A massive head, as big as Corey, with a short, elephant like nose pushed through the ferns just above his head. The nose snaked up and grabbed some branches filled with leaves and shoved them into the enormous mouth. Bits of leaves, sticks and saliva dropped as it chewed. They fell down on Corey as he stood there, fascinated and frozen in place. He watched as it chewed the branches a few feet above his head. He was so close he could see and hear it swallow.
The nose lowered again and suddenly stopped. It seemed to quiver for a second and then flipped over toward Corey’s head. Gently, almost lovingly, it skitted across his shoulders leaving a thin trail of slime covered pieces of leaf and branch. Then it lifted away and moved onward to another set of ferns. Throughout the entire experience, the tree-like leg in front of him never moved except to shift slightly in its placement on the ground.
Molly pulled up next to Corey. Her face looked white and drawn. Yet a familiar smile on her face told him that she would be her old self again soon. Molly passed him, leaving out a small giggle as she walked into the shade under its belly. Corey followed her down past the leg and out of the dense jungle’s edge, into the bright sunshine, onward toward the cliff’s edge.
‘So much for sitting up in a tree Molly! Good thing that was a leaf eater, right? You know, a mature T-Rex can get almost that high.’
Molly turned to Corey but her eyes focused behind him, ‘Anton, are you crazy! Get your hands off that leg. Suppose it goes and scratches at …’
A monstrous head broke through the thin canopy of the fern forest above Anton’s head. The leathery nose pushed down at him and a two-foot wide eyeball framed in small golden bronze, very coarse feathers looked directly into his eyes. Nonchalantly, the nose flicked around, hitting Anton and lifting him into the air. He landed on his back, eight feet down the path toward Molly and Corey.
They stood in shock for a moment. The head was gone and Anton wasn’t moving. Then he lifted his arm into the air to hold up the bottle with the blood serum in it. His body began to shake. At first concerned, they ran over to him. He turned over, a pained smile on his face. It obviously hurt to laugh but he couldn’t help it.
‘Aw shit that hurt. Just wait a second you two comedians, it knocked the breath out of me.’ Anton gasped and laughed at the same time. ‘I thought I was a gonner!’ He said while gasping in air. ‘Ok, don’t say a word or I’ll start to laugh again and never catch my breath. Aw shit, my chest really hurts!’
Corey walked over and took the bottle from his hand. ‘Well at least you didn’t lose this. Do I need to tell you how silly you look? What the hell were you thinking!’
‘Ok, don’t rub it in. The thing just stood there without moving. I know it was dumb but I wanted to see if it could feel me doing that.’
‘Ah, yeah. Well now we know.’
‘Ok, this way.’ Anton got up and rubbed his chest. Pushing his way back down the pathway, he grabbed the bottle away from Corey as he passed and saw him holding in a snicker. ‘Aw, cut it out!’
They emerged from the thick bush wall that marks the edge of the jungle. Ahead of them stretches a long, broad valley with a river running through its center. The cliffs are bare of most larger trees near the upper edges. The reddish soil here is a mix of slate and sandstone. Up ahead, a broad shelf of granite juts out from beneath the sandstone to provide a steel grey frame to the beauty of the landscape before them.
A blue, cloudless sky stretches before them across the valley. Light grey cliffs on the far side support a jade green canopy of trees and palmetto shrub on the far side. One section directly opposite them is covered with a carpet of massive vines that flow over the edge and half way down the cliff face capturing the mist from a nearby waterfall. The spectral colors of two rainbows play across its face as the mists swirl in the light breeze generated by the cooler falling waters.
The floor of the valley makes the ancient forests of the high planes look barren. Patches of dense palmetto growth are interspersed with open green pastures of grass and surrounded by deciduous trees such as oak, beech, fig, magnolia, and sassafras. The grass is a delicate, green newcomer to this planet where, until the last million years, the continents had only known coarse pine and gingkos, seed ferns, cycads, ferns, club mosses, and horsetails. Down in the river valley, these modern grasses have already pushed out most of the older forms of plant life. Their leaves are soft and succulent and they are the favored foodstuffs for the herds of herbivorous dinosaurs seen below.
Hundreds of hadrosaurids mill around on the valley floor feasting on the lush green growth. They bellow, play and form into large herds intermixed with other plant eating dinosaurs. Small theropods, or meat eaters, hunt and play between the larger duck billed dinosaurs. They chase each other and run after the even smaller dinosaurs that feed off the insects and parasites sitting on the backs and in the dung of the larger animals.
The blue sparkling, wide river flows down the center of the valley. Here it is deep enough that the flow is smooth and without rapids. Further off to the west, Corey can easily see the bright white sand beach where the river first broadens to flow into the sea covering most of the land mass that will someday be western Texas.
‘Wow, what a spot for a cabin!’ Corey says as he gazes out over the valley. ‘The view is fabulous and look at all the birds!’
‘Those aren’t birds.’ Anton comments, ‘They’re pterosaurs. Personally I don’t see the difference but you don’t want to call them birds in front of Sara Wenford unless you’re looking for a half hour lecture.’
