Danger Dinosaurs! полностью

Jacket and Endpaper Designs

by Alex Schomburg

Let us imagine an intricate combination of tubes and coils and relays and knobs and dials and knife switches. Let us suppose that the mind of man has so combined these unrelated pieces of machinery as to allow them to alter the steady progress of time.

Let us call this combination a Time Slip.

Let us assume that the Time Slip can take us back into the past. It can take us to yesterday. It can take us to last Christmas. It can take us back, back…

Back to look over the shoulder of Abraham Lincoln studying his books in the flickering light of a candle in a cabin long, long ago…

Back to Valley Forge, to stand beside General George Washington, to shiver beside the Continental Army, to watch the birth of a nation…

Back to Columbus, and the decks of a wooden ship beneath his feet, and the sails of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria bright in the ocean sunlight…

And farther back…

Back to the Crusades, and back to Kublai Khan, and back to the days of the Egyptians…

Or why not, why not back to the very beginning? Why not back a million years, ten million years, a hundred million years?

The earth is new, rampant with life, alive with dinosaurs.

The Age of Reptiles.

This is where we will go in these pages. The Time Slip is ours to use as we will. Let us go back to the beginning.

R. M.

The sign was big and white and forbidding. It rose suddenly from the green grass surrounding it and jutted against the pale blue sky like the outstretched palm of a traffic policeman. Marching across the sign in bold black letters were the words:

TIME SLIP

AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY

Chuck Spencer looked at the sign and passed nervous fingers through his blond crew cut. His brother Owen had asked him to wait right on this spot, but that had been a full fifteen minutes ago and Chuck was beginning to worry a little.

He looked around nervously, saw the wide stretch of barbed-wire fence that enclosed the grassy area. The sky arced overhead like a giant blue parasol, sprinkled here and there with cottony wisps of clouds. A mild breeze ran its fingers through the grass, setting the insects to buzzing gently.

It was a quiet scene, a landscape devoid of any tenseness. And yet, Chuck wanted to ram his knuckles against his mouth and bite on the flesh. He felt like jumping up and down or screaming or running from one end of the grass to the other.

He was being foolish, he knew. After all, Owen went on a slip almost every two weeks. It was a common occurrence for his brother like brushing his teeth or combing his hair. Just like that.

Well, it’s not a common occurrence for me, he thought.

He unconsciously nodded his head in agreement with himself and turned to study the long, low building that squatted on the horizon. Owen had entered that building after leaving Chuck, and Chuck knew he was probably making last minute clearance checks, making sure that everything was set for the slip.

Chuck clenched his fists and thrust them deep into his pockets. Stop being silly, he told himself.

He glanced over his shoulder in anticipation. Where was everybody? What was keeping them?

Owen had given him careful instructions before he’d left.

“There’s going to be a party of hunters here in about five minutes,” he’d said. “They’ll be looking for me, Chuck, and they’re liable to get panicky if they don’t find me. Just tell them you’re my brother and that I’ll be right back. I won’t be a moment.”

Well, he had been a moment. He had, in fact, been exactly seventeen moments and thirty-three seconds so far. And there was no sign of him yet.

Nor had the hunters arrived.

For a terrible moment, Chuck had the strange feeling that the Time Slip was already in operation. Maybe he’d already been whisked back a few years into the past and was waiting in vain for a brother who wouldn’t appear for a good many months yet.

He was about to consider this seriously when he heard the sound of a motor in the distance. He turned suddenly, facing the large gate set in the barbed-wire fence. Two Security Policemen stepped from booths on either side of the gate, their rifles coming up automatically, as a jeep and a truck came into view over the rise of the hill. The truck raised a giant cloud of dust that smothered the jeep behind it. The vehicles moved closer to the gate, and Chuck heard one of the policemen shout, “Halt!”

The truck’s brakes were jammed on suddenly, the wheels gripping the dirt road, spinning the rear end of the truck around to an abrupt stop.