Rivers of Time

At last I pointed down and told the pilot policeman: "That looks like it." I tried to read the license number with my binoculars, but the aircraft's vibration made this impossible.

A lorry just like the Redintegrationists' stood in a clear space in a bushy area that the cockies had abandoned but that developers had not yet cut up and built over. That was not all; a big semi-trailer rig was backing towards the rear of the smaller lorry. I could understand why the hijackers would bring a larger vehicle, since they would not know how big a Pleistocene animal we should fetch back to Present.

The cop spoke on his radio to headquarters. He had to study a map to give the exact location. Then he circled and went to a small airfield, used by private-aeroplane owners. He got permission to land, and down we went.

More cops drove up, and one of their cars took me. The cop who was driving said: "Mr. Rivers, I don't think we can go busting in shooting like it was a show. They got one of them assault rifles, and all we got its pistols. Have to wait for more artillery."

"Too bad I haven't got my dinosaur gun," I said. "Didn't have a chance to pick it up."

"Okay, but it don't spray bullets like an assault rifle does. So keep your head well down when we get near these perps."

Eventually we found a little rise from which with glasses we could sweep the area where the lorries were parked. There seemed to be three in that push: one carrying the gun, while two others worked to erect a movable platform between the two lorries. This was one of those steel contraptions on wheels, where the platform is raised on scissor legs by a hydraulic jack. One man was turning a crank to pump up the platform, now about halfway up to the lorries' doorsills. The other of that pair I recognized as Horace Dunbar, the game-ranch owner.

"Don't you blokes keep rifles handy for such occasions?" I asked my cop.

"Yeah," he said, "but you gotta go through red tape to take 'em out. Takes time." He spoke in low tones into his handset, then back to me: "Keep your shirt on, Mr. Rivers. They're sending some of the boys with more fire power."

We left the car to creep up a little closer to the lorries. When I looked through the glasses again, I saw that the platform wallah now had the thing all the way up to the lorry sills.

The man who had worked the hydraulic jack climbed up on the platform. He undogged the bolts that secured the doors of the smaller lorry. I saw that Bames had made a mistake in not closing the padlocks. Even if he had, that would only have delayed things a bit, provided the hijackers had brought a bolt cutter or some such implement with them.

The fellow hoisted the two long bolts out of their sockets and dogged them in the raised position. Then he climbed down to the ground again and went to the tractor unit of the eighteen-wheel semi. He climbed up into the cab, and soon the door at the arse end of the trailer began to rise. It had one of those roll-up doors in sections, which rises like a window shade and stows itself against the roof of the trailer. Soon the end of the trailer yawned wide open.

Then this bloke climbed down, came aft again, and climbed back on the platform. Meanwhile Dunbar stood watching and giving orders, while the cove with the rifle stood with his back to the lorry, looking in all directions.

The man on the platform took hold of the door handles and pulled die doors open. Dunbar handed him up a dowel rod about a meter and a half long, with a steel hook in the end. I recalled seeing a circus man control an elephant by catching his ear with such a hook. I had a feeling that Lancelot would not take kindly to such treatment.

Then Dunbar climbed into the cab of the smaller lorry. I could not see what the ratbag did; I suppose he opened the window in the back of the cab, and that in front of the lorry body, and poked something through. At any rate, Lancelot gave a shrill toot and emerged on the platform between the vehicles. The man with the goad leaped off the platform when Lancelot took a swipe at him.

It's a comfort to know that we were not the only ones to make mistakes. I suppose the man who jacked up the platform neglected to turn the handle that locked the platform in the raised position. As soon as Lancelot put his full weight on the device, it started to sink slowly back to ground level, while the crank handle spun in reverse.

Even at that distance, we could hear the shouts of the three men. As the platform neared the bottom of its travel, Lancelot stepped down to the ground. He trumpeted, lashed the air with his trunk, and started off.

Dunbar, who had come down from the lorry cab, yelled and put himself in front of that mastodon, waving his arms, like those people who stand in front of tanks when a government tries to put down an insurrection. Lancelot gave a swipe of his trunk, brushing Dunbar to one side but not quite knocking him down.

Dunbar yelled, stepped back to the mastodon, and grabbed the animal round the foreleg. I suppose he had counted on Lancelot to keep him out of bankruptcy, by the money he would get by letting his rich client shoot the beast; and he couldn't bear to see his last financial hope shuffle away. Desperate, he did one of the most foolish things you can do, which is to try to match muscle with a big wild animal. Even a fifty-Mo chimp is much stronger than any mere human being. But desperate men often go a bit nuts.