Metamorphosis

by Jack McKinney

  "No, Rand. But anywhere away from those reptiles will be fine with me-hey, power down! There's something up ahead-the end of the trail, maybe.

  They stopped in an open part of the water course. What they saw ahead of them was a rampart of stone some hundreds of yards high, running away to the left and right with no breaks.

  "A dead end!" Annie wailed. "And the cliffs and ceiling come together."

  It was true. The overhead haze was broken by the downward sweep of the gigantic cavern's stone ceiling, which met the walls of the place in a tight seal. "No exit here," Scott observed.

  "Maybe; maybe not," Rand corrected. "See up there?"

  It was an opening of some kind, the mouth of a tunnel or cave, set high above the floor of the cavern. "That could be our rabbit-hole," Rand declared. "It's worth a look."

  Scott couldn't argue with that. Their engines howled.

  Elsewhere, the Regis noticed that something was amiss in one of her Genesis Pits. From Reflex Point, her consciousness reached out to join with the evolved mind of a Shock Trooper who was following the movements of the three Humans.

  The Trooper's single, cyclopean optic sensor flashed red as she mindspoke. Contaminants in the pit! her angry thought reverberated through that trooper and the others assigned to the place. Unless these intruders are contained ant neutralized, the experiment will be ruined!

  But she paused, seeing the reasoning of her guards. Certainly these were Earthly biota, and under the Regis's broad guidelines they were valid candidates for inclusion in the pits. But these were Human, and they were armed with weapons and mounted on vehicles. A counterproductive anachronism here in the cavern of monsters!

  Still, the introduction of machines and weapons might provide some instructive insights about the capabilities of the creatures she had bred here beneath the Earth. Their worth as contributors to the Invid's final, Evolved Form would be tested.

  Yes; let it continue for now, at least until more observations had been made. The creatures of the cavern would probably cleanse the place of outsiders by themselves, and that would be most informative, too. Or if not...

  There were other ways.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fay Wray can have it!

  Remark attributed to Annie LaBelle

  There are important insights to the story in Rand's recounting of it in his voluminous Notes on the Run:

  "I got even more worried when I saw that that tunnel through the bedrock was artificial. It had a low arc of roof, but the flat, level floor made it easy for us to go to cycle mode and race along."

  "The obvious fact that someone had drilled the tunnel made me nervous, but let's face it: everything about that underground Lizard Lounge had me nervous by then. Scott had noticed it, too, I assumed, but we didn't mention it because we didn't want Annie hysterical."

  "So we barreled down the tunnel. The Cycs' headlights cut the darkness, but only showed us the rock walls, the rock ceiling, and the rock floor. I would even have welcomed some motel art by that time. I had long since outgrown my graffiti stage, but I was tempted."

  "I fibbed to Annie. 'Hang on tight! I've got a real strong feeling about this tunnel; in fact I'm sure it's gonna be our way out of this place!' If she knew I was bulling her, she was kind enough not to say so."

  "But she did point to a bright light that was coming up before us. 'Hey, look at that!'"

  "Scott's voice sounded real relieved over the tat net, 'We made it!' That sort of surprised me; I figured a guy raised in starships most of his life wouldn't feel the claustrophobia as badly as I was feeling it, but I guess the weight of all those strata above us had been working at him."

  "So I said, tempting fate a little, 'I knew it! Our troubles are over now!'" "All of a sudden the floor of the tunnel seemed to slope down. The next thing we knew, the Cycs were out in the open air and falling toward the lush

  vegetation down below."

  "But we were pretty used to our mecha by then, although it had taken me some time to learn the ropes on a Cyc and Scott hadn't had much practice operating in an environment like Earth until he had crash-landed, a coupla weeks before. Mox nix; we hit our burners. I did my best to see that I didn't lose Mint, and somehow I made that landing on sky-blue, umbrella-shaped thruster flames."

  "The terrain we landed on seemed okay at first, with boulders and some kind of fanlike growths coming from the ground. It was a little precarious but nothing those amazing Robotech scoots couldn't handle. If I had had my helmet open, maybe I would have noticed the smell; Annie was, I suppose, too strung out to."

