On the North side of the clearing, Dieter Chitz and Corey Zavek have gathered with three other scientists and are pacing off a perimeter defense around the town center. The attacking raptors, temporarily disrupted by the new firing, are moving to encircle the buildings and its defenders. Their line broken and confused by the firing, the raptors pause for others to arrive and build their ranks for a push. Dieter watches them in wonder, ‘Something is coordinating their movements. This is like a game drive, they want to push everyone west but our firing is confusing and holding them.’
Back at the main gate, the pack of giant black raptors, magically appearing from the low brush of the mainland, drive in from the west. The elders now have clearly heard the cries of the juveniles, herding their prey far out on the plateau, as their young excitement rises and they call to the elders. The cries spur the elders to form an ambush line on the thin neck of the plateau’s entrance. This is their way of life, just one of the reasons for coming here at this time. Generations have used this plateau for just this purpose. A slaughterhouse and training ground for the young ones.
Out by the main gate, Dan Drake is directing the two heavy pulsar emplacements now firing at the growing number of raptors attacking from the mainland. David, Dan and Sara watch as the beasts push through the non-lethal threat barrier and into the kill zone. The light AutoSentinels begin firing, focusing on the front of the pack. Feathered giants fall, some dead and others slashing their tails and screaming in pained anger. The pack pushes on, closer and closer to the gate. They ignore the wounded and fallen, not understanding the unseen threat of the guns. The man-directed heavy weapons defense opens up and the shots drop the first attackers, few of them survive the accurate fire.
Dan watches in amazement as the massive beasts see the barrier gate and fling themselves over and onto the wires and high berm. The gate collapses under their push and the fury of their attack. ‘The gate is gone. Two of them landed on it.’ Dan calls the gun emplacements. ‘Watch your backs! We have a breakthrough!’
The ground around them trembles with the charge of the pack and dense air throbs in their ears from the low warbles of the raptor’s attack and the shockwaves of the hypervelocity slugs. The raptor’s push rises into a frenzied dash. Momentum is driving them through the heavy weapons defense and has broken the gates with an ease that Dan or Mark had not anticipated. Large beasts, some 30 or more feet in length charge into the compound with speed and high leaps undreamt of by the paleontologists of future years. Only one in three make it through to safety behind the firing platforms. Then some of the massive raptors inside the plateau turn back on the guns. Fire directed on the mainland attackers lessens as the two human gun emplacements split their attention between those coming through the gates and those now attacking from their back.
Sara Wenford stands watching beside the limping Dave Pope and Mark Nolen. Mark is now coordinating the communications net while Sara and David watch for threats with their rifles at the ready. ‘Yes, great! Seth, get the Hunter and bring it around. Maybe you can low-pass overhead and scare them off. Yes, of course you have my permission for a low pass! Roger, copy Bob. You and Toshi take the dozer and bring it up here I want to try to seal the entrance with a higher berm. Yes, block off the whole thing. Make sure you have fire support!’ Mark scans to the perimeter of the camp and mumbles to himself, ‘Well, that’s one argument I’m glad I lost. At least we have one dozer left here at the Station.’ It would come in handy.
Sara’s face suddenly goes pale as a loud keening, almost pitiful wailing sound rises from the grounds around her home. Almost panic stricken she grips her rifle and runs down the path. Janet Andersen had been standing next to her feeling rather helpless. Without hesitation, she takes off after Sara, the unfamiliar rifle held before her.
Sara and Janet run through the coarse sand of the pathway. Pushing low palmetto and ginkgo leaves out of the way, they scramble up the path and over the slight rise to Sara’s home. Sara charges carelessly through the brush and over to the crest of low hill. Her house is now below them and the wails are rising to an unbelievable intensity. The high pitched keening throbs into their heads. Sara’s horror rises even higher as she looks down the ridgeline to her side as she runs. Several smaller raptors, who were moving on toward the Community Center, have stopped their push. As she watches, their heads turn and their attention focuses on the sounds rising from her home. The cries are drawing them! Drawing them to her home!
