* * *
Two days inside the Dragonstar passed quickly. The base camp took shape quickly with inflatable structural domes which served as crew quarters, supply huts, infirmary, communications headquarters, research labs, and power stations. The collection of domes and superstructure seemed wildly incongruous with the lush surroundings of the forest and the marshlands—the ultimate anachronism—but the Goddard team soon established a respectful rapport with the environment and the animals which were drawn to the small human incursion upon their world.
For Mikaela Lindstrom, the interior of the Dragonstar was the fulfillment of her dreams. An encapsulated world of the past, which would forever put to rest the theories and arguments concerning the early geologic periods of life on the Earth. She was totally grateful to have been included in the mission to the Dragonstar, and though she and her two assistants would barely begin to investigate the myriad secrets of the Jurassic wonderland, she would at least have time, during the return voyage, to map out a system of inquiry.
It was not long after the force-field had been erected that the first dinosaurs were seen. Coming up from the misty regions of the swampland which sloped down away from the base, a group of three herbivorous creatures called Camptosaurus, half-walked and half-hopped toward the encampment. Mikaela watched them as they approached cautiously, recording them with a small videocube camera with an adjustable telephoto lens. The dinosaurs were less than two meters tall and resembled kangaroos in general body shape, although their heads were quite birdlike. Their coloring was a mottled green that was almost an exact duplicate of the color of the foliage that grew close to the swamps and lakeshore. The creatures did not come all the way up to the electrified perimeter of the camp, but veered off within a hundred meters of it to pluck juicy blossoms from some of the low-hanging branches of cycads.
The swamp and marshland proved to be a favorite watering hole and feeding ground for a majority of herbivores. Within the first two days Mikaela and her crew had been able to record and observe the habits of a variety of animals—Trachodons, Brachiosaurus, Iguanodons, Ankylosaurus, even several monstrously huge Brontosaurus and impossibly-long Diplodocus. In her earliest notes, Mikaela had observed that there was very little contact between different herbivorous species, and that the plant-eaters generally avoided animals not of their own kind. But this was a gentle aversion, rather than the blind, panicked flight expressed whenever the scent of a predator was in the air.
Since the waters attracted many plant-eating dinosaurs, it was also natural that the carnivorous dinosaurs would enjoy good hunting in the same region. Although Mikaela and her crew soon discovered that most of the feeding took place in the early hours of evening and darkness, there were still many occasions during the day-cycles to observe the meat-eaters at work. She was impressed and terrified at the sight of some of them. Massive, strong, and surprisingly agile, the meat-eaters were nightmares come to life. Many of them, like the Gorgosaurus and the Ceratosaurus, had thick hides of bright colors—oranges, yellows, pale greens—since they had no need for the safety of camouflage. The largest carnivore she had yet seen had been an Allosaurus considerably larger than any ever found in fossilized form. It looked as though it was the same creature that had attacked the first expedition, and Mikaela assumed that the carnivores exhibited some degree of territoriality In their hunting grounds, Among the species of meat-eaters, she observed no direct combat, although there was a definite hierarchy of species, mostly defined by size and ferocity. Most simply, the smaller fellows gave the larger fellows a wide berth and a first chance at any prey that might be felled. She also noted that some of the smaller predators traveled and hunted in packs like wolves. The relatively small, quick species like the Compsognathus, Velociraptor, and Deinodon could be seen in the early evening hours racing about the perimeter of the camp, rushing up to the force-field at full speed, only to be knocked senseless by the energy screens, then stagger to their feet and try again. Mikaela was amazed at the savage intensity with which even the smallest carnivores hunted and fed. She had witnessed their neighborhood Allosaurus bring down a fat, slow-moving Hadrosaurus with incredible agility, covering several meters with each stride of its massive legs, pouncing upon the victim’s back and crushing it to the ground. Pinned, the Hadrosaurus was helpless as the Allosaurus literally tore its body into bite-sized pieces. The beast fed until its stomach became so distended that it could hardly stand erect, then slowly rose from the carcass and stumbled off into the forest, where it would sleep for a day or two in the depths of a digestive stupor.