  "We were congratulating ourselves on making it When the ground beneath us began to move. We had landed in the middle of a bunch of big sail-backed things! Just before we thruster-jumped the hell out of there, I got a look down the maw of one of the things and saw it had two quite large front choppers. I guess it was a Dimetrodon, but I wasn't doing much note-taking and really couldn't tell you for sure if you asked me."

  "Scott was howling something about 'more dinosaurs' but we were safe.

  The herd had re-settled for the night."

  "We were all watching them to make sure that they weren't thinking about a bedtime snack, but I just happened to be looking off to one side when I caught the flash of movement. 'Hey, Invid!' I blurted out. But whatever it was had already ducked."

  "Scott thought I was crazy, and we got a little sore at each other. Being that far underground and in a situation so insane had him kind of frayed. But then he backed off a bit, looking around thoughtfully. 'Maybe they are involved in all this. I suppose-'"

  "Scott interrupted his thought when he noticed that Annie was off an another caper, waving to us from a few yards away. She was balancing, with a lot of windmilling of her hat and shuffling of shoes, on a big, mottled, offwhite ovoid thing that rolled under her. She was giggling and yelling, 'Watch me!'"

  "It was a typical Mint reaction to what we had just been through, driving it from her mind by clowning around. When I saw what she was doing, I could only think, Oh, my god! and I started to reach for my '90. Scott was yelling at her to get down off of there."

  "Annie laughed right up until the second she realized that something big was coming up behind her-fast! I got my gun out. Maybe that Daspletosaurus actually wasn't the size of two Battloids one on top of the other, but that was how it looked to me at that moment."

  "Certainly it was a little surprised to see Annie playing around with its eggs. I can only surmise that it had just laid them and hadn't had time to cover over its nest. It was fast and agile and brilliantly colored. It was just like the oldtime revisionist paleontologists said: a tower of bone and muscle in metallic blues and reds and pinks. Its teeth looked like sharpened baseball bats."

  "I opened fire at it, and then Scott did, too. I have to give the lieutenant credit: he stood his ground and just kept shooting H90 rounds at it, even though it didn't look like he was doing any damage to the thing."

  "If you're sitting someplace safe and reading this, I'll tell you something: It feels a lot different when you're there, and an animal bigger than any mecha is bearing down on you and you can smell it, and the best shots you can lay out don't seem to be making any difference. It takes a lot not to bolt, but I didn't have to make the choice because Scott Bernard was slightly in front of me, straddle-legged, whamming away. So I stood my ground, too."

  "Then you live from microsecond to microsecond, and events all fuse together, because when you're about to die your life is suddenly an infinitely precious thing, no matter how lousy it's been to you."

  "It was our good luck that the thing had a lot of ground to cover. I was aiming for the skull, hoping I might put its eyes out of commission or even get its brain somehow. It roared and staggered at us. But H90s were developed for use against Invid mecha, and no living organism, even one the size of that tyrannosaurid, could survive the kind of punishment we were giving it."

  "We chopped away at its feet, legs, chest cavity, head-all while it was shr
ieking and snapping. Then Annie had the presence of mind to leap clear, as the Daspletosaurus fell across its own eggs, crushing some, dying and charred, never understanding what had killed it."

  "I was yelling at Annie, who was white faced and contrite and promising not to go running off ever again, when I spotted familiar shapes: 'Hey, Scott! I told you I saw Invid!'"

  "But they had drawn back out of sight before Scott turned from Annie or she could spin around. And right away Scott and I were arguing again. How could he have seen them up above and yet not believe I had done the same down below? Either you trust your teammates or you don't."

  "Of course, Mint put in her two-cents worth, as the ancients say. She was scared enough as it was and wished I wouldn't see Invids behind every tree."

  "For maybe the fourth time that day I bit back what I had been about to say. I knew Scott's military training revolved around reports and evaluations and source-dependability ratings and all that garbage, but either I was a teammate or I wasn't. I dropped the subject, though."