Her vision turns back to focus on her home on the low ground below as the trail opens before her. Already seven young raptors surround Sara’s home but they aren’t attacking. The raptors are wailing in pain and confusion. The dinosaurs scream and flounder about, trying to rub their eyes with arms that are too small to reach their heads. Some lie on their backs with feet, too large to soothe the pain, rubbing their heads. Blood flows from their eyes and noses. Out on the back patio calmly stands a solitary figure, John Wenford.
John’s dispassionate gaze moves from victim to victim. His fingers fly across the tablet and the helmet on his head glows a brilliant blue even in the mid-morning sun. As Sara and Janet watch, two more raptors run out from the brush below the patio. A cloud of blue mist rises from the patio to surround the raptors like a swarm of bees. The raptors collapse in pain, their wails adding to the cries of the fallen.
Suddenly, Sara jumps as a shadow crosses the sand by her feet. She raises her head to see the Hunter incredibly low, skimming the very tops of the high brush. To her horror, the massive craft is flying toward the press of beasts now flowing almost freely through the crushed gates of the Station. Sara watches as the raptor’s heads turn upward. This is not the first flying beast they have seen in their lives. They brace, massive legs tense, ready to jump.
Seth directs the Hunter even lower. Tree limbs and brush tips flare into vapor as they touch the drive fields of the craft. Then the Hunter crosses into the tightly packed mass of charging raptors and drive fields of hot interstellar force rip through the upturned heads of the attackers like a chainsaw through gelatin. Janet screams, ‘No, the drives were never designed for …’ and her scream fades beneath a howling blast of instantly vaporized bone and tissue mixed with hot liquefied body fluids that scream into the air.
Vapors fill the air and swirl, hiding the Hunter and flowing in a red vortex behind the craft. Raptors jumping into the attack simply disappear into the now red, glowing blur surrounding the Hunter. Flying barely fifteen feet above the ground, Seth pushes slowly into the tight neck of the plateau. Vapors and liquid below the craft swirl in the ground effects caused by the Hunter’s proximity to the soil, sucking in plants, ground, half bodies and whole bodied survivors of the attacking horde. A beam of sunlight reflects off the red mist that fills into a swirling funnel shaped vortex screaming behind the Hunter and then settles to cover the neck of the plateau like a giant mist of blue-black spray paint. Slowly the black ship reappears from within the haze as Seth holds the Hunter in an easy hover above the narrow neck of land that once held the compound’s main entrance gate.
The elders of the herd on the mainland pull back in shock now that a visible deadly threat stands before them. Their cries change tone again as they retreat from the unknown horror at the mouth of the plateau. A few young adults charge the bloody apparition only to disappear in a spray of liquefied flesh and bone. The guns at the sides of the gate once again turn their fire onto the elders on the mainland. Their rapid fire drops to a few shots as the raptors pull further back into the surround plateau. Their cries begin a new, plaintive call to their young ones still pushing their prey on the plateau.
Responding to the call of the elders, raptors begin running out of the tunnel along the cliff trail on the south side of the plateau. They were close enough to the entrance when the call reached their sensitive ears. Other raptors wander inside the maze of tunnels eventually following the scent trails onto the plateau or back onto the mainland.
‘Let them pass through people. Tha
t was a recall and all they want to do is get off the plateau. Seth, pull the Hunter up a little higher.’ Dan calls across the general channel. ‘We have a lot of babies that want to go back to mom and dad.’
‘You people on the open firing platforms, keep an eye out as these guys run by. Make sure all those in the shelters stay there until we clear the area. Be careful, I don’t want to see any of our hypes with Pulsar wounds.’
‘Mark, we are going to need two push teams to clear the plateau and the tunnels. I’d like to use some of the scientists and technicians for bush beaters.’
* * * * *
The line of humans began their sweep of the plateau starting at the ocean’s edge. They walked slowly, following the paths and looking for wounded raptors. Those too badly hurt to walk out on their own presented a real and present danger. The bodies are carted off to the south cliffs and dumped into the ocean. They would be gone in a night.
