

EARTHFALL

By Thomas P. Hopp

Book One of the Dinosaur Wars Series

First Edition Copyright 2000 Thomas P. Hopp

Second Edition Copyright 2004 Thomas P. Hopp

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2010 Thomas P. Hopp

Third Edition Copyright 2013 Thomas P. Hopp

This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient at Smashwords.com or other ebook sellers.

For my mother Edee, who taught me a hero had better be good.

" _That was my biggest blunder." —Albert Einstein_

Praise for _Dinosaur Wars_ :

"Solid science and pacing that never quits."

—Kay Kenyon, Philip K. Dick Award nominated author of _Maximum Ice_

"Fills the void since _Jurassic Park_. And Hopp's book may be better."

—Steve Brusatte, _DinoLand Review_

"The moon will never look the same."

—Bob Gue

# PART ONE: Moonstrike

## Chapter 1

Chase Armstrong paused on a game trail high on a Montana mountainside. He had spotted what he was looking for. Two wolves sprinted across the sloping grasslands, weaving among the sagebrush and lodgepole pines dotting the landscape. Chase pulled the bill of his green National Park Service cap down to shield his eyes from the morning sun and looked hard at their coat markings. Yes, they were the wolves he was after—288F and 293M, two breakaway yearlings from the Geyser Basin pack over in Yellowstone Park. The young female was out front, sprinting at flank speed. Every time the male got near her tail she wheeled and snapped at him and then tore off in a new direction. Someone might think this was war, but Chase smiled. It was puppy love.

It would be the real thing soon. And Chase hoped these two runaways would establish a new pack here. That kind of excitement—the renewal of life—was what caused Chase, fresh out of college and only an assistant park ranger, to love the wolf reintroduction program. He surely didn't love the tedious days radio-tracking wandering _Canis lupus,_ or weary evenings at his rented cabin, writing fatality reports when a wolf was hit by a truck or by a rancher's bullet. Nothing was particularly appealing about the tiny town of Silver Gate where he lived on the northeast corner of Yellowstone Park, compared to the urban pleasures of his hometown, Seattle.

But a day like this made it all worthwhile—a day when the June sun blazed but cool gusts of air came down into the foothills from snowfields lingering in the 12,000-foot Beartooth Mountains. Above him, the rangeland climbed unevenly into the granite crags. A mass of white clouds boiled up from the highest pinnacles, bringing the last of the season's rain. Today Chase had risen before dawn—on the longest day of the year that meant 4 am—to drive 90 miles northeast from Silver Gate. He had gotten the local cattle rancher's permission to cross his land and then driven and hiked seven miles to this spot.

These breakaway pups would mean more controversy sometime soon when they took down a young steer or a lamb, but right now Chase soaked up the beauty of their dance of love. They moved across the rolling rangeland, weaving in and out of sagebrush thickets, whirling around the base of a stunted ponderosa pine. Maybe they sensed a day like this under the big sky—a vast cool blue infinity with splashes of white clouds—was a rare event not to be wasted. Summer heat, dust, and flies would be on them soon enough. Right now all that mattered was their courtship.

"I hate to interrupt," Chase whispered. Raising his 30-06 rifle he lined up the female in his sights. He inhaled a deep breath of sage-scented air. Letting it out slowly, he squeezed the trigger. The bang of the cartridge sent the dart arcing smoothly to her rump. Minutes later she was down and Chase was kneeling over her, fastening a radio collar around her neck.

Once it was secure he tested its signal with the receiver he carried in his backpack. He injected a dose of antidote and stood back to keep watch as the anesthetic wore off. He knew a darted wolf was vulnerable until fully recovered. The high country held plenty of danger—mountain lions, bears, or wolves from a strange pack.

Chase glanced around as he waited on the wolf's recovery but saw no signs of danger. Not even the male wolf was around. It had disappeared at the sound of the rifle.

The view outward from the Beartooths was as spectacular as the peaks themselves. Chase could see the craggy Crazy Mountain Range fifty miles away across the dusty plains to the northwest. Nearer, the triangular peak of Sandstone Mountain jutted above the other foothills, a towering reddish-tan rock pyramid and the centerpiece of Twin Creeks Ranch.

In a valley several miles below lay the ranch compound itself, half hidden among tree-studded hills. From Chase's high vantage point, it looked like a little fortress of clustered buildings in the middle of a green pasture. When he had stopped there this morning to get permission to enter the property, rancher Will Daniels had been out by the barn loading his jeep. His daughter had been saddling her horse.

"Wolves?" The old man had growled. "You're bringin' back them varmints my daddy worked all his life to get rid of? No thanks." Chase got that kind of reception from ranchers a lot. Step out of the green pickup truck with a National Park Service emblem on the door wearing the tan shirt with National Park Service arrowhead arm patch, green shorts and ball cap, and it was a dead giveaway at a hundred paces you would be on the environmental side of any issue that came up. Just looking at you raised most ranchers' hackles. Cattlemen like Will Daniels, who ran 600 head of Black Angus beef on his property, had not one spit of respect for wolves.

"I suppose I can't stop you," Daniels had grumbled, but in the end he wasn't too hardheaded. He had even given some directions to a little back road that led halfway up to this high ground. Then again, old Daniels had had that I-know-something-you-don't-know smile ranchers sometimes wore. It usually meant one of two things, either "I'll see you in court, first time I lose a calf," or "No problem, I'll shoot your wolves later." Normally Chase could figure which of the two it was but Daniels was a hard one to read, polite but closed-mouthed.

Not so Daniels' daughter, Kit. Smallish, sandy-haired, and strikingly pretty, she had flashed him a big smile when he introduced himself, like maybe she didn't share her father's prejudices. When the old man went to hitch a livestock trailer to his jeep, she had been quite friendly, telling Chase how the ranch got its name from two streams that drained opposite sides of Sandstone Mountain and joined near the house, introducing her old mare whose name was Lucky, and asking him a dozen questions about wildlife biology.

"We're schoolmates!" she had exclaimed when he mentioned he was in the Masters Program at Montana State University in Bozeman. "I'll be a junior there this fall. I wonder why I haven't seen you around?"

"I spend most of my time in the mountains doing field research," he had said. Seeing a hint of disappointment cross her face, he had added, "But, sure, maybe I'll see you around." He had suddenly noticed how her bright blue eyes peeked at him from under her cowboy hat brim. They held the spark of intelligence mingled with a touch of tomboy charm. As she had cinched her horse's saddle strap, he had answered her questions about how hard it was to get a master's degree and who his thesis advisor was, but inwardly he had begun searching for a way to suggest something more than chitchat. Her father had come back and interrupted.

"You got any other questions I can answer, mister wolf man?" He'd drawled the last two words derogatorily. The old man had looked from one of them to the other until Chase tired of his stare and went to his pickup without another word.

Now, knowing the wolves were definitely on the Danielses' property, it occurred to him he would get a chance to see Kit again. Maybe he would invite her to picnic up here and watch the wolves.

A flicker of blue drew his attention to the sky, where the daytime moon caught his eye. It was a thing of remarkable beauty, a bright white crescent blotched with pastel blue floating in the deeper blue sky not far from the morning sun. There was nothing unusual about it. It was the same moon that always rose in the daytime at this phase. But what had flickered?

A flash of brighter blue appeared again and this time Chase saw it clearly. It was a thin shaft of light coming from the bottom tip of the moon's crescent, the south pole. The beam was narrow and laser-like, streaking away toward the western horizon. It glinted for just a second and then vanished.

A moment later, another stronger flash appeared from the same point on the moon, this time aimed off to the east. It reminded Chase of a laser light display, the beam darting one way or another but originating from the same point. And the light wasn't like the red or green lasers he had seen at shows. It had more of a bluish white-hot look to it. What didn't make sense was its origin on the moon. How could that be? A government experiment? A freak of nature? He scanned the sky but nothing else was happening. He shrugged, passing it off as something he would read about online or see on TV.

A noise in a nearby willow thicket reminded Chase of more immediate matters. Something was moving there. Something big. Whatever it was, it was coming his way.

Chase froze when the animal stood and raised its head out of the willows. It was a grizzly bear, not forty feet away from him. True to its name, it was a grizzly sight. A shock of coarse blond-brown hackles jutted out from its head and shoulders. The animal's beady black eyes fixed tight on Chase. Like hungry grizzlies tended to do, it came straight at him as soon as it saw him.

Chase glanced at the wolf. Her feet were twitching but she was still out cold. Unwilling to retreat and give her to the bear and with no time to hesitate, Chase reached into his breast pocket and took out one of the live bullets he had brought along. He threw open the single-shot breach of his rifle, quickly fitted the bullet and snapped the breach handle shut. The bear was already halfway to him. There would be no time for a second bullet.

He took a step forward, straddled the wolf and raised the rifle. The bear was a big one, maybe seven hundred fifty pounds. It halted only a dozen feet away, lowered its nose and sniffed the air, eyeing the wolf. Chase knew this bear habit. If you can run another hunter off of his prize, you get a free meal. But Chase had no intention of moving. The she-wolf was about half consciousness. She would be on her feet in a minute or two.

"Back off!" Chase shouted at the bear, sighting between its eyes with the rifle. "You can't have her."

The grizzly didn't take kindly to being threatened. It rose on its hind legs and roared back at him. Chase felt sweat break out on his brow. He knew the grizzly was measuring itself against him, height for height, and he was on the short end of the measurement. He aimed at its heart and touched his finger to the trigger, but hesitated. Saving wildlife was his job, not killing it, and the grizzly was as endangered here as the wolf. Right now Chase realized he was as endangered as the bear.

Suddenly the grizzly dropped to all fours and bolted into the brush as if it had seen the bear equivalent of a ghost. Just as it disappeared, the terrific blast of a sonic boom—only ten times louder—hit Chase with jawbone-jarring impact. He looked up to see a huge aircraft passing overhead so near it seemed he could touch it.

It was a silver delta-winged glider like a space shuttle but with double tail fins and ten times the size. Hugging the ground, it raced downslope, hurtled along the brush-choked ravine Chase had climbed to get where he was, and veered to the left, disappearing behind the pyramid-shaped peak of Sandstone Mountain. A moment later a distant rumble echoed up the canyon as if the flying machine had crash-landed on the other side of the mountain.

A rustling in the brush behind Chase made him wheel around, ready to face the bear again. Instead, he saw the she-wolf's tail vanish among the bushes. She had recovered while he was distracted and taken the opportunity to flee.

Good. His task here was done. He would be back to follow her sometime soon but right now he wanted to know what had happened to the bizarre aircraft.

It took fifteen minutes to hike down to his pickup, parked in a graveled turnaround where the Danielses' fence road ended against the cliff base of Sandstone Mountain. He hung his rifle on the gun rack in the rear window, dropped his backpack on the floor, put the bullets in their case in the glove box, and turned on the CB radio. He wanted to ask around about the flying machine but got nothing but static on every channel he tried. That was odd. No matter though, he would find out more in Red Lodge on his way home. But before he drove off, he thought it might be worthwhile chatting with the other denizen of the turnaround. Maybe Professor Ogilvey could explain the aircraft, the lights from the moon, or both.

Dr. David Ogilvey was an elderly semi-retired paleontologist from the Museum of the Rockies at Bozeman, here for a summer digging season. Chase had met him this morning in his camp on the grassy flat beside the road end. Ogilvey's rusty and dented beige Land Rover was still parked beside the turnaround so Chase assumed the fossil hunter was near.

"Dr. Ogilvey?"

No answer.

Chase poked around the campsite. The big, square, old-fashioned white canvas tent was empty. In the morning Ogilvey had been eating breakfast at the camp table, now deserted except for a propane stove and boxes of goods cluttering its surface. The old scientist wasn't puttering among the dozen wooden crates of fossils scattered around the camp. Chase had nearly decided to head for home when he spotted something that quickly changed his mind. Kit Daniels' old brown mare, Lucky, was tied to a hitching rail in the shade of a ponderosa pine. Listening carefully, he heard faint voices. He scrambled down the bank of a little muddy creek and followed the sound for twenty yards downstream. He spotted Kit and the professor on the creek bank at the base of Sandstone Mountain's cliff, standing on rubble thrown out from a new dig and discussing something the professor held in his hand.

Chase watched them for a moment unobserved. Dr. Ogilvey was a comical old cuss, short and stout, dressed in a khaki safari shirt and shorts with scrawny arms and knobby knees thrust out of the appropriate openings. All that, and a pair of outsized hiking boots and a gray beard combined to give him an owl-like appearance, but with little of an owl's grace or dignity. He wore a dusty canvas hat and his eyes peered through thick glasses in an owlish way while he ogled the object in his hand. He gabbed excitedly about it while Kit asked questions with obvious interest.

Chase took a good look at Kit as well. She was cowboyed up in a red-and-white checked western shirt, blue jeans, and brown cowboy boots and hat, with a long mare's tail of sandy hair gathered and hanging down her back. There was nothing shy about her and she seemed to hold her own in conversation with the professor. Despite her masculine clothing, Chase couldn't help noticing the way her trim feminine curves filled out those blue jeans.

He swallowed hard and shook himself, reigning in his animal instincts. "Hey you two," he called. "How's it coming with the Pter— Ptera-whatchamacallit?" He didn't quite remember Ogilvey's name for the creature being unearthed here.

"Pteronychus," Kit replied, batting her blue eyes at him cordially as he came up the path. "You don't pronounce the P in Pteronychus. It's Terr-ON-ickus."

"Got it," he said, feeling a little outgunned where dinosaur names were concerned.

Dr. Ogilvey squinted through his thick glasses at Chase's nametag. "Hello again Mr. uhh, Armstrong." He touched the tattered brim of his hat and nodded, simultaneously hiding the object in his other hand behind his back. Chase instinctively leaned to follow the hand behind the paleontologist's plump midsection. The old man laughed a geezing "Hee-hee!" and brought back out an oddly shaped lump of rock.

"I guess you're wondering what we've got here." He smiled sheepishly and held the stone out for Chase to see. It looked like nothing more than a yellowish-white fragment of rock. "I suppose there's no need for me to hide it. You don't _look_ like a commercial fossil hunter. Are you one?"

Chase shook his head. "I'm not particularly interested in fossils."

"Good," said Ogilvey. "I forget that you biologists like your predators alive and your bones with meat on them. I suppose it would be okay to let you in on our little secret." He turned to Kit. "What do you think?" She looked unsure, but Ogilvey had made up his mind.

"Do you recognize this?" He hefted the chunk of stone up under Chase's nose for a close look. It seemed like nothing special so Chase made a guess based on the name of the mountain. "Sandstone?"

"Hardly, my boy," Ogilvey scoffed. "It's a type of limestone. Alabaster to be exact."

"Is that important?"

"Heeh!" The old man's woolly face gaped in a long-toothed grin. "It's a key piece of a great mystery I've been unraveling. Come have a look." Without waiting for a response, Ogilvey turned and descended into his excavation. It was a huge trench, stretching for about thirty feet along the cliff and extending twenty feet wide, right up to the rock face.

Chase hesitated. "Did you see that airplane—?"

"Kit discovered the first few bones along the banks of Eggshell Creek here several years ago," Ogilvey lectured, ignoring Chase's half-spoken concern. "Since then, there's been much digging and one discovery after another. The latest is the most startling of all. Come on!"

Kit scrambled down the crumbling bank of the trench and Chase shrugged, and then followed, taking a good look at Ogilvey's prodigious earth-moving efforts. Stretched out on the flat bottom of the excavation, three dinosaur skeletons lay exposed but still half-buried in the trench floor. The bones were amber-brown, contrasting with gray dust surrounding them. Lines of vertebrae and ribs traced the forms of one larger skeleton, about human sized, and two smaller ones. Something about the way the skeletons were grouped seemed peculiar.

"Pteronychus family," Ogilvey proclaimed with a note of pride. "That's what we have here." He pointed his piece of stone at them. "Mother and two babies."

The body of the larger animal was about human-sized, but not human-shaped. About ten feet from the tip of its toothy snout to the end of its long tail, it was a two-legged carnivorous dinosaur, stretched out on its side with its head thrown back in a death agony. Chase saw nothing unusual about it, but the positions of the smaller creatures surprised him. They lay within the arms of the adult, clutched to its chest, one on each side. Furthermore, they were curled with their arms and legs drawn in, their heads turned to burrow against the adult's breast. It was a poignant scene, one he might have expected from a human family caught in a disaster of some kind. The tiny bones of the babies seemed impossibly delicate, cradled in their mother's arms.

"Isn't it sad?" asked Kit, a little choked up. "Look at how gently she's holding them." Though the mother's three-fingered hands were tipped with deadly talons, they seemed to touch the infants tenderly, comforting them even at the instant of death.

"Death is always sad," Ogilvey said pedantically. "You don't dig fossils without getting used to that."

"But this—" Chase stammered. "This tenderness isn't something I'd expect from a reptile."

Ogilvey chuckled. "Underestimating dinosaurs has been standard procedure for everyone including paleontologists—until now."

"Until now?"

"Yes, yes. I was just showing Kit my latest discovery when you arrived. I dare say no one will underestimate dinosaurs again."

Kit remained conspiratorially silent, giving Chase an inscrutable smile. There was some secret between these two that he suspected was about to be revealed.

The old man swept an expository gesture across the skeletons. "You're looking at the very last moment of the Cretaceous Era. This is the end of the age of dinosaurs, right here. These creatures were killed by the asteroid impact that devastated the earth, destroying them and their civilization at the same time."

"Civilization?" Chase asked. "That's an odd choice of words. I've never heard it used in the context of dinosaurs."

"Nonetheless," Ogilvey grinned. "Civilization."

Chase looked to Kit for confirmation and she nodded. The concept was going to take some time to sink in but Ogilvey went on with professorial flair.

"Yes, my boy, it's all here. You're looking at the greatest discovery in the history of paleontology. See there, Chase?" He pointed across the excavation to a mound of stacked stones, cobble-sized chunks of alabaster like the piece in his hand. "Those were strewn right over the skeletons. I had to remove them to uncover the bones. Notice anything different about them?"

Chase looked carefully at the pile. "They're all about the same size."

"Good, Chase. Your observation skills are not bad, for a biologist. But look at the shapes."

"They're all shaped the same," said Chase. "Rectangular."

"They're bricks," Kit interjected as if waiting for Ogilvey to lead Chase to a conclusion was too slow a game for her.

The thought boggled Chase's mind. "Bricks buried with dinosaurs?"

"Exactly." Ogilvey placed his alabaster fragment on the pile and straightened his portly body, wiping the dust from his hands on the legs of his khaki shorts. "Alabaster bricks. Some are broken, but originally they were identical. You're standing on the site of a Cretaceous city."

"City!" Chase struggled to accept what he was hearing.

"Yes, yes," said Ogilvey. "These bricks tumbled down from the city walls."

"But Professor," Kit said, resuming the conversation Chase had interrupted when he arrived, "if the asteroid hit in the Gulf of Mexico, that's a thousand miles away."

"Farther," Ogilvey replied. "But the force of the impact sent out a massive shock wave." He bent over the mother pteronychus and peered into an empty eye socket. "What must she have seen? A flash of light in the sky somewhere down south and then a blast of white-hot air ripped through the city, knocking her down and searing her and her babies to death. And then an earth tremor buried her under tumbling bricks. And as if that wasn't enough, she and her babies would have been submerged by a giant tidal wave that arrived a few hours later."

He spread out his hands to encompass the whole dig, from the skeletons to the brick pile to the undermined cliff edge. "You're looking at the end of the world here, quite literally."

"Stupendous." Chase felt a chill just thinking of the calamity, until the thought of another flash in the sky came to mind. "Did you see—?" he began, but Ogilvey lectured on.

"There's more. This sandstone cliff towering above us is part of a huge tsunami deposit formed from sand washed up by the tidal wave. Montana was on the edge of an inland sea then, and the wave traveled unobstructed from the Gulf straight up here. I'll wager it was the biggest tidal wave the world has ever seen. This whole mountain is made of sand carried by the flood, hardened into stone over the intervening 65 million years. And, unless I miss my guess, the remains of that ancient city lie right under there." He pointed to the rear of the excavation, where he had started tunneling into the dusty clay underlying the sandstone of the cliff.

"There's a city buried under Sandstone Mountain?" Kit asked.

"Yes, my dear. The clay on which we stand and these specimens of pteronychus mark the level where the city stood but the sandstone itself is an over-layer encasing the whole thing. I've dug back under the cliff a ways, following the base of a brick wall. And I keep finding tantalizing clues. There's more back there, I am sure. Perhaps most of the ancient city. An entire Lost World waiting to be uncovered."

Chase's mind reeled. Ogilvey was overturning everything he had ever learned about dinosaurs and their extinction. It was baffling, but it was not his only concern right now. He held up a hand to preempt Ogilvey's lecture. "Now, wait a minute," he insisted. "Before you go any further, I've got something to say. The moon—"

"Yes, yes," Ogilvey chafed at the interruption. "What of the moon? It's still in the sky, I expect."

"Listen you old buzzard!" Chase shouted to make himself heard. "There's something going on up there, flashes of light coming from the moon."

"Atmospheric phenomena," Ogilvey snorted, adjusting his glasses and looking over the brick pile as if searching for miniscule clues.

"Didn't you see what flew past here about an hour ago? Didn't you hear that sonic boom?"

The paleontologist raised his arms to indicate their surroundings. The sky was hemmed in on one side by the towering cliff of Sandstone Mountain and on the other by the stream gully. Only a narrow swath of blue was visible. "Down in this dig," he asserted, "I don't see much of the sky."

"I heard the boom," said Kit, "but I didn't see anything. I thought it was some kind of military aircraft. There was a noise like that last night, too."

"The U.S. military?" Chase considered the idea. "I didn't see an insignia."

Ogilvey scowled his annoyance at the abbreviation of his lecture. "Have you had your eyes checked lately, son?" He picked up his shovel and moved to the back of the dig. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a lost civilization to uncover."

Chase was at a loss to provoke a reaction from the old man, so he left him digging under the cliff overhang and walked back out of the excavation. Kit followed, her face registering real concern when a bolt of whitish-blue light sliced across the sky visible between the cliff and the gully wall.

"That's what I'm talking about," said Chase.

The flash was brighter than others he had seen and it was followed by a sound like thunder rumbling off the cliffs of Sandstone Mountain.

"Do you think we're in danger?" she asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "I suppose there's some rational explanation."

"Like what?"

"Beats me. But the lights are nothing compared to the aircraft, a spacecraft, maybe. I think it crashed on the other side of the mountain."

Kit's expression darkened. "That's where my father is, up on the high range with the herd."

"Well," said Chase. "I'll bet he knows what's going on by now even if the rest of us don't."

She frowned. "I think I'll go home. Maybe he's back already."

"I'd be glad to tag along," Chase offered. "I'm curious about what he might have seen over there."

"No," she said. "My father's not too partial to strangers."

Disappointed, Chase nodded toward Dr. Ogilvey clanking away with his shovel. "If your father isn't partial to people coming around, why does he tolerate that strange old bird?"

"Because it's important to me. I found the first dinosaur fossils here when I was a kid. The museum sent Dr. Ogilvey to study them and, well, I've been interested in dinosaurs ever since. I lend a hand here sometimes."

"Is that what you're studying at the University? Paleontology?"

"Yeah, as much as I can. But my father makes me take classes in animal husbandry. His heart's set on me running this ranch someday."

The air shook with the _whu-whump_ of another sonic boom.

"There." Kit pointed to the source, a vapor trail far up in the stratosphere. Whatever it was seemed to be moving incredibly fast but silently now that the boom had passed. They caught only a brief glimpse before it disappeared behind the cliff.

"The one I heard last night must have been closer," she said. "It was a lot louder, like that noise a while ago."

The whinny of a horse echoed along the canyon.

"Oh-oh," she said. "That sound spooked Lucky. I'd better go check on her." She called a hasty goodbye to Dr. Ogilvey, who seemed not to hear, and started hiking back up the creek bed.

Chase followed. "That's about enough weirdness for me," he said. "I'm heading back down to Red Lodge to find out what's up. If you want, I'll get on the CB radio and let you know. Or better yet, Kit, what's your phone number?"

"Never mind," she said. "Daddy and I can tune in the TV news on the satellite dish tonight. If you learn anything really important, you can find us in the Red Lodge phone book."

"Sure. I guess you're right." Chase was embarrassed she had spotted his ploy and a little disappointed she hadn't played along.

A minute later they stood at the hitching rail and Kit stroked Lucky's flank to calm her. She planned to ride back to her house on a game trail that followed the creek. Chase would be taking the fence road. He thought she looked a little short to easily make it into the saddle by herself.

"Want help getting up?"

She looked at him critically, then grabbed the saddle horn, put a boot-toe in the stirrup and swung herself up into the saddle. "I can manage just fine," she smiled. "See ya." She touched the rim of her hat and then snapped the reins lightly across Lucky's neck. They cantered off down the little creekside path.

"Bye," he called after her, with an odd feeling in his chest. He'd only met Kit Daniels this morning but she had quickly gotten under his skin. Watching her move in unison with the canter of her horse, her trim shoulders square under her cowboy hat, her blue-jeaned hips rising and falling smoothly to the rhythm of the gait, he shook his head. Darned if she wasn't a major distraction coming when he ought to keep his mind on other things. After she disappeared around a bend in the canyon, he got in his pickup and drove back down the fenceline road.

On the way, he couldn't help wishing she had wanted him to call. "To be continued?" he wondered aloud. When the fence road reached the asphalt county highway he turned right, heading for Red Lodge.

## CHAPTER 2

"So the day has finally come." Diedre Porter stared out the kitchen window of her home in the Pasadena hills, watching flashes of light lance down from the moon. "From the south pole, of course," she muttered. Feeling suddenly dizzy, she braced herself with both hands on the counter edge and hung her head. She closed her eyes and the memories of three years ago came rushing back as if they were happening right now.

"Send the commands, Diedre," Lloyd had demanded.

Pressing the Return key on her computer had been such a simple thing and yet Diedre's fingertips had hovered over the keyboard. She hadn't been able to muster the nerve to push it down.

Things had a way of becoming do-or-die in space exploration. That was true even when you were sitting in a flight operations room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Under bright fluorescent lighting, among rows of computer monitors, Diedre hadn't been worried about her own safety. But Clementine 3 was orbiting the moon, waiting for orders from that particular keyboard and Diedre had feared that her command sequence would be the end of the little space probe. Within an hour of receiving the transmission, Clem would either relay the first close-up pictures of the mystery at the bottom of Phaeon Crater, or lie twisted and broken in a new small crater of her own.

"Are we waiting for something in particular?" Lloyd Andersen, her boss, had leaned over her with a scowl on his face, his jacket off, his tie loosened, and the armpits of his white shirt soaked. As he mopped sweat from his high forehead with a handkerchief, Diedre had snapped, "Don't rush me. I won't send these commands until I'm sure we didn't forget something."

"They're fine. Send them now," Lloyd had demanded. His strength as Project Manager was the ability to smooth ruffled feathers when events got critical, but this night he excelled at making things worse.

Diedre glanced at the digital clock in the corner of her computer screen: 3:58 am. At this late hour of a long day she could only say, "If we lose Clem it will be your fault."

"I'm prepared to take that chance." He leaned so close his perspiration sickened her.

The Clementine Mission team was in turmoil. Nearing the end of a long and successful lunar south-polar mapping mission, the team, usually twelve scientists and technicians, had thinned down considerably tonight at Lloyd's insistence. He had recently dealt half the team to the Mercury lander project and then allowed two people to go on vacation simultaneously. That left only four active team members, all of whom were overworked, sleep deprived, and stuck in the control room at this ungodly hour. Diedre was the ACE, the person responsible for communications with Clementine, and that responsibility would put a few more gray hairs in her brown pageboy by morning.

"Go ahead, Diedre," said Frank Johnston in his big, husky, soothing voice. "It'll be okay. We've thought of just about everything." Frank, whose printed-circuit creations made up most of Clementine's computer brain, was a massive human being. He hovered over her left shoulder, looking like a cross between a biker and a teddy bear with his scraggly beard and curly long brown hair, wire rimmed glasses, baggy blue jeans and an ample gut spreading his suspenders.

Diedre shot him a thin smile, but noticed that Frank's suspenders framed a black Clementine Team T-shirt with a white outline drawing of their little fly-shaped space probe. White block lettering above the drawing read, "OH MY DARLING," reminding Diedre how delicate Clementine was. Frank probably could have lifted Clem by himself, back when she was here and under construction. But now their darling was hurtling through the vastness of space, tiny in comparison to the moon's immensity. The fly analogy was good. Clem's cylindrical body had a pair of outstretched solar panels attached like insect wings and her head end bore three goggling camera eyes.

Diedre's computer screen was split into two windows, a sidebar with data written in it and a larger window with an image of the moon on a black background. Circling the moon from pole to pole, a red arc traced the orbit of Clementine 3. At the bottom of the screen a single white code line flashed on and off, demanding a response: Transmit Command Sequence?

"I don't get what the hurry is," Diedre protested. "In the morning, we can get some people to double-check our calculations."

"Send the commands," snapped Lloyd. "This maneuver has been pre-approved at the highest levels."

Diedre wanted to jump up and refuse to cooperate. But she didn't. She drew a deep breath, pressed the Return key and then slumped back in her chair. "Okay, Lloyd, you win. The commands are on their way."

The line at the bottom of the screen changed to: DSN; CLEMENTINE3; UPLINK 041219; 02, signifying that their pre-coded command set was streaming out from the control room over a cable line to the giant radar dish at Goldstone, which by now was already radiating the commands into space toward Clementine.

Frank murmured, "There's no turning back now."

Lloyd said nothing.

Diedre sat frozen through slow seconds while the command sequence traveled into space as far as the moon. More seconds elapsed while Clem digested the sequence in her robotic brain. Another breathless moment went by while the spacecraft transmitted her response back to the Deep Space Network dish and DSN passed it back to JPL. Then a single line appeared on the screen: ACQ100935*156499.0045D.

"That's it," Diedre wheezed, having nearly asphyxiated from neglecting to breathe. "Clem's acknowledged the command sequence, for better or worse."

On Clementine's trajectory arc, a small blinking dot of brighter red signified Clem's progress down from the north pole of the moon. The dot moved across the lunar equator in infinitely small increments while the mission control room became so silent Diedre could hear the hum of the fluorescent lighting. Everyone knew Clem was about to make what might be her last move.

"C'mon Diedre," said Frank. "We're all used to this kind of anxiety. Remember twelve hours after launch when Clem's logic circuits sent those random signals to her main computer? That had me pretty uptight. Led to some misaligned rocket firings and off-kilter star-navigation events, right?"

"Yeah."

"My point is, we've already had a year of sleepless nights. It was amazing Clem managed to get into lunar orbit at all. How many times did we make heroic efforts to keep her from careening off into space on some useless trajectory?"

Diedre was resolutely glum. "Those were team sessions with everybody involved. Tonight is all on Lloyd's say-so." She glared at Lloyd, who flinched and looked at the wall.

"Sure," Frank agreed. "But despite all Clem's been through, she's managed to hang in there. Now she's dragging details out of the blackness in those south-pole craters, right? Our objective was to settle the controversy once and for all about water ice on those crater floors, and she's gone us one better. Right in the bottom of the deepest, darkest crater of them all, she spotted something that's got us all pretty excited, including Lloyd."

"Yeah, yeah, Frank," Diedre resisted. "We all know there's something weird at the bottom of Phaeon Crater." A chill ran along her spine. In Greek, _phaeon_ meant "the dark one," in recognition of the fact that sunlight never touched the depths of the small kilometer-wide crater, hidden in perpetual shadow not far from the moon's south pole. The bottom of the crater lay so deep that it never saw even the faint blue-green glow of earthlight. But that wasn't what had focused their attention on Phaeon or gave the crater its dark mystery.

Clementine had gathered some pretty baffling information about Phaeon. Radio-spectroscopic measurements gave the strongest water signal yet detected on the moon and that alone might have justified their current risk-taking. But there was more. Clem's high-resolution radar maps showed that the floor of Phaeon was not like other craters. The bowl-shaped depression and central pyramidal mountain peak were not surprising but there seemed to be a whole crop of smaller lumps and bumps covering the floor, each no more than a hundred meters across—and these were arranged in a regular hexagonal array. Nothing like this had ever been seen on the moon, and theories to explain it had proliferated at JPL.

Lloyd cleared his throat in a guilty way. "So that's why I decided leaving Clem in an orbit 55 kilometers above the surface wouldn't get us the definitive answer."

Diedre's hackles rose. "And, without warning today, you insisted we write a command code to bring Clem down as close as possible. Too close, if you ask me."

Lloyd resisted. "With no atmosphere to contend with, you could theoretically lower Clem's orbit all the way to the surface before she'd be in danger."

"Yeah," Diedre sighed, "and we're sending her somewhere just a hair short of that, suicidally close to the crater rim. I hope you're satisfied."

For support, Diedre turned to Frank, who looked like a witness to a cardiac arrest: grim, scared, and yet hopeful. In the synthetic daylight of the control room it wasn't easy to mask emotions, but Diedre noticed the fourth person in the room was doing just that. "And what about you, Major? You never have anything to say but you sure like to hang around."

Major Paul MacIlvain stood far from them, leaning on the jam of the hallway door. His dark blue Air Force uniform was as sharp and stiff as he was. His face was expressionless, as usual. Liaison Officer assigned by the National Defense Service, which funded the Clementine 3 project, he was one person Diedre could easily have done without. For his part, he apparently felt his thoughts and the purpose of his constant presence were to be kept to himself.

"She's heading in," Frank said.

Diedre swung back to the screen. The red trajectory arc began to curve noticeably closer to the moon's surface. Clem had fired her rockets as ordered and was descending toward the moon. Beside the moon map was a digital readout from Clem's laser altimeter. It had hovered at approximately 55 kilometers for weeks, but now it read 20.3 kilometers.

According to their plan, Clementine would skim just 100 meters above a low point in Phaeon's rim at a speed better than 6,000 kilometers per hour. Any errant command interpretation or incorrect guidance thruster firing would be the last thing Clem did. As she moved past 80 degrees south latitude, her altimeter reported 6.23 kilometers and falling. Then it was down to 5.98.

"This is crazy," Diedre muttered, but there was no point in grumbling now.

Frank put a big warm hand on her shoulder. "Hang tough, Diedre."

"I'm okay," she lied. Her palms were sweaty. "Remember all the time we spent putting Clem together in the assembly lab? The months building her, programming her. The system checks, launch preparations—"

"Every minute," Frank replied.

"I can't believe it's all come down to this." She put her hand on top of his and squeezed his thick fingers, trying to imagine what Clem was doing a quarter-million miles above them.

Starlight glinted off Clementine 3 as she moved above the cratered surface of the moon. She seemed to float motionlessly and yet hurtled at an increasing rate of speed that would bring her down over Phaeon in a matter of minutes. Stark sunlight filled her solar panels with power. The little craft's radar dish pointed in the direction of earth and blue-green earthlight softened the contrast between the sun's glaring heat and bitterly cold darkness around her.

Clementine methodically executed the sequence of instructions sent by her earth-bound teammates. Main engine burn completed, she occupied herself with more detailed matters: firing jets of propellant gas from her guidance thrusters, pointing herself in the precise direction required to make observations in the blackness of Phaeon's interior. Diving toward her objective, her laser altimeter registered the distance to the surface at 1.765 kilometers. Seconds later the energy readings from her solar panels plunged as she dipped into the shadows of the moon's south pole. Detecting the power loss, she toggled her main circuits over to her onboard batteries. Deep within the shadow cast by the rim of Phaeon she switched on her radar emitter and began sweeping an arc over the floor. Her photo-sensor retinas, able to see in the wavelength of radar light, recorded one image and then another as she skimmed through the interior of Phaeon. Then, as she approached the crater's far rim, she began to process the images and prepare them for transmission to earth. Her calculator brain translated the photos into strings of coded dits and dahs and she activated her antenna dish transmitter in preparation for relaying the data.

But her laser rangefinder indicated an anomaly as she approached the far rim of Phaeon. Her altitude was 25.78 meters above the surface: nearly 75 meters lower than planned. The altitude decreased to 19.72 meters. Clem recalculated her velocity relative to ground. It was 6,520 km/hr. Her altitude was down to 15.94 meters, 11.05 meters, 7.66 meters...

"My heart's gonna explode," Diedre wheezed. The flashing red dot had vanished from the orbital trace on the monitor screen. All that told her was the radio carrier signal from Clem was out of sight beyond the crater rim. But the trajectory plot on the computer display was down so close to the surface of the moon that it seemed to touch.

After what seemed too long a time Diedre moaned, "She's gone."

Then the red dot reappeared and a new string of characters blinked at the bottom of the screen. "REACQ100989* 206413.0095D." Clem's radio carrier-signal was back.

"She made it!" Diedre cried. Whoops of relief went up from Frank and Lloyd. She jumped up from her chair, knocking it over, and threw her arms around Frank's stout neck. He swept her off the ground and spun her around in a bear hug that squeezed the breath from her. Over Frank's shoulder she saw Lloyd wiping his forehead again but smiling.

Frank set her down. "She did it, Diedre! She survived and she's headed out to a higher orbit. I knew she'd make it."

"Oh, sure you did, Frank." Diedre was giddy with relief and not the only one feeling emotional. Frank grinned from ear to ear and his bifocals were fogged with moisture from his eyes. The biker was gone. He was all teddy bear.

Then a flicker drew their attention back to the monitor screen.

"The data are coming in," Diedre said, setting her chair upright and sitting to await Clem's first radar image, now being decoded by JPL's mainframes. Frank and Lloyd crowded close behind her, watching the image grow line-by-line down from the top of the screen. At first they saw only the blackness of the lunar sky, flecked here and there with bright points of starlight. Then the hummocky outline of Phaeon's crater rim appeared in a ghostly green monochrome like a view through night vision goggles. Finally the deepest recesses of Phaeon began filling the lower part of the screen with foreground detail.

Diedre's heart pounded again, this time with the thrill of discovery. Beyond merely surviving, Clem had photographed a landscape that hadn't seen light in a million millennia. And now, at 4:02:35 in the morning Diedre was among the first people ever to see it. They had anticipated cliffs of ice or geometric terraces with alternating layers of dust and snow. Indeed, forms appeared in the foreground of Clem's photo, but as the green image unfolded Diedre knew something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

The objects weren't the rounded hummocks of dust and ice she had expected to see. They were too steep, too straight-sided...

"They're buildings." Frank's words exploded in Diedre's head. She knew instantly that he was right.

"Buildings." She sank down in her chair. "That's impossible."

Completely, utterly impossible. But there they were, outlined in detail by the glow of Clem's radar. Towers, domes, pavilions. Dozens of them, a whole city stretched out in a hexagonal pattern on the bottom of Phaeon Crater, centered on a stupendous central step-pyramid.

She scarcely breathed her next words. "Who could have built something like that?"

"Russians?" Frank ventured.

"No," said Lloyd. "Nothing like this could be kept secret for decades."

"Ancient Egyptians?" Frank tried again, leaning close to the computer and adjusting his glasses as if squinting might help him make sense of what he was seeing.

Diedre shook her head. "There has to be some rational explanation. Those must be natural formations." But they weren't natural. There were perfectly square outlines along the sides of some of the structures and rectangular openings like dark windows. With only the radar beam to light them, the nearest buildings looked surreal in their flat green color, while the more distant faded into black obscurity. But there was something foreboding about the scene. Everywhere, the buildings were pockmarked by craters and meteor impact scars.

Frank muttered, "The place looks abandoned. Or destroyed."

The desolation of the pocked buildings, cracked towers and broken causeways gave Diedre a dizzy feeling. She began rethinking every assumption she'd made about the world, the universe, and time. "Now wait a minute," she said. "The age of an object can be determined from the number of meteor impacts on its surface, right?"

"Sure," Frank nodded. "They accumulate over time so the more hits you see, the older an object is."

"But there are too many impact scars." Diedre eyed small craters covering the roofs of buildings, penetrating domes, yawning as shattered holes in the walls of the central step-pyramid. "Hundreds, maybe thousands. We're looking at eons of time, millions of years of accumulated damage."

"True," Frank agreed. "To be that heavily cratered, this place must pre-date human civilization."

"It would have to be older than humanity itself," Diedre murmured.

The ghostly image flickered out as the mainframe prepared to decode the second transmission. Momentarily, Diedre's mind went as blank as the screen. As she waited for the next image to appear, she became aware of a man's voice speaking in subdued tones behind her. Not Frank. Not Lloyd. The major. She'd all but forgotten Major MacIlvain was in the room, and now she realized he hadn't joined them at the computer. She tore her gaze from the screen and spotted him, still in the doorway, unobtrusively talking on a cell phone. He looked away and continued speaking urgently with someone on the other end. She stood and walked toward him and he turned to keep her from hearing what he was saying. She stopped a few paces from him.

"Who are you talking to?" She couldn't disguise a note of alarm in her voice.

He said a few more inaudible words, then clicked off the phone, slung it on his belt, and replied in a flat voice. "My superior officer."

He fixed his cold grey eyes on her and made no effort to explain. She became unnerved and looked down and what she saw unnerved her more. The major had opened his coat to put away the phone and there, under his arm, was a brown leather shoulder holster with a pistol in it. As his fingers reflexively touched the holster snap Diedre said, "This is why you've been here night and day. You've been waiting for this, haven't you?"

The major hesitated. Then he said in a level voice, "We already had some suggestions of this sort of thing from Clementine 2."

"And you have a say in whether anyone talks about this, is that right?"

"You're very perceptive, Ms. Porter." His tone was icy.

Alarm filled Diedre to bursting. "How can you do that? Are we under arrest?"

"Not necessarily." The major's voice seemed chillier.

"But you're not going to let this out, are you?" Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. How could Clem's triumph turn to nothing in so few seconds?

"Look at it this way, Ms. Porter. The Pentagon feels there could be some unrest. Certain elements, religious fanatics, anarchists, the lunatic fringe, might cause trouble."

"But you don't know that for sure."

"Top brass's fairly certain. They made some models of public reaction, ran some focus groups. Tell people there's an alien outpost on the moon and the effect is going to be bad. End-of-the-world kind of thing. Maybe violence. Brass felt they couldn't chance it. Didn't want to deal with public hysteria. President agreed."

"But this isn't some Area Fifty-One hoax!" Diedre protested. "This is reality. You can't stand in the way of science—of the truth."

"In this case we can, ma'am, at least until the Pentagon can send an expedition up there to see exactly what's going on."

"But that'll take years!"

He nodded in cold concurrence. She suddenly felt woozy and sank toward the floor. Frank had come in time to hear the end of the conversation and catch her by an elbow, helping her settle into a chair. He confronted the major. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing I can't explain in a few minutes." The major gripped the gun butt as if Frank's size threatened him.

Diedre buried her face in her hands and let out a half-sob, half-laugh. "He's been waiting for this all along, Frank. That's why he's here."

It was all too unreal, too horribly unbelievable. Major MacIlvain had joined the team as a watchdog over the military's little secret, assigned to observe and wait for this moment if it ever arrived. Well, here it was and she'd been none-the-wiser. She and Frank and Lloyd—

She wheeled around in the chair and looked at Lloyd, who had stayed at the computer. His face looked stricken too, but he wasn't watching the major. He was staring _at her,_ wide-eyed. It dawned on her like a peal of thunder. "You're in on this, aren't you Lloyd?"

He closed his eyes and nodded. "Sorry."

"How could you, Lloyd?" Tears streamed from her eyes. "You're a scientist. You're supposed to be one of us."

Lloyd straightened defiantly. "How do you think I talked them into giving us two hundred and eighty million dollars for this mission? I made a deal, Diedre. And we've had quite a little party on their bankroll, haven't we? Now it's time to pay the piper."

"My God." Diedre turned disdainfully from Lloyd and looked up at the major again. "What are you going to do with us, and with Clem?"

"Clementine is the easy part," the major said in a carefully measured voice. "The story will be that she crashed."

"Of course." Diedre felt a numb resignation creep through her. "No one will expect to hear from Clem again if we say she smashed into the moon." She wanted to scream or fall on the floor and cry. Instead, she wilted deeper into the chair. "So that's it, then. Nothing more out of Clem, forever."

The major nodded.

"And us?"

"That all depends."

Frank sank down in a chair next to Diedre and looked up at the major like a chastened schoolboy. "Depends on what?"

MacIlvain glanced at each of them sternly, his fingers still fidgeting with the holster snap. "It depends on how cooperative you want to be."

## CHAPTER 3

The end of world had begun while Brigadier General Matthew Davis was on leave visiting his sister and brother-in-law in Denver. This morning he was rushing back to his post as Director U.S. Space Command Center at NORAD's underground military complex near Colorado Springs. Racing his Lincoln Town Car down the empty freeway south of Denver, he gripped the wheel tightly and occasionally hit one hundred miles an hour. He was trying to rejoin his staff, or what was left of his staff, after the morning's sudden attacks had caught NORAD only half-prepared in its all-but-mothballed base beneath Cheyenne Mountain.

The 5-am telephone conversation with his base Communications Officer had been brief and frantic. If he had the story right, those flashes from the moon were more than just glittering lights. They were the emanations of a powerful energy weapon that could demolish an aircraft, a building or a nuclear missile silo in a single hit. They were eerily reminiscent of the Death Star in the movie Star Wars, now made real. Watching the flashes as he raced southward, he was relieved his car must seem an insignificant target to whomever was up there and not worth the effort of a shot. He was also thankful the local civilians were obeying the President's admonition to stay home, if only because the empty freeway let him lead-foot it toward NORAD at an ungodly speed.

Before leaving his sister's home he had taken the time to iron the pants of his uniform, shave and brush back his head of tightly kinked, wavy graying hair. Standing at the bathroom mirror, he'd buffed the single stars on the epaulettes of his blue Air Force uniform and straightened the many campaign bars and the Purple Heart pinned on his chest. These preparations had produced a look of more composure than he felt entitled to, but composure was what he needed to radiate if he were to successfully take command of the chaos he expected at NORAD.

His job up to now had been to oversee America's surveillance satellite network, to monitor foreign activities in space, and to keep the nation safe from airborne or spaceborne attack. It was amazing how quickly the scope of his duties had changed. According to the Comm on the phone this morning, he was—she hadn't known exactly—at least the ranking officer at NORAD and perhaps the ranking officer in the entire armed services of the United States. Not much was known with certainty, but it appeared that most or all of the joint chiefs were missing in mid-air. Their evacuation plane had been an early target of the ray as they flew out of Dulles for the safety of NORAD's underground bunkers. And as to the President, other than the fact that the White House itself had come under attack by the beam, nothing was known.

It wasn't just the magnitude of his new responsibilities that made Davis's dark skin crawl. A larger question loomed. Was this attack accompanied by an invasion? The Comm Officer had had no answer for that one, primarily because there was so little information available. The spy satellites that were Davis's usual sources had been methodically swept out of near-earth space. Precious little information-gathering equipment was still available and few communication lines remained open. His cell phone lay useless beside him in the passenger seat.

As the satellites had winked out one by one, they had gathered enough information to convince him that the military he now commanded was well on its way to extinction. From reports received early in the attack, the Comm was able to tell Davis that military facilities everywhere were being hit hard, and that the beam's destructive capacity was diabolically swift and efficient.

Now his own eyes confirmed what he had been told. Moving south past Colorado Springs he looked east at a cloud of black smoke rising over Peterson Air Force Base and streaking off to the northeast horizon. Beneath the cloud, Peterson's long line of B-1 bombers had been reduced to a charred landscape of black and twisted metal. Worse, his superior officer, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Space Command, was somewhere under that pall of smoke. He and fully half of the senior officers of NORAD had gone missing this morning when the airbase was hit.

As Davis turned off the freeway onto NORAD's entrance road, he saw another pall of smoke to the south, this one rising from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment base at Fort Carson. Yesterday the base could have easily carried out its mission of protecting NORAD from ground-based threats. Yesterday, hundreds of tanks and tracked vehicles had been arrayed beside a mile-long semicircle of garage buildings. Today there was only a mile-long arc of smoking rubble and melted metal.

"My God," Davis muttered. "It looks like Pearl Harbor on land." Fort Carson's vast military power would be no help to NORAD. It had already been destroyed where it sat.

Davis was surprised that the barracks and family housing areas of the base looked untouched. Even that realization made a qualm run through him. The accuracy of the attack had been incredible. The enemy, whoever they were, commanded an unbelievable source of military precision and deadly effectiveness. If things continued this way, all earthly military capability would be eliminated by deftly shaving it away from everything else. But why? What fate awaited the civilians and troops who were being spared? By any military standard of any war, there ought to be an invasion accompanying such a massive barrage, but where was it? Davis wanted desperately to know what was coming next.

As he drove up the approach road through the scrubland at the base of Cheyenne Mountain, he was dismayed to see the entire surface of the mountain burnt to cinders. The beam had visited here early and often. On the mountain's crest where an array of communication antennas and towers had stood the day before, there was nothing but twisted, melted metal. As he drove the last winding stretch of road to the portal entering the mountainside not far below the wreckage, he pondered the greatest and most terrifying mystery of all. _Who are they?_

He knew as much as anybody and still he couldn't say. He was privy to everything known about Phaeon Crater, but that didn't mean he knew the answer. He was certain this attack emanated somehow from that dark place, but beyond the light flashing from the lower horn of the moon he had nothing to go on except some ominous clues. He knew every knowable detail of the Recon mission, the secret military expedition to the south pole of the moon two years before. He'd looked on amazed, along with other top brass at NORAD, as the President issued an executive order installing Colonel Paul MacIlvain as a new member of NORAD's hierarchy and making him chief of the Recon Mission. He'd watched Mac orchestrate the clandestine moon landing from NORAD. Houston types with NASA badges and civilian clothes had overrun the facility for a time. Davis had also been forced to stand by perplexed as MacIlvain had given the astronaut explorers of Phaeon Crater clearance to restore part of the vast alien complex's power system. They'd powered up a solar energy station atop the central pyramid. Then, several months after the power had been reconnected, all communications from the ten-person exploration crew had ceased. Davis also knew the second Recon expedition, launched a year later, had vanished in near-moon space before ever reaching its objective. Beyond that, no one knew anything about the situation at Phaeon. Not Mac, not anyone. Nothing for two years, and now this. Davis thought ruefully that the re-establishment of Phaeon's power would rank as one of the biggest tactical blunders of all time, if anyone were left alive to record history.

Who or what was coming was unknowable. But the Recon mission had left a legacy of just one tantalizing clue, a mind-boggling one. As the astronauts had explored the airless corridors of the smashed facility, they had come upon several banks of equipment they thought might be computers, although the design had been altogether alien. They had retrieved some small metallic chips from one of the devices and sent them back to earth on an unmanned shuttle. Analysis had confirmed they were printed circuits possessing an incredibly dense array of information. The data encoded on the chips had been hard to decipher, being composed in an alien language and alphabet. Nevertheless the decryption team had managed to determine that the bulk of what was encoded on the chips used only four of the twenty-seven alphabet characters. These were repeated over and over in a seemingly random fashion. Random, that is, until someone pointed out that there was another code known to have only four characters—the genetic code.

A team of biological scientists recruited just two months ago from the National Science Foundation had quickly—and incredibly—matched certain parts of the alien code with genes from earthly organisms; no exact matches but greatly similar to crocodiles and birds, of all things. According to the scientists the alien genes were somewhere right in between. What that meant and how the code had come to be data-banked on the moon remained obscure. It had been cold comfort when someone pointed out the great age of the facility at Phaeon and speculated that the code might belong to some creature out of the age of dinosaurs. Finally, the scientists had conceded there was little they could do with the data. Despite the great volume of code on the chips, it represented no more than a fraction of a single chromosome. They were unable to even guess at the size, shape or appearance of the creature. There was just too little information.

It all gave Davis the worst of grinding pains in his guts as he pulled up to the train-sized portal leading into Cheyenne Mountain. Helmeted guards behind sandbagged, razor-wired checkpoints just inside the tunnel covered his Lincoln with automatic rifles as he approached. The lieutenant in charge came out to look over his ID.

As he waited, Davis looked up at the mountain face towering above him. Yesterday it had been semi-barren reddish granite rock rising several thousand feet above the portal, studded with pine trees and scrub brush. Now the vegetation was reduced to ash, the soil was blackened, and the exposed granite was seared to a whitish gray. The whole mountain surface had been burned and pulverized by the heat of the beam, which had obviously paid special attention to this particular target. He looked once more at the moon high above him in the jaundiced sky. Whoever was directing the beam, which continued lancing this way and that as he watched, had not neglected America's strongest and last defense line drawn here at this mountain.

"Welcome back, sir," said the lieutenant, saluting and waving him forward.

Davis returned the salute and pressed the accelerator, proceeding inside the tunnel on the two-lane road that penetrated a third of a mile into the heart of the mountain. He stopped his car at the inner checkpoint of barbed wire, cyclone fence and sandbags, watching the blast door ahead of him begin to open. The huge rectangular metal structure, 25 tons of steel, was the first of two such barriers guarding the inner entrance to NORAD. Set in the tunnel wall at right angles to the roadway, it swung out slowly, leaving Davis time for a melancholy thought: it would soon swing back to seal him inside with his staff of several hundred soldiers and civilians. They could stay there for months if necessary in a self-contained underground city that might be the only place on earth safe from attack—if it was safe.

Motors droning, the door slowly opened until the gap was sufficient to allow a single individual to pass, and then it stopped. A woman in a blue Air Force uniform strode out and quickly approached him. The tunnel lighting overhead was dim, but he could see right away this was Major Holly Lewis, his Communications Officer and the person he most wanted to see right now. Davis opened his door and got out, handing his keys to one of the checkpoint troopers. Lewis saluted.

"Glad you made it, sir. We were worried about you being out under that beam."

Davis returned her salute and asked glumly, "Any news of General Allen or General Martin?"

"Dead, Sir. They were caught outside in one of the first attacks. You're still the ranking officer as far as we know."

"I see. Holly, I want you to fill me in on everything you've got."

"What little I've got, you mean."

"Whatever you've got."

Davis glanced at Lewis as they moved inside the blast door. Her demeanor was as stiff and straight as that of any military man he'd met, and right now that outward calm was a welcome sight. A person had every right to come apart under the kind of pressure that was building inside Davis's own chest. He did his best to reflect back to Lewis that same solid outward appearance: straight backbone, level eye.

"First of all," he asked, "is there an invasion yet?"

Lewis nodded. "Yes, sir. We don't know much, but before the equipment was knocked out we confirmed more than two dozen incoming bogeys."

"Where from?"

"Trajectories indicated they're coming from the moon."

"Where to?"

"Every continent, including North America. Odd thing though, all nine incoming on this continent were headed for Montana before we lost track of them."

"Why Montana? There's no military objective there worth nearly as much as NORAD or a dozen other places I can think of."

"We've all been scratching our heads, sir."

"What's left of our communications?"

