Crucible of a Species (15 page)

It was over by the time they reached the end of the berm. Lieutenant Esperanza was standing in the center of the track speaking with Sgt. Marshall, Dr. Shieve and that new midshipman. “Sarge, I was just about to send a squad back for you.” Esperanza turned and asked. “How are our ensigns? Did they get off okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. They seemed to have a problem navigating a straight line with the dozer but I’m sure they’ll get the hang of it.”

“Well it’s not my worry anymore.” Esperanza replied, “We’ve got our own problems.”

“Do you think these dinos will try it again, ma’am?” Sergeant Martel asked.

“Who the hell knows? We managed to come in behind and surprise them but, instead of running, they turned and struck; lost Miles and Farley. I expect they’ve had enough for a while but I’m keeping everyone on battle alert. We still have a job to do and little time to do it in, Sergeant. I want this berm finished and us safely back in camp before sunset. Let’s move it!”

*~~*~~*~~*

The dozer careened across the edge
of the berm and down the side like a slow-motion roller coaster with a missing wheel. The machine made an unhurried rocking descent that tossed Ensign Dailey so hard he lost his grip on the steering levers. His hands flailed in the air, smacking his head on the roll-bar as the jolting vehicle threw him to the side. Dailey managed to grab the controls and pulled back, steadying the tractor. It leveled off at the bottom of the slope and then slewed around, pitched forward and miraculously headed in the right direction.

“That’s the wildest, five-mile per hour ride I’ve ever been on. I think my stomach and liver changed places,” Middleton shouted from the other side of the bench.

Dailey glanced over at him and there was a crash. “Oops, I thought we’d clear that tree.”

“You’re supposed to be following the trail back to the base.” Middleton shouted. “That’s soft ground ahead. Turn now. Even this mechanical beast could get stuck in that and then we’ll never get out without the second dozer. I don’t wanna be running back to Esperanza for help, especially with all that firing.”

“Will you relax? I know what I’m doing. I just gotta get a feel for the thing. Aren’t you supposed to be watching for dinos or something?”

“Christ, at least stop the weaving back and forth. Hold her straight. Watch out there’s ….”

The dozer crashed into a thick stand of brush, uprooting bushes and knocking over a small palm. A brown, sharp-billed head popped up from behind the wall of green. The Azhdarchid Pteradon had a long nose leading to a hard, brown bill and a soft, purple crest that rose above and flopped from side to side as it looked at the dozer. Towering over the low bushes, the reptile’s head was easily as long as the tractor and hovered over the ensigns, gracefully extending twenty-feet into the air on its long neck.

Gigantic gray-spotted wings unfolded, launching the reptile into the air with the same motions as a pole-vaulter. Soft fur-like down covered its body and unfolded wings that were wide enough shelter three dozers. Blasts of air buffeted the ensigns as it lifted, spattering water and something else that felt like warm mud across the tractor and its occupants.

“Aw, shit. That smells awful. You got it all over you Dailey.”

“Yeah,” Dailey’s irrepressible grin never left his face. “Guess we scared the shit out of …. Watch out.” A second head covered in blue with a bright red crest was staring at them from their other side. “That thing’s buddy doesn’t look happy. Get us back onto the cleared trail, back up!” The tractor lurched to the left, almost throwing the ensign out of his seat.

“I’m trying.” Dailey shouted as the tractor slewed back and to the side. “I think I’m getting the hang of it. Stop fooling around and hold on.”

“Faster, get us outta here.” Middleton shouted above the roar of the dozer as the wings of the pterodon behind them suddenly clawed its way into the air. The two startled ensigns could hear the terror in the flying reptile’s rough-throated cry. Dailey twisted to have a look and instantly knew they had bigger problems for he could see the bobbing head of a theropod predator pushing towards them through the brush.

“Aw shit.” Dailey’s blood ran cold, “We ain’t gonna make it. This thing isn’t near fast enough. Hold on.” The ensign slewed the tractor around and began heading down their trail with the blade at the front lifted high. “Grab your Pulsar!”

“My Pulsar? I can barely hold myself in the seat?”

“Cut yer griping and get ready. Let’s hope there’s only one of them.”

A seven-foot tall predator with an angry red ring of neck feathers bristling about his head charged out of the brush onto the open trail, its back a reddish orange that transformed into brown before meeting the small, dark green feathers covering its sides. The monster lowered and began swinging its head back-and-forth, calling as it arched its back in a threat posture. Dailey pushed the dozer towards it as the young tyrannosaur charged. Dailey lifted the blade causing the predator to shift to the right, spoiling Middleton’s Pulsar shot. He barely managed to keep the dozer’s blade following the theropod’s rapid movements. Suddenly the two-ton giant charged head-on at the tractor.

