Crucible of a Species (17 page)

“I’m not very happy with that schedule,” the captain replied. “Even with the fence fully operational we haven’t cleared the entire plateau. That means the marines are spending another night in the open and they now have the added burden of protecting the naval personnel we move up there. Let’s see how it goes. We may have to modify our plans and chance taking the ship up later today. Then, at least, most of the personnel can sleep safely inside the ship tonight. Carry on.”

“Aye, sir. Looks like the portal is almost clear. We’ll begin unloading.” Meecham replied.

*~~*~~*~~*

“Petrika, shh, get over here.
You gotta see this.” Lieutenant Braxton Johnson crouched beside a massive black boulder. It lay on the beach like an island in a sea of white sand surrounded by drying strands of kelp. The lieutenant motioned with his arm, telling Petrika to move quietly.

Petrika bent low as he scurried up the sandbank. “What do ….”

“Shh!” Braxton cautioned. He motioned for Paul to look over the rock and began carefully pulling himself up its side. Paul set down his Pulsar and quietly scrambled up the boulder until they could peak over the top. “Nice beach, lieutenant.” Paul whispered with a big grin on his face, “Looks kinda like the one I just crossed.”

A low squeal sounded behind and to their left. Braxton jumped, almost losing his grip on the boulder as he turned. One thought flew into his head,
Shit, I left my Pulsar down there.

The squeal came from a small plesiosaur that was now shuffling around the rock base below them. Its head swung over, excitedly sniffing their bags while the pilots watched from the top of the rock. The humans froze when the plesiosaur spotted them and waddled around towards them. It let out a second questioning warble.

“He doesn’t …. He doesn’t seem to be very aggressive,” the lieutenant whispered.

“I don’t think we have to whisper anymore, Braxton.” Paul replied.

The suddenness of Paul’s speech startled the plesiosaur. It pulled back its head swinging it from side-to-side. “Oh, that’s too much like a snake for my liking.” Braxton commented and then was horrified to notice the ensign sliding down to the sand. Paul stood there for a moment. The reptile’s head stretched out, barely higher than that of the human. “It’s a baby,” Paul commented, “seems to have no fear of us.”

“Ignore it. Grab the bags and back up, pull everything above the tide line.” Braxton said as he slid down, grabbed his suit and rifle and carefully began walking backwards up the beach. “Don’t turn your back on it.”

The plesiosaur had other ideas. It waddled along, following the two humans. “Scare it off. Throw something at it.” Braxton suggested.

“What? There’s not even a shell around here. Do you want me to throw a handful of sand at it? Lotta good that’ll do.

“On second thought, I have an idea.” Paul bent down, picked up a long strand of kelp, and rolled it into a ball. With an easy underhand swing, he flung it at the reptile. The plesiosaur plucked the ball of kelp out of the air fast as a rattlesnake striking its prey, swung it around and back at the humans. Then it let out a high-pitched, almost laughing screech that sounded rather like a dolphin and once again began swinging his head back and forth.

Paul and Braxton were stunned and stood there staring at the animal until Paul bent down and picked up some more of the thick strands of seaweed, rewrapped the loose ends and threw it back harder. The reptile deftly picked it out of the air and returned it. Lieutenant Johnson shook his head, “I hope you didn’t start something here, Ensign.”

“Me? You’re the one who suggested it.” Petrika replied, “He’s cute but I still don’t trust him, let’s move our things up to the base of the cliff, away from the water.”

The plesiosaur maintained a safe waddling distance following them up the beach like an overgrown puppy until the shoreline leveled off to a grass-tuft filled flat area. There it stopped and began calling with its peculiar warble but refused to cross the high tide line. Ensign Petrika slowed and turned to look back at the whimpering reptile. “Almost makes you feel sad, he sounds kinda lonely.”

“Now’s not the time for developing relationships, Paul. We need to worry about getting back to the base and staying alive. Besides, this shoreline makes me nervous. There’s no cover and our friend’s daddy might come back. In case you haven’t noticed, they move quite well on land.

