brief mind-melds with us that the
Sternberger
was like a yo-yo, attached by a mathematical string to the Huang Effect generator 65 million years in the future. Even partially smashed, the timeship would still dutifully return to its launch point in midair between the Sikorsky Sky Crane and the ground. It didn’t have to be intact, but they did have to be inside its walls.

The ship buffeted once more, its hull deforming where a second triceratops rammed against it. Moments later there was another impact, and another pair of horns pierced the wall, this time less than a half-meter from my head.

The parasaurolophus’s call split the air again. Outside the window, the giant tyrannosaurs, looking like blood clots the size of boxcars, growled in response.

"We’ve got to do something," I said.

"Good thinking, genius," said Klicks. "
What
should we do?"

"I don’t know. But we can’t let them have access to the future. Christ, they’d take over the whole planet." The ship rocked again, another triceratops smashing into it. "Dammit!" I slammed my fist against the wall. "If only we had some weapon, or … or, hell, I don’t know, maybe some way to turn off the gravity-suppressor satellites."

"A coded signal in binary," said Klicks at once. "1010011010, repeated three times."

"Christ, man, are you sure?"

Klicks tapped the side of his head. "The Martian may be dead, but his memory lingers on."

I was over to our Ward-Beck radio unit in two bounds and flipped the master switch on the black and silver console. "Do you think we can get a signal to the gravity satellites?" I asked.

Klicks squinted at the controls. "The satellites are obviously still in good working order," he said. "And the Hets do use radio in very much the same way we do."

"What about the satellites below the horizon?"

"The off signal will be relayed by those satellites that do receive it," said Klicks. "We only have to connect with one. That makes sense, of course; otherwise, there’d be no way to operate them all from a single ground station."

"Won’t we need a password to access the satellite computers?" I asked, peering at the console, trying to remind myself of what all the buttons did.

"You said it yourself, Brandy. The Hets are a hive mind. The concept of ‘passwords’ is meaningless to them."

I reached for a large calibrated dial. "What frequency should the signal go out at?"

Klicks closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly, listening intently. "Let’s see … three-to-the-thirteenth-power cycles per…"

"Cycles per second?"

"No. Shit! Cycles per unit of Martian time-keeping."

"And how long is one of those?"

"It’s… uh, well, it’s not long."

"Great." The
Sternberger
shook under another impact. Triceratopses seemed to be using their horns to perforate a hole in one side of the ship. They were making damn good progress, too.

"Well, can’t you program the radio to try a range of frequencies?" asked Klicks.

I looked at the controls. "Not directly. But I might be able to hook the radio up to my palmtop." There was a small patchcord bus running vertically along one side of the radio console. "I’d need the right cable, though."

Klicks picked up the electronic camera. "What about this one?" he said, unplugging the fiber-optic serial cable I’d used to connect it to my palmtop earlier.

"Well, that’s the right type of cable, yes, but it’s the wrong gender. The radio expects a female plug; that one has male connectors at both ends."

"I think I used a gender-changer when I hooked up my spectroscopes," Klicks said. He stepped over to the compact lab and started rummaging around. "Here it is." Klicks handed the little doodad to me, and we completed the connection between the radio and my palmtop computer. "Now can you send the signal?"