by David Rhodes
“Why would you pay to talk to me?” Lisa asked.
Steve turned to her and said, “Because you were there. You saw it and felt it. You know things my team doesn’t. You lived through an experience that others didn’t.” As Lisa bit her lip, he continued, “I’m sorry I put it that way, but it’s true. And I don’t want what happened to your friends to happen to my team.”
Lisa quickly thought of Marilyn and dropped her head. Then she turned to Ron and said, “Maybe we could go for a few minutes. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Ron told Steve.
“When would you like to come by?” Steve asked.
“Now,” Lisa answered. “Can we come by now?”
Steve smiled and replied, “Of course. I have a car outside if you’d like a ride or you can follow me.”
“We’ll follow you,” Ron said. “Let me pay the bill first and –”
“Professor Fontana, please let me get it. I’m honored you both will be joining us.”
As they walked out of the restaurant, Ron asked, “Us?”
“Yes, my brother Ben will want to be there also. He actually will have most of the questions.” He pointed to a car and told them, “I’m in the small blue car there. I’ll have my driver make sure we don’t lose you.” He shook both of their hands and said, “I can’t tell you how excited I am about this.”
As Ron drove, Lisa asked him, “We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?”
Ron paused and said, “I think so. I really do. This Steve is just another time traveler, like Charles. He wants to keep his team safe, that’s all.”
“But what if he is a time traveler like Taggit? What if he really doesn’t care?”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“No, he seems genuinely concerned, but Taggit fooled us, all of us. I just don’t want it to happen again.” She trailed off with, “Not again.”
“I agree,” Ron told her. “I think we need to go slow and see just what this is all about. He’s smart, he not only time travels but he was able to piece everything together just from reading Danny’s book. Let’s just see.”
As they turned through a gate beside a sign that read EXENCO Experimental Energy Consultants, they saw a large complex of buildings spread out over several acres. All the buildings had solar panels on top of them and in the distance behind the buildings they saw wind turbines. As they parked Steve came up and said, “Welcome to my business. As you can see, my company practices what it preaches. We are concerned with the state of the environment and are constantly looking for new ways to provide quality energy to the world without damaging it.”
“This is stunning,” Ron said. “Is time travel just a hobby then?”
Steve thought for a moment then replied, “I guess you could say that, but not really. It is a passion of mine, visiting prehistoric eras and seeing the animals that lived then. I mean, it really has no use. I agree with all of you that animals cannot be brought back to the present and I’m not a publicity seeker. I’m not going to show my videos to anyone else but you and hopefully the other time travelers. So, maybe you are right, just an expensive hobby.”
“What powers your time travel unit?” Lisa asked.
“Excellent question. When we stop we immediately deploy windmills and the solar panels are part of the Unit design. There are other sources we try to tap into also, like the heat of the ground we are resting on, strictly in the experimental stage I assure you, but promising. Of course, there are other methods but like Charles asked during your jumps, would you understand if I told you? If so, I would love to discuss it with you. Maybe get a new perspective on things. But now, let’s go in and meet my brother.”
They quickly walked through a few offices until they found Ben at a console surrounded by large screens. Steve told them, “I’m going to leave you in my brother’s capable hands. I will be back soon though.” Then he asked, “Ben, can you take over?”
Ben jumped up and smiled as he shook their hands. “How nice of you to stop by,” he told them. “I have a lot of questions for you if you don’t mind.”
“It’s why we are here,” Ron said.
“I don’t know if I will be much help,” Lisa told him. “I don’t know a lot about dinosaurs.”
“We don’t either,” Ben replied. “But that’s not all I’m interested in, I’m sure you’ll have some interesting perspectives and ideas.”
“She will,” Ron agreed. “She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. If she needs to say something, she will.”
“Great,” Ben said. “But I almost forgot, would you like a tour of the facilities first? See everything we do?”
“Maybe later,” Ron replied. “Steve said something about a video of an animal you couldn’t identify?”
Ben turned around and a holograph panel appeared. As he moved his hands, Lisa looked at Ron, it all seemed too familiar for her. But he was looking intently at the screens, so she just took a deep breath and didn’t say anything. Then she gasped as the screens were filled with the image of an open beach area with two figures wearing odd suits running toward them. She shouted, “No,” as the animal burst from the water and its mouth snapped shut on Hood and disappeared back into the water.
Ron turned to her and took her hand and said, “It’s okay, it’s just a video.”
“But that man just died.”
“He did,” Ben agreed. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew what we were going to see. I thought Steve had told you. It’s what we’re trying to stop. Why we need answers.”
“Just give me a minute,” Lisa said. “Steve didn’t exactly tell us what we were going to see but he did mention people had died. I guess I should have known.”
“Just tell me when.”
As Ron smiled at her, she told Ben, “Go ahead, I’m ready now, but what happened to the second man we saw?”
Ben paused just for a moment then smiled and told her, “He made it back to the Unit just fine.”
“Okay, go ahead then.”
The video jumped back to the people running and then slowed down as the animal came out of the water. They watched it three more times and then Ron asked, “Will the video go any slower?”
