DS02 Night of the Dragonstar (20 page)

“Get ’im, Captain,” Murphy said. “My clip’s jammed.”

“Take it easy, man.” Ian was trying to remain cool. The heavy, humid air was filled with the night cries of feeding and small skirmishes. The rex listened for another moment as it seemed to be watching Murphy, then it leapt forward with astonishing quickness.

Ian had set his weapon on its slowest delivery so he could better lay in a volley of shots without having to stop to reclip. “Aim for the eyes!” he yelled to Becky as he himself drew a bead on the beast’s neck. A well-placed stream of slugs would sever the spinal cord, and that would be the end of the game.

But just as he raised the gun sight to his eye, the earth heaved violently, almost dropping him to his knees. The entire forest seemed to be resonating like a struck tuning fork, and the Tyrannosaurus rocked back and forth as the earth vibrated beneath its splayed claws. It paused and looked dumbly about for the cause of the new disturbance.

“Ian, what’s happening?” Becky ran to his side.

The people in the geodesic dome came running to the entrance to see what was going on, and Ian waved them back inside. He was still watching the rex, which was beginning to lumber forward again, despite the tremors that were rocking the entire ship.

“Ian!” cried Becky.

“I don’t know for sure,” he shouted. “It sounds like the bloody engines.”

“That’s impossible,” Becky shouted.

“Watch out, Captain, here he comes!” Murphy ducked and ran behind the physical plant dome as the carnivore closed in.

Ian tried to take aim and unleashed a volley at the beast’s neck. The slugs ripped into its belly and stitched a line up the side of its neck, staggering the creature, causing it to wobble and stumble backward. At the same instant, a tremendous burst of inertial motion ripped Ian and the others off their feet. It caused the ginkgoes to sway violently, and snapped some of the taller redwoods.

Looking up, Ian was just able to see the Tyrannosaurus be ripped off its hindlegs and fall upon the naked, snapped-off trunk of one of the redwood trees. The trunk impaled the great beast like a pin through a butterfly, and although it struggled for an instant, bellowing out its final cries of agony, it was dead almost immediately.

But the howling, roaring sound now seemed louder, and the scavenging creatures had panicked, running off into the forest in all directions. As Murphy and Becky moved closer to him, Ian could feel the great cylinder resonating under a steadily increasing acceleration.

“What is it?” Murphy asked, trying to catch his breath.

Ian looked at him as he climbed to his feet. “I’d say it was the sound of rocket motors.”

“Oh my God, Ian!” Becky said. “It can’t be . . .
can
it?”

Ian nodded slowly. “I’m afraid we’re being taken for a ride.”

* * *

His leg was bleeding slowly as he walked through the rubble. It was relatively quiet, and he had a moment to think about what had happened.

In terms of actual time passing, the violent tremors and quakelike vibrations of the Dragonstar’s engines kicking in had not taken very long. Upon reflection, Colonel Phineas Kemp realized this. It only seemed to take an eternity for Becky and Corporal Potlack to race back up the temple steps; it only seemed as though it had taken forever for the masonry to fracture and the walls to come crashing down.

As he stood there, dazed, the reality of everything that had happened began to sink in. In the relative calm of the moment, he found himself thinking of Mikaela, and more than anything in the world he wanted to be able to talk to her and know that she was all right, to hold her in his arms and bury his face in her sweet-smelling hair, to let his hands race over her firm body. He wanted to pull her close to him and forget about everything else in his crazy life.

That was an unusual response for Phineas, he knew. But things were getting away from him, out of control, and although he was not accustomed to situations like this, he felt he could cope with it by withdrawing for a while. Just fall back, regroup, and then he could move forward again.

He told himself he would attempt to locate Mikaela as soon as he had his leg looked at. And thinking of Mikaela almost naturally made him think of Becky Thalberg.

Where was she? Where had she been before all this mess started? So much had happened so quickly that Phineas could not remember all the details without concentrating. Oh yes, that’s right. She’d stayed on at the paleo survey camp
—
she didn’t care to see old Neville and his show because he played a little grab-ass with her.

Well, good for her, and too bad about Neville, he thought with a sad smile. Becky was probably safer than any of us, out there in the wilderness. When he called out to the survey camp after Mikaela he would ask for Becky too. After all, there was no reason they couldn’t remain friends. He was finally starting to realize now that he had been acting like an ass, and every time he recalled his confrontation with Ian Coopersmith he wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.

Shaking his head, Phineas pulled back from his reflective thoughts and moved a bit closer to the first-aid station. Things had certainly been crazy and dangerous.