  "'I can't help it if you're scared, kid,' I told Annie, turning away from Scott to kind of defuse things. 'I'm scared, too. But they were there, they're still there, and they're waiting for us.'"

  "I just couldn't get a handle on any of it. Prehistoric biota, and Invid who didn't attack. It just didn't make sense."

  "But I could see that at least I had given Scott something to ponder."

  "The fire we built on the beach of a tepid lake made Annie feel a lot safer. But I was still looking in every direction, waiting for Godzilla and the gang to show up expecting hot hors d'oeuvres. Scott coughed at the smoke but agreed with Annie that the fire was cheery."

  "I stripped off my armor and put together a survival-type circle trident, to try to catch some supper. Up on the surface we could have just thrown some explosives in the water and waited for the catch of the day to come

  floating to us belly-up. But around here those tactics might just make something mad."

  "So I crouched nervously on a rock on the beach, waiting, checking the deeper water every half second or so, I guess. Still, I'm a country kid, a Forager, and I had done that kind of thing a hundred times before. Pretty soon I had a hit."

  "What I pulled up was all needle snout and kinked tail, some sort of freshwater, pygmy Ichthyosaurus whose grandmother had too many X-rays, I guess. I threw it down on the sand. Scott and Annie came over to find out what was wrong."

  "Everything just got to me, because I started waving my arms around and babbling. The whole time scale had me going nuts."

  "'This fish should've been dead, I dunno, sixty-five million years ago.

  Those pterosaurs and all the rest of these critters, same thing!'"

  "Annie was looking at me with eyes as round as full moons. 'S-so how can they still be alive?'"

  "Scott was shaking his head slowly. 'This is-it's beyond me.'"

  "I told them, 'Well I'm just wondering what else might be floating around out there.' Somewhere far off, we heard something very heavy break the water in a dive. It reminded me of the sound whales made in those prewar nature shows. Only, we knew it wasn't a whale, because it honked like a horny tractor-trailer."

  "'At least Annie can sleep,' Scott said tiredly awhile later, as we sat in the firelight. We planned to take turns standing guard all night, and it was time for him to turn in."

  "We had managed to talk Annie out of taking a watch with some excuse about needing her to help with the scouting the next day. Actually we didn't want her up alone and didn't really trust her with a gun. Even Scott saw the sense in letting her sleep. She snored softly, cap bill pulled down, hands clasped across her middle as she lay on her back. I shrugged. 'Kids: nothing bothers 'em.'"

  "We were finishing up the last of my impossible fish, and Scott grinned, 'Your appetite hasn't been bothered much, either.' I kept on chewing, looking into the fire, trying to think. 'Hey, Rand! Anybody home?'"

  "'I hear ya perfectly well, Scott. I'm just trying to piece a few things together, all right?'"

  "He took an unspoken offense and went to curl up by the other side of the fire. He probably thought that I was still upset that he didn't believe me about the Invid."

  "I thought back to what had happened since we fell into that pit or whatever it was. The fire made it easier to visualize the energy screen we had fallen through."

  "Scott had grown up out there in space somewhere, and lacked a lot of knowledge about Earth. And Annie-she was simply Annie. But one of the main things that originally drew me into the Forager life was that it was a way to find books. Books, films-the history of Earth, the Human race; the history that led to my being what I am, if that doesn't sound uppity."

  "No, Scott knew next to nothing about Earth's prehistory, but I had read a small library's worth. What kid doesn't become interested in dinosaurs? And I had seen enough to know that what we had been thrown into was a huge potpourri: Paleozoic plants, Mesozoic reptiles. Everything was thrown in and mixed around, as if somebody was waiting to see what floated to the top."

  "While there were a few swamp areas like the one in which we had found ourselves at the outset, most of the hundreds or thousands of square miles of the Lizard Lounge appeared to be flood plain, with seasonal bodies of water. We had no idea how the builders managed that. But it was no wonder the place was so enormous; the land creatures' lives revolved around the herbivores' need for a slow, constant feeding migration, and the carnivores' constant need to follow and hunt."