The occasional hollow crack of a hypervelocity rounds rises above the low whistles and warbles of the wounded on the plateau. Sara cringes with each shot but her attention is focused on the ten-foot tall juvenile lying before her. ‘This is amazing. Look at the skull structure and these small arms with only two-fingered hands. These have got to be Albertosaurs! The proto-feathers cover the whole body except of course the legs.’
Janet raised her head and pulled back the recorder from the raptors eye. She is taking close-up images of the optical structure of the eyeball. ‘Then they are in the tyrannosaurid family. That explains the resemblance but certainly not their behavior.’
Sara, standing behind her, cuts in, ‘It does indeed explain their pack behavior. There have been four or five excavations of groups of these predators from Wyoming up into the Alberta Canada region alone. A Dry Island bone bed discovered by Barnum Brown found the remains of twenty-two Albertosaurus. There was a good mix of adults and juveniles but no evidence of prey in the group. The site was not a killing spot like the La Brea tar pits or a river washout like in Dinosaur National Park in Colorado so it must have been a travelling pack. Those dead ones at the entrance are fully grown at about thirty-five feet and these smaller, six to eighteen foot long juveniles are used to drive the prey into the slower but more powerful adults. So what we saw was entirely normal behavior I’m just amazed at their level of coordination. That implies high levels of both intelligence and communications.’
Janet shook her head, ‘If you had a hunting pack this large then you need sophisticated communication for coordination. No, I’m not surprised. After all they’ve had a hundred million years to develop these skills.’
‘Well it just shows you that there’s a lot that we don’t know about this world. They never developed a civilization but there does seem to be a high level of intelligence among most of these species. The intelligence though focuses on optimizing life under the conditions of their own natural environment. They have no urge to modify their world other than to dig burrows or perhaps use very crude tools. A very different approach than our own species has taken. It makes you wonder if humanity’s civilization and urge to manipulate the environment is nature’s way of developing a species capable of coping with natural disasters.’
‘Speaking of natural disasters, here comes your son.’ Janet says with a quiet giggle.
John and Brittany are walking with Tina towards them. ‘Hi Mom, they removed all the dead ones from around the house. Did you hear that Gabe’s friend Suzy was killed in the tunnels but they found Doxi and Fozzy and they are ok. Buddy’s a tough old fellow. He got another good cut that’s Doctor Graeme says is going to leave a new scar. There were about twelve Hypes killed, most of them young ones that couldn’t get out of the way. Amazingly, none of the crew or scientists were hurt. I guess all the target practice helped.’
Sara sat back and looked at John, ‘I’ll be happy when the place is cleaned up again and we can get back to normal. Did Mr. Nolen talk with you about those Hive-Bots?’
‘Yeah mom, don’t worry. He said that Brittany and I should outfit some of the Hypes we are working with the most. He wants to set up a kind of scout and guard division using them. Sort of like a K-9 corps where we work together. These guys are actually a lot smarter than dogs you know.’
* * * * *
The walls of the darkened room glow with columns of data that overlay images of black sprinkled with multicolored points of light. The points of light are all the same size but some glow much brighter than their neighbors. An observer looking very closely would notice a whole range of brightness in the points with each one displaying a unique, almost twinkling color.
The display precisely highlights different sections of each image and the observer’s eye is drawn from each image to a linked image construct floating next to it. One such image displays a black field with a red disk in the center of it. A number of smaller, multicolored disks appear along a line through the center and extending out on both sides of the red disk. A notation below the image reads:
Ecliptic plane not to scale!
Canis Major
HD 47536 Gas Giant
Temporal displacement 12.7 light years
Many similar images cover the walls to display newly measured data for key star indices and their associated planetary partners. The observer’s eye is then drawn from these data packets to a series of graphs and finally a summarizing three-dimensional, simulated graphic floating in the center of the room.