But the great ship had now leveled out. The constant acceleration had ceased when the engines suddenly cut off. An odd, after-the-storm serenity pervaded the atmosphere, and it seemed deathly quiet after all that chaos. Phineas surveyed the latest body count and estimated that his party had lost perhaps another twenty people during the demolition of the temple, and about half of their salvaged equipment. The terrace in front of the fallen temple looked like a city plaza after a blitz. Masonry dust still powdered down in pockets as everyone sifted through the debris and helped the wounded to medical attention.

Phineas had been cut across the thigh by a flying shard of stone, and as he stood in line to receive some attention from a hastily thrown up medic station he saw Kate Ennis walking toward him with Takamura and several others. Everyone appeared haggard and distressed, but there was a certain dignity in their faces that suggested to Phineas one of humankind’s more noble characteristics
—
their adaptability to almost any condition.

His people had been through hell lately, he thought, but they still had that look of determination in their eyes.

“Phineas, are you all right? You’re bleeding,” Kate said.

“I know. A little freeze-pak and some tape and I’ll live, I think.” Phineas looked over at Takamura. “Glad to see that you made it, doctor.”

“Thank you, Colonel.” The physicist looked extremely concerned and quite dour. He cleared his throat nervously. “Colonel, I’ve got to talk with you right away.”

Phineas moved up in the line toward the medic staff and nodded curtly. Even though he had been angered by Dr. Takamura’s sarcasm, Phineas had to admit a grudging respect for the man. He was certainly a hard worker, and his own staff seemed to have nothing but respect for him. And of course, Phineas could remember Bob Jakes praising Takamura to the skies when they were engaged in the selection committee hearings for the Dragonstar project. It was just that there was something about Takamura . . .

“Excuse me, Colonel, I was talking to you,” Takamura said once again. “Are you okay?”

Phineas smiled. “Sorry, Doctor. I was woolgathering, I suppose. Please, you were saying something?”

“Colonel, I’m sure you realize that this ship has accelerated under its own power, that it has vacated its Lagrange orbital position.”

Phineas nodded. “Yes, Doctor, I’ve had my suspicions along those lines, although I have been consciously trying not to think about it. I’m sure you can understand what I’m saying. Have you confirmed this?”

“Yes, we have. Unfortunately,” Takamura said. “Do you have any more concrete information?”

Phineas asked, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any more bad news at the moment.

“Yes. We were able to get some of our instruments running, and I’ve got some information I think you should know about.”

“All right, go on.”

“Those engines are generating more thrust than our instruments can measure, Colonel. They have accelerated the ship to seventy-five kilometers per second at a little more than one-half gee. We suspect that after the initial shock wave some kind of internal acceleration compensation was put into effect.” Phineas said with a sincere, apologetic smile.

“Could you please tell me what that
means?”

“Sorry.” Takamura seemed both surprised and pleased by Kemp’s show of humility. “It means that if we maintain our present rate of acceleration we will eventually reach escape velocity from the solar system.”

Even in his dazed state of mind, Kemp was shocked by the pronouncement. “Is that possible?”

“It is if it’s happening,” Takamura said. “Colonel, this ship is
moving.”

Phineas stared at the chief project assistant dumbly for a moment as he considered what this news really meant. How could this be happening?

“Phineas, are you okay?” Kate asked, touching his arm softly.

“Yes,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Just a little stunned, that’s all.” He looked back at Takamura and forced himself to smile. “Tell me, Doctor, do you have any idea yet where we’re going in such a big hurry?”

ALTHOUGH SHE
had probably spent more time in the wilds of the Mesozoic preserve than anyone else on board the Dragonstar, Mikaela now felt oddly out of place there. As she handled the controls of the lead OTV in her small caravan, she realized that the primordial forest was not the place of her dreams—the fantasy land where she could conduct research and prepare monographs for the International Academy of Biological Sciences.

No, she thought as she looked out into the darkness of the forest, illuminated only by the powerful swath of her vehicle’s searchlights. No, this was no fantasy land. It was more like horror land, actually. Especially now that she knew the Dragonstar was pulling up stakes with its human prisoners and was heading for parts unknown.

Her caravan had been traveling down from a high plateau when the ship’s engines had kicked in and it had been a terrible experience. She’d had no idea what could be happening, and she was especially panicked when she couldn’t raise anyone on the radio, no matter what channel she tried. Even Copernicus Base was silent. She had ordered the OTVs stopped on the last rise of the plateau, selecting a vantage point that, when she played the OTV’s powerful searchlights downward, gave her a view of a river valley below. To the east, the river she had named the Bishop emptied into a large lake (christened Lake Kariskrona after her hometown). When the ship accelerated, Kariskrona had overwashed its banks and flooded a great portion of the surrounding scrubland. Mikaela watched the giant tidal wave sweep over the land, flushing out creatures large and small. Many of the smaller beasts were able to scurry up into trees, or were carried along on the surface of the water, but many of the larger dinosaurs had drowned.

