Rivers of Time

Beauregard and his boys loaded the equipment into the chamber, and in we piled. O'Connor complained he'd forgot his sheath knife, but we didn't have time for him to go back for it.

The morning after Haupt's all-night vigil that discovered Enyo, Cohen took the whole party back to midday of that same day. I let several hours elapse between the time Haupt and I left the Cretaceous and the time we returned to it, for safety's sake. It wouldn't do to try to occupy the same time slot twice, since that would create a paradox. Can't have that sort of thing in a well-run universe, so the space-time forces snatch you back to Present and blow you to bits in the process.

The place we set down the chamber was about as good as we could have asked for. We were on the shoulder of a hill looking off to southeastward. There wasn't much vegetation on the shoulder, just some scrubby cedars and one big tree like the bombax I used to see in India. On the edge of the shoulder and on down the slope grew some stilt-rooted pandanus trees or screw pines. If we cut down a couple of these we should have a clear view to the south and southeast; in other words, straight at the area where the blokes who favored a Caribbean or Yucatecan impact thought it would fall. On a clear day, Featherstone claimed he could see an arm of the sea on the horizon; but I doubt that. In any case, if the Caribbean bods were right, the thing hit at least two thousand kilometers distant. That was quite close enough for me.

Below the hill, the country was flat and, from what I could see through my glasses, swampy, with a dense forest cover. My American sahibs agreed that the trees were mostly a kind of bald cypress, like the one they knew from their own time.

I ought to know more about such things; but there's a limit to what you can cram into one mind. It's hard enough to master the fauna and flora of one area— say, within a hundred-meter radius of St. Louis—for one geological period. When you try to cover the biotas of a couple of hundred million years, it gets bloody hopeless.

As usual, the Raja and I jumped out of the chamber first, with our big guns ready, in case something hostile were out there to receive us. All we saw was a flock of black-and-white birds, which flew up out of a tree. They looked like normal present-day birds, like your American mocking bird. I couldn't see whether they had teeth in their beaks, as some birds from this time have.

While the crew were setting up the camp, I told O'Connor: "You'd better get on with your painting, Jon. Don't go away from the camp farther than shouting distance—say, fifty meters—and stay in sight."

So off went O'Connor with his load of canvases, paints, and accessories. He was the youngest of our sahibs, with the shaggy-artist look. If he'd been cleaned up and given a proper haircut, he'd have been movie-actor handsome. Otherwise he seemed a mild, obliging sort of young man, if a bit vague about non-artistic matters.

Then up bustled little Mr. Todd, saying: "Look here, Reggie, with so little time, I ought to start my hunt right now."

"Sorry, but we can't," I said. "The Raja and I are tied up with setting up the camp. In an hour or so, one or the other of us ought to be able to take you on a little recco."

"But," says he, "I want to go now, while the daylight lasts! If you can't come along, I'll go by myself!"

"Now, Clarence," I said, "you agreed in writing that you'd follow your guides' orders. It won't kill you to wait a bit. When that Thing gets closer, we shall all have to stay close to camp, to be able to board the chamber in seconds."

"You let O'Connor go off by himself!"

"Only to a distance of fifty meters, so we can watch each other. That distance wouldn't do you any good for hunting."

He turned away, grumping, and I went back to siting the tents and the galley. When that was done and the crew were filing back into the chamber, I asked Haupt:

"Is there any indication yet what part of the Earth that Thing will strike?"

"Give me another night, and I can make at least an educated guess. The distance of Enyo and its present velocity, with a correction for the acceleration by the Earth's gravity, will tell us when it will arrive; and knowledge of the time tells us which side of the Earth will be turned toward—"