  "We had seen dinos no bigger than chipmunks, and the real heavyweights as well; most or all of the biological niches were filled, including the ones for small, furtive mammals."

  We had seen things that verified the work of Ostrom, Horner, Bakker, and the rest of the last great paleontologists. Stegosaurus actually did have a single row of bony plates on its back. Do they know, I hope?"

  "What we had stumbled into were warm-blooded dinosaurs-endotherms! The Brontosauruses protected their young while on the move, like a herd of elephants. I watched huge duckbill females exhibiting maternal behavior, feeding and protecting their hatchlings. Of course, we didn't have any time to witness live births among the brontos: we were sorta busy keeping away from hungry meat-eaters."

  "The predators were warm-blooded, and therefore had to eat a lot. They were fast-moving, very aggressive, and always ready for a meal. I watched a pack of swift Deinonychuses, running on bird-hipped hind legs, drag down a much bigger Tenontosaurus. The Deinoychuses tore the helpless giant to pieces and devoured it."

  "Annie hid her eyes against my back, and while I was fascinated even though I was sickened, I made up my mind to try to spare her any similar sight, if possible."

  "We had already had a few close encounters, though. Scott may go down in history as the only human being to ever kill a T. Rex; he did it with a rocket barrage of Scorpions from his Cyc's forward racks. We were safe for the time being, but how long could we last once we ran out of power and ordnance?"

  "I'm probably the last member of the legendary King Kong Klub, having passed the rigorous written and oral exams and proven my love for that movie. But in spite of my avowed devotion to stop-motion critters, I wished in those next hours that the Cycs were teleportation machines. I suspect we all did. You would have, too."

  "I had forgotten that smell of blood. If you have ever had a serious laceration or been around major trauma, you know what I'm talking about. Fresh blood, spilled, lost. That smell was so thick down there that I swear it would have snuffed a candle."

  "Still, that wasn't what I was trying to sort out while I sat watching the

  fire that night, to the sound of Pachycephalosauruses batting heads like bighorn sheep and oinking and spitting at each other. I was considering the awesome size of the artificial world around me."

  "The Human race, even at its prewar height, didn't have the power or the knowledge to create this Lost World. It was pretty obvious who was behind it."

  "But the Invid certainly
had little motivation to build an Earth museum. Then I stopped thinking of the Invid I had been catching glimpses of in terms of soldiers and started trying to think. of them as some other kind of force-say, park rangers? Guarding a sanctuary, perhaps?"

  "'Clear enough!' I was mumbling, and Scott sat up, rubbing his eyes, to look at me. 'This place is one big lab!' I cried. 'Now I'm beginning to understand! It's incredible!'"

  "'Well, I'm not beginning to understand,' he was grousing. 'Back up and try again.'"

  "He was right. I forced myself to slow down. 'I'm sure this is an Invid test facility. They're playing around with the history of life on Earth-evolution, from the start right down to today!'"

  "Were there other arenas where Tertiary organisms fought and strove, or basic Earth life-forms had been mutated with coldly clinical intent, against some possible future? There wasn't any time to think about that now; I was about to trip over my own tongue as it was. I tried again. 'They're doing evolution experiments-cloning, genetic engineering! Darwinism in the passing lane!'"

  "'Are you drunk?'"

  "'I wish! Listen, Scott: the Invid intend to make Earth their home, because that's where the Flower of Life grows best, right? Well, before they choose the final physical form-or forms-they'll take on, they're testing, studying!'"

  "Scott was standing up with a lot of well-now-hold-on-a-second-there talk and flat-handed calming gestures."

  "'And now we're part of the experiment,' I yelled over him, sorry that

  Annie was going to have to wake up to bad news, because I was shouting it. 'They're using us as guinea pigs somehow; that's why the Invid keep hidden instead of showing themselves and attacking-'"

  "Scott was trying to shush me, but I backed away; I couldn't let him think I had had a hysterical episode, or he would never believe me. 'Scott, we've got to get out of here. Or at least get word to the others! This is more important than your damned Reflex Point! Once the Invid find a form that they figure will let them dominate the Earth, there'll be no more need for-uh!'"