Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel) (32 page)

Dawn remembered how the pack of ostrichlike dinos had stolen eggs from the
Triceratops
. So,
Troodon
must use the same tactic for obtaining food. 

Then suddenly, to her surprise, the little predator spun around. After a moment, its cloaca opened wide and two oblong eggs with pebbly shells tumbled into the nest. With speedy precision, the female
Troodon
turned, cached her eggs, and slipped away into the leafy cover.

It was an
aha!
moment for Dawn.
Troodon
was
stealing, all right, but instead of taking food, she had placed her young in the nest of another species. It was a clever strategy; letting another dinosaur mother do all the work. While she was raising your babies, you could merrily go about your own business.

But Dawn’s heart fell when she remembered what was going to happen in the next few hours. Life here was going to change forever. All this would be destroyed by the impact of the comet, the environment devastated by the resultant firestorms, the dinosaurs and their nests burned to a crisp. 

She took one last look at the dinosaurian paradise and then stole away, heading for Gus’s position.

Gus had his gun raised. “Don’t ever do that again!” he said as she came into his sights.

She shrugged. “Sorry. But wait ‘til I tell you what I saw just now.” 

“I don’t care. You took a big risk.”

Dawn nodded, for she had known this. “Sorry,” she repeated. Her face brightened as she remembered the name of the dome-headed dinos. “Oh, they’re called
Pachycephalosaurus
,
” she exclaimed. “They’re also known as boneheads.”

Gus made a face. “Say what?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, never mind.” With a half-smile, she realized she wanted to call
Gus
a bonehead, too, but then she looked at his poor ankle and decided to hold her tongue.

They waited in silence until the sound of the Rover’s engine filled the air.

“Harry’s here,” Dawn said as she reached for Gus’s arm. 

With her help, he struggled to his feet. Balancing awkwardly on one foot, he leaned against her right shoulder for support. 

Together, they hobbled through the ferns in search of the Rover.

***

After they got Gus settled into the vehicle, Dawn told Harry about the
Troodon
at the
Pachycephalosaurus
’
nesting site. 

Harry got an excited look in his eyes. “Where are the nests?” he asked Dawn.

“Not too far––”

“Absolutely not!” Gus glared. “Do you realize what time it is?” He looked at his watch. “0641 – about five hours until Doomsday.” He threw Harry a pointed stare. “I order you to take us back to the lander now.”

Harry blinked. “Yes, Commander.”

Before manning the E-M cannon, Dawn took a seat next to Gus and then grabbed his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m acting like an idiot, aren’t I?”

Gus gave her a peck on the cheek. “Yeah, you are,” he said seriously. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” She saluted.

He laughed. Smiling, she got out of the seat and took her position behind the cannon. 

Harry turned the Rover around and headed for the
Valiant
. “What a shame,” he said, sounding sorrowful. “All this will be gone in a few hours.”

Dawn looked up. From her vantage point, she could see the comet clearly now, hanging in the sky like an executioner’s blade.

Harry went on, “I would’ve liked to have seen the young dinosaurs after they hatched. Imagine the scene? Hundreds of down-covered babies, their heads raised as they wait for their mothers to come and regurgitate food.”

Gus turned. “What’d you say?”

“About what, Commander?”

“Regurgitating food.”

“Since dinosaurs don’t have mammary glands,” Harry explained, “they can’t breast-feed their young the way mammals do. Just like birds, the dinosaur mothers bring food back to the nests. That’s how they feed their babies. By regurgitation.”

Dawn watched Gus. He had a strange half-smile on his face, yet his eyes held an anxious expression that made her heart skip in fear. 

“What is it?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he said mysteriously. “Absolutely nothing at all.”

***

But it wasn’t nothing. It was the answer! 

As goose bumps rippled over Gus’s skin, he visualized himself lying wounded in the cave. The dinosauroid was lowering her face to his. For a brief moment, he swore he could again feel her vomit filling his mouth and sliding down his throat.

It was a taste he would never forget. Vile and bitter, mingled with a sickening sweetness. The most god-awful thing he’d ever swallowed. Worse than the cod liver oil his Swedish great-grandmother had given him as a child.