Doctor Matthew Zoeller takes his position and his work seriously. He carefully models and plans every experiment and analysis. Enthusiasm and passion drive his studies but rarely are they enflamed by emotional excitement. This is one of those rare occasions.
‘Now look at this part of the data Paul. These are the local group keys for the Sagittarius Arm. Look at the alignment! We are already passing into that dense structure of the arm so the crossing does indeed predate the extinction event that will fall in less than a thousand years.’
Sara Winford’s husband Paul is a physicist but his specialty is robotics. Stellar groupings are not new to him but he now finds himself straining to catch up to Matt’s rapid and enthusiastic presentation of the results of a planned, deeply complex analysis.
‘Let me make sure I understand the analysis Matt. These are processed images from the four high-orbit muon telescopes. The program used the spectroscopic shift and gravimetric flux data gathered to identify each key star and to place the Earth’s current position in the Milky Way by using the relative positions of these stellar keys. As I recall, our galaxy has four large arms and the Earth, in our time, is located on the sparse edge of the Orion arm. Our Solar System rotates about the center of the galaxy, bobbing up and down a small amount relative to the plane or ecliptic of the galaxy as we orbit around its center.’
‘You’re data suggests that, based on these key stars, we are no longer near the Orion arm? That the present day Sun has been travelling in the empty, sparsely populated area between the arms for millions of years and is now just entering the more densely packed leading edge of the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy?’
Matt really didn’t like to dwell on basic theory but he wanted Paul to understand and help with some of the analysis. Once again, he tolerated a reply. ‘Yes, well, it’s not anything really new. The concept goes back to a few papers in the 1990’s and is accepted dogma today. The Sun in fact rotates, as do all stars, around the center of the galaxy at a rate higher than the apparent rotation of the four arms of the galaxy. The arms are in essence artifacts. They are not physical, permanent structures but stable areas where stars cluster and bunch together rather like a traffic jam on some old automobile freeway.’
‘Ok, I don’t have any problems with that.’ Paul replied. ‘This Earth’s travel through the empty area between arms explains the lack of climactic variation and the seasonal uniformity here as well as the elevated temperatures of the last hundred million years. Please bear with me for a few seconds. I recall that the Suns output, and for that matter the rate of
new star creation in the galaxy, is highly sensitive to the level of cosmic ray radiation. The more radiation, the more new star creation and the greater the number of nova occurrences. Cosmic ray radiation is not uniform. It is stronger in parts of the galaxy that have abundant gases and highly active star creation and destruction, that is stellar novas. Namely, there are higher levels of cosmic radiation in the center of the galaxy and in the densely packed sections of the arms.’
‘The solar wind of our sun modulates the flux of high-energy particles coming from outside the solar system. These particles, the cosmic rays, are the dominant source of ionization in the Earth’s troposphere. Cloud cover on the earth, which is a strong climatic variable, is sensitive to the amount of tropospheric ionization. Lower levels of cosmic radiation result in the bright blue, cloudless skies we’ve seen during our stay here. Higher cosmic radiation levels generate more ions in the atmosphere and that in turn results in increased density of low level clouds. More low level clouds result in colder temperatures on earth.’
The low levels of cosmic ray excitation also mean that the Sun’s output is more stable. This results in lower atmospheric turbulence so the Cretaceous earth has very little climatic variation across the planet. Bottom line, right here in the Cretaceous we see very few clouds and a very warm, uniformly hot climate because of our solar system’s position between the arms for the last few million years.’
‘Now, as I understand from your data on these graphs, our sun passes from arm-to-arm during it’s rotation about the galactic core. Thus, each time we cross into a galactic arm, we should expect to encounter stronger cosmic radiation and therefore a cloudy, colder climate. Maybe even ice ages.’
‘Now, does this also imply that the gravitational constant has also changed because of our location in this sparse region? This of course is the primary focus for the expedition, a resolution modeling treatment of the gravitonic constant as a variable rather than a constant.’
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 34