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A week passed and Cassy seemed somewhat better as they had completed their rounds of the Indian territories. They had even allowed Kurt to take a wagon load of goods to the next town. During that time, Cassy did inform Mary and Missy that indeed she and Cord had been lovers, which confirmed everyone’s suspicions. That is all save Mary who had known for sure. She was afraid she’d hurt Missy and Wes if they knew, but it appeared she was wrong...especially Wes. All the time they spent on the train, Cassy spent with her head on Wes’s shoulder or sleeping with her head in his lap.
Though improved in spirit, there always seemed that there was something that she held back. As much as Wes worried the fact was, they were now completely unloaded with their supplies to the last village the rails reached. Wagons returned and loaded with goods to be sent back to Boulder, they now had to back the train to the main Indian town and Wes was afraid that passing through the area where Cord had lost his life saving Cassy’s would trigger her sorrow even worse that it seemed to be…but Wes was wrong.
As far as anyone could see Cassy was no sadder than before and went about what sorting she had to do with the neatly cut raptor hides. This also surprised Wes as they were also the hides of the same type of creature that took her love’s life. Cassy just went about her business.
Upon reaching the town, the crew found that the Indians had indeed been busy. The track they had dropped off was completed and now had a ‘T’ shaped switch so the train could back onto the dead-end siding, throw the switch and pull head first on the track to Boulder and that made the guys happy knowing they didn’t have to back the entire distance…and Red could see the tracks ahead rather than having someone watch them from the caboose.
Fueled with dry wood, coal, and water, the trip back with fully loaded cars of supplies for Boulder was fast. As Boulder appeared in the distance Missy walked over to where everyone that wasn’t working were sitting.
“Something wrong baby?”
Wes still frowned “Just keep feeling that the professor isn’t telling us everything.”
Kurt smiled “I’m sure he is.” he smiled again as he sat across from Wes.
“When I first got here I too thought the same, but after knowing him all these years…”
Wes interrupted with a shake of his head.
“Sorry Kurt. Look, I know you and Proff are close, I also get the fact that everything got dropped here and Pangea is some sort of a focal point for this time thingy of his. I also get that what Red and I saw…the portal flatten and fade…gave him the idea that it’s run out of power.” He sighed deeply “Fine!” he looked at Kurt again “But did Proff ever tell you if the focal point is real? Has he ever mentioned that if the portal did run out of power…that crystal power thing he told us of…could it be recharged? Maybe if we found it and whatever the portal focused on here in Pangea…” Wes frowned “Hell I don’t know…maybe we could figure out a way home?”
Kurt had a strange look on his face and Wes knew his thoughts had gotten through to the ex-German flyer. He thoughtfully looked at Wes.
“Maybe…maybe, you might be on to something there.” He looked at the rest never changing his puzzled look.
“Proff and I had talked many times during the first few years, but to be honest, every time I got to the idea that we might put our heads together and figure out a way to return to our times, Proff would shake his head and change the subject. I always figured that he was just so frustrated about failing to find a way that he just didn’t want to talk about it.”
Missy laid a blanket over the sleeping Cassy in the seats behind them, joined Wes and curled her feet under her on the seat as she laid her head on Wes’s shoulder.
“Baby, what else could there be? I’m sure that Proff would have thought of something as he is the smartest man living in these times.” she smiled sweetly.
“Maybe he likes being the leader of all that surrounds him?” Wes sighed “It’s hard to think about it as I don’t know the man, but maybe the ‘master of his realm’ thing could be right?”
“No…” Kurt argued “Not Proff, he’s tried to hand power down several times. Few tried to fill his shoes, but eventually Proff is begged to take the lead again even though he still advised whoever took over. Power never went to his head and Proff is the kindest man I’ve ever met.”
Wes laid his head over on Missy’s and smiled “Ok if you say so Kurt, but I still think there is something Proff isn’t telling us…” the train jarred a bit and then returned to the click-click rhythm of the tracks “Sorry to be so suspicious guys, but Kurt, he just seems so content with the fact that we’re here for good.”
Mary nodded “It sure seems like he’d still be looking for something to…” The train rattled into the dark passage through the wall and the portcullis could be heard clanking shut over the chugging of the engine. Their ears popped from the suction of the newly installed fans as it drew out the black Dillo laden smoke the engine belched, and exhausted to the outside of the wall. Within a few more seconds they were in the rail yards and Red sputtered over the radio from the cab.
“Holy crap Wes, are you seeing this?”
Everyone moved to the right side windows to see. Since they had been gone, two more sidings had been installed, new switches and a good half dozen rail wagons they used to carry supplies to the Indian communities. These were much smaller and closer to normal sized box and flatbed cars.
These were varied as some were flat cars already laden with more rails and other goods. There were some wagons that looked like ore carriers and one rather large tank car that was slightly larger than the two they had brought with them.
Kurt chuckled “The wheels we’ve been making since the first set of tracks arrived here in Pangea. We had already been casting steel for the train wheels for decades. They are easy as they are one piece. Same with the bushings that they ride on; easy to cast.” he laughed “On my wagons, we didn’t have to worry about the bushings as they would eventually smooth themselves out being pulled so slow. Now that your train arrived, Proff said we had to figure out some way to machine smoother bushings or burn out the wheels.”
