‘You know this could explain something that has been puzzling us for quite some time.’ Sara continued as she set down the chick. ‘Dinosaur size just never quite fit into the puzzle. Their ancestors all started out as smaller animals and then grew larger over the generations. Changes in oxygen or any other gas levels in the atmosphere don’t correlate with the growth so there must be some other reason.’
‘Most paleontologist are faced with a dilemma that with larger size we also get problems associated with muscle strength and the mechanical ability to move all of the weight. They used to theorize that the really big ones like Barosaurus lived with their bodies submerged in water to support their weight. Engineers however pointed out that the water pressure at the depth needed would be too great for the animals to breath. As a result the general theory, and now our initial fly-over observations, shows they lived on dry land.’
‘Well, how is it then that their muscles are strong enough to support them? How does the heart provide blood to such a large body? The heart is a pump. In order for it to move blood, it has to be able to push it through an outflow value and into the body. Under normal gravity and oxygen conditions a long necked dinosaur like a Barosaurus would have to have a heart capable of pressures six times that of the human heart.’
‘That is too much pressure for any heart so the early paleontologists theorized that big sauropods like Seismasours walked around with their necks parallel to the ground and not lifted up into the air. Well, the 50 foot neck of a Seismosaur is calculated to weigh about 35,000 pounds and yet the bone structure is not as strong as that of a modern day elephant. Just try to hold your arm outstretched with a book in your hand for more than a minute. The muscles and bone structure of the neck cannot support a dinosaur walking with its head in the lowered position. So while a lower head posture solves the problem of pumping blood to the head, their bone and musculature wouldn’t support walking and feeding like this.’
‘Finally, logic asks, why even have such a long neck if you walk around with it lowered to the ground. Evolution doesn’t happen without a reason you know.’
‘The answer has to be a combination of their bone structure and the lower gravity. I’m anxious to get a close examination of some of the larger species to confirm this. This still leaves us with a very big question as to when did gravity start to increase to our modern levels? What will it be like for our descendants fifty million years in our future? ’
David Pope brought up the obvious question, ‘Well, does this mean that guys like Tyrannosaurus won’t be so big and mean?’
Sara was quick to answer, ‘No. What do you care if it weights only six tons instead of eight? Quite the opposite, we need to be very careful. We’ve estimated that Tyrannosaurus was able to walk at more than ten and run at near forty miles per hour based on measurements of tracks left on the ground. That assumes that their movements and timing closely parallel existing uptime species. We’ve since discovered that its vertebrae is honeycombed with air sacs that allowed T-rex to breathe through a complex system of pockets like bellows that force air into his system in one direction. Just like in modern birds they have the most efficient breathing system designed by nature. The blood of a T-rex supercharged with oxygen for every breath he takes.’
‘This one-way system constantly bathes the lungs in fresh oxygen, whether the lungs are breathing in or out. A T-rex would have no trouble running the New York Marathon. By design, T-rex has a high metabolic rate. Like a bird and, with the lower gravity, he’s probably faster and quicker off the mark than we calculated in the past. Pair that up with an acute sense of smell like a vulture and the eyesight of an eagle. No, I’d say we have much more to be careful of than in our original plans.’
‘Eargle, Eeelge’ a high voice mimicked from behind Sara along with a whistle and a cluck that turned into a long warble sounding something like their conversation. Sara turned and stared back into Molly’s eyes. ‘Well, I’ll be darned. They mimic like parrots.’
* * * * *
Alex Grissom always liked dogs. The younger Hypsilophodonts, or “Hypes” as they’d begun calling them, had begun following the construction group around especially after they discovered the Hypes liked the ration bars that Seth had given them over Sara’s diet objections. The Hypes have a habit of looking closely into your face. They are fascinated with the way the human mouth moves and the sounds of the human voice. The older ones don’t like to be touched but the young ones love it. Now it was hard to get rid of the things. Luckily, there were only eight in the area. It’s rather like having a friendly pack of dogs.