Their eyes opened in disbelief as the massive beast sailed over both them and the tractor. The theropod landed behind them, its foot sliding in the loose, sandy soil. With amazing speed and dexterity, the predator swung around, extending one of its tiny arms to control the rapid stop in a perfect, almost comical, three-point stance. The tyrannosaur swung its head, keeping its eyes on the two ensigns in the tractor. Dailey saw death blazing in the eyes of the demon behind them as he desperately swung the dozer around to face the tyrannosaur, knowing it wouldn’t move quickly enough. Frantically, he pulled one lever back and pushed the other forward to slew the dozer around in a sliding turn that almost flung Middleton over the side. The theropod was on them before they could fully bring the blade between them. The weight and power of the turning dozer crashed the side of the blade against the side of the charging monster. A head, nearly as large as the ensign opened its mouth revealing white sharp teeth as it stretched around the blade, snapping viciously as spittle and the stink of rotten flesh rained forward to cover the ensigns. The side of the blade spun the theropod and Dailey pushed the tractor forward with the monster frantically trying to climb upon it. The struggling beast twisted, managed to set its foot firmly into the ground while grabbed the blade with its short arms almost lifting the front of the massive dozer.

A crack from Middleton’s Pulsar shattered the air in the small clearing, the tyrannosaur’s neck erupted into a red mist of blood and flesh. The predator’s head flipped to the side, its body convulsing as it twisted and fell to the ground.

Ensign Dailey pulled back on the levers bringing the tractor to a halt and slumped over the controls breathing hard. A few brief moments later his breathing slowed, “Took you long enough to get him Middleton. Hey, did you see that? I think I finally got the hang of this thing.”

Middleton, his arm still tightly locked around the roll bar, was white as a ghost, “What does it take to upset you Dailey? Never mind, start moving. I want to get back to the Hunter. Damn, this isn’t what I signed up for.”

“Me either,” Dailey replied with a broad grin and turned the dozer back down the path. Smoothly his arms pushed the controls forward and the dozer pulled out onto the trail with as much grace as a forty-ton mechanical behemoth could muster.

Dr. Michael Thompson
pulled the CompuPen from his shirt pocket, set it on the desk and gently pressed the sensor on its top. The pen took on a life of its own as it rose from his hand to lift upright and balance on the desktop.

A faint red pulsing aurora encircled its upper tip. Like the flash of a meteorite, a thin beam danced from the device to trace the inner cornea of the doctor’s right eye, confirming his identity even as the tattoo sensor behind the doctor’s right ear responded and told the system to start the simulator. The CompuPen projected an aberrated wavefront above the desk to form a three dimensional simulation of the Argo’s Wave Drives. Groups of controls, sensor panels and a database browser solidified, filling the open portions of the desk surface along with an archaic style keyboard that remained his preferred interface.

Enshrouding the image of the drives was a translucent, spectral-keyed field-flux vector map displaying the gravitonic field power and uniformity.
Good, the drive alignment values have updated,
Dr. Thompson thought as he used his right index finger to page through the database of alignment variables. He examined the predicted wave patterns of the simulation for a few moments before sitting back in his chair.
Lieutenant Anderson is a very exacting engineer. I could not have brought the drives into this close of an alignment without the aid of the simulator. Still, if I tweak the central axis of the transverse magnetic pole and shorten this resonance channel … yes. Very nicely done.

“Personnel note to Captain Lee. Captain, I wanted to commend Lieutenant Robert Anderson and his team. They performed an excellent realignment …”

“Specialists Cyndi Stewart and Tom Denon are requesting to see you, Doctor,” The avatar of his synthetic aid interrupted the dictation. “The journalist, Mr. Bradley, is also with them.”

“Invite them in, Cynthia.” The Doctor replied. The office door opened almost before he could finish the sentence. “Good evening, please excuse me for just a moment.

“Cynthia, I’ve told you many times not to anticipate my commands. Suppose I had decided I was too busy to see them right now.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor, but your Convergent Replies Index indicated …”

“Enough, Cynthia. We’ll discuss this later.

Doctor Thompson turned to the crewmembers and journalist, “Forgive me, please. It’s just that I’d like to maintain at least the illusion that I have some control over my schedule. Cynthia’s personality on board the Argos seems to have become more aggressive in her duties, but I forget myself. You aren’t interested in this. So, how may I help you?”