“I’m still not getting a return signal on this radio. The cliffs ahead don’t look too bad. If we can work our way up to the top we’ll have the extra height and can contact someone. Otherwise, we’re gonna have to be very careful about choosing a place to hunker down for the night.”

“There’s a cut in the wall down the beach.” Paul said as he began coiling the spool of rope so he could loop it over his shoulder. “It might be easier to climb if we use the washout.”

“Okay, but first, there’s an overhang in the cliff up ahead.” Lieutenant Johnson pointed up the cliffs ahead of them, “Let’s carry these EVA suits over and stow them under it until we can return. Considering our situation, these suits are almost as valuable as the ship to us and the captain will have our hides if we lose them. Make sure you save the coordinates.”

The humans lifted their suits onto their shoulders and began walking across the soft white sands of a Cretaceous beach studded with shellfish, crab and ammonite shells. Layers of brown, yellow and white streaked the limestone cliffs ahead of them, remnants of an even more ancient seabed that strongly contrasted against the deep blue sky of a late afternoon. The sun would soon be setting and with it would come the dark of evening.

The cut in the cliff turned out to be a dry water runoff or arroyo and the climb up to the top of the plateau was easy. Halfway up, Ensign Petrika stopped and began examining the rocks. “Braxton, come here. Look at this.”

Lieutenant Braxton was almost up but turned and scrambled down across the boulders to the ensign. “We’re running short on daylight, Petrika. What’s so important?”

“Look at these rocks. They’re full of fossils. Look at this one, I think that’s a fish. Over here’s some sort of clam and I believe a trilobite and an ammonite and …”

“You gotta be kidding me, Petrika.” Braxton grabbed the ensign by the shoulder and pulled him erect. “Were you watching the beach as we walked over here? It’s full of those things and …”

“Yeah, but those aren’t fossils. These are old and exceptionally well preserved.”

“We need to move or we won’t find a safe place to spend the night. We don’t want to be caught out in the open after nightfall. I don’t think you’d survive it. Now, come.”

Paul stooped down, grabbed three of the rocks and put them into his leg pocket before scrambling to catch up with Braxton. “There’s a difference, Braxton. These are old, real old and hard to find. I had a whole display case of fossils at home and none were this good.”

“Yeah, but if we can get out of this alive, you can take back as many extinct creatures as you want and they don’t have to be rock pictures, they can be the real thing. Look at that, we’re in luck. There’s a game trail following the edge of the cliffs. That’ll make the travel easier.”

“One minute,” Paul said as he bent over and pulled a small device from the left leg pocket of his jumpsuit. “Remember, we were gonna see if the radio works from up here. I’m still not getting anything … whoa, hold on. There’s a carrier frequency.

“Argos, this is Hunter Recon One. Please respond.”

“Hunter Recon One, this is Argos Base,” Ensign Mary Li responded. “We’ve been worried sick about you guys. Are you okay?”

“Hi Mary,” Petrika responded. “Yeah we’re still alive and kicking but our Hunter’s down. We’re stranded on the coast about a mile north of the river’s mouth and it’s not too friendly out here. Can you send over Dailey or someone to pick us up? Soon!”

“I’m not in the Argos, Paul. They sent me to the plateau to take over communications from the colonel. You did it, you know. Thanks to you, the Argos survived and they’re getting ready to start the drives and bring her up to the plateau. Hang on, I’ll link you through to Hunter Recon Two.”

Paul was a little frustrated having only audio. This was a suit radio and not a full communications device. It made the waiting hard.

“Do you still have the carrier, Paul?” Lieutenant Johnson asked after a minute, “It’s taking them an awful long time to …”

“Paul? This is Middleton. We won’t be able to get to you for another hour. I’m ferrying people and supplies from the Argos. Good news is, the captain allowed me to break off and come for you guys before we moved the ship.

“We won’t have much time so make sure your transponder is on and …”

“Hold on, ensign. This is Lieutenant Johnson. You need to get our situation report before going any further.

“First of all, we don’t have a transponder. It’s in the boat. Second, we don’t have a boat. It’s dead in the water, or I should say under a hundred or so feet of seawater and roughly a hundred yards offshore. The crash damaged the field drive and the backup power modules are zero lined.