The two ‘dozers finished clearing brush from most of the area and were now smoothing out a landing site for the Argos. Alex and Jon pulled a two wheeled cart behind them filled with picks, shovels, a small solar powered post digger and a SilFuser. As they neared the north cliff edge, Alex noticed Brittany putting brush onto a burn-pile and waved. Brittany took off her gloves and walked over to Alex.
“Hi Alex, I left my water back at the Hunter. Have a spare?’
‘Yep, you’re welcome to some of mine.’ He replied. ‘I have to set up a base for the crane. Have you had a chance to examine the cliffs here? I need a sheer drop to the beach below and another spot where I can climb down.’
‘OK, come over this way I think this might work. What’s the crane for?’
‘We need to make a landing pad for the Argos and start off with three buildings over at the landing site. We’re going to make them with fused silicon extrusions. That little SilFuser over in the cart will get us started. It’s going to take a lot of sand and there is quite a bit down there. Easiest way to get it is to put a shovel crane here and just scoop it up to the plateau top.’
‘There’s no frost worry here but the crane has to be well anchored and we’ll do that by digging a hole with anchor rods into the rock and then molding a SilFuse platform into it. We can use some of the small sand pockets up here to get us started.’
Brittany skipped over a small hole to walk to the cliffside and asked, ‘Why are you using a wheeled cart? We used float platforms on the Argos and on Europa for moving things. It seems a little archaic to go back to wheels.’
‘No’, Alex replied. ‘The Hunter is the smallest vehicle on which we can mount a Gravitonic Drive and the floats on Argos and Europa need a drive field. Out here we just do it the old fashioned way.’
‘Good, this spot might just do the trick. Did you see any possible ways down?’
‘Why do you have to go down?’ she asked.
‘The crane can only swing out so far. I need to make sure … Come on Fran! Get your paws out of my pocket. Shoo! Darn Hypes, I love them but they can be pests. This one’s taken to following me around so I named her after one of my old girlfriends.’
‘Where was I? Oh, yeah. We have to check the cliff side immediately under the crane location to make sure it will support the load. Then we climb down there and sound out the depth of the sand. No use going through all this work only to find out there’s only a few feet of sand within our reach. It’ll give you a chance to collect some shells if you want to come along.’
‘Yeah, I’d love to come along. I’m about done here anyway. Here’s a path I’ve seen the Hypes use. Do you have any extra backpacks in the cart?’
Alex grabbed a backpack for Brittany and hitched a sonic mapper to his belt. The mapper sends a very low frequency pulse into the ground. The low frequency coupled a very long wavelength burst that could penetrate deeply into most ground materials. A sound spectrum analyzer in the unit picked up reflections from any material changes in it’s path and converted them into a three dimensional map. The operational concept is similar to sonar or an old ultra-sound medical tool. The user’s Hive Tab picks up and stores the analysis results as needed.
The path over the rim was a little tricky but it quickly broadened out to make the climb down easier. As they neared the bottom the path rose to go up over a solid overhang. Alex stooped down over the edge to s
ee what the Hypes were avoiding. A cave about four feet in diameter went into the cliff side. Alex decided they would have to see what was in there. Caves are common in limestone formations. They would need to make sure it would not lead to a major fault line in the plateau. It could also be home to an animal that could be a threat.
‘Wait a minute before you go running off to the beach, Brittany. Remember the safety review we had, this is not the plateau top. We have to check out this cave. Leave our backpacks here and get ready with your Python. Set it to three, there can’t be anything too big in there. Jon, help me with this mapper.’
Brittany stood off to the side while Alex took the sonic mapper on the other side of the opening.
‘The entrance appears to go into the mountain for about eight feet and then opens in to a larger chamber. I’ll shine a light and we can go in.’
Brittany followed Alex into the cave and Jon came last. Brittany didn’t have a light with her but enough reflected back so that she could walk comfortably. The inner chamber opened into a limestone cavern complete with stalactites and stalagmites.
