Read Nodal Convergence
‘Hey! Some of the hadrosaurids have stopped feeding and are running this way! Alex, can we move in a little closer to the shore. Look, off into the high brush to the right, a small theropod.’ Sara called. ‘See, the skull structure! It’s a tyrannosaurus; a small one, only about twenty or so feet long. My God! How fast it’s moving. It’s coming this way.’
The small T-Rex charged with a bright red ring of neck feathers bristling about his head. His head and back are a soft orange color that morphs into a darker brown feathered-down that was almost a deep green toward his belly. His back feathers are distinct while those on his belly are little more than a mottled brown in color. Several red and orange tints run through the brown making him near invisible in the light brush. Its arms and the ends of its legs are nearly featherless.
‘No, it isn’t attacking,’ David said ‘it’s driving the herd. Like a sheep dog. There, see that? It could have grabbed that one but didn’t. It simply ripped its flank. There, it just clawed that other one. Where did he go? I thought these things were slow.’
The herd turned and swung by the trees just as a mountain of fright and fury burst out of the bushes in front of the leaders. The mass of this beast was fantastic, easily twice the size of the T-Rex they had been watching. The herd turned hard as the tyrannosaurus emerged with a screech like a freight train trying to stop on a bed of marbles.
The front of the herd collapsed, trying to run back from the demon appearing in front of them. Those nearest to the attacker cut back to avoid the lunge, running into and colliding with those following them. As the Hadrosaurid herd collapsed upon itself, another mountain of brown fury burst from hiding on the far side, pushing the panicked animals even more toward the center. Slashing with their teeth and kicking, the T-Rex howled and snapped to wound as many of the fleeing victims as were in his reach.
Two other T-Rex’s suddenly emerged from the brush on the back and near sides of the herd. The largest T-Rex seemed to appear from thin air along the edge of the river less than thirty feet away from the humans.
‘My God, that’s right where we were going to land!’
Praise for Nodal Convergence
What can I say?? Fantastic and wow! I love Sci-Fi books involving Space or Dinosaurs. With them both together bliss! I think the web site to go with the books is fun. I'm 1/3 way through the second book. I hope there will be many more in the series, as the potential is mind boggling…
Deborah, Swansea South Wales
__________________________________
This book is what I would call 'traditional' sci-fi. It takes a few extrapolations and builds the story around them rather than introducing marvelous things just to be marvelous. I like that.
The plot moves right along and makes sense in context. (I've seen others that do neither. One star for those.)
The most distinctive characteristic of the book (series) is there are chapter notes. These are left as exercises for the interested student. The author supplies a few paragraphs with each chapter describing what's accepted science, what's speculative, and what's totally made up….
Q.Tipp, Kindle Digital Purchaser
Tales based on Science Fact.
and stories suggested by experience.
Cretaceous Station Series
By Terrence Zavecz
Nodal Convergence
Hunter’s Moon
See the Last section of this book
for a preview of “Hunter’s Moon”
or visit
http://www.GraviDynamics.net
To my spouse and closest friend Donna,
An instant love who put up with me
Through all my years of work and travel
And yet somehow still shows her love.
Nodal Convergence
A species can either evolve or pass into extinction
…. or perhaps do both.
Book I of Cretaceous Station
Terrence E. Zavecz
http://www.GraviDynamics.net
GraviDynamics Corporation
Mark Francis Nolen
Chief Executive Officer, Director of the Board
Dr. Matthew Zoeller
Chief Scientist, Partner
The following material is confidential and proprietary.
Use is restricted to the needs of GraviDynamics Corporation and its officers.
________________________
Cretaceous Station Personnel consisting of 322 men, women and children as of November 28, 2231.
All material in this report has been verified for permanent records. References are correlated to the summary of each section and their sources validated #322108-17.
Primary contributors and those mentioned in this report are as follows:
Engineers & Scientists
Janet Anderson – Geo-Physicist
Martin Feldman – Physicist
Mary Li – Chef, Nutritionist
David Pope – Naturalist
Sara Wenford – Paleontologist
Paul Wenford – Physicist
Wenford Children:
John Wenford
Brittany Wenford
Technical Specialists
Michael Yatscho – Opticial Design Engineer
Corey Zavtek – Mechanical Engineer
Rachel Zavek - Spouse
Zavtek Children:
Gabriel Zavecz
Crew of Argos
Adrian Lee – Pilot
Seth Sassaman – Hunter Pilot
Molly Pasteur - Communications
BlackWave Security & Engineering
Daniel Drake, Colonel Commanding
Toshi Yakamura - Pilot
Alex Grissom – Sergeant, Engineering Specialist
Bob Brody – Demolitions, Specialist
Tom Bracken – Electronics, Specialist
Jonas Buckwheat – Security and munitions
Todd Rangle – Security systems analyst
Sotak Luti – Engineering Specialist
Cindy Decker – Hive-Tab Systems Engineer
Eric Beadler – Technician
Brian Folsome – Engineering Specialist
Ed Saren – Weapons Specialist
Dieter Chintz – Mechanical Engineering
Wei Young – systems Analyst
Wei Young – systems Analyst
Daughter – Jenn Young
Hypsilophodont Familiars
Tina, Molly, Fran, Buddy, Dozi, Fozzy
Nodal Convergence - 345 -
“And engineers are sure to be ready to pay the highest price for the chance to give to the Mankind spaceships, systems of instantaneous communication with them and real perspectives for the very long history”
S. Poliakov, O. Poliakov,
”Gravitonics is Electronics of the XXI Century”, New Energy Technology, Issue #4 (2002) Russian Science
________________________
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The references and chapter discussions in this book are real and are, to the best of the author’s knowledge, true and accurate.