Red had been listening in on the radio “Or catch the wagons on fire. I know you used wheels that were already broken in this trip, but to think I have…”
Red’s pause gave the crew a hint that something had distracted him, and they were right.
“Jesus…” Red muttered “is that what I think it is?”
Sitting on the most distant siding were large wheels and a chassis of what appeared to be something akin to his engine’s size.
Kurt keyed his radio “It was going to be a surprise for you Red. As you know the engineers took measurements of your train, and started to make parts that could be used to start a new train.” He looked out the window at the construction framing and hoists.
“Proff wants to dissemble parts of the engine now we’re back so we can make more engines…if it’s ok with you…the brothers agreed before we left.”
“Speaking of which…” Wes started to ask, but Kurt laughed.
“Already working on ways to start up some sort of supply system to make profit I’ll wager.”
Red couldn’t hide the worry, nor the glee in the idea of running a complete rail line chock full of trains heading in all directions. Nor had he or anyone imagined the speed in which the foundries of Boulder worked as they passed stacks and stacks of new rails. One of the mechanical engineers from the thirties, told him about a plan to rig spikes on the engines to keep dinosaurs away. Red had laughed and informed him that his idea was impossible as it required the builders of the railroad to widen everything…including the huge wall to accommodate the spiked protection. He sadly nodded and walked off knowing they’d have to stick to weapons and ‘smelly smoke’ to repel attackers.
Kurt had told them of the iron mines and how they were basically strip mining the very ends of their landlocked peninsula. Below in the southern
prairies he had told of the other races that when able, exchanged goods…mainly magnesium that was used to weld the rails together out on the prairie. Stunned by the progress, Wes still had that nagging hunch about Proff and that bothered him to no end.
This also concerned Sarge as Sarge had known Wes for a few years and his hunches had saved them many times.
Sarge looked over to Wes “We’re heading on over to have a chat with Proff aren’t we.” Wes just stared out the window as Sarge looked around at the rest of their group.
“Yup! We’re going to go chat with Proff…I just know it.”
“And you know this how?” Missy asked.
Sarge nodded to his silent longtime friend and ex-leader.
“Because when he gets like that, something has bugged him long enough and he wants answers.”
“He won’t hurt Proff?” Kurt asked gingerly.
“Naw, not Wes.” Sarge replied “But if we have to sit in his office until we turn to dust, Wes will get us some answers.”
“Huh?” Wes muttered as he turned his gaze from the new train cars and back toward Sarge and the rest.
“Nothing boss.” Sarge smiled and winked at the rest.
Wes looked a bit out to sea “Uh yeah, we’re going to see Proff as soon as the train…” The train came to a clunking halt and Wes slapped his knees as he arose.
“Well guys, looks like I’m off to see the wizard.”
Everyone chuckled as Missy and Sarge spoke at the same time.
“Not without us you aren’t.”
Kurt grinned “Guess I’m in as well, mein Kapitän.” adding a click of his heels and a slight bow at the waist, as was the practice of the German aristocracy in Kurt’s time. With a nod of his head, he fell in behind Wes and Missy.
“You were an aristocrat Kurt?” Wes asked.
“My grandparents Wes, my father was disowned during WWI for not fighting for the Kaiser. I like a fool thought fighting for that little mustached pipsqueak…” he sighed softly “I’m really sorry that my friend Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg failed to...” Kurt never got to finish as they disembarked and Red met them. Wes knew Kurt regretted joining the Luftwaffe, and so far Kurt had been nothing but a friend to him. He could see over and over Kurt seemed like he felt like he had to prove himself to Wes.
Wes pointed to the lone structure that held Proff’s office.
“Again let me reiterate, off to see the wizard.”
Missy laughed and made like she was waving a magic wand and clicking her heals together as she closed her eyes.
“There’s no place like home…there’s no place like home.” She peeked through her eyelids as she looked around and sighed “Ok, this still isn’t Kansas…off to see the Proff.”
Chapter 29.
Proff welcomed Wes and his people and everyone sat around the meeting table with Proff at the head. They had little time to chat since their arrival, but Wes had a surprise for the professor and he didn’t pull punches, nor hedge on his first question.
“Ok professor, I’ve had a chance to ponder all the stuff you told us the day we met.” he looked at Proff with his dark eyes. “Now how about you tell us everything you didn’t tell us?” before Proff could speak Wes added “I know what you tell people from other times, people that didn’t know about portals and the like…” he sat to Proff’s left and looked him straight in the eye.
“The truth…not what you thought we should hear.”
The professor leaned forward and slowly looked over this group of people as he slowly nodded. Wes however, was not prepared for the truth that Proff told…
“My friends, I’m thinking it is about time the truth comes out, but I’m not exactly sure as to how those that do not know about things like this will take it.
You see…the truth be told, me…and my partner in research, Dan… Well we had hit a brick wall in our teleporter research.
