Rivers of Time

"I figured out that this was a mating dance, and the one doing the setting-up exercises was the male, hoping to get the female into a receptive mood. It seemed to be working, because the male extruded that great long hook-shaped hemipenis—or rather, he extruded the half of it on the side toward the female. Then he grabbed the female with his foreclaws, hoisted one leg over her hindquarters, and started feeling around her underside with this organ to find the point of entry.

"I couldn't resist the temptation to shoot a few frames on my camera. Whether the tiny click of the shutter aroused the male, or the motion of my arm, I don't know. But he suddenly stared at me, let go the female, and withdrew his hook inside him. He uttered a kind of caw, like a crow, and started for me. Not being armed, I ran for it."

The Raja and I had the same thought, and we both burst out laughing. "Sport, he thought you were a rival, who wanted to screw his mate," I said. "Naturally, no right-thinking bull steno is going to stand for that!"

The whole camp had a good laugh over the incident. But then our spirits sank as the clouds formed huge anvils, with lightning and thunder. By the time for tucker, rain was coming down in buckets.

It kept up the whole night. Maybe theropods gathered again round the sauropod carcass to resume their feast; but the storm made so much noise we couldn't have heard them. The next day was more of the same, all day.

"Lousy luck," said Featherstone. "If we can't see the results of the impact from a distance, we don't dare hang around until it happens. The shock wave might catch us unawares and smear us."

Haupt said: "There may be enough light from Enyo to warn us as it makes its final plunge, even through the cloud cover."

"How about the big wave?" asked Romero. "If that Thing lands in water, it'll kick up the grandfather of all tsunamis. You know what they say: If you're at the beach and see a tsunami coming, it's already too late to save your life."

"Unless," said Featherstone, "you had a fast motor vehicle and floored the gas away from the beach."

"And if," said Romero, "the road wasn't jammed with other people trying to do the same thing. But how about this tsunami?"

"Don't worry," said Haupt. "One might wash inland over flat country for a few kilometers—maybe ten or twenty—but we're at least a hundred kilometers from any sea. The speed—"

"How do you know," interrupted Todd, "that we're a hundred kilometers from the sea, when we haven't a map of the area for this period?"

Haupt answered with the forced patience of a schoolma'am with a backward pupil. "Because if it were closer, we could see it plainly from this altitude. The speed of the wave would be only a fraction of that of sound, which is a little over 330 meters per second, and which is also the speed of the shock wave."

I held up a hand to quiet the argument and said: "Listen, please. We shall get up hours before the expected impact. Then we shall load into the chamber all the stuff we plan to take back with us and stand by the doors, ready to leap in the minute you blokes see a flash in the sky. We shan't wait for any shock wave but take off for Present instantly."

So it was decided; but as things turned out, that scenario did not prove necessary. During a day of rain, I had to listen to Todd's complaints over not getting a second hunt, and O'Connor's complaints over not being able to paint more pictures, as if I were somehow responsible for the weather.

The evening before the Event, the rain tapered off and the clouds broke up. We loaded into the chamber the stuff we were taking back, like Todd's sauropod head and O'Connor's pictures. Ming hauled a bag full of our new kitchen utensils; he wasn't going to sacrifice them if he could help it.