Kichio let his smile fall away. “The Matryoshka wormhole. Twenty-two hundred chambers, nested one within the other like Russian Matryoshka dolls. Each separated by a minute distance. We implode each sphere at the same time—initiating the Casimir effect within them and creating negative energy. We use that energy to open wormholes between the chambers via space-time foam. And the very first sphere—the arena-sized chamber where we and our vehicles and equipment are stowed—Travels. And here we are.”
The Travelers could return only via that sphere. Unfortunately, they’d left it behind at the insertion site—it was simply too big to bring along, which was why Horatio had been so adamantly against leaving the site in the first place. If things got nasty out here, they’d have to withdraw all the way back to the sphere, potentially fighting every step of the way.
“There’s one thing I’ve been wondering,” Horatio said. “How come we can Travel only to this specific date and time?”
“The date is determined by the number of spheres, and the size of each one,” Kichio explained.
“But can’t we go to different eras by changing one of those two variables?”
Kichio shook his head. “Too few spheres, or too many, and the Casimir effect collapses. Same thing if we vary the size. This is the only point in time we can ever travel back to. At least until our understanding of the physics involved improves. I actually discovered time travel by accident, you know. I was trying to create a portal to an alternate universe, and instead I created a portal to the past. Imagine, dinosaurs!” He giggled, like it was the biggest joke in the world.
Again, no one else laughed with him.
“That’s all well and good,” Horatio said. “But if our mission ended successfully, how come we haven’t encountered any other time travelers?”
Kichio opened his mouth, and promptly shut it. He glanced at Captain Ford, who pressed his lips firmly together.
“Get packed up, people,” Captain Ford said. “I want to return to the insertion site within the hour. I think we’ve had enough ‘exploration’ for the time being.”
Normally Horatio would have complained that he’d just unpacked everything, but like everyone else present, he was more than happy to get out of there.
* * *
Drenched in sweat, Horatio awoke from his quick nap to the sound of sporadic gunfire in the distance.
The tyrannosaurids were testing the perimeter again.
He had dreamed of the tiny horse. It had returned with friends. They had run him down in a pack, sprouted sharp teeth like little dogs, and viciously torn his body to pieces.
It was silly. Horses were herbivorous. He wasn’t going to let the dream trouble him.
Time travel.
Who would have thought it was possible?
And yet here he was, waking from a bad dream in the Cretaceous period, on the continent of Laurasia. Simply amazing.
Like he’d told Kichio, time travel was going to change everything. Probably literally.
As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he noticed something: the gunfire was increasing in frequency.
He also heard the occasional scream.
A distant rumbling sound came now, like a geyser begging to break the surface.
Not good.
He barreled out of the tent and started to pack his supplies. He cursed himself for not doing this earlier when he had the chance. When he’d reached his tent after supper, he’d been all groggy from the food (that was another reason he didn’t like to eat—it made him sleepy), and the prospect of packing everything up hadn’t seemed very appealing. The captain had promised them an hour after all, so Horatio had decided to lie down for a quick nap before packing. Just a teensy, tiny nap.
Whoops.
Navy boys rushed past him as he hauled his supplies one by one from the tent.
The all-pervasive rumbling was growing louder.
“Forget the tent!” Franks said as he sprinted by. “Get your ass to the Humvee!”
Horatio heard a terribly inhuman whoop, so loud it edged into roar territory. Birds were direct descendants of theropods, which included the tyrannosaurids; Horatio’s analytical mind vaguely noted that if he took a chicken’s cluck, slowed it down a hundred times, and amplified it a thousandfold, he could reproduce the sound he had just heard.
The roar-whoop came again. It seemed about thirty paces away.
He promptly abandoned the tent and raced after Franks.
The rumbling grew behind him until it sounded like he was being pursued by a roomful of massive machine presses firing out of sequence.
He glanced over his shoulder.