But the attacks of the Allosaurus were tame when compared to the horrible tactics of the marauding packs of Compsognathus, and especially the odd little dinosaur called the Deinodon. The latter creature was no more than three meters long, standing just higher than the average man, but was one of the most distinctive-looking bipedal dinosaurs. Its head was similar to the Gorgosaurus or the Allosaurus, and was full of sharp, ripping teeth, but its legs were much leaner, ending in two large toes and a third digit which had evolved into a twelve-centimeter, sickle-shaped claw. Its other remarkable feature was its long tail, which always protruded horizontally to the ground, as though held rigid by thick musculature or fused tail vertebrae. Equipped thusly, the Deinodon was an incredibly agile, terribly lethal creature. Mikaela had watched packs of three and four of the species running through the edges of the forest and across the clearing below the base camp at speeds approaching that of a thoroughbred horse. From what she had seen thus far, the Deinodon was the speediest predator of all. lt could run down any prey with impunity, whereupon it would perform its special kind of death-dealing. Once it ran its victim aground, the little dinosaur would hold the body away from it with its longish forelimbs, then balancing one leg and using its rigid tail as a balance-pole, it would employ its scythe-like third claw to slash open the prey’s belly, effectively disemboweling it with several deft strokes. This procedure was done with such swiftness that the eye could barely follow it. The sharp-teethed jaws snapped up gobbets of warm flesh with equal speed and efficiency. To see a small pack of these killers take down a large Trachodon and butcher it within minutes was an experience not soon forgotten.
In addition to its chilling hunting techniques, the Deinodon had also been seen galloping into the middle of a meal being enjoyed by one of the really big predators such as the Gorgosaurus and literally steal the food from its huge jaws. It would perform this dangerous feat at full speed, snapping a chunk of warm flesh from the forelimbs or snout without breaking stride. The larger carnivores, though angered they might be, were usually so startled that they almost never gave fruitless chase. It was like a game the small predators played, and it gave credence to the idea that all dinosaurs were not the dull, dimwitted creatures formerly imagined. More than once Mikaela thought she detected the bright sparkle of cunning laughter in the small killer’s eyes.
Her observations also cemented the still-raging controversy of warm versus cold bloodedness in the dinosaurs. She had been working on the observations and calculations when Phineas Kemp entered her laboratory dome.
“How’s it going, Doctor Lindstrom?”
She looked up and saw the colonel. Blue eyes as bright as neon, sandy hair, and square, all-American jaw (though she knew he was from Canada). He was not a tall man, but he was trim and well-muscled, and quite handsome in the old-fashioned sense of the word.
“Oh, good evening, Colonel Kemp.”
“You can call me Phineas, if you’d like.”
“That would be nice,” said Lindstrom.- “I never was very high on formality. Everyone calls me Mickle . . . but, I prefer Mikaela.”
Kemp laughed. “I can’t even tell you what they call me! Behind my back, that is . . .”
Mikaela smiled and gestured that Phineas take a seat at the lab table where she was working.
“I stopped by to tell you that we will be sending out an expeditionary team in the morning—well-ar
med, of course—and I was wondering if you and your assistants would like to accompany us?”
Mikaela brightened and smiled broadly. “You were wondering?! My god, Colonel . . . I mean, Phineas . . . Ever since we got here, I’ve felt like a little kid outside the window, waiting for the candy store to open!”
“Yes, I’d rather expected that,” said Phineas, smiling. “I hope you understood my reasons for keeping everyone inside the perimeter. I thought it would be best if we secured the outside hull and got the outrigger engines in place before tackling the interior.”
“Are the engines ready?”