“We are on shore and have moved inland to the top of the cliffs roughly a mile north of the river’s mouth. You’ll have to follow this radio signal to locate us.”

“Cheez Lieutenant, how did you guys get … never mind, we’ll leave that for later. Can you wait the hour or must I call in an emergency?”

“No, there’s no emergency. We can wait. Give us a call when you leave and we’ll keep a lookout for you. Thanks Middleton, it’s great to hear your voice.”

“Hunter Recon Two, out.”

“Well, that’s a load off my mind.” Braxton said as he returned the radio to the ensign. “We can use the time to bring up our gear.”

“Why don’t we just wait down on the …” Ensign Petrika began, “Oh yeah. The radio can’t make contact from down there.”

Braxton smiled at the ensign, “This won’t be so bad, after all we didn’t bring that much ashore ….. hmm, the suits and supplies will be a bit bulky. Well, perhaps we can get around that since we brought the ropes along.

“Here’s what we do. You go back down to the beach. I’ll walk northward on this trail a bit until I’m over the area where our stuff is stored. You’ll have to point it out because I won’t be able to see the overhang from up here. Then I’ll just hoist the equipment up using the rope.”

Paul was thinking about the fossils they had passed on the way up as he answered, “Aye aye, sir.”

“Uh, Petrika! Your weapon?”

“Right, guess I’m going to have to get used to carrying this around for a while.” Paul replied as he handed the radio back to Braxton. Grabbing his rifle, he turned and started back down through the arroyo.

The gravel was loose and movement harder going down the cut. Then he saw the change in color that marked the layer of earth in which he had found the fossils. Paul realized he didn’t have much time and besides, he would be coming back up this way. Still, he couldn’t resist taking a minute or so to look.

The spot was fantastic. The hardest part was selecting which ones to pick. He saw a big rock enclosing a horseshoe shaped animal with millipede-like legs sticking out of the surrounding soft soil. He instantly knew it was a trilobite and it was a big one, maybe as much as eight-inches across.

As he grabbed the stone and pulled, a section of the cliff collapsed covering his feet in sand and gravel but he didn’t care, he had his fossil. Paul shook his leg to free it from the sand and, as he pushed himself back up, he saw it. A snail-like shell that resembled a tightly coiled ram’s horn. It was a fossil ammonite shell similar to the animals that had followed them onto the beach but bigger, much bigger. This one was at least four-feet across but that isn’t what made the find so great.

Paul immediately recognized it from the expensive necklaces he had seen during an almost forgotten vacation up to Edmonton, Canada. A thin layer of semiprecious opal covered the entire shell and, where the sunlight struck it, the shell glowed in a rainbow of coral blue to a deep red brilliance. This was a major piece for a museum and, if he could get it home, it would be worth a small fortune.

Get it home? He thought as his heart sank, I doubt if I can even lift the thing much less get it back to the ship. Maybe I’ll get a chance to come back here. I’ll cover it back up and then we’ll see.

Then Paul remembered, Oh no, Braxton is going to have a fit.

Paul half slid and half ran down the long slope, stumbling out across the rough sand at the bottom and onto the upper beach. Keeping an eye out for any threatening movement, he began moving back up the beach.

The overhang was nearby. He looked up along the cliff top but Braxton was nowhere to be seen. Paul stopped and called, “Braxton, hey Braxton.” A minute went by before the head of his friend appeared above the top of the cliff. Once again, Paul called to get his attention, “Over here, you have to move up a little further north. Where the heck were you?”

“I got tired of waiting for you, Petrika so I was scouting the area. What’d you do? Stop for lunch? We only have twenty-five minutes left before they come for us. Now don’t move. I’ll be right over.”

A minute later, Braxton’s head again appeared. Paul waved and called, “You’ve gotta get a little bit closer.”

“Can’t do it. Too much shrubbery there and the trail moves inland. You’ll have to carry the equipment over to the rope. I’m dropping the end now,” Braxton shouted.