"Our first casualty was information. We've lost just about every kind of communication, from satellites to ground-based to sea-based systems. We're nearly deaf, sir. In fact, the first inkling we had that something was wrong was when communications satellites started disappearing like mad. The enemy has our information systems at the top of its priority list."

"Smart. Neutralize your opponent's communications and you've neutralized his ability to fight back."

"Exactly, sir. It's like they've been studying us for the last couple of years. Like they catalogued every possible target on earth and they're just going down the list."

They moved past the gigantic door and its hydraulic cylinders reversed with a clunk and whined as they closed the aperture. Davis felt his brain straining every bit as hard as the hydraulic pistons as he tried to get some inkling how to fight this war and what his options were.

As if to underscore the limitations to those options, a glaring blue light illuminated the tunnel shaft behind them, accompanied by a terrific humming noise. It was the beam, laying down another salvo of heat at the tunnel entrance. It lit up the tunnel interior for several seconds and then vanished, leaving behind a hollow roar that echoed within the tunnel's concrete walls. Davis and Lewis hurried past the inner blast door, a second rectangular behemoth that was open and waiting for them.

Once inside the central corridors of NORAD Davis could feel and hear, rather than see, the continued attack of the beam. A series of ground-rocking thuds rumbled down through the granite of the mountain and reverberated beneath his feet as he and Lewis moved through the branching tunnels on their way to the command center. She did her best to fill in the details Davis needed.

"The attacks started in the Eastern Hemisphere about seven hours ago. The beam neutralized every military base from Australia to Siberia to Europe to South Africa. Not just ours, everybody's. The Eastern Hemisphere was facing the moon at first, but the attack spread westward as the earth turned. That put the East Coast of the U.S. under the beam only two hours after the whole thing began, which wasn't enough time for the Pentagon to figure out what was going on, let alone react."

"Any missiles fired?"

"Our nuclear missiles, sir?"

"Yes."

"No. They were taken out in their silos, every last one, as far as we know. No nuclear detonations, just fuel explosions. The warheads are probably still sitting in the rubble."

"How is this facility doing, Holly?"

"Some of the upper levels have caught fire and we get a lot of vibration down here every time the beam hits us up above. But we're holding together pretty well in the command center."

Davis saw dust pouring from cracks in the whitewashed concrete tunnel arch overhead as the sounds of muffled detonations rumbled down from above. As if to add to his doubts, a rock fragment dropped from the ceiling and smacked on the floor near him.

When they reached the command center Davis got his first look at the top echelon of his staff, such as it was. It shook him to see just how junior most of them were. Among the young men and women standing or sitting in front of the dozens of computer consoles in the room were captains, majors and colonels, but not a general among them. He sank into a seat at the head of the boardroom table with an ice-water feeling in his guts. They came silently to join him, taking places around the table. _Never,_ thought Davis as he looked at the young, scared faces, _have such inexperienced people been given such tremendous responsibility._

At the far end of the room were several backlit display maps of the world with oceans in blue and continents in tan. Normally, they would have shown dozens of white light-points indicating radar facilities, red lines denoting satellite trajectories, yellow tracks for incoming bogies when drills were in progress, and a hundred other bits of numerical data and position markers for objects of interest. But right now the displays were empty except for the dimly illuminated continents and oceans.

"What's wrong with the displays?" he asked Lewis as she sat down on his right.

"Nothing, sir," she replied. "The displays are fine. There's nothing to display on them."

"Yes, of course. I should have guessed."

"Sir," a male voice said, "we're all taken by surprise."

Davis eyed the speaker, who was just taking a place at the foot of the table. It was Colonel Paul MacIlvain. Not necessarily a face Davis was glad to see, given Mac's role in bringing this all about. It didn't sit entirely well with him that MacIlvain seemed to be the second rank here, after himself and before Major Lewis. Something about the man inspired less than complete confidence. Maybe it was how he had shoved his way into the middle of NORAD's hierarchy without working his way up. But there was no denying that his intimate knowledge of Phaeon was critically important now. Davis would have to learn to like the man, because they would be working very closely for the foreseeable future.

The other faces around the room, fifteen in all, were too young and green to inspire much confidence. They looked scared—downright petrified—to Davis's practiced eye. He drew a deep breath. This was one of those crucial command moments. What he was about to say had to sound convincing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to win this engagement. Somehow, I don't know quite how just yet, but I am confident you will help me find a way. Just the simple fact that NORAD is still here tells me no matter how powerful our enemy is, he can't get at us down here. And we have something here at NORAD that he wishes he could destroy—" Another detonation far above shook the room. "—but he clearly does not have the means to do that." Davis silently thanked fate for the timing on that hit. He could see a few heads rising taller.

"Their inability to reach us makes me certain that we can hold out for the time being. Then it will become a question of mounting a resistance to this attack. To do that, the first thing we'll need is information. I want to see some data on that map and you've got to give me a way to get it. We need a ground-based mobile communications grid to replace what we've lost. I want to find a way to use hand-held radios and the communications capabilities of the vehicles that are inside here with us. I know the main antennas are down, but I want to start transmitting on anything that's left ASAP. Car radios, ham radios, whatever. There have got to be people out there with small equipment. We need to contact them and establish a nationwide network of small operators, and we need it yesterday, but I suppose tonight or tomorrow will have to be soon enough."

"Excuse me sir," a Navy lieutenant spoke up, "but if there's an invasion force already coming at us, how long do we really have until they're knocking at our door?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Davis admitted. "Days? Maybe hours." He looked again at the blank world map. The knot in his guts tightened.

Lewis suggested, "If there were some way of neutralizing that beam."

Davis glanced at MacIlvain. The man had been silent, apparently content to ruminate about what he was hearing without adding anything.

"Damn it, Mac," Davis grumbled. "What I'd give to have a look into your crater right now."

## CHAPTER 4

Clementine 3 moved above the surface of the moon, her orbital radius back up to 55 kilometers and her electronics in safe mode. She was powered down, her mapping and detailed observations long ago completed. Her shutdown and standby command sequences had been uplinked from earth 848 days, ten hours, eleven minutes, thirty-nine seconds and 0.0293 milliseconds ago. The only subsystems still active were ATTITUDE CONTROL, monitoring the sun angle to assure sufficient solar power on the panels, CLOCK, recording the unending passage of time, and RECEIVER, monitoring radio transmissions from earth. Clementine's imaging systems were shut off, as were her central processor and transmitter. She had obediently made herself blind, dumb, and nearly deaf except for the minuscule voltage across her receiver channel. She had autonomously awakened herself 381 days ago in response to an anomalous voltage in her communications subsystem, noting the failure of one of its thirty-two logic processor chips, which began sending waves of static through transmitter number one's control circuit. Clementine had taken it offline only to find that transmitter number two was acting up as well. In the absence of command transmissions from earth to help solve her dilemma she'd had no option but to resume safe mode, wait, and listen.

Before powering down she had rechecked her orbital parameters to a high precision. The variance of her orbit from perfect circularity was less than 0.000001% and its period was 99 minutes, 44 seconds and 87.63 milliseconds, plus or minus 10. Even without monitoring, the orbit would be stable for the next 2,200 years, plus or minus 28 years. All else, for Clementine 3, was waiting. She didn't even point her instruments down as she passed over the former subject of her most thorough surface observations: Phaeon Crater.

Phaeon, however, was not as inactive as Clementine.

Great changes had occurred in the crater's dark depths. In fact, those depths were no longer entirely dark. Although the human explorers who had come there were dead, signs of life were everywhere among the buildings of Phaeon. Towers and pavilions once punctured by meteor strikes were repaired, their lines cleanly rectangular or circular. Windows, once vacant and black, now glowed with interior lights. Here and there living beings moved past the windows, going about their business within.

Of all the buildings, none rivaled the huge central step-pyramid, which lofted its dome-surmounted top 500 meters above Phaeon's floor. The dome rose out of the shadows to bathe in perpetual sunlight just grazing the moon's surface at the pole. An immense gun-barrel projected from a vertical slit in the dome and pointed in the direction of earth, which floated just above the horizon. Several times a minute the gun adjusted its pointing angle and a wisp of nearly invisible blue light emanated from it, lancing toward earth. A patch of red-orange flame flared briefly at each earthly target point and then faded. Then the turret gun adjusted its angle and unleashed another bolt of blue-hot energy. Across the gibbous disk of earth, plumes of black smoke rose from hundreds of points in North and South America where the beam had touched down. On earth's unlit eastern quarter, burning targets delineated the continents of Europe and Africa with hundreds of dull red spots glowing against the blackness of a world suddenly without electrical power.

At the base of the step-pyramid, a huge red-lighted hangar doorway yawned wide. From the scarlet glow of its interior emerged a titanic silver-winged streamlined spacecraft, rolling ponderously out of the facility on a set of three heavy metal rails. Once the craft had emerged fully, twin rocket engines beneath its tail fins ignited, propelling it outward along the rails. These guided it up the crater wall to the rim's edge where the ship leapt into space and its rockets accelerated it outbound on a trajectory toward earth. Soon, another spacecraft emerged from the hangar's red recess, ignited its engines, and raced along the rails following its predecessor.

Far above the hangar, the giant gun-turret dome at the pyramid's apex was surmounted by a smaller circular observatory. Figures inside its windows performed their duties of supervision and control, lit by dim red safelights. They were human-sized, two-legged, unearthly beings, half reptile and half bird, known to themselves as Kra. In one window, a lone individual watched another ship accelerate up the rails and disappear into space. This observer was Gar.

Seated on a couch inside the observation window, Gar cocked his head to one side and peered out at the blue-green world floating above the horizon. His yellow iris flexed and its black pupil narrowed as another flash of blue light leapt from the light cannon. Swiveling his long neck in a bird-like motion, Gar focused his other eye on the dark smoke wisps tainting the air of the planet. His long jaws gaped slightly, exposing rows of sharp reptilian fangs. He clacked his teeth together lightly, a nervous habit of Kra who thought deeply, or worried over a difficult problem.

"Distoonoh, Gar-hoo?" asked a second Kra, entering the observation room and giving Gar a subtle nod in greeting, as high-ranking Kra habitually did. "What troubles you, Lord Gar?"

"Nella danta," Gar replied. "The same question."

"This is no time for doubt." The second Kra was Saurgon. He cast his yellow-green eyes on the fires and smoke on the planet and his feather mane swelled with pride. "The matter has been decided. And the initial elements of your wave of assault spacecraft are departing even now. Let your thoughts be clear, Gar. Delight in the fine efficiency with which our attack progresses. All eighty-one of your invasion ships will be en route within the morning."

"The launch crews are prompt and meticulous," murmured Gar.

"And my teams operating the killing ray are performing their duties flawlessly. The enemy below will be helpless within another rotation of the planet."

"I have no doubt about that."

"When you and your wave of landers arrive, any resistance to your attack will be brief. There will be much glory in this war. Your share, Gar, will be great. Only two chieftains among the Kra hold as high a rank as you. Oogon is already on the ground with his wave of landers. My only regret is that I must remain here at Illik base to command the killing beam and deal destruction to the enemy from above. But your wave of 729 warriors is a powerful force. Oogon and I will soon gladly share our victories with you. Does the thrill of battle not surge in your blood, Gar? To fight for the resurrection of Kra-Gol is the highest of callings."

Gar watched another assault ship streak toward the blue-green planet.

"But is this the true path, Saurgon? The return to our world is not as the planners foretold. This world agonizing under your killing ray is our own world, I can see that, but it has changed. How can even the continents have moved? The great inland sea of Kra-Sogh has dried. Where, on this blue-jewel world is our capitol, Arran Kra?"

"Under a mountain, some say."

"That may be so, but what is the meaning of such upheaval on our planet? Why did the spy probes return images of hoonahs, walking upright, tailless, hairless, nearly toothless—and yet ruling cities?"

"Yes, Gar, what inexplicable events gave them dominion? When did they come down from their trees?"

"And how long has this station slept, Saurgon? The instruments of the Watcher say no more than eight days, but my eyes tell me otherwise. Even Oogon, so intent on war making, cannot deny what is plain to see. The time of silence through which this station slept was infinitely longer than planned: thousands of years, perhaps millions. When the great meteor, Kela, collided with our world, rocks that crashed upon this station halted our machines for an eternity. This is what I believe. How else could the very constellations have drifted in the night sky? How else could so much have changed on Eka, our world? How else could such creatures as hoonahs have arisen to take our place?"

"The how and the why are insignificant, Gar. It is good that our weapons need not taste the blood of our own species. Our old enemies, the Khe, did not survive the impact of Kela. That is certain, else how could hoonahs have come to rule our world? The Khe could easily have suppressed the rise of such inferior creatures as these."

"But I am still in doubt, Saurgon. A Kra should feel nothing but joy at the destruction of his enemies, but my ordinance is to preserve life. That is why I fear we do a great wrong by annihilating these hoonahs. Am I not the High Priest of the Cult of Life, and are not all species sacred to me?"

"You are High Priest of Life, even as I am High Priest of the Sky—and the death beam."

"As High Priest of Life, I oversee the animals we bring down with us in our landing ships, those reborn here on Noqui with us, as sacrosanct. But these unknown species on the surface of Eka, what of them? The planners left no message to guide us. Who will preserve that which was not in the plan? Who will save that which needed no saving before today? Even the High Priest of Life is not so wise as to know the answer."

Saurgon chuckled gutturally. "Oogon, the High Priest of War and Death, is already giving them the answer. His assault forces have begun their attacks."

"Yes, Oogon is having his way, but only because his vote and yours overruled my vote to approach this world cautiously and without bloodletting."

"A vote of the Triumvirate of War is final and all must obey."

"Yes."

"Besides, Gar, even you must admit these hoonahs have done great damage to our beloved Eka. Our probes detected pollution, habitat destruction, overpopulation, and species on the edge of extinction everywhere. I believe the hoonahs must be destroyed before they can do more harm. We Kra will save the planet from them and tend it responsibly, as we did before."

Gar sighed. "So these hoonahs must die. They have come to their time of extinction. But is this the true path?"

The door to the observation room opened behind them.

"Gelloch natik, Gar-hoo," said a third Kra as he entered. "Lord Gar, your assault ship is ready. The time for launch has come."

Gar rose from the observation couch and returned his pilot's salute by touching his thumb-claw first to the tip of his lower jaw, then to the center of his breast armor. Haneek nodded deeply in response and then turned quickly to leave. Gar followed him, but paused at the doorway and regarded Saurgon carefully.

"We will discuss this again," he said, "before the last of the hoonahs are gone."

Saurgon nodded but said nothing.

Turning to follow Haneek along the corridor, Gar observed the excitedness in his behavior. A yearling, Haneek was just fully-grown and eager for the taste of blood, as Gar could tell by his hurried movements and long stride. At one point he moved so swiftly that the low gravity could not hold him to the floor and he momentarily floated free of the corridor's metal decking. It would be good to feel the full gravity of Eka.

Gar followed the pilot into an elevator, feeling much older, though he himself had only hatched from the birth tube two years previously. A Kra could learn much in a short time; too much, perhaps.

The elevator carried them quickly down to the sub-surface level of the pyramid, where Haneek resumed his hurried pace along the winding passageways with Gar following. On their way to the spacecraft hangar they passed the glass wall of clone chamber 87. Gar slowed to look at the long rows of glass tubes, each with a Kra warrior of the reserve division growing in the same way Gar and his mate Gana had been created in the first reconstitution after the station came back into operation. These new Kra would grow quickly to full adult size, stimulated by hormones and rich growth broth, and be ready for automatic hatching within another week. He recalled his visions from within the green liquid. His first conscious impressions were of Gana, suspended within the glass chamber of an adjacent growth tube, her ochre-colored eyes even then irresistibly attractive. Gar's hackle-feathers rose briefly as he recalled those occasions when, looking beyond Gana's tube, he had seen Oogon's baleful red eyes piercing through the glass of the next tube to radiate jealousy and hatred toward him. It was unfortunate that the growth tube beside Oogon had cracked. In it had been a developing female, one who might have been Oogon's mate. Oogon's hatefulness had seemed particularly obvious at times when Gar had tried to nuzzle Gana's nose through the glass between them.

Following Haneek farther along the corridor, Gar passed the door of the dissection lab where he had studied the corpses of hoonahs who had come to explore the station. They had contributed to their own demise by restoring the power. Once awakened, the Watcher had automatically closed the massive pressure doors in the hallways, impeding the hoonah explorers so greatly that an entire squad of Kra had hatched before the hoonahs could penetrate halfway to the clone chambers. It had been a simple matter for Oogon to organize a surprise attack that killed them all. They had died without a fight, all eight of them. Unarmed and with no laser reflective armor in their suits, most were easily dispatched by a single shot from a light gun or a single slash with an aseeta, dying horribly as air left their punctured suits and the vacuum in the corridors overcame them. Several escaped unscathed into the vast landscape of Noqui, only to die of asphyxiation when the oxygen in their suits ran out. These had been the best specimens for study.

Gar had dissected one of the creatures himself and he knew more than most Kra about the enemy they were facing. The oddly shaped being was unlike anything that existed in the times before Kela brought the Great Death. What sort of foe would these hoonahs be? Easy targets, nearly defenseless, as Oogon claimed? No, it seemed more likely that these creatures, advanced enough to come into space and reach this station, would be more formidable on their home ground than here on Noqui.

Nevertheless, once Gar had removed the space suit from the body of his hoonah subject, the creature had been remarkable for what it lacked, as much as what it possessed. Where a Kra bore three talons on the thumb and two fingers of each hand, as well as three hooked claws on the toes of each foot, hoonahs possessed only weak, flattened claws that looked like they could do little damage in hand-to-hand combat. Where a Kra's jaws were long and lined with serrated dagger teeth, a hoonah had no more than a small hole for a mouth and this was covered with concealing lips and possessed small teeth fit only for nibbling and chewing soft foods—hardly weapons of war. In addition to the lack of any substantial jaws, the peculiar head of the hoonah also lacked any form of ornamentation projecting from the top or forehead. There was nothing on a hoonah so beautiful or impressive as a Kra's forward-jutting, horn-covered crest, which easily doubled the height of its possessor's head. Gar wondered what feature a hoonah displayed during courtship. His own crest so enraptured Gana that she never ceased to exclaim about its height and the beauty of its bright stripes of yellow, black and red.

The hoonah corpse had possessed a mane, in some ways reminiscent of a Kra's neck-mane. It was not composed of feathers, but of thin strands of fur like that found on the rodents that were its ancestors. There had been no feathers anywhere on the body, which was primarily covered by naked skin. This nudity was striking to Gar, given that his own body was covered by fine black contour feathers. The picture of a hoonah was nearly complete when Gar imagined it standing in its un-rodent-like bipedal stance, almost as tall as a Kra—although a Kra with its long neck might rear up much higher than a hoonah could manage with its pathetically short and inflexible neck. It was easy for a Kra to look down on a hoonah, both figuratively and literally.

Finally, as Gar followed Haneek through the enclosed gangway leading to the ship's cabin, he allowed himself one last thought regarding the hoonahs. He felt the supple sway of his long tail as he walked and knew that a tail was indispensable to proper balance and agility in battle. How did a hoonah manage to keep upright, let alone leap, sidestep and thrust in mortal combat with no tail whatsoever? This would become clear as the fighting progressed.

Despite the physical shortcomings of the enemy, Gar still felt concern about destroying such a peculiar species. Might there be some redeeming quality in a hoonah that was not obvious in an anatomical study? Gar wanted to learn this and much more before the last hoonah was gone from the planet.

He entered the ship's cabin and took his place in the command seat beside Haneek, who was already busy adjusting instruments and flipping switches. Outside, the launch tunnel walls glowed a dull red.

Massive gear moved the ship onto the launch rails and Gar heard rumbling noises and bellowing through the thick metal of the cabin's rear wall. The big animals in the ship's hold were terrified of the motion. They were only dumb brutes and could not understand, as Gar did, that this flight would take them home to the world of their ancestors.

Gar settled down in his seat. For so momentous a journey, this one started with creeping slowness. Droning machinery moved the ship toward its launch point at an almost imperceptible crawl, and Gar's thoughts turned to Gana.

Earlier this day he had gone to their quarters on the ninety-second floor of the pyramid to say his farewells. He had found Gana squatting in the center of the nesting couch's oval depression with her arms tucked by her sides, her beautiful long neck curved sinuously and her head settled behind one shoulder. With her graceful tail arched out behind her she had looked perfectly calm and comfortable, the way an expectant mother Kra should look as eggs grew inside her. She took to the nest-couch more often now and the laying would begin in a matter of days and incubation would follow. Their brood would be one of the first not brought out of the automatic growth cylinders, but out of a living Kra mother.

Gana and the few other pregnant Kra females would wait here until the hoonahs were subdued. Then they would join their mates on the planet's surface. Until that day, he would miss her dearly.

Gar's reverie was interrupted by the sound of the launch engines whining to life. His cabin-mate glanced at him impatiently, awaiting the order to begin the launch sequence.

Gar uttered the command, "Ellok-ahey," and Haneek pressed the launch button. A catapult driven by massive falling cable-weights within the pyramid thrust the ship forward on the launch rails. The twin engines roared and Gar felt himself pressed back as the ship accelerated along the rail-track. The throttles came to full power as they raced up the crater wall and then the glare of stark sunlight burst into the cabin as the ship shot off the end of the launch track. Clear of the crater rim with engines throbbing, they accelerated toward the blue planet, toward Eka, toward home.

## CHAPTER 5

Things were happening a bit too fast for Kit Daniels today. Strange happenings in the sky, a great paleontological discovery, angry words with her father, and an interesting young man—too many events all mixed up in one short morning.

It was nice to be alone for a while, astride Lucky's gently swaying back as the mare picked her way down the game trail beside Eggshell Creek. That was the name Kit had given the little stream when she was in grade school and found some bits of dinosaur eggshell along its banks. The shell fragments, blackened with age, had sparked Kit's interest in dinosaurs and brought Professor Ogilvey to the ranch. She and Lucky had been up and down this path a hundred times visiting Dr. O's digs but this morning the trail seemed different. There was an electric quality to the air. As Lucky poked through thickets of short willow trees lining the trail another thunderous noise rumbled along the canyon, sending a tingle up Kit's spine.

The air along the stream banks was eerily still. The twitter of small birds among the willows had stopped. Lucky's ears pivoted nervously to and fro. Kit breathed easier when Lucky pushed out of the last willow thicket and the house came into view. Given her head, Lucky trotted the last hundred yards to the barn, holding her ears back as if something were following them out of the gully.

Kit absorbed some of Lucky's edginess and looked around carefully as she stopped the mare at the white equestrian fence in front of the barn. The pasture beyond the fence was all but deserted with the herd up at its summer graze. Nelda the milk cow lay inside one of the loafing sheds, keeping out of the sun and chewing her cud. Buck, her father's dun horse, was grazing at the far end of the pasture. Chickens pecked in the dust at the barn's open front door. They didn't seem nervous but chickens had so little sense you couldn't read much from their behavior. The odd quiet still made Kit uneasy. Beyond an occasional cluck, the only sound was a thin repetitive squeak from the windmill in the pasture. A light breeze turned it slowly atop its metal gantry, bringing up water for the house and trickling the excess into the cattle-watering trough. Nothing was out of place in the heavy equipment shed next to the barn. The John Deere tractor and cultivator were parked side by side, as usual. The next building was the garage, with its door perennially left open. Inside were her red Volkswagen Beetle and the space where her father's jeep normally sat. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except the stillness of the air. Maybe there wasn't anything too surprising about that. The animals were just reacting to the noises and the eerie lights in the sky.

Slipping from the saddle, Kit patted the horse's graying withers with a gloved hand. "What is it, Lucky? Those lights got you spooked? Well, don't worry, I won't let them get you." Kit led the horse inside the barn and put her in her stall, wishing there were someone around to reassure _her._ She pulled Lucky's saddle off and slung it over a rail, undid her bridle and put some fresh hay in the feed trough at the head of the stall. When she closed the stall gate, the old mare nervously bobbed her head and ignored the hay. That wasn't like Lucky.

Kit hung the reins on the tack post and then spotted something else that was odd. Her border collie, Zippy, sat on his dog-bed of old blankets in a dim corner of the barn with a worried look tenting up his white eyebrows.

"What's up, Zippy?" she asked, walking over to have a closer look. "I figured you'd still be up there helping Daddy turn out the new bull." She knelt and gave him a chuck under his graying black muzzle. "What is it, boy? You're trembling. Why'd you come back without Daddy?" She didn't expect an answer but she would have liked one. If her father wasn't finished moving the bull, why would he let Zippy wander off? A Border collie was better than an extra mounted horseman when it came to chasing cattle and Zippy was the reason her father had let her go to see Dr. Ogilvey this morning. Unless the bull was already loose and chased away from the stock pond, Zippy shouldn't be home yet. She thumped him reassuringly on the side and he let out a throaty, worried whine.

She left Zippy and Lucky in the barn and crossed the hundred feet of graveled driveway to the back of the house, jogged up the back steps, walked through the pantry hallway and into the kitchen, where she flipped on the light switch—and nothing happened. Sensing another unpleasant mystery, she hurried through the first floor of the house, flipping switches and confirming that it wasn't just the kitchen light that was out. The living room, the dining room and office on the main floor, and the bedrooms and bath upstairs were all out. That put a wrench in her plans to turn on the TV and find out what was going on with the moon and to use the CB radio in the office to contact her father. Neither was possible without electricity, but fortunately Kit knew how to get that. She jogged back out to the side of the barn where her father kept a gas-powered generator. Given that it was thirty miles to Red Lodge as the crow flies and a good fifty over the winding county road that dead-ended here, you didn't want to be without power, especially in the winter when the county power lines were not always reliable.

Kit's father had insisted she become familiar with every piece of equipment that kept the ranch operating. Today she was glad for her father's survivalist tendencies. She soon had the generator on and humming.

Inside, she tried the TV again but got nothing but static on any of the satellite channels. She tried the CB radio but found no one to talk with. The local sheriff was usually at the other end of channel one, but not today. The occasional trucker or neighboring rancher might be expected, but again no luck. And much more alarmingly, her father was not at the other end of channel three like he ought to be. Maybe he was away from his jeep, busy with a rotted fencepost or any of a dozen things that could keep a rancher busy longer than he planned.

Frustrated in her attempts to get in touch with the world, Kit plunked down at the table in the kitchen nook, where the breakfast dishes had been left when she'd hurried out to load the bull this morning. She picked a leftover biscuit off the serving plate and spread some jam on it. Nibbling the biscuit to satisfy her grumbling stomach, she felt the sunlight streaking in across her shoulders. Its warmth soon made her feel a little more relaxed. Things would be okay when her father got back.

***

Chase pulled into the first self-serve gas station on the outskirts of Red Lodge but as he stopped at the pump island, he began to wonder whether the station was open. The convenience store looked dark and deserted. He stepped out and swiped his credit card in the slot on the pump, but the display was blank.

"You won't get any gas out of there for a while, mister." The voice made Chase jump. A middle-aged man in a hunting cap and plaid coat came out of the convenience store. He had a shotgun slung over the crook of his right elbow.

"I'm getting low—" Chase began to explain.

"Gonna get lower," the man interrupted. "Power's out. Power's out all over town. Besides, we got martial law. Gas's rationed. Haven't you heard?"

Chase was dumbstruck. Seeing his confusion, the man spat some tobacco juice. "You been up in the hills or something?"

"Yeah, and I haven't been able to get anything on my radio."

The man cast a glance at the moon. "That's some sort of alien death ray up there. Whole world's under attack. We got hit here in Red Lodge. Did y'see that?" He pointed down the main drag. A quarter mile from them was a burnt patch of ground about fifty feet across, in the middle of which was a tangled heap of charred metal beams. "That's what's wrong with the radio. Moon ray took out the radio tower. Good country music. Gonna miss it."

Chase stood speechless, trying to get his mind around the catastrophe happening as they spoke. He had expected trouble but had no inkling the news would be this shocking.

"Made a hell of a roar," the man went on. "I run out of the store to see, and it was already like that." He waved a hand dismissively at the smoldering heap of wreckage. "We'll make do without it, and if whoever did that comes around here, I got this." He patted the double barrels of his shotgun. "Same goes for people who can't understand a 'closed' sign. I'll take care of me and mine."

Chase moved toward his car door. "I'm just a little low on gas for where I need to go."

"You look like a decent fellow," the man said. "I'd let you fill up but the pump don't work without power. 'Fraid you're stuck."

"I guess I am," Chase admitted. He got in and closed the truck door, firing the engine as the man walked back to the food mart. His gas gauge read one-eighth. Maybe, just maybe, that was enough to get him home to Silver Gate. On the other hand, it would be plenty to get him back to the Danielses' place. He didn't have an invitation and he wouldn't have enough gas to get back to this station if they turned him away, but something told him to go back up there. He couldn't say exactly why, but he thought it might have something to do with Kit Daniels. If the aircraft that crash-landed behind Sandstone Mountain was part of this, then big trouble might have come calling at Twin Creeks Ranch and Kit might not know it.

He pulled out of the gas station and turned toward the ranch. "Oh boy," he muttered. "Am I a sucker for a pretty face, or what?"

***

Sitting in the warm sun of the breakfast nook, Kit let her mind wander over the peculiarities of the morning. Ray beams from the moon. Impossible. Dr. Ogilvey's fossil civilization. That was impossible too. What she wanted to do most right now was to ride Lucky up to the prairie, find her Dad and ask him what he thought about all this. But she knew it was possible he had already come down from the prairie and driven into town before she got back. If so, she would wind up high on the plateau under that flickering moon with only Lucky and 600 head of cattle to answer her questions.

No, she'd wait on her father, at least for a while. She wished she hadn't been so short with Chase Armstrong. By now he probably knew exactly what was going on. He'd be telling her about it if she'd been open to him calling or coming back with news from Red Lodge.

And why not be nice to a man as interesting as Chase? Sure, her father had gotten huffy this morning, talking about wolves, but she had no cause to be standoffish. Particularly since he was...

"Awfully good looking," she sighed, running over in her mind how he had looked when she first saw him at the house and again at Dr. Ogilvey's dig. He was broad-shouldered and well built, tall and tanned. His Park Service clothes reminded her how her mother used to talk about how good-looking her father had been in an Army uniform. And there was an animal attraction in the way his dark hair hung down from the back of his green cap, a little long and unruly. The wolf-head patch on the front of the cap gave him a wild, untamed appeal.

The fact was, Chase Armstrong was a darn sight more interesting than most young men who came around Twin Creeks Ranch. Take the fellows her father kept sicking on her: local boys, ranchers' sons who looked her over like they would size up a brood mare. Chase was nothing like them. The words stitched in the borders of the emblem on his hat, "Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Program," symbolized a man who looked beyond his own time and place and saw the world in a larger view.

Kit kicked off her cowboy boots and pulled her feet up underneath her on the leather cushion of the bench, letting her mind ramble farther.

"It would be nice," she murmured, "if you'd drive up in your truck right now, Chase." She imagined him pulling in, scattering the chickens that were pecking in the loose hay below the barn loft. Then he'd get out and spot her sitting in the window. He'd wave and flash a smile. She'd smile back at him and say to herself, "Here we go."

He would stride purposefully toward her like a jaunty knight-errant fresh off his steed, and she'd smile regally from her seat in the palace window.

Suddenly her daydream was interrupted by the very sort of thing she had imagined. Chickens flapped their wings and scattered in all directions as a shadow crossed the gravel in front of the barn. But when Kit saw the maker of the shadow her fantasy ended abruptly. This wasn't the hero of the story—it was the dragon! Her eyes widened. A huge tan-colored animal had appeared, much larger than any grizzly she had ever seen, and nothing like a grizzly. It was a gigantic leather-skinned creature walking on two legs. "A tyrannosaurus!" she gasped. Waves of panic rolled through her and she wished desperately that this was the most vivid nightmare of her life, but it was too terribly real.

The creature stood nearly as tall as the second story of the barn and its long reptilian tail stretched out twenty feet behind it. Small taloned hands hung down from its chest, tiny in comparison to the immense head with massive jaws lined with rows of dagger-like teeth. Kit's initial disbelief washed away in a flood of sheer terror and a small scream involuntarily escaped from her throat. The creature reacted immediately. With a quick, eagle-like turn of its head it fixed its cold eyes on her. The titanic body instantly froze in place with one foot off the ground, more agilely than she would have imagined for such a huge beast. It paused in perfect balance between the massive head and long tail. The red eyes focused on her with a predatory intensity that riveted her in place. Turning imperceptibly toward her, it lowered its foot slowly until the three huge talons trod the ground gingerly, without making a sound.

_It's stalking me,_ she thought. Hoping if she held still it would lose interest, she sat motionless in the window. Maybe the movie _Jurassic Park_ had it right. Maybe if you just didn't move. Nevertheless, the tyrannosaur lifted its other foot and took another slow, stalking pace toward her. It lowered its snout to her level, keeping its sharp eyes fixed on her. Instinctively she knew that if she made a move it would charge. The beast was three, maybe four giant strides from her. It was sizing her up and picking its moment, trying to close the distance before making a final rush. Her heart pounded hard and she felt she was about to faint, but she knew her survival depended on getting out of the creature's sight. As inconspicuously as possible she lowered her feet to the floor, but even this slight shift was enough for the creature. It opened its fang-filled mouth and charged straight for her, letting out a blood-curdling roar. Its feet thundered so heavily that the plates rattled on the table. Kit shrieked at the top of her lungs and leaped up and away from the window. She dove sideways as the beast closed the last few paces and the entire window filled with the sight of its tooth-lined maw.

She caught her foot on a table leg and went sprawling, landing hard on her back just as the huge jaws burst through the window frame. Slivers of broken glass shimmered and spun away in all directions, seemingly in slow motion, as the scaly monstrosity erupted inward through the frame and its massive jaws snapped shut with a thump that reverberated in Kit's ears. The animal's chin skidded across the table top, clattering dishes and silverware before it.

A welter of terrifying sights and sounds registered in Kit's shocked brain, all seemingly in slow motion. Glass fragments and splintered wood from the window frame sprayed over her and scattered across the kitchen floor. The horrific face of the creature paused, perhaps a yard from her, one eye leering at her menacingly from under a scaly brow. Along the nape of the powerful neck stood a shock of bristling hackles like those along the back of an angry bear. The rows of teeth lining the yard-long jaws were a sickening dull yellow color and longer than the table knives strewn around her on the floor. Kit was mesmerized momentarily by the glistening saliva coating the fangs.

The beast's nostrils flared and inhaled a great volume of air, taking her scent. Then it exhaled a gust of hellish, fetid, reptilian breath.

And that eye! It stared straight into hers with an intensity that froze her in place for an agonizing moment until she forced herself with a desperate effort of will to get to her hands and knees. As she did so she sensed, more than saw, a thrusting motion starting in the animal's neck and rolling forward. She ducked away just as the tyrannosaurus lashed its head sideways and snapped at her. The heavy jaws closed inches behind her back with a resounding _chumpf!_

She scrambled on hands and knees to the living room doorway and got to her feet by leaning on the jamb, trying desperately to steady her rubbery legs, while the tyrannosaurus pulled its head back out of the shattered window. She felt a flicker of momentary relief as it disappeared from sight, but it was gone only an instant before the entire rear wall of the kitchen splintered inward like matchwood. The tyrannosaurus had reared back and one kick of a huge hind foot had swept downward and cleared the barrier between it and its prey. Then, while the two-by-fours of the wall and shards of broken windowsill were still careening across the floor, it thrust its whole body into the opening and those horrific jaws rushed toward Kit again. Another shriek tore from her throat and she staggered backwards into the living room, tumbling across the arm of the couch and falling to the floor. The beast pressed forward until its head surged right into the living room after her. She balled up in fear, knowing this was the end—it had her!

Just as it seemed those jaws would clamp down on her, a shudder went through the entire frame of the house and the creature's forward motion stopped. Its back had slammed into the ceiling beam of the kitchen's outer wall. The impact made the monster stumble and it crashed down belly-first onto the kitchen table, which crumpled and shattered as the beast's downward momentum carried it thundering to the floor. Its head smashed down just short of the couch. Momentarily reprieved, Kit stood up, ran to the front door and turned the knob. Glancing behind her, she was surprised to see the animal withdrawing itself backward from the wreckage of the kitchen. It stood up outside the shattered back of the house and strode away, disappearing from sight.

Kit stood frozen at the door, her hand on the knob, her mind racing. She knew the rex was somewhere near the opposite end of the house. That would give her a head start if she ran outside. But where would she run to? If the tyrannosaurus spotted her out in the open it would easily run her down. She peered back through the gaping hole in the kitchen and could see all the way out to the barn. The thing had vanished. She strained her ears but there was no sound other than her own spasmodic breathing and the audible pounding of her heart.

It was waiting for her to make the next move.

Rather than go outside, she released the doorknob and tiptoed up the stairs that rose from the entry hallway. At the top of the staircase she ducked into her bedroom and crouched beside her four-poster bed, huddling against the wall on the side away from the window. Then she fought to control her fright, to quit gasping for breath, to keep from sobbing out loud. There was no sound at all from the monster outside. She settled against the wall and became as silent and motionless as stone.

# PART TWO: EARTHFALL

## CHAPTER 6

Major Lewis strode quickly through a fluorescent-lit whitewashed tunnel in the underground military complex at NORAD. Beneath the arched ceiling of heavily reinforced concrete, her footsteps rang out on the cold pavement and echoed around her. Her movements were as sharp as the creases in her blue Air Force uniform. Other soldiers and staff in gray jump suits hurried past her on foot or in electric carts, carrying out their tasks in a rush of activity. The echoes of a hundred footsteps and the whine of the motors conveyed a sense of the frantic haste with which NORAD was being readied—for what? Uncertain that any amount of military preparations would make a difference in this conflict, she quickened her pace still further.

She turned and passed through a doorway, shooting a quick salute to the two helmeted, machine gun-bearing guards flanking it. Entering NORAD's main command center, she approached a small group of men and women clustered around General Davis and staring at a computer screen. They were discussing the map that glowed on the display in front of them, a map of their own location and the vicinity around Colorado Springs. General Davis nodded as she joined the group.

"I hope you've got some good news for us, Major."

She hesitated, clearing her throat. "At the risk of sounding impertinent, sir, I have good news and bad news."

General Davis glanced around the assembly of command center officers for a moment before responding. He couldn't get over this god-awful lack of seniority at such a life-and-death meeting. There was an Army lieutenant colonel, an Air Force major, two lieutenants from the Navy, and a Marine captain. This was all the brass, if you could call it that, he had been able to scrape up from within NORAD. From outside, God only knew if they would ever see another officer. And Davis was concerned about how demoralized these young officers might be, so he opted to start with the positive.

"First the good news."

Lewis nodded. "We're getting some responses to our radio broadcasts. We've been sending on every band we can manage with the equipment that's left to us and it seems like there are plenty of units out in the field."

"That's good to hear. Any with combat capabilities?"

"Basically just small equipment so far, sir. There are vehicle radios by the dozens, some CB radios and a couple of ham operators."

"But nothing big like an intact military installation or an airport somewhere?"

"Negative, sir. And that's where the bad news comes in."

Davis glanced again at the young officers gathered around him. They had their warrior faces on but he worried about fear lurking behind the tough façades. Just the same, he had to ask the next question.

"And the bad news is—?"

"There's not much battle hardware left out there. The military units that have checked in have been hit about as heavily as Fort Carson. The people were spared but their heavy equipment has been fried."

Davis again scanned the faces. He knew they were all, to a man or woman, fighting a hopeless feeling in their guts like the one that hadn't stopped gnawing at his own intestines.

"Okay," he began, and then stopped. He realized that his first job was somehow to inspire confidence if he was going to take charge of anything more than a surrender. He cleared his throat.

"You've been called together here because you are the ranking officers present with me in this facility. Given the way things have gone in the last twenty-four hours, you might even be the ranking officers in your entire services. We don't know. Some of you have heard a lot about what has been going on, others only a little. Given the amount of destruction out there, we are forced to assume we are the ultimate authorities in the U.S. military. We will operate that way until we receive orders from a higher authority, which may be never. But I can tell you one thing. We are going to prevail. Understood?"

Davis scanned the faces around him nodding in stoic agreement. Even the idea that there may be no higher command left, so earthshaking in its import, got barely a sniff from any of them. Good. It was a time for toughness. He addressed Lewis again.

"And in the bad news category, what more can you tell us about the incoming bogeys?"

"Not much additional, sir, but we've got confirmation from people on the ground in Montana that these are some sort of large transport, definitely of an alien design. That's all we know for certain."

Davis spread his hands wide, as if about to deliver a sermon.

"So folks, there you have it. First thing that happens today is we're hit by a death ray from space and now we've got an invasion on our hands. As you know, we weren't exactly ready for this. It's like Pearl Harbor or 911 all over again, but it's on a worldwide scale this time. From what we've heard, we can assume just about every military target and every communication system on earth has been hit by this energy beam. The loss of military effectiveness has been pretty complete, whether we're talking U.S. or foreign forces. My guess is, whoever is up at Phaeon has been cataloging targets over the last two years since the Recon One astronauts disappeared. And now that they've opened fire, they're knocking out assets throughout the world."

"As to our situation here, we've been hammered on too, but as you know this is the world's most impenetrable fortress. We've got a whole mountain overhead. So far, it has served us well."

He pointed at the map on the screen.

"What I want from you people now is a plan of action. We'll start with local defense as an immediate priority. Given that Fort Carson is out of action, we're going to need to defend this base ourselves. Meanwhile, Major Lewis, you'll keep patching together a communications grid. Once we get ourselves organized we're going to start developing a plan for taking this battle back to the enemy. Now first of all, we need some clues as to how soon there might be a land threat to this facility. Holly, what can you tell us about the progress of the invasion force?"

"We're starting to get some information from ground observers. There are ten or eleven bogeys on the ground so far, sir."

"In what locations?"

"All in Montana."

"Montana?" Davis stared blankly at her for a moment. "I could understand Washington D.C. or here, but why are they concentrating on Montana?"

"Don't know, sir. We've got a pretty good network of small units organized up there. National Guard, police—"

"Where in Montana?"

"At Fort Peck Reservoir, according to a couple of guardsmen on the scene."

"Reservoir?"

"Yes, sir. The bogeys are landing on water, most of them. They're amphibious gliders according to the observers. Big gliders."

"And disembarking what? Have they seen what's on board?"

"No, sir. They are too far away for a clear view."

"Well, tell them to get closer. And, would it be possible to get a video feed from them? Some pictures?"

"Might be possible. We'll have to work on it."

"Well, do so. Now, what was that about most of them? Have some come down elsewhere?"

"Two have gone down somewhere in southern Montana. We're not quite sure where yet. Just anecdotal reports."

"Well, follow up on that too, will you? I don't get this Montana thing. Why there?"

He asked this last question to the group but neither Lewis nor any of the others had anything to offer. Seething with frustration, he drew in a measured breath. "Fine then, let's get some defenses up around this rat's nest before they come in after us. And Holly, tell me immediately if you find something I can use to fight back."

***

Billowing dust trailed the Humvee roaring along a dirt road through the mesquite-brush desert of southern New Mexico. The crackling heat made the Hueco Mountains shimmer in the distance. Tank troop Captain Victor Suarez was behind the wheel, sweltering in full combat dress from boots and desert-tan fatigues right up to his standard-issue dark sunglasses and fabric-covered Kevlar field helmet. He glanced at his second in command, Lieutenant Joe Abercromby, in the passenger seat. Crom looked as hot as Suarez felt but there would be no bending of the dress codes, no out-of-uniform duty today. They had to be at the ready. Suarez wondered how Crom was feeling. Sweaty? Sure, that was normal on the training grounds of Fort Bliss. But apart from the heat, how about scared? Another glance told him Crom looked calm enough, although you couldn't really see anything behind the dark glasses. Of course, if Crom felt anything like Suarez did, then you might as well call it fear. Neither Crom nor anyone else had said anything about being scared, but everyone in Fox Troop was acting that way. As their leader, it was Suarez's job to know they were worried and confused by orders that told them to stop their tank training exercise and sit still in the desert. Orders that told them to take cover and keep silent. Orders that told them to await further orders that never came. And orders he and Crom were now defying because of smoke they had seen rising in the sky since just after daybreak.

They had left their column of Abrams M1A2 tanks ten miles behind on the target gunnery range to come on this unauthorized reconnaissance drive together, understanding that they would back each other if they were caught and court-martialed. The order they were disobeying had come from headquarters over the secure encrypted channel. It had read, "Abort training exercise. Establish defensive formation with camouflage cover. Maintain strict radio silence and await further orders. This is not a drill. Condition RED."

Condition RED. That meant War. Real War. But with whom?

Captain Suarez's tank with the name "Fox One" stenciled in black on its desert-tan cannon barrel, now sat smack in the middle of the desert under camouflage netting as part of a defensive ring of M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks and Bradley armored personnel carriers. That armor, plus transport trucks and support vehicles, made up his command: a hundred twenty-five fighting men and 27 machines; Armored Cavalry Unit F, code-named Fox Troop.

They had been detailed to target practice because their proficiency had fallen short during the previous week's training. Remedial gunnery was an embarrassment to Suarez personally, but he had intended to correct Fox's shortcomings by making them the most effective shooters in the entire battalion. They still had a way to go but they were hard workers and he was confident they were the best troops a commander could hope for.

The thing was, they had sat still today on the target practice range until the desert heat had them all about to go stir-crazy. And following the sun as it rose up the sky was that damn moon, with that blue laser light. Didn't matter who, tankers or truckers, medics or Humvee drivers, they were all asking Suarez what it meant. The moon laser reminded everyone of the target-designating lasers on their tank gun barrels. Didn't take a military genius to come up with that idea, or to know it meant trouble.

And then there was the smoke cloud. Long and black, it had stretched across the sky to the south of them through the morning without letup. It was right in the direction of their Army Battalion Headquarters at Fort Bliss on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas. That's where the cloud rose from and that's what worried them most. It kept growing until it stained half the sky a foreboding black. Everybody in Suarez's own tank had popped up to have a look at it and make worried noises. His driver, his gunner and his loader had all begged him to go find out what was going on and then get Fox Troop moving again. They were getting buggy from the heat and low on rations. Most importantly, if there was action they wanted to be in it.

And the radio silence was too complete. They hadn't heard a peep out of headquarters since the first message bringing the orders that now kept the troop motionless. Other than that, the team in the communications vehicle hadn't heard a thing on any military channel. They hadn't even been able to pick up the usual police band and civilian signals. Nothing. When their link to the global-positioning satellite network crashed, everybody agreed it was way too quiet out there.

The countryside through which Suarez drove was studded with low desert ocotillo and mesquite brush. It was almost flat on the desert floor between the mountain ranges, except there was just enough curvature to the terrain that you couldn't see any great distance ahead. When they finally reached a rise where they could get a look to the south over the remaining five miles to Fort Bliss, Suarez gasped.

"Sweet mother of Jesus!" He stopped the Humvee on the crest of the rise and stood up through the open top to take in the scene. The entire Army base and adjacent airstrip were billowing thick black smoke. He reached for his binoculars as Crom stood up beside him, and together they looked in silent horror at what lay in front of them. It confirmed the worst fears that had run through everyone's mind this morning.

"This is for real, man," said Suarez. "Fort Bliss has been taken out."

From the vantage point of the rise, he could scan his binoculars across the entire broad Rio Grande Valley below him to take in a frightening scene. Buildings all over the base were either burnt black or still billowing smoke and flames. And over it all the sky was streaked with the long black cloud that surged out of the ruins and towered straight into the stratosphere.

A bolt of fear swept through Suarez as he realized that his family, Maria and the kids, were closer than he was to the danger. Quickly, he swept his binocular view across the flat landscape until he found the family barracks area. To his great relief the little neighborhood seemed undamaged. Nothing was wrong with the rows of stuccoed houses or the streets lined with cottonwood trees as far as he could tell.

"Hey," he elbowed Crom. "Take a look at the barracks. They're okay."

"I know. I'm looking at 'em."

Suarez took a moment to glance across the river to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. It was mostly unharmed, with just one or two small columns of smoke rising. His grandparents were probably okay then, too.

He turned his attention back to the military base. What had been the headquarters office buildings and communications center the day before were now burning piles of rubble. Nearer to Suarez, at the airfield, a fuel tank burned furiously, shooting orange flames hundreds of feet into the air and sending billows of inky smoke skyward. Yesterday there had been rows of jets, transport planes and an Air Cavalry Battalion of attack helicopters along the edge of the airstrip. Today each aircraft was a pile of wreckage set in a circular patch of charred pavement.

As they watched, another bluish-white light beam emanated from the moon and lanced downward to strike an intact fuel storage tank just beyond the airstrip. At its touch, the fuel tank ripped apart in a tremendous detonation that sent up a mushroom-shaped fireball. Then the beam leapt quickly across the airstrip to a damaged jet fighter that hadn't been demolished completely in previous attacks. In seconds the jet too was enveloped in flames. Then the beam vanished as quickly as it had appeared and the quarter moon floated silently in the eastern sky.

"I can't believe it." Suarez shook his head in grim disbelief. "That light from the moon is bad business, whatever it is."

"Russians?" asked Crom. "Chinese? What are they doing up there?"

Suarez's mind boggled. He tried to imagine what he would tell his troopers when he got back to them. They had known instinctively that the light was trouble, but how it fit in to the Condition Red alert hadn't been clear until now. What he was seeing was beyond belief, beyond reason.

"What the hell is this, anyway?" he wondered. "The Apocalypse?"

Crom sat back down in his seat. "Come on Vic, let's get moving. I want to go down there and see my wife."

Suarez sat down slowly and put his hands on the wheel. He wanted to go home too. He wanted to rush right down there and get Maria and the kids and split for the hills. But he needed a moment to think. Something gnawed at him. Crom watched him expectantly.

"No," he finally said. "We're not going down there. We're going back to the troop."

Crom's face fell. "You gotta be kidding. Our families are down there. Come on Vic, there's no one giving us orders anymore. Headquarters is blown away! I want to see Jessica. I gotta know she's okay."

"If we go down to see our families, Crom, I know you won't come back to the troop with me." Suarez felt the corners of his own mouth turn down to match Crom's scowl. What they had to do next would be painful for them both but that was too bad.

"Look, Crom, you're not in command here. If I said, 'Okay, let's go down there,' then you'd be off the hook. You could go home if you wanted. But I can't do that. I've got the responsibility of command."

Crom was starting to look frantic. "What are you saying? We're supposed to leave our families down there and hang out in the desert? You're crazy, man. What if they're in trouble? What if they're hurt?"

"Then I _know_ you won't be coming back with me."

"How can you be so heartless, man?"

"I got a heart in here too." He touched a thumb to his chest. "And it's aching to know about my own wife and kids. But I know my duty. And duty comes first."

"No, it doesn't. Not now. Not when everything's in ruins. The chain of command's busted, Vic. Just let me go have one look."

"No. If the chain of command is busted, then it starts again right here." He touched the thumb to his chest again. "You and me are still in a chain of command, even if we're the only link. I can't go down there and I can't afford to lose my right-hand man. We're going back to the troop to wait for orders."

"Orders? There aren't going to _be_ any more orders. There aren't _ever_ going to be any more orders." Crom yanked on his door latch, kicked the door open and got out. "You go back to the troop if you want. I'm walking home from here."

Suarez's temper flared and he kicked his own door open. "Hey, man! You stop right there." He caught up to Crom, who had started walking quick-time down the road to El Paso. "This is insubordination," he shouted. "I read about it in training manuals but I never expected it from my best friend." He squared off in front of Crom, resisting an urge to pull his pistol.

"Out of the way," Crom gave him a shove with all his might and that was enough. Suarez doubled his fist and swung it, catching Crom on the side of the chin and knocking him down into the dust.

Crom sat up, shook his head, pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed his jaw. There was a fierce but pained look in his eyes, one that mirrored Suarez's own feelings.

"Look," Suarez began. "We gotta think about more than just ourselves." He extended a hand down to help his friend get up.

"What about our families?" Crom asked as he took the hand.

"Maybe the only way we can help them is to keep the troop together."

On his feet again, Crom thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away to stare at the base. Suarez heard him cursing under his breath almost too faintly to be heard. He put a sympathetic hand on his friend's shoulder but Crom shrugged it off.

"Come on, man," Suarez pleaded. "Get back in. We gotta remember who we are. We're soldiers. It's our job to follow orders. Let's get back to the troop."

Crom hesitated another moment, letting one frustrated sob escape his throat. Then he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, put his sunglasses on and got in the Humvee. He slammed the door, folded his arms across his chest and stared down at his feet. There was nothing more to be said. Suarez turned the Humvee in a tight circle on the shoulder of the road and pushed the accelerator to the floor. As they sped back in the direction of the troop, he glanced into the rear view mirror and caught a glimpse of his neighborhood shrinking into the distance. He could just make out the roofline of his own house, still untouched by the beam and shaded under the arch of the black cloud. It almost looked peaceful but it gave him a pain in his chest worse than any gunshot could have.

_Good-bye,_ Maria, he thought. _God keep you and the kids until we meet again._

***

At the end of the county road the asphalt surface ran out and Chase drove onto the gravel of the Danielses' long entry drive. He passed beneath the ranch gate, a simple but impressive structure made by suspending a wooden placard between two ponderosa pine-trunk uprights, one on either side of the driveway. The placard, hung by chains from a third pine-trunk cross-member, was of oak and carved with the words, "Twin Creeks Ranch." Chase glanced up and noticed another streak high in the sky, traveling northeast like the ones he had seen that morning. The incoming spaceship left a pale whitish trail of vapor, seeming to write a challenge across the heavens. Chase didn't know where it was headed, or care, so long as it didn't land nearby. He took some comfort in the fact that it was too far away for its sonic boom to be heard.

At the moment the ranch complex looked quiet. That was good. From the front, the house looked fine, though deserted. He pulled up near the big porch that spanned the front of the house and glanced around the place. Everything seemed calm, from the big red barn behind the house to the equipment shed on its right where a tractor sat beside a cultivator, to the garage where Kit's red Beetle was parked. He swept a look past the low animal loafing sheds and chicken coop bounding the near end of the pasture and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except maybe that there was nothing going on. This morning, there had been a dairy cow in the pasture behind the white boards of the fence and chickens by the barn, but now there was nothing living in sight. He glanced up the pine-log exterior of the house to the upstairs windows but they were dark and curtained. There was an eerie calm about the place. Everything was too quiet.

He got out and mounted the three steps to the front porch, opened the weathered screen door and knocked solidly on the door. Then he stepped back and waited for Kit to answer.

After a minute went by with no response of any kind, he gently tried the handle and the door opened.

"Kit?" he called. "Mr. Daniels?" There was no response. He called out louder. "Kit?"

Kit's reply, thin and muffled, came to him from somewhere on the next floor.

Sensing that something was wrong, Chase quickly climbed the stairs that led up from the landing at the front door. At the top of the stairway was a short hall with four doors arranged two on each side. The one ahead to his left was open and he saw a four-poster bed with a bright yellow floral counterpane on it, just the sort of room he would expect Kit to have. He stepped inside and saw her crouching on the floor on the far side of the bed with her back pressed into the corner of the room, staring at him as if she were seeing a ghost.