Dan, my partner if you recall, had rechecked my figures and found a critical error that we had both previously missed…many times in fact. Not only didn’t we have the power, but we hit a flaw that completely changed my original formula. I had the concept, but the math wasn’t there. That much of what I told you was true…and of course the accident.”
It was the young lass that spoke up from her week and a half of near silence.
“Your friend Dan…” she reached to her neckline and pulled a rawhide necklace out from beneath her top, pulled it over her head and slid it down the long table and it stopped in front of Proff.
“Was this his?” Cassy slid it across the table.
Proff’s eyes welled with tears as his trembling hands gently clasped around the necklace and the small microchip incased in plastic. With red eyes he looked down the table at Cassy as she smiled and spoke.
“I never knew the old man’s name, he said he couldn’t remember. The people in Blackwood found him and just called him ‘old man’ so he just went by it. When he found me I cried for days, I wanted to go home, I wanted my parents.” she looked at Proff with tears in her eyes
“He’d cradle me and stroke my hair and tell me there was no going home right then. Months went by and every day I asked him if I could leave to go home…” she smiled warmly “I guess he got tired of me pleading because one day he lost his temper and blurted out something about it wouldn’t exist for me or my kids…”
Everyone in the room looked shocked as they looked toward the professor and then back to the lass.
“Professor, I think the old man was Dan, but the age wasn’t as you described him.”
Proff nodded slowly as he wiped the tears from his cheeks.
“Nothing seems to drop at the same time, I might have dropped a decade after he did and as long as we live around here, it could have been decades or a century…but I found no real trace of Dan and quickly gave up when the people around here told me how things appeared and how far apart things dropped…but I never gave up.”
Cassy smiled softly as she remembered back to her days with the old man who now had a name. “He said that he had a large head wound and some people in Blackwood had patched him up…he remembered so much about other things, but never a thing of his life or past.
“The portal Proff?” Kurt reminded his friend.
“Oh yes, the portal…forgive me. Dan and I were about to just sell off all the gear we had assembled in hope of getting some of our money back…” he sighed “it is amazing how much we managed to spend in nearly a decade.
Anyway Dan came over early and was going to take inventory, but shouted for me to get my fanny down to the basement. There sitting in the middle of the floor was this faintly glowing orb I told you about.”
“So students didn’t find it?” Red asked.
“No my friend, they did not. Attached to the orb was a cylindrical object and when I approached some sort of hologram showed. It was sort of a slide show, so Dan and I began to take pictures of it. The data was incredible…”
“You hesitate Proff.” Bryce muttered.
“There was more Mister Lewis, one series of pages didn’t fit, but the others we recognized as mathematics related to what we were doing…but incomplete. Dan figured out the set of numbers the text was written in, but the language was unknown.
Oh I went on with the numbers and corrected my portal theory as it appeared whomever sent this orb was working on the same teleportation theory. Dan found how to use the orb by accident as I said and we constructed the very first working portal.”
“Somehow I feel like there’s a but coming.” Wes added.
“You see the text confounded me and I kept a small scroll of the text in my pocket that I had transcribed from the pictures we had taken. I worked at deciphering the text in my spare time… Well the accident happened as I said and I arrived here. I told the ruling body here in Boulder everything and thought they’d lynch me, but instead one wise man just informed me that I’d fill a place of learning with others. We were of similar intelligence and we would work together a
t finding a way home while they looked for the focal point I told them about. Then I wasn’t sure if the power source and the portal were one in the same or different entities,” he nodded sadly “it took a while to explain because I was guessing at best.”
“You found them?” Missy blurted out with so much hope in her tone that Wes had to restrain her from leaping out of the chair.
“Found it…yes.” He pointed to a strange looking pile of blackened shards encased in the corner of the room. “Apparently when the portal triggered, it created a solid anomaly here in Pangea and that’s what is left of it.”
Everyone’s hearts sank as their eyes slowly drifted off the basketball sized chunk of broken, burnt shards that still held a partial shape of what was the focus.
Proff could see the despair, but it was broken by John.
“Well hell guys, let’s just make another one. I’ll bet the professor has some idea of…”
Proff smiled weakly and nodded.
“I know something probably could be created…let me finish…please.” he sighed deeply as he looked at the newcomers.
“I worked where and with whomever I was asked to, but in my spare time I worked on the scroll of pictures we took of the text. My room was covered with dinosaur vellum,” he smiled “it was cheaper than the cotton paper.”
Proff stood and began to pace nervously and Wes sensed what was coming next he wasn’t going to like.
Proff stopped and turned to face the group.
“I finally was so elated when I figured out a Rosetta stone for the cyphers…and then regretted it.”
Puzzled looks abounded as Wes started to ask why, but Proff continued…
“My friends, the orb, the formulas, everything was from the future. Not just from the future, but from an alien race that was passing through our solar system and found us by our radio and TV signals. They watched our planet for a while and tried to learn from us. They were somehow able to scan our records, books, recorded media, and do it all from space. Among the records they found some obscure mention of Dan and I, and our failed attempt to create portals.
Last Train to Pangea: Death by Dinosaur Page 21