Printing History
Ver. 1.0: Kindle Digital, March 2012
Ver. 2.0: October 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1479299720
ISBN-10: 1479299723
Nodal Convergence
Copyright © 2012 by Terrence E. Zavecz
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions.
Prol
og: The River’s Edge
"There is also strong experimental evidence in favour of the conjecture from the fact that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future."
Stephen Hawking on Time Travel Impossibility
The excitement was always there when he walked along the river’s edge. It was not much of a river right now, no more than a few feet across and a couple of inches deep. Mike knew that when the rains started in two months the gully would fill with muddy turbulent water that could flow over the banks even covering the old steel bridge. No rain today, it’s hot and the air is filled with buzzing insects and the sweet smell of sage mingled with the sounds of the dancing waters.
Mike could feel the pistol bumping in the holster at his waist as he scurried along the sharp sandy edge of the cut. The thumping of the small 9 mm provided little more than a measure of reassurance. A feeling of protection from snakes or maybe one of the wild boar that tended to pop out the brush when you least expect. All of this lay softly in the back of his mind for his imagination wandered through paths that envisioned in every cut of the stream the lay of a land far different from this little riverbed.
The land in Mike’s vision contained ferns and palm-like plants growing in small swamp islands along a soft muddy shoreline. Shells, sand and mud covered the flat while crab-like creatures scurried before him. He knew this long-passed shoreline extended north along the edges of a warm shallow sea through the heart of Texas to stretch across the present day border with Canada. His eyes searched every outcrop of rock and newly washed flat of the river’s edge for traces of this lost world. An attempt to capture the feel, sounds and life of a land that his mind borrowed from memories of summers spent on the shoreline marshes of Padre Island.
This was not a trip of pure imagination or a teenager’s fancy. The visions arose around him from his knowledge of the unique fossils found in this area. The castings found in this ground were not dry, dead fossils of petrified bone segments from some extinct animal lying prone on the ground and thrown unnaturally like a deer along the highway. These fossils catapulted the imagination with a glimpse of exotic life and sometimes conflict.
For almost a hundred years, the area of central Texas has yielded the footprints of life both large and small that lived along the shores of this sea. Footprints that told stories of how the creatures of the museum skeletons walked ran and, in a few lucky finds, how they hunted.
Sometimes just a step or two would emerge from the storybook in rock. In one lucky find along the Glenn Rose formation, the long lazy trail of a vegetarian, four footed and long-necked sauropod led the viewer along a winding path. A rancher found these tracks in Dinosaur Valley State Park just a bit north of his present hike. Mike recalled the excitement that filled his imagination as the sauropod trail suddenly became mixed with a set of smaller three toed tracks belonging to a meat-eating theropod. The sauropod’s stride lengthens into a running gate. The visual drama rises as the bipedal meat-eater’s tracks begin merging and then one clear positioning of a footprint sends the predator hopping in a great leap to thrust the meat-eater onto the back of the sauropod. The tracks mingle and then disappear into the ages as the climax, washed away through the ravages of the geological epochs, is lost to all but the imagination.
Today’s hike carries Mike along a flattened washout, up a mile from the road. A point where the river takes sharp bends uncovering new strata every year during the rains. As he walks, his eyes dart along the edges of the well-known trail searching for changes in the sandy walls. He searches for those critical clues that indicate a new find and perhaps an addition to his collection. His collection consists of bits of footprints along with samples of quartz, agate, fossil coral and shells gathered from similar expeditions over the years. Last year, right in this section of the path he found a small egg-shaped agate that proved to be a handsome geode, hollow inside with beautiful crystals of green and blue. Sadly, this was not the elusive dinosaur artifact he so longed for but still a significant find.