He went to her swiftly and knelt in front of her. Her eyes were red like she'd been crying.

"Kit?" he grasped her by the shoulders. "Kit, what is it?"

She stayed silent, trembling and in a state of shock. He shook her gently, getting her to focus her eyes on his. She searched his face for a moment like she was struggling to remember who he was. Suddenly she reached up and grabbed him around the neck with both arms and pressed her face into his shoulder.

"Oh, it's you, Chase," she sobbed. "Thank God you came back."

He held her for a few minutes until she regained her composure. Then she told him of her nightmarish experience with the tyrannosaurus as they went downstairs and raced around the house making hasty preparations to leave. Though the story was incredible, he had only to look at the gaping hole in the kitchen wall to know that every word was true. Something immense had been here and she was lucky to be alive. She threw a few articles of clothing into a suitcase and then they began making a plan of action. Kit wanted to drive north to Absarokee but Chase preferred going back to Red Lodge.

"I don't think it would be too wise to head north," he said. "That's the direction those streaks in the sky were moving."

"But that's the direction my father went this morning."

"If he's disappeared up there, it's all the more reason to get help from Red Lodge."

She nodded silently. They hurried out the front door and down the porch steps, where Chase tossed her suitcase into the back of his pickup.

"We can't get away from here too fast," he said as he climbed into his side of the truck. But she stopped with her hand on the passenger door handle.

"Come on," he urged her through the open window. "Let's get out of here before that thing comes back."

"No, wait." She motioned for him to stay put, and hurried toward the barn. "If we're leaving, I've got to let my horse out of her stall."

Chase opened his mouth to speak but thought better. He sat back in the driver's seat and waited while she ran the fifty paces across the driveway to the barn. She disappeared inside for just a moment and then reappeared leading Lucky by the halter. She spanked the mare on the rump and sent her galloping away kicking and whinnying, headed for the nearby birch woods.

As Kit hurried back toward the truck, her Border collie come out of the barn with his hackles standing tall, barking furiously at something behind the far side of the building. Kit broke into a run for the pickup as the cause of the dog's excitement made itself apparent—the tyrannosaurus! It reared its head right over the barn and spotted Kit. A wave of adrenaline rippled through Chase. He shouted, "Look out, Kit!"

She glanced over her shoulder and screamed. The beast came around the corner of the barn in a charge that was as swift as Lucky's gallop. This time it had Kit out in the open. She was midway between the barn and the house and fifty yards from the pickup. She instinctively began running directly away from the beast and toward the truck, where Chase was already in motion.

He pulled his 30-06 off the gun rack and grabbed his box of shells from the glove box. He got out and knelt on the ground beside the truck and stuffed a bullet into the breach, but the bolt jammed without closing. He cursed the customization he'd done to make it accept either shells or tranquilizer darts. A screwdriver was what he needed to clear the jam, but his was misplaced somewhere inside the cab. "Where the heck is it?" he growled, frantically tearing through the contents of the glove box, the map pocket...

He shot a glance at the beast towering over Kit. Unable to outrun it, she had seconds to live if he couldn't un-stick the bolt, and maybe even then he'd be too late to save her.

He reached under the driver's seat and felt nothing but floor.

Kit had only a fleeting second to wonder what Chase was doing before she sensed the creature directly over her. Acting on instinct, she leaped sideways to the ground and the heavy jaws clamped shut just inches above her back. For the second time today she went down flat on the ground and was forced to turn over and look up into that horrible scaly face. And as before, she rolled away just as it lashed out sideways with its fangs snapping at her. On an impulse, she got up and ran straight under the beast. Just for an instant she was directly between the huge taloned feet and legs that rose on either side of her like tree trunks. Then the monster wheeled with incredible agility and stepped to the side fixing its red eyes upon her again. A sickening dread filled her heart. This time there would be no escape. The animal could take her easily if she sprinted for either the house or the barn. She hesitated for just an instant but that was sufficient for it to lift one foot and knock her to the ground. She sprawled out headlong and the foot came down, pinning her thighs under a single taloned toe. Then the tyrannosaurus lowered its great head and eyed her for a moment. She struggled, but her arms and legs had gone all rubbery.

Saliva dripped from rows of fangs. Kit's heart pounded as fast as that of a trapped mouse. The creature slowly opened its jaws to take her.

Suddenly Zippy was beside her, snarling and charging in to snap at the end of the creature's nose. He succeeded in drawing the tyrannosaurus's attention, dashing away just as its jaws snapped shut behind the tip of his tail. The old dog wasn't finished. He spun and scurried in again, barking ferociously as the monster wheeled to take a giant step after him. When it lifted its foot from Kit's legs, she somehow found the strength to get to her feet and run the short distance to the machine shed. Inside, she threw herself down between the tractor and the cultivator and looked out from behind the tractor's wheels.

To her right, Zippy had outrun the monster and disappeared around the side of the barn. To her left, Chase was out of the truck and kneeling with his rifle slung across his knee. He fumbled frantically with the bolt, dropping a cartridge case and scattering dozens of glittering metal shells across the ground. While he scrambled to pick one up, Kit saw the tyrannosaurus coming after her again. It had abandoned its charge after Zippy and turned its attention back to her. Lowering its nose to the ground and sniffing, it came toward the machine shed following her scent like a bloodhound and moving unerringly toward the spot where she crouched between the farm machines. Realizing her hiding place was useless, Kit got up and ran for the back of the shed. The tyrannosaurus immediately spotted her and rushed at her, bending low to thrust its head inside. She retreated to the back wall of the shed, looking futilely for a path to safety. The creature opened its jaws for her again and she turned and pressed herself against the wall. Beside her was a tool rack and her hand touched a pitchfork. She grabbed it off the rack and wheeled just in time to swing its tines into the beast's jaws. Summoning every bit of strength, she drove the tines in under the tongue. Simultaneously, the tyrannosaurus's momentum forced the handle back until it jammed against the shed wall and the entire length of the tines sank deep into the animal's maw.

The tyrannosaurus uttered a hideous roar and reeled backward out of the shed, shaking its head violently from side to side until the pitchfork dislodged and went flying through the air.

There was a momentary pause while the beast cocked its huge head and glared at her, working its massive jaws to and fro as if measuring the damage done. Undaunted, it took a pace forward and she shrank back against the wall. At that instant there was a boom from Chase's rifle and almost simultaneously she heard a sharp _thwack_ as a bullet hit somewhere on the flank of the beast. The animal flinched at the impact and reared its head away from the shed, uttering yet another deafening roar. This roar from the tyrannosaurus, however, was answered by another equally powerful roar from Chase's rifle. Again, Kit heard a bullet hit the animal.

Flinching again at the second bullet's impact, the tyrannosaurus turned and glared at Chase, issuing another bellow that shook dust loose from the rafters above Kit. But the beast took a step backward this time as if it were registering real pain from the bullets. Zippy charged in while it was distracted by Chase and bit down on the tip of its tail, snarling and shaking the tip in his teeth until the beast issued another enraged roar and whipped its tail, flinging Zippy through the air and slamming him into the side of the house. Howling in pain, Zippy had had enough. He limped away around the corner of the house and the tyrannosaurus turned to square off against Chase again, but Chase was ready with another bullet. This shot hit the animal in the breast, throwing out a spatter of bloody flesh. Finally, the monster decided it had had enough. Letting out one final rumbling growl it wheeled and thundered away, disappearing behind the barn. A moment later it crashed into the nearby woods, its heavy footfalls fading into the distance accompanied by the snapping of tree branches. Kit stood and moved toward the front of the shed, but her legs were wobbly. A wave of faintness swept through her and she stopped to brace herself against a fender of the tractor.

Chase ran to her side with his rifle in hand. "Come on," he urged, putting an arm around her waist and half-carrying, half-dragging her toward his truck. He helped her into the passenger seat, ran and jumped behind the wheel, started the engine and tore out of the driveway in reverse. Kit closed her eyes, feeling spent and nauseous as the lurching truck tossed her head from side to side. She was trembling, shocked and drained. Her heart was sore from nearly bursting.

In a moment Chase had the pickup careening along the blacktop road to Red Lodge at eighty miles an hour. Kit had never been so glad in all her life to be leaving the ranch behind.

## CHAPTER 7

With every turn of the road he put between them and the tyrannosaurus, Chase's mood lifted. To have fought with such a creature and survived was incredible. Going through it all with Kit Daniels somehow thrilled him beyond words. As seconds went by and their distance from the ranch house increased without further sight of the monster, he began to chuckle. Overdosed on an excess of adrenaline, his laughter quickly escalated to semi-hysterics.

"Can you believe that?" he shouted at Kit.

She had sunk into the corner of her seat and was staring at him. "What's your problem?" she asked.

"Pretty good rescue, huh?" His mirth faded when he glanced at her sour expression.

"Rescue? Seems like I had to do quite a lot of it myself."

"Oh, sure," he agreed. "You're quite a hand with a pitchfork. I'm impressed. I want you with me next time I take on a T rex."

She let out an exasperated sigh. "What's so funny about me almost getting eaten?"

"Sorry," he said. "I just can't quite believe we're still alive."

She wore her sour face resolutely. "It wrecked my house."

"Yeah," Chase agreed. "But you wrecked his mouth pretty good with that pitch fork. And I got a couple of good shots in, even if I do have to say so myself."

"Ooh," she said sarcastically. "My hero."

"C'mon," he said. "Lighten up. Think what a team we make. This is one hell of a first date if you ask me."

"Date?" She clucked her tongue. "I don't know what in the world you're talking about. This is no date. It's a struggle for survival."

Chase sighed. He couldn't explain his feelings any better than he already had. Despite doing eighty on a straightaway he took his eyes off the road for a second and smiled at her. Kit kept her eyes on the road and suddenly she flung herself at the steering wheel, grabbing it and pulling hard to the right. "Turn!" she shouted.

Before Chase could react they were off the road and careening over rough ground. The truck heeled up on one side and Chase yanked the wheel the other way and the tires crashed back down. As they came to a halt on a small two-rutted dirt road, he caught his breath and stared at Kit in disbelief.

"You trying to get us killed? Again?"

"Sorry."

"What's the problem?"

She smiled at his anger, having neatly turned the tables. She pointed up the dirt road. "We should go see Dr. Ogilvey."

Chase suddenly recognized the siding she had put them on. It was the fenceline road leading to Sandstone Mountain.

"Oh no, we don't," he said. "We're not going up there. We're going someplace where there's police and guns and people who can help us deal with that dinosaur."

"But we can't just leave Dr. Ogilvey up there by himself. He's in danger too."

"You know, you are really something," Chase said, gripping the wheel and pressing the accelerator down. As they moved forward at a more reasonable speed along the narrow brush-lined track, he chuckled one more time.

"What now?" she snipped.

"You've got a good point, though. We have a problem with a dinosaur, so who better to go see than a paleontologist?"

They rolled into Dr. Ogilvey's camp fifteen minutes later, finding everything the same as when they had left it. The Land Rover was there but the old paleontologist was not. They walked down the creek bed and climbed the slope to the dig. He wasn't there either.

"Dr. O?" Kit called out.

From a hole dug under the cliff at the back of the excavation came a muffled call. "In here."

Kit knelt and stuck her head into the opening. "Dr. O, please come out. Something terrible has happened."

"No," Ogilvey called back. "You come in. Something wonderful has happened."

"But there's a tyrannosaurus."

"Couldn't compare with what's in here!"

Kit glanced at Chase in frustration. Chase shrugged and gestured at the opening. "After you."

She ducked into the dark gap like Alice disappearing down the rabbit hole and he crawled in after her. They scrambled on hands and knees under the cliff rock until a space opened up around them, a chamber large enough to stand in, lit by Ogilvey's flashlight. The paleontologist grinned at them like the Cheshire Cat, his eyeglasses glinting in the flashlight's glow.

"Listen," Chase began forcefully, pointing a finger at Ogilvey.

"No, look!" crowed the professor, casting his flashlight's beam on the wall beside him. Chase intended to say more but what the light revealed made him stop. The wall wasn't part of a natural tunnel. It was a corridor of stone blocks covered in sculpted images and hieroglyphics stretching from floor to ceiling. Inhuman creatures sculpted in relief six feet tall, seemingly had been put there to further strain their already-boggled minds.

Kit reacted first. "They're dinosaurs."

"Yes, Kit!" Ogilvey chirped. "Living Pteronychus, sculpted in the flesh 65 million years ago by their own hand." He illuminated one of the images closely. "The head with carnivorous teeth, the three-clawed hands, the bipedal stance—look at the extraordinary detail of the carving. So much more here than the skeletons outside could ever tell us. A graphic representation of anatomy I could only have guessed at. Look at the feathers. It seems more bird than reptile."

The body and arms of the pteronychus were covered with delicately sculpted impressions of feathers extending from the reptilian head down the body to a long feathered tail that stood out rigidly behind the beast. The S-curved dinosaurian neck had a feather mane that bristled outward from the back of the head and along the nape, sculpted in exquisite detail.

"And that head!" Ogilvey enthused. "At once beautiful and horrific, equal parts reptile and bird. The jaws of a carnivorous dinosaur and a crest much like that of a cassowary. And Look!" He shone the light lower. "The chest is encased in an armor jacket of smooth-finished metal."

Kit caught her breath. "What's it got in its hand? A sickle?"

"A, er, weapon of some sort," said Ogilvey. "There are a number of these, er, warriors brandishing as they move along in some sort of procession." He shone the light along the wall to reveal a long line of similar creatures marching in military order.

"Yes," Ogilvey said as if guessing Kit's thoughts, "Pteronychus was a civilized, intelligent, and warlike dinosaur."

"But what is this place?" asked Chase.

"An underground catacomb," replied Ogilvey. "I'd guess it was subterranean even in their time. We're somewhere beneath the ancient city, down where the sand couldn't reach when it buried the place. It goes on quite a ways in either direction." He flashed the light one way and then the other along the wall, illuminating a large corridor perhaps ten feet across and as many feet high, with an arched ceiling made of finely fitted alabaster stone blocks. The frieze of engraved figures—hundreds of them—stretched away in both directions on both sides of the corridor wall. All were marchers in a procession that headed straight into the mountain.

"It's astonishing," said Kit, so deeply taken in that other thoughts seemed swept away.

Chase was not so easily diverted. "Wait a minute," he said. "We've got something else to talk about."

"Yes of course," Ogilvey said blandly, moving away from Chase and following the procession along the wall. "We'll talk as we walk."

Chase had little choice but to follow the paleontologist as he moved along shining his light from one marching pteronychus to the next. "We've seen a tyrannosaurus," he said.

"Yes," Ogilvey mused. "T-rex fossils are common in this stratum."

"No," Chase fumed. "I don't mean a fossil. I mean for real."

Ogilvey stopped and shined his light in Chase's face. Chase flinched at the glare. The old paleontologist was apparently satisfied that Chase wasn't joking but, incredibly, turned and continued walking and scanning the wall. He said casually, "I'm afraid T rex can't hold a candle to this creature."

Chase gripped the old man by the shoulder, spinning him around.

"Listen," he growled. "We came to warn you there's a great big, dangerous, hungry monster out there." He pointed back the way they had come. "Don't you care?"

Incredibly, the professor still looked uncertain. "Well, yes, of course I care. To see a tyrannosaurus in the flesh would be the thrill of a lifetime, under other circumstances."

"Thrill!" Chase exclaimed.

"But this is the greatest discovery of my life."

Chase looked to Kit for support, pointing a finger at Ogilvey. "Either paleontologists are a special breed or this old coot is nuts."

She tried to intercede. "Please listen to him, Doctor O. We're going to Red Lodge for help. We came to take you with us."

"Oh my!" Ogilvey moaned. "What a bad moment." He shined his light at the wall, then back at the two of them again. "What a horrendous choice."

Chase muttered, "I think you still don't get it. We're in danger. There's some connection between the lights coming from the moon, an invasion from space and the T rex."

Ogilvey at last fell silent. He stared at Chase dumbly, mouth agape, eyes goggling wide.

"Now, let's get out of here," Chase said, turning to retrace his steps. Kit followed but Ogilvey stopped them with a single softly-spoken word.

"No."

Chase wheeled around and shouted in the old man's face, "What?" The words echoed down the dark corridor, "What? What? What?"

"I won't go with you," Ogilvey retorted. "You two go on. If the end of the world is upon us, then I must stay here until I know who they were." He shone his light along the wall. "Where they went." The flashlight beam fell across a row of hieroglyphics at the base of the wall.

"Look at these," he marveled. "Unlike Egyptian characters or Mayan script, unrelated to any human writing system. Carved by an intelligent dinosaur, a scholar, my colleague of an eon ago." Ogilvey addressed the writing itself. "You're speaking to me, telling me your story, aren't you? If I can only read what you have to say, then let the tyrannosaurus take me."

Chase circled an index finger around one ear for Kit's benefit. Then he crowded nose to nose with the paleontologist.

"Listen, you old buzzard. I can't decide whether to leave you here or drag you out kicking and screaming."

"Wait." Kit put a restraining hand on Chase's shoulder. "I know how he feels about this. It's his life's work." She asked Ogilvey, "If we give you a few minutes to look around, then will you come with us?"

"Yes, yes, I suppose so," Ogilvey mumbled, casting his light along the wall and moving deeper into the corridor. Kit hooked an arm around Chase's elbow and pulled him along, following several paces behind the professor. After a few yards they reached a point where the hallway crossed another at right angles. Ogilvey called "Hello!" into the crossing corridor. In the utter stillness of the underground space his call echoed repeatedly, fading off into the black distance. He quipped, "The catacombs seem to go on infinitely. It wouldn't do to get lost in here. Ah, Theseus, where is your ball of twine?"

He moved forward, shining his light around and making verbal notes. "There are signs of great age in this catacomb. Look at the stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites built up on the floor, no doubt through millennia of slowly dripping mineral water." Look here, where the corridor was cracked by an earthquake long ago, probably along a fault that runs through the very sandstone of the mountain. The corridor floor is coated in dust as though no living foot has trod it in eons."

There was a dank mustiness to the air that caused Chase to wonder if they were heading into worse danger than they had left outside.

"What was the purpose of this procession?" Ogilvey wondered aloud. "Shades of Dinotopia!"

His light struck several of the creatures who wore, in addition to their armor, fantastic headdresses adorned with tall feathers fanning out above them. "The ruling class, I should think," Ogilvey murmured. "Or generals. Perhaps both." He played his light on one after another of the chieftains. Then the scene shifted to pairs of marchers carrying between them large boxes and baskets. "Filled with booty, perhaps?" Others marchers carried lances waving banners in the air, and still others carried what appeared to be a sort of rifle. Each, regardless of its adornment or what it carried, marched solemnly forward, its crested head held high, the heavy reptilian jaws gaping to show off sharp teeth.

"They're like a victorious Roman legion," Ogilvey exclaimed. "Barbaric and yet civilized. The crowning evolutionary achievement of their times."

"Listen," Kit suddenly called in a whisper, tightening her grip on Chase's arm. "There's something behind us."

The two of them paused to listen as Ogilvey moved forward heedless of noises or anything else, humming quietly to himself and scanning the walls from top to bottom as if trying to understand the hieroglyphs carved there.

When he was a dozen yards ahead, Chase heard a noise coming faintly from the darkness to their rear. It was a low, thumping, ill-defined sound that seemed to put a greater chill in the dank air.

Kit shuddered. "This is starting to give me the creeps."

"You and me both," Chase replied.

They hurried forward to where Ogilvey had stopped to illuminate a new scene on the wall. Pairs of the creatures bearing horizontal poles between them carried members of their own species lashed hand-and-foot and stripped of armor, hung like captured animals.

"Listen," Kit whispered, and Ogilvey quieted. The thumping was there again, stronger, rhythmic, like footfalls.

"There's something back there," she hissed.

"Yeah," Chase agreed, turning to stare into the darkness behind them, his pulse quickening. "Footsteps, and they're getting closer."

He grabbed the flashlight out of Ogilvey's hand and snapped it off, plunging them into total darkness. The sounds echoing out of the depths of the corridor immediately seemed louder and now it was clear that each heavy footfall was accompanied by more of the same. "There's more than one," he whispered.

"A lot more," Kit agreed.

"They sound like they're in that side corridor," Chase whispered. "If they get into this one, we'll be cut off from the way we came in." Kit gripped his arm until her nails dug in.

Other sounds became discernable. Metallic clanks mingled with the thumping footfalls, interspersed with mechanical clicks, whirs and pneumatic hisses.

Out of the pitch-blackness a greenish glow appeared, dim at first and swaying in cadence with the footsteps. It grew brighter and cast eerie moving shadows along the sculpted walls. Chase began instinctively backing away from it, pulling Kit with him as he moved. The sound of the footfalls grew closer and louder.

As they retreated with Ogilvey following, Kit glanced at the stone procession on the wall, now illuminated by the green glow. She gasped at what she saw. "Look," she murmured and the three of them paused to gape at the culmination of the procession. The captives were laid on altars and their captors were setting upon them with sickle weapons—beheading, gutting, and eating them.

The light brightened into a strong searchlight pointing in their direction. Simultaneously the corridor walls opened out into a cavernous black room. Nothing inside was visible except the floor, upon which the green light cast shadows from their legs stretching away into the darkness. The searchlight, now a distinct circular shape, had closed to within a hundred feet of them.

"Maybe this is not as bad as it looks," Ogilvey mumbled. As Chase and Kit retreated into the chamber, the professor suddenly reversed direction and took a tentative step toward the light. "Perhaps we should just talk to them and find out what they want." He raised a hand in salutation and called toward the light, "We come in peace."

Chase quickly grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him into the darkness beside the door they had just entered. "Some other time, Doc." The three of them groped their way along the dark interior wall for a few feet until they found a sheltered nook out of the reach of the oncoming light just as it burst through the doorway.

They pressed themselves back into the shadows as a second light and then a third entered the chamber. Meanwhile the bearer of the first lamp, invisible to them behind its blinding glare, scanned the room with its beam. The shaft of light moved across the walls revealing a huge chamber, perhaps a hundred feet across, outlined by massive stone columns supporting a ceiling lost in the darkness above. The walls were lined with dozens of niches and doorways leading into dark side-chambers. The main chamber had not escaped the ravages of time. Piles of rubble, stalactites and fissures running across the floor were everywhere, but most of the immense space was intact.

As the light swept along the wall in their direction, they shrank further into the tight space they had chosen—a niche behind a pillar flanking the door they had entered. Chase put an arm around Kit as all three of them pressed into the back corner of the niche. He felt her tremble when the light passed in front of them. Failing to illuminate them, the light continued along the wall without pause. They were safe for the time being.

As the searchlight continued its scan, more beacons entered the chamber and joined it. The combined beams brightened the room until it was possible to see the bearers of the lights. Each lamp was the searchlight of a ten-foot-tall, two-legged robotic walking machine. Their streamlined bodies looked like fuselages of fantastic jet fighter planes made of silvery metal with rounded dark glass canopies on top large enough to house human-sized pilots. Tapering to a point at the rear, each fuselage moved with bird-like strides on a pair of jointed mechanical legs. Mechanical arms projected from either side of the machines' bodies and where there should have been hands at the ends of the arms, there were arrays of instruments—pincers on the left hand and groups of projecting gun barrels and antenna-like rods on the right. The searchlights were attached to the left wrists above the pincers.

Chase whispered, "I've never seen anything like that."

"Not in my wildest dreams," Ogilvey concurred.

"Nightmares," Kit corrected.

The group of machines grew to about a dozen, moving into the room accompanied by a bedlam of clanking and whirring sounds. The dark canopies concealed the occupants and the shimmering metal skins of the machines dazzled the eye. Each machine's fuselage bore an individual insignia, the emblem of its driver, some designed in blood red hieroglyphs, some in patterns of black or dark green. The attention of the drivers seemed drawn to the far side of the room, where a gigantic idol stretched from the floor to the ceiling of the chamber: a huge stone pteronychus head with its reptile-bird face contorted into a hideous scowl. Its fiercely toothed jaws were open wide enough that one of the machines could have fit inside the gape. Surmounting the reptilian phantasm's head was a headdress of sculpted feathers that rose high and fanned out across the ceiling of the chamber.

An ornate stone altar lay in front of the idol's giant jaws and the machines went to form a semicircle around it, hunkering their jointed legs down until they squatted, birdlike, on the floor.

One by one, the dark glass canopies opened and the occupants emerged. The creatures stepping from the machines were the very image of the god sculpted above them.

"Living pteronychus!" Ogilvey murmured, fascinated.

Chase shushed him softly, wondering whether the professor had a shred of survival instinct.

"I'm simply amazed," the professor said in a softer whisper. "The impossibility of it all! Just moments ago we were examining a carved procession on a wall and now we're looking at the same unearthly beings in the flesh. This morning I was excavating their fossil remains and now they're here as living creatures!"

There was little danger Ogilvey would be heard by the creatures. More than a dozen of them had dismounted their vehicles to stand in front of the altar, and from their mouths came a cacophony of raven-like vocalizations.

"Listen to that," Ogilvey whispered. "They're talking!"

"Of course they are," Chase replied under his breath. "They're intelligent creatures. They built this place."

"I wish we could understand them," said Ogilvey.

"I wish we could get out of here," said Chase.

The creatures' speech was unintelligible but seemed ominous given its hoarse, rasping tone coupled with the creatures' ferocious appearance and the barbaric nature of the sculptures on the walls. Like those sculpted figures, they wore armor breastplates of glittering silver and bronze, adorned with colored enamel designs of red, black or green. Some wore ornate helmets of enameled bright metal that covered the head from crown to mane; others wore headdresses bearing colored feathers similar to those sculpted on the idol. The effect of the armor and headdresses was to make these already-fierce creatures look purely hellish, like feathered Zulu warriors endowed with crocodile jaws.

Among the cackling, cawing group, one pteronychus stood out—a particularly large and fierce individual with a headdress of scarlet feather plumes jutting high and dancing around its head. Strutting among its companions, it exhorted them to greater excitement and celebration. It stepped to the altar and raised its arms toward the idol. In a harsh raven-like voice, it began an incantation. The others fell silent as the chieftain in red made his supplication to the idol. "Eng-Kan! Ne-too essakana teh!" it roared. The others joined in a chorus of deep guttural hurrahs.

Although Chase had no inkling of the words' meaning, his skin crawled at their unmistakably warlike, raving cadence. "I've seen enough," he whispered. "None of them are looking this way. Time to get out of here." He took Kit's hand and began edging around the pillar toward the doorway. Ogilvey followed, but his rock hammer slipped from its unfastened holster and fell to the stone floor with a loud clank.

The ceremony instantly stopped. Chase pushed Kit and Ogilvey back into the nook and followed them into the shadows just as the creatures turned to look in their direction. Fortunately none carried a light to shine on them, but after an awful moment of silence one of the warriors left the group and came toward their hiding place. It stopped ten feet away and peered into the shadows, flaring its nostrils and sniffing the air.

Then it inexplicably turned and moved back toward the group at the altar uttering a terse, "Kteh!" The others seemed satisfied nothing was amiss and turned their attention back to their leader and the idol.

As the incantation resumed, Chase squeezed Kit's hand. "Come on. Let's get moving." He edged around the pillar a second time with Kit and Ogilvey following and sneaked out the doorway undetected. In the darkness, they made their way a hundred feet along the tunnel before Chase cast a glance back. The pteronychuses were still preoccupied with their deity.

Feeling their way along the dark corridor by running their hands over the sculpted wall, they continued until they reached the hallway that crossed at right angles. Chase had thrust Ogilvey's flashlight into a back pocket and now, figuring they were far enough away that the creatures couldn't see, he switched it on and quickly led the way to the opening where they had entered the catacombs.

Crawling out into the daylight of Ogilvey's excavation, they glanced around warily but found the area undisturbed. The creatures had probably used a separate entrance elsewhere on the mountain.

Exhausted by the quick retreat, Ogilvey sat down on his pile of bricks, removed his hat and wiped dusty perspiration from his brow. "Why were we spared?" he wondered aloud. "I'm sure that creature saw us."

"Maybe its night vision isn't so hot," Chase suggested. "Now, come on. If we hang around we're gonna end up on that altar after all."

"Yes, of course." The professor stood up and followed them out of the excavation. They hurried up the creek bed and reached camp as the sun was setting.

"My God," Ogilvey said, huffing from exertion and squinting into the sun's last rays. "Were we in there that long?"

"It seemed like eternity to me," Chase grumbled. He went to his truck and fired up the engine. Kit climbed in but Ogilvey went into his tent, emerging a minute later with an armload of notebooks, which he began placing neatly in a box on the tailgate of his Land Rover.

"Leave them," Chase called. "They're not worth your life."

Ogilvey headed for his tent again, waving them off.

"My notebooks _are_ my life. You two go on, I'll be right behind you."

"Suit yourself," Chase muttered, driving away from the cul-de-sac and leaving the professor to his notebooks and his fate. "He's been warned," he said as he concentrated on steering along the narrow tire ruts. He shot an irritated glance at Kit. "Any other bright ideas about where we should go?"

"No."

"Let's try Red Lodge, then."

The sun disappeared below the mountain ridges as they bumped along the narrow track leading out of the canyon. As far as they knew, the creatures in the underground city hadn't spotted them. But Chase kept an eye out behind as he drove out of the hills.

## CHAPTER 8

Less than a mile from where it joined the county highway, the fenceline road entered an area where huge rock outcroppings and dense sagebrush made the route tortuous. Chase reluctantly slowed down to negotiate the tight turns. His view of what was ahead was hidden around each bend and that made him edgy. Coming out of one particularly tight turn, he spotted a reddish-brown animal about the size of a cow moving in the sagebrush beside the road.

"What's this?" he asked. "One of your dad's steers?"

Kit shook her head. "That's no steer."

The creature trotted onto the road, forcing Chase to stop. Kit was right, it was no steer. It had a horn on its nose, stubby like that of a baby rhinoceros, a wide bony frill at the back of its head lined with small horns and a snout with a hooked beak. Its feet were padded with flat toenails like a rhinoceros but its tail was long and reptilian, a dead giveaway that this was another dinosaur.

Chase looked it over uneasily. "Okay, Kit, you're the aspiring paleontologist. What is that thing?"

"A pachyrhinosaurus, I think. Look, it's fuzzy."

Chase looked again. The animal was covered in red fuzz like a baby elephant and had a dark tuft of hair at the tip of its tail. "Is it dangerous?"

"I'm not sure," said Kit. "It's a plant eater."

"I've darted bison in Yellowstone Park," said Chase, "and they're pretty dangerous. This thing's about the same size. But I guess this truck's more than a match for it." He rolled forward. The animal had paused to eye them warily but reacted to the truck's movement by trotting away in front of them on the road.

"Figures," Chase muttered. "We'll have to follow it." He fell in behind the pachyrhinosaurus and it broke into a gallop, bleating like a scared calf. "Brilliant!" Chase grumbled. "This must be one of those dinosaurs with a brain the size of a pea."

"Walnut," Kit corrected.

"No wonder these things went extinct." Chase moved up and followed close on its tail. It bucked and brayed but stayed on the road.

Kit said nervously, "I don't think you should be doing this."

"Why not?" Chase scoffed. "That's not enough dinosaur to give us any trouble."

"But it's just a baby."

"Aww. Are your maternal instincts kicking in?" He pushed in the clutch and revved the engine, hoping the roar would scare the beast off into the bushes. It brayed louder but stuck to the roadway.

Kit shook her head. "I wasn't thinking of mothering it myself."

Around the next rock outcrop the reason for Kit's worry appeared. Another reddish-brown animal rushed onto the road. This one was nearly as big as a grown elephant.

"Oh, Mamma!" Chase shouted. He slammed on the brakes and skidded the truck to a halt.

"Exactly," Kit affirmed as the little one scurried under the big one's flank. "Mamma."

The new beast was darker, hairier and ten times the size of the smaller one. The differences between it and its offspring sent a tingle of shock through Chase. It was bristling with huge horns like some horrific gargoyle. The nose horn, long and upwardly hooked, stood a good five feet above the beaked snout and looked fit to penetrate the armor of a tank. A half-dozen shorter horns bristled from the top and sides of the frilled head. The animal's shoulders were made more imposing by a thick covering of bison-like, curly dark brown wool.

The beast bellowed thunderously and shook its bristling head at them. It pawed the ground and lowered its nose horn until it pointed at the pickup.

"It's going to charge!" Kit cried but Chase needed no explanation. He grabbed the shifter and searched for reverse. Gunning the engine, he dumped the clutch—but the truck was still in first gear. It leaped ahead instead of back. He jammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt just a few feet from the tip of the animal's horn. Startled by the truck's apparent aggressiveness, the beast took a step backward. Then it lowered its nose horn again and shook its frill from side to side in a fierce display of counter-aggression. It uttered another deep bellow that reverberated in the frame of the pickup and blended eerily with a high-pitched scream Kit couldn't contain.

Chase got the shifter into reverse and floored the accelerator. The rear tires spun madly, dragging the truck backward and throwing out dust that momentarily confused the pachyrhinosaurus. Turning to look out the back window, Chase tried to keep the truck on the road as he accelerated in reverse.

"Here it comes!" Kit cried. As the pickup lurched over the rough track, Chase couldn't bother looking at the animal. He concentrated on steering backward, maintaining his speed and holding the truck on the twisting road. He could hear the drumming charge of elephantine feet. Kit was more than willing to inform him of the view out the front windshield. "It's gaining on us!"

He pushed the accelerator harder but the uneven route was more than he could handle. One of his rear tires struck a boulder that bounced the whole truck to the left and into the sagebrush. An instant later the tailgate rammed into another boulder. They came to a dead stop and the engine died.

Kit screamed, "Look out!" as the monster closed in. Chase cursed and cranked the ignition but only had time to watch the thing lower its nose horn, hook the bumper, and flip the truck over backwards. The sky went reeling past them and Kit let out another scream. The pickup smashed down on its roof and for a moment they hung upside down, suspended by their seat belts. Then they were whipped around helplessly as the creature pounded the pickup this way and that, bellowing furiously. The body of the truck crumpled around them, gouged again and again. The nose horn smashed through Kit's side window, penetrating right in front of her face. Chase tried to dodge the horn tip as it came at him but it caught his chin and everything went black.

## CHAPTER 9

Chase regained consciousness with the sound of his own pulse pounding in his head. Out of the blur, Kit's face came into focus.

"Chase?" she whispered urgently. "Chase, wake up." His senses sorted themselves out and he noticed her face was upside down. Then he realized it was he who was upside down, suspended from his seatbelt in the overturned truck. She was the right-side-up one, sitting on the overturned ceiling. A charge of adrenaline shot through him.

"Where is that thing?" He tugged at his seatbelt buckle and it came free, tumbling him onto the ceiling with Kit.

"It's still out there," she whispered. As he got himself upright she silenced him with a finger to her lips. He could hear the thing bellowing, now some distance away. From the sound of its enraged roars, it was involved in some other confrontation.

"Let's get out of here," Kit hissed, crawling gingerly over the broken glass of the rear window and pulling herself out from under the overturned bed of the truck. Chase followed and they crouched beside the mangled wreck, taking in yet another astonishing sight. On the dusk-lit road a hundred feet ahead of them stood not one pachyrhinosaurus but half a dozen adults and as many young animals. They had gathered in a circle with the calves huddled inside a protective ring of big animals. Their attention was no longer on the truck. Another more serious threat had appeared.

Seven new creatures had fanned out to surround the pachyrhinosaurs, and these newcomers were the most bizarre creatures Chase had seen yet. They seemed at first to be huge eagles, standing much taller than a man and stalking the ground around the pachyrhinosaurs. They were feathered in eagle-like patterns of brown and white, with crests of tall black feathers rising from the back of each animal's head. Their arms bore long, brown-and-white banded feathers but they didn't use these to fly. Instead, they flapped the feathers to speed their ground maneuvers as they rushed in and dodged back, harassing the herd of pachyrhinosaurs.

As bird-like as these new creatures seemed, they, like the pteronychuses in the temple, were two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs. Long reptilian tails extended behind them, fringed with feathers, but by far their most reptilian features were their long jaws with knifelike teeth, and hooked claws on three-fingered hands. A sense of horrified wonder filled Chase as he watched them boldly harass the ring of pachyrhinosaurs. There was something awe-inspiring about their agility as they dodged and sparred with the big animals, fanning the feathers of their arms and tails for balance.

He leaned near Kit and whispered, "What the heck are they?"

"Some species of raptor, I think. But a lot bigger than velociraptor."

Chase had studied the tactics of mammalian carnivores. Now, despite the immediacy of danger, he admired the elegant dance of these savage hunters.

"Maybe they're utahraptors," Kit suggested.

"Utahraptors? Don't they know they're in the wrong state?" Chase tried to force a chuckle but it wouldn't come. They looked too dangerous.

"Look at their feet," she whispered. "That's their main weapon."

As formidable as the animals had seemed at first, Chase saw there was more to their weaponry. On the inside toe of each foot was a hefty sickle-shaped claw that looked capable of disemboweling an elephant—or a pachyrhinosaur—at a single stroke.

"You mean their teeth aren't bad enough?" Chase whispered, reaching into the truck through the shattered side window and quietly withdrawing his rifle. He took Kit's hand and tugged her in a direction away from the creatures. "C'mon, dino-girl, let's don't disturb their dinner."

They crouched below the level of the sagebrush and moved along the road toward a large rock outcrop that looked like it might offer some shelter, while the pachyrhinosaurs bellowed and the utahraptors eagle-screeched in reply. But as Kit and Chase neared the rocks the sounds behind them ended abruptly. There was an awful moment of silence.

Chase shot a glance back and got another jolt of adrenaline. The largest of the utahraptors had straightened, lofting its head high, and was looking directly at him! It let out a cry that was half wolf howl, half eagle screech, and blood curdling in its ferocity. The other animals raised their heads and joined in a howling wolf-eagle chorus.

"Come on!" Chase cried, but Kit needed no urging. They sprinted together on the uneven road as the utahraptors raced at them with cheetah-like speed, uttering fiendish yapping calls. Chase quickly saw it was futile to try outrunning the beasts but he spotted something that offered a faint ray of hope. Turning off the roadway, he grabbed Kit's hand and dragged her through the sagebrush with him. The rock outcrop had a diagonal crack splitting its lichen-covered surface. "Get inside!" Chase shouted, and though the cleft was less than a foot wide Kit managed to wriggle in.

The pack's howling intensified and Chase sensed he didn't have time to follow Kit. Instead, he turned to face the beasts as they raced the last few strides to him. He took a flat-footed stance outside the opening and raised the rifle, aiming at the lead utahraptor's breast. As it bore down on him he carefully squeezed the trigger. The rifle roared and the animal crumpled at his feet, thrashing in agony. Its pack-mates paused to look at their fallen leader, giving Chase the opportunity he needed. He turned and dove into the fissure with Kit. There was just enough time for him to squeeze inside the opening before the other animals surrounded it. They moved cautiously, alarmed by their stricken leader's screeching, watching its struggles diminish until it lay still.

Kit tapped on Chase's shoulder. "Why don't you shoot the rest of them?"

"I can't."

"Why not?" she asked incredulously.

In answer, he held up the rifle and pulled the trigger. It clicked. "The rest of the ammo is on the ground at the ranch."

Her face fell. "Brilliant." That was all she had to say.

That peeved him. "Well, I was too busy trying to get you out of there in one piece. Besides, I'm supposed to save wildlife, not kill it, remember?"

Kit sighed. "I guess we're the ones who need saving now."

The animals outside the crack lost interest in their dead leader, focusing their attention on Chase and Kit's hiding place. Cautious after Chase's display of his lethal capability, they surrounded the crack and settled down on their haunches. They cocked their heads, bird-like, and studied their quarry.

Minutes dragged on. The gloom of evening fell. Chase and Kit pressed themselves far back into the cramped, awkwardly tilted recess of the crack. One of the animals approached the opening and scratched tentatively with its foot, but its attempts to dig them out made no headway against the solid rock. Chase pointed his rifle at the beast and it withdrew quickly, respecting the death-dealing potential of the weapon. It hunkered down and joined its companions in waiting them out.

Chase slumped against the rock and sighed. "Utahraptor, huh?"

"I think so," Kit replied.

"How do you make utahraptors go back to Utah?"

"I don't know, Chase. Doctor O doesn't teach that sort of thing in Paleontology 101. Maybe you can think of something."

"Okay." He wedged himself down into the crack until he was pressed close beside her. "I'll get right on it."

Outside, it looked like the utahraptors were preparing for a long wait as twilight faded into darkness. After a few minutes Chase leaned the rifle against the rock and closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. He felt Kit tremble against him. "It's getting cold," she said. He put an arm around her shoulders and then laid his head back against the sloping wall of the crack.

"Guess you could say we're in a tight spot."

"Guess so." She rested her head against his shoulder.

They were safe for the moment.

***

"Nobody has ever had to fight a war like this one," General Davis muttered. He sat at a monitor in the command center with Holly Lewis, Paul MacIlvain and several of his junior staff, waiting to have a first look at a videotape feed Lewis had pulled in from a National Guard unit at Fort Peck Reservoir. The signal had traveled to them via two mobile relay units and was pretty broken up. It was taking some time to get it unscrambled by NORAD's central processing computers. The screen was blank, giving Davis a minute to reflect glumly on the situation.

"How do you fight an enemy shooting at you from Phaeon Crater? Every twenty-four hours the earth rotates like a giant rotisserie. When the moon is overhead we get blasted."

"On the other hand," Lewis replied, "every time we rotate away from the moon we'll be out of the beam's reach for twelve hours. So we have to keep our heads down from moonrise to moonset, but we should be free to maneuver the rest of the time."

Davis nodded. "I've been thinking about that. We can carry out operations above ground for twelve hours each day without risk from Phaeon. I foresee a peculiar geometry to this war, a kind of rhythm. As long as our enemy is in a fixed position on the moon, we know exactly when they're going to be overhead every day. Trouble is, each time Phaeon comes overhead, everybody outside has to come in and everything exposed at the surface gets another dose of high-energy neutrons, or positrons or whatever is in that beam. The whole mountaintop is already a cinder. Whoever's up there knows this site is a threat and something to pound on."

"And just what is up there, Mac?" asked Lewis. "I know it's been your job to monitor the secret missions on the moon, but those missions were too highly classified for my ranking. Given the circumstances, maybe it's time you dished a little info."

"Go ahead Mac," Davis agreed. "It's always made me uncomfortable having more than one level of security at NORAD, anyway. I think those days are gone."

"Okay, sir," Mac said with none of the arrogance he had exuded for years. "Where to begin? Ahh, well, the complex at Phaeon is as big as a good-sized city. There's no telling how much military presence might have been assembled there in the two years since we lost contact with Recon One. What I got from the last update interview with John Lindmark, the commander of Recon One, was that they hadn't even entered—let alone studied—more than half of the Phaeon complex."

"But _who_ was there," Lewis pressed him. "That's what I want to know."

Mac sighed. "Nobody."

"Nobody? How do you figure?"

"The astronauts never found any evidence of any living being, even though they surveyed hundreds of chambers and corridors. The place was laid out for occupants but no one was there, dead or alive."

"That doesn't make sense." Lewis wondered if Mac were still hiding something, but the old deceptive look was gone from his face.

"It would make sense," he suggested, "if their intent was to occupy it later, somehow. There were big storehouses full of raw materials for life support: salts, phosphates, nitrates, carbonates, you name it. All the raw chemical materials for growing plants or animals, millions of tons."

"Combine that with the DNA information on the computers," said Davis, "and you could create just about any plant or animal you wanted, assuming your cloning technology was advanced enough."

Mac nodded. "A reconstitutible army. Just add water."

Lewis shook her head. "Why would anyone create such a cockamamie system? Why leave the place unoccupied? Why didn't they just come to earth and set up shop?"

"That seems reasonable," Mac replied, "unless earth was not such a nice place to be. When the asteroid hit, theory has it the planet was uninhabitable for centuries."

"So they left a reconstitutible army on the moon?"

"Right, in case they had to fight to get the earth back."

"But an army of what?"

"That's what I hope to find out right now," Davis interjected. "Have you got that video yet?"

"Any second." Lewis eyed the screen uncertainly. It was still blank.

"In the meantime," Davis continued, "what other news have you gotten from your communications network? For instance, have you been able to locate any Air Force capability?"

"Air Force, sir, seems to have been hit hardest of all the services. It's pretty tough to hide aircraft and hangars. The beam's hit them everywhere. Right now I can't locate a functional training aircraft, let alone a fighter or a bomber. Crews, yes, but they've got no aircraft."

"Still no nukes?" Davis asked. "Have you found any intact missiles?"

"Like before, all strategic missiles seem to have been blown up in their silos without nuclear contamination."

"Clever devils, aren't they?" Davis muttered. "They don't want to mess up the place too badly while they're taking us out."

Lewis nodded. "I did some statistics on their targeting pattern, sir. Looks like they're hitting every military target the size of a boxcar or bigger. They must have some good telescopes up there. If it was us, we'd be hard pressed to see that much detail from so far away."

"Navy," Davis continued. "What's the status of the Navy?"

"Not well known, sir. Fleets at sea were ordered to disperse and maintain radio silence when things started up. They are either doing that or—"

"Or they've been destroyed."

"No way to know right now, sir."

"Submarines?"

"Those in port are toasted. Those at sea may still be with us, but we've lost contact."

"Army?" asked Davis. "They must have something useful left."

"They've taken a heavy beating everywhere sir, about like you saw at Fort Carson. Every base we managed to contact is heavily damaged. That includes equipment, supply depots, headquarters, communications, anything useful to a combat force. People are okay for the most part, but there's precious little left to fight with. Just isolated pieces of equipment."

"What about National Guard? They're a decentralized operation."

"Yes, sir. But just about unarmed. They kicked into action pretty well when the President declared the state of emergency this morning. We're using them as communications organizers on the ground but we can't count on them for much firepower. We'll need them for civilian relief, anyway."

Davis nodded. "We've got a major obligation there, haven't we?"

"Yes, sir. Word from most big cities isn't good. Things are pretty shook up. Power's out, communication's down, riots and panic in a few places but mostly people are real quiet. Scared."

"Any cities under attack?"

"No, sir. Worst problems are power outages everywhere. An odd thing about that—the beam's been cutting power transmission lines, but not hitting power generating facilities or networking stations. Like they want the power system intact."

"Maybe so the can use it once we've been neutralized."

"That's what I've been thinking."

"Is there a lot of public hysteria?"

"Some, but not too bad. National Guard got a jump on it. They're trying to stabilize the situation."

"So Phaeon hasn't been attacking cities, just their power lines and military targets?"

"Right. They've been sparing human life in general. Don't know why, but once we get back on our feet we're gonna have a logistics nightmare trying to feed everybody."

"Once we get back on our feet," Davis repeated. "I wonder when that will be?" He patted Lewis on the shoulder. "Good work getting as much information as you have."

"Thank you, sir. Hasn't been easy. Phaeon's taken out radio and TV stations whether they were on the air or not, under cloud cover or clear skies, almost as if they knew right where to shoot. Looks like they've already mapped out everything that transmits on a radio frequency and they're just making the rounds—cell phone towers, TV stations, our communications complex on top of this mountain, everything except a few installations that haven't broadcast in a coon's age."

"So we've got at least some outside assets to work with?"

"Yes, sir. Phaeon doesn't seem to know about anything that hasn't been broadcasting. Some installations may be too small to actually see from up there. With no signal to home in on, they've been overlooked.

"How many?"

"Too soon to tell. Minimal, but we're spreading the word. Got truckers on CB radios, some ham operators and anything that's moved around in the last couple of days—mobile transmitters, that sort of thing. The place where they used to be may have been hit but not their new location. As long as they don't broadcast when Phaeon is in the sky—"

The computer console beeped. "Okay," she said. "This should be it."

A snowy videotaped image appeared on the screen, shaky and out of focus. The camera panned across an arid countryside under a blue sky, following an object streaking through the atmosphere. As the object neared the camera, it resolved into a gigantic double-tailed glider made of silver metal. It rapidly descended over the blue waters of a lake.

"Fort Peck Reservoir," she narrated. "It's the largest body of water in Montana. Still not obvious why they picked Montana as their primary landing site in America but so far twelve craft have landed at Fort Peck."

The alien ship skimmed the water's surface and then disappeared into a wall of white spray thrown up by its touchdown. When the spray cleared the ship was floating on the glassy surface of the lake.

"So that's the way they're doing it," Davis muttered. "Belly-flopping those big gliders on bodies of water."

The video followed the spacecraft as it slowly approached the far shore of the lake and pulled in beside several identical craft and lowered a ramp from beneath its nose. Immediately it began disembarking cargo onto the shore. Although detail was lost in the distance, the forms were those of large animals, some of them unmistakably dinosaurian. There were long-necked things bigger than elephants, horned dinosaurs, duckbills, armored dinosaurs and interspersed among the larger animals, forms too small to make out at such a great distance. The animals moved off the ramp and scattered into the surrounding landscape in pairs or small groups.

"It's like Noah's ark for Godzilla," Davis murmured.

The video zoomed in on an object smaller than the big dinosaurs, standing near the ramp and just visible under the nose of the landing craft. It was an odd out-of-focus shape, two-legged, with a metallic glint to it. "It seems to be driving the larger creatures away from the ship," Davis mused. "What is it, anyway?"

"No idea," Lewis replied. "Seems to be directing traffic so I'd guess it's the brains behind this operation. It looks like a robot or a mechanical device of some kind, about the size of a tank."

The video ended and the screen blanked, leaving Davis shaking his head. "Well, that's just fine and dandy, isn't it? They've landed out in the middle of nowhere and I guess we should be glad they aren't right here on our doorstep. But it's only a matter of time until these guys start making a nuisance of themselves." He got up from his chair and began pacing. "I hope none of you plan to get much sleep in the foreseeable future. Go out and get a cup of coffee, take a pee, get fed, whatever, but I want you back here by twenty-one hundred hours. And I want some ideas, folks, bright ideas. We've got to use whatever assets we can muster—National Guard, police, you name it—anything that can roll or fly. The time is coming when we'll have to take this battle to the enemy. We've got to start thinking offense, not defense. We can gather information on just how bad our situation is until hell freezes over. But if we're going to do anything other than wait here and arrange a surrender, you've got to find me some way of fighting back."

## CHAPTER 10

Kit shifted her head on Chase's shoulder. It made him think how nice it would be if she rested her head there under other circumstances. It was pretty nice even now.

Despite the pleasant thought, he kept his eyes on the entrance to the fissure. The utahraptors waited outside, barely visible in the dim purple twilight. Six of them, including the dead one. The others squatted on their haunches or lay on their sides like a pack of wolves settled down to wait out their prey. From time to time one or another of them would glance in his direction, cocking its head in that peculiar, bird-like fashion that reminded him he was up against something he'd best not judge by wolf standards. The nearest utahraptor yawned, gaping its toothy jaws wide and then fixed its eyes on him with an intense, hawk-like stare.

Just this morning Chase had delighted in watching the return of wolves to this land. Now he'd been forced to meet another freshly reintroduced species whether he liked it or not. He got an inkling of the dismay ranchers like Will Daniels felt, seeing wolves returning. Worse, he got a sickening sense of how a cornered lamb might feel, watching its killers awaiting its next move. But he was no lamb. He'd figure a way out of this.

Kit stirred. "It's getting dark," she whispered. "Do you think they'll go away at night?"

He looked at her sidelong. "Don't bet on it."

Kit leaned across him to look outside, her hair brushing his cheek. He inhaled a faint, pleasant scent.

"Look at the moon," she murmured, pointing to the bright crescent hovering over the black silhouette of Sandstone Mountain. "It'll set soon. I'll be glad. That beam keeps flickering and it looks so eerie."

Feeling her shudder, he said, "At least we've got body warmth to keep the chill off us."

She sighed and nestled against him. Then she raised her head and looked him in the face.

"Why did you come back?"

"To warn you."

"Yeah, but why?"

"I thought... well, look at all the trouble you turned out to be in."

"It was a brave thing for you to do."

"It's nothing. I'd have done it for anybody." He immediately wished he hadn't said that.

"Oh," she said, turning away from him.

"I didn't mean that like it sounded." He was getting tongue-tied.

"You didn't?" She looked at him again, her eyes brightening in the moon-glow. "How _did_ you mean it?" Before he could answer she leaned across him again, looking out the opening with her jaw dropped. "Look!"

He spun his head, ready for trouble, but what he saw outside was unexpected. The utahraptors were gone.

He started to sit up, bumping his head against the opposite wall of the crevice. He put his cap straight and looked around the dark landscape in astonishment. With the exception of the dead utahraptor there was no trace of the pack.

"They've moved on." He edged closer to the opening.

"Don't get too close," Kit cautioned.

"Why not?" he resisted. "Maybe we can make a run for it."

She didn't budge. "Don't rush into anything."

He stuck his head out and peered into the darkness, listening intently to the sounds of the night. Crickets chirped and wind sighed gently in the sagebrush. Nothing suggested the presence of dinosaurs. He leaned his head farther out.

Suddenly there was a rush of footfalls. He looked to his right in time to see the silhouette of a utahraptor bolting straight at him. It had hidden beside the opening and was already in mid-spring.

He pulled his head back and the creature's jaws snapped shut just in front of his face. With desperate energy he heaved himself backward into the crevice but collided with Kit, who had moved forward to look over his shoulder.

"Oh!" she cried, scrambling backward out of his way, but it was too late for Chase. He was too near the opening. The animal threw its body into the crack, uttering a fierce eagle-shriek, and aimed a savage bite at his mid-section. Chase brought the rifle up between himself and the beast and the barrel got there just in time to intercept a bite that would have torn him in half. The sharp fangs clanked against steel and Chase pushed with all his might to force the slavering jaws away from him. For a split second the beast withdrew but Chase guessed it was preparing for another strike. He pushed backward, quickly getting his body far enough into the crack to be out of range of the creature's fangs. But the beast surprised him, thrusting a long hind leg into the crevice. The big sickle-claw came down across his boot, pinning his foot to the ground.

Chase flailed at the claw with the butt of his rifle. Each time he struck at the creature's foot, its head lunged in and its jaws snapped at his face. He felt himself being drawn outward by the claw, which was hooked solidly around his ankle. Sliding over the rubble of the crevice floor, he called, "Kit! I'm going to need some help here!" He held out a hand and she grabbed it and pulled back with all her might. But the powerful foot drew them both toward the opening.

Chase slid down onto his back on the fissure's floor, fending off the utahraptor's jaws with the butt of his rifle. The animal's fangs dripped saliva on his midsection. He fought like a downed swashbuckler, knowing one false parry would be the end. The creature agilely dodged every blow and it seemed only a matter of time before those fangs would sink into his belly.

"No!" Kit growled like an animal as she strained to keep him from being pulled away from her. "I won't let you have him!"

Her shout was answered by excited howls from the other members of the pack, which had gathered for the kill. Chase looked at Kit in desperation. "This isn't working!"

