Ell stood speechless for a moment before saying, “That’s it, Cager. No more trips into the water. Maybe the other battery parts are still on land somewhere. At least we know we’re in the right vicinity.”
“And we’ve got enough now to get back. It would be nice to have a few more to run the cooling fans, though. So which way do you want to look next?”
We finally turned inland to skirt along the dark waters of the swamp but found no further trace of batteries. The monotonous drone of large dragonflies flitting above the fen accompanied us back to the glider. From our dune top, we again scanned the distance for any sign of danger and realized we were parched.
“We’re getting dehydrated,” I said. “We need to find some fresh water.”
“You don’t think you can get the glider working again with these cells?”
“We can, but it may take a while. I’ve still got to check that the wiring from the console to the battery compartment didn’t pull loose. Then make absolutely sure I have the polarity right. If I hook the cells up backwards, they’ll fry the IC chips. There are some spares on board just in case, but no tools or voltmeters or spare wiring.” I set the battery cells down. “And those initial tests, they just weren’t sufficient. The yaw control; that should never have been tied into that selector switch. The yaw rate was supposed to be fixed at a constant, sedate speed. In short, I’ve gotten careless.”
“Well, it was just going to be a quick trip back a few years then home again. Who would’ve guessed we’d end up here.”
“I suppose. Anyway, it’s too late to lament that now. We need to find water.”
Ell slipped back into the glider, and I handed the two cells to her.
“Hey, it’s cooler in here, Cager.”
“That’s the solar panel still running the thermoelectric cooling. I added that to make NASA think the machine really was a prototype space lorry. But the voltage out of the panel would blow the IC chips and I have no way to lower the voltage or regulate it to a stable level.”
Ell shoved both cells to the side of the battery compartment. “So there’s no way to tap off voltage at a lower level?”
“Even if I could, we’re bound to come out at night at some point on our way back, and we’d lose power to the chips and just fall out of the sky. And, of course, we can’t jump tens of millions of years into the future from our present ground level. The Rockies are still rising. We’ll need to be at least a thousand feet up when we start. In other words …”
“Yeah, I get it.” She climbed back out and brushed sand off her knees. “I don’t guess it matters anyway. We have the two battery cells. Let’s go find some water then get back and see if we can fix this thing before something bad comes along.”
Chapter 54
We headed up the beach in the opposite direction looking for a way around the swamp. I hoped to find water quickly to minimize the chance of running into anything looking for something crunchy. But we had seen no sign of land predators.
About five minutes up the beach, lay a large sand inclusion apparently washed into the swamp by a recent storm. We crossed through a miasma of marsh gas, past bee-laden glades of yellow flowers, and into the piney aroma of a conifer woodland. From there, we hiked up sloping terrain into a deeper forest of oak and beech. As we made our way through slanting shafts of sunlight, small creatures scurried about in the dappled gloom. Alarm cries of unseen birds preceded us. I wondered if, like Aunt Cealie, predators used those calls to tell of approaching faunae.
We had gone about a mile when we stepped out onto a wide, well-worn path leading down into a shallow dell where a stream flowed into a good-sized lake. The trampled shoreline indicated this was a watering hole for a wide variety of species. We paused under cathedral-sized, spreading oaks to study the clearing for any sign of life, but only an occasional bird glided down to the lake’s edge to drink and splash in the clear water.
“At least there’s not much going on right now,” I whispered.
“I can see why. That’s pretty open down there. No cover until you get back into the trees, and even those are too far back from the water to offer escape from a predator prowling the area. I’ve seen a few of the predators from this period. They’re fast.”
“Yeah. There are bones in the shallows. Let’s move upstream until we find a more protected spot. We can drink there then get out fast.”
We faded back under the forest canopy and moved uphill toward the headwaters of the little stream. As we made our way through gnarled oaks contorted by centuries of struggle, we found ourselves crossing through a shadowy nesting colony of small dinosaurs. They seemed to sense we weren’t predators and remained unperturbed as we made our way through their rookery. Broken eggs littered the ground, crunching under foot. A reek, not unlike a poultry farm, permeated the air. Then a faint babble of water cascading over rocks drew our attention. We followed the sound to emerge from the forest just above the stream bank.
Broad fronds, intertwined with lianas, hung overhead almost hiding us as we drank the cool water. We relaxed on boulders in the deep shade for a time then drank some more. Ell had just raised up and was wiping her chin when she stiffened. I turned to look along her line of sight but saw nothing for several seconds. Then, twenty feet away, a shadow shifted against the feathery saplings bordering the stream.
It was nearly perfect camouflage. Alternating stripes of green and brown with splashes of sky-blue along the upper torso and head. An adolescent tyrannosaur studied Ell with the intentness of a cat about to spring. And as I watched, it crouched to attack.
I pulled a smooth stone from the streambed and hurled it with all the skill the years of practice with Arlie had imparted to my premotor cortex. The stone struck the beast with a resounding thud just below its eye. It jerked upward and back a step, hissing and flashing bandoleer rows of teeth in response—just before it leaped.
“Run!”