He turned his face aside, casting his glance away from Dawn. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered to himself. “It really did happen.”

***

Tasha studied the telescopic projection with increasing trepidation, but she did not let on to Jean-Michel. 

“I was careless, Dr. Antipova,” he said over the com. “I should have seen them. All of them.”

“Perhaps not. Refer to article I’ve highlighted from
New
York
Times
. According to it, as of April of 2025, the Sentinel space telescope asteroid tracker has located an estimated ninety percent of near-Earth and Earth-crossing comets and asteroids. That’s ten percent they believe are yet to be discovered. Ten percent! And it has big advantage – it scans in infrared and is positioned between Earth and Venus orbits. You do not have such advantage, Jean-Michel.”

“But I should have detected the other fragments. They were right under my nose.”

“As my husband used to say – don’t beat yourself up about it,” Tasha grumbled. She knew she was about to lose her temper, so she deliberately changed the subject. “More important question should be what do we do now?”

“But––”

“Enough self-pity, Jean-Michel. Now, think. Think! We must have good plan.” 

Without waiting to see his reaction, she turned away from the com-screen and stared at Kris. She was sleeping again. Satisfied her patient was for the moment doing fine, Tasha lowered her voice and asked, “Mars Rover, do you copy? This is
Valiant
. I need to talk to you.”

“This is Granberg,” Gus said as his face appeared onscreen. “We copy you, Doc. What’s up?”

“First, how is your ankle?”

“Uh, about as good as can be expected.”

“I will work on it as soon as you get back here.” Tasha faltered. “Perhaps Jean-Michel should tell you – we seem to be in big trouble.”

“The comet is not a lone object,” Jean-Michel said. “There are two other large pieces out there, perhaps even more. I suppose the comet we’ve been tracking split apart. I did not see the other bodies until about an hour ago, when they passed the orbit of the Moon.”

“Two more?” Gus asked.

“
Oui
. They appear to be part of the same cometary shower.” 

Harry whistled. “You know, there’s evidence something more hit the Earth during the K/T Event, near India.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t quite understand something,” Gus said. “If there are more comets, how come we haven’t seen their tails?”

“They may not have any ice left,” Jean-Michel explained. “If they did not break from the main comet, and are part of a cometary shower, they could be the rocky cores of spent comets. After millions of years, when the ice is gone, the core is all that remains – they’d look a lot like asteroids.”

“Okay,” Gus said. “When are the pieces going to hit?”

“The two bodies, which I will call Nucleus A and Nucleus B, are traveling at 30 kilometers per second,” Jean-Michel said. “I estimate their impacts will occur in a little over one hour.” 

“What?” Gus looked unnerved. “Can’t you be more specific than that?”

Jean-Michel consulted his monitor before saying, “One hour, thirteen minutes and fifty-two seconds for Nucleus A. For Nucleus B, it will be one hour, eighteen minutes, ten seconds.  The larger comet, Nucleus C, will hit after that. The designated time of that impact is still 1134.  After the last impact, you will have perhaps ten or fifteen minutes until debris jettisoned into the atmosphere ignites and then starts to hit your location. The resultant firestorm will be massive.”

“That means we won’t get back in time to execute lift-off.” Gus was silent for a moment, then Tasha saw him purse his lips in frustration. “Where will the impacts occur, Jean-Michel?”

“One off the coast of India, like Harry said, one in the Ukraine, and the largest in the Yucatan. And I should remind Harry of a suspected impact in the North Sea – although that one, along with the Indian one, was always disputed.” 

Harry whistled again. “This blows me away. I always thought the Boltysh and Shiva Impact Craters happened in conjunction with Chicxulub, but the Silverpit in the North Sea would be an awesome discovery. It’ll mean even more fragmentation. You know, a lot of scientists suspected the comet or asteroid broke up.”

“Like Shoemaker-Levy 9 did,” Jean-Michel added, “before its pieces
hit Jupiter in 1994.”

Ignoring them, Gus asked, “Jean-Michel, you’re sure we won’t have time to leave?”