‘Let’s get a move on. We’re almost at the overlook. I want to have enough time to set up properly before nightfall.’
‘Movement along the cliff top is easy. The path is smooth and clear of brush for most of the way and they weave in and out of the treeline as they push on using a well worn trail. Anton gently reaches out to push away a curtain of sharp thorns and behind it is open blue sky and slightly below them a hard grey rock outcropping marking the edge of the overlook. From this vantage they can finally see the massive rock edifice as it juts out into the valley, a bare granite finger, relatively flat on top and about a quarter of a mile wide. It extends out into the valley roughly three times its width marking a point where the river far below forms a hair-pin turn in its meandering path.
Anton can feel his shoes crunch as they pass over the loose gravel covering the rocky core. The heat of the sun is even greater as they leave the cooling canopy of the forest’s edge. The path ahead forms a clear trail where small rocks and the finer dirt cover have been worn away by the passage of many feet over the hard rock bed.
‘Put the scent out a little stronger here. We want to make them very anxious to come out on the cliff top. I want to head over this way, a little off the side of the path up by that boulder.’
The fissures, that Anton talked about, are now clearly visible in the rock at the edge of the cliff as they cross out onto the bare stone precipice. Ahead of their path, several threatening cracks start back about twenty to thirty feet from the edge of the rock’s precipice. Corey walks up to the very edge of the nearest without the slightest hesitation, ‘Hey, I can see right through it to the valley floor below. There’s a couple of rocks stuck in the crack up here but if you turn your head you can see right down to the tree tops below. You want me to climb down that?’
‘Yeah but not you Corey, this is your spot Molly. Come over here, the crack is wide enough for you and if you hop onto that rock that’s lodged in there, then it gets even wider below so that you can shimmy further down inside. There is no way they are gonna reach you from up here when you’re down there.’
‘You have got to be kidding.’ Molly comments as she looks over the edge. ‘You said there would be some cracks with boulders stuck in them but you didn’t say anything about being able to see right through to the valley floor below them! If I step on that thing how do I know we’re not both going to go flying down to the valley floor.’
‘Oh come on. You kno
w those rocks been there for millions of years. Why would it give way now. Besides, I’ve been down there. It’s not as bad as it looks from up here. There’s even a bit of an overhang that you can duck under down there. I tell you it’s pretty easy and not as scary as it looks.’
‘Well, if it held you I guess then I should be ok.’ Molly quipped with a slight twinkle in her eye. ‘Are you sure you went all the way down there?’
‘I, ah, well I went down to the rock and onto the ledge. I didn’t go out further down the side trail but you won’t have to anyway.’ Anton quipped as he turned to set down his backpack.
Anton opened the pack and pulled out a sack. He loosened the string on it and looked inside. ‘Well, I was a little concerned but I didn’t really expect them to be damaged from such a little bump.’
‘Little bump? Oh, you mean when you got nosed by that dino!’
‘… and flew into the bushes about three meters!’ Molly added.
‘Ah, yeah. Nosed! Never heard it put like that before, wise guys.’
‘Well I never saw someone thrown into the air by a big nose like that either Anton. Ok, I quit. Down to business, just what are these little things?’
‘These are the AutoSentinels that Marty constructed, he calls them StrobeSentinels.’ Anton flipped one into the air and caught it. ‘According to Marty, they are encased in a positively pressured covering like a tennis ball. Unlike our normal ‘sentinels that are on legs, these are made to lie directly on the ground.’
‘We have a basic problem with the Black Ghosts in that they can sense the long wavelengths of the detectors. They evaded our detectors by simply learning and then providing the proper identification response. That allowed them to easily pass through the perimeter defenses.’
‘When Marty put up the second wall, they immediately reacted to the signals because… well, the radiation scans changed so rapidly that it actually hurt them as they tried to follow the adaptation. When they finally managed to get through, we learned something else about them from their success. They are extremely resourceful and in spite of the pain, they were interested enough to repeatedly and painfully test the circuit barrier until they found a way in. We’re still not really sure how they did that.’
‘So, Marty, being the clever guy he is, put these little things together. We scatter them on the ground in a rough perimeter. Their sensitivity range is about thirty feet in all directions. I’d like to have had more of them but we have enough that we spread them across the neck of this outcrop and a ways along the edges. This little transmitter activates and communicates with them and they are all interlinked to process data as a hive.’
‘They’ll sit on the ground without emitting any radiation and without making a sound. Each one contains a small accelerometer inside that senses for ground vibration. When we first turn it on it measures the ambient noise and vibration levels for a minute. Then it self-calibrates using a Fourier Model to identify the frequencies in the area surrounding them. This self-calibrates the unit for the location allowing it to identify the normal background levels and detect intrusions even in a noisy area.’
‘Now, when something approaches the perimeter it will introduce a new set of pressure waves in the air and in the vibrations that travel through the ground. Oh, by pressure waves I mean noises Molly. They’ll stand out like a sore thumb against the normal background ambient and the StrobeSentinel will react.’
Molly wrinkled her nose and looked into Anton’s eyes, ‘Ok Anton, you got back at me but I know that noises are just variations in pressure in the air.’