‘A stalagmite might touch the floor”, or is it the other way around.’ Brittany muttered half to herself. ‘I can never remember which way that goes.’
Alex whispered to her, ‘Shhhh, keep it down. I think I can see a light ahead. Watch your footing.’
The small cavern turned to the side and opened further into a large grotto filled with light coming from a bright pool of water in its center. The water was calm and the ripples refracted bright shimmering lines across the walls and ceiling. A black line about two feet above the waterline marked the tidal high-water level.
‘There must be a submerged entrance to the ….’ A large figure ran past them and dove into the water. They could see the outline of four feet propelled by a large tail. Alex quickly turned his light to shine into the other corners of the cavern. No other entrances and no other habitants appeared. ‘Well, we appear to have lucked out on this one. Whatever was in here was more afraid of us than we are of him.’
‘Wanna bet?’ Brittany asked. ‘There’s no way that thing could have been more afraid of me. Jon must have felt the same way. He turned and ran back outside.’
‘Well, I don’t think it’s going to be bothering us. This is actually very pretty and refreshingly cool. We’ll have to keep it in mind. Maybe we can use it as a cold storage area.’ Alex sounded. ‘Jon,’ he called, ‘Where the hell did you get to?’
The interior glowed with reflections from the pool. Brittany walked over to the water’s edge. The bottom is covered with shellfish and large crab-like creatures. ‘Well, maybe we can get a crab dinner from it.’
Alex picked up a few of the broken crystals by his feet and they moved back out to the beach without incident. There was no sight of Jon. ‘Well I guess I can’t depend on him in the future.’ Alex grumbled. ‘Most likely he went back up the cliff. Let’s set up below the crane and we’ll check out the sand depth. Grab the knapsacks.’
‘Can I look at some of the shells while you work?’ Brittany asked. ‘I promise I’ll stay close by.’
Alex nodded and began taking measurements.
Brittany walked over near the cliff edge near the top of the sand dune and turned to look at the ocean. ‘Look Alex, a shark’s fin.’
‘Yeah, there can be all types of animal life in there. Stay out of the water.’ Alex replied.
‘Well, he isn’t that big anyway. Ouch, watch out there’s a rock slide.’
‘Oh Shit! Get over here Brittany right now. We need to head back up the cliff. Right now!’
‘That’s not a rock slide. Take a quick breath and look at the top of the cliff above where you were standing. Apparently, we have visitors. You can only see four now but there are about a dozen big birds up there and it looks like they’re trying to find a way down. There are the others and it looks like they found a path that leads down here.’
‘Those aren’t birds Alex, they are dinosaurs. Remember, Molly has feathers too but not as striking as these.’
One of the dinosaurs fluffed up its head and back feathers and, in a brilliant flash of black and yellow, gave out a bird-like yodel. The entire group, except for one individual, ran over to the caller as he started down the cliff face on some apparent trail. One larger dino stayed behind and began yelling as Alex and Brittany began to climb their trail back to the top.
‘They are communicating Alex! Look, they left a sentry behind while the rest of the pack ran over to the trail-head that the scout found. The sentry is now warning the group about our climb up the cliff edge.’
‘You don’t have to sell me on it.’ Alex puffed as they gathered their equipment. ‘Half of the group that was heading down the trail is now going back up to the sentry. We should have plenty of time to get back to the top. When we get up there we’ll need to stop them from following us. You radio back to David for some help and I’ll stay at the top of the cliff. Maybe they won’t come up if I roll a couple of rocks down at them. Otherwise I’ll have to start firing.’
The second group ran up past the sentry, heading for the land-bridge onto the plateau. The first group reached the bottom of the cliff just as Alex and Brittany crossed to the top. They could hear the muffled sounds of the AutoSentries firing briefly in the distance and then it stopped.
Brittany cleared the rim of the cliff and called on her transmitter, ‘David, Alex and I ran into a dinosaur problem over here by the crane installation. Can you send some armed help over?’