"I know." She tugged harder.

Suddenly a new sound blasted through the air, as loud as a train whistle. It emanated from somewhere behind the utahraptors. Chase's attacker snapped its head around to look behind it, but kept its hold on his foot. The blast of noise came again and this time the animal shrieked a challenge back, still refusing to let Chase go. Then a bluish-white electric bolt illuminated the front of the crack, arcing like lightning over the utahraptor, dancing across its head, jumping from its teeth to its eyes to the crevice wall and back again. The beast shrilled in pain, released Chase's ankle and sprang away from the opening. Hissing fiercely, it charged away and crashed through the sagebrush along with its pack-mates.

Chase scrambled back and huddled with Kit as deep in the fissure as they could squeeze.

"What the heck was that?" he asked, but he got his answer before the question was out of his mouth. The lightning bolt vanished and another light appeared outside: a green searchlight.

"It's one of those machines!" Kit moaned. "What's it doing here?"

"I don't know," Chase said. "And I'd rather not find out."

They had little choice. The searchlight hove straight to their hiding place, accompanied by the metallic clanking sounds they had heard in the catacombs. The terrifyingly familiar silhouette of a walking machine loomed against the dusky sky. It shined its spotlight into the crack, fully illuminating and blinding them with glaring green light. The machine hesitated a moment as if its occupant were studying them carefully.

It seemed things couldn't get worse, but then a chorus of howls erupted. The utahraptors were back.

The machine spun away from the crevice, leaving Kit and Chase dazzled but relieved. The alarm whistle blasted again, but the angry pack leapt forward as a group, slashing their foot-claws at the metallic hide of the machine, gnashing teeth at its canopy glass, and sending it reeling backward under their combined weight. Nevertheless, the machine withstood their onslaught and unleashed its electrical bolt from a pointed probe on its right arm, raising a chorus of painful howls from the pack.

A brief one-sided battle ensued in which the utahraptors repeatedly tried to rush the newcomer but were scattered by the electric arc. Methodically, the machine drove the pack backward step by step with its arc lashing out until the utahraptors disappeared behind a rock outcrop. As the machine vanished in pursuit of them, Chase quickly grabbed Kit's hand and clambered out of the fissure, pulling her with him.

"What are you doing?" she resisted.

"Come on," he urged her. "It's now or never."

"You're right," she agreed. "Let's go!" They scrambled through the sagebrush that skirted the face of the rock outcrop, quickly putting a hundred feet of brush between them and the crevice while the machine and the utahraptors fought on unaware of their prey's escape. Chase spotted a deep, willow-filled gully and they ducked down under the overhanging branches just as the sounds of the fight ceased behind them. Huddling together, scarcely daring to breathe, they let the silence of the night close around them.

It wasn't long before the machine reappeared at the crevice, shining its light inside.

"Aren't you glad we didn't stay there?" Chase asked.

"Shhh!" was Kit's reply. The machine turned and swept its light around the area, across the wreckage of the pickup and along the fenceline road. It moved in their direction, passing just yards from them. The occupant must have assumed they had continued on foot in the direction they were going because it walked off along the fence road toward the highway with its beam flashing one way and another.

When they were alone and the crickets started singing, Kit and Chase crawled out of their hiding place and stood up. The moon had set, the sky was dark and the air was still. Chase slung his rifle over his shoulder and took her hand.

"Let's go."

"Where?" she asked. "The machine is ahead of us and the utahraptors are behind."

"I'll take my chances with the machine." He started walking in the direction of the highway. "At least we can see it by its own light."

"There's something about that machine," Kit remarked. "I got a good look as it went by. Did you see the emblem on its side? A pair of crossed palm leaves in green enamel. That's the same design that was on the armor of the pteronychus that almost discovered us in the temple."

"Maybe it trailed us here."

"But why? And why alone? Why didn't they all come after us?"

"I don't know."

The gravel crunched behind them. Chase wheeled and leveled his empty rifle at an oncoming dark mass, but when Kit saw what was coming she let out a cry of relief. "Oh, Dr. O!"

The professor, driving his Land Rover without headlights, stopped alongside them and rolled his window down.

"Going my way?" he quipped.

"You bet we are," cried Kit.

"I was delayed by an encounter with a pachyrhinosaur herd," Ogilvey explained. "I see you didn't fare any better."

"Just a bit worse," said Chase.

"Come on," Ogilvey urged. "You'd better hop in quickly. No telling what will come along next."

Kit took the front seat and Chase jumped into the back, laying his rifle across his lap. Ogilvey started forward again cautiously, leaving his headlights off. When he reached the county road he hesitated before turning onto the pavement.

"What are you waiting for?" said Chase. "Head for Red Lodge."

"I'm waiting for that." Ogilvey pointed off to the right, in the direction of Red Lodge. The green light was sweeping over the hillsides and among the trees lining the road.

"The machine's gone that way," Kit murmured. "Now what?" In response, Ogilvey pulled onto the road heading left toward the ranch house.

"Now, wait a minute," Chase protested. "There's a tyrannosaurus that way."

"The better of two bad choices," Ogilvey mumbled, tapping a pistol holstered on his hip and pressing the accelerator down.

"Okay," Chase acquiesced. "But I sure wish I had some ammo."

Ogilvey said, "Your single-shot breach loader may be fine for darting wolves but I hardly think it's up to fighting dinosaurs."

"It'll have to do," said Kit. "It was enough before."

"Yeah." Chase sounded a little smug. "It was, wasn't it?"

# PART THREE: MARSHALLING FORCES

## CHAPTER 11

Dawn's early light. At midsummer in Southern California it was a strong light. Diedre Porter opened her eyes and squinted at sunlight slipping between the closed louvers of her Venetian blinds and painting slanted white stripes on the blue bedroom wall. Day had come whether Diedre was ready or not. Her calico cat Lupe suckled a collar point of her nightshirt and kneaded her breast with tiny claws like on many another morning, purring loudly with a soothing lotus-like effect. Lupe had helped keep Diedre tangled in her sheets much later than she otherwise might have stayed. Lupe and a handful of tranquilizers last night.

Remembering the events of the previous day, Diedre suddenly sat up with a gasp, sending Lupe sprawling across the bedspread. Lupe stood and mewed plaintively but Diedre ignored her, clasping her forehead in both hands and trying to clear her mind. Had yesterday been real? She looked at the clock radio on the night table. The digital time display was black. The power really was out.

Adrenaline was in full flow again, like it had been all day yesterday as the blue light beam lanced down from the moon and black smoke rose into the sky. She went to the window and bent a louver down. Outside, beyond the yellow flowers and green leaves of a hibiscus bush, the stucco houses and palm trees of her neighborhood looked peaceful. The red tile roofs, the greenery in the back yards looked the same as two days ago. That was reassuring.

But not so reassuring was the pall over the horizon. A sickly yellow trace of smoke hung against the desert mountains. Nearer, about a mile away, blue-gray wisps of smoke blew up from the valley where JPL lay, or where it had lain peacefully until yesterday morning. She let the blind snap shut, shuddering at the thought of JPL in flames. She slipped into her sweats outfit and went to the kitchen and lifted the phone from its receiver on the wall. Still dead. She tried punching the buttons on the microwave. Nothing. What had she expected?

She went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. Mercifully, the water was still running. A splash of cool water on her face cleared her mind and helped her calm down. She dried her face with a towel and glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyelids were pink and puffy from too little sleep, but her hazel eyes showed none of the terror she had expected to see. Maybe after yesterday she was immune to terror.

In the kitchen she got some orange juice out of the still-cold refrigerator and took a banana from the fruit bowl. She sat down at the table reliving the events she had witnessed the day before.

She had been up by 5:30 am as usual, listening to a radio news show and doing her morning stretches when the President came on and announced that the world was under attack, that he expected the attack to spread to the U.S in a matter of hours, and that he was declaring martial law and urging citizens to stay in their homes. Terror-stricken by his terse words and unconvinced by his promises to overcome any challenge, she had stayed home from JPL and remained as calm as she could. But she had listened with growing horror to news reports on radio and TV confirming the attack. By six, there had been precious little to see on TV except worried local newscasters discussing the loss of their satellite links. They had promised a live broadcast from a press conference at JPL, where authorities were preparing to explain the source of the attack, and Diedre had sat on the edge of her couch for hours expecting to watch Lloyd confess his cover-up of Phaeon Crater. But no live report came from JPL or anywhere else. Instead, the TV went dark and the radio went dead and the power went out. In the silence that followed, she had heard the first explosions. She had gone to the kitchen window and seen the crescent moon rising in the east, and watched the blue beam in breathless terror as it sliced down to the earth. When black clouds of smoke began to billow from the direction of JPL she had begun to cry. She had curled up with Lupe on the couch most of the day, uncertain what the ghastly blue light would do next. Would it be content to destroy TV, radio and JPL or would her own home be a target? At one point, she heard the next-door neighbor calling after one of her kids and poked her head out the back door to talk. But there had been little to say. Mrs. Thurber was a devout Mormon, convinced the Day of Judgment was at hand. She had taken her children back inside to pray joyously for the sound of Gabriel's trumpet and the advent of Christ.

In the evening the beam had continued its deadly work. Flashes of light filled the sky until twilight faded into darkness and the moon set and the beam went with it. Diedre had climbed into bed with Lupe and after hours of tossing and turning, and quite a few Prozac, had fallen into a drugged sleep from which she had just awakened.

Sleep had not been a great refuge for her lately, anyway. Over the last three years, she had scarcely gotten a night's rest because of the awful secret she was forced to keep about Phaeon. She and Frank had been placed under virtual house arrest. Military people had stopped by to check on her constantly, saying they were looking after her wellbeing but really just letting her know they still had an eye on her. Lately the enforced silence had been driving her crazy. She had grown moody and isolated from her friends. Her first reaction this morning, wondering whether the situation was real or imagined, was a symptom that had begun to worry her. Constantly suppressing the truth about Clem's discovery was more than she could live with. She had gotten good at telling the fabricated story of Clem's crash, but she knew very well Clem was still silently circling the moon.

Living with lies and sleeplessness had taken its toll. She had lost her ability to concentrate and errors in her computer codes had gotten her demoted. She was an entry-level data specialist again and having a hard time with that. On rare occasions when she bumped into Lloyd, she could tell by his haggard look he was not much better off. Maybe he regretted instigating all this but she couldn't forgive him. Every day had brought another opportunity for Diedre to blurt out the truth. Somebody would ask when a replacement mission was scheduled. Somebody else wanted to look at Clem's last data before she crashed. Lloyd always looked nervous when Diedre made weak, diversionary replies. He would watch her closely, as if thinking, _Is this the day she blows it?_

But that day hadn't come and Diedre blamed herself for the horror of this day—blamed herself and Lloyd and Frank and that skulking Major MacIlvain, who had vanished from JPL soon after their enforced silence began. But suppose she _had_ shouted the truth to the world? Maybe someone would have listened. Maybe things would never have gotten to this point.

Or maybe she'd be dead. She remembered the nervous way the major had fingered his pistol that night and recalled the last time she had seen him at the lab. He had pulled her aside in the hallway.

"Remember, you are a top priority security subject," he had hissed. "Don't think you can get outside our grasp. Just play along for a while and things will work out fine."

She hadn't believed him about things working out but she hadn't known what else to do. Go to the media? She would wind up labeled an Area Fifty-One crackpot, discredited by the government and Lloyd too, her career over and her life ruined. Or worse.

But such thoughts were pointless this morning. Despite her terror at Phaeon's attack, Diedre felt a strange new exhilaration. At last she could tell the truth! Mixed with horror she felt an intoxicating joy. A lead weight had been lifted from her soul. The world might be coming to an end but somehow, she didn't quite know how, she had just been reborn.

She heard a knock at the front door and after shaking off a wave of irrational fear, got up from the table to answer it. She looked through the peephole and shouted with delight.

"Frank!"

She opened the door and threw herself into his big arms. "Oh God," she cried, "am I glad to see you."

He bear-hugged her. "How're you doing, Diedre?"

"Just fine now, Frank. Come on in." She led him straight back to the kitchen and offered him food, a sure-to-please tactic with Frank. He was like a puppy dog. Feed him and he'd follow you anywhere. This morning he seemed to have quite a healthy appetite, rifling her cupboards and refrigerator for cereal, milk, bread, butter and jam.

"I slept on a couch in the lab basement last night," he said between crunches of cereal.

"I thought the lab was gone," said Diedre. "I heard explosions."

Frank took a bite of bread and continued with a cheek full. "JPL's been hit all right, but our building's okay. I thought I'd walk over and see what you're up to."

Diedre smiled. Frank's wrinkled Clementine T shirt, smudged blue jeans, matted beard, fingerprinted glasses and tousled hair made him look like he'd slept in a gutter rather than on a couch. He munched another spoonful of cereal. "I wish I knew what's going on up there at Phaeon."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Me too. I wish there was something we could do."

As she watched him shovel in another spoonful, an idea came to mind.

"Hey, Clem is still up there, right?"

"As far as I know."

"Then we ought to try and get another look into Phaeon. Maybe we'd see something we could pass on to the military."

Frank stopped crunching. "That might just be possible."

"Then again, with the power out..."

"Not a problem." He shoveled in another bite and pointed his spoon at her. "I've already got the power back on in our lab. Found a portable generator in the Physical Plant building. There's plenty of gasoline in the campus security cars. Power's no problem. We just need a plan."

"We can write a command sequence," Diedre said with her newfound enthusiasm doubling. "And we can uplink it to Clem if she's still listening. I wonder if we can get through to her via Goldstone?"

"Nope. Phone line's dead as a doornail. Don't know if Goldstone is even there anymore. We'll have to come up with something else, but no sweat, right? We've solved tougher problems than this. Now get yourself some breakfast. You look pale. Got to eat to keep your strength up."

She got a bowl and joined him while he ate a second serving of cereal. After that she dealt with a couple things before leaving for the lab. She got a bag of dry cat food out of the cupboard and overfilled Lupe's bowl in the corner of the kitchen floor, then filled Lupe's water bowl to the brim, smiling at the way Lupe managed to purr while engulfing bites of cat chow.

"That's enough food and water to last you a while, Kitten Face. I'll leave the kitchen window open so you can get in and out. Be a good girl, okay?" Lupe replied with a half-purr, half-meow while crunching another bite of food.

A minute later, walking with Frank along the curved sidewalks of her neighborhood, Diedre was surprised at how quiet and serene everything was. This was still the same tidy suburban development she had known for years. Birds twittered in the bushes and the morning sun was already hot, alternating with the cool shade of fan palms. As she and Frank went in the direction of JPL, nobody was out other than them, but that was understandable. There was no rush of commuters this morning. People were obeying the President's call to stay in their homes and wait for further information. Of course, Diedre didn't really expect any further information to come.

After walking a mile through quiet suburbia they came to the Jet Propulsion Laboratories campus, a small city of beige and gray highrise buildings nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains. The approach road was a curved arc of pavement flanked by sidewalks and barred by a guard kiosk in the center of the roadway. On an average morning the front gates bustled with arriving workers and delivery vehicles, but this morning the kiosk was empty and the campus seemed deserted. None of the buildings had been attacked but a set of radio transmitter towers on the mountainside had been struck by the beam and were melted wrecks. The hillside itself had been swept by fire and was now an ashen gray forest of charred brush skeletons. The moon was still below the horizon and the sky from which the beam had emanated was clear and quiet this morning. But what was once a bustling community of scientists was now a ghost town.

Approaching the main entrance, they passed the scene of a great holocaust on the street outside the campus. A line of TV communication vans parked in front of the Von Karman Auditorium was now a row of blackened metal wrecks. Although the auditorium was intact, the pavement in front of it was blackened, and charred shapes lay scattered on the street. Diedre gasped, realizing the shapes were human bodies. Several dozen people had been burned black by the death ray. They had already begun to bloat and ooze dark liquid onto the pavement. Diedre shuddered to think who those unrecognizable forms might have been yesterday.

Beyond the wreckage, the main entry kiosk stood empty. Passing the gate on the way to their lab building, they crossed a stretch of campus lawn landscaped intermittently with trees and bushes. Diedre looked around her in astonishment.

"After all the explosions I heard, I thought the place would be in ruins."

"Not much damage at all," Frank replied. "Just the power and the radio transmitters on the hill and the TV vans. That's all they were after."

Diedre sighed. "I guess the sounds of explosions yesterday made things seem worse than they were."

"Yeah," said Frank. "Those vans blowing up made quite a racket."

Diedre noticed a disheveled man in wrinkled slacks and an untucked white shirt shoveling dirt on what had been a bed of star jasmine. Both the man and the job he was doing were out of place.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"Don't you recognize him?" Frank responded. "It's Lloyd."

Approaching Lloyd, Diedre saw that his pile of dirt was grave-sized. Lloyd's back was to them and his flip-top hair blew in the breeze.

"Lloyd!" she helloed. "It's Frank and Diedre."

Lloyd turned as they walked up to him but said nothing. A day's growth of stubble covered his chin and cheeks and his pants and shirt were splotched with dirt and ash. He gazed at them dully with red-rimmed eyes. He sat down on a stone bench beside the dirt pile. The corners of his mouth turned down bitterly, he gestured at their surroundings.

"She liked it here under the eucalyptus trees. You can almost see the whole campus."

"She? Who?" Diedre asked.

Lloyd said nothing, staring at the dirt.

Frank explained softly, "Linda, his wife. TV news reporter, remember? She died in the vans with the rest of them. Lloyd left her there and came back to the lab to get a DVD of images of Phaeon for his presentation. He'd finally decided to tell people everything we knew. But while he was in the lab all hell broke loose."

Lloyd hunched over with his face in his hands.

"Hey, Lloyd," Frank said cautiously. "Diedre and I want to try reactivating Clem."

Lloyd sat like a statue with his eyes fixed on the grave.

Diedre tried to sound chipper. "Whaddya think, Lloyd? We'll find a way to get Clem up and running, just the three of us. Just like the night we—" she almost said, "—sent her down to look at Phaeon," but stopped, remembering Lloyd's uncontrite expression as he sided with Major MacIlvain. It was a hated memory but now his grief and his dirt-smeared hands made her feel like forgiving. He had paid a terrible price for his complicity.

Staring at the dirt, he doubled a grimy fist and hissed through clenched teeth, "I want to smash them, make them hurt like this."

Diedre put a hand on his shoulder. "If we get a look at what they're doing up there, then maybe somebody can."

They coaxed Lloyd to leave the grave with the shovel stuck in at one end as a marker and come across the campus to their own building, which Diedre was heartened to see untouched by the beam. They went to a basement entry door leading down to the Clementine Operations Center, but Frank paused to look at the sky above the mountains. "Guess what will be rising any minute now."

Diedre followed his gaze through the smoke hanging over the craggy eastern horizon. One horn of the crescent moon was poking up into the sky. Goosebumps rose on her arms.

"We'd better take cover," she said, but Frank was in no hurry. He scratched in his long frizzy brown hair. "I have a hunch they won't shoot at us. They're just after communications."

"Just the same, I'll feel safer inside." A small gasoline powered generator purred beside the entrance and Diedre followed the orange power cable that snaked through the door, down the stairs and along the central corridor. Frank, adept at ad-hoc wiring, had tied it into the sub-basement's power grid, so when Diedre reached the Operations Center its fluorescent lights flickered a cool white greeting.

As Frank and Lloyd followed her in, Diedre realized that Frank Johnston and Lloyd Andersen were probably the best co-conspirators she could hope for. Frank's ability to work anything electrical made it a foregone conclusion that they could jury-rig communications from earth to Clementine. And Lloyd knew as much about the overall workings of JPL as anybody.

She went to her old seat at the ACE's computer terminal, sat down and keyed in a command to retrieve the most recent Clementine entries. The screen began reeling off a stream of data.

She smiled. "Looks like we've got a complete log of Clem's activity up until we put her on standby, with updates from her every six months since."

Frank and Lloyd hemmed her in the way they had on that night three years ago. Somehow it felt more comfortable this time. "How's her orbit?" Frank asked.

"According to the last update she's still 55 kilometers up, orbiting directly over the poles. She's been real quiet, waiting for her next command sequence."

Frank pointed to a line of code. "Looks like she still has the primary mission data on board."

"Super," said Diedre. "That means she's got a complete 3-D map of Phaeon Crater in her memory."

"How about fuel?" asked Frank.

A few more keyboard entries brought the fuel data up. Clem's main fuel tank was down to twelve percent.

"Pretty low," Frank acknowledged. "But we can get one last big burn and take her right down over their heads."

"Oh-oh," Diedre pointed to another line. "Thruster number four is almost out of propellant. That's not good for attitude control."

Frank shrugged. "You'll just have to come up with a command sequence that conserves use of thruster four, Diedre. You'll find a way."

She chuckled. "Hey, why should these commands be any less hair-raising than the others we've sent?"

Lloyd, who had stood by like a zombie, stirred and said hoarsely, "You really think Clem's still okay? She probably got blasted a long time ago."

"But she hasn't been transmitting," Frank countered. "That's the key. They don't know she's there. I'll bet she's just fine. All we've gotta do is get one signal up to her. Just a quick command string before Phaeon gets a fix on our position."

"And if they do get a fix on our position?" Lloyd rasped.

Diedre's heart began to race. "We could get ourselves killed."

Frank shrugged. "We could do that without trying anything, seems to me."

"Yeah," Lloyd agreed. "So let's try something." His voice was brittle. Diedre took a good look at him. He was grim-faced, staring at the screen with his jaws working and his fists doubled. Something in his eyes was scary... hollow... dead.

***

Chase tossed fitfully on the Danielses' living room couch, trying to sleep under a light blanket with one arm shielding his eyes from the flood of daylight penetrating the drawn curtains. Having turned in sometime after 2 am, Chase was trying to catch a little more rest, as was Kit in her room upstairs and Dr. Ogilvey in the guest bedroom. They had seen no sign of the tyrannosaurus in the night but the thought of it made sleep hard to come by.

A sudden blast of sound as loud as a train whistle and as deep as a foghorn rattled the house. Chase threw off the blanket, picked up his rifle from the floor, swept his ball cap off the coffee table and put it on. He grabbed some rounds out of the box of 30-06 bullets he had collected from the ground outside the night before. He checked to see that his rifle was loaded and then moved to the doorway that led to the ruined kitchen. As he removed the chair they had chocked under the doorknob, the foghorn tone roared around him again, so intense that dust filtered down from cracks in the pine log ceiling. He listened to it carefully this time. It wasn't the tyrannosaur's roar, although it seemed like it must come from a beast that large. It started as a low monotone that carried on for several seconds and then rose in pitch, fluting up through octaves to end in a shrill high note. It reminded Chase of a bull elk's call, if the elk were scaled up to the size of an elephant. There was something familiar about it. It sounded a lot like the noise made by the walking machine the night before. Hairs stood up on Chase's neck. Had the machine found them here?

Kit and Dr. Ogilvey came down the stairs and joined him as he paused by the door. "What the devil was that—?" Ogilvey began, but he was drowned out by another blast of the sound.

They had shut the door between the living room and kitchen and propped a chair against it to keep out the cold and God-knew-what-else might come in through the hole the T rex had made. But whatever was making the noise sounded like it was still outside the house. Chase turned the door handle and opened the door a crack, peeking through with Kit and Ogilvey close behind him. The kitchen was empty except for shattered wood and chairs strewn across the floor, but outside by the barn was an enormous animal, the likes of which he had never seen: a duckbilled dinosaur the size of an elephant, though not elephant-shaped. It stood on its hind legs like an immense goose with its body leaning forward, its long reptilian tail stretching out behind, and its front legs dangling but not quite touching the ground.

"Jeez!" Chase muttered. "What is that?"

Ogilvey squeezed past Chase and walked into the middle of the kitchen, apparently unperturbed by any notion the thing might be dangerous. He turned and flashed a long-toothed grin at Kit. "Ih-hee-hee!" he laughed. "A parasaurolophus! That's what we have here."

Seeing Chase holding his rifle at the ready, Ogilvey motioned for him to lower it. "No need for that, son. It's a plant eater. Completely innocuous."

Chase doubted a beast so huge could be entirely harmless. He slung the rifle across his arm to keep it handy.

Ogilvey beamed. "Look at its coloration, Kit! You'll never see that in a textbook. A reddish-brown body—what's the term for that color? Rufous? Yes, that's it. Rufous. A light buff color on the throat and belly, a broad dark brown stripe running from the side of its neck down the length of its body and along its tail, and its muzzle and bill the same dark umber color. Is it furry, or do my eyes deceive me?"

Chase said, "Doc, it sounds like you're already composing a scientific research paper on the subject."

"Oh, indeed I am, son. Just look at those eyes. Bright orange irises set in a dark umber eye-band. Gorgeous!"

Chase noted that those orange eyes were watching Ogilvey cautiously, but not threateningly.

"And that rufous head-crest," Ogilvey rhapsodized. "Long, curving, tube-shaped, and arching back a good six feet with a flap of skin beneath it patterned in alternating stripes of iridescent blue and brilliant red. Those are the most striking colors I've ever seen on a large animal. Stupendous!"

The beast, unperturbed by Ogilvey's ramblings, filled its lungs in preparation for another rafter-jarring honk. Rearing tall, it emitted the foghorn blast through its nostrils, raising its head high to radiate the sound. Chase, Kit and Ogilvey flinched as the air throbbed around them so powerfully that it hurt their ears. Finishing its call, the creature settled down to all fours and seemed to listen to the sound echoing through the hills. Zippy, who had joined them in the kitchen, let out a pained whine and shook his head, flapping his ears.

The big animal's call was answered by several smaller honking voices and three creatures that appeared to be its offspring trotted from the pasture to join it. These juveniles were about the size of horses although not horse-shaped. Jogging up single-file in a two-legged trot, they squatted on their haunches near the big animal. Though their bodies were rufous colored like the adult's, their crests were no more than small bumps at the back of their heads, which lacked the red and blue coloration. Another large parasaurolophus, slightly smaller than the big adult, ambled up and squatted near the young ones.

"That must be the mother," Ogilvey asserted, "completing the family group. Notice the sexual dimorphism, Kit. Like many female animals her colors are drab like the young ones. Her crest is also smaller than the male's —and unmarked."

"What beautiful creatures," Kit murmured, moving to the splintered opening in the kitchen wall to get a better look.

"Don't go too far," Chase cautioned. "We don't know how these things react to humans."

"Ih-heeh!" Ogilvey laughed. "I'd wager no one knows that."

The male parasaurolophus ignored Kit. Rearing up, it let out another loud call, which provoked Zippy to howl in harmony. As the noise echoed away, Kit said, "The machine last night made that noise when it drove off the utahraptors. I wonder why?"

"It's obvious," Ogilvey replied. "If you sound like one of these you get a lot of respect. Perhaps it's a territorial call, warning other creatures to stay away or suffer the consequences."

"What consequences?" Chase wondered.

Ogilvey thought a moment. "Confrontation? A fight?"

Kit said, "They don't look like they want to fight. I wonder what they want?"

As if in response, the male stretched up and reached his head into the barn's open second-story loft door and pulled out a mouthful of hay. The juveniles began a loud chorus of cries that sounded like bawling calves. The father parasaurolophus lowered his mouthful of hay and the young ones began greedily tugging out bunches of it and gobbling it down. The father repeated the process of snatching down hay and passing it to the young and the mother as well, until all of them were happily chewing and gulping. Squatting again, he surveyed the scene like a proud, outsized father goose. He cast an eye toward the kitchen but didn't seem to regard anyone there as a threat.

Chase said, "They'll make short work of your hay."

"That's all right," said Kit. "It's just the tail end of last winter's supply. We won't miss it. In fact..." She jumped down from the opening in the kitchen wall to the driveway and walked toward the animals.

"Hey! Come back here," Chase called in a hiss, thinking she must have gone crazy. He turned to Ogilvey. "Are you sure these things are friendly?"

The professor scratched his beard. "I suppose they might be dangerous if provoked, like any big animal."

Chase wanted to call another warning but he was afraid what might happen if he startled the beasts. He stayed quiet but kept his rifle ready as she approached the creatures.

The male snuffled nervously and Kit wisely detoured around him in the direction of the main barn door. The young huddled against their mother and chortled anxiously. The male moved between Kit and his family, issuing a rumbling growl.

Chase raised his rifle and aimed at the creature's flank, certain it was about to charge, but Kit got inside the barn safely and the beast settled back on its haunches. A moment later Kit appeared at the hayloft door and called down to the creature.

"Hey there rufous! Come here, boy." The big animal rose and took a step toward her, cocking its head like a curious bird.

Kit pulled a bale of hay to the loft door and said, "You and your babies can eat all you want." She shoved the bale over the edge and it broke open upon hitting the ground. The male eyed it carefully, dropped to all fours, sniffed the hay, and then took a nibble. He took a larger bite and the young ones clustered around him clamoring for a handout.

Kit grinned and called down to Chase and Ogilvey, "Aren't they adorable?" The sound of her voice startled the big animal and it raised its head up to where she stood in the loft doorway. Chase raised his rifle again.

"Easy, Chase," Kit called, motioning for him to lower the rifle. She stood still in the loft as the male brought its nose up to her pant-leg and drew a long, snuffling breath. Then he raised his head higher until his snout was inches from Kit's nose. They looked each other in the face until Kit broke into a wide smile and chuckled. The creature relaxed again, lowering its head to continue its feast.

Kit threw out a second bale and then came down from the loft, easing past the creatures and returning to the kitchen with an exultant smile. "I think I just made a new friend."

"Yes," Ogilvey agreed. "A very big friend." He squared his thick glasses on his nose and looked at Chase reproachfully. "I'm surprised at you, Chase, so eager with that rifle. Aren't you a wildlife reintroduction biologist?"

"Yeah, but Kit might have—"

"But nothing. Here is a lovely family group, freshly reintroduced. You should be as delighted as we are." He put an arm around Kit and hugged her.

Chase took off his cap and scratched his head. "You've got a point, professor. But it's all just a bit much—invaders from the moon, robot machines, a tyrannosaurus, now this. I guess I'm a little confused."

Ogilvey shrugged. "Whatever the pteronychuses are up to, their motives can't be all bad if they've brought us such wonderful creatures as these." He addressed Kit. "Come along dear, I brought some of my reference books. Let's go look up parasaurolophus. I notice several features that differ from previous scientific reports. The sexual dimorphism of the head-crest is quite pronounced, don't you think? There's quite a difference between father, mother and young parasaurolophuses. What a lovely family they make! Don't you agree?"

Kit's happy expression faded as he spoke. "They're one big happy family, aren't they?" She replied dully and her face grew red.

"Yes," Ogilvey crooned, oblivious to her sudden pain. "The father simply dotes on his brood, doesn't he?"

Kit turned and ran through the living room and up the stairs. Ogilvey looked confused. "Have I said something wrong?"

Chase nodded. "Her father's gone missing, remember? You were gabbing about fathers and families."

"Yes, of course," Ogilvey acknowledged. "A word of apology is in order —after I jot a few things in my notebooks." The paleontologist went inside the living room and turned to the adjacent dining room where his notebooks were scattered on the table. He sat down and picked up a pen, mumbling to himself about hens and chicks and parasaurolophuses. Chase, left in the kitchen with Zippy, wanted to go and comfort Kit. But what could he say that would really help? He had no idea where Will Daniels was. He picked up a chair knocked over by the T rex and sat down with his 30-06 across his lap, keeping an eye on the parasaurolophuses. Zippy came and sat beside him, resting his head on Chase's knee. He gave the dog a pat on the head and a scratch behind his black-and-white ears.

***

The line of burned vans stretched for fifty yards along the road outside the JPL fences. Every press conference Diedre had ever seen had drawn a small circus of trucks bristling with satellite dishes and radio transmission antennas. Today the row of vehicles looked like the aftermath of a massacre. Hot fires had raged through the trucks leaving them charred with their bare wheel rims sunk into the asphalt pavement. The press corps had come to get JPL's best guess as to who was attacking from Phaeon Crater but had gotten firsthand experience instead. Phaeon must have regarded JPL as a hot target buzzing with radio transmissions. If any of the broadcast crews survived, they were long gone.

Phaeon had missed the last van in the line, and now Diedre stood looking it over while Lloyd and Frank worked inside. Its white exterior was untarnished by smoke and the radio equipment was in good shape. The rooftop transmitter, a six-foot white radio dish, was turned up in what was once the direction of a geostationary communication satellite. The back of the van was a white box a dozen feet square with the logo "News Three" painted on the sides in bright red. In an open compartment at the rear a small generator motor purred softly, providing power for the broadcasting equipment Frank was busy rewiring.

Diedre went up a short staircase to the side door of the compartment and surveyed the banks of electronic equipment inside. The interior walls were crowded with video tape decks, TV monitors, and dozens of electronic consoles with red and green diode lights and switches and knobs and dials and slide-potentiometers and gizmos and gadgets defying description by anyone—except Frank.

Lloyd was inside, seated at the control desk in one of the two operator chairs, scowling grimly as he had done since early this morning. Frank was missing. She looked around and smiled when she spotted Frank's legs extending out from under the desk. He had crawled there to get at the truck's electronic circuitry. His circuit-testing tool kit sat on the floor by his side.

"Here we go!" His muffled voice came out from where his hefty torso vanished among the electronics racks. "I found a place where I can tie into their equipment."

"Good," Diedre replied to what she could see of Frank. Then she spotted something interesting on the wall beside the door. It was a telephone hung inside a cubbyhole. "Hey, what's this?" she said, lifting the receiver.

"Go ahead, Diedre," Lloyd muttered. "Try the White House. Maybe they'll send the Marines."

Diedre held the receiver to her ear and looked away from Lloyd's scary eyes. There was nothing but static on the line.

"Of course, it's dead," she sighed, hanging up.

Lloyd stared at his shoes. "Phones don't work anywhere."

Undaunted by Lloyd's bitterness, Diedre spotted a small handheld microphone hanging on the wall. "What's this other thing here?" she asked, taking it off its hook.

"CB radio," Lloyd answered without enthusiasm. "Probably useless."

"Try the police channel," Frank called from under the equipment bank.

Diedre punched the Channel 1 button on the console and pressed the thumb switch on the hand mike. "Hello, anybody there?"

The line stayed silent.

"Try another channel," Frank called as he worked. "Try them all."

Diedre hit the Channel 2 button and sent out another hello. Again only static, ragged walls of it. The airwaves were as dead as the JPL campus. She tried channel after channel with no luck, until she tried Channel 18. Something different happened there. After she sent her message out, the static surged and crackled.

"Wait!" Frank called. "I thought I heard something."

"Yeah," Diedre laughed. "If you like scratchy noises." But she stayed on 18 and shortly, in the middle of the static, something was really there. A voice came faintly through the interference.

"—six, do you read me? Try Channel six."

Diedre switched the radio back to Channel 6 and called into the handset, "Hello, are you there?"

The voice came through clearly now, a man's voice. "Hello there, little lady, got a handle?"

Diedre was confused. "A handle?"

Lloyd stared at her unresponsively but Frank scooted out from under the desk and sat up. "He wants to know your name."

"Diedre Porter," she announced into the mike. "Calling from JPL."

"JPL?" The voice made a wheezing laugh. "JPL? What's that stand for? Jungle Patrol Lunatics?"

"Jet Propulsion Laboratories, in Pasadena."

"Oh. And you're the Little Old Lady from Pasadena."

She didn't like the tone of his voice—half-crazy, or worse. "No. I'm Diedre Porter." Whoever the fellow was, he sure thought he was funny.

"D. P., that's you to me," the voice rhapsodized. "Okay if I call you Sweet Pea? My name, well now, that's not for public consumption. Got my transmitter hopped up way louder than the law allows. Call me Daddy Longlegs, 'cause I'm a skinny bastard. How do you read me?"

"You're loud and clear." Diedre stifled an urge to comment on his odd attitude.

"You're not too clear on my end Sweet Pea," the voice replied. "But I can dig you if you shout."

"Okay, Daddy Longlegs," she shouted.

"Glad to hear yer voice, Sweet Pea," he drawled. "I been lonely, way out here in Taos. Most'a my old buddies ain't there no more. I think they got cooked by the moon unit, you know what I mean? The moonbeam."

"Why didn't it get you?"

"Well, see, I been off the air, for a month or so. I was in for a liver transplant, you know, on account-a my misspent youth. I guess the moonies didn't know where to find me."

"Sounds like you're lucky. Better keep off the air when the moon is up."

"Hey, Sweet Pea," he launched into a sing-song voice, "you wanna boogie woogie with me? I got a jug'a bur-gun-dee."

"Hey Daddy Longlegs, can we get serious a minute?"

"That's what I'm sayin', Sweet Pea. I wanna get serious with ya. Your place or mine?"

Irritated, she passed the hand set to Frank, who sat on the floor looking amused.

"Hello Taos," Frank barked in an authoritarian voice. "Are you in touch with the military?"

"Hey," the voice came back. "Who're you? Put Sweet Pea back on the line."

"Listen," Frank fumed, "we need to know if you're in touch with any military operations."

"Affirmative, JPL," Daddy Longlegs aped a crisp military reply. "I am communicado. They come on every so often, askin' about aliens and little green men and such."

"Can you pass a message to them?"

Daddy Longlegs took a less flippant tone. "Affirmative, good buddy. What you got goin'?"

Frank explained the details of the Clementine plan and admonished Daddy Longlegs not to transmit it when the moon was in the sky.

"Roger on that JPL. I'll keep quiet while the moon is shinin'. That Holly Loo-Ya girl up at NORAD told me they got a schedule of times when it's negatory to transmit. Guess that's so's I don't get blasted. But I'm gettin' blasted anyway, y'know what I mean? Straight bourbon. Anyway, gotta go. Someone's knockin' from Saint Louie on Channel Four. You got anything else?"

"No," said Frank.

"Check you later. And kiss Sweat Pea for me. This's Daddy Longlegs, over and out."

"JPL out," Frank replied.

Diedre took the mike back from Frank and put it on its hook, her face flushing at Daddy Longlegs' suggestion. "We've got some big promises to keep," she said.

"This rig's gonna do it for us," Frank said as he wormed himself back under the desk. "I've just about got things connected. Then I'll need a little time to reset the satellite dish to talk on Clementine's wavelength. But that won't take long."

***

The Apache attack helicopter moved steadily eastward, speeding through the tree-lined canyons of the Beartooth Mountains. Captain Stuart Harper scanned the rugged terrain below, looking for the objective of this morning's deep reconnaissance mission. He and his co-pilot, First Lieutenant Chet Green were the crew of what might be the last flightworthy Apache on earth. They had gotten their orders straight from NORAD during the middle of the night, relayed by a series of ground units and detailed to them by their commander, who had called them out of their bunks at 2:30 am. They had lifted off before dawn from Boise Air Terminal—what was left of it—with extra fuel tanks on the copter's stub wings. Without global positioning satellites they had flown non-stop into Montana, through the Absaroka Mountains, and into the Beartooth range using dead reckoning and highway road maps. They were tasked to obtain visual contact with alien gliders reported down in the area and then transmit their location to ground units deployed nearby. As he probed the foothills of the Beartooths, Stu Harper maneuvered the copter on the ragged edge of disaster, flying at high speed right above the ground. He wanted to avoid detection and give himself the element of surprise when he found the enemy.

The copter vaulted a low ridge and flew out over a high prairie between two mountains and Stu's jaw dropped. He was right on top of his targets. Below and to one side lay a giant silver glider that had plowed into the prairie, tearing a streak across it and coming to rest against the base of a low hill. Nearby were a second and third huge landing craft, stationary at the end of their own long skid-marks. Stu began a tight roll to the right that would bring them in a circle above the bogeys. Nothing moved on the prairie except some cattle. No immediate sign of the enemy. That was a relief.

Chet's voice came over the headphones in Stu's flight helmet. "There's something on the mountain at ten o'clock."

Stu glanced at the triangular tan mountain rising on the far side of the prairie. At the mountain's base were two piles of freshly dumped rock-rubble. Immediately above each pile, an opening the size of a train tunnel went straight into the mountain. It looked like an underground fortification of some kind was under construction.

"Better relay our coordinates pronto," Chet reminded him, but Stu was already into the drill. He punched the control buttons of the data transfer module and its red LED display blinked to signify that it was broadcasting their geographic location via high-speed radio modem. Whether anybody was listening out there was unknown but Stu had his assignment to complete. His orders were to remain in the area and re-transmit until acknowledged, whatever that meant.

Stu got a bad feeling in the pit of his gut. Until now it had been "movement to contact," the search-and-identify phase of the mission. Now, slowing the chopper to survey the area, he felt vulnerable. If the former occupants of the bogeys were still around they might be targeting him right now with whatever ordnance they used. He could feel hairs on the back of his neck rising. Anything could happen from here on, but for the moment the radar screens and optical displays in his cockpit were clear of trouble signs.

With the data transfer module repeating its message, Stu thought it best to make himself a moving target. He steered the Apache up the face of the mountain and flew directly over its top. At the summit he saw more fresh construction. The mountain's rocky surface was penetrated by a group of three vents like low-profile smokestacks. From two of them clear air rose up shimmering with heat, while the larger central one billowed out a hot gas with a distinct greenish tinge. Stu steered clear of the unhealthy looking emission and started a second sweep around the prairie. He took another look at the bogeys and typed some details of their appearance into his keyboard, adding to the digital report the radio unit was repeating. So far there was no response, verbal or digital, from the receiving team.

"Maybe we're too low," he said over the intercom. "We might need some altitude to get the transmission through."

"Roger," Chet replied. Stu could see his co-pilot's helmeted head nodding in the gunner's cockpit in front of him.

"I'll take her up a couple thousand feet," he said. Just as he pulled back on the stick, a white flash streaked past him on the left and Chet shouted into the intercom, "Contacts at the tunnel opening. Two of 'em."

Stu forced the joystick forward and right, throwing the Apache into a tight spin and initiating an evasive dive. He shouted, "Arm your Hellfires!"

Chet responded with a terse, "Arming missiles."

Stu swung the Apache around to an attack orientation, figuring the best defense was a good offense. He flipped the heads-up targeting monocle of his helmet into position over his right eye and pushed the chain gun ready-button. When the nose of the copter swept around to line up on the mountain he got a look at the enemy. Two of the strangest fighting machines he'd ever seen stood in the tunnel openings. They were two-armed, two-legged metal contraptions with sleek fuselage-like bodies.

One of them raised its right arm and fired a shot of white-hot laser light that ripped past the copter on the right. Stu had no more time for conscious thought. He sighted through his monocle, aligned the chain-gun crosshairs on the machine that had just fired, and squeezed the trigger on his joystick. In response the chain gun under the copter's belly swiveled to his aim-point and released a burst of 30mm superspeed rounds. A furious hail of armor-piercing slugs arced to the target in less than a second and impacted on its metal skin before it could fire another laser bolt. The machine reeled back, its dark glass canopy shattering and its legs crumpling. As it tumbled to the ground in a ball of flame Stu shouted, "Scratch one!"

Simultaneously Chet called out, "Hellfire locked on target two... fire!"

The missile leaped off the left stub-wing pylon and streaked toward its target, guided by an optical tracking camera in its nose. Stu kept up a steady rain of 30mm rounds, kicking up dust and sparks all around the second target. The enemy machine responded agilely, dodging most of Stu's incoming heat but the Hellfire's targeting computer was not to be denied. The missile's smoke trail zigzagged twice compensating for the machine's motion and then went in right on target. The warhead exploded with a flash that completely demolished the enemy. Pieces of what had been a formidable adversary scattered a hundred yards around.

"Yee-haw!" Chet's rebel yell rattled Stu's ears.

Stu hollered back, "This is a turkey shoot!" Then he noticed two more machines walking out of the second tunnel opening. One of these lifted its right arm and fired before Stu could bring his chain gun to bear. The shaft of white light tore through the undercarriage of the helicopter and came up between Stu's legs, passing through his instrument panel and out through the glass of his side window. Bits of white hot metal and shards of glass flew everywhere, ricocheting off Stu's visor and tearing into his cheeks.

Screaming in agony he tugged on the joystick but the Apache didn't respond. Instead, it began a paralyzed roll over to the right, out of control.

Another white-hot beam ripped into the copter, tearing through the forward cabin. Chet wailed, "I'm hit! I'm hit!" sounding more like a hurt child than the professional soldier who had coolly fired his missile seconds before. A huge vibration arose in the copter and Stu guessed a rotor had been shorn off by the shot. He yanked the joystick left, right, but the Apache turned completely over in the air and headed for the dirt. A third laser shot impacted the missile carrier out Stu's right window and a massive explosion enveloped him in a flash of bright—nothingness...

***

The concussion of a far-away muffled explosion rattled the windows of Will Daniels' office on the first floor of the ranch house. Chase was trying the channels of the desktop CB radio but he stopped momentarily to look at Kit and Dr. Ogilvey, whose faces mirrored his own concern about the noise. Still, with so many odd and bad things happening a distant explosion hardly seemed worth noting. He shrugged, punched up another channel on the CB and addressed the microphone. "Breaker, breaker, anybody out there?"

The reply was immediate. "This is Sheriff Cochrane in Red Lodge. Whoever you are, keep off the air! Repeat, keep off the air! We've got some weird-looking machines running around town, shooting up the place. Stay where you are and keep quiet. These things home in on a radio signal like you wouldn't believe. Sit tight and keep your mouth shut. We'll get back to you when we can. Red Lodge out."

***

The Gulf of Mexico was a serene flat vista of light aqua against a pale blue morning sky as the shrimp trawler _Lisa Marie_ moved out of Cameron Bay, Louisiana. Captain Lee Thibault stood in the wheelhouse, the warm bow-breeze reminding him how good it was to be on the sea again after a day laid up at the docks. It hadn't taken Thibault and his two-man crew more than a day to run out of patience with the curfew keeping them safe in port. Lee knew as well as anyone that if this war-of-the-worlds went on for days or weeks or months, people would be going hungry. And catching food was what his boat and his life were all about. The _Lisa Marie_ and her crew wouldn't do anybody any good sitting idle at the pier. So here they were, heading out to the shrimp shoals just like any other day. Lee looked behind him to see what his deck hands were up to. Pete Hampton and Lonny Bremmer were relaxing on the benches astern, chatting just like always. That was reassuring.

The ship channel was deserted except for the _Lisa Marie_ and out past the last marker buoy the horizon was an unbroken line of blue. That wasn't right. On most days shrimp boats and freighters would have been everywhere. High up the sky, the moon was flashing those weird lights but nothing had come of them yet, not around Cameron Bay. And there was no use hiding anyway, Lee figured. If whoever was up there wanted to blast his boat they'd get her whether she was at sea or tied up at the quay.

He steered out into the Gulf with a sense of purpose. Everybody had a part to play and his was bringing up food from the sea bottom. War didn't change that. He felt a little more at ease when his sonar told him the shrimp banks were beneath him. He was about to tell Pete and Lonny to run out the nets when he noticed a streak in the sky to the southeast like a jet contrail moving up from the horizon. He grew more concerned when, instead of moving slowly across the sky like other jets would, this one seemed to come straight at him.

He cut the _Lisa Marie's_ engines and she slowed and wallowed forward.

"Hey," he called to the two men on the deck below. "What do you make of that?" They stood and stared at the thing, shielding their eyes from the sun.

Pete looked up at him. "I don't know. Whadda _you_ think it is?"

Lee didn't think for long before he acted. He shoved the gear lever into forward again and gunned the throttle, pulling the bow around sharply to the right to run for home. As the _Lisa Marie_ accelerated he glanced up at the white streak through the cantilevered masts and rigging and felt a chill set into the pit of his guts. The thing at the front of the streak had grown until it looked like the head of a big comet coming right at him. Now he was sure it meant trouble. There was a fierce orange glow to it, hotter than red-hot, just what you'd expect from something plunging all the way down from outer space.

The thing made no noise, coming at them faster than the speed of sound. And as if one spaceship was not bad enough, Lee noticed two other streaks coming from the same point on the horizon. The lead craft grew in apparent size as it approached and Lee saw it was an immense gliding spaceship coming his way at hellish speed. He reflexively crouched as if he could somehow duck under the massive falling object and began to recite a Hail Mary. The thing rushed overhead and slightly to one side of them. As he and his mates turned to watch its plunging course, a huge pressure wave blasted into the _Lisa Marie_ , sending Lee reeling against his helm station and knocking the deck hands off their feet. The _Lisa Marie_ heeled over in the grip of a gale-force wind, taking water over her gunwale before she righted herself.

As the blast died down and the boat came upright, Lee looked at the object rushing away to the north. It was much bigger than his boat, as huge as one of the cruise ships that sometimes lumbered through these waters. The titanic spacecraft was canted back on its delta-shaped wings with rear flaps down to slow its descent. Still supersonic, it receded quickly toward the Louisiana shoreline, the air in its wake shimmering with heat coming off its hull. It fell steadily and soon was skimming the Gulf's surface, throwing up white spray that coiled into the turbulent air behind its twin tail fins. It plowed deeper into the water and walls of white spray rose hundreds of feet on each side of it. Then the mist settled and the spacecraft's rounded ark-like hull floated smoothly on the surface of the Gulf, perhaps a mile away.

But there were more of these strange things in the sky. Lee turned to see five more streaks fanning out from the horizon. He forced the throttle farther forward, steering for the channel-entrance buoy and worrying at the strained thrumming of the engines, hoping she'd hold together long enough to make it back to the inlet before the invaders had them surrounded.

As the _Lisa Marie_ chugged for her homeport it became clear to Lee that his boat was beneath the notice of whomever was aboard the spacecraft. While the second landing craft was splashing down, the first headed away from them toward an inlet ten miles down the coast between the towns of Creole and Grand Chenier.

On the deck, Lonny was crossing himself. Lee called down to him, "I hope Grand Chenier folks are ready. Something very bad is coming their way."

***

"General Davis?" Holly Lewis shook his shoulder lightly to wake him. "Sir?"

He'd been asleep on his couch with his coat pulled over him for a little warmth in the air-conditioned cool of his office. He sat up and Lewis snapped him a crisp salute. He liked her early-morning spunk but lacked any of his own. Waving a perfunctory salute in return, he took the mug of coffee she offered him and motioned her to a chair. She sat tall with a resolute look on her face. Her uniform was less wrinkled than his own, even after what must have been a longer night than he had just been through. She had combed her short-cropped brown hair and there was even a hint of makeup on her face. She understood that appearances mattered in times of stress. "Nearly 7 am, sir. I let you sleep a little longer than you asked. You looked like you needed it."

"If you can call it sleep." He took a long sip of coffee. There was a nagging ache behind his eyes. He closed his eyelids and rubbed them. "What's new? Any contact with chain of command?"

"Nothing concrete, just bits and pieces. The White House is still silent but we got a report relayed from D.C., over about a dozen intermediate local units. They say the White House and the President are alright. Only the communications outbuilding was hit."

"That's good news."

"I sent a response back informing the President we're still here, but the network is pretty unreliable. No response from him and I don't know if he got our message."

"Any way to get better reliability?"

"I'm open to suggestion. We've had a team of three volunteers with a field radio on top of the mountain ever since the moon set last night but nothing they send or receive is coded and there's precious little to be heard out there anyway. We've been able to listen and broadcast for almost twelve hours but the team's got to bring the transmitter inside before the moon rises."

Davis stared through the window that overlooked the cavernous space of NORAD's underground command center. The place was deserted except one man working at one of the many computer screens. Lewis saw Davis looking.

"It's been a long night of mostly futile efforts to gather information, sir. With news coming in that slowly, I ordered people to catch a few minutes of sleep."

"The joint chiefs," Davis mumbled as the caffeine began to take effect. "They still haven't materialized out of the air they vanished into on their way here?"

"No, sir. And given the beam's ability to find and destroy aircraft, I don't think we should expect them. None of the reports so far have turned up a higher-ranking officer than you."

"So I'm still it, as far as we know."

"That's right sir."

He sighed. "I take that fact very personally. It feels like America's salvation rests squarely on my shoulders."

"And mine, sir."

"Yes, of course, Holly. Thanks. Please call me Matt."

"Yes sir, Matt."

"You know," he said after a moment. "I see one ray of hope. As bad as things are, that beam isn't demolishing everything it could."

"Definitely true, Matt. It has the capability to destroy every building and structure in its path, but so far things are pretty limited to communications, power, and weaponry."

"That suggests to me," Davis explained, "that, as capable as the beam weapon is, it must have its limits. For instance, maybe there's a limit to the amount of power being supplied to it, in which case it may be working as fast as it can, but it has to prioritize. If it were me up there and I had limitations, I'd do what they're doing. Hit communications and major weapon systems first and get to everything else later."

"And when they get to everything else later, Matt, what do you think will be on their list?"

"I don't like to think about it."

An orderly came in and handed Lewis two sheets of paper. Davis could see the news was bad by the way the corners of her mouth turned down as she read the first.

"New landings, Matt, this time on the Louisiana coast. Nine gliders moving ashore."

"Sounds like they're opening a second front," he muttered. "First Montana, now Louisiana. They'll cut the country in half if they link up. What else you got?"

"Hmm. Second one's a relay from that National Guard chopper you ordered to Montana. Have a look."

She handed the sheet to him and Davis read the brief message. "Enemy installation under construction coordinates 45°27'14" N, 109°30'55" W. Tunnels under Sandstone Mountain."

He stood up, his heartbeat accelerating with adrenaline. "I knew there was more going on in Montana than met the eye. Sounds like they're building a base of operations. Maybe they're taking a lesson from us, getting underground."

Lewis nodded. "But why there?"

"Darned if I know." Davis had begun pacing his office with a sudden excess of energy but now he stopped and stared at the last two words on the sheet.

"What the devil is Sandstone Mountain?"

"Don't know, Matt."

"Is there some way to move a ground unit in to take a look?"

"There isn't much in the area. A few National Guard people and some police, the ones who relayed the helicopter report, but nothing like a real reconnaissance force."

"I'll take what I can get," Davis replied. "I need detailed information, quickly. There's got to be a reason why they're concentrating on Montana. Scare up some people and equipment to get a close look at this Sandstone Mountain. I've got a feeling it's the key to turning the tide if we can figure out what they're up to. But I can't do anything without more information. Make it your highest priority. Either we find out what they're doing in Montana and locate a force that can oppose them, or they'll be on their way down here before you know it."

She nodded silently as if feeling the weight of her responsibility, but Davis saw a resolve in her hazel eyes that gave him confidence. He settled down into his desk chair, feeling refreshed and ready to start the second day of the war. "You'd better get back to your station," he told her. "Inform me immediately of developments at Sandstone Mountain and holler quick if you find us any kind of fighting force."

"Yes sir, Matt." She rose, saluted, walked out into the command center and began chatting with some of the staff who had returned to their duty stations.

It was the start of another day of watching, waiting and planning. But for what? Davis's mind was a welter of questions and half-formed thoughts.