‘Yeah. Well the Strobe first puts out a 0.4 millisecond pulse of radiation that scans the entire spectrum. This is much faster than the Black Ghosts can react but it’s enough time to take in a sample. Hopefully they won’t even notice the pulse. We have bio-identification algorithms on the chip inside each ball that can identify the intruder. If it is one of our Ghosts then the sentinel will test a second time. They are entirely passive after detection and identification so from that point onward they just listen silently until the subject leaves their area. We have them set to report as soon as they see any movement and they will alarm on our helmet radios using an ultra high frequency burst transmission if the detection is something we should worry about. So unlike most of the sentinels, they won’t actively try to prevent intrusion and they will remain stealthed.’
‘I get it Anton.’ Corey said as he examined one of the spheres. ‘It emits too short a burst for the Black Ghosts to react to and nullify and perhaps too short to even notice, but we will know they are here.’
‘That is the point of it. You and I will set up along the edges up here and over there. We’ll know when they come onto the peninsula and if they are onto the blood trail then they should head right for Molly.’ Anton stands up and points out across the bare rocky plateau toward the jungle wall beyond. ‘This is the killing field from here to over there by that set of boulders. You will set up over there and I’ll cross to that set of boulders over on the opposite edge. We’ll have them in a good field of overlapping fire without having to worry about hitting each other. Now look, we want to wait until they are well within the free fire zone. We should be able to get both of them if we can catch them in the open with their backs to the cliff.’
‘Molly, you don’t want to head down into the crevasse until we see them coming. They need to be able to see and smell you. Just make sure you keep your head down when they do come so we have a clear fire area. Any questions?’
‘Ok, you each have a sack like this in your backpack. Let’s run them out along the edges. I want a checkered placement zone at least thirty feet off the point and into the brush. We should have enough left after that to put a thin ring around the edges of the point…’
‘You mean along the tops of the cliffs?’ Corey interrupted. ‘Do you really think they would come up the face here? It’s sheer rock.’
‘I’m taking no chances with this. We’ve been surprised too many times. I want a sensor ring around the entire area even if it is a little thin along the cliff.’
* * * * *
Deborah Clinow looked out over the blue sea. She took a deep breath and turned to Matthew Zoeller who had walked out from behind his desk to stand beside her. Deborah picked up her hot cup of coffee. Her hands shook as she took a sip and set it down again on the small table. Turning back to the virtual world of his office’s walldisplay, she could see a flock of pterosaurs low winging across the waves in the distance, hear their cries and smell the fresh salt on the breeze. She felt a little safer here in Matt’s office. Here she was protected from the harsh reality of the world she saw before her but could still experience the beauty and the thrill of it. At least the thrill was still there.
As a member of the board of GraviDynamics she wanted to be able to provide the same thrill and appreciation of the beauty of this world to all of their customers. Provide them with a controlled environment where they could feel the excitement but safely experience the wonders of this world. Safely!
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this Matt! There’s an evolutionary niche to be filled in every ecology but still, they are animals, or at least I thought they would be! They aren’t supposed to be this smart or cruel. Intelligence is supposed to bring compassion and understanding!’
‘Oh Matt, how I underestimated them. I thought we could set up a resort here. You know, like the game preserves in Africa. A place where people could experience and learn about these wonderful creatures. I should have realized just how different and dangerous they would be. They aren’t like us at all. They are alien in every sense of the word, in every thought sequence.’
‘I never imagined just how dangerous they could be. After all, they have no real technology beyond what they are born with. What would have happened without the extinction event? Would we have even developed as a race? After all, one branch of the theropods managed to survive the physical calamity that is coming in less than a thousand years. The birds surv
ived and look how they pushed out everything else trying to fly! They survived the calamity. They managed to exist where our ancestors took over every other section of the ecology only because the dinosaurs were wiped clean from every section we moved into. All except that one group of theropods that lived on. How strange that they managed to hold on and continue to dominate the air. They pushed out all of our ancestor’s efforts. Oh we have bats and flying squirrels and a few other measly mammals in some very minor niches but how do they compare with the all encompassing dominance of birds?’
‘And here we come into this world. They are at a peak of a hundred million years of evolution and we thought we could control them. Shit, our ancestors have only been around for one million years and we thought we were something special. Here we sit and cower, we can’t even keep them out of our main ship much less our settlement.’
Matt decided he better cut in. He could see the direction of this and didn’t like it. Where the heck is Mark when you need him? He’s the one who should be handling these people. ‘Easy now Deborah. This is the way of any expedition or for that matter any research project. You have setbacks and need to keep going, persevere! We simply need to overcome these obstacles.’
‘Obstacles! People are dying! How can we stay here if we can’t keep our people safe?’
‘We can overcome the obstacles. I was not in favor of setting up anything permanent here much less a resort like you are talking about but the situation has changed. I think we can still overcome the problems.’
‘Deborah, progress on this scale demands sacrifice. Just continue to give us your support and the time to do it and we’ll adapt. We will succeed.’
‘Oh Matt, I wish I could believe that. I’ve seen nothing but death and failure since arriving here and ....’
Hunter's Moon (Cretaceous Station Book 2) Page 39