Dinosaurs!
Page 26
He had only fourteen minutes left when the landscape began to take on a familiar cast. Yes, there was the forest in which he had first encountered Hue-man and her mate, and just to the south of the forest was the swamp where he had been forced to abandon the damaged bicycle. Harry quickly pulled his watch fob out and checked the time. Nine minutes to six!
He dashed frantically across the plain, straining his eyes to find the bicycle. If he didn't find it very soon, he would be condemned to a short and nasty lifespan in the Mesozoic. The seconds ticked away like the pounding of his pulse. Now there was less than five minutes left. . . .
There it was! The gleaming, black bicycle was easily visible in the yellow grass. Harry sprinted toward it, his tail up high behind him. He was not more than fifty feet from it when a blood-curdling yowl split the air. He glanced behind him and saw a pack of brightly plumed deinonychuses bounding towards him, screeching horribly as they came. Harry's heart lurched in terror.
The leader was near enough for Harry to make out the terrible claws on its hind legs. Though the deinonychuses were no larger than himself, they were extremely fierce—and there were so many of them!
Harry could never outrun them. His only chance was the bicycle. He doubted that it was still serviceable, but he made for it as quickly as he could.
As he ran, he whipped out the watch. Less than two minutes remained!
He despaired as he drew closer to the bicycle and saw that its tyres were so badly bent that it could not possibly be ridden. The deinonychuses were closing in on him. Their roaring filled his earholes as he reached the bicycle.
At that moment an astonishing thing happened. The bicycle suddenly righted itself and flew straight up into the air. It bounced back down to the ground and then up again, the twisted metal straightening itself a bit on each bounce.
The bicycle bounced one last time, and was completely restored as it began to pedal backwards. Harry ran towards it, the wild pack howling right behind him.
The Law of Forward Time Conversion was taking effect!
Harry scurried pell-mell across the plain, chasing the bicycle, until he caught sight of the chronokineticon; it rested in the bed of wildflowers exactly as he had left it. His heart swelled with hope as he saw that it was unharmed.
A dinosaur the size of a chicken, a microvenator, who had been dining on butterflies, blinked as the riderless bicycle came pedalling backwards towards it. It squawked and scurried up onto what it no doubt deemed the safest place in sight—the chronokineticon.
In a trice, the bicycle leapt up onto the main wheel alongside the tiny creature. It took its place and its chain snaked over the chronokineticon's smallest cog. The huge mechanism was already whirling, bound for the nineteenth century! Harry glanced over his shoulder and saw slavering jaws about to close on his tail! He ducked aside as the deinonychus' fangs snapped shut, catching a whiff of fetid breath. The carnosaur stumbled, its forward motion arrested just enough for Harry to outdistance it the last few paces to the time-machine. It was now or never!
Harry leapt towards the bicycle, three pair of clacking jaws barely missing him. He fell short, landing on the ladder, and scrambled desperately towards the seat. As hungry jaws snapped around him, the chicken-sized microvenator scurried up over his body and head. The ladder, never meant to carry weight under the tremendous force of the spinning main wheel, began to buckle and fall back towards the pack of deinonychuses. Harry felt their hot breath on his tail and backside as he jumped. The deinonychuses screeched and ground their razor teeth as he clambered up onto the seat. In a moment the savage beasts had vanished.
The light flickered and dimmed as the sun passed overhead repeatedly. Harry pedalled backwards. Fortunately, there was less resistance moving forward in time than moving in reverse. The glaciers rushed over him, retreated, rushed back. . . . The mountains became less craggy, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of rude, neolithic huts in the distance. The huts became first a village, then a town, and at last a city.
Harry neared his own beloved nineteenth century. The sun arced from east to west a little slower now. The university spires appeared. Harry's claws gripped the handlebars tightly. He was almost home! The flag-bedecked pavilion sprang up. The crowd came into view next, moving comically fast—and there was Sir Brathwaite!
The brilliant scientist sat on his shooting stool, drinking tea, just as he had been when Harry last saw him. With an enormous clunking noise, the chronokineticon came to an abrupt, wrenching halt. Momentum tossed Harry off headlong into the crowd, the pith helmet flying off his head.