Here last month’s rains had washed over the bend in the river and a section of the wall collapsed into the stream. His eyes scanned and settled onto a red colored, hardened ledge about two-thirds of the way up the bank. The ledge was slightly protruding from the cliff side to form the promise of a flat, tabled surface when uncovered. Mike feels the excitement rise as he sifts through the debris along the edge adding to his collection a few incidental pieces of clear quartz crystals and a small agate. Then his eyes catch on the partial imprint of a three-toed footprint stamped into the stone shelf. His chest begins to heave partly from the exertion but mostly because, as he clears more debris from around the flat layer of the strata, he can see additional tracks leading across a few feet into the hillside.
Mike now knows that this is not the occasional footprint segment or prize fossil found and casually placed in his rock cabinet. The tracks join with two other trails about ten feet into the cleared debris suggesting a small pack of hunters. He soon forgets the annoying buzzing of the flies around his head as he moves the ground from around another six-foot section of the ledge carefully using only the folding shovel of his backpack and a brush. Excitement drives him on but Mike controls the thrust of each shovel to avoid damaging the artifact. Tension builds as the tracks seem to converge to a point somewhere under the edge of the unexcavated ground. Careful, don’t ruin the find! What were they chasing? What did they catch? Is the answer just ahead?
At this point Mike hesitates and then does the hardest thing he ever did in his life. He stops digging. He carefully climbs down to the river and uses his canteen cup to gather water to wet each individual print. Then he pulls out his phone to take a few close photos of the rock bed. Excitement races through every fiber of his body as he calls Uncle Rob at the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at the University of Texas about 100 miles to the east in Austin.
‘This is Doctor Rob Hillard, how can I help you?’ says a young voice on the other end of the cell phone.
‘Hey Uncle Rob, this is your favorite nephew Mike. I’m down along that stretch of the Llano River hunting fossils again. I think I really found something this time. I’m sending you a few photos.’
‘Ok Mike, but what’s the hurry? Why can’t you just show me your new fossils when I come over this weekend? Wait a minute. The photos are coming in now.’
‘All right, what am I looking at? You have no point of reference in these photos.’
‘I’m sorry Uncle Rob, I’m just too excited. The first shot is an image of a twelve and a half inch footprint that I think is most likely a meat-eater of some sort. This is really neat because if you look at the second photo you can see where I’ve cleared out a fourteen by six foot area. See the four sets of tracks? They seem to go even further into the hillside. I remember all your stories about how good finds can be ruined by poor documentation during fossil excavation so I stopped and called you. I always hoped I’d find something significant but these prints are clear and promise to go even further into the hill.’
‘All right,’ Rob replied, ‘you got my attention. I’ll bring Jan and Leo over for an early weekend. Even if the find doesn’t pan out we can do a little field work and all get a good supper this weekend from your Mom. Be sure to protect the site before you leave. Bye.’
“OK, how am I going to wait two days to see where these tracks will lead? Just what is their story?” Mike thinks to himself as he heads back to the truck to get the tarpaulins. ‘Well, I’m going to do this right and besides, I can look for other fossils as soon as I protect these tracks.’
Uncle Rob and his two graduate students arrived late Thursday night. They were going to be getting up early tomorrow to go over the river and Rob could feel his anticipation growing during the long night. Rob talked with his nephew about the location of the wash-out and the types of surrounding strata. They went over the set of additional photos taken by Mike before he covered the site. The prints looked like the one set might be Deinonychus tracks a
lthough they would be young, unlike the larger tracks a full grown, eleven foot adult would leave. The other three are larger, heavier predators. Having worked the river before, Rob thought the outcrop was most likely part of that same Glen Rose Cretaceous strata known to pass through this area.
There was a lot of delicate detail in the unusually clear tracks that Mike had found. They would have to excavate carefully. Rob silently thought that it was a good thing Leo was able to come along. Leo was the one they turned to when the most delicate touch was needed. Rob felt that the level of detail they saw in the photos of these cleared prints just might help in our understanding of the juvenile’s gait, foot musculature and speed for this bird-like dinosaur sometimes called a raptor. Dig clearance was not a problem since they had worked the area before and Rob’s cousin Tim, the landowner, was an avid collector as well.
Patience comes hard to a seventeen-year-old boy but Mike managed to survive the night. He wanted to see what was under the remaining sand and stone covering the hidden portion of the tracks and he prayed that an answer to this story was still there under the debris of eons. The time passed easier because Uncle Rob was accustomed to breaking in new, very enthusiastic students to the bone-weary discipline of good fieldwork. Mike soon found himself very busy.
‘Hey Mike, bring that bundle of stakes and markers for me. Just how far down is the bend where you found these tracks? Jeez, watch out for the camera box or we’ll have to go all the way back to Austin. How long do you think you’ll have to work for me to buy a new Nikon?’
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 1