Molly slowly extends her hand. There is a donut in it left over from this morning. They sniff, peck at it and begin dancing and singing again as they attempt to resume their pinecone game with this new intruder.
Molly turns toward Dieter and Alex as they walk forward. Her sun-red cheeks raised in a smile of pure delight, ‘I guess we’re alien enough that we don’t qualify as either food or threat.’
‘Come on, this isn’t why we’re here.’ Alex grumbles but she notices that his hand reaches out to touch and nuzzle the soft down of several of the dinosaurs as he passes.
Life fills the forest around them with whistles. Strange birds fly from tree to tree mixing with even stranger dinosaurs flying by almost as easily. An occasional screech cuts through the forest song as they walk. Dieter always liked dinosaurs. A childhood infatuation had grown into a hobby. A hobby now grown into a career unlike any he had ever hoped would exist. Oddly enough, it is the little things that fascinated him the most.
In his youth, he had scoffed at the soft dinosaurs of the entertainment parks. Nothing could have prepared him for the elegance of a species given a hundred million years to develop and evolve. These are not primitive, tooth ridden beasts who clumsily ambled along in an environment that seemed to tolerate their hostility and existence. They were graceful, beautiful, highly developed and perfectly tuned to their environment. Oddly enough, many of them were very soft and intelligent but yet oh so different. So unexpected.
‘You know,’ Dieter mused as they hiked through another clearing filled with bushes that were growing small black berries. ‘I’ve been listening to their songs. The theropods sing short clips rather like our birds but it grows into that low warble that rather rocks your brain. These others carry a longer tune. They don’t have the shortened, repeated refrains that are used to identify a species in our time. The songs are much more complex, changing and even complementary. Like a coral group singing. It’s a beauty that will be lost to the world when that comet or asteroid hits.’
They push another half mile up the river and soon they come across the goal of their hike. The river ahead is blocked. Branches, mud and even smaller pines lay across its channel. Behind the obstruction is a large pond that fills a basin bordered with boulders and higher ground.
‘Do you see anything ahead? Any tracks?’ Alex calls to Molly and Dieter. ‘Don’t let your shadow fall on the water and don’t bump the growth at the edge.’
‘No, there’s no one around.’ Molly whispers back.
Alex creeps up to the edge and removes his backpack. Crouching low, he pulls out the bundle of rods and begins to assemble them. He then reaches into the pack and pulls out a cylinder with a handle. This had taken him a week of his rehabilitation to build and his hands almost shake with the excitement. A thin line is pulled from the cylinder, pushed up through loops along the rods and he then attaches it to the end of a small metal shank.
Alex ran his eye over the waters above the sticks and then pulled a length of line out. His arm pulled back only to instantly whip forward. The metal shank flew out at the end of the line, sailing through the air, carrying the dinosaur feathers tied on it to land softly half way across the pond.
A violent flash broke the surface of the pond and Alex snapped the rod back, setting the hook. His face filled with joy as he fought to reel in his catch. It didn’t look like any fish he’d ever seen but it acted like a big old trout. Dieter had warned him that anything he caught would most likely be very boney and inedible but Alex didn’t really care. This was fun.
Later that evening, they sat quietly talking. ‘I have no idea what this thing is either. I’ve also been looking for whatever built this dam. Something must be filling the environmental niche of our beavers.’ Dieter said as he took a second helping of the fish.
Alex cleaned his plate, ‘Well they sure ain’t pretty and they got teeth like a muskie but they taste ok. Guess it was a good idea using that single crystal plastic stuff for the line or he would have bitten right through it.’
‘We need to get moving. That sandy area we saw from the Hunter is ahead. That’ll be a good place for us to camp tonight.’
As they walk ahead, the sun is going down before them. Another hour or so, more than enough time to set up a secure camp. ‘Yeah, I’d sure like to retire up here. I’ll have to talk with Dan about it. You guys can go home and I’ll just settle in the valley.
A carefully laid out fire sends lonesome sparks that fade into the bright blanket of stars above them. The day was a gift. Beautiful, clean air under a sky of blue fades into the soft velvet of an amazingly bright Milky Way above them. Sensors are set up around them as they fall asleep below the sandy shelf of limestone, gravel and mixed stones. Buddy softly snores beside the sleeping Alex, exhausted from the rigors of the day.