“Just about. Jakes says that the final emplacements will be made this evening. After that, all that will be necessary will be to secure the Goddard and Heinlein, patch in some computer-guidance to the outriggers, and we’re on our way. We should be firing the engines by tomorrow at mid-day.”
“How long will the return voyage take? Am I going to have much time to explore the rest of the interior?”
“I’m not sure yet . . . We only have some of the preliminary figures and projections at this point. It depends on how well the Dragonstar responds to course changes and deceleration. We’re moving along at pretty good rate right now. It’s going to be a tricky operation for awhile. No one’s ever piloted a ship this big before.”
“No, I don’t suppose they have . . .” Mikaela looked at Kemp and wondered if he was really that serious and wrapped up in his work, or if he was trying to “make conversation.” He did not act as if he was in any great hurry to leave, and she was of two minds about his intrusion on her thoughts and notes.
“Have you made any interesting discoveries or observations yet? I see that you’ve found plenty to write about, even by just watching them beyond the perimeter.”
Mikaela wondered if Phineas Kemp was actually interested in her notes, or whether he simply wanted to get into her pants. She hated to think of men in those terms alone, but her experiences with Matte and other men had taught her that most of them preferred to get physical first, then bother to get to know you later.
She decided to give the colonel the benefit of the doubt. “Well, since you’ve asked,” she said with a calculated smile, “I have come up with a few things that knock the hell out of the old ideas about the dinosaurs being reptiles . . . at least like the reptiles that we are now familiar with.”
“You mean that business about the hot-bloodedness?” said Kemp off-handedly.
Mikaela’s face must have revealed her shock that he would know something about her work.
Kemp smiled. “My dear Doctor Lindstrom, just because I am a lantern-jawed astronaut does not mean that I am a total dolt in terms of anything other than trajectories and g-forces . . .”
“I know, Colonel, it’s just that I didn’t expect very many people to—”
“To be interested in paleontology? Mikaela, when I was a boy, I think I read every book ever printed on dinosaurs! Those big buggers used to fascinate me. Used to dream about them still being alive somewhere in the world, and that someday I’d find them, or that one night, one of them would amble up to my bedroom window and peek in to have a look at me with his big yellow eye!”
Mikaela laughed along with Kemp, and she felt herself blush.
“I’m sorry,” she said, after a slight pause. “I guess that when you get so immersed in your work, you can sometimes forget that there are other people around who might understand and appreciate what you’re doing.”
“Yes, I know the feeling. I think it’s a common problem with people who really love their work. Sometimes they can let it get in the way of the people in their lives.”
“You mean the old ‘love me or love your work, but you can’t love both’ routine?” Mikaela smiled and shook her head. “Yes, I’ve been down that road a few times myself.”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to get into anything personal,” said Kemp quickly. “It just seemed like the appropriate thing to say . . .”
“Oh, I see,” said Mikaela. She noticed that he was a bit edgy when she relaxed the conversation. She had heard some of the crew members talking during the voyage about the colonel being involved with one of the missing people on the Heinlein expedition. He was probably having trouble dealing with the whole mess, and she decided she should respect his wishes and simply back off.
“Well, anyway, let me tell you what I’ve found out so far . . .”
“About the dinosaurs, you mean?”
Mikaela smiled. “Yes, of course.” She shuffled through her notes for a moment. “You see, it was generally believed for so long that the dinosaurs were just giant lizards that it was also assumed that they were cold-blooded, like the reptiles on Earth today. But reptiles are dependent upon the environmental temperatures for their own body temperatures. And even under optimum conditions, true reptiles can only produce about a twentieth of the amount of energy than hot-blooded animals, like mammals, of the same body weight.”
“And the bigger the body of the reptile, the more energy would be required to move it.”
“Of course,” said Mikaela. “And just in a couple of days, I’ve seen creatures like the Deinodon and the Compsognathus who move so quickly that they could not possibly be reptiles.”
“But if they’re not lizards, then what are they?”