As the terrified Harry landed in their midst, his fall broken by the bodies of several gentlesaurians, everyone gasped—or very nearly everyone. Sir Brathwaite had not seen Harry hurled into the crowd. His snout had been stuck in a teacup when the chronokineticon appeared, and he had missed everything. Now he perceived that the cumbersome time-machine had returned—and more than returned: it was partially embedded in the ground, a result of geologic activity over the eons. Just as the ground was low in the Cretaceous, so was it commensurately high in the nineteenth century. It was this that had stopped the machine's motion and hurled Harry forward.
Sir Brathwaite waved his stick at the chronokineticon. Resting upon its seat was Harry's helmet.
"Poor, brave Harry!" said the grey-feathered scientist. "All that remains of him is his pith helmet!" Reverently, Sir Brathwaite lifted the edge of the helmet with his stick. Underneath it, perched on the seat, crouched the tiny dinosaur that had fled to the chronokineticon for fear of the deinonychus pack!
"Oh, what a tragedy!" Sir Brathwaite said, as the pith helmet fell to the main wheel and rolled to a stop. "The poor devil has regressed to a state of prehistory . . . and not even to an ornithomimus, at that." Sir Brathwaite's throat sac distended sadly. "I say, Harry lad, do you know me? Poor, dear, brave boy!"
The creature blinked at him.
"This stout fellow has made the ultimate sacrifice for science and empire . . . but at least he has proved my theory that the modern saurian is descended from the crafty micro-venator!"
"Your theory, Sir Brathwaite?" Harry slowly raised his aching body from the mud and stood. "I do not recall you even subscribing to that theory, let alone inventing it."
Sir Brathwaite stared in dismay as Harry limped towards him. For a moment he looked angry at Harry's inopportunely timed appearance, but quickly recovered his composure. "Thank God you're alive," Sir Brathwaite gushed, coming forward to pump Harry's hand. "I knew you'd survive, old thing. All it takes is pluck, and you've always had plenty of that!"
While Harry was still blinking in astonishment at Sir Brathwaite's utter shamelessness, Sir Brathwaite turned to the crowd. "Three cheers for Harry Quince-Pierpont Fotheringay!" he shouted. "Hip, hip-"
"Hooray!" the audience roared.
"Hip, hip-"
"Hooray!"
"Hip, hip-"
"Hooray!"
Harry attempted to speak, but the roar of the crowd drowned out his hoarse voice. In spite of his momentary annoyance with Sir Brathwaite, he was deeply touched.
At last the din died down, and Sir Brathwaite commanded his attention once again. "My boy, you have returned from the Cretaceous, with this creature as evidence of your marvelous journey through time. A knighthood shall soon be yours, no doubt. But now, tell us what it was like. Can you describe the awesome vistas of the prehistoric world for us?"
Harry's happiness at his hero's reception quickly faded at the thought of the intelligent apes he had encountered in the past, to say nothing of the intelligent dogs, whales, and cockroaches. He looked around at the throng of gentlesaurians that surrounded him—the great ladies peering through their lorgnettes at him, the gentlemen leaning forward avidly, resting on canes and furled umbrellas—and felt his throat pouch swell with emotion. Here was the very flower of nineteenth century civilization, itself the pinnacle and summation of all previous history. How serene they were, how untroubled, how effortlessly refi
ned—unchallenged rulers of an Empire upon which the sun never set, masters of all they surveyed, the chosen of God, made in His image, to whom He had given Dominion over all the beasts of the earth . . . How could he tell them the truth? How could he tell them they were not alone, not unique? How could he shatter their complacency by telling them of all the other creatures who doubtless believed that they, too, were Lords of Creation . . . loathsome, unwholesome creatures! He shivered in horror and disgust at the very thought of them. How could he tell these cultivated gentlesaurians that it seemed to be only the merest chance—the whim of the universe—that it was they who had achieved the summit, and not gerbils, or weasels, or raccoons, or apes?
"No, Sir Brathwaite," he said, a catch in his voice, his jaw firming in resolution. "No, for there are some things sauriankind was not meant to know . . ."