The limestone, sitting near the high peaks of these mountains is itself an enigma. It was once an ancient shoreline. Older, smaller animals walked the shores of ancient oceans and mudflats in a younger, hotter, alien climate. Flowers and trees did not exist and rough palm-like plants and horsetails filled the ancient land.
Above their heads and down from where the four sleep, amid the rocks rubble and sand, a blackened object protrudes from the face of the cliff. It lies embedded in the ground. A short distance into the sandy hillside, it links to a mineralized skeleton, proving that ancestral life existed on the long dead shores of this ancient sea. The fate of this record of life is sealed and destined for destruction by its nearness to the surface. Soon time will wash it from existence and its story will be lost to the eons.
Like all artifacts of life on the planet, it has a story. Some carry the story for a very long time. The fates alone limit the lifetime of the story’s survival. Other times the story lives on but ignored when found. Dogma often shades the interpretation until proven wrong.
The simple artifact resting above the sleeping trio has its own story as all things do. It is an amazing tale. The neck bones protruding from the gravel attach to a head bent back in the rigors of death. It is a broad head with sharp teeth and, oddly enough, in its mouth is a piece of rock-hard silicon. In a strange undiscovered irony of creation, this small piece of silicon is tied to the sleepers. If Dieter would but rise to find the artifact he would have carefully cleaned the mineralized bones. Recognition of the find would have come to him for this is a very common denizen of epochs past.
A closer examination of the creature’s jaws would have shown the rectangular silicon wafer inside. Dieter may have wondered why such an odd piece of rock could have lodged there. Had he extracted the rock he would have doubted his own actions. It is out of place. It has no valid reason for being there for still clearly inlaid in the stone from within the jaws is the label:
The long rays of a hot young sun beat down from a clear sky entirely devoid of haze. Cool sea breezes blow across the plateau to provide some relief to a small group standing in the shaded, narrow neck of land separating the research station from the wilderness of the mainland. The obvious presence of handheld weapons throughout the group of humans is not unusual. Even the presence of a small number of Hypsilophodonts among them has become normal. The strangeness of the gathering lies in the fact that groups typically do not assemble at this location. Particularly since the gathering lies outside the safety of the gates to the Cretaceous Station research facility.
Two men stand toe-to-toe at the center of the group; one of them, Anton Dotschkal, has a glow about him. A red suffusion that emanates up the back of his sweat-streaked neck and then travels behind and over the ears to flush brightly across his cheeks. A vivid display of reaction that pales in comparison to the fires burning brightly in his eyes.
‘Are you out of your ever loving, desk bound reactionless mind?’ Anton clearly enunciates in a low, deadly tone, spitting directly into the Matt Zoeller’s face. ‘You want to hunker down here behind your passive automated defenses! There is no way you can simply ignore what is happening until after the board members
leave! Just what do you intend to do when we suddenly lose some more of our Hypes or even worse, another expedition member? How do we handle the board members then?’
To his credit, Matt Zoeller weathered the verbal onslaught quite well. He remained cool and calm before the heated torrent. ‘Mister Dotschkal, I’m sure Daniel can handle the situation. We simply have to pull back our resources onto the plateau and ignore the threat of these animals. They will grow tired of the area and simply leave when there is no food supply. I realize this will delay our construction plans for the rest of the Station but we can make up for it later.’
‘You underestimate them Matt! These are not simple-minded animals who will run away and allow you to go about your ivory tower research for some obtuse galactic set of principles. They are a physical reality of the here and now! If you want to continue your work then you either have to leave the area and move elsewhere or directly address the problem. You cannot ignore them and, since we can’t simply pack up and leave, we have to remove the problem and we need to do it quickly. Right now! If we don’t act now then we will lose more people and I’m talking about human lives here.’
‘No Anton, I don’t think so. This is too much of a distraction. If we ignore it then it will resolve itself.’
‘No, no, no! At this point we’ve been attacked three times. I’ve lost a very valuable man who also happened to be a good friend. Look, you need to consider two very important facts. First one is that they have already penetrated our so-called tight defenses here on the plateau. Even the Hypes didn’t realize their six family members were dead until we discovered the bodies. Don’t forget, these poor Hypes were hunted and dragged from right out of their tunnels. That’s half an unprotected step away from our sites on the plateau.’