“
Oui
. The first impact alone will set off a disaster. Like I just mentioned, after each subsequent hit there will be transient holes created in the atmosphere. And there will be the inevitable firestorms, traveling from the impact sites from the southeast to the northwest.”

Tasha glanced through the window, imagining the huge fireballs pluming toward the sky after impact, like those of nuclear bombs. Tons of debris would be sent into the air. Some of that rock and dust would be sulphur rich and ignite with temperatures rivaling the surface of the sun. 

“Commander,” she said, “we must not attempt lift-off. The risk is too great.”

“Yeah,” Harry concurred. “The shockwaves and hot plasma would destroy us.”

“Damn it all,” Gus said.

“You will reach
Valiant
in time,” Tasha added. “Then, we must ride out K/T Event here, on the ground.”

***

Ride it out?
Gus frowned, hoping that was possible. The lander had been designed to withstand the tremendous forces caused by atmospheric friction during reentry. Maybe that would save them.

Then again, maybe not.

The Rover was racing toward the
Valiant
, Harry driving like a mad man. Gus looked over at Dawn, caught her expression of alarm, and then peered at the sky. 

“Damn,” he said, gazing at the comet’s eerily beautiful tail.

There was nothing more to do or say. The lander was it, their only hope.

Chapter 24

O, it is monstrous, monstrous!

Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it;

The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder...

~William Shakespeare,
The Tempest

They could see the
Valiant
now. Gus had to admit Harry was making good time, but the Rover was still an estimated ten minutes away from the lander, which gave them about a twenty-five minute window until the projected first strike of the K/T Event off India, in the southern hemisphere. He cursed under his breath, They were cutting it too close for comfort, way too close. Despite his nerves, he let his gaze roam. It was a gorgeous day, a final, perfect morning. The sky was the same deep color as a field of Texas bluebonnets.

“You didn’t answer me back there, Gus,” Dawn asked. “What’s the matter? You looked like you saw a ghost when Harry started talking about the dinosaurs feeding their young.”

He stared at Dawn, remembering the dinosauroid. 

“Come on, Gus. If something’s wrong, you need to tell me.”

“Later,” he said. “I want to discuss it with everybody.” He decided to pay attention to his surroundings again. The Rover had begun a gradual ascent as it reached the outskirts of the hill country. In the distance, he could just make out the lander, nestled snugly among the bluffs.

Then Gus’s gaze struck the familiar rocks of the cliff-face, and he took a closer look at the
Valiant’s
position. For the first time, he realized the ship was protected, as if it’d been deliberately placed in such a way it would withstand the impeding devastation of the K/T. With it nestled behind the cliffs, any blast coming from the south would be blocked.

Son of a gun!
Had the Keeper always known they would not be leaving the Earth when the impacts occurred? Was this part of his plan?

But why? What was the alien bastard thinking?

***

Dawn, Gus, and Harry had been back at the lander for a little under thirty minutes when Dawn took a seat at the table. Gus already sat there, wearing a clean T-shirt and shorts, with his ankle wrapped, iced, and elevated. He gave her a grim smile and then went back to surveying the com-screen, having watched the
Destiny’s
orbital transmission of the first impacts. A few minutes before, two cometary fragments, designated Nucleuses A and B, had struck off the coast of India and in the Ukraine, the former setting off a massive tidal wave, the latter a devastating land impact, with both propelling tons of debris into the atmosphere. Interestingly, the Silverpit impact had not occurred, and Harry said that it meant either of two things: the suspected impact site wasn’t a crater after all – perhaps a geological anomaly instead – or that an impact did occur, but sometime after the K/T Event, maybe thousands of years later.

But the two actual impacts, bad as they were to the environments of southern Asia and Europe, did not have the potential for global disaster like the more massive cometary fragment, Nucleus C, now heading straight for the Yucatan. With an estimated diameter of ten kilometers (about the same length and width as San Francisco and standing taller than any mountain on Earth) and weighing in at one trillion metric tons, it would create an explosion of one billion megatons, or ten thousand times the force of the simultaneous detonation of all the nuclear bombs in the U.S. and Soviet Union’s pre-1990s arsenal.

