Doc was obviously excited and stopped long enough to tell Jack that since they had left he had been measuring the portal, tossing various things in…and watching them vanish.
“Everything from this reality Jack, but not one of the damned things from any of the other realities will pass through. Damn frustrating I tell you.”
“All mass Doc.”
“Yes, I know…from your perspective of course. Density…assuming that you are right of course. I was going to ask Harry to send us one of his cannons, but then I realized that they were made here, so they wouldn’t test your theory very well.”
“Agreed,” Jack nodded slowly “I sure hope that I’m right about that.”
Coi laid her head on Jack’s arm and sighed “Imagine towing that sub thing all the way back to the waterfall, raising it all the way up to the second waterfall level, raising it again to put it on the platform and sliding it down the ramp we’re going to build, just to watch the sub bounce off the portal toss your butts back out into the stream.”
Jack patted her knee knowing that she was dreading the day he and the others would climb in and launch into the portal. The love of his life was terrified she’d lose him forever…and Jack tried not to show that this was his concern as well. He owed it to his people to try to find a way home, but if he did, he could lose Coi forever. Jack wasn’t sure that going back through the portal wouldn’t change him again and that change would…his mind wandered to the horrible thing he didn’t tell the rest; passing back through…could cause the portal to collapse, forever.
Doc had been speaking but Jack had been lost in his thoughts, but now slowly became aware of what Doc was saying.
“The trees protect most of the work on the launch platform. It has to be high enough to let the little sub thing you mentioned, slide down into the portal. I concur that as the portal does not touch the ground, nor should the sub be touching the platform when it hits the portal. Jack you do realize that if the portal spits you out, it’s going to be in for a hard landing.”
Jack grinned “No harder than Paul and his people when they arrived.”
Doc smiled and nodded in agreement “While I was waiting for you two to arrive, last night our host here told me a bit more about our mesa. Apparently at some point people like his and Coi’s arrived from our world, but they were hostile and fought with the Mayans that guarded the portal waiting for their people.
Then some decades later bodies with their hearts torn out were thrown through.”
“That could explain all that carved stone rubble we saw strewn about the field around where the portal was.” Jack muttered “Instead of coming though, they began sending sacrifices.
“Exactly. I’m guessing, but the Mayan records tell of various types of dinosaur species that chased prey up to the waterfall and vanished in the portal. I think one of those times, they landed on our mesa in the Amazon and frightened the natives away.”
“And the heartless bodies stopped coming.” Jack added.
“They did!” Quta added “No one came through until I was a young lad and some of what you would call ‘more modern’ men came through.”
Doc grinned “And the tales from those that didn’t come through are what was written about…what led us to the plateau.”
Jack laughed “And brought us here.” he squeezed Coi’s knee “and me to you.”
“But your duty to your people will cause me to lose you again.” Coi replied almost in tears.
“Maybe not Coi.” Doc smiled warmly “I am willing to take the risk and go with Jack. I’ve been studying the portal and with the technology that we have, I’m sure that we can find a way back.”
She frowned “If you all land in your reality.”
“True,” Doc replied “but you have to remember, even in Paul’s or Jan’s reality there could be a chance.”
“Assuming that you and Jack stay in the sub until that can be accomplished.” she shot back angrily.
“It’s possible I guess, Jan’s portal was on a shoal where few go, but not really near enough to land to get help. Paul on the other hand, we could sink and implode.”
“No actually we’ve fixed that problem.” Paul added as everyone spun around to see the short, handsome, sub’s pilot standing there.
“You see we’d been working on a few ideas, but once they got the message we sent, they contacted Quta here and his people escorted them to the DSRV. Now we won’t have a lot of wiggle room, but Jan’s people have made crude batteries…with enough juice to run the crude compressor we built a few years back.” he grinned “I mean we have lead here, and copper…a little acid and…”
Jack grinned “and a crude battery.”
“Right! So once up on the launch platform, we hook up the compressor, charge the ballast tanks and…” it was written on his face “ok so it should get us to the surface once we flood the ballast tanks.”
“And how far from land was your portal?” Doc asked.
“Oh, just a few thousand miles.” he muttered softly with a hesitant sigh “But your man Sam suggested putting one of those big batteries in the DSRV and using it to power the radio. The signal would be weak, but with luck a passing ship…”
Coi frowned “But my love would still be trapped in your reality…and the sub…maybe for the rest of his life.” the sadness in her voice was unmistakable.
“And that’s assuming that a wave or rain, or some insect doesn’t touch him.” Everyone looked at the beautiful princess in shock. Coi knew or had figured it out.
“If everyone has changed coming through the portal, what’s going to happen to you all when going back? Maybe even a more horrible change could happen, maybe a change that would prevent you from returning…maybe you all will just vanish and I…I…”
Coi leapt from her chair and dashed toward the hall that led to her room.
Jack slowly rose, but her father grasped his arm.
“She needs time Jack…then I’ll speak with her.”
Jack smiled at a father’s concern “I’ll go sir…she was to be my wife…” he sighed deeply, sadly and seeking any words to explain the great guilt he was feeling “I have to go, we need to settle this. She has to know…” with that he turned and followed her down the long hallway and into the shadows of the inner sanctum.
Chapter 25.
There was no consoling Coi, but Jack tried and he had nearly a week to spend with her. Jack was a leader not an engineer nor a builder. As the daily reports came in he was amazed at what hundreds of Mayans could do in such a short time span. The structures on the waterfall’s small area were complete. Dinosaurs were now blocked off from the gradual incline up to where the humans were. A strong cage of tree size logs were attached to and over the waterfall’s top ledge to provide coverage from the divers that now and then soared overhead in the deep blue skies of Jack’s new world. Most impressive was the sturdy log platform that the DSRV was to be hoisted upon. Strong, sturdy, and able to tilt enough to allow the sub to slide off and into the portal…the ledge was ready. What most impressed Jack was the huge hoist that was to lift the sub from the river, swing it around, and gently lower it onto the cradle above the portal.
When it came down to the final day before moving the DSRV to the waterfall, Jack and Coi left for the small rocky cove where Paul’s people had been keeping the sub safe.
Upon arriving at the encampment they saw that as usual the Mayans had been busy at work. Huge ropes made from coil stretched across the one hundred foot wide river and on both sides tall stakes and spikes of all sizes ringed where they camped.
On the river floated two large rafts that carried what looked like one large ballistae per raft and each ballistae could swing a full 380 degrees to cover each shore. With one raft in front of the sub and one behind, they were ready to protect the men on the shore from any behemoth that might stumble upon them.
As the sun filtered through the tops of the trees along the river’s banks, the Mayan’s picked up the ropes of coi
l and began pulling the sub from its long time moor and into the river. Each raft was pulled upstream by ten men on either river bank, and ten more with sharpened poles walked beside them to change position every half hour. Twenty Mayans on each bank hoisted a spiked barricade on their shoulders and moved along the banks so the men towing were between them and the river. These spiked barricades were to be dropped in the path of any charging dinosaur in hopes of causing enough pain to the foot to make it think twice about eating humans. The ballistae were the last and final hope to save lives should the barricades fail. Spear bearers and long sharpened pole bearers walked along the coil-pulling lines of men in case of something smaller finding them…like the feared raptors of this world. Quta had planned all of this and had done so very well.
From the barges Hank waved from the lead raft, and Sam from the other, as Jack grinned feeling that somehow he just felt better that some of his men had come along. Jack was never fully at ease out in the open and one glance at Coi told him that she was her usual self on the ground…the hunter/ guide mode was in full effect as she constantly scanned the jungles on either side of the river. She constantly checked the sky as did many of the guards; a diver attack was not out of the question.
Smaller flying reptiles perched on limbs on the jungles fringe were watched as they might take flight if something was coming through the jungle and disturbed them. Any tracks near the bank that had not filled with water meant they were fresh and a possible danger, but so far there were none. Everyone was on nervous as it was the common practice to move from one place to another as quickly as possible and do so with as few as possible. Now they would be forced to move slow and with large numbers of people. With a little over one hundred men and women pulling three objects upstream on the slow moving river, and the support crews on the banks, they knew they would eventually be noticed…it was inevitable.
Jack had brought along the largest surviving rifle, but the .380 Lapua Jack had a serious doubt as to its ability to bring down something the size of a t-rex. With the scope he could aim for the eyes, if it would stand still long enough; another doubt. Jack prayed his men’s ballistae would do the job, but again far too much doubt. Feeling guilty that he had not arrived in time to inspect the weapons, the Mayan foreman told him that it had been modified by Jack’s men. Now Coi and Jack walked with the barricade bearers on the west bank; the bank that had the best chance of producing an attacker.
Morning turned to afternoon and in the distance they could see the cliffs where the waterfall was. Boulders had been easily navigated around as the Mayan’s simply pulled the sub closer to one bank of the river or the other, and when around the obstacle, back to the middle. Commands were sent from the rafts to look for and prevent any ‘just below the surface’ surprises.
Jack finally managed to crack a smile when he remembered something that had amused him earlier and was about to tell Coi to relieve the tension.
An earth-shattering roar shattered the quiet of the jungle. Coi snapped her head around to briefly look at her love and without any fear in her eyes and calmly muttered “That is what you call a rex.”
“Yeah…” Jack sighed “we’ve heard that sound one time too many.” It roared again and Jack watched Coi move her head one way and then the other as she listened.
“My love…it comes our way.” with that Coi shouted something in Mayan, and again in English.
“PREPARE!”
There was a flurry of activity as ropes were secured to any close tree or boulder, men grasped spears and long sharpened poles, and one of the ballistae was swung toward the sounds of crashing through the jungle. The men on the sub with long poles that pushed it away from any obstacles now shoved their poles deep into the river’s silt bottom should any of the ropes be broken. Another roar was heard and Coi’s face paled…
“By the Gods, there are two!” again she screamed something in Mayan and the natives carrying portable spiked barriers moved toward the river and pressed them into the mud. The men that had carried them now stood at the ready behind the barriers with spears. Others had carried long sharpened poles and they moved to form a row just behind the twenty foot long spiked barriers that had been quickly being lashed together. A wall of wood and flesh stood at the water’s edge.