She had waited out the initial effects of the acceleration until the engines suddenly cut off, leaving the Mesozoic preserve once again in relative quiet. Again she tried to raise someone on the radio, and this time she received a reply
—
from Lieutenant Barkham, the ‘thopter pilot stranded at the ruins. He reported that the ancient buildings had survived the quake, and that Zabriskie had just dropped off the first three people from Ian Coopersmith’s group back at the paleo survey camp.

“Oh, that’s good,” Mikaela said. “Were they okay?”

“Affirmative. But Zabriskie was running a little low on fuel so she transferred what was left from the tanks of my ship. She took off about 10 minutes ago.”

“Tell me, have you heard anything from Hakarrh? From Colonel Kemp?”

“Not much, Doctor. Only that the whole bunch of ‘em are leaving the Saurian preserve to come out here. All of a sudden everybody thinks this is the best spot to be on the whole ship, and all I did was crash-land my ship here.” Barkham laughed weakly.

“I tried to reach them by radio, but there was no reply,” Mikaela said.

“Well, I’d imagine they had some problems with the quakes. I expect they’ll be getting in touch as soon as they can.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Would you like me to give you a call from them?” Barkham asked.

“That would be fine, Lieutenant. As a matter of fact, please tell Colonel Kemp to call me on this frequency. I should be getting to the ruins within two hours.”

Barkham agreed and signed off, leaving Mikaela to her thoughts as she signaled for the caravan to begin moving again. Slowly she led the three OTV s down from the grazing plateau into the flooded scrubland. The waters from Lake Kariskrona had receded, leaving the landscape mushy like a sponge but still solid enough to allow the OTVs to move with good speed.

They passed several drowned carcasses along the way, already attracting a crowd of carrion eaters to the spot. An entire herd of Ceratopsians had been trapped in an arroyo and drowned, and above them a stormcloud of insects was gathering, ready to descend upon the fresh meat. The sky was filling up with Pteranodons and other smaller species of Pterosaurs. These creatures were the vultures of their age, and their keening, scritching cries were like a dinner bell for all the nearby survivors.

Interestingly, Mikaela noted, with the sudden abundance of free meals in the aftermath of the flood, the predatory theropods such as Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex, and their smaller cousins seemed to be totally oblivious to the line of strange-smelling OTVs. Many times they passed very close to a bipedal monster, searchlights splashing boldly over its body, reflecting coldly in its great walleyes, only to be ignored
—
either because it was dipping its bloody snout into the torn body cavity of a flood victim or because its nostrils were burning with the scent of recent death and it was fast on its way to a meal.

That was the most incredible part of observing the life cycles in the Mesozoic preserve: it was a never-ending ritual for the beasts, a ceremony of foraging and eating and sleeping and foraging and eating. The environment responded well to the demands placed upon it. The flora grew at a super-fast rate in the steamy, humid atmosphere. The herbivores consumed many times their weight in vegetation each day, and the carnivores ate the herbivores. It was a great relationship, a perfect understanding, even though there was very little communication, thought Mikaela with a wry smile.

As they moved away from the flood plain, Mikaela knew there would be fewer drowned, free meals lying around and that more caution would be necessary again.

She decided to try to raise the survey camp once again. Hopefully, they had survived.

“PSC,” said a familiar voice. “We copy here. Come in.”

“Hello, this is Dr. Lindstrom. Is everybody okay back there?”

“This is Becky, Mikaela. We had a few problems, but we’re holding on.” Becky briefed her on the attack, the quake, and its aftermath.

“I just spoke to Barkham, and he said that Zabriskie’s on her way back for a second run,” Mikaela said.

“We’ll be watching for her. Thanks, Mikaela.”

“Don’t mention it. Please be careful.”

Becky chuckled harshly. “I don’t know if it really makes any difference anymore.”

“Please don’t talk like that,” Mikaela said. “We can never give up.”

“Yes, I know. But Ian thinks the Dragonstar is heading for another star system.”

The words stung Mikaela. Up to that point, she had been telling herself that perhaps the IASA had started up the outboard engines, moving the ship to a more stable orbital window. But Becky had confirmed her unspoken, almost unformed fear of the worst. Oh God, if that was true, they would never see the Earth again.

“Oh God, I hope he’s wrong,” said Mikaela in a very soft voice.

“So does Ian, but I don’t know
—
it’s like I don’t even care anymore,” Becky said.

“You’re just depressed,” Mikaela said. “Hang on a little while longer and things will get better.”

“They can’t get much worse. All right, Mikaela, good luck. Hopefully we’ll be seeing you soon. PSC out.”

She signed off the transmission and again tried to raise the research lab without success. They must be having trouble with their receivers. Mikaela laughed aloud. Hell, they must be having trouble with a lot of things by now.

She had been controlling the lead vehicle absently as she used the radio, and she didn’t immediately react to the thing that had lumbered into the path of her searchlights.