Soon, tons of fiery debris would begin falling back to Earth, preceded by the largest sonic boom in history. Harry and Tasha took seats at the table opposite Dawn and Gus. Despite putting on brave faces, Dawn could sense everyone’s fear. 

“If we’re lucky, after the impact the immediate area around the lander might resemble what was observed at Mt. St. Helens in 1980,” Dawn said.

“How so?” Gus asked.

“In spite of the enormous blast that came out of the northern flank of St. Helens, there were places that were quite protected.” 

“Right,” Harry agreed. “Some sections of forest in the blast zone were left standing virtually intact after the eruption. There were also patches of plants that escaped the devastation. If vegetation was positioned behind hills, or in protected valleys or even behind boulders, then it had a chance of surviving.” He nodded to Gus. “I think your observation as we approached the lander was right on. The
Valiant
may survive intact, because the Keeper placed it in this very spot.”

“Yes, but what’s the real reason he put us here?” Dawn asked.

“I think it has to do with you,” Gus said.

Dawn felt a surge of icy dread. “
Me
? What do you mean?”

“I saw the dinosauroid back in the cave,” he said in a disarmingly ordinary tone. 

“You
what
?” At that moment, Dawn realized things were getting totally weird. “Is that what you meant when you said you had seen
her
?
”

Gus nodded. It took him a few minutes more to relate the events of the previous twenty-four hours.

Dawn and the others sat in dazed silence. Tasha came over to Gus’s side. “Let me look at your leg. Where was compound fracture?”

Gus went to show her, then shrugged. “I don’t exactly recall where it was. There isn’t even a scar left.”

“Amazing!” Tasha said after she examined his leg. “I cannot find anything to indicate wound. I wonder what dinosauroid gave you?”

“Yeah, I do, too.” Gus gazed ruefully at his ankle. “Wish I had some of it now.” 

Dawn studied Gus’s expression. She could tell he was as worried as everyone else, just trying not to let it show.

“If what I think is true,” Gus went on, “if the Keeper wants to change Dawn’s DNA, then how can I stop him?”

Tasha stared at the weapon case. “This is not something you will have to do alone, Commander. We will help, won’t we?”

Dawn watched as one by one the other astronauts nodded. 

“I know I can count on you,” Gus said quietly.

She noticed the faint trembling in his hands and fought back tears.
I love you!
she thought as she reached out and took his hand. 

He smiled and nodded to her, whispering, “It’s okay. We’re gonna make it.”

Harry glanced at his watch. “It’s almost time. We need to get in our flight chairs.”

“Right,” Gus said as he gave Dawn’s hand a little squeeze, then let go. He rose from the table and hobbled over to his chair.

Dawn strapped herself in and looked at Gus. His gaze had grown steady, his demeanor rock-solid, exuding calm. She closed her eyes, waiting.
We’ll be safe
, she told herself.
We’ll be all right. Remember what Gus said? We’re going to make it
.

She was suddenly aware of a low, thunderous rumble, like the roar of a lion. The air itself seemed to vibrate, to shudder in fear. 

Holding her breath, Dawn gripped the arms of her chair. The K/T Event had begun!

Time passed so slowly. There was nothing Dawn hated more than thunder and lightning. The howling gales and resounding booms and crashes outside made her want to hide under her bunk and cover her ears. But she was stuck in her flight chair, strapped in and feeling utterly helpless as the K/T seemed to go on and on.

She looked at her crewmates. Everyone sat there – with the exception of Kris, who was strapped into an infirmary bed – all looking cool and calm, handling the situation with professionalism, using their headsets or communicators to monitor the static-laden broadcasts being relayed from the
Destiny
.

Dawn attempted to breathe deeply. She’d been trying to fight her panic, to no avail. As the land outside was rocked by chaos, an inner turmoil just as fierce raged in her heart. Her knees trembled and her mouth was dry. She felt as though she stood on a precipice. One wrong move and she would fall into the abyss. It was now or never. Her life was at a turning point.

Suddenly, Gus said, “I think we can move around now.”

Dawn looked over at him. 

“It’s been an hour since the sonic boom,” he told her. “You should see what’s outside. Down in the valley, it’s rainin’ fire.” 