## CHAPTER 12

Fox Troop's line of tanks and trucks were pulled up in front of a dirt-covered ammo bunker at McGregor Live Ammunition Depot in the desert north of El Paso. Despite a continuing lack of orders, Captain Suarez had decided to take on a full load of ordnance in every vehicle. Come what may it couldn't hurt to be full up on live rounds. The loading crewmen were running their forklifts back and forth from the bunker carrying pallets of artillery shells to the tanks and ammo trucks. Suarez, outfitted in battle fatigues and a cloth-camouflaged Kevlar helmet, walked from his tank toward the Bradley communications vehicle parked nearby. Its boxy rear compartment bristled on top with every conceivable sort of antenna and radio dish. Fox Troop was maintaining radio silence but that hadn't kept Suarez from telling his people to eavesdrop on everything going on out there. Unfortunately that hadn't been much. The citizens' bands were the only place anybody was talking and there you only got occasional frightened cross-chatter between civilians. Nothing worth the time spent listening.

Suarez ducked inside the rear hatch of the Bradley where Radio Specialist Corporal Wayne Wallace sat at the communications console with his bug-like Combat Vehicle Crew helmet on, monitoring the airwaves. Suarez tapped his radioman's shoulder. "Anything shakin' out there?"

"Yeah, listen to this." Corporal Wallace handed him a second CVC helmet, plugging in the jack for its built-in headphones as Suarez pulled off his field helmet and put on the CVC helmet. He heard a man's voice through the headphones, thin and broken by static.

"Fly me to the moon," the man sang. "Oh Baby, fly me to the moon." In addition to sounding far away the voice sounded like its owner might be high on something. "Hey, Cheyenne," the caller warbled. "You got your ears on?"

A more somber, clearer voice responded, "Roger, Daddy Longlegs, we read you."

"Hey-hey dude, how you been?"

"Okay, and you?"

"Good, good. I got a new girlfriend. Her name's Sweet Pea."

"Roger, that's Sweet Pea, what's her location."

"She's the pea for me, you know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"Yeah. I'm hot for her, you read?"

"Sure, Daddy Longlegs. Got anything we can use this morning?"

"Yeah, I do... I do-oo-oo," he crooned. "I wanna say 'I do' to my Sweet Pea."

"Ahh," Cheyenne interrupted. "Daddy Longlegs, if you don't have—"

"Yeah, I got something, I got something, man. Keep your shorts on. Now this Sweet Pea chick, she's from JPL, you know?"

"Jet Propulsion Laboratories?" Cheyenne suddenly sounded more interested.

"Yeah man, JPL. She's a rocket scientist. Just my type."

"Go on."

"Well she's got a spaceship. Calls it Clementine. Oh my darlin,' oh my darlin'... Anyway, she's gonna get some photos of those moon dudes. Tomorrow, Two pm Pacific Daylight Time, frequency 999.43 megahertz. Be there or be square. You dig?"

"Got it."

"Whadda you think, Cheyenne?"

"We'll look into it. Who is this Sweet Pea? Has she got a name?"

"Hey, man. No fair, no fair. You wanna put the moves on her too, right?"

"Negative Longlegs, just need to confirm what you're saying."

"Okay, but don't tell nobody else, all right? It's Diedre Porter. That's her name. And I think I'm in love so don't mess me over. Okay buddy?"

"Affirmative, Longlegs."

"Okay man, I gotta go. Somebody's knockin' on Channel Three. Daddy Longlegs over and out."

"NORAD out."

The last words sent a jolt of adrenaline through Suarez. "NORAD!" he pounded his fist on the ceiling of the Bradley in exultation. "That's who Cheyenne is. It's Cheyenne Mountain. NORAD is still operational. This is too good to be true!"

He clapped Corporal Wallace on the shoulder. "Come on man, we're gonna break radio silence. Get me in touch with that NORAD dude on the double."

Wallace pressed the transmit button on his console and spoke into the microphone of his headset. "NORAD, NORAD, this is Fox Troop. Do you read?"

***

The second story of the ranch house was a comforting hideaway for Kit. Her mother had decorated the three bedrooms and upstairs bath in old-fashioned flowery wallpaper that matched the house's early 1900s vintage. Kit's room was papered with a floral print in tones of cream and canary yellow and the hallway outside her door was done in pale yellow and white stripes. Kit had retreated to these bright warm spaces many times in the years since her mother's car crash to find the afterglow of a mother's love. The happy parasaurolophus family had reminded her how much she had lost. Not only her mother but now her father too. Her hopes that he was alive were dimming. The upper prairie was only five miles away. Nothing could keep him out this long except... she didn't want to think about it.

She sat on the bench by her open window with her elbows on the sill and her chin resting on the backs of her hands while a light breeze fluttered the sheer curtains. Sandstone Mountain dominated the view and its craggy beauty reminded her that one thing was permanent in her life: Twin Creeks Ranch.

Below Kit's window scarlet columbine bloomed in the flower garden that had been her mother's pride and joy. The garden conjured memories of how her mother had oohed and aahed over every bloom, and it brought back strong memories of her father as well. As a child she had watched him work the soil with a shovel, turning it over with sweat soaking his shirt. His strong hands had gripped the shovel with fingers thickened by years of hard labor in summer heat and winter frost. His weathered forehead had been framed by unruly red hair then, which had since thinned and gone white. She recalled the stern creases furrowing that brow, the squint lines that narrowed his blue eyes to slits. Once, when he had noticed her at the garden gate, she remembered how his hard face had softened with a warm smile.

"Hi, Little Girl," he'd said and invited her into the garden, where she had looked for bugs in the overturned dirt.

But that was an eternity ago.

Kit sighed. Except for Sandstone Mountain, everything outside her window had the stamp of Will Daniels on it. The barn neatly painted red with white trim, sheds and outbuildings full of well-maintained farming equipment, the neat picket fence around the flower garden, everything built, bought or horse-traded by him with help only from family and friends. He kept everything in good repair, from the buildings to the machinery to the gas-powered electricity generator with its 500-gallon tank. Twin Creeks Ranch was a fine, secure place to live, independent from the rest of the world. Even if larger society was in ruin, the ranch Will Daniels built could sustain her indefinitely. But it seemed cruel that the person who had made survival possible was not here now.

A pang of regret welled up inside her as she thought of her last conversation with her father. Why had it been so unpleasant?

This year, her sophomore year in college at Bozeman, she had been pretty rebellious. She had made up her mind to study paleontology against her father's wishes. He wanted her to learn agriculture and animal husbandry but she had found broader horizons at the university. Yesterday morning after they loaded the bull into the livestock trailer she had finally told him flat out he should quit expecting her to take charge of the ranch someday.

A set-jawed, stubborn look came over his face but she had been surprised by how weary he looked. His shoulders had slumped and his face had seemed older or more weather-beaten than ever. The big man she had always known seemed to shrink a little.

He'd stewed while she fetched Lucky from the pasture and begun saddling her. He'd leaned against the trailer and said, "It was a good enough life for your mother, God rest her."

That was a low blow, bringing up Mom when Kit was fighting for the right to live her own life. "I may be a rancher's daughter," she had blurted, "but I'll never be a rancher's wife!"

He had looked at his boots for a moment and then spat some tobacco juice on the driveway gravel. "It's a shame. You can ride better'n any man I know and rope a steer better too."

"I ride because I love horses, Daddy, especially Lucky. And I learned to rope steers just to help you."

"I always expected you'd inherit this ranch when I'm gone."

"I think you'd better look for someone else. I'm just not interested."

"I don't see what kind of life you're getting yourself into."

"But I do, Daddy, that's just it. It's the life I want."

"You're gonna end up like that old nut, Ogilvey, livin' out of a tent all summer and workin' in a dusty museum every winter."

"Sounds good to me, Daddy. Dinosaurs interest me. They had their own lives, habits, mothers, babies..."

He'd spat again and shot her an angry glance. "Ever since that Ogilvey fool set up his tents in my hunting camp you've spent every spare day digging in the dirt with him and talking dinosaurs. Maybe the boys around here would pay you some attention if you didn't act like such a snooty little dinosaur-head. You're good-looking enough to get any fella you want."

"I'm not interested in any of the locals."

"Locals? That's the way you think of us now, huh?" She had hurt him and he lashed back like a stepped-on rattler. "You think we're a bunch of hayseeds, do you?"

"No. I didn't say that."

"Look, Little Girl. All's I'm saying is, hangin' out with a crazy old dinosaur digger ain't gonna win you no popularity contests. You had some nice young fellas coming around when you were in high school. I'd-a thought one of them would catch your eye."

"Oh yeah," she'd sassed. "Every time Bobby Everett stopped by in his pickup truck you practically wanted to give away the bride. I just don't see myself marrying somebody like him. He's a big dorky hog with a buzz cut, a neck like a bull and fat fingers."

Her father had run a thick, callused hand over his own white buzz cut. "You could do worse. Their ranch is next to ours. You two kids could combine for quite a spread."

"He's a stupid son of a rancher."

"So what am I?" He'd banged a fist down on the trailer's fender, startling a surprised moo out of the bull hitched at the fence by a rope through his nose ring. Realizing she'd cut him to the quick, she shut up for a moment. Then she had said, "Sorry, Daddy. I've just got other plans for my life."

He had stalked to the open door of his jeep, grabbed his weather-beaten cowboy hat off the seat and squashed it down on his head. "We got a bull to turn out. You ready?"

That was when Chase Armstrong pulled into the driveway bringing another worry bone for her father to chew on: wolves on the ranch. That had put a new crease in his brow. After he'd given his permission and Chase went off in search of the wolves, she had helped him load the bull in the trailer and then wheedled, "You don't really need me any more, do you? Zippy can help you turn the bull out and I'd like to go see Dr. O."

"Fine," he had grumbled. "Go waste your time."

That had torn it. Seething, she had mounted up, yanked poor Lucky's head around and galloped off to Ogilvey's dig without another word.

What hurt most now, was that yesterday's fight might be her last memory of her father. Pain cloyed her throat and tears welled. The landscape outside blurred, dissolving the garden's reds, yellows, and greens into the tan of Sandstone Mountain, until a chirping sound brought Kit back to the present.

She blinked the tears away as a cacophony of twittering tiny voices erupted outside her window. Leaning out, she spotted a group of sparrow-sized creatures under the eaves above her clinging to the vertical surface of the log wall. At first she thought they were birds, but they crawled over the surface in a most un-birdlike way, more like bats. Still, they weren't bats either, given their long, toothy snouts. It dawned on Kit that these were pterodactyls, another group of new arrivals from ancient times.

There were six or seven of them, more mouse-like than birdy. Their diminutive bodies were covered with fine mouse-colored fur and they had practically no tails at all. Kit laughed at the cuteness of their little rumps as they scrambled hither and thither over the wall's surface, their furry little bat wings folded back and their tiny, clawed hands and feet scritch-scratching over the logs. They had long black beaks lined with miniscule pointy teeth with which they pecked and poked every chink and crack, and each other as well. There were two slightly bigger animals among the group, with white bodies and black heads. Kit figured these were parents tending their tiny brood. The entire tribe was in constant comical motion, bickering, pecking, and squabbling.

"Hey, little guys," Kit cooed. "You're totally cute, aren'tcha? Where'd you come from?"

The whole troop of miniscule busybodies paused to look her over and then flitted into the air one by one, dropping down to settle on the side of the house around her window. One of the adults landed on the sill. Kit smiled at the diminutive visitor, inches from her elbow.

"You're a curious little thing!"

The creature let out a peep and blinked an orange eye at her.

"Too cute!" Kit exclaimed, beginning to feel better.

Suddenly, the pterodactyl flapped away with an alarmed squawk. A humming drone had started in the air overhead and as it intensified the other pterodactyls shrieked and scattered. Kit looked up just as a dark brown, hawk-sized creature hurtled past on wings that were the source of the droning. It streaked just inches from her face in pursuit of the pterodactyls, snapping after one of the darting creatures then another with horrific reptilian jaws full of jutting fangs. Unlike the pterodactyls, this animal had a long tail ending in a paddle-shaped tip that it used as a lever against the air to change direction almost instantaneously. The whole group, pursuer and prey, veered around the corner of the house and disappeared amid a receding series of screeches and cries.

Alone again, Kit felt emptier than before. The scattering of the pterodactyls underscored how her own family life had come unraveled. The pterodactyls had squabbled just like she and her father until something bigger came and shattered their world.

There was a light knock at her door. She wiped her eyes and turned to see Chase Armstrong standing just outside with concern on his face.

"Can I come in?"

She nodded. His thoughtful, intelligent expression was nothing like Bobby Everett. And those broad shoulders, the uniform, and the tousle of dark hair hanging down from his Park Department cap made him look ten times more handsome than Bobby ever would. But why did she have to meet him under circumstances as bad as these?

Chase hesitated a moment before entering the room. He thought he'd seen her wipe away a tear and crying women weren't his forte. He was better with lost wolf pups or staring down an angry bear. He went in but stopped a couple paces from her. He said softly, "You took off kinda quickly a while ago."

"Sorry," she replied. "I was just thinking about Daddy." She turned to look out the window again and heaved a sigh. Chase reached out a hand toward her shoulder, wanting to comfort her, but hesitated. With all the trouble they were in he wasn't still harboring romantic notions was he?

Gingerly, he put his hand on her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. In response he felt a tremor run through her entire body. She buried her face in her hands and began to cry. "Something terrible has happened to Daddy," she sputtered. "I just know it."

"You don't know for sure," he said gently, keeping his hand on her shoulder, feeling her tremble like an orphaned wolf pup he'd once picked up. That pup had started out shaking and scared but it he had taken it back to Silver Gate and looked after it until it could fend for itself. Now it was grown and running with the Rose Creek pack.

In a world of troubles, Kit's pile seemed bigger than his. He searched for a word or two but was interrupted by a noise behind him.

"Ahem." Dr. Ogilvey stood in the doorway looking inquisitively from Kit to Chase and back. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No," Chase replied. "She's just worried about her father."

Ogilvey studied the two them for a moment and then shrugged. "I suppose we could go up to the prairie and have a look around. Although it might be dangerous with dinosaurs everywhere."

"I'm not sure we're much safer here," Chase responded.

Ogilvey nodded. "I suppose we're not really safe anywhere, are we?"

***

"Armored Cavalry!" General Davis slapped a hand on his desktop. "Now we're talkin'!"

"Yes, sir," said Holly Lewis, standing military-straight in front of his desk. "Ten Abrams main battle tanks, thirteen Bradley armored troop carriers, mortar tracks, command tracks, the works."

"Praise God!" Davis almost wept with elation. "Are they battle-capable?"

"They're taking on a full load of ammo as we speak. Then they'll come north from New Mexico on Interstate 25. We can expect them here late tomorrow night."

"This is the best news of my life!" Davis exulted. "And you say you've got more good news?"

"Yes, sir. A ham operator in Albuquerque passed along a message from Pasadena. Some JPL folks are going to photograph Phaeon Crater with the Clementine 3 probe."

Davis couldn't believe his ears. "How can they do that?"

"They're rigging a TV news antenna to transmit the commands. That should be at fourteen hundred hours tomorrow according to their plan."

Davis felt hope rising where only doubt and worry had been moments before. "Holly, I've been praying for a miracle. Now it seems like two of them are on the way—a fighting force and a way to see who we're up against at Phaeon. Those JPL folks might just pull it off. They always get their spacecraft to do the impossible. Maybe they've got one last miracle left in 'em."

She smiled. "Let's hope so, Matt. That's all I've got for now."

"That's plenty," Davis grinned at her. She performed a smooth about face and left as he punched a button on his intercom. His aide said, "Sir?"

Davis smiled for the first time in days. "Lieutenant, I want an officer's meeting in fifteen minutes. Make sure no one misses it short of a Purple Heart. In the meantime don't disturb me unless it's extremely urgent. I've got some reading to catch up on." He let go of the intercom button and picked up the book he had been reading before Holly walked in. Part of a set he had appropriated from an Army general who had gone missing-in-action on the first day of the attack, this volume was entitled _Defensive Fortifications._ He put it back on his bookshelf and pulled down another. _Tank Warfare._ He leafed through and began reading Chapter Five, Rapid Long-Range Assault.

***

Dr. Ogilvey bumped his old Land Rover up the switchbacked dirt road with Chase in the passenger seat and Kit in the back. Chase didn't dislike the crusty old paleontologist but he distinctly disliked entrusting himself to the old bird's judgment and that was what he was doing at the moment. Ogilvey was driving them up the hillside behind the ranch house to the high prairie beyond Sandstone Mountain in search of Kit's father.

It wasn't like they were unprepared for trouble. Chase had his 30-06 slung across his lap, Kit had her own rifle, a Winchester 30-30, beside her on the back seat and Ogilvey had his Colt 45 pistol strapped on with its too-small gun belt constricting his plump midsection. Chase would rather not have relied on the bumbling old paleontologist's driving but he'd had little say in the matter. His own truck was a heap of scrap. Nevertheless, Ogilvey's chronic preoccupation with things other than driving worried him.

"What we have here," Ogilvey said, taking a hand off the wheel to raise an index finger and pontificate, "is a test of common sense. We've had more than ample evidence of danger: tyrannosaurus, pachyrhinosaurus, utahraptor, and ultimately pteronychus."

Chase grumbled, "Don't forget the light from the moon and the flying machines."

"Yes, quite!" Ogilvey agreed. "But the urgency of our own situation makes Kit's fears for her father seem all the more justified."

Kit sighed. "If something happened to him I don't know what I'll do."

"On the other hand," Ogilvey took his eyes off the road to glance around at her, "there may be little we can do if your father has come to harm at the hands of... or horns... or jaws..."

Chase didn't like how Kit's eyes widened at each implication. "Just drive, Doc," he chided.

With the next switchback fast approaching, Ogilvey hit the brakes just in time to avoid going into the ditch. He steered the Land Rover around a tight turn that bounced it violently. As they continued uphill Chase stuck the barrel of his 30-06 out his open window so he could bring it to bear instantly if there were any unpleasant surprises. The road grew narrower at each switchback until it was just a brush-lined bulldozer track up the pine-covered hillside. His nerves tingled when they reached the notch where the second of Twin Creek's streams trickled down from the high prairie behind Sandstone Mountain. Willows crowded the road on both sides, obstructing his view.

"This is a bad idea," he muttered under his breath. But Ogilvey, heedless of danger, launched into another dissertation.

"To see dinosaurs," he crooned, "especially my pteronychus in the flesh, why it's a paleontologist's dream come true!"

The reverent tone irritated Chase. "It's a nightmare to everybody else."

"Yes, of course," Ogilvey allowed. "But see it from my perspective. Ideas I have propounded for years over my colleagues' strenuous resistance are now quite emphatically borne out."

"Like?"

"For years I have sought to refute the notion of dinosaurs as stupid overgrown lizards. Now my beleaguered theory proves correct. I call it behavioral maximization: the concept that extinct animals should be modeled, not on primitive creatures like lizards, but on the most advanced living examples. We should never assume extinct animals were less capable than their modern counterparts."

Chase kept a wary eye on the road as he said, "They look primitive. They've got lizard tails and crocodile teeth."

"And that's where you make the classic mistake, my boy. Dinosaurs are built on an older body plan but don't assume they haven't optimized the use of that plan. Remember, dinosaurs had one-hundred-eighty million years of evolution to perfect their forms and behaviors while modern mammals have had only sixty-five million years. Therefore it's best to assume a predator like T rex was at least as sophisticated as a modern lion. All that extra evolutionary time must count for something. Perhaps rex was even more sophisticated—"

Ogilvey suddenly ceased his lecture, clutched the wheel with both hands and slammed on the brakes. The Land Rover skidded to a halt in view of a wide prairie stretching several miles in front of them. Chase followed Ogilvey's goggling eyes and his own jaw dropped. Straddling the road in front of them was the very spaceship that had roared over his head the day before. It had plowed a furrow across the prairie and come to rest at the base of a low hill. Hundreds of feet long, made of glistening silver metal, it lay with its belly stretching across the road and one of its delta wings towering above the Land Rover. It was wrecked but not completely destroyed. To Chase's relief, it looked deserted. He glanced around for the craft's occupants but saw no trace. Looking at Ogilvey, who still ogled the spacecraft in wide-eyed wonder, he hissed, "What are you waiting for? Get us out of here."

"Yes, of course." Ogilvey cranked the steering wheel but let the clutch out too quickly. The Land Rover lurched forward and stopped with its engine dead.

"Great," Chase muttered. "I knew I should have driven."

"Oh, dear," Ogilvey sputtered, grinding the ignition ineffectually.

Chase glanced at Kit. She was wide-eyed too but she wasn't looking at the spacecraft. He followed her gaze to the side of the road where, just ahead of them, her father's jeep was heeled over sideways in a muddy ditch. The livestock trailer was completely overturned behind it. Both were empty.

Kit threw her door open and rushed to the driver's window of the jeep. Chase followed her, taking his rifle along just to be safe. A glance into the jeep confirmed his expectation: no sign of her father.

Kit cried, "Oh, my God!" and ran back along the trailer.

Chase followed, immediately seeing what had drawn her attention. The rear end of the trailer was mangled. Its back doors had been physically ripped from their hinges and tossed twenty feet away, twisted and broken. Nearer the trailer, the grass on the ditch embankment was smeared with a blackish-red residue of dried blood. On the road surface was a single cow's foot, shorn off in mid-shank and sitting in its own dark puddle. Chase noticed Kit wasn't looking at the blood or the hoof. She was staring at a farther point, where her father's hat lay upside down on the embankment crushed in the center of a giant three-toed track—a tyrannosaurus track.

Kit choked, "Oh, Daddy," and began to weep. Chase fetched the hat and brought it back to her. She took it slowly, tremblingly, and Chase instinctually put a comforting arm around her. She buried her face in his shoulder and began to cry out loud while Chase kept his head up, scanning the area for signs of the huge predator.

Meanwhile Ogilvey's efforts to restart his engine came to nothing.

"You've flooded it," Chase called to him. "I can smell the gas. Give it a rest."

Ogilvey got out of the car and for once was speechless, gawking at the wreckage of the trailer and the bloodstains.

"Come on," Chase whispered to Kit. "There's nothing we can do here. Let's get back to the car." Keeping his arm wrapped around her he led her to the Land Rover and helped her into the back seat. She was stunned with grief but still had the presence of mind to pick up her rifle and lay it across her lap. "Just give me a minute," she said.

"I'll take a look around," he said quietly. "We might be stuck here a while until the engine clears." He lifted the visor of his ball cap to get a wide field of view and scanned the spacecraft carefully. Off to the right atop the nose of the craft were several small cabin windows, which he was relieved to see were dark and empty. To the left between the twin tail fins an off-loading ramp reached down to the prairie.

The right wing stretched over his head and clear across the road to where it had run up against the boulders of the hillside. It had crumpled with a jagged rock sticking through it.

"It's pretty busted up," he said to Ogilvey. "It'll never fly again."

"Probably doesn't need to," the paleontologist snuffled as he inspected the rumpled metal along the base of the craft. "It's already made its delivery." He gestured toward the bottom of the spacecraft with a spread of his arms. "It looks like a boat hull to me. How do you figure that?"

Chase shrugged. "I guess it was meant to land on water."

"Very good, young man." The pedantic flourish had returned to Ogilvey's voice. "I believe I can explain what it's doing here on dry land. If you recall your paleogeography you'll remember this was the shore of an inland sea sixty-five million years ago."

"If you say so. But there's no sea here now."

"The best laid plans of mice and dinosaurs," Ogilvey chortled. "Looks like they hadn't planned on the sea drying up."

"But wait a minute," said Chase. "There are oceans and lakes all over the world. Why risk a crash landing here?"

Ogilvey nodded toward the crag looming beyond the ship. "I suspect it has something to do with what's buried under Sandstone Mountain."

Chase tried to link it all together but too many pieces of the puzzle were missing. He looked from the mountain to the ship to the jeep to Kit, silent in the back of the Land Rover. He muttered, "Why do _you_ think all this is happening, Doc?" Getting no answer, he looked around for Ogilvey and spotted him halfway up the ship's unloading ramp. "Hey!" he called as loud as he dared. "Are you nuts?"

When Ogilvey continued into the ship's hold without slowing, Chase considered his question answered affirmatively. He hurried to the bottom of the ramp and looked up into the rear of the ship. An immense cargo bay yawned between the tail fins with an opening you could roll two semi trucks out of side by side. Ogilvey was already inside.

"I don't think that's too smart," Chase called after him. Heedless, Ogilvey vanished into the dark interior without a backward glance.

Wondering how much worse things could get, Chase dashed up the gangway and caught up to the professor. Fortunately for them both, there were no signs of life inside the ship. Ogilvey stood in the center of the deck, marveling at what he saw. Both sides of the cargo bay were jammed with immense shining metal cages, all empty. Some could easily have held a parasaurolophus or a T rex. Some could have held even bigger animals. And interspersed between the large cages were many smaller ones of various sizes and shapes. There were hundreds of cages, maybe thousands, ranging in size from immense to tiny. Restraining straps that had held the occupants in place now hung empty. Whatever was in the cages had long since vanished down the unloading ramp.

Chase followed Ogilvey toward the front of the ship. The paleontologist stopped to stare at a metal staircase leading to an upper-level doorway. "That's got to be the crew cabin up there," he suggested, his voice echoing among the cages.

"Too bad nobody's home," Chase said sarcastically. "Maybe you could introduce yourself."

"Yes, yes," Ogilvey agreed. "Too bad."

Chase detected a note of disappointment in his voice. "C'mon, Doc." He took the old man by the elbow and gently but firmly persuaded him to return to the rear exit. "We'd better get lost before they come back."

Walking down the ramp, Ogilvey stopped and looked across the prairie, adjusting his glasses and letting out a cry of delight. "Oh, just look at that!"

Not more than a mile away was another huge landing craft and beyond that another. These too had wrecked themselves, plowing across the rangeland, and had disembarked their cargo via rear gangways. Chase failed to see why Ogilvey was pleased until he spotted two large, amber-colored, four-legged creatures by the nearest ship. Perhaps twenty-five feet long, they looked like huge, squat armadillos.

"Ankylosaurus!" Ogilvey declared. "Look at the bony plates on their backs, the spikes along their sides, the armored heads and the clubbed tails. Beautiful!"

The animals capered in a mutual dance of some sort, displaying remarkable agility for such heavy-set creatures. They reared up ponderously on their hind legs and then went back to all fours and arched their backs playfully, although they must have weighed a few tons each. One raised its head and opened its mouth. After a momentary delay due to distance, its call echoed across the prairie—a deep bray, like a baritone jackass.

"Ih-hee-hee!" Ogilvey chuckled. "A mating dance. That's what they're up to. They're courting one another."

Chase rolled his eyes. "You're saying there'll be more of those things around here pretty soon?"

Ogilvey's spectacle-magnified eyes twinkled. " 'Tis the season, Chase. Summertime, when a young dinosaur's fancy turns to love."

Chase shook his head. He'd seen too much of what dinosaurs could do to be amused. "I'm glad you think it's funny. Now come on, let's get moving."

"They're harmless," Ogilvey protested but nevertheless allowed Chase to lead him down the gangway by an elbow. "They're plant-eaters."

"Wasn't it a plant-eater that totaled my truck yesterday?"

"Oh yes," Ogilvey admitted. "You've got a point there."

Chase hustled the paleontologist back to the Land Rover. Kit had regained her composure enough to smile at them bravely as they got in. Ogilvey cranked the ignition and the engine roared to life. As he turned the Land Rover to drive back the way they had come, Kit caught her breath.

"Look!" She pointed toward the base of Sandstone Mountain.

Just at the point where the slope met the plain was a tunnel entrance not far from the second spacecraft. Something metallic glinted at the opening: a walking machine.

Chase clapped a hand on Ogilvey's shoulder. "What are you gawking at, Doc? Get moving before they spot us!"

Ogilvey floored the accelerator. As the Land Rover raced downhill, Chase turned to squint at the tunnel opening. Another walking machine had joined the first but neither had noticed them. "Better keep moving Professor, unless you want 'em breathing down our necks again."

Not until a switchback put a screen of willows between them and the prairie did Chase breathe easier. "Funny," he murmured. "Everything we see makes matters worse."

Kit shook her head. "Not funny, really."

***

Frank's re-electrification of the basement had a side benefit in the resurrection of the snack machines at the end of the hall: a soft-drink machine, a sandwich machine, and a munchy machine. Diedre looked them over knowing the food wouldn't last forever but at least could see them through what they were doing. After that, she didn't know what they would eat.

She returned to the control room with an armload of sandwiches and bagged potato chips, two Cokes and a Dr. Pepper. Frank and Lloyd were squared off across the electronic device Frank was constructing. She could tell at a glance they weren't happy campers.

Frank glared at Lloyd, whose eyes were resolutely downcast.

"So," Frank muttered. "You're mad at me for being slow with the press conference slides. You came back to the lab to bug me for them and got separated from Linda."

"I'm not as mad at you," Lloyd replied, "as I am at those savages up there in Phaeon Crater."

"At least you're alive." Frank replied.

"I shouldn't be." Lloyd's flat voice gave Diedre a chill.

Frank appealed to her for help. "He says he could have gotten Linda out of there if he'd been with her but jeez, Diedre, you should have heard that beam hit this place. I mean it was like, instant earthquake. The whole building shook and it was all over in a second. We're both lucky we were down here in the basement, Lloyd."

Diedre looked into Lloyd's taut face and tried to console him. "There's no way you could have gotten her out, Lloyd. You'd just be—"

"With her right now." The hollow look was in Lloyd's eyes again.

Diedre put the food down on the bench top and changed the subject. "C'mon boys. It's noon. Let's do lunch." Frank grabbed a bag of potato chips, tore it open and filled his mouth. Apparently his efforts to rig a Rube Goldberg electronic gadget for the van's TV transmitter had given him an appetite. Of course, almost anything could get Frank's appetite going.

Just a few minutes ago Diedre had finished her own task of writing the set of commands they would send to Clem. She had burned the command file onto a plug-in memory card they would take with them to the van.

Everything was just about ready—if Clem was.

After Frank finished his sandwich he sealed up his little black electronic box and the three of them trooped off to the TV truck, where Frank crawled under the control desk to hook it into the circuitry. Within seconds he emerged from under the desk, smiling.

"Okay," he said. "We're ready to rock'n'roll. Got the memory card, Diedre?"

She handed it to him and he plugged it into the computer that ran the truck's uplink systems. Several mouse clicks later the commands were loaded into the computer's memory.

"There we are," said Frank. "All the necessary connections between the computer and the radio dish are ready to go. Who wants to do the honor of sending the commands?"

"I'll do it," said Diedre, sitting down in the computer chair.

"There's nothing left to do but press the return key," Frank, explained.

A sense of déjà vu made Diedre's nerves buzz. Three years ago, she had hovered over a similar keyboard, filled with doubts about what they were doing. This time there was no room for doubt. This transmission had to work or there was no use trying anything else. The commands had to be sent and Clem had to hear them. There were no two ways about it.

She pressed the return key.

The screen flashed a single line. "Transmission sent."

"Off go the commands into the wild blue yonder," Frank quipped. "I wish this van's receiver was strong enough to pick up Clem's acknowledgment transmission but it's not. So there's no way of knowing immediately if she got the message."

"How will we know if it was sent at all?" asked Diedre.

"Good question," said Frank. Then an unmistakable reaction came from outer space. The daylight outside brightened into a bluish-white glare and a hellish roar rattled the van.

Frank shouted, "It's the beam!"

Diedre didn't need to be told. She shielded her eyes from the blinding light, seemingly brighter than the face of the sun, and tried to prepare herself for death. Then the light vanished as quickly as it came, leaving thunderous echoes booming through the sky. Phaeon had struck at their signal and missed, but just barely.

They went down the steps of the van and stared at a huge patch of campus lawn that was no longer green. A swath of charred ground fifty feet wide smoldered and crackled where the beam had moved across it, having missed the van by only a dozen feet when its nearest edge stopped just on the other side of the wrought-iron campus fence.

After a moment of awed silence Frank said, "Message received, huh?"

"I guess so," Diedre said. "By Phaeon, at least. But how about Clem?"

"Don't know." Frank scratched in his frizzy hair. "At least we know the message got up there."

"That's something," Diedre agreed.

"Come on," said Frank. "Let's get inside the lab before Phaeon takes another crack at us."

Diedre followed Frank and Lloyd up the hill, her nerves settling more with every second the beam didn't renew its attack. As they ducked back inside the basement door, Frank stopped to glance at the moon. "I guess they figure they got us on the first shot."

"C'mon, Frank," Diedre moved past him and jogged down the stairs. "Let's don't wait out here to find out. Besides, Clem ought to be warming up her thrusters already if she got the message."

Fifteen minutes later they gathered around another of Frank's electronic projects on the roof of the lab building. He had salvaged a TV satellite receiver dish from one wrecked van, brought it up to the roof and run a wire down the side of the building to the basement, and then he had souped up the dish's wiring to make a mini version of a Deep Space Network receiver. While he made some fine adjustments and Lloyd stood muttering to himself under his breath, Diedre broached another subject.

"You got family to go to, Frank?"

"Not around here," he replied while screwing a clamp onto a wire. "My mother's back in Iowa. She's safe, I hope, but the phones are dead so I don't know for sure. How 'bout your family?"

"Just my cat. I guess I'll stick pretty close to home. What's your plan Lloyd? You going to hang around JPL?"

"I plan to stay close to my wife," he said with finality.

Once the radio dish was wired up they retreated to the basement to wait for communications from Clementine. The first hint of success came abruptly when an image started appearing on their computer screen, rolling downward line-by-line just like that first image three years before.

As before, Frank and Diedre leaped to their feet and cheered. Even Lloyd managed a hint of a smile. They settled down to watch the image grow. The green-lit radar scene reminded Diedre of her first glimpse inside Phaeon on the night her life began to unravel. Now a hope quickened in her that somehow, despite all that had happened, something good was in store.

But as shocking as the first images had been, this one was even more so. The buildings and towers, once shattered and pockmarked, had been repaired. The craters were gone from the surfaces of the buildings. Broken causeways stood straight again and the central pyramid's stepped terraces no longer looked ravaged. It stood tall, clean-lined and monolithic. Where a ruined dome had once surmounted the pyramid, now a perfectly symmetrical turret sat with a cannon-like barrel jutting out. She knew at once this was the source of the light beam.

"Whew," Frank whistled. "So this is what we're up against. What can anybody on earth do against a weapon like that?"

***

At NORAD, when the second image from Phaeon completed downloading onto the wall display in the command center, General Davis muttered, "I'll be doggoned. What do you make of that Mac?"

"Looks like they've got most of their complex functional again," MacIlvain replied. "I'd have thought that would take decades to do."

Holly Lewis added, "They must have much more capability up there than we've been thinking."

"Whatever we do from now on," Davis said, "we had better not underestimate them."

***

In Pasadena, as Diedre looked at the images of the light cannon, the germ of an idea crept into her mind. "Suppose Clem crashed into it?"

The control room was dead silent for a moment. Then Frank said, "Yeah, by golly. You've got a good idea there. Just maybe—"

Lloyd came to life. "By God, that's it!" He pounded a fist on the desktop. "If Clem hits them right here—" he pointed to a small opening in the turret just below the gun barrel, "—she oughta make one hell of a bang."

Diedre looked at him in surprise. The dullness in his eyes had been replaced by a maniacal light.

"All right!" Frank shouted loud enough to match Lloyd. "Let's do it."

## CHAPTER 13

So this is the dwelling place of hoonahs.

Gar, the Kra, cautiously piloted his fighter-walker up to the rear of the house, his hand tense on the firing-control joystick. Only when he was sure there were no hoonahs in the vicinity of the dwelling place or its outlying structures did he relax. Settling his quahka down on its haunches, he opened the canopy.

_No hoonahs. That is disappointing._ Nevertheless, to be safe from ambush he took his tintza rifle along as he stepped out of the fighter. He inspected the area around the shattered back of the dwelling. It looked as if a tarrocha had been there. The great three-toed tracks on the ground and the gaping hole in the wall of the hoonah structure told the story.

_Unfortunate._ The tarrocha had probably eaten the inhabitants only a short time before Gar came to look for them himself.

At least I will learn how they lived before the tarrocha made them his meal.

Gar went inside, stepping gingerly over the broken wood and glass, guessing that he had entered a room in which food was prepared. There were countertops large enough to butcher and trim meat, a washing station, and what seemed to be a heating device for food. But all this was of little interest to Gar. He had no great desire to study hoonah eating habits. His dissections had already taught him they were omnivores. It was the social life of the hoonahs that he sought to study, to gain an understanding of their minds—and their souls, if they had any.

Tintza rifle at the ready, he entered the next room. It was larger than the food preparation room with several pieces of sitting-furniture arranged around a small glass table in the center. There was a chair constructed of wooden slats, which responded to his touch by rocking back and forth on two bent rails. _Ingenious._ And there were large and small stuffed chairs. None of these was remotely like Kra furniture. There was no place to put one's tail. _Peculiar, these hoonahs._

On one wall was a massive masonry structure of round river-stones with a large recess for burning wood. This seemed a primitive way to heat a domicile, but perhaps effective. Above the fire-opening was the sort of thing Gar sought. In a rectangular frame of polished wood was a flat image, a portrait of three hoonahs. _A family, no doubt._ Two adults sat on a wide stuffed chair with a hatchling between them. Gar presumed the large hoonah was the dominant male of the household and the somewhat smaller one the female. The offspring favored its mother in appearance and so must have been a juvenile female. This smaller creature was wrapped in the embrace of its mother and touched lovingly on the shoulder by its father. Gar's heart warmed. _This is what I have come here for. The behavior revealed in this image suggests intelligence and the same tenderness Kra parents display toward their own chicks. This picture will renew my debate with Oogon and Saurgon. I will take it as proof that hoonahs have feelings, families and home-lives much like ours. It will enable me to win my argument that even lowly hoonahs are worthy inhabitants of Eka, not mere vermin to be swept aside._

The faces of the three hoonahs gave Gar pause. They were unlovely to his Kra sensibilities and curiously contorted, their mouths arching upward with teeth showing. Had the creatures not looked so alien and repulsive to him, he might have guessed their faces registered some sort of pleasure. _Most curious._ He set his tintza rifle on the glass table and took the image down from its hanging place to inspect the creatures' mysterious clothing and adornments.

Hoonahs. They will take some getting used to. If Oogon allows any to survive.

Gar attempted to reproduce their facial expression with his own mouth but found his lengthy jaws unable to mimic the odd configuration. He cocked his head from side to side, the better to focus on this intriguing image of hoonah love. It occurred to him that he would sit for such a portrait himself someday soon with Gana and their first nestlings.

His mind drifted momentarily up to Noqui, inside the pyramid and inside a chamber not far beneath the light cannon dome. That was where he had last seen his mate.

_Gana, my love,_ Gar thought, _it has been too long since we did the mating dance. The eggs growing within you force you to remain in the fortress above while I do battle against these poor hoonahs. In my dreams I see you settled on our nesting couch, more beautiful than any other Kra female. I half-believe Oogon insisted on attacking now just to separate us at your time of laying. I fear he has a desire for you that he does not speak—one he dare not display in any dance. But I have seen him look at you. His eyes fall too warmly on you, and too harshly on me._

When Gar had last entered their nesting quarters, his intention to approach Gana quietly had been thwarted by the clatter of his breast armor. She had been sleeping, as was her habit lately, but the sounds roused her into a full greeting display. She had half-risen from the nest couch, dipping her breast low and fanning out her arm feathers in front of her. The display of green-on-black iridescence had dazzled his eyes and made his heart pound with excitement. The length and beauty of her arm feathers, which would cover the nest and warm his hatchlings, filled him with pride and desire. His rapture had increased when Gana raised her head atop her gloriously long neck and uttered her greeting call, "Ah-keeah!" She had blinked her ochre eyes with such coy provocation that Gar felt instinctually compelled to start the mating dance. His legs, without so much as a conscious thought, had begun a stiff strut across the floor. He had reflexively raised his own head high, turning his crest right and left in the mating ritual. Finally he had raised his arms to display—

The mood had broken at that moment. He had immediately ceased his dance and Gana had settled back on the nest couch. They had seen the same thing at the same time. Gar's arm feathers, the long, nest-covering feathers that should have fanned out from his forearms, were gone. Of course they were. Nesting feathers were a hindrance to warriors. They interfered with hand-to-hand combat and fit poorly in the cockpit of a fighter-walker. As all warriors did, Gar had plucked them out. Only the short, black contour feathers remained on his arms. If Gana had not been filled with fragile eggs, she too would have plucked her nesting feathers and prepared for war. But along with those other Kra females who were already pregnant, she was to stay behind. Gar had contented himself with nuzzling her, preening the mane-feathers on the nape of her neck and inhaling her delicate sweet scent one last time. It had been a quiet farewell.

Gar sighed. _By now she may have already laid the first egg._ He would miss her dearly until the day she came down on one of the last flights, when victory was in hand.

A thumping noise brought Gar back to the present time and place. He wheeled around as the front door of the dwelling swung open. There, not five paces away, stood a hoonah. It wore a green cap and an expression Gar guessed was surprise. It reacted quickly and raised a weapon similar to a tintza rifle, pointing the barrel at Gar's chest. It shouted hoonah words, incomprehensible, but Gar guessed they were an order not to move. He glanced at his tintza rifle lying just beyond reach on the small table—and held still.

"Don't move!" Chase had shouted after opening the front door and covering the creature with his rifle. Now he called, "Hey, Kit! Doctor O! Get in here quick."

Kit came inside, followed closely by the doctor. Both gasped at what they saw. Kit stopped just behind Chase with her rifle at the ready. The animal hissed at the rifles, gaping its reptilian jaws and displaying rows of curved fangs. It arched its long neck and flared a mane of iridescent greenish-black feathers like hackles on a monstrous fighting cock, while its crested head nearly touched the ceiling crossbeams eight feet above the floor.

Uttering a series of frightful cackling sounds, it took a step forward. Chase realized he had approached the creature too closely. He backed up but the pteronychus lunged and with the sweep of a clawed hand, knocked the rifle from his grasp. As the 30-06 clattered into a corner of the room a second swift arm movement caught Chase by the shoulder and threw him roughly to the floor. He landed flat on his back, leaving Kit face-to-face with the monster. She shrank away but raised her rifle and aimed at its face. It took a step toward her but stopped, realizing it couldn't reach her before she fired.

"Shoot!" Chase called from the floor.

Kit aimed the 30-30 squarely between the beast's eyes, backing away and jostling against Dr. Ogilvey, who was right behind her.

"Shoot!" Chase called again but Kit hesitated. She was distracted by what the creature held in its hands. "Of all things," she murmured incredulously, "it's got our family photograph."

After a moment the creature calmed down, its feather mane flattening against its neck. It closed its mouth and cocked its head to one side, giving her a curious, birdish look, blinking its yellow eye at her unthreateningly.

"What are you waiting for?" Chase hissed. "Shoot!"

Instead, Kit lowered the rifle. "We— I don't want to hurt you," she said to the thing.

Chase had fallen near the coffee table where the creature's rifle lay. As the creature faced off with Kit, he surreptitiously got to his hands and knees and then lunged at the coffee table. He grabbed the weapon and leveled it at the creature.

"Don't move!" he shouted, but this had the opposite effect. The animal's hackles flared again and it made another lightning-swift lunge at him. This time Chase was quicker. He squeezed the trigger of the weapon and a bolt of blue-white electricity arced from the barrel, crackling through the air to meet the creature. Lines of electricity danced across its head and chest, convulsing it for an instant. Then it toppled over backwards and crashed heavily to the floor.

Chase released the trigger and the bolt ceased. The pteronychus writhed for a moment with wisps of smoke rising where the electric arc had touched it. Then it lay still.

Chase stood up and looked at the weapon in his hands. "Jeez," he said, "what _is_ this thing?"

Ogilvey paid him scant attention. Rushing past Kit and bending over the motionless pteronychus he wailed, "You've killed it! It was trying to talk to us!"

"Or take a bite out of somebody," Chase retorted.

Ogilvey knelt and gazed into one of the animal's half-closed eyes. He listened carefully and then his expression brightened. "It's still breathing!"

A soft hissing noise came from the creature's open mouth. Its chest rose and fell inside its breast armor in slow, deep breaths. Its long tongue lolled on the floor.

"Whew," Ogilvey sighed. "It's just unconscious."

Chase set the alien rifle on the coffee table and picked up his own. "There may be more of them around here," he said. "I don't want to be taken by surprise again." He moved swiftly into the kitchen and went out through the hole in the wall to where the creature's walking machine was hunkered in the driveway. As he scanned the area outside the kitchen, Kit turned and did the same out the front door, shrugging to indicate nothing was out of the ordinary. Chase went in and methodically searched the house, first downstairs and then up.

"The house is clear," he said as he came down the stairs. Seeing Ogilvey bent over the creature, intently studying every inch of its body, Chase pointed his rifle at it. "Don't you think we should finish this thing off before it comes to?"

"Absolutely not," Ogilvey bristled. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime."

"What are you talking about?" Chase protested. "This is the opportunity to be dead."

"I'm surprised at you," Ogilvey huffed. "A wildlife biologist—a species reintroduction specialist, no less. How can you fail to take an interest in such a magnificent creature?"

"Right now," Chase muttered, "I'm worried it'll take an interest in us as food. Look at those teeth."

"Yes, yes, the fangs," Ogilvey said, turning his attention back to the creature. "Teeth can tell you much about an animal." He began counting fangs. "One, two, three on the premaxillary plus one, two, three, four, five-six-seven-eight on the maxillary. Yes, this is definitely a pteronychus." He looked up and grinned broadly at Chase, who shook his head dubiously. "Come on, Mr. Wildlife Biologist! You can't tell me this beautiful specimen doesn't hold the least bit of fascination for you."

"Some other time, maybe."

Ogilvey continued to study the creature, leaning close and adjusting his spectacles to observe one of its hands. "Magnificent unguals! Look at the razor sharpness of those claws. Three digits: a thumb and two fingers. A typical maniraptoran hand. Good for grasping, tearing..."

"Would you cut it out?" Chase fumed. "It just about took my head off with those claws, or didn't you notice?"

Ogilvey continued his inspection, ignoring Chase and moving to the animal's feet. "Three-toed, bird-like, with a small dew-claw in back..."

Chase turned to Kit to appeal for reason, but just then a thought struck her. "Hey," she exclaimed, "we might be safer now that we've got a hostage."

"Hostage?" Chase shook his head. "Seems to me they're calling the shots around here, not us. And how do you suggest we keep him? Tell him not to knock a hole in the wall without first asking pretty please?"

"Of course not," she replied. "There's plenty of wire and chains in the barn. We'll tie him up." She motioned for Chase to follow and went out through the kitchen toward the barn. Outside, Kit paused beside the empty fighting machine and pointed at the emblem on the silver fuselage: a pair of crossed sago palm fronds inlaid in dark green enamel. "That design was on the machine that saved us from the utahraptors. Do you think it's the same driver?"

Chase shrugged. "He was probably saving us for a midnight snack."

She broke into a grin. "You're incorrigible. But there's something special going on with this guy, don't you think?"

Chase thought for a moment but nothing sensible came to mind. "Come on," he said. "Let's go get those chains."

In the barn's tack room they gathered some hoops of baling wire and several lengths of heavy chain. Kit even found an old padlock and key to secure their hostage. When they brought the gear into the house, Ogilvey was still kneeling beside the unconscious dinosaur, which lay between the coffee table and the fireplace. He stared at it in overawed silence. As they set the shackles down in a pile near the pteronychus, Ogilvey smiled. "I can't believe what this old scientist's eyes are privileged to see."

He addressed the beast itself. "It's astonishing that you and I should meet in the flesh. You don't know how long I've worked, how often I've wondered what you would be like."

Kit and Chase built a makeshift manacle from the baling wire and chain, which they used to bind the animal's wrists. Then they ran a longer chain through the manacle and wrapped it around the nearest of the sturdy pine-trunk columns that supported the ceiling beams. Not until they had run another length of chain around both ankles and looped it around the post did Chase finally feel comfortable pausing to take a good look at the creature. He and Kit sat down on the couch while Ogilvey, ever the professor, began a running discourse.

"What we have here," he grinned, "is the height of dinosaurian evolution, the counterpart of what _Homo sapiens_ is among mammals." He leaned over the creature, nearer than Chase thought sensible, his owlish eyes round with excitement. "It seems more like a bird than a reptile, doesn't it? Yes!" He answered his own question. "Rather like a big, beautiful cassowary with just a bit of crocodile thrown in for teeth and tail. In fact," he held up a rhetorical finger, "it is indeed an intermediate stage between those two, evolutionarily speaking."

He moved to the head, from which the tongue still lolled and the eyes remained closed. "This crest is every bit as tall as a cassowary's. Perhaps a bit taller. And these facial colors, glorious! Look at the yellow stripe of skin and short feathers surrounding the eye, and these stripes of black, orange and scarlet on the crest." He moved a finger just above each feature as he described it, his nearness to the formidable jaws causing Chase to shake his head.

"But the teeth," he went on, "are much more advanced than crocodilian teeth, most assuredly the teeth of a theropod dinosaur." He moved his pointing fingertip a fraction of an inch above them. "Note the recurved shape, the serrations along the edges, much like steak knives. Perfect for cutting flesh."

Kit shuddered. "All that and intelligent too."

"Yes, highly intelligent, from the look of that machine outside. But notice the variety of feathers," Ogilvey enthused like a child looking over a new toy. "Nothing I excavated ever had a trace of feathers. The fossilization process rarely preserves them. But look at this fellow. He's got black contour feathers over most of his body, just like a crow. They must be for heat retention." He lifted one of the animal's hands and felt the scaly dark brown skin. "Yes, it's as warm-blooded as a bird."

Chase pointed at the breast armor encasing the creature's chest. "There's a bit of Roman warrior about him too."

"Yes!" exclaimed the professor. "Torso enclosed in shining silver metal. Shoulder guards, breastplate and two flank plates, all inlayed in ornate green enamel designs highlighting the contours of the armor and the body it covers. This crossed palm-frond design, inlayed over the heart—it looks familiar."

"That's the armor we saw up close on the one who came to look for us in the temple," said Kit. "It must have been this one."

"Yes," said Ogilvey. "Yes, yes, of course. But I feel I must be dreaming. Here is the height of Cretaceous evolution, come to visit _me_. I could never have hoped to see this, though I've worked all my life." Words failed the paleontologist. He choked up and went a little dewy-eyed, drawing a handkerchief from a pocket to wipe his steamed glasses. Putting them on again, he leaned near the creature's face. "How can you be back on earth with us?" he said. "I have a million questions."

Suddenly the creature's eyelid opened. Startled, Ogilvey fell over backward. Chase grabbed his rifle and covered the animal.

Kit clapped her hands and laughed at the flustered paleontologist. "A million questions, Dr. O? Why don't you ask him!"

***

Lieutenant Steve Smith stood in the open top of his National Guard Humvee, searching the nearby foothills through binoculars and trying to shake the terrified feeling in his guts. His little detail force of one Humvee and one Bradley armored troop carrier had pulled up on a low ridge in the foothills west of the town of Absarokee, Montana. They were lying low under cover of a grove of paper birch trees, as ordered, waiting through the afternoon while the pale quarter moon and the enemy in space passed overhead.

Functional military equipment was as sparse in Montana as anywhere, so the two operational vehicles in the National Guard Armory at Helena hadn't gone unnoticed by the brass down at NORAD. General Davis had sent an order stating that he needed reconnaissance in the Absarokee area. He wanted visual information on the number and nature of the enemy near Sandstone Mountain. Early that morning Smith and his Guardsmen had hauled out of Helena to drive 150 miles to their present location. They were to wait for cover of darkness and moonset before proceeding closer to the target area up near the Beartooths.

Although they weren't authorized to move or to transmit anything until then, nothing stopped Smith from keeping his eyes open. He squinted hard across the grasslands at one of the mountains a couple of miles away. There was an odd line of dust rising along a logging road that twisted down its side.

"Hey, Mike," he said to his driver, "have a look at this."

Corporal Mike Talbot stood up beside him and focused his own binoculars where Smith indicated.

"Oh, man," Talbot said after a moment. "We found them all right—or I guess they found us."

Smith watched through his field glasses for another minute as three metallic forms moved swiftly down the road, stirring up dust as they went. At the bottom of the slope, they turned to move squarely in his direction. A qualm ran through the pit of his gut. _This is it,_ he thought. _There's going to be a fight whether we're ready or not._ He turned to look into the scared face of his driver. "Get on the horn, Mike, and tell Helena we have three unidentified machines coming down out of the mountains."

"You sure you want me to break radio silence?"

"Do it," he ordered. "It might be now or never."

He looked through his binocs again at the onrushing machines. They had already covered a quarter of the distance to him in the time it took to order the radio call.

Talbot flipped the power switch on and raised his handset to his mouth.

"Helena Command Post, this is Red Dog 5, we have sighted an enemy patrol, do you read?"

Smith's eyes were riveted on the advancing machines: strange, two-legged running contraptions, about tank-sized, moving toward him over the uneven prairie at incredible speed. He turned to look up at the nearby armored personnel carrier. Its commander had stuck his helmeted head out of the top hatch.

"Deploy your troops, sergeant," Smith shouted. "Prepare to repel an assault."

The sergeant's jaw dropped. "Right here?"

"They're coming at us too fast." Smith pointed at the trio of mechanical nightmares, now scarcely three quarters of a mile away. "I don't think we can outrun those things. Get your men moving. This is as good a defensive position as we're gonna get."

The sergeant barked orders down into the interior of his vehicle and a moment later a half-dozen soldiers clambered from the back hatch and spread out among the nearby rocks and trees. Directed by the sergeant from his position atop the Bradley, they began setting up a field mortar and two heavy machine guns. Meanwhile Talbot continued to squawk position information into his handset. Smith cut him off.

"Enough of that, Mike. We've got big trouble coming fast. Get a video feed going. Our mission was to get a visual on these things and we're gonna get the job done. Get your camera rolling and keep transmitting, no matter what."

"Yes, sir!" Talbot quickly fastened a video camera to the gun-mount on the Humvee's roof. Smith no longer needed binoculars to watch the invaders. They had already closed to within a half-mile and were coming across the grasslands at a good seventy miles an hour.

"Video's running," said Talbot as Smith took another look at the strange machines. On either side of their metallic silver bodies were arms bristling with instruments and weapons.

"Coming too fast," he moaned. He turned to look up at the Bradley. A second man had joined the sergeant and together they were loading a canister of bullets onto its heavy machine gun.

"They're already in range," Smith called to them. "Open fire!"

The gunner looked up as if taken by surprise, then quickly locked down the ammo canister, sighted the gun and opened up. The _brrrattt_ of the machine gun filled the air with a thunderous noise, followed a second later by the heavy bang of the hand-mortar as the team on the ground launched its first round. The two machine gun nests joined in with a chorus of staccato fire.

General Davis and several other officers gathered around a desktop computer screen in NORAD's command center.

"This feed is from the Helena National Guard group," Major Lewis explained. "Lieutenant Smith's detail, a few miles northeast of the Beartooth landing site."