Everyone on the land stood near or in the slow moving river as diving below the surface would be the last hope of surviving should the rexes not be deterred by a painful foot stab.
The jungle burst with s flurry of various greens and browns as the first rex blasted through the shrub and tree fringe, and headed straight for the barriers…and the tasty morsels behind.
“They’ve met people before.” Coi shouted “They are not puzzled by us…this makes them more dangerous.” The rex headed for the humans that had quickly squatted down in the water and frozen in place.
The size of the rex’s strides took only four steps before it stepped on the first section of spiked limbs and as the triangular spikes dug into the muddy soil near the river bank, two of the top spikes sunk deep into the bottom side of its foot.
There was a blood curdling half roar, half scream, and the rex swung back toward the jungle with a wooden spike the thickness of a 5 inch limb stuck into its foot. The second step the spike came out but it kept limping into the jungle as fast as its injured foot would allow.
As it burst through into the deep underbrush, out smashed the second. As its mate had done, it headed toward the humans on the riverbank and by its second step, the pole bearers were praying to their gods in the ancient language; their poles were designed to skewer raptors and even though they knew their chances were slim to none, they braced their poles into the mud.
Jack raised his .380 and fired several shots, but the rex was moving far too fast for him to hit something like an eye to deter it.
Several Mayans were trying desperately to repair the smashed barricades and were quickly snapped up by the ferocious rex. One went down without touching the teeth, but the other died with a sickening crunch and the gigantic head lowered after several more of the fleeing Mayans.
There was a strange hissing and Jack looked toward the first raft. A plume of smoke covered the raft as something flew out of the cloud and toward the gigantic beast. There was a muffled blast and glowing white plumes flowered near the rex’s head. Several plumes slammed into the head of the rex and it screamed in pain as smoke now spewed from each wound.
“Phosphorous grenade!” Jack shouted as the rex flopped to its side and rolled on the ground as the wounds burned with unrelenting heat. Finally it managed to get its footing and stumbled into the jungle as the stench of burnt flesh and white smoke billowed behind it as its desperate screams echoed throughout the jungle. In the distance there was silence and once again the jungle sounds began returning and Coi knew the threat was over.
Coi looked puzzled, she had never seen such a horrible weapon…yet knew it could save countless lives in the future.
“My love…what is this poperus…uh…”
“Phosphorous honey.” the look on her love’s face was disconcerting. “It is a weapon people in our reality developed.” Jack nodded to the first barge sized raft “It would appear my friends whipped up a batch for protection.”
“The dinosaur…rex…it burnt through its skin?” one shocked native asked as he stared at the jungle “You made it to fight dinosaurs in your world?”
Jack sighed as his stare followed that of the man that asked “You should see what it does to another human being.” came his reply with another deep sigh. “It seems that we have a penchant for killing and mutilating…even in this world.”
Before Jack finished his reply the ropes had been once again hoisted upon the shoulders of the natives and the sub and rafts were moving. A gentle touch on his shoulder and Jack gave Coi a half smile as he glanced at the bloody and quite flattened spike trap. Other Mayans cut the spikes free and hoisted them upon their shoulders, two to a spike…they still had several miles yet to go before reaching t
he waterfall. The danger was not over.
In the nearly three hours it took to raise the DSRV the twenty or so feet up to the level the portal was on, Jack had a chance to talk to Doc, who now decided that he was going to be one of those going through. Doc sat on a log and wiped the sweat from his brow the hot and humid afternoon was causing.
“All the time you’ve been gone Jack, I’ve been up here studying the portal. As soon as I got back from our visit to you when you met the shims, I immediately got back to studying it. ”
Jack smiled “Didn’t know you were a physicist Doc.”
“Merely dabble my dear boy. Now we were able to toss things from this world through without any problems, but we found two major things. One, which Jan’s people told me, was the portal shimmers just before something comes through. Granted it is only seconds, but it does give us time to get out from in front of that damned thing.” Doc looked concerned “Jack a large sea creature came through… I think it was some form of an orca…not our world. It died quickly and we pushed it off to the side of the stream up here so divers couldn’t see it.
Anyhow when it came through the portal shrunk from about four feet, to three. By holding a piece of the rope we had with us, I could hold it up against the portal and it wouldn’t go through; thus managed to measure it.”
“Ok Doc, I’ve seen that look before, what’s the problem?”
“Jack…I estimate that the portal will shrink to the size of a baseball after the sub passes through with all of us on board. I think the portal is running out of whatever is powering it.” he sighed “Every time something passes through it shrinks…this is something new according to Jan’s scientists.”
Jack looked over to Coi who was talking to Jan and Edward; who had become quite a charming couple, and then back to Doc.
“And that’s why I have to come along Jack. All my observations, measurements.”
“Doc we might not even be able to go outside of the sub if we wind up in another world that isn’t ours.”
Jurassic Portal Page 17