“Are you sure it’s okay to get up?”

When he nodded, she unbuckled herself, then walked over to his side. “Gus, we need to talk.”

“Sure.” 

“Alone,” she said.

Gus cast his glance beyond her, focusing on the window. Dawn turned. Harry and Tasha stood there looking out, momentarily oblivious to everyone else in the room.

“No one will hear us, Dawn.” He indicated the chair next to him.

She sat and looked into his eyes, sensing his strength, needing reassurance. “I’m so afraid.”

Gus took her hand. “It’d be strange if you weren’t. A huge tsunami just hit the regions surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. Harry said it probably stood over one kilometer high. It slammed into the southern coast of Texas. It killed everything there.” 

Studying the com-screen, Dawn’s gaze trained on the dark, swirling clouds of smoke now blanketing parts of the Earth’s atmosphere. 

“Just look at that,” Gus said. “It’s like nuclear winter.” 

“It’s so sad, isn’t it?”

“Not so sad for us mammals.” He shook his head. “But I sure wouldn’t want to be a dinosaur right now.”

Dawn’s thoughts returned to the
Pachycephalosaurus
nesting site. Where was that sneaky
Troodon
now? Was she still alive? And what had happened to the dinosauroid? She glanced at Gus. “You really believe you saw a dinosauroid, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“If the Keeper somehow changes me into that creature, then it’d be like dying. I wouldn’t want to live anymore.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you.” He kissed her hand, his lips soft against her skin. “Trust me, Dawn.”

“I trust you.” She forced herself to smile. “But have you considered what will happen if the Keeper
doesn’t
have his way?” 

“I don’t understand.”

“Whatever his plans are for me, if they don’t happen, then it means I won’t be able to save you in the cave.” 

“Huh?”

“Don’t you see? If I don’t become Dinosauroid Dawn, then you’ll die from your wounds. I won’t be able to give you the medicine.”

“So be it.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe that won’t happen either.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we prevent the Keeper from carryin’ out his plans, then he won’t be able to transform you. And then, since he won’t be able to get his physical body back, I won’t have to follow him to the cave.” He paused. “You see how it goes, don’t you? ‘Round and ‘round. We don’t know what’s actually coming up, but we’ll throw a wrench in things so that maybe we can change the course of the future.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Dawn sighed.

“I
am
right,” Gus declared. “You’ll see. Once we’re out of this hellhole, we can forget about the Keeper and get on with our lives.”

“I want to believe you.” 

He kissed her hand again, this time with a firm, jaunty smack. “Then do.” 

***

By late afternoon, as the crew tended to the specimens in the lab, they tried to ignore the devastation outside. Fortunate creatures, the lab specimens were perhaps all that was left of the aboveground animal population around the
Valiant
, for almost everything else had been wiped out by the effects of the K/T Event.

But theirs was not the hardest hit area. Far to the south, the devastation approached apocalyptic ruin. Everything within one thousand kilometers of Chicxulub had been destroyed, either crushed by the immense weight of the ejecta hurled out of the crater, smashed by subsequent atmospheric shockwaves and magnitude 10 earthquakes, drowned by tidal waves, or burned by firestorms. In fact, raging conflagrations still blazed over the world’s forests, with sporadic wildfires whipping through even more distant locations, like the northern woods of the Arctic. 

Although it was in reality several hours after sunset, outside the sky was still glowing red from the fires. But that would all change. There was so much ejecta in the atmosphere Harry estimated daytime would soon seem as dark as a moonless night, and sunshine wouldn’t reach the Earth’s surface for weeks, maybe months. As soon as the fires burned themselves out, he predicted the outdoor temperatures would drop to below-freezing levels. This, coupled with the continuous darkness, meant certain death for the majority of species on Planet Earth.

And that was not all. Six hours after the K/T Event, horrible, yet extraordinary, things had started to happen on the other side of the world. Jean-Michel had been able to film the Deccan Traps of India and the eastern African coast just before the smoky atmosphere obscured his view. Afterward, he got images of the region in infrared. Despite the atmospheric interference, he managed to patch the films to the
Valiant
. What they revealed was startling.