"Looks like they're in big trouble," said Davis.

On the screen was a shaky video image of three alien machines approaching at a full run across a sagebrush-studded grassland. A mortar round exploded near one machine and all three slowed their pace, forming a widely-spaced skirmish line. The sounds of the Guardsmen's barrage of machinegun fire and mortar rounds filled the computer's speakers with scratchy surging noise.

The fighting machines raised their right arms as they advanced through the sagebrush, aiming at the Guardsmen. Narrow straight bolts of blue light leaped from the instrument-studded ends of the arms with alarming effect. A birch tree splintered and caught fire within view of the camera.

"What the—?" Davis gasped at the intensity of the light-rays. "What kind of weapon are they firing?"

A beam from the leftmost machine slashed across the field of view and set off a violent detonation on the right. The camera heeled over at a crazy angle. Lieutenant Smith called frantically through the roar of explosions and small arms fire, "The Bradley has been hit!"

The camera veered crazily as its operator picked it off its mount and swung it around to show the Bradley enveloped in fire with a dark mushrooming billow of smoke rising above it. A man staggered out of the rear hatch with his clothes in flames.

Davis grimaced. A chorus of exclamations came from the growing group of staff crowding around the video monitor. Then another explosion rocked the camera view and it swung back toward the advancing machines. On its way, it swept across Lieutenant Smith's desperate face. He shouted, "We're being overrun! They came at us too fast."

The screen filled for a moment with an image of one of the machines clanking forward on its robotic legs, its light-cannon blasting to the left and right. Then the machine aimed directly at the camera. The screen went to snow and the speakers filled with static.

"Damn!" Davis pounded a fist on the desk top. "That's unbelievable. What kind of attack vehicle was that anyway?"

The others stood or sat silently, struck dumb by what they had just witnessed.

"And what kind of weapon were they using?" Davis fumed. "Another kind of death ray? How do we fight that? What are we supposed to do against that kind of thing?"

"Sir," a junior officer seated at a nearby computer console interrupted, clutching a headset to one ear. "I've got a report of another enemy attack, this one in Billings. Seven machines. They've already overrun the town. No defense force available. Moving northeast to southwest."

"Billings?" Lewis remarked. "That's on a path from the landings at Fork Peck Reservoir to Sandstone Mountain. Sounds like they're trying to link forces."

"Sounds like they already have," Davis muttered. "This enemy moves like a Blitzkrieg. How can we contain an advance this fast?"

An aide came into the room and handed Lewis a computer printout. She glanced at it quickly and passed it to Davis.

"Sorry, Matt. More bad news, this time from Louisiana. A massed invasion moving up from the coast."

Davis sat down in a swivel chair in front of the video console and murmured, "We're getting bad news faster than we can listen to it." He took the printout from her and read it like it was a death notice. "Additional spaceships splashing down on Gulf of Mexico. Amphibious landings unopposed. Fifty-plus fighting machines debarked. Moving inland to the north."

He scowled. "Have we got any military assets in the area?"

"Nothing organized," Lewis replied. "Fort Polk's equipment has been pretty thoroughly neutralized. There's nothing intact down that way except some squad cars from the local sheriff's department. That's how we're getting our information, from the county police vehicle radios. But as far as a military force, nothing."

"Unopposed," Davis muttered. "Northbound from the Gulf of Mexico. They'll keep going until they link up with the force in Montana."

Lewis nodded somberly. "Sounds like that's their plan, Matt."

***

Chase hammered another nail into the two-by-four Kit had propped across the gap in the kitchen wall. They had scrounged some studs and plywood from a pile in the barn and their makeshift patch was taking shape, hopefully strong enough to keep out unwelcome visitors for as long as they remained in the house. When the nail was driven he lifted his cap and wiped sweat from his brow. "Most of this house is made of solid pine logs except the kitchen. Why's that?"

"Daddy added a section onto the old kitchen about the time I was born," said Kit. "Mom wanted more space and something light with lots of windows. Leave it to a tyrannosaur to find the weak spot."

"Good point." Chase picked up another two-by-four. "Let's beef this up with some more cross-braces."

She nodded. "Enough to hold it until Daddy gets back."

To Chase, it sounded like Kit was in denial about her father's fate. By refusing to believe something so tragic, she was staving off the pain of acknowledging her father's death. That explained why she had brought his hat home and hung it on its peg by the back door. Sooner or later, though, she would have to face reality.

A "hrrumph" from Ogilvey in the living room reminded Chase of another pressing issue—the little matter of a dinosaur in the house. The professor had been seated on the couch throughout the afternoon with his notebooks on the coffee table, jotting notes about the captive pteronychus. As the creature had started coming around, Chase had cinched up the chains to restrain it to an upright pine-log ceiling post in a corner of the room. Groggy from its encounter with the shock weapon, it had squatted quietly at the base of the post in a posture like that of a resting swan.

Although Chase kept an ear to the living room as he worked, the pteronychus had made no effort to escape, not even testing the strength of its shackles. Now Ogilvey mumbled something to the creature—not that it could understand.

"One thing I'd like to know," Chase said to Kit after pounding another nail, "is what we're going to do with that beast."

Kit pursed her lips. "I'll bet the Army would like to get hold of it. On the other hand, Dr. O is as qualified to interrogate it as anyone. Who else has studied pteronychus for years?"

"Good point," Chase admitted.

After they covered the patch with plywood they took a few minutes to hammer the kitchen table together with the help of some two-by-fours.

"Now, if it just had some food on it," Chase remarked.

"It's just about dinnertime," Kit replied, "and my stomach's been growling for hours."

"We could make a run out for cheeseburgers," Chase quipped.

"We've got a side of beef cut up in the freezer," Kit said. "I'll thaw some steaks. There are carrots, peas, and new potatoes in the garden."

Fifteen minutes later Chase was shelling peas while Kit scrubbed potatoes at the sink. When the microwave oven completed its steak-defrosting cycle and dinged, Ogilvey came into the kitchen and pointed a thumb back in the direction of the pteronychus. "Do you suppose it's hungry?"

"How would you ever know?" asked Kit, peering at the captive, which had recovered its senses but remained settled in the corner of the living room.

Ogilvey walked to the microwave, opened the door and picked up the platter of thawed porterhouse steaks. "Excellent," he smiled. "I think it's feeding time."

"Now, wait a minute," said Chase. "One of those is mine."

Heedless, Ogilvey took the platter of steaks into the living room and Kit and Chase followed him. The creature was still in its resting-swan posture but when Ogilvey stopped a few paces away and cleared his throat, its head came up and its yellow eyes focused on him. He bowed slightly to the pteronychus and addressed it politely. "We thought you might be a little hungry."

The creature rose to its feet, ignoring Ogilvey but eyeing the steaks rapaciously. It took a step forward until its chains pulled tight around the pillar—and held, to everyone's relief. Droplets of drool collected on the ends of the creature's ivory-colored fangs.

Ogilvey grinned. "I wonder how you like your steak cooked?"

"Or," Kit interjected, "if it likes it cooked at all."

The creature cocked its head birdishly, inspecting the meat with one eye and then the other.

Ogilvey hesitated. "This is rather awkward," he murmured. Noticing how the creature worked its toothy jaws while staring at the platter, he turned and winked at Kit. "Judging from his keen interest, I think we'll try it raw."

He lifted a steak off the platter, holding it between thumb and forefinger. "Want one, then?"

The beast strained forward against its chains, its eyes fixated on the porterhouse and its fangs dripping saliva.

"Watch out," Chase cautioned. "It looks like it could bite an arm off along with the steak."

"Er, yes, good point," Ogilvey replied. "I don't know exactly what to do, except..." He tossed the steak into the air in front of the creature. It reacted instantaneously, catching the steak in its jaws and snapping it down whole. A series of head-bobbing swallows pushed the angular bulge of the steak down its gullet.

"You know," Ogilvey advised the creature, "these things have bones in them."

The pteronychus eyed the remaining steaks as though unconcerned about what was being said. Ogilvey picked up another from the platter and, noting how the creature's gaze followed it, commented, "Hungry, aren't we?"

## CHAPTER 14

"Vic!" Maria's voice came from the living room to Suarez, who lay in the midnight blackness of their bedroom. Sensing something was terribly wrong, he slipped out of bed and moved through the darkness with all the stealth of his military training. A night sweat made his T shirt stick to his body. His heart pounded in his chest. He was afraid, but not for himself. There had been a choking terror in Maria's voice.

In the living room he saw her silhouetted against moon glow on the curtains. "What is it?" he asked, barely breathing the words.

She pointed toward the open doorway to the boys' room and his heart pounded even harder. He'd known instinctually the trouble was there. He flattened himself to the wall outside the door, leaned his head around the jam and peered into the dark bedroom. He saw nothing but a shaft of moonlight on the floor. Straining his ears, all he heard was the wispy sound of the boys' breathing. Nothing seemed wrong but Vic remained on edge as he crept in and went to Evan's small bed. He took heart when he saw the form of his eldest boy lying under the tangled covers and heard his even breathing. Then he glanced quickly at Emanuel's crib, but the dark and the crib rails made it impossible to tell if he was there. Vic stole silently to the crib and leaned over the rail, smelling the sweetness of little Manny and hearing faint little whiffs of soft breathing. The boy lay snuggled under his comforter. Just to be sure, Suarez reached in and pulled the cover back—

"Vic!" The voice called again and Suarez realized it wasn't Maria's voice at all. It wasn't even a woman's voice.

"You all right, Captain?"

The shudder and rumble of the tank brought Suarez out of his dream. His ears filled with the roar of the engine and the heavy clank of treads fanning pavement. He'd been daydreaming, completely lost in a vivid and terrifying fantasy. Now the glare of hot afternoon sun cut through his visor, reminding him exactly where he was, and why. He was in the commander's hatch of his tank, sitting behind his machine gun. Scorching sunlight had heated his helmet to the boiling point. He'd been mesmerized by the blur of asphalt rushing under the front of the tank. Now his eyes snapped into focus and he turned to see Walt Hebert, his loader, staring at him from the other turret hatch. Walt's face, like his own, was mostly hidden in a bug-like Combat Vehicle Crew helmet and dust goggles. It had been Hebert's voice coming through Suarez's helmet speakers that had roused him. Walt looked at him curiously, waiting for a reply. Suarez shook the cobwebs out of his head.

"Yeah, man, I'm fine. This helmet's cooking my brains." He thought to himself, _You're going psycho, man. Too much sun, too little sleep. Just hold on, Suarez. Maintain._

"Like I was saying," Walt said, "it looks like parade day."

Suarez glanced around to see what Walt was talking about. The tank column was just entering the little New Mexico town of Alamogordo and it _did_ seem like being in a parade. People were coming out in droves from the darkened buildings along the main drag. The motels and gas stations, the food stores and travel agencies and apartments were coughing up tons of people as Fox Troop roared into town. Folks were walking to the edge of the curb and stopping to gawk like a parade was going by.

Suarez had been in Alamogordo before. It was a desert tourist trap and retirement community across from the main gates of White Sands Military Ordnance Testing Range. He and Maria had been up this way on weekends more than once. Today, the town seemed normal enough, considering what was going on. People were keeping calm, sticking close to home, waiting. Nevertheless, as the tank column neared the center of town, Suarez saw that everything was _not_ okay. One building was a smoldering ruin: a cell-phone transceiver station was now a burnt-out cinder block husk beside the melted, buckled-over metal framework of its transmission tower. The light-beam from the moon had zapped the communication facility without collateral damage.

As the tanks rumbled on, the crowd on the sidewalks grew. People clumped by the dozens on both sides of the street. Most had a curious, half-scared, half-hopeful look on their faces. Walt said over the intercom, "Feels like one of those World War Two liberation movies."

"Except nobody's smiling," Suarez observed. "And we haven't liberated anything."

A woman in a store clerk's uniform broke from the crowd and ran beside the tank, stumbling along in shoes that weren't built for speed. Suarez's driver, Ed Vecchio, sitting with his head protruding from the Abrams' front hatch under the gun barrel, saw her and slowed for safety.

She was yelling up at Suarez and he pulled off his helmet to listen. "Are you going to fight?" she shouted, "or are you retreating?"

Suarez opened his mouth to tell her about NORAD but the words froze in his throat. He had to think of the security of his troop. "Can't talk ma'am," he called, looking regretfully into her upturned hopeful face. "Might jeopardize the mission."

Her hope drained away and she stumbled, losing a shoe. But she hobbled along dangerously close to the spinning treads, calling up to him, "Oh God, please say something. We've got to know. Are you fighting or running away?"

"Running away?" That got to him. He shouted back, "We're going to fight!"

Her other shoe came off and she went down to her hands and knees, but she wore an ecstatic smile. "God bless you!" she shouted after him. "God bless you all!"

She got up, gesturing excitedly and shouting to people on the curb. Suarez couldn't hear what she said but he saw the reaction. Cheering broke out and spread faster than the tanks were moving. People ran into the street, grinning and waving hysterically. They hollered louder than the roar of the tanks, shouting words of encouragement. A man tore flowers out of the median and flung them across the decks of Fox One. Others followed his example and soon the entire column was covered with purple and yellow flowers.

Suarez picked up a rock rose blossom from the turret top. Its fragile beauty sent a chill up and down his spine. These people were pinning their hopes on him and his men, but he saw precious little reason for that trust. He didn't know what awaited him at NORAD. And he didn't know what Fox Troop could do when they got there.

On the curb a mother held up her tiny baby, helping its little hand wave at him. He focused on the lady's face as he rolled past. It was a pretty face, tear-streaked, full of hope and fear at the same time. That one face said as much to Suarez as the whole cheering crowd. It told him why he was on this long road-march to NORAD. A moment ago he had been dreaming, drifting away to his own home and family. But now he was back. The flower he held was like a prayer from a stranger. It reminded him duty came first. He couldn't let himself worry about home. He had to trust God for that and keep his mind focused on the task at hand. And his task was to protect these people just as steadfastly as he would defend Maria and the kids. That mother and baby on the curb were part of his family now. Everyone's hopes were riding with Fox Troop.

The cheering faded when they passed the last little shop at the north end of town. As they accelerated on the straight desert highway the wind began blowing flowers off the tank one by one.

***

On the outskirts of Shreveport, Louisiana, a patrol car marked Desoto Parish Sheriff sat under a cypress tree. Two officers sat quietly in the vehicle, glad the tree's Spanish moss hung down to hide them from what they were watching across a small bayou. A short distance along a two-lane highway, two mechanical fighting machines walked across the empty parking lot of a strip mall. The officers had been shadowing the machines through the southern outskirts of Shreveport for some time now.

The deputy in the passenger seat tapped the sheriff on the arm and pointed. "Hey, look at the liquor store."

The sheriff noticed a pickup truck had crashed, rear-end first, through the sidewalk-to-ceiling windows of Kenny's Liquor Store. The alien machines had noticed, too. They were moving in to investigate.

"Looks like they's doin' our job for us," said Deputy Horton.

Sheriff Bemis leaned over his steering wheel to watch. "That's old Wiley's pickup, ain't it? Man, has _he_ got a surprise comin'."

Inside the liquor store, Don Wiley staggered a little as he walked into the stock room for the umpteenth time. Cases of liquor were all around him.

"Lawdy!" he crowed. "I done died and gone to Heaven."

He grabbed a case of Jim Beam, four half gallons, clutching it to his chest and pushing his way out the swinging stock-room door. He staggered along the aisles of booze bottles to the store's shattered front and plunked the case onto the tailgate of his pickup, sliding it in alongside his growing pile of liquor cartons. There were two or three cases each of Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, Johnny Walker and Bacardi. He winked at two pit bull terriers panting out the passenger window.

"Patience, boys!" he said. "I'm almost done. Y'all wouldn't want me to do without, would ya?"

He went in again and a minute later came out of the stock room with a case of Old Bushmills, but he stopped short. Outside the liquor store he saw trouble, _real bad trouble._ Two evil-looking machines stood just beyond the right-front fender of his truck.

"Hoo-wee," he moaned. "Please be the DTs. _Please!"_ Sometimes Wiley saw things that weren't there. Maybe these were just hallucinations. He blinked a couple times and shook his head but the machines refused to disappear. They just stood right where they were. His dogs whined, letting him know they saw what he saw.

Wiley's arms took to shaking and the liquor case slipped from his hands. When it hit the floor the bottles shattered and Old Bushmills, maybe a hundred bucks worth, spilled across the linoleum tile. He caught the sharp smell of the liquor puddled at his feet but was too busy looking outside to glance down. The machines' canopies opened and what he saw nearly stopped his heart. Two eerie-looking lizard-birds leered out at him, tilting their heads like inquisitive cockatoos. "Yeah," he murmured, "this's gotta be the DTs." He blinked a couple times more but they wouldn't go away. And to top it off, they started talking, jabbering something back and forth, sounding like two crows cackling. It kinda sounded like they were laughing, too.

Watching their mouths full of dagger teeth, Wiley felt kinda woozy. "Oh, Sweet Jesus," he moaned, dropping to his knees in the spilt liquor and clasping his hands together to pray. "Dear God, I'll never knock over another liquor store, I swear. And I won't never touch a drop again." That last bit was a pretty steep price but he figured he was bargaining for his life.

Despite his penitence, the creatures didn't leave. They dismounted their machines and came to stand just outside the busted front windows, looking at him and cackling a blue streak. They seemed pretty amused by the situation and were sizing him up for something. Just what, Wiley wasn't sure.

One of the pit bulls growled, giving Wiley an idea. The creatures were just a few feet from the dogs.

"Kill, boys!" he shouted, turning to crawl behind an aisle of liquor bottles. He heard the dogs claw their way out the window, snarling as they attacked. And he heard the creatures set up an awful hissing and screeching as the dogs tore into them. It sounded like the dogs might make short work of them but Wiley was too scared to watch. He crawled away on hands and knees to hide in the stock room.

***

Chase picked up one of the carrots they had gathered from the garden and crunched a bite. Kit was standing at the back door of the kitchen watching the parasaurolophus family eat a fresh bale of hay.

"Your garden grows some good veggies, Kit," he said. "Sweetest carrot I ever tasted."

"We've got plenty of fertilizer, with six hundred head of cattle."

He crunched slower, thinking maybe the carrot needed another washing. Kit went to the stove and adjusted the flame under the pot of boiling potatoes. He asked her, "What will you do when this is all over?"

She turned and looked at him dubiously. "You mean if I survive?"

"Sure. Assuming we find a way out of this, what'll you do? You said you wanted to study paleontology at Bozeman. Sounds like a good career choice, all things considered. Ought to be quite a demand for people who know their dinosaurs."

"I suppose so," she replied. "I'm afraid to think about the future."

"Things look pretty grim right now, I'll admit. But take wolves as an example. They were wiped out around here but now they're making a comeback. Things can change."

"It's not the same. This time dinosaurs are making the comeback and people are disappearing."

"Still," he said. "Yesterday those parasaurolophuses were fossils. Today they're animals you're feeding hay to. It's getting hard to tell the difference between paleontology and wildlife biology. Your interests and mine might... come together someday."

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. She gave him a thin smile, the best he had seen in a while. Then a thought struck her and she turned toward the living room door. "Hey, what's up with Doctor O?"

"I don't know," said Chase. "Still studying our... guest, I suppose."

Kit went into the living room and he followed—and they both froze.

Dr. Ogilvey sat on the fireplace hearth with one of Kit's school textbooks open on his lap. The creature was standing right over him!

Chase's first thought was to shout a warning but the words froze in his throat. The animal's fangs were just inches from Ogilvey's head. There was no way the old man could react in time to get away. Then Chase saw something even more astonishing. Ogilvey, oblivious to danger, pointed to a picture in the book and looked straight into the creature's face.

"That's a tree," he said. Then, moving his finger on the book, "That's the sky."

"Doctor O!" Kit barely squeaked. "What are you doing?"

The paleontologist turned and gazed blankly at their concerned faces. "Just teaching him some of our words."

The creature regarded them calmly and Ogilvey jerked a thumb at it. "He catches on very quickly."

The captive reached out its manacled hands, pointed a claw at the picture and did its best to mimic Ogilvey's words.

"Treeee," it repeated. "Skaaeee."

"Very good," Ogilvey responded. "Tree. Sky."

"But, but," Kit gasped, "are you sure it's safe to get so close?"

Ogilvey glanced from her to the beast and back. "No, but he certainly _seems_ friendly enough. His name is Gar." Setting the book on the hearth, Ogilvey stood and made formal introductions. "Gar, meet Kit." He indicated by a gesture that the latter name belonged to her. The creature bobbed its head and made its best effort to repeat her name.

"Kee-ta."

Kit hesitated a moment, flabbergasted, and then replied, "Gar. Pleased to meet you."

Ogilvey smiled congenially at the creature. "And that's Chase, standing behind her."

"Chay-suh," said Gar, head-bobbing at him.

Chase bobbed back reflexively. Then, feeling awkward at his apish replay of the creature's movement, he stammered, "Uh... Hello, Gar."

***

A few minutes after the alien machines sped away from the liquor store Sheriff Bemis pulled his patrol car up in front of Wiley's pickup truck. He spotted Wiley sitting on his tailgate inside the liquor store, his shoulders slumping and his head hanging down.

Wiley didn't move as they got out and approached him. "Go ahead," Wiley said without looking around, "arrest me, Sheriff. I'll be safer on the inside, anyhow."

"You okay, Wiley?" Deputy Horton asked through the shattered hole in the big window.

Wiley turned and looked at them plaintively. Then he pointed to the ground at their feet. "Ate my dogs," he moaned.

Bemis and Horton jumped back, startled. In front of them on the pavement were two dogs, or what was left of them: skulls, thighbones, rib cages and pieces of hide, but not a scrap of meat.

Sheriff Bemis took off his trooper hat and wiped the Louisiana humidity from his brow. "I'll be doggoned," he said. "Looks like those critters just stopped by for supper."

***

"Great dinner." Chase leaned back from the dinning room table and patted an over-full belly. "I'd have a second steak if our prisoner—I mean, Gar—hadn't eaten the rest."

Dr. Ogilvey rose, daubing a napkin at his mouth. "Kit," he said, "you are to be commended for your skill with a skillet, potato masher and gravy boat. I've rarely had so fine a meal. But now I must get back to Gar."

While Chase was helping her clear the dishes Kit said, "I want to go look for the horses before it gets dark. Will you come with me?"

"Sure," Chase agreed. "I hope you don't mind if I bring my rifle along."

"I'll bring mine too."

After the dishes were put away, they went out the back door into the early evening twilight carrying rifles. With the peak of Sandstone Mountain silhouetted in the afterglow and the ranch seemingly at peace, Kit let herself into the garden through the gate in the white picket fence, and began gathering a bouquet of mixed flowers. Not quite sure what she was up to, Chase kept an eye on the landscape around them but spotted nothing threatening. He let his gaze be drawn to the garden's profusion of early summer blooms and to the prettiest thing in the garden, Kit Daniels. Holding an armload of scarlet columbine, long-stem daisies and snapdragons, she was as enchanting as any girl he had ever seen.

"You plan on giving a peace offering to a dinosaur?" he quipped.

Looking serious, she shook her head. "There's something I want to do while we're out. It'll just take a minute."

She went out through the gate and he followed her for a hundred yards to a low knoll with a cluster of headstones. The tall grass had been trimmed. She put the bouquet in front of a granite marker engraved with the name "Evelyn Daniels." She lowered her head and paused a moment in thought.

Chase pulled the bill of his cap low over his eyes and scanned the hills again. Still no sign of trouble. After a moment he asked, "Is that your mother?"

Kit nodded. "She died when I was only eight. Daddy brings her flowers at least once a week in the summertime, but he's—"

Chase could see her face was strained. A lot had happened to her since he had met her one day ago. Another headstone caught his eye. He read the inscription aloud. " 'Charlie Summermoon. Born 1898. Died 1958.' A relative?"

"Yeah." She seemed cheered a little by his interest. "My great-great-grandfather. He was half Blackfoot Indian. His daughter married my great grandfather Arthur Daniels. They're over there." She pointed to a matched pair of headstones on the far side of the group. "There's four generations of Daniels buried here."

"So you're a lot like the pteronychus," Chase observed.

"How do you figure?"

"Their ancestors are buried on this ranch, too."

"I guess so, then." She bent to arrange the flowers by her mother's headstone. "Where are your folks, Chase?"

"They live in Seattle. At least I hope they're still alive."

"I hope so too." When Kit got the flowers arranged to her satisfaction she pointed to a taller grassy hill overlooking the ranch compound. "We might be able to see Lucky from up there."

She led the way up a narrow animal path that meandered to the top of the hill. Halfway up, they paused and listened to a sound echoing off the cliffs of Sandstone Mountain. It was a wolf howl.

"Sounds like your pet project is still alive," Kit said, flashing him a smile.

"It's good to hear they're okay," Chase said. They howl like that when they're hunting." A thought made him chuckle. "Maybe they're after a dinosaur. That would even the score a little."

The evening was warm and calm. The almost-quarter moon had nearly set. Although the beam still flickered, it seemed a little less threatening coming through the rosy evening light. On the flat hilltop was a large lichen-covered boulder. Kit propped her rifle against it and climbed up to sit with her arms wrapped around her knees. Chase sat beside her.

"This was my favorite getaway when I was a kid," she explained. "It's got a panoramic view of the homestead. I must have come up here a thousand times."

Looking out over the ranch's little valley, they saw the parasaurolophus family clustered together at the end of the pasture farthest from the house, just inside a section of the equestrian fence with the top rail knocked off. Kit touched Chase's arm and pointed to a spot near them.

"Look!" she cried happily. "There's Lucky, Buck, and Nelda."

The horses and cow were grazing on green pasture grass not far from the duckbill family, seemingly at ease near the colossal creatures.

"Whew!" Kit sighed in relief. "I'm glad to see they're all getting along together."

Chase spotted something. "Look at the mother parasaurolophus. Is she on a nest?" The female squatted at the center of a wide mound of dirt dug out of the pasture soil. Her body covered a central crater-shaped hole. The male squatted on his haunches near her, keeping an eye on their surroundings with his head held high.

"I wonder if there are any eggs in that nest?" Kit mused.

"Let's go check," Chase wisecracked. "Rufus won't mind, will he?"

Kit looked puzzled. "Rufus? Who's that?"

"That's the name you gave the big one, right? I heard you call him that."

"Oh, rufous," said Kit. "Dr. O said the Latin word for his red color is rufous, so I called him rufous.

"I like it," said Chase. "Rufus, the para-sauro-LOO-phus."

"LAH-phus," Kit corrected. "It's pronounced para-sauro-LAH-phus."

"I say LOO-phus, and you say LAH-phus," Chase teased. "You don't want to call him RAH-fus do you?"

The big animal looked up the hill in their direction without apparent concern. Kit said, "No, Rufus is just fine. And let's call her Henrietta. She looks like a mother hen on that nest."

"Rufus and Henrietta," said Chase. "Sounds good. And the little ones?" They watched the three yearling duckbills, which seemed in constant motion, cavorting in the pasture near their parents. "How about Huey, Louie and Dufus?"

She laughed the first happy, warm laugh he'd heard from her in a long time. As she did, he turned to look her fully in the face. He noticed again, as he had noticed when he met her, how beautifully her eyes sparkled when she smiled. _Dangerous eyes,_ he thought. _A guy could get his heart all tangled up._

Noticing his silence, she turned to him and they looked into each other's eyes for a long moment. Then an unfamiliar sound from the pasture broke the spell. Kit glanced down and scowled slightly. "Now, what's this?"

A group of a dozen smaller animals moved out of the woods beyond the far end of the pasture.

"Bighorn sheep?" Chase suggested. "They're about the right size, right buff color, and the bleating noise they're making sounds right."

"But everything else is wrong," Kit observed. "I don't think they're sheep."

The animals trotted toward the pasture fence on two legs, not four, with long reptilian tails stretched out behind them. They vaulted the fence easily and trotted into the middle of the pasture as a group with their arms hanging down in front of them dinosaur-style.

"You're the dinosaur expert," said Chase. "What are they?"

She looked the animals over carefully. "They're a type of pachycephalosaur. Boneheaded dinosaurs."

The crowns of their heads were bony domes rimmed on the sides and rear with bristling spikes. Though much smaller than Rufus and his duckbill family, the newcomers looked at least as formidable as bighorn sheep.

Kit was still working on a name. "I think they may be stygimolochs."

"Stygi-who?" Chase laughed. "Now that's a name. They look like dino-sheep. Kind of woolly, too." Though it was hard to tell at a distance, the buff-colored bodies of the animals seemed covered in thick curly fur of some kind.

"Hey!" Kit exclaimed. "Now I see what chased them out of the woods." A black-and-white animal streaked in under the fence and charged after the sheep-dinosaurs. "Zippy! I wondered where he'd gotten to after the T-rex attack. He's a wanderer and he's got a mind of his own. I was worried he had run off for good, with all the weird animals around here. But I'm glad to see he's back."

Zippy raced after the stygimolochs, yapping excitedly and driving them along, seeming to get on all sides of them at once.

"Look at him go!" Kit exclaimed. "His herding instincts are in high gear."

Zippy drove the creatures toward the windmill at the center of the pasture and then stopped and lay down just as they reached the watering trough. No longer harassed, the newcomers calmed. They dipped their muzzles in the water or nibbled the lush grass around the trough, bleating constantly like a herd of sheep.

Now a pair of new animals appeared. Ten feet tall and two-legged, they quickly crossed from the woods, leaped the fence and landed heavily inside the pasture. They hurried to join the smaller sheep dinosaurs. These animals also had domed, spike-studded heads.

"Mom and Dad?" Chase ventured.

"That makes sense," Kit agreed. "There's a theory that stygimoloch isn't its own species. Instead, it's the young of pachycephalosaurus. And there's living proof. Dr. O will be glad to see it."

The larger of the two adults stamped its foot and lowered its domed head in Zippy's direction. Prudently, the dog slunk away. The adults joined the young at the trough for a drink and then the entire group trotted away, jumping the fence near the barn and moving off up the gully that led to Sandstone Mountain.

Chase asked, "How smart do you think dinosaurs are?"

"Pretty smart," said Kit. "Just look at Gar."

"I wasn't thinking of Gar," Chase corrected himself. "What about the T rex? I wonder how well it can think?"

"Depends on what you mean by thinking," she said.

"When I shot it the third time, it looked right at me and then it ran. I wonder if it understood that my gun could hurt it?"

"Maybe," said Kit. "But that doesn't make it intelligent." She looked around as though the mention of a tyrannosaur had suddenly made her nervous.

"You're right," he said. "It was just a self-preservation instinct. This thing really packs a wallop." He patted the 30-06 leaning on the rock and spoke to it as if it were a living thing. "Stick close to me, baby."

"I will," Kit replied while still looking around. Then, when she realized he wasn't talking to her, a flush of color rose on her cheeks. Chase noticed and suddenly felt as skittish as one of the sheep-dinos. She was all the more beautiful when she blushed. After a moment, a shy smile crept across Kit's face. She leaned near him. In a low voice she said, "I haven't thanked you properly for saving me from that tyrannosaurus."

She put her arms around his neck and gave him a small kiss on the lips.

He reacted quickly and instinctually, surprising even himself. Wrapping an arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders, he pulled her to him tightly, kissing her powerfully and passionately. She tightened her arms around his neck and kissed back. Her breath deepened. His heart raced dizzily and he nearly fell off the rock. But he found his balance and they swayed together, sharing a new pulse that seemed to throb in the landscape around them.

Then she pushed him away and drew in a sharp breath. "Whew!" She fanned at her open collar where the skin of her throat had flushed a brilliant pink. "Easy, boy." With her blue eyes gone wide she searched his face for a moment. "Why'd you do that?" she asked.

"Do what? Shoot the rex?"

"No. Why did you kiss me like that?"

It was his turn to flush red. "I guess— Well, I—" he sputtered, tongue-tied.

A sound arose overhead, the _whup-whup_ beat of powerful wings. Chase quickly grabbed up his rifle.

"There!" Kit spotted the source of the sound a hundred feet above them. It was a huge pterodactyl flying on wings that spanned thirty feet. Chase raised the 30-06, ready to shoot if the airborne colossus turned in their direction. But it passed calmly overhead, paying no attention to them.

"What the heck was that?" he asked.

"Quetzalcoatlus," Kit said with certainty.

"Quetzalcoatlus," Chase repeated the tongue-twisting name as the long-beaked beast continued serenely on its way, disappearing beyond the next hilltop.

"It was the biggest animal ever to fly," Kit asserted.

Chase chuckled. "Don't say 'was the biggest,' Kit. Say 'is.' I guess it's not a predator, or we'd be in trouble."

"No, it's a scavenger, like an overgrown stork."

"Good," he said. "Last time I checked, we weren't dead meat yet. Let's keep it that way."

"It'll be dark soon," Kit said, noticing the evening shadows creeping across the valley. "Maybe we should get back to the house." She picked up her rifle and led the way down the trail, pausing to look at the parasaurolophus family. Rufus was bringing a mouthful of hay from the barn to Henrietta. "Do you suppose they mate for life?" she asked.

"Wouldn't that be nice?" Chase replied. He paused a moment, watching Kit walk down the trail. His mind was full of a thousand new thoughts. He shook his head, smiled, and followed her.

## CHAPTER 15

It was a bright, sunny Nebraska Sunday morning. The left front fender of Bob Eastley's old blue pickup made a _tack-etta, tack-etta, tack-etta_ sound as the washboard surface of the gravel road sent a throbbing vibration through it. The fender sounded like it might just rattle right off this trip. Bob knew he could get rid of the noise by slowing down, but he liked to ride these wide plains as fast as he could go and still keep the truck on the road. Otherwise he'd never get where he was going, given the distance between the farm and just about anywhere else. Travel was simple enough here in corn country. Forty acres of foot-high corn sprouts on one side, forty acres of soy beans on the other, then forty of alfalfa and another forty of corn, and a dirt road between 'em as straight as an arrow. Even if you lost control on a bumpy stretch, you'd just spin off into a field without the inconvenience of a ditch. And then you'd pull right back on and keep a-going wherever it was you were headed.

This morning, that would be church, thirteen miles straight ahead in Albion. Bob ordinarily had little use for services when plowing and planting got busy this time of year. But there was that other matter: the world was coming to an end—and well, his mother had just insisted on church today.

He'd often wondered how such a tiny little woman could give birth to a big lug like him. He was one hoss of a farmer, with hands like hams and a keister as big as a pair of watermelons. He had a sun-hardened, square-jawed, fat-cheeked face gawking out from under his dirty white-straw cowboy hat like a big tomato. Compared to him she looked like a midget, sitting quietly with her purse in her lap, dressed in her dark blue Sunday dress. She was about as small as a woman could get and scrawny as a new lamb. And as dusty as his coveralls were, that's how clean she was, like she still needed to be an example to him and teach him some manners. Her black hat with flowers on top sat above her pasty white face just as tidy and perfectly straight as it could be.

He kept his boot down on the accelerator and the pickup truck barreled along at a clip of almost seventy miles an hour. The vibrations rumbling through the truck didn't do anything more to his mother than make the flowers on her hat jiggle a little bit.

This morning, of course, he kept a wary eye on the flat horizon. Strictly speaking, they weren't supposed to be out here halfway between home and town, what with the invasion and martial law and all that. But Mother'd insisted. She was about the strictest Lutheran in the county and there wasn't much that kept her from Sunday worship.

She'd said, "God will keep us and protect us on our way." He hadn't been able to argue with that.

Besides, there'd been no sign of an invasion other than the radio and TV being out. Nor was there any sign of the Army, the police or anything else going on around these parts. Things were just like always—real quiet. Bob had decided he was better off taking Mother into town without any back-sass. So far, rattling along under a clear blue sky, he had no cause to regret it.

Then he caught a glint out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to look across a rolling field of green soybean sprouts. Somewhere, way out there, something had flashed in reflected sunlight. Just about at the horizon. _There._ He saw it again. Beyond the wagon-spoke rows of soybeans, he saw another flash of sun on metal in a new-plowed tract of dark brown land. He checked the road ahead, which was empty, and didn't let up on the gas pedal. It seemed like slowing down to find out what was over there wasn't a good idea. Sweat came up on the palms of his hands.

It wasn't long before what was over there came to find out about him. Each time he glanced sideways at the metal thing—or things, he could make out three of them now—they were closer. Some kinda machines, maybe a half-mile away and moving awfully fast over loose-plowed dirt. He pushed the accelerator down a bit farther but when he looked again the things were closer and moving on a line that would cut him off in a matter of seconds. Now he got a good look at them. Good Lord! They were like nothing he'd ever seen. They were running on pairs of legs, and running fast.

A cold chill flowed through him because he knew he was about to regret leaving home today. He clutched the wheel tighter and bore down on the accelerator. The speedometer read just over seventy-five and his tires were floating over the loose gravel and washboard. He couldn't go any faster.

"I'll be danged," he muttered as the things drew alongside him, their metallic feet pounding the ground but their streamlined silver bodies gliding smoothly above the soy sprouts. He peered at the dark canopy glass of the cockpits but couldn't see anything inside.

As the soy field gave way to one of new-mown winter wheat stubble, the machines drew ahead of him and angled onto the roadway. When they deliberately slowed down in his path he took his foot off the gas. The truck rolled to a halt and they turned to face him, spreading themselves across the road twenty feet in front of his bumper. He muttered, "What the hell are those things?"

"Watch your mouth," Mother scolded.

The trio of machines stood like eerie mechanical gunslingers with their arms held out to their sides as if ready for a fight.

"Now Mother," Eastley said. "D-don't you be s-scared. I'll handle this." _Somehow,_ he thought, _I'll handle it._ But how? While the machines took stock of him and his truck, he squinted into the glare coming off their dark canopies. There was someone, or something, inside each machine. But he couldn't quite make out what. To his surprise, the truck's passenger door opened and he turned to see his mother stepping down onto the roadway.

"Mother? Mother! Get back in here!"

Ignoring him, she walked out in front of the truck and stood up as straight as her ancient bones would let her. Facing the mechanical menaces, she reached into her purse and came up with her old black bible, which she raised above her head and held out in a white-gloved hand toward the invaders. Everything froze for a moment except the bible's red bookmark ribbon fluttering in the breeze.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" she shouted, thrusting the bible at them as if it might radiate a bolt of God's divine power. She clutched her purse to her breast with her other hand and held her head so high that her hat slipped off her pinned-up gray hair and tumbled to the dust behind her. She stood her ground defiantly, bible held high, though she was dwarfed by the size of the mechanical monsters. Bob eyed the gun-barrels on the right arms of the machines and sat riveted to his seat by indecision. If he let her stay out there they'd take a shot at her sooner or later. If he ran to fetch her they might think he was charging and start shooting anyways. But he had to do _something._

He took a hand slowly off the wheel and gripped his door handle while Mother continued, unbowed. "Praise God! Satan, be gone!"

Easing his door open, Eastley could just make out the drivers behind the machines' canopy glass: reptiles of some kind, leering at Mother with their jaws agape. Faintly, he heard the sound of cackling laughter.

The machine on the left pointed its gun-barrel straight at Mother and Eastley's heart froze in his chest. The others followed suit and in the terrible silence that followed, he knew he had to act. He threw his door open wide and charged out. But as his feet hit the ground the three machines let loose a barrage of laser blasts. Beams of light shot in every direction. The truck's left front tire exploded, knocking Eastley to the ground. There was a horrible din of clanking metal, pieces of pickup whistling through the air, and the lasers' sizzling _vip, vip, vip_. His truck dropped down once, twice, three times as its other tires blew out. Then there was a momentary silence as the invaders stopped to take stock of the damage they'd done. Dust and steam swirled around the stricken truck.

Eastley stared bug-eyed at the space in front of the truck, expecting the worst. But to his utter surprise, Mother still stood there like a statue with bible held high. Either they were incredibly bad shots, or... The sound of cackling laughter came from the fighting machines again, this time louder. Then the three mechanical monsters turned in unison and raced off across the farmland. Within seconds they disappeared over a rolling hill, moving in the direction they were originally going.

Eastley got up and dusted himself off. He took off his cowboy hat and wiped his brow. Mother lowered her bible and turned to inspect the shredded tires of his truck and listen to the hiss of its punctured radiator. She stooped slowly to get her hat but he ran and picked it up for her. Though she hadn't been touched, she looked a mite pastier than before.

"Damn them to hell," she said as he handed her the hat. "How will we get to church?"

It was the first time he'd ever heard her swear. He stood a moment in shocked silence. Then he took her by an elbow. "C'mon, Mother, let's get you back in the truck. Better keep out of the sun or you'll get a burn."

***

The big war-theater display screen on the wall at NORAD finally had some data points on it. Putting those red-flashing dots up there was an accomplishment for which General Davis had already praised Holly Lewis. Seeing the display alive again after days of blankness gave him hope of regaining a small measure of control over events, although most of the information displayed on the wall was not reassuring.

"One small piece of good news," said Lewis. "The President got back to us. Sent a coded message along the grapevine. He's at Camp David and safe for the time being. Confirms you are first-in-command of all U.S. forces. Congratulations, Matt."

"Not exactly a cause for celebrating," Davis muttered, "under the circumstances."

He frowned again at the map of North America, where flashing red spots indicated small ground units reporting contact with invaders fanning out from Montana into the Dakotas and now Nebraska. There were more dots spreading northward from Louisiana into Arkansas. "Is there any organized force we can use to oppose them if they turn east and cross the Mississippi?"

Lewis shook her head. "There are fair-sized National Guard units in the major cities, but they're focusing on food distribution. If you mean armored forces, then there's nothing functional whatsoever east of the Mississippi."

"Air power?"

"We've located an intact National Guard Chinook helicopter in Bismarck, but it's unarmed. There's nothing else flyable within a thousand miles."

"Damnation!" Davis fumed.

Paul MacIlvain came to join them.

"What have you got, Mac? Have you been able to muster any useful forces around here?"

"Not much, Matt. Just trucks and light equipment. We're going to have to rely on that Armored Cav troop."

"They're making good progress," said Lewis. "But it's a long haul from Fort Bliss. They're taking cover right now while the moon is overhead."

"Hiding out all day is no way to move an armored column," Davis grumbled. "But the enemy have complete freedom of movement." He pointed at the red dots on the wall map. "They're covering ground at incredible speed."

"Approximately ninety miles an hour," Lewis concurred.

"At that rate," Davis grumbled, "they can be anyplace on the continent in a couple days."

Lewis nodded. "Pretty much, sir."

"My only consolation," Davis muttered, "is that they're not advancing directly toward us from Montana or Louisiana. Either they're taking the easy pickings on the Great Plains or this is some sort of envelopment maneuver. Maybe they plan to attack us later with a combined force. Either way, we can't just sit here and wait. The only advantage I see is that no enemy has been reported between here and Montana. I think they're overconfident, leaving the approach to their base at Sandstone Mountain unopposed. I intend to take advantage of that. But if we don't take the initiative quickly, we'll lose this war without a fight."

"Don't forget JPL," said Lewis. "They plan to knock out Phaeon's light beam by crashing their space probe into it."

"And I wish them success. But we can't help them and we can't count on them either. They might not get the job done. So I want a plan to move our forces north undetected, hiding when the moon is up. Mac, get the logistics going for enough fuel and food for a fast road-march into Montana. When's the Armored Cav due to arrive?"

"About seven-hundred hours tomorrow, sir."

"I want that armor rolling again within an hour after it gets here."

Mac nodded. "I'll have fuel and supplies waiting."

"Good," said Davis. The hint of a smile crossed his face. "If we can get our tanks up there in the next day or two we may have a chance to hit their command structure while they're still in their nest. I'm itching for a chance to fight back."

***

Frank's latest electronic contraption was spread out on a tabletop in the operations center, looking like a kid's Radio-Shack project. It was a timer to delay the van's broadcast of Clem's next command sequence long enough for them to move a safe distance away. Frank was putting the assorted pieces together according to a design that was obvious only to him. Diedre assisted by holding a printed circuit board in place as he soldered it down. She had long since finished her part of the plan by burning the commands onto a memory chip that now lay on her computer desk.

Lloyd had hovered over them while they worked, annoying them by grumbling about details and obsessing about how they would learn whether the computer in the van sent the command sequence. He had volunteered to stay and watch the screen but Diedre and Frank argued it was suicidal to stay anywhere within a hundred yards of the van. This time Phaeon would be ready with their coordinates and might make a more effective counterstrike. She was glad Lloyd had accepted majority rule and agreed to let Frank use a timer. Then, mercifully, he had made himself scarce.

"That's it." Frank snapped a plastic cover onto the small black project-box. "All wired up and ready to go. It's even got an LED display on the front. Watch this." He pushed a small button on the side of the box and the red LED set itself to 60 and began counting down by one-second increments. "Put this in line with the van's radio dish and it'll keep the transmitter silent while the computer gets ready for the uplink. When the timer hits zero, the carrier signal comes on and the commands are sent immediately, all without human intervention."

Diedre watched the timer descend through 49, 48, 47...

"You're sure it'll do what it's supposed to?"

"Pretty sure."

Diedre walked over to her computer to get the memory chip.

It was gone.

"Hey," she said. "Who's got the commands?"

Frank glanced around the room and they looked at each other in alarm.

"Lloyd!" Diedre cried. "He was hanging around this desk before he disappeared."

"That fool!" Frank shouted. "Come on, Diedre."

They ran out the door, sprinted down the hall and rushed into the daylight outside the basement doorway.

"You idiot!" Frank bellowed, looking down the sloping campus lawn. The TV van's satellite dish had been moved out of its straight-forward stowed position and was slued up to point at the moon.

Frank broke into a dead run downhill toward the van and Diedre followed close on his heels. Across the intervening hundred yards of sloped lawn she saw Lloyd inside the van's open side door, sitting at the control desk. No doubt he was already transmitting the commands from her memory chip. She cursed herself for not having guessed Lloyd would try something like this. Now she remembered what he had muttered just before he wandered off. "I'm going out to spend some time with Linda."

"Lloyd!" she shouted as she ran. "Get away from there!"

She overtook Frank, whose heavy legs were tiring, and rushed to the wrought iron fence between her and the sidewalk. Never mind that she couldn't get past. She grabbed the black iron bars and shouted, "Lloyd! You don't have to do this."

She was sure Lloyd could hear her from just across the sidewalk, but he didn't turn around. He was fixated on the computer screen flickering in front of him. Diedre was about to shout again when a wall of blue light burst out of the sky. The beam touched down a hundred feet beyond the van, silhouetting it in its glare and giving off a deafening sound like the rasp of an electric arc at earsplitting intensity. The air shook, sending vibrations right through her guts. She looked upward along the beam in horrified fascination. The shaft of blue-white light tapered up to a vanishing point at the lower tip of the crescent moon.

Just as it dawned on her how close and immediate death had become, Frank caught up and tore her hand free from the fence rail. "Come on!" he shouted, tugging her wrist and pulling her back in the direction from which they had just come.

She glanced over her shoulder as he dragged her back. The beam had touched down across the street on the grounds of an equestrian riding club. It looked like a titanic spotlight, a shaft of blue heat fifty feet wide where it touched the riding field like a huge acetylene torch, turning the soil red-hot and blasting smoke out on all sides.

"Hurry," Frank tugged on her arm harder as the equestrian jumping rails ignited and the trees bordering the far sidewalk burst into flames. "It's heading this way." The wall of blue light advanced across the street, igniting the asphalt into flame and smoke as it came.

"Lloyd!" she yelled one last time, her voice now lost in the awful roar of the beam. Inside the van, Lloyd still faced the computer screen, heedless of death bearing down on him. When the beam moved onto it, the van immediately erupted into flames. Lloyd Andersen never got up from the control seat. He just vanished into the orange fireball.

"Lloyd!" Diedre screamed, but Frank shouted over her cry as he dragged her along, "Damn it Diedre, we're next!"

The realization that he was right broke her fixation on Lloyd. She turned and ran up the hill for her own life as explosions tore through the van and shattered window-glass tinkled on the pavement. After a dozen paces she glanced over her shoulder. The beam had left the burning van behind and was continuing over the fence onto the campus lawn. It was coming _straight at her._

Diedre and Frank sprinted up the hill, racing beneath a row of eucalyptus trees, each of which burst into flames just after they passed it. She could feel heat searing her shoulders from the foliage blazing overhead and knew in her heart that getting too near the van had been a fatal mistake. Her legs were aching, about to fail. They burned from the fatigue of running too far, too fast. And Frank's labored breath became a series of groans of exhaustion and terror. Suddenly his legs gave out and he sprawled headlong on the ground. She wheeled around and grabbed his arm.

"Get up!" she yelled, tugging with all her might. But Frank's energy was spent. He tried to rise, but couldn't.

"Go on, Diedre," he panted.

She wrenched him upward again, but his weight was too much for her to lift and she stumbled to her knees beside him. The beam closed in on them fast, turning a huge swath of lawn from green to red-hot as it came. She knew it didn't matter whether she ran or not. Her only choice was to die here with Frank or a few paces from him if she got up. As the white-hot rim of fire approached to within twenty feet she threw her arms around Frank's neck and buried her face in his bearded cheek. He clutched her tightly to him and shouted, "Goodbye, Diedre."

"Goodbye, Frank."

The instant of their death arrived—and passed. The blue light disappeared as if a switch had been thrown, leaving nothing but a thunderclap reverberating up into the sky, clear yellow sunlight, and the crackling heat of burning trees. She let go of Frank and rolled onto her back on the grass, panting and unable to believe she was alive. Frank lay face-down, gasping for air.

After a minute, he sat up and looked around in astonishment.

"It vanished, just like that." He snapped his fingers.

Diedre sat up beside him. At the bottom of the hill, the van was the center of a whirling tornado of orange flame and black smoke.

"Lloyd—" she began, but there was nothing to be said. Lloyd was gone. A dozen feet from her, the edge of blackened and smoldering ground showed how narrow their own escape had been. Frank stood up and offered her a hand.

"Come on Diedre. It wasn't after us. It just wanted the van. Let's get back inside."

She took his hand and stood up, but paused to look into the blue vault of the sky beyond the flames and smoke of the trees. "Clem?" Her voice quavered and a watery blur filled her eyes. In her tears the white scimitar shape of the moon seemed to float like a reflection. Clementine was up there beyond the blue of the sky in the black depths of space, orbiting silently above Phaeon. Lloyd Andersen had just sacrificed his life to get a message to her.

"Did you hear, Clem? Did you?"

***

Saurgon sat at the command desk of the light-cannon's observation deck, his yellow-green eyes fixated on the blue world floating in front of him, pleased to see his task of raining destruction on the hoonahs proceeding well. From a cage set on the desk, he lifted a possum-like creature by its tail and regarded it thoughtfully.

"Notoonu hoonah," he murmured, "Little hoonah, whose blood tastes so sweet, I must make a decision about your cousins on Eka soon."

A subordinate entered and saluted. "Hoonah seesque tonoh—" he reported, "The enemy transmitter aiming its signal at Noqui has been silenced."

"Hnnh," Saurgon murmured. "Dooleenko—Excellent. Has the entire planet been swept of radio transmitters, Tekkoo?"

"It has, with the exception of a few puny mobile ones of little consequence."

"And all hoonah military units have been paralyzed?"

"They have."

"Good. Have you had any communication from the High Priest of Life?"

"None since shortly after his landing. He is missing."

"And dead, I presume, by the hand of a hoonah." Saurgon twisted the tail of the little hoonah and looked at it looking at him, nose to nose. "So, Gar's voice in support of the earthly hoonahs is silenced."

"He has not been heard from in more than a day."

"In the absence of Gar to defend them, I decide here and now what shall become of the hoonahs." He killed the hoonah with a swift bite and gulped it down whole.

"Should you seek Oogon's concurrence?"

"Oogon?" Saurgon gulped hard to force the hoonah down. "He has never held any opinion of earthly hoonahs except that they must be exterminated. I myself am only curious to find out how they taste. Gar would argue them worthy of some better fate, but I have no such concern."

Tekkoo nodded. Saurgon looked again at the smoke wisps on Eka. "Begin targeting their population centers, Tekkoo. You must cause a great dying in their cities such as has not been seen since the asteroid Kela destroyed our world."

Tekkoo bowed and withdrew to begin his preparations.

***

Kit went down the wooden stairway to the cellar and pulled the string that switched on the bare light bulb in the ceiling fixture. All around her was her father's larder of supplies. Every wall of the concrete cellar was lined with wooden shelves jammed with boxes and every box contained something that now seemed more essential than it had just days before. There were cases of canned goods, from beets to chili to garbanzos to beef stew, big cartons of bandages and medicines, and stacks of household supplies that would put a wholesale store to shame. On one shelf she spotted what she was looking for: a plastic storage box jammed full of cartridge packages labeled Winchester 30-30, an almost infinite supply for her rifle. She took out a couple of cartridge cases along with some gun oil and cloth and then pushed the box back in its place on the shelf.

"Thank you, Daddy," she murmured, thinking of the debt she owed to her father's survivalist tendencies. He had believed the ranch should be able to withstand a nuclear winter, an economic collapse, terrorism, or an environmental catastrophe, despite Kit's doubts and those of her mother before her. Now she realized his prodigious setting-aside of food and gear would be his greatest legacy to her. A bitter sense of loss gnawed at her heart, but she fought it. She knew what he would say.

"Never give up hope, Little Girl. A cattleman lives on hope—hope that the weather will be better next year, hope that the price of beef will rise, hope that the barn can take another windstorm. You've always got hope to go on, no matter how bad things get."

She went back upstairs wondering exactly what she could hope for. As she stepped into the pantry hall and closed the basement door, she spotted Chase Armstrong out the back door, puttering around the creature's fighting machine. He was investigating the control knobs and gadgets that lined the inside of the cockpit. She watched the supple movements of his tall athletic frame as he leaned over the machine. "I'm lucky he came along," she murmured. She already knew he could be counted on in a tussle with a tyrannosaurus. And the handsome face and those hanks of dark hair hanging down the back of his neck didn't hurt. Maybe Daddy had a point about hope. That kiss on the hilltop had been the promise of better times ahead, hadn't it?

She went into the kitchen, sat down at the table and began breaking down her rifle and oiling the parts. No telling how soon she might need it. She wanted it clean and reliable when the time came.

From the living room came the sound of a woman's scream, a recorded scream, not a real one. Kit got up and went to investigate. She stifled a laugh when she saw Dr. O and Gar watching a movie the professor had put on the DVD player. Ogilvey sat on the couch and the creature stood in its corner staring at the old black-and-white classic _King Kong_. The screamer was Fay Wray, perched atop a tree while Kong and tyrannosaurus battled for the right to possess her. Gar and Ogilvey talked softly over the soundtrack, one moment laughing, the next serious.

Kit couldn't make sense of Gar's cacklings, nor for that matter Ogilvey's pidgin-dinosaur replies, but she settled against the door jam and listened to them for a moment. Ogilvey chatted excitedly, deriving a boyish pleasure from sharing knowledge with his new friend. She could tell this wasn't just an adventure for David Ogilvey. This was the culmination of his life—what he had been made for. _It's incredible,_ she thought, _that times like these can make anyone happy._

Fay Wray screamed again when Kong and the rex knocked her tree down in the heat of battle. Ogilvey and Gar fell into a mesmerized silence, watching the mammal-reptile dominance struggle escalate toward its Hollywood climax.