“Mr. Bradley suggested you would be the best person to talk to.” Cyndi Stewart opened and then turned toward the journalist, “Mr. Bradley, you’re better at explaining things than I am.”

Tom Bradley had obviously been expecting the request, “Some crew members have brought up an interesting concept that they have been discussing among themselves for the past few days. They are concerned with time travel or, more exactly, the effect that our presence here in the past will have on our own future.”

“Ah, yes. Brittany Thornsen approached me earlier on this topic. Apparently, she never had the time to return with the results of our discussion and unfortunately, she’s up on the plateau now.” Dr. Thompson began as he pulled his chair around from behind his desk.

Dr. Thompson took a breath and examined the faces of his visitors before continuing, “These stories originated before we understood the physics of time. We now use a construct of ‘String Theory’ to explain this and other physical phenomenon that quantum physics could not. Time isn’t like a billiard ball travelling across a table where you make a change in the time-path by striking another ball to create two separate time-paths. This would be a particle-like behavior for the time-stream rather than the wave-like response we know it displays.

“The Adleyson Extension of ‘Temporal Momentum’ to String Theory shows that if you change a point in history, it’s like placing a rock in a stream. The time-stream will experience a minor disturbance immediately around the rock but there is no influence on the overall path of the stream. In your example involving the butterfly, we would discover that mankind has more than one potential ancestor. So, no lasting harm results from the loss of any single small mammal or even multiple individuals.

“You would have to make major changes in the entire streambed to alter the full course of time. For example, in thirty-five million years an asteroid will strike the Earth and exterminate more than 70% of the species here on the planet, including all these dinosaurs that have our survey teams so excited. That level of event would be a major change.

“You look skeptical, Ms. Stewart. I haven’t noticed any changes. Have you?” The doctor challenged.

Cyndi hesitated a few moments and then erupted, “How would we know? We may have already changed a great deal.”

Dr. Thompson was astonished. Previously shy, Cyndi had suddenly become very animated as she continued, “Have you considered just what it will mean if we do make it back to our Earth. Everyone will know how to travel back in time. Corporations will come and deplete the planet’s resources long before our species can evolve. They’ll ruin our planet and change or even wipe out the human race.

“After discovering that we had traveled back in time, we should never have landed. It would have been better if we had all died.”

Dr. Thompson sat back in his chair, staring directly at the specialist. “Ms. Stewart, don’t you think you are overreacting a bit? We are still here and nothing has changed. Remember too, we’ll be leaving as soon as we can with a minimum of disturbance to the environment.”

Then the doctor noticed that Cyndi was no longer paying attention. Her mouth was open in mid-thought and she was staring at the drive simulation still running on his desk. It was as though she just recognized what was on the display.

“Ms Stewart?” Dr. Thompson attempted to bring her attention back to the conversation.

Cyndi turned, then continued as though there was no interruption, “Theories! All you have are theories. You have no real proof. Theories are nothing but ideas and ideas can be wrong. The reality is, we are here and that is not natural.”

“I’m sorry Cyndi, but we are already here.”

For just a moment, Cyndi looked ready to burst into tears.

“Look … oh, never mind,” Cyndi said as she stood, moving towards the office door. “You’re just like all the others. Thank you for taking the time but you don’t know anything more about time travel than I do. Our very presence here jeopardizes the existence of the human race. We’re going to take a step too far and that’ll be it for humanity. Please, please reconsider …. Oh, I can see this was a waste of time. I won’t bother you anymore.

“Tom, are you coming?” Cyndi asked her friend.

“Uh, no Cyndi. I think I’ll stay a while and see what more they have to say.”

Cyndi turned and rushed out.

The doctor stood and walked across the room to close the door continuing, “Cyndi apparently feels strongly about our being here. How about you Tom,” he asked the specialist, “any comments or questions?”

“No, I’m a bit confused at this point,” Denon replied. “I’m sorry Dr. Thompson. I really didn’t expect that reaction. I thought she would stay here and try to convert you.”

“Convert me?”

“Well, maybe that wasn’t the proper word to use. It’s just that Cyndi has very strong beliefs and she’s not afraid to state them. If you disagree then she’ll work at you until you see it her way. Thing is, she usually presents a good argument and then stays with it like a bulldog. It’s very unusual for her to simply walk out like this.

“I remember when the captain first announced how far we had travelled back in time; she really went off the deep end. I mean, her ‘wasting resources’ speech took a complete turn. Now she’s convinced that by being here we’re going to wipe out humanity. I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown when they announced we were landing on the planet. That’s why I took her to Chief Meecham and, well, we eventually ended up here. Frankly, I don’t think she sleeps well at night. Nightmares, you know.”