A pack of tyrannosaurids bore down on him, their immense feet shaking the earth, their roar-whoops reverberating in the air.
A part of his mind noted triumphantly that protofeathers were sheathing the backsides of the tyrannosaurids, while reptilian scales dominated their undersides. Just oversized birds, in the end, as he had always suspected.
The other part of his mind reminded him that these oversized “birds” meant to devour him with extreme prejudice. If ever there was a time to ignore the “don’t kill the dinosaurs” rule, it was now. Except everyone was too busy running to kill anything.
Waving him on, Franks waited for him beside the back door of the closest Humvee.
Horatio dove inside.
“Go go go!” Franks leaped in after him, shutting the door as the Humvee squealed away.
Other Humvees took off around them.
“To the insertion site!” Franks said to the driver. “Floor it!”
Horatio was sandwiched between Megan on one side and Franks on the other. Franks shook his head, hugging his chest like he was suddenly very cold. “We should’ve never abandoned the insertion site. Forward Operating Base, my ass. Let’s spread ourselves thin. Ingenious. It was you scientists who demanded we explore this place. Goddammit.”
“That’s the fault of Megan Brocks!” Horatio said. “Paleobotanists always insist on doing irrational things, even when those things put everyone else in danger! She did it just to defy me! I know she did!”
“That’s just like you, Horatio Horace,” Megan said. “Always accusing me. Always calling me the troublemaker.”
“That’s because you are!”
She shook her head sadly. “I did it for you, Horatio. I wanted you to see the dinosaurs for real. I wanted you to live your life outside the museum for once. That’s why I insisted on leaving the insertion site.”
He could almost believe her.
The roar-whoops continued above the Humvee’s revving engine. Horatio also heard machine-gun fire from the navy man who manned the turret on the roof. If Horatio looked back, he could see the legs of the turret operator in the back seat.
“Switch seats with me,” he told Megan firmly. He wanted the window seat.
She shrugged, opening her seatbelt. She was pretending to be calm, though the terror was obvious in her eyes. “You want to be more exposed, suit yourself.”
“Hey, I’m being chivalrous.”
“I didn’t think you knew the meaning of the word.”
He and Megan switched places, and Horatio sidled up to the window.
He couldn’t really see much from this angle. The dinosaur pack was too far back. Still, he caught occasional glimpses of the sleek, massive forms that pursued through the conifers.
He had to get some pictures.
Horatio slyly glanced at Franks, and then pulled back his sleeve to expose his smartwatch, which had a built-in camera.
Franks noticed immediately. “Where did you get that? Doesn’t look mission-sanctioned.”
“Uh, Captain Ford said I could bring it,” Horatio lied.
Franks regarded him dubiously.
“Why are you worried about something like a smartwatch at a time like this?” Horatio said. Military bastard.
Franks shook his head, then looked back out his own sealed window.
Horatio got close to the glass
and took a photo. Because of the angle, all he captured was his own reflection. If he wanted to get a good picture, he’d have to open the window. But there were no obvious buttons or turn-handles underneath it…
He glanced at Franks. “Uh, how does this open?”
Franks shook his head. “You’re not opening the bulletproof window.” To the driver: “Can you speed it up?”
The sound of gunfire from the turret above continued relentlessly. The pack didn’t slow, however, judging from the roar-whoops, which were actually increasing in intensity. The forest was growing sparser outside, Horatio noted.
He studied the window. It had locking pins and latches. He had an idea of how he could open it. But he didn’t want Franks to catch him…
He glanced surreptitiously at the navy man, and pretended to take another photo with his smartwatch, though he was actually eyeing those latches the whole time.
The Humvee swerved suddenly, and hit a terrible bump, jolting everyone out of their seats. Horatio’s head almost hit the ceiling.
Franks leaned forward. “What the hell was that, Wilson?”
The driver, Wilson, glanced over his shoulder. “Dunno. Looked like a small dinosaur, sir.”