“Hey, Dr. Lindstrom,” said the young voice of her gunner up in the bubble. “Watch out for this guy.”

Suddenly Mikaela was back in real time and looking a Triceratops in the eye. The beast had emerged from the scrubland and rocks to the right, and when it spotted the approaching OTV it stopped, raising its crowned, horned head into the air, trying to get a scent on this strange-looking beast. The Ceratopsians were herbivorous, but since they were so well armored, they were not docile plant eaters like most of their type. If their disposition could be described, it would be called arrogant, as though they were always looking for a reason to get upset.

The Triceratops stood its ground, tilting its head so that one baleful eye might study this odd bubble-backed intruder. Mikaela eased down on the accelerator, stopping less than twenty meters from the creature.

“Shall I take it out?” her gunner asked.

Everyone else in the vehicle tried to squeeze around each other for a look at what was going on.

“No,” Mikaela said. “It might be somebody’s mother ... or father, I can’t tell from here.”

“Well, what are we going to do, Doctor?” The trooper asked nervously.

“I’m going to try to go around it.” She radioed her intentions to the other two vehicles and started moving again.

She steered to the left and cut a wide swath into the underbrush, grinding through the thick tangle of vines and tubers. The Ceratopsian continued to stare at the little beetle-shaped vehicle, waiting until Mikaela had almost totally passed by before making its move.

It advanced quickly on the lead vehicle. Mikaela expected it to lower its head and attack the side armor with its horn, but, surprisingly, the beast had other ideas. It gathered up a running start, then reared up on its hind legs in an attempt to sexually mount the OTV. As soon as the gunner saw what it was trying to do, he burst out laughing.

“Well, I guess it’s somebody’s father for sure,” he said, and that kicked off everybody else in a wave of nervous laughter.

Even Mikaela could not keep from smiling as the Triceratops thrust itself repeatedly at the rear of the OTV. There was no logical reason why the beast would want to copulate with her machine, and no reason why it would normally mistake it for a female
—
darkness or no darkness.

The only cause she could imagine would be the same radiation that caused physical mutations in the dinosaurs and mental aberration in the Saurians. Perhaps it was the cause of the sexual confusion she now observed. The Triceratops continued to thrust at them with a steady thumping rhythm.

“Hold still, Doctor,” someone cried out from the cabin. “He can’t get a good grip on us.”

More laughter.

“Isn’t anybody going to squeal to make him feel good?” And that took them to the edge of pleasant hysteria.

Mikaela continued to churn through the underbrush at a slow speed, and the beast continued to chase and leap and thrust. He finally got the message that the OTV was not offering what might be called good sex, and at last gave up. This brought a round of applause from the passengers, obviously pleased to have something to break the tension and the monotony of their journey.

Checking the caravan’s position on her monitor, Mikaela exhaled slowly. For some reason, she had not been able to let out all her tension and apprehension during the “sex” scene. And she knew why: just the thought of the entire ship hurtling off into deep space, actually leaving the solar system, made her feel physically ill. If she continued to dwell on it, the abject terror and feeling of desperation were going to drive her mad.

The monitor’s readout informed her that she was less than fifty kilometers from the ruins. The crazy midnight journey was almost at an end. But then what? What would happen to them after that?

She didn’t want to think about it.

* * *

“I don’t believe any of this,” cried Oscar Rheinhardt, security chief for Copernicus Base. He was a thin, ascetic-looking man with a pencil-thin mustache. He chain-smoked his cigarettes and had a cough like a howitzer.

“Well, I’m sure we all wish it were a bad dream, but unfortunately it is not,” said Christopher Alvarez, who chaired the meeting of the Joint Chiefs. “This whole thing has been very bad for our public image.”

Gregor Kolenkhov laughed. “Public image? Come, Chris, why don’t you say it
—
we look like a bunch of fuck-ups. I’ll bet the Third World Confederation is having a good laugh at this one, oh boy!”

“Is there anything else we can do?” asked Marcia Bertholde, a middle-aged woman of sophisticated manner. She had winced at Kolenkhov’s words, but that was nothing unusual. She usually winced at whatever Kolenkhov said.

“I doubt it,” Rheinhardt said, speaking beneath a billowy cloud of blue smoke. “The stasis field kept all ships and equipment at bay, and when its engine fired up, it jumped out of here like a rabbit with its ass on fire.”

“How quaint an expression.” Bertholde did not look amused.

“But very appropriate,” Kolenkhov said. “The Dragonstar is now traveling at a velocity of between sixty and seventy kilometers per second, forty-eight degrees off the ecliptic. We don’t have anything that could catch her, and even if we did, there’s nothing we could do about it.”

“And you think it’s leaving the solar system?” Bertholde’s voice sounded as though it might break.