‘Second, these guys have developed a taste for human blood. Have you talked with our big game hunter about this? Then you need to do it! David will tell you that when that happens they lose interest in other food sources. That means the threat isn’t going to go away. That means that we will be losing more people from right out of our own Station very soon particularly since they know how to get past our security. We need to do something and we need to do it right now while we have a lead on them.’
Mark Nolen and Dan Drake walked out from the gates as they listened to the exchange and stood next to the parties, waiting for the right moment. ‘Hi Anton. Sorry to interrupt but just what are your intentions.’
‘Ah Mark, Dan! Glad to see you. We need to move now while we have a warm trail. We’re heading over to the tractor site and we’re going to hunt down these bastards that killed Sotak. All of us have had hunting and military experience on one level or another and if we approach in a group we should be able to drive them into a kill zone. Matt apparently objects to it. He thinks we should wait them out but we all disagree.’
‘Ah yes, I heard that part of it. By the way, where is David? I asked him to be here.’
As if on cue, a dark figure emerged from the jungle trail. Rifle held before him, sweating and breathing heavily from the obvious exertion of a hard run through the jungle.
‘What the Hell are you doing running through the wild area by yourself?’ Dan called out to the winded naturalist.
David pulled up beside the group, his breathing already near normal. ‘Hi Dan, one minute and I’ll explain. I figured the discussions would be going this way. Good, glad to see you all here, you just saved me a lot of time and trouble.’
‘Mr. Nolen, I would like to see if we can resolve this problem. We’re pretty sure there are only two of them so far but, who knows, if we let them continue to hunt then they may call in others of their kind. They obviously like our hunting grounds.’
‘I want to set up an old-fashioned game drive. I’ll need four more shooters to setup a kill-zone. If I could I would ask Anton, you Dan, Alex and Corey to join me.’
‘We’ll set up a group of drivers to beat the bush, need about twelve to fifteen or so. They’ll start at the kill site and follow the scent trail. There will be safety in their numbers and they can drive the two dinosaurs ahead of them into an area of our choosing.’
‘Great idea!’ Anton cut in, ‘In the mean time, we’ll circle around to the narrow end of the ridge line and set up our shooters. That’s a natural choke point and we can bracket them in both high and low.’
‘No, I don’t have enough people and if we use our technicians as drivers you are going to get someone killed.’ Dan replied immediately. ‘This isn’t a gamelands deer drive you know. These brushlands are deadly and anyway, who other than you can follow the trails quickly enough. The dinosaurs will simply out distance your drive. They’ll simply skirt around the edges of your group. Worse yet, people will get lost or bump into lord knows what. Then how many dead will we have?’
‘Well, I guess we could ask Buddy and some of the other Hypes to man the drive.’ Mark interjected. ‘They have an interest and a stake in this too. They’ve also been good trackers in the past.’
Dan simply shook his head. ‘We don’t have the time to organize the Hypes. Furthermore, they aren’t hunters. No good, they won’t be able to …’
David had taken a step or two back from the group as they argued and turned to face the dense brush around them. He lifts his hands and whistles out a complex call. The brushland around the group erupts in a continuous stream of warbles, rattling screeches, hisses and whistles. The calls came from all around the humans. Random calls soon coalesce into a low thrumming beat that billows up and down the scales with shrieking interjections of blood curdling screeches. Branches begin to rustle and the brush-line around the humans erupts with black feathered dinosaurs that appear out of nowhere. They stand around eight foot tall, many with a yellow crest that runs magnificently down each one’s back to flair out in a multicolored broad tail that whips savagely behind them as they bob up and down in place before the small group of humans. Their head feathers bristle in a fierce display to end in a yellow neck ring as the Hypes cower back into a tight grouping behind the humans. (To be continued!)
Terrence E. Zavecz is a scientist, engineer and high technology business professional who has conducted most of his career in the Semiconductor Industry.
After forty years of research, development, marketing and sales around the world, he now turns a portion of his time toward fictional writing.
Terrence incorporates his experiences as well as his love of life, science and photography into what he believes is a unique prospective of popular fictional writing with just a hint of engineering exactness. Enjoy and learn.
Terrence E. Zavecz
MS-Materials,
MS-Metallurgy,
BS-Engineering Physics
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 36