"Who's he rooting for?" Kit asked. Both Ogilvey and Gar cast surprised glances at her.

"Good question," Ogilvey chuckled. "I hadn't thought to ask him. But let me tell you, things are going great here." He picked up the remote control and paused the video. Gar uttered a disappointed whine but Ogilvey ignored him for the moment. "I thought watching movies might be a way to explain human culture to Gar. I figured this one would look familiar to him, with all the Mesozoic flora and fauna. Anyway, discussing the plot is helping me decipher Kra-naga."

"Kra-naga?" Kit puzzled. "What's that?"

"The pteronychus call themselves Kra, and Kra-naga is the name of their language."

Gar pointed a talon toward the set. "Ogil-vee, Tee-Vee anaka."

"He wants to see more," Ogilvey smiled. "Quite taken with Hollywood. And quite talkative too. He can pronounce all the English vowel sounds and most of our consonants. The only ones giving him trouble are those where his fangs get in the way—B, M, P and W. He has a lot to say, I can tell you that. He says he followed us to this house hoping to make peace."

"Peace? You mean a truce?"

"Yes. That is, if I'm translating the word ikkoo-nek properly. That's the devil in the details, Kit. The nuances of his language still elude me. I can't be sure if he wants to arrange a surrender or an armistice. The two concepts are related but I have no way of attaching one meaning or the other to what he says. He might have come here to be our greatest ally or simply to become our new master. I still can't decipher which. I've tried the usual linguistic tricks, looking for cognate words or rules of grammar in common, but with no luck. Until I get a finer grasp, I can't quite be sure where he stands. I'll keep working on it, though."

"I'm glad to hear that," said Kit, realizing she had another reason for hope. Dr. Ogilvey was the perfect compliment to Chase, the consummate dinosaur fighter. In contrast, the paleontologist, older and less physically able, was the perfect dinosaur peacemaker. His scientific training and insight born of age more than compensated for his physical shortcomings.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to a sheet of paper on the coffee table with penciled scribblings all over it.

"A paleogeography lesson," Ogilvey replied. "Sit down and let me explain."

She joined him on the couch. Gar, still shackled and not built for human furniture anyway, hunkered down nearby on the Persian rug.

Ogilvey pointed a thumb at Gar. "He's quite the artist. I asked him where he's from—or was from, sixty-five million years ago. He's drawn it out for me."

She looked carefully at the outline on the paper. It was obviously a map, but not of any place she recognized.

"It took me a minute to spot it, too," said Ogilvey. He traced the continental outline with a finger. "The coastline of the Cretaceous inland sea came through Montana back then."

"Oh, I see it now," she said. "It's a map of North America, but with a long inland waterway stretching from the Gulf of Mexico... all the way up here."

"Correct," Ogilvey confirmed. "And right here where Montana would ultimately lie, was—"

"Arran Kra," Gar interjected in his raven-like voice.

"Yes!" Ogilvey tapped his finger on a dark dot drawn beside the coastline. "Arran Kra. If I understand Gar right, that's their capital city. Arran Kra was the center of their civilization."

"It's the buried city you found, isn't it?" asked Kit.

Ogilvey smiled smugly. "Umm hmm."

Gar bobbed his head in affirmation. "Gah!"

Kit eyed the pteronychus thoughtfully. "Why do I get the feeling he understands what we're saying?"

"Because he does," Ogilvey stated matter-of-factly. "He's an extremely quick learner, just a little hampered when he speaks our language. You see, he lacks some of the necessary prerequisites for human speech."

"Like what?" asked Kit.

"Like lips."

Kit looked at Gar's toothy jaws. "Oh yeah." She smiled. "I can see how that would be a problem."

"For the time being," Ogilvey went on, "I think it's better for me to imitate his language. I can make most of their sounds, more or less."

Kit turned her attention back to the map. She pointed to a second pencil dot on the eastern shore of the inland sea in the area of Ohio. "What's this dot over here?"

"Oh, that," Ogilvey said with a note of consternation. "That was the capital city of the Kra's ancient enemies, the Khe. They were, I believe, another tribe of pteronychus."

Gar nodded.

"If I understand correctly," Ogilvey continued, "the Khe perished in the asteroid impact sixty-five million years ago. However, if it had not been for the Kra's fear and loathing of the Khe, then Gar himself might not be here."

"How is that?"

"Well, the Kra astronomers knew exactly when the impact would occur. They saw the asteroid circling the sun one last time and did everything they could to prepare for it, although in the end the catastrophe was far greater than they anticipated. Curiously, they were at a point much like our own civilization. They had just begun exploring the moon. They had a permanent base there at the south pole, which they protected from the Khe with a deadly light ray, as we have seen."

"But how does that explain Gar being here sixty-five million years later?"

"I was getting to that, my dear. You see, the Kra realized the earth might be uninhabitable for thousands of years after the impact, due to toxic fumes, cold, and darkness. So they came up with an ingenious way to escape extinction. They did it without surviving."

"What?"

"It was impossible to provision a space colony for a thousand years, so they hit upon the scheme of robotic cloning. Like our own species today, the Kra had mastered the art of reading genetic information from DNA sequences. And, being one step farther along than us, they had also mastered the art of test-tube reproduction. That is to say, they could produce offspring entirely within glass vessels. They provisioned their station on the moon with enough chemicals to produce an army of Kra and an automated machine to start the reconstitution process when the earth became livable again. Overseeing it all was an earth-monitoring computer called the Watcher, tasked to detect the return of normal temperatures and a breathable atmosphere. Once the Watcher was set in motion, despite the original crew dying of old age long before the earth was habitable again, there would still be a means to get the result we see today."

"But wait a minute," Kit balked. "If the earth was uninhabitable for a only thousand years, why wait sixty-five million?"

"Ah, the final piece of the puzzle." Ogilvey paused as if he were savoring delicious wine. "When the asteroid hit the earth, it threw out such a mass of rock and debris that the moon itself was bombarded for years by a meteor storm. The station was damaged so badly its garrison was killed and the Watcher ceased to function. It lay silent for eons frozen in its dark crater, until our astronauts unwittingly set its programs in motion again."

Chase had appeared in the kitchen doorway while they were talking. "That's awesome," he said. "But why send down tyrannosaurs and utahraptors and all the rest?"

Ogilvey grinned. "The Kra are only doing what you have been doing Chase—re-establishing vanished species. For them that means using computer banks of genetic code stored on the moon, containing the DNA sequences of every creature known to them. They're replicating not only the Kra, but every other Cretaceous plant or animal for which they've got a genetic code, and there are many."

"What a concept," Chase marveled. "A computerized Noah's Ark in space."

"Ih-hee-hee!" Ogilvey laughed. "Right you are, Chase! But the computers themselves were knocked out. Talk about a computer crash! That one little glitch set them back sixty-five million years."

"Species reintroduction on a global scale," Chase murmured. "It makes our wolf project look easy."

Ogilvey pointed to a dotted outline on the map paralleling the inland waterway on its western side. "See this area running from Montana down to the Gulf Coast of Texas? This is the territory Gar calls Kra-Gol. It's the land of the Kra, the extent of Gar's ancient homeland. It corresponds to the migration route of the great dinosaurs that are now being returned to the hills around us here in Montana. The Kra were hunters and herders as well. Their ancestors followed the great beasts from their summer nesting grounds in Montana down to the warm regions where they passed the winter."

"That's the same route modern whooping cranes fly," said Chase.

"Or a hundred other types of bird," Ogilvey agreed. "Modern birds are just another type of dinosaur, ones with wings. And their migrations still follow the old routes."

"But how can dinosaurs do it?" Chase asked. "That's too far to travel on foot."

"Igga na hoogahs," Gar interjected.

"Not for dinosaurs," Ogilvey translated. "By that, he implies that my behavioral maximization theory has merit. Dinosaurs were every bit as capable as modern species, and even more so."

Chase scowled. "I doubt people who live along those routes would sit still for this if you gave them a choice. I have enough trouble with ranchers just trying to reintroduce a few wolves. How can you expect people to live with dinosaurs in their back yards? Dozens of species—"

"Hundreds," Ogilvey corrected. Gar cackled a few words and Ogilvey corrected again. "Er, thousands. Apparently, it did not occur to the Kra planners that humans would ever exist or that anyone else would populate the places where the Kra expected to carry on their way of life. He has no answer for your question."

Kit interjected, "I don't think they plan to ask permission, anyway."

The professor paused, scratching his beard. "Speaking of humans, he keeps referring to us by a word whose meaning I haven't quite deciphered. Hoonah. It means either a type of mammal or a type of food. I'm not sure which."

"Maybe both," Kit said with a shudder.

Gar stayed silent.

***

Clementine's computer brain hummed, doing self-diagnostics and awakening subsystems that had been offline through years of cold silence. Acting on the new set of commands just uplinked from Pasadena, she recalculated her position precisely. Her telemetry instruments acquired laser-altimeter readings of the distance to the moon's surface and took star-field images to get a precise fix on her orientation in lunar space.

Meanwhile her navigation subsystem completed a status check of fuels, pressures and temperatures. Her main processor calculated burn-rates and accelerations needed to put her on the new trajectory specified by the command sequence. She did all this mechanically, automatically and without any computation of her chances for imminent destruction, or mankind's chances for survival.

But when she determined the specified new orbital parameters, her anomaly detector subroutine registered an error condition. She recalculated, but got the same result. Her new orbit included an impact point on the lunar surface at the center of Phaeon Crater. According to her standard operating procedures, she began a third recalculation before aborting the maneuver. If this calculation confirmed the anomaly, she would shut down all functions and stand by in safe-mode until another set of instructions was sent from earth to clear the error.

While she reprocessed her data, yet another anomaly occurred. Memory circuit-board five, which Clem had shut down years ago when it was determined to be the source of her previous trajectory miscalculations, suddenly came back online. It sent out a surge of electricity that propagated through several subsystems before dissipating via a grounding wire to Clementine's metal hull. Clem quickly shut down the errant circuit board and then returned to her error diagnostic recalculation. But this time she got a new result. The error-status parameter had been replaced with a new string of letters: "GO-ON-CLEM—LLOYD."

Clem's logic boards processed this data string three times but were unable to determine its meaning. However, when she rechecked the overall mission status, the error condition was cleared and she was able to continue executing her orbital maneuver commands.

Not prone to pondering unknowables, Clem performed the next steps in the programmed sequence without a nanosecond's hesitation. She warmed up her gas valves preparatory to firing her guidance thrusters. All was in readiness for her last maneuvers.

***

On the light cannon's command deck, Tekkoo returned with a new report to Saurgon.

"We have detected a hoonah satellite. It fired thrusters to shift its orbit as it passed overhead.

"Hnnh," Saurgon muttered. "This may be a serious threat. Delay your attack on the hoonah cities and make ready to destroy the satellite the next time it appears."

***

A little over an hour later, Clem approached her orbit's perigee and her impact point at Phaeon Crater. She fired two small side-thruster jets and rotated to the precise pitch and yaw to aim at the central pyramid. Then she adjusted her antenna pointing-angle and began transmitting a series of approach radar-images back to earth. As the pull of lunar gravity accelerated her down to her target, she calculated the few remaining parameters more precisely than any she had ever calculated before, because she no longer needed to plot out lengthy sequences of events far into the future. Her operations would cease in 1.996608 minutes.

At impact-minus 1.000000 minutes she began to relay to earth the requested data: laser altimeter readings, 1.7344 km, 1.6860 km, 1.4253 km; a photo of the target impact point on Phaeon's central pyramid, now 1,928 meters away.

From the geometry of the radar images, she recalculated the match between her programmed aim-point and the gap under the pyramid's cannon. With 45.3333 seconds to go, she determined that her aim point was slightly off, specifying an impact on the crater wall beyond the pyramid. She calculated a fine adjustment based on her updated 3D map of Phaeon and fired guidance thrusters briefly. With her newly calculated impact point squarely on the gap beneath the cannon she ignited her main engine. A smooth parabola of blue flame erupted from its bell-shaped nozzle, propelling Clementine forward at ever-increasing velocity. The time to impact clicked down to 7.0130 seconds and counting. Clem continued to transmit radar-image data to earth as she checked her velocity relative to the surface. It was up to 7,780 km/hr and increasing, sufficient for an impact of 2,278,093 ergs—more energy than any of her subsystems were built to withstand...

***

An air of tense anticipation permeated the command center at NORAD. Davis and many of his officers were gathered around a computer screen. Holly Lewis worked at the keyboard and Davis hovered over her. He half-believed the JPL communiqués were hoaxes perpetrated by the demented ham operator in Taos. Daddy Longlegs had advised them to monitor Clem's radio signal, so they were gathered to await an astonishing break in humanity's fortunes, or an embarrassment for having listened to Daddy Longlegs' ravings in the first place.

Davis sighed. "I hope we're not just grasping at straws."

"I've got a signal from the spacecraft!" Lewis exclaimed.

Davis caught his breath. Lines of numerical data flashed on the screen. Lewis entered a command at the keyboard. "Translating data to visual. Aah. There."

A green radar image from Clementine flickered onto one of the large screens on the wall. Buildings on the floor of Phaeon Crater filled the entire view and the pyramid was dead center.

"Look familiar?" Davis whispered under his breath to MacIlvain, who stood beside him with an ashen pallor spreading over his face.

"Too familiar," Mac replied.

The screen blanked and then showed another stop-motion image in which the pyramid had grown noticeably closer. "That slot on the turret, beneath the gun barrel," Lewis murmured. "That's the aim-point."

In the next image, Clementine's acceleration toward Phaeon had rapidly magnified the pyramid and the turret slot looked much larger and closer. But the light cannon had swiveled until the dark hole at its end was clearly visible. Davis's heart pounded. "She's nose to nose with them," he said. "Come on, baby!"

The next freeze-frame was streaked at the edges, giving a sense of the tremendous speed with which Clementine was hurtling at her target. The aim-point crosshairs of the image lay precisely on the dark gap below the cannon, which now pointed directly at her. At the bottom of the screen two digital counters rolled with ever-increasing speed. The altimeter reading reeled downward through 0.98 km, 0.76, 0.52, while the velocity counter climbed past 8,152 km/hr.

Then the image vanished.

When nothing came up to replace it Davis asked, "What's this? What happened to the picture, Holly?"

She turned to him with deep consternation on her face. "We didn't just lose the image, Matt. We lost Clem's signal."

"The light cannon," Davis muttered. "It was pointing straight at her."

Mac finished the thought. "If it fired in time, she's gone."

***

Clementine had rechecked her calculations at impact-minus-ten milliseconds. She was still within satisfactory error limits of her targeted trajectory and her narrow-angle camera view was almost completely filled with the dark open space beneath the gun barrel. Although she had no sensors with which to measure her own destruction, she was able to detect the event when it came.

It was like a complete reset. All subsystems simultaneously registered the same number: 0.0000000000.

***

The huge steel door within Cheyenne Mountain jolted with a rumble like an earthquake. Hydraulic motors pulsated thunderously, slowly leveraging the door open. As soon as the gap was wide enough for a man to squeeze through, General Davis shoehorned himself out and hurried the three hundred paces to the tunnel entrance, followed by a flood of personnel emerging from the depths of the facility into the fresh air and daylight at the surface. He moved twenty paces out from the opening and stopped on the scorched asphalt, craning his neck to look at the quarter moon, a pale blue D-shape against the deeper blue of the sky. The space around the moon was empty. The death beam was gone.

Soldiers and staff hurried out of the tunnel. Dozens of them joined Davis in peering skyward.

"Yeah!" Davis shouted. Giddy feelings of hope coursed through him. He shook a fist above him. "Take that, you devils! How does it feel to get a dose of your own medicine?"

Cheering arose around Davis. At first there were just a few voices, but as time went by with no sign of the beam, more joined in. Davis yelled too, scarcely believing his eyes. People around him, bleary-eyed from too little sleep and dazzled by the unaccustomed daylight, began hugging and clapping each other on the back. A bedlam of exultant cries swelled until Davis imagined the sound carrying as far as Phaeon Crater.

Major Lewis appeared in the crowd and threw her arms around his neck. He clasped her in a tight embrace. Then he pulled back to look into her face. Her eyes were streaked with tears of relief. "By God, Holly," he shouted. "We've finally got something to cheer about!"

"Yes, sir," she replied enthusiastically. And then she gave him a most un-soldierly kiss on the lips. They hugged, laughing at the breach of professional decorum like naughty children. A thought struck Davis, settling him down instantly. He held her by the shoulders at arm's length. "Come on," he said, taking her by an elbow and turning back toward the tunnel. "I want you to get on the horn and tell that tank troop to come out of hiding. Get them here double-quick!"

# PART FOUR: Allies And Enemies

## CHAPTER 16

Fox Troop had laid up in southern Colorado under the cottonwoods of Purgatory Creek when the moon rose in the morning, but the call from NORAD had sent them racing up the highway at top speed. Two-and-a-half hours later Vic Suarez felt great anticipation as his column pulled up to NORAD's front entry-portal. As promised, Phaeon had left them alone while they traveled. Now, late in the afternoon, it felt good to link up with another U.S. military force.

A group of a half-dozen NORAD brass emerged from the shadows of the tunnel entrance and headed straight for Suarez. He jumped down from his idling tank to greet them, surprised by the Air Force uniforms on the two officers leading the group. Without really thinking about it, he had expected Army fatigues. But soldiers wearing Army green or Marine camo were lower ranks here, as far as he could see.

He came to attention and saluted the Air Force one-star without letting on he was at all surprised. The general snapped a salute back, crisply fanning the visor of his hat. "Welcome to NORAD, Captain Suarez," he said.

"Thank you, sir." Suarez kept eyes front, posture erect.

"At ease," the General said calmly. "We can dispense with formalities. I'm Matt Davis and this is my next-in-command, Colonel Paul MacIlvain.

Suarez shook hands with them. Then General Davis scanned the line of tanks and trucks. "Any trouble on the way up here?"

"Not for the Fox, sir."

"Fox? Oh, yes, your troop. Well, you're to be commended for your initiative." The General stood to his full height as if taking Suarez's measure. He looked down slightly into Suarez's eyes, being half-a-head taller. "You understand, don't you Captain, that yours is the only functional fighting force we've got?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good," said Davis. "I'm sending you straight into the heart of the enemy position in Montana. I want you to get right in their tunnels with them if possible. There's something inside Sandstone Mountain that's terribly important to them or they wouldn't waste time on it. A center of operations like this one, I suspect. Either we go up there and take out their command structure or they'll come down here and take out ours. We don't have enough forces to defend this place properly so if it comes to that, we've already lost. But I'm worried about your troop's preparedness. Do you think you can pull off what I'm asking?"

"I can lead my men anywhere, sir. We're a tight team. Just specify our objectives and the Fox will get it done."

Davis smiled, liking what he heard. "Yes, I believe you can, and will."

"Just tell me who my superior officer is, sir."

Davis hesitated. "Why me, of course."

"Sir, I thought I would be reporting to Army command, sir."

Davis leaned close to him and looked him deeply in the eyes. Suarez kept perfectly straight, eyes front.

"You're worried an old airman like me can't command tanks, is that it?"

"Sir, I never said—"

"But you're thinking it." Davis paused a moment. Then he looked Suarez in the eye again. "You know, Captain, you're right. A flyboy like me shouldn't command armor. I've shot up enough of it, God knows. Enemy stuff in Desert Storm, but I've never driven one of these things." He pointed at Suarez's tank.

Colonel MacIlvain leaned close to Davis. "Sir, this mission is too important to leave to a junior officer."

"Maybe so, Mac, but Suarez has a point. I've flown support for tanks but I've never been in one."

"But I have sir, in joint-forces training," MacIlvain responded. "I'll advise you."

Davis eyed MacIlvain for a moment. "You always have the answer, don't you, Mac? You make me nervous sometimes. But I suppose you're right. This assignment is too critical to entrust to a captain. Suarez, let's make it formal. I hereby assign your troop directly to my own supervision. You'll take your orders from me. Understood?"

"Yes, sir." Suarez wanted to say he could handle the assignment without being top-heavy with brass but kept the thought to himself, maintaining his self-discipline and subordination. But he didn't like MacIlvain. There was something oily about his voice. Words snaked out of his mouth too easily.

"That will be all for now," said Davis. "We've got fuel and supplies ready. Prepare your troop to move out within the hour. I want us in Montana by daybreak and that's a long way. We need surprise and we'll only have it if we act quickly."

Davis turned and walked back toward the tunnel entrance with his people, leaving Suarez muttering under his breath, "I hope you know what you're doing." He turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. Crom had come from his tank.

"What's happening?" Crom asked.

Suarez answered resignedly. "I think we just joined the Air Force."

***

The afternoon went slowly for Chase, and that wasn't a bad thing after all he had been through lately. He added another layer of two-by-fours to strengthen the patch on the kitchen and boarded up the house's first-floor windows, watching the surrounding hills for signs of the invaders, or T rex, or whatever else might appear. Other than the peculiar fact that the moon quit flickering late in the day, nothing new or noteworthy happened.

Kit and Dr. Ogilvey spent most of their time conversing with Gar in a strange common language the doctor was developing—half English and half Kra-naga. As the lessons continued in the living room, Chase put away the tools and went to look over the hunkered-down fighting machine again. He thought of his pickup, overturned and mangled by the pachyrhinosaurus up near Sandstone Mountain.

"I wonder what it's like to drive one of these babies?" he murmured. He put a hand on the sleek nose of the fuselage and felt its shining surface. The machine was about the size if not the shape of a large pickup. It resembled its intended driver, having the overall configuration of a two-legged dinosaur. The silver metal fuselage sat on a pair of hunkered-down legs like the body of a large resting ostrich, just as Gar was now hunkered in the living room. The bent arms projecting out on the sides bore impressive arrays of instruments at their ends: pincers, antennae and cannon-like barrels. The front of the fuselage and open cockpit canopy looked vaguely like an alligator's head with jaws agape; the body tapered rear-ward to a streamlined point, in which there was plenty of room to enclose the driver's stretched-out tail.

The machine's birdlike squatting posture brought the cockpit low enough for Chase to see the strange controls and instruments inside. They beckoned to him. "How hard could this thing be to drive?" he mumbled, stepping up onto the knee of a mechanical leg and climbing into the cockpit. He nestled into the trough-shaped black leather-cushioned interior where he supposed a dinosaurian driver would squat rather than sit. Instead of a seat back, there was a cushioned slot behind him where he could have put his tail if he had one.

The lack of a proper seat bothered Chase but he discovered a pair of gas-peddle-like levers on the floor in front of him with sleeves like the toe-pieces of water-ski bindings. He slipped the toes of his hiking boots into them for leverage and was able to sit comfortably while exploring the controls bristling from every interior wall of the cockpit. Most of the instruments and gauges had no decipherable purpose but a few looked familiar. Two large joysticks, one at each hand, seemed like they ought to control the arms. Each had two buttons on its front surface where fire-control triggers should be.

"So, where's the on-switch?" he murmured.

"Chase?" Kit had come out on the back porch. "What are you doing?"

He grinned at her. "Gonna give this baby a test drive."

Without waiting for her reaction he flipped a likely looking toggle switch in front of him and the machine came to life, making small clacking and whining noises. He flipped another toggle beside the first and the legs of the machine automatically stood up, lofting him eight feet above the ground. "Sweet," he exclaimed.

Kit didn't share his enthusiasm. "Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"Sure," said Chase. He grabbed the right-hand joystick and pulled it to him. The right arm lifted. He pushed it outward and the arm lowered. He pushed forward, the arm went forward; he pulled back, the arm went back. He pulled up, pushed down, the arm pointed up or down. He torqued the stick and the wrist rotated. He tried the same maneuvers with the left joystick and got the same responses from the left arm. Wiggling both joysticks simultaneously made the machine flap its arms like some big, preposterous chicken.

Kit smiled and shook her head. "Careful, Chase. Don't get carried away."

He laughed out loud. "This thing rocks." So far, the controls were easy. Guessing the sleeved pedals were leg controls, he wiggled his feet to see what effect they had. The left foot was fixed in place, an anchor-point to maintain the driver's balance and keep him sitting upright. But at a slight pressure on the right-side foot control, the machine took several steps forward. Unfortunately, it went straight for the house and crashed nose-first into an upright porch beam, causing Kit to scurry inside the back door with a scream. Chase immediately realized his mistake and put his foot in the neutral position, halting the machine. It took several quick back-steps on its own to regain its footing and then righted itself and stood still, almost as if it had a sense of balance.

Kit crept back onto the porch and Chase called to her, "Did you see that? It practically drives itself."

"It had better drive itself," she chided, "if that's the best you can do."

Undaunted, he noticed there was room to fit someone behind him.

"Want to go for a spin, Kit?"

"No!" she retorted. "That thing is dangerous, especially with you in it."

"C'mon," he smiled. "I'm starting to get the hang of it." He flipped the second toggle and the machine hunkered down to let her climb in.

She took a long, dubious look at him but finally stepped off the porch, climbed up on a leg and then slipped into the cockpit behind him. She settled down and put her arms around his waist like a motorcycle passenger.

"I think I'm gonna regret this," she said as he flipped the toggle again and the machine rose, jostling them and causing her to hug more tightly against his back. Chase didn't complain.

He tried the foot-control more gingerly this time and the machine took a single step forward. Then he pulled back with the toe of his boot, rocking the foot-sleeve up rather than down, and the machine responded by backing up. It moved away from the house, swaying smoothly with each stride. Chase halted by putting his toe in the center position. Then he swiveled his foot to the left. The machine started a leftward rotation, walking in place as it did. "Awesome," he said, swiveling his foot to the right and getting a similar right turn in place. When the machine had turned enough to face away from the house he said, "Okay, let's take this baby on the road."

"Wait a minute," Kit protested. "Can't you put the lid down, at least?"

He searched around the array of dials and switches in front of him until he found another promising toggle on the opposite side of the cockpit from the first two. He flipped it down and the canopy closed over them. "There," he said. "Safe enough?"

He didn't give her time to answer before he pressed his right foot down harder this time—and the machine began striding forward. He found that a combination of forward pressure plus a sideways swivel of his foot made the machine walk in a long smooth turn, steering out from behind the house and onto the driveway.

"Just what we needed," he grinned. "A straightaway." He pressed his foot forward harder and the machine jogged ahead briskly, covering ten feet at a pace. He floored it and the machine started a smooth, ostrich-like run, quickly getting up to about fifty miles an hour.

Kit's head snapped back and she hugged him tighter to keep from falling over. "Jeez!" she cried. "This thing really moves."

He brought the foot control back to neutral and the machine loped to a halt under the ranch gate, having covered most of the quarter-mile length of the driveway in seconds. "This machine is hot," Chase exclaimed. "I wonder what else it can do?"

Dr. Ogilvey appeared at the front door of the house and came jogging toward them on the driveway shouting something, but the closed canopy blocked the sound of his voice. Chase turned the machine in place and flipped the toggle to raise the lid.

"Hey!" Ogilvey puffed as he approached them. "What do you think you're doing? Somebody could get hurt."

Chase tried vainly to suppress the cocky smirk that had spread across his face. "Lighten up, Professor. It's not so dangerous. It keeps its own balance. Watch—" He swiveled the foot control to the right and the machine turned in that direction. This time he forced the control as far as it would go and the machine went into a dizzying spin.

As the landscape whirled around him, Chase could see Dr. Ogilvey with both hands raised, making 'slow down' motions at him. Instead of heeding the paleontologist, Chase pushed and pulled the joysticks until the arms of the whirling machine were flailing wildly. Finally satisfied he'd shown off enough, he came to a halt facing Ogilvey. "See?" he laughed. "I know what I'm doing."

For once, the doctor was speechless.

"Look," said Chase. "These joysticks move the arms—" He tugged the right joystick to show Ogilvey how the arm moved but his index finger accidentally squeezed a trigger button. There was a sharp ripping sound and a white-hot bolt of light shot from the arm's gun barrel. Without the benefit of aiming it flashed over Ogilvey's head and tore through one of the ranch gate uprights, sending a shower of red-hot cinders in all directions. Startled, Chase let go of the joystick. Severed neatly by the blast, the upright groaned and toppled. The crossbar and placard came with it.

"Look out!" Kit shouted as the heavy wooden structure fell straight for them. She dove across Chase and swatted the canopy toggle and the lid snapped shut just as the wreckage pounded them from above. Somehow the machine maintained its balance against the impact and the wooden wreckage caromed off it, clattering down toward the spot where Ogilvey stood. He dodged away just as the crossbar landed in his footprints.

Chase raised the canopy. He looked down sheepishly at Ogilvey, who stood coughing and sputtering with dust billowing around him. The doctor's bifocal-magnified eyes goggled wider than usual. "Not dangerous, indeed!" he fumed. "I'd say that depends on who's driving."

"Sorry," Chase apologized while looking around and inspecting the machine. Despite the rattling blow, it was unharmed except for the right arm, which had taken much of the crossbar's impact. It hung at an awkward angle. Chase tried the joystick gingerly but there was no response.

"Way to go," Kit drawled. "You broke it."

He had to admit it looked that way. But he didn't have to admit it out loud. "I'm sure it can be fixed," he said without conviction.

Ogilvey approached the front of the machine. "Perhaps you two had better get down from there before any more damage happens—to this machine, or to us."

Chase noticed a small red light among the dials and gauges in the front of the cockpit, flashing like the 'Check Engine' light on his pickup's dashboard. He tried the hand and foot controls but they were unresponsive.

"Nice driving," Kit scoffed, climbing out of the cockpit and making her way down a set of ladder-like footholds on a leg. "I think I'll walk home."

There was nothing Chase could say to ease his embarrassment. He flipped the power switch off, climbed down silently and left the machine where it was, trailing Kit and Ogilvey back to the house.

They stopped midway when a noise like the gabbling of many geese arose in a grove of aspen trees bordering one side of the driveway. Chase glanced toward the ranch house and a qualm ran through him. They were a good hundred yards from the front porch and they hadn't brought weapons with them. The underbrush beside the drive suddenly erupted with dozens of small two-legged dinosaurs. A jolt of alarm shot through Chase but the animals reached the roadway before he could react and divided into two streams racing around, not at him. As the mini herd rushed by, Dr. Ogilvey laughed loudly, turning one way and another to watch the little dinosaurs stampede past.

"Relax Chase," he chortled. "They're herbivores and they're not interested in us. Watch them run. How lovely!"

The knee-high creatures surged past like a herd of small graceful gazelles. Even the largest of them was no more than three feet high and none were armed with dangerous horns or claws.

"Look at their coloration!" Ogilvey enthused. "Gazelle-like, wouldn't you say, Kit? Tan bodies, bars of red-brown along their sides, white underneath, all in a soft fur-like covering."

Occasionally one would make a gazelle-like leap that brought it as high as Chase's head. But these were by no means gazelles. They lacked visible ears and had long reptilian tails whipping along behind them.

Chase bent down and picked up a long stick that had splintered off the ranch gate, just in case. "What are these things?" he asked.

Ogilvey gave him an amused, owl-eyed glance. "No need for a weapon, Chase. They're harmless."

"I'll keep it just the same," Chase replied. "What I really want to know is what scared them."

"Probably running from their own shadows," the professor chuckled. "They're timid creatures. Hypsilophodons, I believe, one of many varieties of small harmless dinosaurs that far outnumbered the larger and more dangerous ones."

The creatures streamed across the driveway and into a field of tall grass on the other side, moving away in fluid motion like a single unit rather than individuals. They flowed around bushes and boulders, overrunning obstacles in a flood of delicate tan-and-brown striped bodies.

"I don't think they're hypsilophodons," said Kit. "I'd say thescelosaurus."

"Aren't they rather small for thescelosaurs?" Ogilvey countered. "If they're not hypsilophodons, then I'd pick orodromeus."

"I'm sticking with thescelosaurs," said Kit.

Ogilvey raised an eyebrow as if quite impressed. "My, my. You really _have_ been studying. And now you've begun questioning your teacher."

"Can you two talk as we walk?" Chase urged. "I'm still not sure what spooked them."

As they resumed their stroll to the house a loud snapping noise came from where the herd had emerged from the woods. A moment later, the ominous cracking of tree branches heralded the approach of a much larger animal.

"Let's not stick around to find out what it is," Chase exhorted. All three of them broke into a run for the house. The cracking of tree branches intensified and a huge creature hove into view. "Oh my God!" Kit cried. "The tyrannosaurus!" The monster stepped clear of the trees less than fifty feet from them and paused to size them up.

"Keep running!" Chase shouted as the beast lowered its head and charged. He followed Kit and Ogilvey at the slower pace set by the old paleontologist's scrawny legs, even though his own long legs could have outrun them both. Looking back over his shoulder he gauged the speed of the beast and realized it would overtake them long before they reached the house. He silently cursed his stupidity for bringing them so far from safety. There was no way any of them would reach the house before those huge jaws closed for the kill.

Chase's mind raced in search of a plan as the predator's footfalls thundered behind them. Kit shot a glance back at the creature and Chase glimpsed the desperation on her face. Realizing she was about to die for his stupidity, he felt his fear turning to rage. In the grip of that powerful emotion, he wheeled and faced the onrushing beast.

"Yahh!" he shouted, raising both arms high the way he had learned to intimidate grizzlies into breaking off a charge. But the tyrannosaur thundered toward him without pause.

_Stupid move,_ he thought to himself. _You've got nothing but a stick in your hand._

Beneath the gaping jaws he noticed a streak of dried blood on the animal's breast and realized this was a wound left by one of his bullets. He was facing the same rex he had fought two days before. Simultaneously, he realized the stick in his hand was about the size and shape of a rifle. Experience had taught him animals learned fast when it came to the risk of injury.

The tyrannosaurus was within a few strides of him when he raised the stick and sighted along it like a rifle, pointing it directly between the beast's eyes.

It reacted instantly. Its massive, fang-lined jaws snapped shut and it skidded to a halt on its huge taloned feet no more than a dozen feet from Chase.

It remembered the rifle.

Anticipating the pain dealt by the weapon, the rex half-closed its eyes and turned its head to the side. A momentary thrill of victory coursed through Chase. He could hear by their footfalls that Kit and Ogilvey had nearly reached the house. His ruse had paid off—for them—but as he continued sighting along his stick he knew the die was cast. Either his bluff would work and the monstrous predator would stalk away, or...

Or what?

It towered over him, teetering in a balance between aggression and fear. For a moment both Chase and the tyrannosaur were locked in place. Chase was sure if he turned to run, it would have him in its jaws in an instant. But what else could he do? He held his phony weapon steady, hoping the animal was just smart enough to remember the danger but too stupid to figure out this was no rifle.

Chase kept the point of his stick trained on the creature's face and did his best to look tall, straight and dangerous. Incredibly, the rex took a step backward, flinching its head left and then right, dodging Chase's attempts to sight in on its eyes with the stick.

It took another step back but then it stopped and held its ground. It ceased weaving its head and its eyes opened, focusing on the end of the stick. Chase sensed it was gaining confidence, realizing this stick had none of the wallop the other had.

Chase's heart sank. A moment before, the beast had looked cowed. But it had only been fooled for a moment. Now it lowered its head and both red eyes focused keenly on the stick. It opened its monstrous mouth wide and let out a roar that shook the ground under Chase's feet. It was trying to scare him into running. The noise made his knees almost buckle under him but he held his ground and kept the stick pointed between the rex's eyes.

_This is the end,_ Chase thought. He had seen enough of the behavior of grizzlies and other predators to know this one was working up its nerve for a charge. There was nothing he could do about it. He was out of tricks.

The tyrannosaurus roared again and took a pace forward. But this time its bellow was answered by another sound. From Chase's left came the siren blast of a parasaurolophus call.

It was Rufus.

The duckbill had left his place in the pasture and charged to the scene of the confrontation. He came straight at the rex, seemingly in defiance of any logic or survival instinct. The tyrannosaur forgot Chase and squared off with the oncoming parasaurolophus. The two creatures, nearly matched in size, hesitated twenty feet apart and exchanged ferocious bellows.

Chase was mesmerized by the primeval confrontation until Kit yelled from the porch, "Run, Chase! Run this way." The sound of her voice shook him into action and he threw down the stick and sprinted to the house, joining her and Ogilvey on the porch watching the dinosaur showdown. The tyrannosaurus roared a thunderous challenge, but Rufus cut it short with a honk so powerful it made the hills reverberate.

Rufus was the first to attack. He charged the rex, rearing up like a boxing kangaroo and flailing out with his forearms. His hooved front feet caught the predator on the chin and throat and almost knocked it down. Without hesitation, Rufus lashed out again and his quick punches sent the rex reeling backward. But the carnivore dodged Rufus's next thrust, opened its mouth wide and snapped its jaws shut inches from Rufus's throat.

That slowed the big duckbill's attack. But now Henrietta charged onto the scene. The pair pressed forward, raining blows on the tyrannosaur's sides and back until it struggled just to keep its feet. With their hooves pounding its flanks, the tyrannosaur wheeled and rushed back toward the forest. Rufus and Henrietta pursued, honking and snapping at the tip of its tail as it plunged into the trees. They paused at the edge of the woods, satisfied their enemy was in full retreat. After a moment of defiant snorting and honking, they turned and trotted toward the pasture where their brood was waiting.

Chase sat down on the front porch swing, shaken and dazed. He pulled off his cap and wiped sweat from his forehead with a sleeve.

"Whew," he wheezed. "I can't believe what just happened."

Ogilvey and Kit both talked at once, the paleontologist praising his bravery and Kit expressing her thanks, but their words faded into a buzz. He was overflowing with adrenaline and relief at simply being alive. His mind reeled until Kit put a hand on his shoulder. That calmed his jittery nerves and brought him back to present company.

"You sure like heroics," she said, grinning.

***

The manacle securing Gar's right hand dropped to the Persian rug on the living room floor with a loud _clink._ A moment later the left handcuff joined it when Chase undid the makeshift bolts holding it together.

"Welcome," Ogilvey said as Gar smoothed his wrist feathers. "You are now a full-fledged member of our little family."

Gar bobbed his head in a gesture of understanding, or gratitude, or both.

"I hope this is a good idea," said Chase, still shaky from the aftereffects of his brush with the tyrannosaur.

"Most certainly," Ogilvey reassured him and Kit, who had a similar dubious look on her face. "Gar has proven himself trustworthy."

Chase gathered the chains from the floor. "You could count on him not to bite your head off while he was chained up. But giving him his weapon back? I don't know."

Ogilvey went into Will Daniels' study and returned a moment later lugging the tintza rifle, which seemed half as big as him. He carried it to Gar and handed it over with a groan. He sputtered, "If your side loses this war, Gar, it will be from hernias."

The prospect of an armed Kra in the same room caused Chase to glance uneasily toward his 30-06 leaning against a wall. "You're sure he'll keep his end of the bargain?"

Ogilvey and Gar seemed almost conspiratorial. Their eyes shined with the same clever light. But the paleontologist gave Chase a reassuring nod. "I have no doubt Gar will acquit himself honorably."

Gar went to the open front door and paused to flip a switch on the tintza rifle. It hummed softly as it powered up. Seeing Chase looking uneasy, Ogilvey quipped, "Oh, come on, Chase, he's really no threat. He's promised to hide the walking machine in the garage and to repair the damage done by your little excursion. Now, we can't send him out to retrieve it without some means of dealing with a T-rex attack, can we?"

"Good point," Chase admitted.

"While Gar tends to that unfinished business, I suggest we prepare dinner, unless we want to eat in the dark after lights-out."

As Gar went onto the front porch, he called over his shoulder, "Neetoo." Then he bounded down the steps and headed for the walking machine.

Ogilvey smiled. "That's one vote for raw steak. Any other suggestions?"

Two hours later, Chase sat with the others at the dining room table. He kept a leery eye on their dinner guest, Gar, whose table manners were curious. Not built for chairs that would seat a human body, the Kra squatted on the floor with his long neck raised above the level of the table top. Kit set a plate with several raw steaks in front of him.

Unexpectedly, he showed none of the keen interest he'd previously had for steak. Averting his head, he hissed a few words of Kra-naga to Ogilvey, who sat in a chair to his right. Ogilvey's wooly brows lifted. "Aloo-koo na toto," the paleontologist replied in his best Kra diction. Gar responded by getting up and walking quickly through the kitchen and disappearing outside.

"Is something wrong?" Kit asked.

"Oh, no," Ogilvey deadpanned. "He just needs to urkooss. I suggested he go behind the barn."

"To do what?" Chase asked.

"Urkooss," Ogilvey explained, "means to vomit out the bones of your previous meal. It's a normal Kra habit, before each new sitting."

Kit wrinkled her nose. "What a nice thought."

"In fact," Ogilvey went on, "there are seven words for vomit in the Kra language. _Urkooss,_ as I have already mentioned, and _naukek,_ which means to regurgitate food for one's young. Then there is _ur-kah-kah,_ to be sick to one's stomach as a result of disease, and _kalla-kah-kah,_ which means—"

"Stop." Kit reached across the table and gripped Ogilvey's hand. Her expression had grown more disdainful at each new definition. "Can we change the subject? Something more appropriate for the dinner table?"

"Of course," Ogilvey said, chastened.

Gar returned to his place and without fanfare and immediately set his teeth into a steak. Lifting it off the plate in his jaws, he flipped it into the air with a toss of his head, caught it in his mouth, and gulped it down whole.

Kit leaned near Ogilvey and whispered, "I don't suppose a knife and fork would be of any use?"

Gar gulped several times while his tablemates watched the visible bulge of the steak slide down his throat. A satisfied look came over his face, expressed by his half-closed eyes.

Ogilvey broke the silence that had fallen over the table. "You know, Gar is quite an interesting fellow."

"Naw," Chase drawled, eyeing a drop of saliva dangling from one of Gar's fangs. "You're kidding."

Ogilvey cheerily ignored Chase's sarcasm. "For instance, did you know Gar is only two years old?"

"Two?" Kit questioned. "He's gotta be the world's biggest baby."

"How big will he be when he grows up?" Chase asked. "Tyrannosaurus-sized?"

Ogilvey's eyes twinkled. "Just as you see him now. The Kra grow fast, like all birds and dinosaurs. He's fully mature and very much at the top of Kra society. For instance, he's a warlord and a co-equal commander in a triumvirate with two fellows named Oogon and Saurgon. You'll be interested to know he opposes their plan to destroy humanity."

"How thoughtful," Chase said darkly. He eyed a forkful of mashed potatoes without much interest.

"What brought Gar to this house," Ogilvey went on, "is his desire to understand us better. And, Kit, you should know that your family portrait was the thing that convinced him he wanted to make peace."

"Lucky we didn't shoot him." Kit wrinkled her nose at Chase.

Chase shrugged and ate the mashed potatoes.

"Tomorrow," Ogilvey continued, "Gar proposes to take me to Oogon. Assuming our discussions are successful, we'll contact the U.S. military forces with a peace overture."

"I wish you luck," said Chase. "But suppose this Oogon fellow disagrees?"

Ogilvey gestured toward Gar. "Our friend here is as highly ranked as any Kra. As High Priest of Life, he is dedicated to the preservation of species and reintroduction of the Cretaceous animals we've seen, as well as the Kra themselves. He's got an important voice and even Oogon must hear him out. I surmise that Oogon and Gar are brothers, after a fashion, born in the first generation of Kra after the moon base was reactivated."

"How was anything born up there?" Kit puzzled. "The moon's a frozen wasteland with no air."

"That's not true of the station. It's fully automated and tapped into the moon's underground stores of ice and minerals. After our astronauts repaired its solar power facility, the station created its own air and Gar as well, along with the other creatures we've seen."

"But how do you _make_ a dinosaur?" Kit asked.

"The station has hundreds of machines that use genetic cloning techniques to grow animals in giant glass cylinders. The Kra have been mass-produced, as has every other type of creature from late Cretaceous times. It's all done with computerized DNA codes and chemicals. The raw materials were stored in vats for sixty-five million years but are still fresh, being simple chemicals. The Watcher automatically mixed them and used computer-stored DNA codes to create increasingly complex molecules and cells that divided until they became whole animals. After hatching from their cylinders they were reared by automatic feeding programs until they matured into adults. In the Kra's case, that included automated education as well. That's how the entire invasion force was created in just two years.

"Furthermore," Ogilvey continued, "the creatures produced in the vats are normal in terms of their behavior and reproductive ability. Henceforward they will live normal lives and reproduce as they did sixty-five million years ago, perpetuating their species by laying eggs and rearing new generations of hatchlings."

"So that's why there are two sizes of parasaurolophuses," said Kit. "Huey, Louie and Dufus are half-grown babies. Yearlings."

"Precisely," said Ogilvey. "The adults protect their young over the two-year period until they are fully grown."

"But what about the climate?" Kit wondered. "Isn't the modern earth too cold for dinosaurs?"

"Dinosaurs," said Ogilvey, "don't require the earth to be any warmer than mankind has already made it through global warming. And, it seems we paleontologists have been under some illusions as to how well dinosaurs dealt with cold weather. One thing not obvious from bones is that most dinosaur babies were born with a coat of feathers. Like modern birds, their feathers served first of all for insulation. The adults of many large species didn't need insulation, so they shed their feathers and were scaly. But there are some exceptions, like our friend Gar, for whom feathers are a part of adult life as well. Remember, birds evolved from dinosaurs and Gar is, in many ways, the missing link between the two."

Gar made a cackling laugh and said in pidgin English, "We not missing anymore."

Ogilvey smiled. "Nice use of the letter 'M,' Gar. You're getting the hang of it despite all those teeth getting in the way."

Chase asked, "But where do people fit into all this? Are we just supposed to get out of the way?"

They looked at Gar, who blinked as if not understanding the question. The silence was broken only by the sound of another gulp as he forced a second steak down his gullet.

"It's a safe bet," Ogilvey resumed, "that humanity will be making some adjustments. Unless our military can work a miracle, we must compromise to survive. The Kra only want sufficient territory to re-establish their homeland and the accustomed ranges of their herbivores. The carnivores, Gar tells me, will take care of themselves.

"Oh?" Chase responded. "And how will they do that?"

"By eating some of the herbivores and by partaking of, well... the ahh... available stock of mammals."

"What mammals?" Kit asked.

Ogilvey exchanged uncomfortable glances with Gar. "Well, we're not too clear on that point. He's not very familiar with modern animals."

Gar cocked his head, listening to something outside. In the distance, an animal was making a deep roar that repeated over and over.

"Tarrocha," Gar murmured. "Kesta doo."

Ogilvey translated. "He says it's a tyrannosaurus, and it sounds like it's in pain."

"Not surprising," said Chase. "Rufus and Henrietta really smacked it down."

Kit touched him on the shoulder. "Not to mention a couple of bullet holes in it."

"Tough times for T rex," said Ogilvey. "As long as we have Rufus and Henrietta, we're tyrannosaurus-proof."

Chase was unconvinced. "I don't like the idea of living with something that dangerous around here, if we lose this war."

"Perhaps it's time," Ogilvey reflected, "to stop thinking about war; about winners and losers. What Gar is proposing is a truce. Peaceful coexistence."

Chase frowned. "Maybe we can make a deal with the Kra, but can we really expect people to coexist with a predator like T rex?"

Ogilvey shrugged. "People around here have coexisted with grizzlies. People in the arctic coexist with polar bears. Bangladesh has tigers."

"But Americans will never stand for dinosaurs in their back yards."

"Not in their back yards perhaps, but Yellowstone Country may have room for some more big animals."

## CHAPTER 17

The next morning brought bright sunlight that flooded into the open garage, illuminating Chase, Ogilvey and Gar as they leaned over one arm of the hunkered-down walking machine, or quahka, as Gar called it. Gar was repairing the damage caused by Chase's mishap. He had opened a box of odd-looking tools and was using one of them to adjust a fitting inside a small hatch on the right forearm, which was overstuffed with the wires and gadgets.

Ogilvey pointed to a shining metal cylinder within the cavity, about a foot long and two inches wide.

"Is that the power pack?" he asked.

"Gah," Gar replied, snapping the cylinder out of its place and handing it to him.

Ogilvey turned the cylinder over gingerly in his hands. "What's this called, again?"

"Kekuah," Gar murmured, concentrating on his adjustments.

Ogilvey handed the cylinder to Chase. "It's the power source for the laser gun."

Chase took the cylinder carefully and inspected it for distinguishing features, but there were few. It felt as light as aluminum and seemed like it must be filled with nothing heavier than air. There were pipe fittings at each end and a rectangular hatch in the middle with a small button next to it.

Gar spoke several unintelligible words, which Ogilvey interpreted. "He says, open it."

Chase pressed the latch-button and the rectangular lid popped up. The chamber inside was filled with fine white powder that glowed with faint magenta light.

Gar gestured at the powder and said a few more words in Kra-naga.

"That's kekuah," Ogilvey translated. "Go on and touch it."

Chase touched the kekuah and then rubbed a bit of the powder between his thumb and index finger. "It feels like fine sand."

"Oh, it's not sand," Ogilvey quipped. "If I understand Gar correctly, that material you are handling is light."

"Light?" Chase shook his head. He pointed to a streak of sunlight across the garage floor. "That's light. This stuff is solid." He sniffed at it. There was no smell.

Ogilvey chuckled. "But it's light, nonetheless. The Kra mastered light technology 65 million years ago, attaining a stage well beyond what we humans presently know. Their most amazing discovery is kekuah. That whitish-pink powder is pure light, transformed into a solid."

Gar nodded but Chase remained doubtful. "That's impossible. Light moves. You can't stop it. I was awake through part of physics class, anyway."

"The Kra," Ogilvey chuckled, "would beg to differ with your physics professor. Light can indeed stop moving and the Kra know how to make it do so. They have a clear technological lead over us, at least in this one area. According to Gar, it all depends on a fairly simple insight that our scientists seem to have missed.

"Nokah, Ogil-vee," said Gar. "Nohoota-vah tanta Einstein."

"Oh, yes," the paleontologist responded. "Gar reminds me about a problem with Einstein's equation."

"A problem with E = mc2?"

"Quite." Ogilvey smiled. "Several of our most cherished scientific tenets seem like nothing more than superstitions to Gar. It's as if we thought the earth were flat, or that the sun revolves around us. And, being ahead of us in these matters, the Kra find it easy to manipulate light in ways we think impossible. To Gar, it's not an issue of great genius. It's just a simple matter of perspective. See here?" he went on, pointing to a place on the concrete floor where the familiar equation had been scrawled in pencil. "I wrote it out for Gar, but he's corrected it." Next to Ogilvey's writing were clusters of pencil-scratchings in an alphabet unfamiliar to Chase.

"These are his revisions," said Ogilvey, pointing at the scribblings. "He says E = mc2 is a nice beginning, but only holds true if time stands still. If time goes forward, however, then Einstein's equation is too simple."

"Hallam zhulanki tolatta," said Gar.

Ogilvey translated, "Our priest had it wrong."

"Priest?"

"Yes, referring to Einstein. You see, in Kra-naga, the same word is used for either priest or scientist. The Kra don't distinguish between the two. Sometimes I think we humans don't either."

Chase scowled, unconvinced. "Our scientists have measured the properties of light. They know its speed, the red-shift of the galaxies..."

"Ah yes," Ogilvey smiled. "The Big Bang theory of the universe. Wrong again, according to Gar. Just another of our primitive superstitions. He claims the universe is not expanding at all. I tried explaining the Big Bang theory to him but he laughed it off. I protested that the red-shift of light from far-away galaxies proves the universe is expanding but his counter-explanation was that light dies."

"Light dies?"

"Yes, Chase. Light ages as it goes along, just like everything else. Time is again the key. Like we humans, light loses its energy over time. For light, loss of energy means a longer wavelength: a red shift. It gets redder the longer it travels and the amount of reddening depends on how long the light has existed rather than how far it has gone. According to Gar, the galaxies are going nowhere, there is no Big Bang, and no expansion of the universe. He says our priests are wrong on that one."

"But," Chase protested, "light can't just lose its energy. Energy can't be created or destroyed."

Ogilvey's whiskery face split into a wide grin. "Right you are, Chase. But Gar points out that in a multi-dimensional universe, time elapsing at the speed of light equals distance, and _time_ is the thing Einstein neglected. For every photon of light, 'E' only equals 'mc2' when it is brand-new. As light travels through space its energy is converted into something called eelahkah, which means roughly, 'time-distance,' if I'm translating correctly."

Gar nodded.

"Kra priest-scientists take into consideration not just the interconversion of matter and energy, but also of energy and time and distance as well. To them, each is connected to the other."

Chase shook his head. "Wolf-reintroduction training didn't exactly prepare me for this. But what's it all got to do with kekuah?"

Ogilvey resumed his lecture. "The Kra have found a way to control the time-distance string elements of the photon. In doing so, they control its motion. Once that has been accomplished—and please don't ask me how—the light particles cluster together into that powder and just sit there, suspended in time and space, until they are sent on their way again. Gar assures me you are looking at pure light energy in a tangible form, right there in your hand."

Chase closed the lid of the cylinder and handed it back to Gar reverently, but Gar handled it casually. He clunked the cylinder into its slot in the machine's arm and closed the repair hatch.

"I'm impressed," said Chase, "although I don't quite see how it works."

Ogilvey grinned. "You and me both. But there are disadvantages to kekuah technology. They haven't yet found a way to miniaturize it. That cylinder is the smallest they can use, which explains why Gar's tintza rifle is so darned huge and why they've no equivalent of a pistol: too much gadgetry required to make the light start moving again. Despite that shortcoming, kekuah is impressive stuff. One of those small cylinders is good for thousands of shots from the laser cannon—"

Gar interrupted with a few cackled words.

"Millions of shots," Ogilvey corrected himself. "And there are a couple of bigger cylinders inside the fuselage that can power this whole fighting machine for a year or more."

Chase patted the side of the machine's shining body. "What I wouldn't give to own one of these babies. How fast will it go?"

"Gar says it'll do 38 gokaks," Ogilvey replied.

"Gokaks?" Chase took off his cap and scratched his head. "How fast is that?"

Ogilvey shrugged. "I haven't figured that out yet."

A snuffling noise behind made them turn. Henrietta was across the drive in front of the barn, nibbling at a pile of loose hay thrown down from the loft by Kit, whom Chase spotted standing in the loft doorway. He called a cheery good morning.

"Good morning," she called back.

He strolled out to watch her feed the parasaurolophus, which ignored him though he was less than twenty feet away. "You've got a way with animals, Kit."

She sat down and hung her legs over the edge of the loft with an amused gleam on her face, tossing down another armload of hay to Henrietta. The duckbill responded by stretching up to place her billed muzzle in Kit's lap, mildly looking in her eyes. Kit stroked Henrietta's head and cooed, feeding her bits of hay that she nibbled tamely.

Chase grinned. "How do you like studying dinosaurs up-close-and-personal?"