Tom looked up and saw the surprise on the doctor’s face, “Did I say something wrong, Dr. Thompson?”

The physicist had turned his head and was studying the Wave Drive simulation, seemingly ignoring the question. After a moment, he stretched over his desk, turned off the CompuPen and said, “I guess I should have shut that down. Sorry about the distraction.

“No, Mr. Denon. You’re quite right to bring her here. Does Ms. Stewart tend to dwell extensively on this topic? Do you think her strength of character might extend beyond simply trying to force this belief on others?”

Denon was looking a bit nervous at this point, “Look, I’m not trying to start problems and Cyndi has done nothing wrong. We’re simply trying to understand what’s happening. Hell, everything seems to be going wrong.”

A smile rose on the doctor’s face, “You’re right. Things are a bit of a mess right now but we’ll work our way out of it. However, we need to work together. People who believe something is wrong should be encouraged to discuss it with their superiors and not spread dissention. You did the right thing. Don’t fret, nothing will happen to Cyndi but I believe we need to talk with her some more.

“While our situation is dire, we can actually benefit from this whole experience. We’re in a unique position to discover more about this period and time travel in general.

“Now, I’m afraid I have a conflicting appointment with Dr. Nolen. Do you have any more questions or comments before we have to leave?”

Tom Bradley stood up and extended his hand, “Thank you, Dr. Thompson. I agree, we have much more to concern ourselves with right now than worrying about stepping on bugs. I’ll see if I can talk more with Cyndi.”

The journalist rose, commenting as he opened the door, “Come on, Tom. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. Perhaps you can explain Cyndi to me,”.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll walk with you for a ways.” Dr. Thompson said as he followed them out into the corridor.

Dr. Nolen’s quarters were just a short distance away but Thompson took the long way around. It wasn’t unusual for him to stroll along the passageways of the Argos like this when working on a problem. The lab workers he passed thought nothing of it when he didn’t return their greetings.

I do believe we finally have our saboteur,
Dr. Thompson thought to himself.
Question is, is Ms. Stewart the only one?

*~~*~~*~~*

Shafts of light
projected downward, dancing through coral blue waters to fill the dim interior of the vessel with shimmering curtains of color. A squadron of six large ammonites propelled themselves past the viewport of Hunter Recon One. They looked like large, brightly colored snails with a squid stuck inside the shell. Related to the cuttlefish, they moved by jetting through the water with their long arms dangling behind them.
Strange things to be seeing swimming past the portal of a spaceship
, Lieutenant Braxton Johnson thought to himself as he snapped his helmet into place, “Systems check. Can you hear me Paul?”

“Loud and clear. Let’s head out.” Ensign Paul Petrika turned and unlocked the egress control on the Hunter’s Extra Vehicle Activity, or EVA panel as it was commonly called. A metallic clang sounded through the walls as the valve opened and water began rushing in around their feet.

This was a much slower egress than in outer space since liquid is harder to move than a gas. Braxton felt his ears pop as the churning waters slowly rose and the pressure in the chamber equalized to meet that of the outside seabed. It eventually covered their faceplates and a dim feeling of claustrophobic panic played at the edges of his consciousness.
This is very different from a normal EVA. Feels like I should be holding my breath,
he thought as the waters swirled around his helmet. The pressure of the ocean pushed against his ribcage as the oxygen in his lungs struggled to match the massive pressures outside.

The outer door opened and before them spread a panorama of the reef in all its glory, teeming thousands of brightly colored fish. The broad scope of the reef’s expanse, a myriad of colors held them in awe before Braxton pushed over to the edge of the airlock. His first steps were unsure and hesitant. He could feel the current and pressure resisting every movement.

The ship had settled on an expansive bed of coral, crushing a part of it in the process. Braxton called out, “Be careful. Coral’s sharp and can puncture your suit. We need to find a way around it.”

“Grab the service grips on the hull.” Paul replied, “We’ll pull ourselves over to the edge and drop into that sandy area. Unfortunately, this clump of red coral is obstructing the door. We’ll never squeeze through with our suits on. We need to break it off.”

Paul knelt and began chipping away at the base of the outcrop with his utility spanner. The spanner was a heavy, oversized device designed to eliminate torque for zero gravity tasks, not intended for use as a hammer. The surface of the red coral smashed into small chunks as he struck the massive column. A cloud of dust and particles spread out, dispersing more with each blow. The cloud of debris soon attracted colorful fish that darted in to grab the shattered but still live coral. An entire school of the creatures was soon streaking around them.