Horatio took advantage of the distraction to pull the locking pins on the window. He followed that by quickly turning the latches.
“Wait!” Franks shouted at him.
Horatio pushed on the window.
The bulletproof glass plate promptly fell away, vanishing into the trailing undergrowth.
The window was certainly open now.
And would never close again.
“Uh, hadn’t quite expected that,” Horatio said sheepishly. “I thought the glass would stay connected. Like the windows people have in ordinary cars, you know?”
“Damn civilians,” Franks said, shaking his head.
Horatio leaned out the window, smartwatch camera at the ready.
“I’d get back in here, if I were you,” Franks said from inside.
Horatio ignored him.
The tree line fell away entirely.
Horatio surveyed the situation behind him. Only three other vehicles followed this one, in scattered positions.
Horatio glanced forward, confused, wondering where the remaining Hummers were. But he saw no one else.
That wasn’t good.
The tyrannosaurids abruptly burst from the tree line and closed on the trailing Hummer. These dinosaurs were roughly the same size as the vehicle. Younger ones, then.
The man operating the turret atop Horatio’s vehicle fired back at the pack, trying to protect the trailing Hummer.
Horatio plugged the ear that faced the turret with one finger. The distance was too far, he thought. None of the bullets from this turret were hitting.
As he watched, two tyrannosaurids closed in on both sides of the trailing Hummer. The first dinosaur took a good dose of machine-gun fire from that Hummer’s turret, and swung its head sharply away as bullets drilled into its skull. The second tyrannosaurid closed—
The trailing Hummer’s turret operator attempted to swivel his machine gun toward the new threat—
Too slow. The second tyrannosaurid chomped down and scooped him right out of the turret.
A third tyrannosaurid swooped in and bit into the machine gun itself, trying to break it off—no success there.
Tyrannosaurids approached the defenseless Hummer from both flanks, repeatedly bashing their heads and upper bodies into the sides.
The vehicle swerved as the driver attempted to run the leftmost tyrannosaurid off the road. The dinosaur leaped on top of the vehicle, then slipped off, crashing to the ground.
But then the rightmost tyrannosaurid lowered its head and got in a good bash, completely flipping the Hummer, which skidded to a halt.
Three of the dinosaurs instantly converged on the upturned vehicle, while the rest pursued the remnants of the convoy.
Beyond them, in the distance, Horatio saw several large, adult-sized tyrannosaurids lumber from the tree line. They were approaching the upturned Hummer, and seemed eager to finish the job.
As he watched all this, Horatio felt a strange sense of detachment. He was horrified by the loss of life, yet both relieved and validated at the same time. His theories were exactly right. The tyrannosaurids hunted in packs, with the young leading the charge and the old cleaning up from the rear.
Little good it would do if no one found out he was right. He wouldn’t let the deaths of those men be in vain.
He removed his smartwatch and directed the camera toward the pack, taking several pictures of the tyrannosaurids. He then switched to video mode, leaned slightly farther outside, and began narrating.
“This is Horatio Horace, Adjunct Curator of Paleontology, Museum of National History. I am currently in the Cretaceous period, continent of Laurasia. I am part of a convoy of Navy Marines—err—Navy SEALs. Here you can see several tyrannosaurids in pursuit. Our precarious situation notwithstanding, you’ll notice these tyrannosaurids are rather small, about the same size as the Hummers. They are the younger members of the pack, and—”
One of the tyrannosaurids unexpectedly closed from the side—
Horatio barely had time to pull himself back inside the vehicle before those jaws munched down, and the dinosaur crunched empty air instead.
The driver abruptly swerved to the right, hitting the tyrannosaurid—
The creature jammed its giant head through the open window.
The tyrannosaurid, now wedged within the window frame, pulled the Hummer sharply to the right with its sheer weight. It half-ran, and was half-dragged, alongside.