The creature landed off-center on the boulder where Ell had sat moments before and toppled backward, legs flailing, pinning Ell between itself and the boulder. As the T. rex scrambled to its feet, teeth snapping inches from her face, Ell twisted under its belly to emerge beneath its tail leaving the beast to turn about looking for her. I bounced another rock off its head to distract it as Ell clambered up the slippery stream bank and tore back through the rookery. The small dinosaurs scattered like chickens as I fell in behind her. A clatter of falling rocks and a chilling, “Awaaaaak,” followed as the T. rex scrabbled up the stream embankment and into the nesting area. At that point, everything changed.
The wildly fleeing smaller dinosaurs stopped and turned to face this new threat. As if on cue, they swarmed the intruder, attacking its legs and ankles. I turned briefly to see the beast kicking and lashing its tail as it sent its smaller attackers flying. Then I went back to putting as much space as possible between it and me as I followed Ell in her wild, leaping downhill race.
We ran out onto the trail we had come in on and paused to gather our wits. A nearby snuffle curdled my blood. Dimly visible in the shadows, an enormous T. rex raised up with evident interest. There was no way we could make it back to the glider before it caught one of us.
“The lake, Ell.” We charged headlong down the trail, propelled by the terrifying hiss of the tyrannosaur closing the distance behind us. “Dive under and swim out as far as you can. I’ll find you and join up.” I hope. Gravel crunched right behind me as I hit the lake.
I had just leveled off along the lake bottom when the creature’s leg slammed down through the clear water like a giant piston, missing me by an arm’s length. I veered away and swam until I thought my lungs would burst. When I surfaced the T. rex was head-down in the water about thirty feet away looking for me. But it had stirred up so much bottom silt it was a useless effort. Nevertheless, this versatility of its hunting prowess was impressive. A few seconds later I heard Ell surface a good forty feet beyond.
About then, the creature raised up. Cascading runnels of wa
ter streamed from its head and tiny arms as its nostrils retracted with a sharp snort, spewing a jet of water droplets across the lake. It scanned the water’s surface, pausing to tilt its head as it caught sight of us. I called to Ell to work her way toward the far shore some hundred yards away. More sea creature than me, she nodded and submerged, making hardly a ripple.
I turned back toward the T. rex, just as it lunged for me.
The surge from its plunging drive swept me just beyond its wildly grasping arms. I struggled to get deep underwater again, expecting powerful jaws to crush me at any moment. Panic exhausted my oxygen. Forced to surface early, I came up not ten feet from the creature. It was again head-under searching for me. I calmed my breathing and backstroked quietly toward the far shore, slipping beneath the surface when the creature reared yet again.
As I paused in the shallows watching the submerged T. rex, Ell surfaced next to me with a small gasp.
“I wasn’t sure there for a while you got away, Cager.”
“I wasn’t sure I would. On his next dive, we’ll make a run for the woods.”
As the beast came up for air, we slipped underwater again holding hands. After about ten seconds, I surfaced to see the T. rex head-down again, probing around the lake bottom. I pulled Ell up and we waded out then dashed toward the forest.
Peering back through dense brush, we watched as the T. rex continued its hunt.
“How long do you think he’ll keep that up?” Ell whispered.
“I don’t want to be here long enough to find out. Let’s circle back to the glider. Did you ever get a good drink?”
“Yeah. If you call being chased by dinosaurs afterwards a good drink.”
“And that adolescent is still out there somewhere, too. We should get moving.”
Chapter 55
Still shaken from our encounters with the inland wildlife, we found more trouble back at the glider.
There had been a visitor while we were gone. The derelict glider lay crossways on the dune now, its solar roof crushed flat. Large tracks of the three-toed visitor punctuated the sand. Worse, the recovered battery cells had tumbled out. One lay some distance away. The other protruded from the beach sand. When I pulled it out, battery acid trickled onto my hand burning like fire. I wiped at the acid and ran over to the swamp to rinse. Ell was poking at the other battery as I came back.
“Looks like a bite mark, Cager. All the electrolyte’s leaked out. Must have burned whatever bit into it. The tracks are pretty deep right here like it was making a startled retreat.”
“Good thing. It could have done a lot more damage if it had hung around.”
“So, can you fix the batteries?”
“Not a chance. We only have the batteries out there offshore now.”
“Well, how are we going to get those? You already recovered the closest and nearly got yourself eaten doing it.”
“Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that going on around here today. But to answer your question, I have no idea how to salvage them. They’re our only way out of this mess, though.” Then the incongruity of it all sank in. “We just need a volt and a half to operate the chips. You’d think as a physicist I could figure out a way to come up with a volt or two wouldn’t you.”
“You said we can’t use the solar panel, but you also said it powered a thermoelectric cooling system? That’s not a term that ended up in my vocabulary but is it perhaps made up of thermocouples?”
“Yes. A large number of thermocouples grouped together make a thermopile. The solar panel runs current through this thermopile. That cools one end and heats the other. The hot end is back there in the radiator that feeds the heat out the bottom of the glider.”
“But the reverse holds true doesn’t it? If you heat one end, it generates a voltage.”
“Yes. A very stable voltage, if the heat source is stable.”
I recalled the metal junctions in the thermopile were simple iron to copper-nickel alloy connections. Each junction put out about 50 microvolts per degree Celsius temperature differential between the junction ends. A wood fire running a bit over a thousand degrees would generate about five hundredths of a volt per junction. I turned to Ell.
“I think you’re on to something. To get a volt and a half, we just have to pull the thermopile wiring runs loose and recombine thirty or so to connect to the console. Then we build a fire and heat one end and hope we got the polarity right so we don’t blow the chips with reverse voltage.”
Ell didn’t look too hopeful. “That’s a lot to do with no tools. Or matches.”
“It’s either that or wade out to get those other battery cells. But I suspect the saltwater is conductive enough that they’re dead by now.”
Ell turned toward the ocean lying so deceptively serene under its pale, Cretaceous sky. “Good. It was suicide going after them anyway.” Looking back at me, she said, “So, do you think we can pull this off before we have to go get another drink of water?”
We worked inside the damaged glider in the stifling heat the rest of the afternoon stripping out the wiring until we had enough to make up a thirty-five-junction thermopile. By late afternoon, darkening clouds brought some relief from the heat. I tried my best to remember whether the iron end or the copper-nickel end was the positive terminal but finally found a connector box with the polarity marked on it. The iron wire was the positive side. Now all I had to do was build a fire with no matches.
But like my father before me, I had memorized his Boy Scout handbook. It had covered fire starting with a bow and drill in great detail. I had never actually tried it, but how hard could it be? Boy Scouts did it.
“Let’s go gather up some firewood.”
As we set off under threatening clouds, a searing lightning bolt exploded into the beach just ahead. Drenching rain followed the ensuing cannonade of thunder as we staggered half-blind from the flash back to the glider, both for shelter and to find something to catch a little water for drinking. We removed the console cover for the control boxes and took turns holding it under the runoff trickling from the rear of the glider, drinking until we could hold no more. But the rain was both a blessing and a bane. There wouldn’t be a dry piece of wood for miles.
We finally crawled up to the front seats and lowered the backs enough to get comfortable while we listened to the rain drum away on the crushed roof. I wondered how much we had changed history since our crash landing. There was the plant eater devoured by the thing watching ceaselessly from its offshore lair. And the nesting dinosaurs the adolescent T. rex had battered about. And the creature that had bitten into our battery cell and scrambled to escape the burning acid in its mouth.
Ell and I were now riding that wave of change toward a different future. One in which humans might never evolve. But, I reminded myself, our own future was still out there for the time being, secure and waiting for us. If only I could start a fire.
All night, lightning danced across that lost world to a dark and primal beat of unrelenting thunder. A chill rain pelted our glider in driving sheets, rocking us with each blast. And with each shudder of the glider, we imagined it was something outside trying to get in. With cold wind blustering through the open battery compartment, we finally huddled together under the console and prayed for daylight.
Chapter 56
Morning brought threatening skies, marbled with ocher clouds. Along the beach, the sea lay still and gray, knocked down by an offshore wind.
Ell and I ventured out for firewood again, eventually ending up back where we had found the scattered batteries. Two were still visible, submerged in what appeared to be waist-deep water. The temptation to try to recover them was now dampened by the knowledge the seawater had discharged them beyond any use. Then I thought of trying to recharge them with whatever output still came from the damaged solar roof. That might work. They were deep-cycle batteries, after all. Even if I could only partially recharge one, it would still be more reliable than a thermopile held over an open fire.
�
�Keep watch. I think I can get that closest cell.”
I was in the water before Ell could protest. None of that being quiet business. I leaped through the flat sea until I was knee-deep before low domes of water began moving in from both sides. Water pushed up by monsters rising from the depths. Headed for me. Ell was screaming again. That was all it took.
I splashed back out and stood on the beach watching the watchers. Only the tops of their heads with their large, squid-like eyes penetrated into our world. The creatures had apparently made a living along beaches for millions of years and had little trouble detecting prey venturing into their watery domain. It was useless to waste any more time on submerged batteries.
We continued along the beach still hoping to find a cell or two we had missed the day before, but none appeared. Turning inland toward the swamp in search of anything we might dry out for fuel, we found tangles of ancient driftwood half-buried along the edge of a marsh. I swatted at dragonflies as I pulled a few pieces free and threw them onto the beach. Some were heartwood and would burn with a hot flame if ignited. Other smaller pieces, we could break into kindling to get a blaze established. We each scooped up an armload.
I tossed the wood into the glider to dry then turned to making a bow-and-drill fire starter. Following the directions memorized so many years before, I labored for well over an hour with only my pocketknife for a tool. After completing the bearing block and drill, I made a bow from a shoelace and a piece of curved driftwood. By the time everything was finished, our wood was fairly dry. It was a question of waiting for it to dry completely or trying to start the fire immediately hoping it caught.
“We need to get out of here now,” Ell said. “So what if it goes out because the wood is too damp. We’ll just let it dry some more.”
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