“Yes,” Ben said, and the animal came out of the water one frame at a time.
Ron leaned forward and watched without blinking. As the mouth closed, he told Ben, “Stop right there. The animal is almost completely out of the water, we can see everything we need to, and it’s unbelievable. At first, I thought it would be Lemmysuchus or Deinosuchus but now I see it isn’t. Let me think on this for a moment.”
“So, all of those would be different than a sea crocodile? That’s what we thought would come out of the sea.”
“Yes, yes, much different than your standard sea crocodile. It’s not a Leldraan.” Ron stared at the screen for a few more seconds then said, “You know, it could be, it looks like it, but bigger. It’s got the snout, but there haven’t been…”
As he trailed off Lisa asked, “What do you think?”
“Well, again, no fossils have been found in the U.S. but of course that doesn’t mean a lot when you remember the small percentage of fossils we have actually uncovered. But, I think I may be right.”
“Okay, but what do you think it is?” she asked.
“A Sarcosuchus, well, a Sarcosuchus on steroids and in the wrong place.”
“What do you mean?” Ben asked.
“Sarcosuchus, and I mean Sarcosuchus imperator, is found in Africa. It’s a huge animal, though smaller than this one, but they have the same snout. But some teeth belonging to Sarcosuchus hartti were found in Brazil so that places the animal in South America. Still, there is nothing to link these animals, but…”
“But you have a theory, right?”
“Well, Sarcosuchus could have migrated to the Inland Sea. And, being in the area we see here, a beach or shore, that is where they would be. They lived in sea and freshwater. What other
animals were in the area?”
“There were some Rexes.”
“So, that would be the late Cretaceous and Sarcosuchus has been dated from early to late Cretaceous so…”
“So, it’s a Sarcosuchus?” Ben asked.
Ron shook his head and answered, “Well, maybe. Sarcosuchus-like is a better way of saying it. The length of the animal is right, forty or fifty feet or so it looks like, but the body is bigger, bulkier, especially the head. This could just be the North American version of it after a few million years of evolution.”
Ron looked at the screen for another moment and asked, “The pack the man was wearing, was it to protect him?”
“Yes,” Ben answered. “It stood up to a Rex bite, so we thought –”
“So, you thought it would stand up to the bite of a sea crocodile if you ran into one.”
“To tell you the truth, we didn’t really think about it that much. We concentrated on land animals.”
“Well, there is a lot of conjecture about the bite force of all dinosaurs and also crocodilians. The T-rex is thought to have had the largest bite force of any land animal, but crocs have enormous bite forces. This animal is larger than any crocodile or crocodilian than we have encountered before. No wonder you misjudged it.”
Ben nodded his head and told Ron, “I wish you had been in on the planning stages. You could have given us vital information instead of us learning through trial and error.” He looked at the screen, “We wouldn’t have lost these men.”
“Men?” Lisa asked.
“Yes, men. Some others lost their lives just before this incident when three juvenile Rexes attacked. We thought Rexes hunted alone.”
Ron leaned forward and said, “Only recently has it been theorized that Rexes, especially young ones, may have pack hunted. Can you show me?”
Steve walked in just then and said, “Professor Fontana, you’ve been here for over an hour. I know you are in a hurry, but I would like to show you a few other things before you go, perhaps you can come back soon?”
Ron smiled and replied, “Yes, I can come back. I think I can help you.”
Steve clasped his hands together and told them, “I’m so happy to hear you say that. That puts my mind at ease.”
“Mine too,” Ben added.
“We don’t want to see anyone else killed though,” Lisa told them.
“Of course not,” Steve said. “Ben, why don’t you come with us? I was going to show them the Unit.”
“Great,” Ben said as he turned off the screens and joined them.
“Follow me,” Steve said and led the way down a long hallway to a large room the size of a football field. Inside, Ron and Lisa were amazed to find what appeared to be a two-story building. It looked like it was made out of some lightweight metal and though there were windows they couldn’t see any sign of a door.
Well, here it is,” Steve told them. “It’s how we travel. I know from reading Danny’s book it’s different to what Charles Dawson built, and it is definitely different on the inside.”
“Can we see?” Lisa asked.
“Of course,” Steve said.
As they approached the Unit, a door appeared in the middle of it and they stepped through. Screens activated, and holographic images of controls and number readouts appeared. “I can show you more later,” Steve said, “but to keep things simple, right now we’re in the Viewing Room. We’re just outside the Conference Room, upstairs there is a Control Center and, work stations, and to the sides are Team areas and different storage compartments.” As he sat down he asked, “Do either of you have any questions?”
Ron shook his head and said, “Well, no, I guess not. Not yet anyway.”
Lisa smiled and said, “He wants to see the Stegosaurus. But he knows I don’t want to, that I’m still afraid of what happened. I’m sorry.”
