Rivers of Time
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1993
- Язык: английский
- Год: Baen Books
- ISBN: 9781555940232
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Rivers of Time». Краткое содержание книги:
Includes:
• Faunas (1968)
• A Gun for Dinosaur (1956)
• The Cayuse
• Crocamander Quest
• Miocene Romance
• The Synthetic Barbarian
• The Satanic Illusion
• The Big Splash
• The Mislaid Mastodon
• The Honeymoon Dragon
He and I both jumped at the thunderous bang of Todd's heavy rifle. I looked around the camp but saw no sign of him. I yelled at the Raja:
"Did you see that bloke leave the camp?"
"No," said Aiyar. "I was working with Ming on the supplies."
I was so angry at Todd that I was damned if I'd go crashing off in the outback looking for him, although I had a pretty good idea of where the shot came from. So the Raja and I spent the next half-hour waving off Cohen and the crew in the chamber and getting our sahibs settled.
By then it was near sundown. O'Connor straggled in, loaded with canvases, stands, palette, paints, and a camera. The Raja and I agreed it was time for our evening's spot of lubricant, so I called time. We were sitting round drinking our tot of whiskey. (I'm pretty strict about how much I allow per person. I've seen what can happen when someone goes over his limit on grog.) O'Connor showed off his sketches and talked a streak about reculement and other artistic matters that went over my head.
We all turned round as Todd came staggering up the slope. He was covered with blood, and for a bad second I thought he'd lost a chewing contest with a theropod. But he seemed cheerful, with his big-game rifle in one hand and his other arm around his trophy. This was the head of one of the smaller sauropods, the ones that look like a gigantic snake threaded through the body of an elephant. I think this was an Alamosaurus; there were still a few sauropods around at the end of the Cretaceous, though nothing like so conspicuous as they were in the late Jurassic.
Todd had the head and almost two meters of the animal's neck balanced on his shoulder like a drooping log.
I never advise my sahibs to shoot sauropods. It's not at all sporting, any way you look at it. They're harmless creatures if you leave them alone, pretty stupid even by dinosaur standards. I don't mean that dinosaurs are extraordinarily stupid, any more than modern crocs and other reptiles. They have a set of serviceable instincts, which see them through most of the crises of their lives; and they can actually learn, though not so quickly as any mammal.
All the sauropods do, however, is eat, eat, eat anything green they can reach with those long necks. Some are bigger than people thought anything could be and still walk on dry land. But it seems the limiting factor is not the strength of their legs but how much greenery they can gulp down and process in those mighty guts in any one day.
They can survive a lot of gunfire, too. Todd was lucky to have got one in the heart with his first shot. And if you kill one, what have you got? Just that silly little head on that long stalk of a neck.
None of that had stopped Todd. "See?" he said, grinning ear-to-ear. "I got my trophy, and all by myself. Hacked off the head with my machete, and here it is."
"How far down the slope were you when you shot it?" I asked.
He waved. "Maybe two-thirds of the way down, just inside that timberline of bald cypress, where the trees are stunted and scattered."
"And you left the carcass there?"
"Sure! Did you expect me to haul ten metric tons of dinosaur up that slope? Where's the salt to preserve it with?"
"You bloody idiot!" I said. We get all kinds on these time safaris, but the buggers who cause the most grief are those out to prove their manhood. I went on: "Don't you know the smell will draw carnivorous dinosaurs like flies? They'll be having a grand carrion party before the night is over. That's all right so long as they stay round the carcass; but what's likelier is that a big one will chase off a smaller. Then the smaller, not to be done out of its tucker, will wander up here looking for more—us."
"Scared, eh?" he sneered.
"Why, you ratbag—" I began. Things were making up to a first-class row, when the Raja took hold of Todd's arm and led him aside, saying: "Now look, Mr. Todd, if we start off with a mutiny, we might as well all get back in the chamber and return to Present..."
They passed out of my hearing; but the upshot was that Aiyar calmed Todd down to the point where, looking crestfallen, he came back to me and mumbled something about hoping nothing bad would come of his impulsiveness. The Raja found him the preserving materials while Ming got our tea—what you fellows call "dinner."
On a normal time safari, I take the sahibs out on the first full day to hunt fresh meat; that gives us the protein we shall need for scrambling around a rough landscape and also to judge which of the time travelers is to be trusted with a loaded gun. In the Mesozoic, that means one of the smaller herbivorous dinosaurs, like a bonehead or a thescelosaur. This time our stay was to be so brief that it didn't seem worthwhile. We had enough food from Present to do us. Besides, Todd seemed the only one keen on hunting.
As I had predicted, the theropods gathered round the carcass of Todd's sauropod down the slope. We could hear their grunts and bellows as they sorted themselves out into a pecking order; but there was so much meat there that they didn't have to compete for it. Anyway, none came up to the shoulder of the hill where we were camped.
When the sun came up next morning, the last of the theropods had gorged itself until it could barely waddle, and little by little they all wandered off into the cypress swamp. Looking through the glasses I could see a set of bare ribs sticking up.
I suspected there was still a fair amount of meat left on the carcass, so we had better keep our guard up against theropod visitors. We don't get the famous Tyrannosaurus around our site at this particular time, but those we do get include an Albertosaurus big enough to make a snack of you.
Einar Haupt was up most of the night stargazing. After breakfast, he came up with a little pocket-sized computer, saying:
"Reggie, I think I've got Enyo's arrival nailed down. According to my instruments' figures, it'll hit about dawn the day after tomorrow, and pretty certainly on this side of the planet."
"Can you fix the place of impact any closer than that?" I asked.
"Nope. If we were back in Present, my fellow astronomers could dope it out; but we're not."
That gave me an idea of what those blokes must have felt in the two big wars, when they were in a city the enemy was going to bomb. You might comfort yourself with the thought that there was a good chance the bombs wouldn't hit you; but it would be a lot nicer if they didn't fall at all.
"In other words," I said, "we may expect the lady in a little less than two complete revolutions of this bloody planet?"
"That's right." I hadn't said "forty-eight hours" because at that time the Earth rotated a bit faster than it does now, so the hours—I mean the twenty-fourths of one revolution—were shorter. This complicates our efforts to run a safari on schedule, since the sahibs' watches don't conform to the movements of the sun. I've thought of having special watches and clocks made; but the Raja and I decided the expense would be out of proportion to the benefits. Such timepieces would have to be adaptable to the planet's angular velocity for all the times back to the pre-Cambrian.
It was building up to a sticky-hot day. Sterling Featherstone wandered by, saying: "Have you seen George around, Reggie? There s a geological question I want to discuss with him."
No, I hadn't seen Romero; and a search of the camp failed to turn him up. Oh, lord, I thought; don't tell me another of these coves has gone walkabout by himself! It wouldn't have much surprised me with O'Connor, who seemed a vague, dreamy sort—but not George Romero, a brisk, no-nonsense field scientist. I thought scientists of all people were supposed to have better sense, but I find that's not necessarily so.
I made the round of the camp, questioning everyone as to what had become of George Romero. At last Todd told me: