Eric Flint - Time spike

"Jesus," whispered Harshbarger. "What's the second reason?" asked Brisebois. The mathematician shrugged. "Hell, Nick, you saw it yourself." He nodded at the two policemen. "We've finally been able to identify the creature they shot. One of our… call him a fellow traveler, is a paleontologist at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. He's a dinosaur expert. We sent him the carcass you gave us and he says it's definitely a dromaeosaurid of some kind." "Awhat?" asked Boyle. "Dromaeosaurid. The common name for them among dinosaur people is 'raptor.' They're one of the families in the theropod group of dinosaurs." Boyle's eyes were wide. He gave his partner a glare.

"You crazy bastard! Tim, you had us both out there in the night shooting at a goddam velociraptor. I saw that movie too, y'know? It's a good thingwe're still alive!" Harshbarger made a face. "Oh, cut it out. The thing was nowhere near as big as Spielberg's monsters-not to mention that it was trying to run away from us." Margo cleared her throat. "She, actually." The two cops looked at her. "Well, sure, of course we dissected it," she said apologetically. "Or, rather, sent it to the museum and had them do it." "As a result of which," Richard added, chuckling, "I don't believe our colleagues at Bozeman can be described as 'fellow travelers' any longer. Rabid converts to the cause, would be a more accurate way of putting it. And I believe you can put your mind at ease, Officer Boyle. There are-were-a lot of dromaeosaurids. The name itself is just Latin for 'running lizard.'

The velociraptors and their huge cousins the Utahraptors were just two genuses among many in the family. Our expert told us the one you shot is related to them, but was probably a scavenger. No more dangerous to a human being than a very large coyote would be, in other words." Nick ran fingers through his hair. "Okay. I see your point. Yeah, that's evidence, all right." Harshbarger was looking back and forth between Brisebois and O'Connell. His face was starting to get flushed again.

"Well, Idon't get it. What does the critter me and Bruce shot have anything to do with whether or not my buddy Joe is still alive?"

"Hell, Tim, you can figure it out for yourself. Think about what it means to say that a bolide's impact happens along the time axis instead of the three space axes. What happens when you shoot a bullet into a body?" Boyle grinned crookedly. "If I shoot it, the body dies."

He jerked a thumb at his partner. "If Ol' Tick-eye Tim here shoots it, who the hell knows? The brick wall eight feet from the target might get dented up a little." Harshbarger scowled at him. "Iam the one who brought down Slavering Sue," Bruce said cheerfully. "Not to mention thatmy scores on the target range-" "Ah, shaddup." Nick waited for the banter to end. Then said: "But whatelse happens? Does a neat hole just appear in the body? Does the flesh and blood vanish? Does the residue from the cartridge vanish? If the gun you used was a. 357 Magnum instead of a target. 22, was the recoil the same?" His friends still looked puzzled. "There's always are- action, is my point. And the reaction, just like the action, only happens in the three spacial dimensions. Well… yeah, sure, there's also a time element, but it's not distorted from the time around it. You follow me so far?" The two policemen nodded. "Then figure out what happens if the impact is fourth-dimensional. You get a reaction also-which is the residue of whatever time period the bolide is passing through getting kicked back." He looked at Malcolm. "Is that the right way to put it?"

"Uh… not exactly. Mathematically, it's more like a loop. But keep going. You're doing fine." The air transport specialist turned back to the cops. "Don't you get it? If there -action showed up alive and kicking-that's your Slavering Sue, fellas-then why wouldn't the same be true of the ones acted upon? The bolidecan't shred them, in three dimensions. All it can do is shift them around in time." Harshbarger's expression cleared. And, again, his face paled. "Jesus H. Christ.

Joe-all of them-they're still alive somewhere." O'Connell winced.

Before Harshbarger could get emotionally see-sawed again, Margo spoke up hastily. "We simply can't say that, Tim. I'm sorry. All we can say is that the time shift itself wouldn't have killed them. But what happened afterward…" The state policeman shook his head. "Yeah, yeah, sure. They might have landed in the middle of battlefield. But Joe and them were-are, dammit-pretty damn tough. I'm betting they can cut it." Margo wondered if she should leave it at that. But…

These men weren't children. If nothing else, they had a right to know.

"No amount of toughness could have saved them, Tim," she said gently,

"if they ended up in the wrong time. This-event-was a really deep one.

For all we know, they might have gotten driven back two billion years ago." Now, Brisebois winced. "Oh, hell." Harshbarger looked at him.

"What? Dammit, I don't care how big the dinosaurs ever got, I'm still betting on Joe Schuler and those men and women at Alexander." Nick shook his head. "There weren't any dinosaurs two billion years ago, Tim. There weren't any land animals of any kind. Nothing. Not even lichen." "Jeez," said Boyle, rubbing his face. "They'd starve. It's not like a maximum security prison has more food than maybe a month's supply." Margo sighed. "They'd have died almost instantly, I'm afraid.

That far back in time, the Earth's atmosphere was completely different. There wouldn't have been enough oxygen to keep them alive."

"Oh." Harshbarger's jaws tightened. He looked around the huge chamber, full of scientific equipment whose design and function meant nothing to him. "Isn't thereany way you can figure out where-when-they ended up?" Margo shook her head. "I'm afraid not. We just-" Karen Berg cleared her throat. "Uh, Margo, you've been out of the loop for a bit.

As it happens, we now think we can. Malcolm and I have been working on that almost round the clock, and we've got alot more data than we did when you left." O'Connell looked smug. Everyone else in the chamber stared at Berg. "Well. Roughly," she said apologetically. "It's sort of like a circular error of probability thing-and the farther back in time you get, the bigger the error factor." "Still!" exclaimed Richard. "That's fantastic, Karen." "Howbig?" demanded Harshbarger. He made a gesture with his hands, as if juggling a basketball. "That circular error thing, I mean." Karen Berg was normally given to being cautious in her projections. But, seeing the so evident distress on Tim's face, she clearly decided it was a time for being as precise as she possibly could. "They ended up somewhere-somewhen-in the Age of the Dinosaurs. We're pretty sure it was the early Cretaceous, approximately in the Hauterivian stage. Say, one hundred and thirty-five million years ago. But, that far back, the error spread is something like plus or minus eighteen million years. They could conceivably have landed as far back as the very late Jurassic, although that's not likely." Harshbarger looked at Nick. "Hell, I'm not sure, Tim. But I think-" "The air was almost certainly quite breathable any time during the Mesozoic, which that period was in the middle of," said Richard firmly. "Probably thick with moisture, quite warm, and I wouldn't begin to guess what it smelled like. But your friends wouldn't have suffocated. Dinosaurs may have gotten them, but they'd have been breathing till the end." Harshbarger slumped into a chair nearby. "I'm not worried about giant lizards. Joe and his people handle human lizards every day. Maybe not as big as dinosaurs, but every bit as mean and a lot smarter. They'll make do." His eyes started to water. "Damn, I'll miss him. But at least I don't have to grieve."

Chapter 24 Terry Collins whistled softly as he walked toward the armory. Things were working out perfectly. The Indian with his sob story had been the icing on the cake. Captain Blacklock, along with over two-thirds of the guards, was gone. They were off to savethe world, the silly bastards. Collins gave a small chuckle and slowed his pace. He wanted to enjoy the night. It was beautiful. The sky was clear of clouds, giving him a spectacular view of the heavens. He had never realized how many stars there actually were. The moon was just as impressive. It was full and golden. If he'd still been a kid he would have skipped across the parking lot, or tossed a rock at the man in the moon, just for the joy of it. He hesitated. Grinned. Bent and retrieved a rock. But when he looked up at the sky once more, the mood was gone. There was work to do. The rock fell from his hand. He knew from the shift roster, which Joe Schuler had so kindly given him a copy of, that the armory was unmanned. Almost everything was unmanned.