Steve nodded and asked, “Would both of you sit down for a moment in the Conference Room?” As they both found chairs around a table, Steve continued, “I understand completely. But I might be able to take both of you for a…a jump if you will, to satisfy Ron’s curiosity, and Lisa, calm your fears. It seemed limiting to me to have a stationary launch pad for the Unit so to speak. Think of how you didn’t have to worry about appearing in the same building, at the same time as Taggit when you returned in the Unit that was kept in the elevator shaft. Charles Dawson was brilliant in that regard. It gave me the idea.
“As you saw when we entered this building it is large, very large. I designed it that way, so the Unit could be moved. One reason was in case there was ever any trouble, but the other reason was to go back and watch what happened during a Walk, troubleshoot to use Ben’s language.”
“You can go to the same site twice?” Ron asked.
“Or more if necessary,” Ben said. “We don’t do it often, but we do have the ability to drop back into the same time. Just not the same space of course.”
“But doesn’t the first Unit see the second?” Lisa asked.
Steve shook his head and replied, “Remember the camouflage Charles Dawson had? The holographs on the outside of his Unit? Ours is similar but I modified it some. Because you are right, we wouldn’t want the first set of Walkers to know they were being watched.”
“So, what are you trying to say?” Lisa asked.
“That if we go back to see the Stegosaurus I can guarantee your safety. The first set of Walkers deployed all safety devices, so we knew, and that’s knew one hundred percent, that there were no large, dangerous animals within a half-mile of us. They didn’t even need to put on their shells, the protection they wear on their backs against attacks.”
“We saw it earlier,” Ron said. “In the video of the possible Sarcosuchus attack.”
“Oh, so you thought you recognized a dinosaur? Which one was it, Ron?”
“On the beach, right after the Rexes.”
Steve smiled and said, “Thank you for watching the video Professor, knowing what the animal was will help us design better protection for the Team.”
“I could only guess at what it was.”
“I’m betting your guess is better than what we think we know.” Steve looked at Lisa and added, “And thank you, Lisa. I know it was probably hard for you, especially since there was a death involved.”
“At first it was, but the more we watched I suddenly knew that Ron could help. Maybe I could too in some small way. I don’t know how, but I don’t want anyone else to die.”
“I’m happy to hear you say that. I’m sure -”
“So, I think we should go back right now, if that’s possible,” Lisa suddenly said. “It’s safe, nothing happens. Statistically it won’t get any better than right now to visit the Stegosaurus site.”
“I’m surprised,” Ron said. “Are you sure?”
Lisa took a deep breath and quickly said, “Yes, I’m sure. I can deal with this and I can tell this is important to you. Plus, it might help with getting rid of my dreams.”
Steve put a hand on Lisa’s shoulder and said, “At any time you change your mind just say the word and we’ll immediately return.”
“Thank you.”
Steve turned, and as he started talking, holographic images appeared. As he began manipulating them Ron leaned over to Lisa and asked, “Are you sure?”
Lisa smiled and said, “Yes.”
Ron turned to Steve and told him, “Looks like we are good to go whenever you’d like.”
Steve smiled and replied, “That’s good because we’re about forty million years out already.”
Ron looked up and then he laughed and said, “Sorry, looking for the haze from our previous jumps. I forgot we were inside a building. I don’t have the sensation that we’re doing anything.”
“Do you think that’s better?” Ben asked.
Ron thought for a moment then answered, “Yes, I think it is. I don’t know why, maybe less distraction.”
“Yes,” Lisa agreed, “less distraction. I’m nervous, especially now that
I know it’s really happening again, but with no visual cues I’m staying under control.”
“That’s an understatement,” Ben said. “I’m monitoring both of you and first, it appears both of you are in exceptional shape. Lisa your resting heart rate is 48. You say you are nervous, but it still is only up to 60, which is 10 below Ron’s 70 which is excellent considering what we are doing. Ron, what’s your secret?”
“I watch what I eat and do lots of yoga,” Ron said quickly. “I have my whole life.” Then he smiled as he shook his head and continued, “Well, let’s just say since I met Lisa, she has me on track.”
“I’ll say,” Lisa said as she swatted Ron. “Before me he thought good food was hot dogs and beans and yoga was a catcher for the Yankees.”
Everyone laughed as Steve turned and said, “I’m glad we’re having a good time. But let’s step back into the Viewing Room, we have arrived.” As they entered the room they were surprised to see that the two windows they had seen earlier had disappeared and the whole wall seemed to now be a window. Outside was an open space that ran about fifty yards to a dark green jungle. Tall trees waved in an unfelt breeze as they towered above smaller trees with shorter ferns hugging the ground under them.
“Okay,” Ron said, “this is impressive. What are we looking through?”
Steve smiled and told them, “It’s a fabric that I invented. Certain electric currents make it see-through, or it can be opaque. It’s also how we camouflage the Unit. When the Team arrives in a few moments we’ll have to camo up, but we’ll still be able to watch what is going on.”
“Great,” Ron replied.
“It’s strange without any noise,” Lisa said.
“Ben, some sound,” Steve commanded and immediately they could hear the wind blowing, animal calls and insect noise rising and falling. In the distance, a roar was heard, and Lisa covered her ears and asked, “Can you turn it off now?”