‘Hi Brittany, we’re having our own bit of excitement over here. A group of man-sized birds tried to run onto our plateau from the mainland. You must have heard the firing. Can’t Alex and Jon handle it?’
‘No David, Jon isn’t with us and those are dinosaurs not birds. Alex and I have some of these same dino’s coming up the cliff face. They are following the path that we used to go down. It’s part of the same group you encountered at the entrance.’
Alex began rolling some large stones down the hundred-foot high cliff-face. He didn’t particularly want to hit any of the dinos down there, just scare them off. The dinos got the idea after climbing a few more hesitating feet up the trail. They turned and ran back down to the beach and stood there yelling at Alex. David and Dan arrived to see the final exchange of insults.
‘Sorry Dan, I guess we didn’t need you after all.’ Alex commented.
‘What were you doing down there?’ Dan broke out.
David spoke up for Alex, ‘They are installing the sand-crane. They needed to go down to insure the bed-depth at the bottom. They followed proper procedure.’
Alex noticed Jon standing off to the side and said nothing about his early retreat from the cavern. ‘We were running the readings when these guys showed up at the top of the cliff. Half of the group started down a trail up over there to get at us. The other half broke off when they saw us climbing back up here. That’s the group you guys ran into at the entrance. I think they were actually trying to surround and trap us. Pretty smart, huh?’
‘Well, it looks like these guys are a lot smarter than we thought they would be.’ Brittany chimed in. ‘They even set up a sentry who coordinated their attach on us. We would have been boxed in here if the entrance wasn’t guarded.’
‘Alex, did you get a chance to complete the survey down there?’ Dan asked.
‘Yeah, we got a good spot. No need to go back down in the near future. We did find a nice cave entrance to an open sea grotto. Plenty of shellfish and crabs along with some crystals. I brought back some samples. Looks like there’s a pretty big vein of calcite and quartz down there.’
‘Well, that’s good to know.’ David commented. ‘Take them back with you, we’ll look at them later. Finish the crane installation but keep an eye on our friends down there. I’ll send a couple of sensors over. We’ll have to watch that section of the beach in the future.’
Alex gave Jon a strong, accusing look, ‘Come on Jon, we have to finish the job. You c
an keep an eye on the trail down to the beach. Make sure you stay where I can see you.’
Brittany joined Dan and David to walk back to the entrance. ‘You know, they saw us from the top of the cliff. One member of the group actually coordinated the attack on us.’
Dan thought for a minute. ‘What do you mean by coordinated?’
‘Well, as soon as the group saw us they first looked for a trail down the cliff. One stayed back and hooted orders to the others. As soon as he saw us move back up our trail he had these others return to the top and run over to the entrance. There were about a dozen of them in all.’
‘Jeez, that’s all we need. First your mom starts telling me about how fast this T-Rex may be and now we have these cousin’s of Big-Bird showing communications and entrapment tactics. Well, the guns got three of them. Looks like the others got away. Your mom’s over there now examining the bodies.’
The AutoSentinel is efficient as well as accurate. Two shots were in each dino, one in the head and one in the body. Pulsed laser target tracking with hyper-velocity slugs and hit-confirmation analysis guarantee an on-target tap for every round fired.
Sara was out about fifty yards in front of the recently plowed berm. Three guards stood with their backs to her, watching the surrounding plains. She bent over one of the dinos and closely examined the body. It was about seven feet long from tail-tip to nose with a fine coat of small black feathers. The head was crested with a yellow plume that ran down its back on onto the tail. A ring of yellow feathers ran thickly around the neck. The jaw line is sharper than the blunt noses of the Hypes.
She put her arms around the body and easily lifted it. ‘A lot lighter than I would have thought, less than 100 pounds.’ She thought to herself. She noticed the feet were scaly and three-toed. The middle claw was set back and enlarged like a raptors. ‘Obviously a Theropod. Meat eater. Ancestor of modern birds.’
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 9