“That’s what all the research will really be about. Can you imagine what we’ll learn when we can actually dissect a few of these animals? My feelings are that they are either a totally extinct class that resembles our modem reptiles in appearance only; or that they were a part of the reptile family that was hot-blooded and simply died off. We’ll find out lots of things before we’re done . . . now that we have this floating zoo.”
“If we are careful,” said Phineas. “That was one of the things I wanted to tell you about. When the expeditionary teams go out, I want you to realize that our first objective will be to search for any trace of the Heinlein team who might have survived. Scientific research will be secondary at this point, and I want you to understand that, okay?”
“Yes, that’s quite clear. Are we going to be going out on foot?”
“Maybe for the preliminary excursions. But I’m planning to have several omni-terrain vehicles assembled, plus an ornithopter which will be able to fly in the contained atmosphere of the cylinder. There are some tricky vortices and gravity gradients that we will have to play with before we really know what we’re doing.”
“Well, don’t worry about me and my people, Phineas. I promise that we will be cooperative. Nobody will go running off into the grinning jaws of old T. Rex.” She smiled and closed her notebooks, sensing that their talk was almost at an end.
“Speaking of T. Rex . . .” he said as he stood up. “I haven’t seen him yet, have you?”
“No, but I’m not surprised. Most of his fossil remains have been found in less densely foliated regions. He seems to have preferred hunting in more open territory, most likely because of the trouble he might have had, squeezing between air those redwoods in the thick parts of the forest.”
“That’s something good to know,” said Kemp, reaching out to take Mikaela’s hand, shaking it lightly. “Very well, then, it was good to have a chance to talk to you for a bit. We’ll be assembling at oh-eight hundred hours. See you in the morning.”
“That’ll be fine, Phineas. And thank you. Good night.”
Kemp smiled wanly, turned, and left the lab. Mikaela smiled to herself, thinking that she found him attractive in an odd way. There was something about his ram-rod mannerisms that didn’t seem right. There was probably a lot more to Phineas Kemp seething about just beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed, and Mikaela had the notion that she might be the woman to do the job.
* * *
Ross Canter entered the airlock of the Goddard, along with his co-workers on the outrigging project. As a flight engineer, he had not been d
angling in space on an umbilical to do the actual labor on the engines but had acted as a supervisor and inspector of the work. The engines themselves were not as much of a problem as the proper placement and method of securing them to the hull and structure of the alien ship. It would have been much easier to have simply located the alien control section of the ship and used the on-board engines. Of course, Canter knew that there would be a whole new set of problems involved in something like that. It might be near to impossible to figure out how the engines worked without risking the destruction of the entire vessel; or it might all be in vain, since one, of the most probable reasons why the ship was orbiting the sun dead in space was some kind of engine failure.
As Canter entered the ready-room, where he and the others slipped out of their EVA suits, he realized how thankful he was to be almost finished with the job. He did not like EVA work, just hanging out there in the bottomless pit of space. It gave him a bad case of vertigo, especially when he was looking down the endless length of the Dragonstar. It was like he was falling outwards all the time.
The Goddard and the Heinlein, docked together to form one ungainly ship, had been attached to the side of the alien hull, and after a few more series of tests, Doctor Jakes and his men would be firing up the engines and the alteration of the Dragonstar’s orbit would begin. According to Canter’s timetable, that would be just about the right time to sabotage the communications centers of both the Goddard and the Heinlein. Once the later phases of the operation had commenced back on the moon, there could be no more contact with either ship.
He had gone over the plan of action in his mind many times, and he was confident that he would be successful. It was incredible when he thought about it . . . how easy it would be to do the job. In fact, having seen how far along the outrigging project had gone, maybe now was the best time to do it. Canter hung up his EVA suit in the locker and left the ready-room, walking quickly up to his crew quarters to pick up the few tools he would need.
Day of the Dragonstar Page 15