The dinosaur couldn’t open its mouth, because the metal borders of the window frame were just the right proportions to constrain its jaws.
Franks fired his pistol at the thing, point-blank.
Meanwhile Horatio and Megan were just panicking.
“Ahhhhh!” Horatio said.
“Uhhhhhh!” Megan said.
The tyrannosaurid pivoted its head left and right, trying to break free. Its lower jaw moved over Horatio’s lap.
“Ahhhhh!” Horatio shouted. “The eye! Get the eye! Ahhhh!”
Franks just kept shooting. To his credit, the tyrannosaurid’s nearest eye exploded, splattering Horatio in proto-blood.
The tyrannosaurid broke free and dropped to the ground.
Horatio tentatively peered outside.
The dinosaur’s corpse receded behind them.
Horatio couldn’t stop shaking. “Th-th-that was rather c-c-close.”
Megan’s face was pale. But when she heard Horatio’s words, anger crept over her features, overriding any fear.
“No thanks to you, you selfish bastard!” Megan said. She switched to the low-pitched voice she used when mimicking him. “I know! I’ll open the window so I can get some good photos! Who cares if I put everyone’s lives at risk? All I care about is getting my perfect picture, so I can show it off to all my friends back home, and brag about how great I am and how right all my theories are!”
Horatio inclined his head. “Y-y-you’re right. I’m sorry.” His hands were still trembling.
She tried to grab the smartwatch from his fingers, and nearly succeeded. But Horatio was the quicker, despite the shaky aftereffects of his overtaxed adrenals, and he managed to stuff the watch into his pocket.
Anger was beginning to replace his own fear, now.
“How dare you!” he said. “I almost paid for those photos with my life, and here you are scrambling for my smartwatch, trying to destroy it and all my precious pictures. By my rights, I should—”
He noticed something.
“What?” Megan said mockingly. “What should you do?”
“It’s gone.”
“What?” Megan said, nonplussed.
“The gunfire,” Horatio said. “From the turret.”
Megan cocked her head. “You’re right.” Her voice trembled.
The two of them glanced back ne
rvously, toward the back seat. The legs of the operator were no longer there.
Horatio looked up into the turret. There was a splatter of blood around the rim.
“This isn’t good,” Megan said.
“Maybe one of us should man the turret?” Horatio gazed at Franks.
Franks was on the radio. “Captain Ford, do you read, over? Captain Ford?” He noticed Horatio looking at him. “What?”
Horatio nodded toward the back seat.
Franks looked. “Dammit.” He piled into the empty back seat.
Horatio glanced out the window.
Behind them, the other vehicles were nowhere in sight.
The tyrannosaurid must have dragged them farther off course than Horatio had thought when it got stuck in the window. Either that, or the other Hummers had already been overturned, and their occupants killed.
Five young members of the pack remained in pursuit.
They were gaining.
Free of the restraining binds of the foliage, these young ones really cranked out the speed now.
Horatio pulled himself inside and gazed at the speedometer. Incredible. The theoretical top speed of the entire species would have to be revised.
“How far to the insertion site?” he asked the driver.
“One klick,” Wilson, the driver, said. “Give or take.”
Horatio didn’t think they were going to make it.
Franks had shoved himself up into the turret position now, so that only his legs were visible in the back seat. He was firing at the pursuers—
Those roar-whoops abruptly increased in pitch and intensity—
Franks was unceremoniously yanked from the roof with a loud crunch.
Megan screamed.
A tyrannosaurid approached the Hummer on Horatio’s side.
Horatio protectively shoved Megan away.
The dinosaur slammed its body into the Hummer, tossing the vehicle violently.
Another tyrannosaurid hit the vehicle on its opposite flank.
The two dinosaurs kept bashing the vehicle, ramming it back and forth between them. They would bow their heads, then lift their necks on impact, striving to flip the Hummer like two dogs trying to topple a garbage bin full of offal behind the butcher shop.
Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel Page 26