"Wonderful!" Kit smiled back. Then her expression changed to one of concern. She pointed beyond him. "Look!" she cried. "Oh, my God!"

Chase turn quickly to see an armored tank turn off the county road and come at them at flank speed. It was the first in an entire column of tanks. Henrietta brayed nervously and trotted away to the pasture as the roar of tank engines swelled and clattering metal treads lifted clouds of dust into the air. The lead tank came on with its cannon aimed at the garage, smashing the wreckage of the ranch gate and scattering wooden pieces into the ditch like a collection of toothpicks. It reached the garage so quickly there was no time for anyone to react.

Chase felt tremendously mixed emotions. He was elated to see the equivalent of cavalry coming to their rescue, but an edgy feeling grew as the cannon barrel continued adjusting its aim-point at the inside of the garage where he, Ogilvey and Gar stood. As the immense battle-machine halted, Ogilvey cautioned, "No one make a false move. They must think we're consorting with the enemy."

"We are, aren't we?" said Chase, glancing at Gar, who stood frozen with the expression on his deadpan Kra face unreadable. Did he understand Ogilvey's advice? Ogilvey, went ashen white, but raised a trembling hand in greeting. Then he raised the other to signify surrender.

The top hatch of the tank opened and a helmeted and goggled soldier half emerged and pointed the tank's mounted machine gun at Gar. He shouted sternly, "Put your hands up. Nobody has to get hurt."

"Easy on the trigger," Ogilvey called, raising his arms higher. Seeing Gar hadn't understood the order, Ogilvey hissed sidelong, "Hands, Gar, er...tooka, tooka. Get your hands up."

Suddenly grasping the concept, Gar raised his hands. Chase breathed easier when the tank commander let a hand off the machine gun and waved Ogilvey and Gar forward. "Come out here where I can get a good look at you."

The three moved out of the garage and onto the driveway with hands high. Chase glanced up at the barn. Kit had disappeared.

The tank man demanded, "Would you civilians like to explain what you're doing here with the enemy?"

"He's a friend," said Ogilvey, keeping his hands up.

The soldier's jaw dropped as if that was the last thing he expected to hear. He paused to think as the other vehicles rumbled up and halted in line behind him. A Humvee pulled out and stopped beside the tank and a man in Army camouflage fatigues and field helmet jumped out of the passenger side. Drawing a pistol from a brown leather holster, he eyed Gar and spoke to the tank commander.

"All right, Suarez, I'll take over from here. You just keep 'em covered. If they make a false move, shoot first and ask questions later."

"Yes sir, Colonel MacIlvain."

The colonel turned his attention to Gar. "Now, what have we here?" He walked up and leveled his pistol at Gar's face.

Gar hissed nervously but held his ground.

"You don't look so invincible up close," the colonel blustered, moving his aim to Gar's heart. "I'll bet you bleed like everybody else." His eyes glared with intense hostility.

Chase took a step in their direction. "Listen, he's okay—"

"Okay?" the colonel snapped, pointing his pistol at Chase and stopping him in his tracks. "I think he's gonna be dead, pretty quick." He swung the gun to point at Gar's head again. Apart from the momentary flinch of an eye, Gar held steadfast.

Another vehicle roared up, a squarish Armored Personnel Carrier that pulled in alongside the Humvee. A half-dozen armed troops leaped from the back hatch, spread out and knelt to cover Gar, Ogilvey and Chase with assault rifles. After them came a man with general's stars on the collar of his fatigues.

"Very good, Mac," he said to the colonel. "I see we have a prisoner."

Colonel MacIlvain straightened as the general approached, but didn't lower his gun from its aim point between Gar's eyes.

"Prisoner?" he questioned. "Matt, are you sure it's safe to let him live? He might be more dangerous than he looks."

"Good point, Mac, but he might be valuable too, if we can interrogate him."

"Y-yes, he c-can be," Ogilvey stammered, his raised hands trembling with fright. "P-perhaps you gentlemen would like to join us inside for s-some coffee?" He grinned sheepishly at the general.

The general stared at him for a moment and then laughed ironically, shaking his head. "We'll be glad to join you inside all right. We're going to need this house as a base of operations." He turned and walked toward the kitchen door. "Colonel," he called behind him, "bring these folks—and that thing—along."

The soldiers bound Gar's wrists together with cable handcuffs. Colonel MacIlvain escorted the three of them into the house where a platoon of office staff had already begun setting up a field headquarters. Two young soldiers ran a spool of wire out the back door and into a radio-command vehicle while two more converted the dining room table into a communications center with a radio and video screen set up amid a tangle of wires and gadgets. The general was looking over a map at one end of the table but stopped and came to meet them when they entered the living room. "Hog-tie this fellow," he said, pointing at Gar. A soldier knelt by Gar with a thin cable to bind his feet.

"Wait!" cried Ogilvey, stepping between the general and Gar. "This is not necessary."

"It _is_ necessary," General Davis said emphatically. "I want him right here in the living room where I can keep an eye on him but I can't allow him to move around. Proceed, corporal."

"I am sure he will give his word—" Ogilvey began but Davis cut him off with a bitter laugh.

"His word? I've seen nothing but death and destruction for four days, and you want me to _trust_ one of these devils? I don't think so, Mr.—what was your name?"

"Doctor," said Ogilvey. "Doctor David Ogilvey, Professor of Paleontology at Montana State University." He extended a hand and the general shook it, nodding politely.

"I'm General Matthew Davis. You're a dinosaur digger, eh? I'll bet you're amused by all this." Davis gestured toward Gar, who had hunkered down docilely to let himself be bound hand and foot.

"Yes, I must admit—" Ogilvey began, but Davis cut him off again with a wave of his hand.

"Anyway, what's your connection to this... creature?"

"His name is Gar. He came here to make peace."

"Peace?" Davis looked dubious.

Colonel MacIlvain leaned against the front doorjamb with his arms folded. "I wouldn't trust any of them, sir," he said. "They were working on that fighting machine together when we drove up. In my opinion it's some sort of collusion. Ask the old man what he gets out of a peace deal. Maybe his own Quisling government?"

Davis put up a hand. "Easy, Mac. Let's not jump to conclusions. I'm willing to listen." He turned to Ogilvey. "Speak your piece, Doc. I haven't got much time so be quick about it."

Ogilvey nodded at Gar, now squatting on the carpet and leaning on one haunch with his hands and feet bound together. "He came to us of his own volition to arrange an armistice."

"How do you know that?" Davis eyed Ogilvey suspiciously.

"Because I've been talking with him for two days."

" _Talking_ with him? Now I've heard everything."

Ogilvey looked dismayed. "Please hear me out. Gar is a leader among the Kra. His job is to make sure the animals they reintroduce don't become extinct again."

"Hooray for him," Davis growled. "What about us? It seems to me _humans_ are the endangered species now."

"No, no," Ogilvey pleaded. "Quite the contrary. Gar understands exterminating humans is no more justifiable than the other way around."

"Did it occur to you that this thing—" Davis pointed at Gar, "—might be here to misinform us, sucker us into giving up?"

"No," Ogilvey protested. "I'm sure he's sincere."

Davis looked from Ogilvey to MacIlvain and back again. "You know, I almost want to believe you're right Doc, but I can't take chances. I've got to stick with what I'm sure of and that's our battle plan. We'll talk peace if it fails."

Ogilvey frowned. "By then it may be too late."

Davis sighed, addressing MacIlvain wearily. "Put these people under guard too. Keep them upstairs, out of my hair. I've got a war to fight."

MacIlvain drew his pistol and motioned for Chase and Ogilvey to go up the stairs. Chase went to the stairs but Ogilvey lingered in front of Davis. "You'll regret this choice, General."

Davis turned away and walked toward the dining room where several of his staff waited. "I may regret it, Doc. That's the hell of being in command."

Chase and Ogilvey were put in Will Daniels' upstairs bedroom with an armed guard outside the open door. Minutes later, Colonel MacIlvain reappeared with Kit.

"I was hoping you got away," Chase said after MacIlvain left her with them.

She shrugged. "Where was I supposed to go?"

He shrugged back.

Two overstuffed chairs faced the bedroom windows with a view over most of the ranch. Kit took one seat and Ogilvey took the other. Chase burned off some nervous energy by pacing the Persian carpet runner beside the big four-poster bed, while a young soldier outside the door cradled an assault rifle in his arms and eyed him cautiously. The three captives had a good view of the barn and pasture, around which soldiers swarmed like ants, throwing up a redoubt of sandbags along the equestrian fences connecting the house with its outbuildings and caching supplies in the barn. Directly below, tanks and armored vehicles lined the driveway. The noise of diesel engines and shouted commands filled the hot afternoon air. Dust drifted in a light breeze.

Chase watched the rush of men and equipment. "Do you think they can drive the Kra out from under Sandstone Mountain?"

Ogilvey shook his head slowly. "I don't see how. You saw for yourself how extensive their tunnel network is. Gar says they're constructing a whole series of new underground fortifications."

"But look at all these tanks and guns," said Chase. "That's a lot of firepower."

Ogilvey observed the scene below with a look of intense displeasure. "I think this is the utmost folly."

"It may be," a voice interrupted from the hallway. General Davis came into the room accompanied by two helmeted soldiers who stopped on either side of the doorway. He went to the window and looked up at Sandstone Mountain. "What can you tell me about that mountain, Doctor? I understand you've done some digging up there."

"Scientific excavations," Ogilvey muttered.

"Okay, excavations," Davis said patiently. "I'm not interested in your work so much as what you know about the enemy. I'm going to risk a lot of brave men's lives. I need information."

Ogilvey sighed. "What do you need to know?"

"Are there any approaches to the mountain other than this road going up the hill?"

"Yes," Ogilvey mumbled. "There's a horse trail leading to an entrance under the cliff on this side."

"Any other routes?"

"No, it's all wilderness up there, and roadless."

"That may be good," Davis mused. "If they have no withdrawal route, we may be able to trap them."

"Or vice versa," Chase suggested.

"Son!" Davis snapped. "What is your military rating?"

"I—" Chase stammered, "I don't have one."

"Then keep your mouth shut."

Chase almost replied, but thought better of it.

Davis turned to the two soldiers at the door. "Suarez, Abercromby, I'm going to ask you to divide your force."

"But sir—" Suarez began.

Davis held up a hand. "Here's the way I see it, Captain. We have the element of surprise. Given the lay of the land, I think a concerted attack at both the front and rear entries could work, so long as we retain the element of surprise."

Suarez and Abercromby looked at each other like they didn't think so.

"I want a penetrating attack directed at both entrances," said Davis. "Sergeant Abercromby, you'll take a small force up the horse trail and send two platoons of infiltrating ground troops into the tunnels. Captain Suarez, you'll take the rest of your command and work your way beyond the mountain to attack the main entrances. I'll coordinate your movements from this house. When both forces are in position I'll give the order to begin the assaults simultaneously."

"Yes, sir," said Suarez. "But I don't like dividing Fox Troop."

Davis looked sympathetic but resolute. "I don't like it either but our options are limited. We've gotta play the cards dealt us."

Suarez hesitated only an instant, and then snapped a salute.

"Yes, sir."

"Good," said Davis, turning without further words to go back downstairs. Suarez and Abercromby followed.

"I don't like this business," Ogilvey muttered. "Win or lose, there's something lost."

"How do you mean?" Chase asked.

"If Gar arranges a truce, then nobody need be the loser. But how do I get Davis to stop fighting and start talking?" He took a step toward the door but the first guard was back in place. The young soldier took a wide-legged stance and half raised his M 16.

"No farther, sir."

Ogilvey began a long-winded protest but Chase turned away, sensing it was pointless. Kit stood at the window, staring up at Sandstone Mountain with her arms wrapped around herself. He went to her and asked, "What's up?"

"Nothing," she said, her voice frail. "Too much has happened too fast. I wish Daddy were here. I feel like I should be protecting the ranch. Just look what they're doing."

Soldiers in the garden were digging up the soil to fill sandbags. They had trampled most of the flowers while building a machine-gun nest. Chase looked sidelong at Kit and saw tears rimming her eyes. He put a hand on her shoulder sympathetically. "You'll have your work cut out for you, fixing this place up after things get back to normal."

She shook her head. "They'll never get back to normal."

"I'll stick around and help you, if we get out of this okay."

She put a hand on his. "Thanks," she murmured. "That would be nice."

A parasaurolophus call rattled the room. "What's Rufus up to now?" Kit wondered, but it was easy to see he was heading for trouble. He had approached the barn and encountered a tank and a Bradley troop transport parked too near the hayloft for his liking. Now he had gone into his angry goose act, looking like he was about to charge.

Ogilvey muttered, "Rufus doesn't like soldiers any more than I do."

The big animal strutted forward, honking and hissing at the nearest tank in a threat display that was both comical, given the angry-goose posture, and awe-inspiring, considering Rufus's elephantine size.

Kit gasped when the tank turret rotated to point its gun at him. "Rufus thinks they're invading his territory," she fumed. "What are they going to do?"

"This doesn't look good," Ogilvey remarked.

The parasaurolophus feigned a charge, stopping only feet from the cannon barrel with his front feet flailing the air.

"I've seen enough!" Kit cried. She rushed out the door before the guard could react and bolted down the stairs.

"Halt!" the guard called after her, ineffectually. "Stop where you are." Kit was already halfway down to the living room. The guard followed, with Chase and Ogilvey in close pursuit.

## CHAPTER 18

"Madre de Dios!" cried Vic Suarez, training his mounted heavy machine gun on the enraged duckbill from the command hatch of his tank. The huge beast stood erect and threatening, not more than twenty feet from him, honking and flailing its arms. Suarez nervously fingered the trigger but hesitated.

General Davis and Colonel MacIlvain jogged up to his tank on the side opposite the creature. He looked down at them questioningly. "What do you want me to do, General?"

Davis stared at the beast for a long moment. "What the heck is it, anyway?"

Suarez hadn't expected a question in reply to his own. "A very angry dinosaur, sir."

Davis turned to a group of officers who had followed him out of the house. "Somebody want to help me out? What is this thing? It looks like a cross between Godzilla and Daffy Duck."

Nobody had an answer.

"Don't shoot it," the General told Suarez. "That much noise would alert the enemy." He put his hands on his hips and scowled. "I guess we're in a fix."

"I can handle this," said Colonel MacIlvain. He drew his sidearm and took a silencer out of a slipcase on his gun belt. He screwed it on and walked forward, aiming at the beast, which stopped hooting and stomping to watch him. Sighting at the parasaurolophus's head, he asked, "Shall I, sir?"

"Wait!" Kit Daniels cried, rushing out between the tank and the dinosaur, turning her back on the beast to face MacIlvain. "What's going on here?" she snarled like a lioness.

To Suarez, it seemed she would be smarter to keep an eye out behind her. The big beast towered over her, but she didn't pay it any attention. He figured this civilian was about to buy it, right before his eyes.

MacIlvain continued sighting over her head at the dinosaur. "Shut up, lady."

"Put that gun away," she shouted at him, stamping her cowboy booted foot just like the dinosaur had been doing. "Rufus only wants food for his babies. You guys parked your tanks between him and the barn. Back them up!"

Davis nodded his assent and Suarez called down to his driver, "Fire it up, Ed. Let's do what she says."

A moment later the tank and Bradley rolled back a dozen yards, and that was that. Rufus immediately lost interest in them and moved to the hayloft. Kit hurried inside the barn, went up to the loft door and smiled down at the beast. "Easy, Rufus," she cooed. "It's okay. Just calm down." She pushed a bale of hay out the loft door to the ground and Rufus pulled a huge mouthful loose and trotted back to the pasture where the other duckbilled dinosaurs waited.

Kit hurried back from the barn to the house and as she stalked past MacIlvain she pointed a finger at him and growled, "Don't you ever point a gun at one of my dinosaurs again!" Stamping up the back stairs and into the house, she kicked the door shut behind her.

Suarez looked down at Chase Armstrong, who stood near his tank.

"Hey man, did she call that thing Rufus?"

"Yeah," Chase replied. "He's harmless if you don't mess with his hay."

"Are you saying he's her pet?"

Chase shrugged. "Something like that."

Suarez rolled his eyes. "Too crazy, man."

***

Suarez spent the hours after the dinosaur incident making Fox Troop ready for whatever happened next. He checked that every vehicle crew was at peak performance capability. He chatted with the men to boost their spirits. He told them he was proud of them. Then he got back into the command hatch of his tank and watched the moon set against the black horizon. He was glad the beam had quit lighting up the sky. He heard footsteps coming across the gravel and turned as General Davis and Colonel MacIlvain approached and stopped below him. The general looked up with a kindly, almost sad expression.

"It's time," he said quietly. "Have your troop ready to move out at 23 hundred hours, Captain. That's fifteen minutes from now."

"Yes, sir." Suarez snapped a salute, perhaps a little too curtly. The order made something run cold in the pit of his guts. He wasn't afraid of a fight but this task seemed too big for Fox Troop, or any single troop.

Davis returned the salute. "The best of luck, Suarez. My prayers go with you."

"Thank you, sir."

As the general and colonel headed back to the house without another word, Suarez turned and called to Crom, who was in the command hatch of the tank pulled up behind him. "We roll out at 23 hundred. Pass the word."

Crom gave a thumbs-up sign and turned to pass the message to the vehicle behind him. Suarez wondered if he had just pronounced his best friend's death sentence. He watched the two commanders go up the steps into the dark house as the sound of revving tank engines filled the air. He respected Davis. The General had it tough. As the ranking officer he had to take command whether he was qualified to lead tank troops or not. No use blaming him for that. And even though Suarez didn't like the odds for the success of this assault plan, he had to admit Davis was a real leader. He made his decision based on the best options open to him and he stuck to it. There was something to be said for that.

"Hey man," a voice rose above the rumble of the engines, interrupting Suarez's thoughts. Down where the general had been a minute before was Crom, looking up at him like a brave but scared schoolboy. "I wanted to say goodbye. Just in case."

Suarez climbed out of his hatch and jumped down off the deck to clasp Crom's extended hand. They shook hands hard and he looked into his friend's night-shadowed face and saw a haunted, spooky look in his eyes.

"I'd be lying to you," Crom said, "if I told you I thought we could pull this off."

Suarez shrugged. "Remember what I said a couple days ago? A soldier's got to follow orders. That's it."

"You're right. I'm thinking about it too much. Maybe good luck will ride with us."

"I don't like to trust luck, Crom. How about trusting God?"

"Where's He been up to this point? Asleep?" They fell silent for a moment, each lost in his own thoughts while the engines roared.

"Don't let it get you down, man," said Suarez. "You gotta believe some good will come from what we do, even if you can't see it now. Maybe General Davis can see something we don't."

Crom looked at the ground for a long moment. Then he smiled. "You're right, Vic. I'm just sorry we won't be together when this goes down."

"Yeah, me too."

They embraced tightly. Suarez felt in his bones that he would never see his friend again. That was what he regretted most. This night would probably end a beautiful friendship.

He drew back and clapped both his hands down hard on Crom's shoulders to give him a jolt of adrenaline. "Hoo-ah!" he shouted. "Fight well."

"Fight well," replied Crom. He turned and headed for his tank.

Suarez called after him, "Keep your head up. Keep thinking."

"You too." Crom climbed onto his tank and into the command hatch. Suarez watched his friend descend into the turret, thinking he had done a good job of restoring Crom's faith in the future. But it was hard to find that faith inside himself. When he climbed back into his own command hatch it was already 22:59. He yelled down to his driver, "Let's get this crate rolling."

"Yes, sir," called Veccs. He revved the engine once, twice and then the tank jarred into motion. Within a minute they were at the head of a snake of moving hardware crawling along the road that went up the hill from the ranch house. At the first switchback, Suarez looked back to watch Crom's short line of two tanks and three Bradleys pull out from the main column and onto the horse trail. They were headed for their separate appointment with fate on the front side of the mountain. He looked down on the complex of ranch buildings as his main force mounted the second switchback. On the rear porch of the house, he could dimly make out General Davis standing with several of his aides. He shot the general a thumbs-up signal and Davis responded in kind. The goodbyes were over.

Suarez peered through his infrared binoculars into the darkness ahead, scouring the green-outlined hillside for signs of an enemy the likes of which he hadn't been trained to engage. In fact, apart from the captive creature and the machine parked in the garage, it was an enemy he had never even seen. Behind him he could just make out the helmeted heads jutting from hatches along the column of war machines following him up the mountain road. A feeling like cold water ran through his stomach. He and his men would face the toughest test of their lives tonight. Would they come out heroes, or dead men? A few hours would tell. He felt fear, not for himself, but for the brave souls who were following him to their deaths tonight. He remembered punching Crom on the overlook to El Paso. It seemed like a hundred years ago. At least he and Crom had taken time to choose their own fates. These boys hadn't been given that choice. He wondered how many would have chosen wife, family, and friends over this?

None, he decided. No one would do anything different. Duty came first. They all knew it as well as he did, down to the last man. That gave him some comfort, if not about the outcome of the night's engagement, then at least about his responsibility. The gnawing in his guts calmed a little. He was finally ready, no matter what happened.

His watch showed 23:03 hours. If things went according to plan, Crom would have his platoons of dismounted men ready to rush Dr. Ogilvey's entrance to the citadel at about 23:35 hours. By that time Suarez expected to have his own line of tanks in position for a frontal assault on the main entrances. It seemed unlikely the enemy could fail to see the main force coming but if Crom's men got inside during Fox's attack there might be a slender hope of success—if everything went as planned.

Suarez strained his eyes through the night-vision binocs, scrutinizing each bush and tree, each switchback of the climbing road, searching for a hidden threat or ambush. Overhead, the moon was well below the dark silhouette of Sandstone Mountain but still made enough skyglow to light things up on the intensifier screen of his binocs.

Fifteen minutes later, they topped a switchback that opened onto a high, dark prairie. It was narrow at first but widened in the direction of Sandstone Mountain. As the line of tanks moved past a wrecked enemy aircraft and out onto the prairie Suarez kept his binocs trained on the base of the mountain, a mile away on his left. There in the darkness lay their objectives, the two portal entries to the underground citadel. In just a few minutes the troop would be in position to wheel left and the tanks behind him would spread out to become his right and left flanks. There was no enemy force in sight.

"It's all too easy so far," he murmured. "Way too easy." Then his head-set came alive with the sound of voices shouting in the heat of battle. Among them he recognized Crom.

"We are under attack from all sides. We are not deployed yet! Repeat, not deployed yet!"

There were shouts from others as well, as tank and Bradley commanders struggled to gain control over what sounded like a chaotic situation.

"This is track two, we're hit!"

"Bradley five, get your infantry out. Deploy your men on the ground and return fire. Move toward the objective."

Explosions came over Suarez's headset now, some sounding like cannon fire, some sounding much worse. Screams of pain mingled with the other noises. Suarez shuddered. That was a sound he had been dreading for days now. With his own column moving onto the prairie unmolested, Suarez kept an ear on Crom's voice.

"On your right, Charlie. Turn and fire! Turn and fire!" From his high-pitched tone, Suarez knew Crom must be in desperate straits. He wished there was something he could do to make a difference but his options were limited. He turned to look back along his own line of tanks. They were almost in position. Another two minutes would do it—a long two minutes. By then the chance to take the heat off Crom might be gone. _Gotta do something now._ He pressed his comm link button and addressed the troop.

"Let's start this party early. Launch flares. Left wheel and advance on the objective."

The mortar track two positions behind him responded almost immediately with two rocket flares that arched over the prairie and descended slowly on parachutes. They lit things up until Suarez could see the portals outlined clearly against the base of the mountain.

"Hey, Quinn," he shouted down into the turret. "Give 'em a high explosive round right in the front door."

"Roger," said the gunner. A moment later the tank's gun banged heavily and their first round was on its way.

***

Kit, Chase and Dr. Ogilvey had been summoned to the dining room where they stood silently listening to the voices on the radio. General Davis sat at the table, his expression grim as the rumble of distant cannon fire rattled the windows. A voice from the radio in front of him shouted, "Another Bradley knocked out!"

"Just my luck," he muttered. "Eisenhower only had Hitler to deal with. Powell got an easy one with Saddam Hussein. How did I ever draw this enemy?" He looked at Gar in the living room and his eyes narrowed. "These guys are like Dinotopia, the Devil, and the Apocalypse all rolled into one."

"Phaw!" Ogilvey exhaled. "Did you ever stop to consider the other side's predicament? From the Kra point of view, they're just trying to get home after a long odyssey and you're doing your best to stop them. How do you expect them to react?"

Davis scowled at the paleontologist. "So, I'm supposed to open my heart to the enemy, is that it? Just say, 'Hey, you've suffered too, let's be friends'?"

Ogilvey nodded. "Something like that. Remember, Jesus said, 'Love thine enemy'."

"Well, that's where Jesus and I differ, Doc. Do you hear what they're doing to my men? _Do you?"_

"Yes." Ogilvey clamped his jaw shut and fell silent as the rumble of gunfire intensified.

Davis looked at his watch. "Ten minutes _before_ they were to be at their ready lines. I hope they had time to get the whole troop onto the main battlefield."

Static crackled on the radio along with the sound of a thunderous explosion, followed by the rattle of machine-gun fire. A voice came out of the rising static.

"This is Fox Two requesting permission to withdraw. We are under heavy attack. We'll be wiped out before we get near the tunnel."

Davis grabbed a microphone off the table in front of him. "Abercromby, this is General Davis. You are ordered to keep attacking, do you understand? Move forward. Fight _to the last man._ Do you read me?"

Crom's voice came over the radio thinly, breaking up. "Yes, sir. I read you."

"It's now or never," Davis shouted. "You can't fail!" He got up and paced the floor, stopping to listen as several more dull thumps reverberated outside in the distance. The radio came alive again, this time with Suarez addressing his command.

"Okay Fox Troop, move toward Point A. Fire at confirmed targets only."

"At least _he's_ still moving forward," Davis muttered, staring at the radio as if trying to see the action he was hearing. He wore a look of desperation.

## CHAPTER 19

As Suarez's tank crossed the halfway point to the tunnel openings he looked to the left and right. About half of his force was hurrying to take positions on his right flank and the remainder was still coming onto the prairie to form his left flank. And ready or not, Fox Troop was engaging the enemy. The whole force was advancing on the openings at the base of Sandstone Mountain with muzzles flashing and the thump of heavy rounds roaring all along the line. But other flashes—flashes of laser light—cut the night air from sources scattered on the mountainside and inside the portals.

"They're returning fire," Suarez called through his headset microphone. "Keep cool and pick your targets carefully."

A nearby Bradley took a laser hit and erupted in flames.

"Jesus!" Suarez cried as it peeled off the line of advance and rolled to a halt. There wasn't time to notice which of his comrades had bought it. As the wreckage fell behind, Suarez had plenty to deal with ahead and to the sides. The flares drifting overhead lit the battlefield but the enemy was hard to pick out until he fired. Fighting machines would appear from behind scrub-brush or boulders, fire their lasers, and then disappear again. Suarez spotted the one that had taken out the Bradley dead ahead on the flat as it ducked behind a thicket of brush.

"Quinn," he called through the intercom. "There's one behind the bushes, maybe two points right. See him?"

"Roger, Captain. Targeting now." The tank's turret swiveled in a fine-aiming adjustment as the alien machine stepped out from its cover again and raised its right arm. The bore of its light cannon seemed to point straight at Suarez's face. It fired a white-hot streak of light that went by wide to the right. An instant later flame shot from the muzzle of the tank's gun, momentarily washing Suarez's night-vision with glare. But his sight cleared just as the shell reached its target and the walking machine's body exploded into a thousand fragments. The lower chassis and legs stood for a moment and then toppled and fell to the ground.

"Bingo!" shouted Quinn.

"Nice shot," said Suarez. "I thought he had us."

He looked around at the rest of his troop and took heart from what he saw. The full force was on the field. Muzzle-flashes erupted all along a battle line stretching a good quarter mile across the flats. There was a hell of a lot of shooting going on and most of Fox's vehicles were intact and fighting hard.

His tank's cannon roared again and a moment later Suarez saw an explosion at the right-hand tunnel entrance. He peered carefully at the dark opening, hoping to see some effect of the explosion—but no luck. Shells from other tanks hit both entrances but there were no secondary detonations or other signs the bombardment was having an impact. The enemy was dug in deep.

To his right and slightly ahead of his own position, Suarez watched the tank of his first sergeant, Pete Henessy, put two shells in succession into the right-hand tunnel entrance, again without effect.

"Henessy," he called into his comm link. "Target their fighting machines. We've gotta reduce their firepower." But as he spoke, the first sergeant's tank took a laser hit under its turret and exploded in flame. The turret blew clean off, lifting up and flipping over like a massive pancake and crashing down in front of the tank. The chassis became a cauldron of blazing fuel and ammo and as the men inside burned, Suarez gritted his teeth. He vividly recalled the face of each one of them. Shaking his head hard, he muttered, "Gotta stay focused." He looked down the battle line again and saw too many knocked-out Army vehicles burning on the prairie, maybe a third of his force. And he saw something even more alarming. Although the enemy had taken quite a few casualties, they had abandoned their hidden positions to come out and engage Fox Troop in close combat. Tanks and walking machines were mixing it up all along the line. Both sides were firing in all directions, taking hits and dealing death as well.

He turned and searched the mountainside, desperately looking for any sign their bombardment had had an effect. But there was none. The dark tunnels were intact and the real battle was much closer at hand.

"Fox Troop," he shouted into the radio, "forget the tunnels. Take evasive action and defend yourselves." Then he turned his attention to his own situation. Ahead of him, he could see by the light of the flames from Henessy's tank that a fighting machine had paused to inspect the wreckage.

"Hey, Ed," he called to his driver, "enemy at two o'clock." The tank was moving at a good clip and Ed veered toward the alien machine, catching it not looking. It turned to face them at the last second, but Fox One hit the walking machine full on the nose and knocked it over backwards. The tank's right tread rode up and over the enemy to the sounds of shattering glass and crunching metal. Suarez glanced back at the crumpled wreck as they sped on. "Nice driving, Veccs."

Then he quickly appraised the troop's situation. They were giving a good accounting of themselves. The battlefield was strewn with as many shattered walking machines as tanks. From every side there were bolts of blue-white laser fire but fewer and fewer cannon flashes. He came to the grim realization that he was overseeing the annihilation of his force. He agonized for a moment about what failure would mean for humanity but had even less stomach for watching his men go to their deaths pointlessly.

"Break off the attack!" he shouted bitterly into his helmet microphone. "Break off! The objective is not achievable. Fall back and defend yourselves any way you can."

The ragged line of advance dissolved into a chaos of individual vehicles fighting to save themselves. Suarez looked for a way out for his own tank, but the enemy was on all sides and more were coming from the tunnel openings. He and his tank were too far onto the battlefield to ever hope to withdraw. But the wreckage of Henessy's tank gave him an idea. "Hey Ed," he called into the intercom, "pull in next to the Sarge's tank." Vecchio circled the tank around, ran across the body of the walking machine again and came to a halt close beside the blazing wreck.

Suarez ducked inside and sealed his command hatch. "Shut down the engine," he said. "The Fox is going to ground."

The tank's rumbling ceased and Suarez looked through his periscope to see if any of the Kra machines had spotted them. As he had planned, the smoke from the killed Abrams billowed across the deck of his own tank, making it look dead too. With no sign of an enemy nearby Suarez allowed himself a sigh of relief. Then he lifted his night vision goggles and looked around at the anxious faces his crew lit by the red-orange turret safelight. "We're gonna sit tight for a while," he said. "We look like we're burning. Let's hope we got 'em fooled."

***

Chase paced nervously in the aisle behind the living room couch where Kit and Dr. Ogilvey sat listening to the distant thuds of shells or vehicles exploding somewhere beyond Sandstone Mountain. The sounds were tapering off as the battle drew to a close. An awful silence hung over General Davis and the handful of soldiers in the dining room. Davis leaned over the radio, his face a study in defeat. An aide entered the living room through the open front door and moved past Chase to address the general. "Sir, I've got your transport waiting."

"Retreat? Is that it?" Davis mumbled. "Yes. I suppose that's what comes after a lost battle. I hadn't made plans to—" He covered his eyes with a hand and drew the fingers down slowly over his face to wipe away frustration and pain. Then he came into the living room and addressed Ogilvey with a cloying bitterness in his voice.

"Well, Doctor, I guess you were right. Maybe we should have sued for peace."

"It's not too late," Ogilvey replied.

Davis shook his head. "It's too damn late, that's for sure. Now listen. It's pretty clear the enemy will take this position in a matter of minutes. I'd like the three of you to come to NORAD with us."

"Wait a minute," Ogilvey said warily. "There are four of us. You just said three."

"You sir," Davis frowned at Ogilvey, "may be of some use to us because you know quite a lot about these things. But him—" He pointed at Gar, still bound on the living room floor. "It's too risky to bring one of the enemy along on this retreat."

"But Gar is potentially your best ally, not your enemy," Ogilvey protested. "What do you propose to do with him?"

"I don't propose anything," Davis replied matter-of-factly. "I'm going to shoot him."

"No," Ogilvey gasped. "You mustn't."

At that moment, the clattering of nearby machine-gun fire erupted. Troops stationed at the ranch's fortifications had opened up with their light weapons. One of the officers in the kitchen called to Davis. "Two enemy fighting machines coming down the hill."

"Listen," Ogilvey pleaded to Davis. "Leave us all here. Don't harm Gar. If anyone can make peace it will be him."

Davis stared thoughtfully at Gar who, though still bound hand and foot, looked back at him quietly. Then without a word he drew his pistol from its holster.

Chase knew how this little drama would end unless he could pull off a plan he had been hatching. The officers in the dining room and the guards at the front door were watching the confrontation between Davis and Gar, and that allowed Chase to slip into the kitchen and move out the back door undetected.

Outside, laser flashes and gunfire lit up the night. Chase hurried down the back steps, dashed across the driveway and into the garage. He climbed into the cockpit of the fighting machine and flipped the power switch on.

"Come on baby," he said, hoping Gar's interrupted repair job had made the machine functional again. He grinned when its motors whirred and the instrument panel lit up. "That's what I want to see." He hit the switch that made the machine stand up.

It didn't move. The red panel light was flashing again. But the machine had to work, or Gar had only seconds to live.

Noticing the hatch on the right arm open and the kekuah cylinder again out of its place, Chase leaped off the machine to finish the repairs.

"Sir," Davis's driver called from the front doorway. "We're taking laser fire at the front of the house now. We've got to go."

Davis raised his drawn pistol and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he looked at Gar with equal introspection. "I've got nothing against the individual enemy soldier," he muttered. "He might even be the friend you claim he is, Doc. It's too bad there's no time to find out." He glared his frustration at Ogilvey, who had risen from the couch, and then he spun and stalked out the door, keeping the gun handy for self defense. A moment later his Humvee raced off down the driveway.

As the rest of Davis's staff cleared out aboard a second Humvee, Kit fetched a pair of cable nippers from her father's office and cut the wires on Gar's wrists and ankles, allowing him to stand.

Ogilvey pointed a thumb heavenward and said to Gar, "Someone up there likes you, my friend." Gar bobbed his head in agreement.

An icy voice interrupted from the kitchen. "God and the General might let him get away, but I won't." Colonel MacIlvain stepped through the kitchen doorway covering Gar with his pistol. "I'm personally gonna make sure he's dead." He muttered vindictively to Kit and Ogilvey, "Say your farewells."

Instead, Kit stepped between Gar and the pistol and snarled at MacIlvain, "You had better be prepared to kill me too."

"I am," Mac replied coolly. "Now, get out of the way."

His icy eyes put a chill into Kit's heart but she stood squarely in the pistol's line of fire. Dr. Ogilvey joined her muttering, "You'll have to shoot us both."

The colonel looked from Kit to Ogilvey to Gar as if unsure whom to shoot first. Singling out Ogilvey and leveling the pistol inches from his face, he muttered, "It'll be a pleasure—"

A tremendous crash shook the house. The boarded window near the fireplace imploded, spraying glass and splintered wood across the room. Kit screamed and MacIlvain's pistol went off, firing wide of Ogilvey's head and chipping some stone off the fireplace. Ogilvey dove to the floor as the torn curtains fell away and the cause of the impact appeared. The right arm of a Kra fighting machine jutted through the window frame. It swiveled to aim at MacIlvain. He reacted quickly enough to dodge a laser round that splintered the stairway banister. He fired back at the machine but the bullets ricocheted off its closed canopy. He tumbled to the floor to avoid a second laser blast, giving Gar the opportunity to spring out the front door of the house, chased by several wild pistol shots. The machine fired its laser again, tearing up a slice of carpet near where MacIlvain lay. He got to his feet and dashed through the kitchen to disappear outside.

The canopy of the machine opened. Kit cried in astonishment, "Chase! It's you! I couldn't figure out where you went."

"Now you know," Chase quipped. "Where's Gar?"

"I'm not sure," Ogilvey replied, pointing out the front door. "He went thatta-way."

"Get in, Kit," Chase pointed a thumb to the space behind him in the cockpit. "I'm going after him."

Kit ran to the window, climbed over the sill and got behind Chase in the machine. He snapped the canopy down just as an Army machine-gunner on the perimeter spotted him and clattered a dozen bullets over the canopy glass. He withdrew the fighter-walker's arm from the window, spun the machine and accelerated across the driveway. A hail of machine gun fire followed the quahka as it sprinted past the garage and reached the cover of darkness.

Ogilvey moved cautiously onto the porch, squinting into the night, looking vainly for his friends as the last transport roared away with troops crowded on top. It raced down the drive with its heavy machine gun pouring a hail of gunfire onto the hillside. Laser shots came back, igniting bushes and trees but failing to hit the Bradley. It turned onto the dark county road and raced away, leaving the ranch eerily quiet.

Ogilvey searched the darkness and spotted Gar and the fighting machine moving together, far beyond the end of the pasture. He dashed off the porch and ran in their direction, but soon realized they were receding too quickly for his old legs to follow. Wheezing from exertion, he stopped to catch his breath. The parasaurolophus family was grunting and honking fearfully in the woods. Otherwise the night was silent. Too silent.

"Come on, Ogilvey," he mumbled to himself. "You'd better find a place to hide." He guessed the Kra would sweep past the house in pursuit of the retreating soldiers. If so, his best refuge would be in the house's cellar. As he approached the front porch, he was surprised to see a Kra fighting machine standing on the far side of the house. Its canopy was closed.

"Chase?" he called, hoping his friends had somehow managed to circle the entire complex as he walked back to the house. "Kit?" he asked, squinting hopefully into the dark canopy glass.

The laser arm of the machine rose to point at his belly. The canopy lifted. A Kra warrior leered at him, cackling triumphantly.

***

The remnants of Davis's force raced southward, deep into the Beartooth Mountains on a winding two-lane highway, occasionally coming under fire from pursuing Kra. After several hours of cat-and-mouse, Davis's Humvee crossed a bridge over a deep canyon. He said to his driver, "Pull out here." The man halted the Hummer on the shoulder of a rising stretch of road that overlooked the bridge they had just crossed.

"I've been looking for a way to create a barrier between us and those things," Davis explained to the driver. "This looks like it." He stood in the gun opening and checked the area behind them through binoculars. Early summer predawn light illuminated a rugged landscape of granite cliffs and sparse mountain vegetation. Below him, back the way they had just come, the two-lane stone-and-concrete bridge spanned a ravine more than a hundred feet deep. The far-side approach was an exposed section of road dynamited from the granite of the canyon wall. On the near side, the road provided a natural semicircular firing position with trees and giant boulders where his force could take partial cover. As the last vehicle, a Bradley, came across the bridge with no Kra fighters in sight, Davis spoke into his radio hand mike.

"We're not going to let them cross this bridge. I want it rigged for demolition in 60 seconds." A group of soldiers dismounted from the Humvee nearest the bridge and scurried back onto the roadway carrying heavy ammo boxes. Climbing over the rock parapets of the bridge, they began attaching explosive charges to the buttresses on either end of the structure while two men reeled off a line of detonation wire leading back to the Humvee.

Watching them work, Davis considered his good fortune to have escaped the ranch with several dozen men and a handful of vehicles. The five Humvees had heavy machine guns mounted on them and the three Bradley armored personnel carriers were equipped with small but deadly 25mm turret cannons. He had observed, while pulling away from the ranch and rolling through Red Lodge, that the Kra respected their firepower. By sending an occasional salvo to the rear, his force had managed to keep the enemy at bay. But now, moving into the tortuous roads of the Beartooths, he worried that a flanking opportunity would present itself and the Kra would pin him down. Here, he hoped to eliminate that danger for good.

The squad leader waved, signifying that the explosives were set.

"Okay," Davis called into the radio. "Detonate when ready."

One of the men knelt over a detonator box and twisted the actuator handle.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. Nothing.

Davis pounded a fist on the top of the Humvee. "Get it fixed, pronto!" he called into the mike, and then he muttered to his driver, "What I'd give for just one tank."

The man stood beside him in the gunner's hatch. "Sir, should we move farther forward, out of the danger?"

Davis turned and looked him over. He was a young man with dried blood on the side of his face from a small wound of some kind. "No, son," Davis replied. "This troop is all I've got left. There's no purpose to a general without a force to command. I'll stick close."

At that moment a Kra fighter came into view on the far side and the mounted guns of the vehicles behind Davis opened up. Bullets sparked as they ricocheted off the surface of the Kra machine. A 25mm cannon round from a Bradley detonated against the machine's canopy, staggering the walker but not taking it down. Dented but still dangerous, it backed away, lacing the area around the bridge with laser fire. Men scrambled for cover and a tree branch over Davis's head burst into flame.

He called over the handset, "Have we got another detonator?"

"Negative, sir."

A second Kra appeared and then a third, not on the roadway, but on a hillside overlooking the far side of the bridge. The machines took cover behind big boulders and soon were joined by two more Kra. All began firing at Davis's vehicles. The rearmost Humvee exploded into a ball of flame.

Over the din of battle, Davis shouted into his radio, "Concentrate your fire on the explosives under the bridge. We've got to blow the darned thing." A moment later the base of each bridge piling came alive with flying dust and dirt thrown out by a hail of bullets, but the charges still refused to explode. The Kra worked their way down to the bridge and came together in a phalanx formation, bristling with laser fire.

"Keep shooting," Davis shouted. "We're lost if they make it across."

As the first Kra stepped onto the bridge, the nearest Humvee gunner clattered a stream of bullets over it but it pressed forward, feeling no effect other than a slight denting of its metallic skin. Then a round from a Bradley's 25mm cannon struck a knee joint and took the fighter-walker down. The other four Kra gathered around it and raised a blinding hail of laser fire, concentrating on the Bradley that had done the damage. Taking multiple hits, the Bradley burst into flame.

Davis groaned. "Just one tank, God."

Before he finished speaking, his driver tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. "There, sir! Just what you asked for."

Roaring around the bend in the road behind the Kra was something that made Davis's jaw drop: not another enemy, but—an Abrams tank! It came from behind the Kra without warning, rolled to within twenty yards of them, and halted for a clean shot with its 120mm cannon. The round hit a machine in the middle of the pack and it exploded. Arms and legs flew in all directions.

A voice came over the radio. "This is Fox Two, Lieutenant Abercromby, reporting for duty."

"Halleluiah!" Davis shouted. "Get 'em, Crom."

The tank's gun roared again and a second Kra exploded. The other machines had by now identified the source of the threat and turned to face it. They sent a barrage of laser fire against the tank and its metal skin sputtered molten iron where the bolts struck. But its cannon fired again and a third Kra erupted in flame. Then, with three of the five enemy destroyed and another down, the tank's engine raced and it rolled onto the bridge. A wild shot from the last standing Kra glanced off its turret but the tank kept coming. It rode up and over the downed Kra machine, crushing it to scrap. Then it piled into the final Kra, sending him reeling backward. The fighter-walker teetered momentarily at the edge of a stone parapet and then toppled backward off the bridge, tumbling head over heels into the depths of the canyon. A seconds later there was a thunderous rumble as the machine shattered on the rocks below.

The tank rolled forward to the near side of the bridge and Crom poked his head up through the command hatch to give Davis a thumbs-up. Davis raised his radio transmitter and was about to remind Crom about the explosives lashed to the bridge, but the lieutenant scarcely hesitated. Once his tank came to a halt on the near side, its turret wheeled around to target the far abutment.

One well-placed shot set off the whole train of explosives, sending billows of flame and black smoke out from under the bridge. For a moment the roadway trembled and the wreckage of the Kra machines lurched one way and the other over its surface. Then, ponderously, the bridge crumpled in the middle and fell into the gorge, the Kra machines spinning downward with it. Everything vanished into a whirlwind of dust as the wreckage thundered onto the rocks below. A cheer went up from the troops and Crom waved a victorious fist in the air.

Davis enjoyed the sound of the cheering for a minute. Then he got on the radio. "All right everybody, let's get moving."

As his driver fired up the Hummer and pulled out, Davis took stock of the remnant of his force as it fell in behind. He was down to two Bradley armored vehicles and four Humvees, but now he could add one Abrams tank.

He sat and said to his driver, "It's not much of an army but it just might get us back to Colorado Springs." Before the view was lost around a bend, he looked back across the ravine and saw several new Kra machines cautiously observing from cover. He said, "It'll be a while before they find a way across that gap."

As the column pressed forward on the long haul back through Wyoming and Colorado to NORAD, Davis took a small measure of hope. For the time being, the Kra wouldn't be on his heels.

***

As the day's heat came up around Suarez's tank with the air conditioning off, the crew began to overheat. By noon all four were stripped to the waist and dripping with sweat. The smoldering wreck of the first sergeant's tank next to them had filled their interior with a suffocating burnt-rubber smell. Walt Hebert, the loader, was taking it the worst. Little streams of perspiration trickled over his ebony skin from head to foot and he began to get the shakes, panting and groaning like a hurt animal.

"I gotta get outta here, Captain," he pleaded. "Just let me go topside for a minute in the fresh air. They won't see me, I promise."

"No, we gotta sit tight."

"But I'm dying in here. My heart's gonna explode." Walt clutched at his chest and Suarez could see his heart pounding in his ribcage. His face was puffy and his eyes were starting to bug out.

Walt was the youngest man in the tank and wasn't used to the tight quarters. He was gonna lose it, Suarez knew, if they didn't watch out for him. Heat stroke could make a man delirious and Walt was on the brink.

"It's okay," Suarez soothed. "You'll make it all right, man. Just be cool. We'll get out of this somehow, no sweat." That was the wrong thing to say.

"I gotta have air!" Walt leaned back in his seat and rolled his head from side to side. "I can't breathe."

"Come on, soldier," Suarez snapped. "Maintain, man. They'd be all over us if you went out there."

Walt clamped his eyes shut and knit his brows, concentrating hard. He drew a long deep breath, blew it out, and then drew another. "Okay," he exhaled. "I'm all right now. Just had to catch my breath."

"Sure Walt, take it easy."

Walt settled back in his loader's seat beside the cannon breach, drew in another deep breath of the stuffy cabin air and exhaled again.

"That's good, man," Suarez told Walt. But he was thinking, _Now if I can just get my own heart to stop pounding._

Walt mumbled, "I wonder what it's like inside a tank when it explodes? It would be easy enough for me. I'm right in the middle of the ammo. I'd just splat like a bug on a windshield. But you guys, you're farther away. Maybe you'd get your legs blown off. Maybe you'd start burning."

"Shut up, Walt," hissed Pat Quinn, fidgeting with his gun sight. "None of us would be around long enough to write a book report."

Suarez drummed his fingers on the armrest of his command chair. It was going to be a long wait. He stood up from his seat and looked through the 360-degree periscopes of the command hatch cupola. Outside, the prairie shimmered with heat waves. Smoldering tanks and shattered walking machines dotted the battlefield. He didn't see many intact enemy but he saw enough. Four walking machines stood guard at the portal doors half a mile away and several more moved around among the wrecks salvaging parts, gathering bodies or whatever the heck they were doing. At the right-hand portal, two more walking machines escorted a captured Army supply-truck into the mountain's interior. Suarez could just make out what was in the truck's open back and it made him queasy: a dozen men in Army uniforms. Captured Fox Troop soldiers. Only God knew what awaited them inside. Suarez wanted to fire up the tank and do his best to save them but that was out of the question. To move an inch right now would mean certain death. A dozen enemy machines would be firing at them before they got up to full speed. "Maybe tonight we'll risk moving," he said softly. "Maybe not, but there'll come a time to move."

He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. Walt was resting easier now. The cabin grew quiet except for the sound of four men breathing. With Walt cooling it, the only fears Suarez had to face were his own. Just how long could they sit and stew? He didn't know. Would he be the next one to lose it? He didn't know that, either.

_Maria,_ he thought. _Pray for me. Ask the Lord to give me strength._

## CHAPTER 20

As the supply truck rolled into the catacombs beneath Sandstone Mountain, Ogilvey peered out the back opening and watched the tunnel entrance shrink with distance. Sitting with a group of captured soldiers, he felt his hope fade along with the daylight. A Kra fighter-walker trailed them and another was leading them to whatever fate awaited inside Arran Kra.

The Kra turned on their headlights, bathing the stalactite-covered ceiling in ghastly green light as the route twisted into the subterranean depths. Ogilvey's emotions were divided. One second, he was gripped by black fear, remembering the horrid procession carved on these walls and its gruesome outcome. The next second, his hopes would rise. What might his three confederates yet accomplish, if they were still free outside this hellish sub-world? For that matter, what might his own knowledge of the Kra and their language accomplish if he got the chance to speak? His guards hadn't listened as he'd made halting overtures. One had lashed out with a tintza rifle butt, bruising his cheek.

_I must find the right opportunity,_ he thought, _or everything Gar and I have worked toward will be lost._

The truck stopped and the rear guard opened his canopy and climbed out. With his tintza rifle, he motioned for the captives to get down from the truck. Then he ushered them along a dark side-corridor that opened into a huge room lit by a volcanic orange glow. A bolt of fear coursed though Ogilvey at the sight of the colonnaded walls, the immense pteronychus-headed idol, the friezes of cannibalistic feasting—it was the temple! And it was all too terrifyingly familiar. Flaming urns now lit the chamber and their acrid smoke hung in the air. A savage tribal rhythm throbbed on unseen drums. Not far from where he, Kit and Chase had once hidden, a huge cage had been constructed of dark metal bars. He and the other hostages were herded into this cell and as the steel gate slammed behind him, Ogilvey surveyed the gloomy scene: a dozen soldiers had been sitting or standing inside when the new contingent arrived to nearly double the population. All except him were captured survivors of the tank troop.

Trembling in the clammy air and weak in the knees, Ogilvey sat down on the stone floor. Peering through the half-light of the crowded prison, he saw that most of the men were wounded. Some milled around, gaunt and bandaged with shreds of their own uniforms. Others lay motionless. A man was sprawled next to Ogilvey, prostrate and semiconscious. Orange torch-light flickered in his half-lidded eyes. His right pant-leg was split open and a nasty-looking hole gaped where a laser had filleted his calf muscle. Despite a tourniquet above the knee, a large amount of blood had oozed out and pooled on the floor.

Sensing the man would bleed to death if left in this condition, Ogilvey leaned over and twisted the cloth tourniquet tighter. As he did, the man caught him by the shirt collar with a blood-mired hand, staring into his face deliriously. "They shot me up pretty bad, didn't they?" he mumbled. Then he coughed heavily. Sputtering and choking, he asked, "Where am I?"

"You don't want to know," Ogilvey replied. He took a good look at the man's face. The fellow was so pale and the cage so dim that he hadn't recognized him at first. But now he exclaimed, "It's you! Colonel MacIlvain! The man who nearly shot me!"

The colonel's hand lost its grip on his collar and slid down Ogilvey's chest, smearing him with blood. MacIlvain's eyes rolled back in his head and he turned his face away as if the sight of Ogilvey tormented him.

"What are they gonna do with us?" he asked.

"I don't know," Ogilvey lied. He sat for a moment longer but didn't like watching MacIlvain writhe. He got up and looked around the temple. Beyond the bars, the giant stone pteronychus face leered malevolently, bathed in shifting orange firelight. Drums throbbed with increasing intensity. The ornately carved walls danced in the torchlight, their scenes of bloody feasting brought alive by the flames. Ogilvey dared not speculate what was in store for him and the others. Nothing pleasant, he was sure.

***

In the previous night's escape, Gar had followed on foot while Chase piloted the fighting machine several miles overland from the ranch house to a hiding place Kit suggested. They had hidden deep in the scrub-brush of a gully where neither Kra nor humans were likely to find them. They had listened through the night as the sounds of battle faded on the far side of the ranch.

In the morning Gar made it clear by means of pidgin English and Kra-naga that he still intended to make peace between humans and Kra, no matter what the cost. For several hours, he tinkered with a spare kekuah cylinder retrieved from a hatch in the rear of the fighter, using his box of odd tools. Working with some bits of electronic gadgetry he cannibalized from inside his machine he puttered, hour upon hour, with what looked like an odd collection of spare parts. Chase tired of waiting with nothing to do. "What's he up to?" he asked Kit, who sat on the ground watching Gar work. "Repairing the laser?"

"Not exactly," she said. "He tried to explain but I'm not as good at Kra-naga as Dr. Ogilvey. It's something he calls vonv."

"Vonv?" Chase puzzled. "What's that mean?"

She shrugged. "Got me."

Gar decided to show them rather than tell. He held up the product of his labor for their inspection. The kekuah cylinder now had several wires and a small metal box attached to it.

"Ah-hah!" said Kit. "A bomb!"

Gar nodded affirmatively. "Vonv," he repeated through his fangs.

Kit smiled at Chase. "His teeth are getting in the way. It isn't a Kra word. It's English."

Within another hour Gar's device was operational. The tube of kekuah powder came to be swathed in colored wires and the box had a display window glowing with strange red symbols. In pantomime, Gar explained it was a timer that could be set in motion by a radio signal from his quahka. A button on the box's side, he explained, would illuminate a small green light that indicated the bomb had been placed and was ready. Pointing at Chase's wristwatch, he indicated that, once his radio signal had set the timer running, the digital numbers would decline and they would have a period of about ten minutes to escape.

"But what do we do with it?" Chase asked.

"I gonna show you," said Gar. Climbing into his fighting machine and leaving the cockpit canopy open, he motioned for them to follow him out of the gully. They made their way onto the switchback road leading to the upper prairie and Arran Kra. As they walked, Gar explained his plans and suggested, to dispel the suspicions of any Kra they might meet, that Kit and Chase walk in front of the quahka as if they were his captives. This was a wise precaution. As they came around the last turn leading onto the prairie they met two Kra who had dismounted from their fighting machines and were squatting in the shade of a pine tree. Both Kra stood and raised their tintza rifles as the party approached. Chase reached out to squeeze Kit's hand. "I hope Gar knows what he's doing."

"Me too," she whispered nervously.

"Leenkoo!" shouted Gar.

"That means halt," Kit whispered. They stopped with Gar overlooking them from his machine. The sentries eyed Kit and Chase with great interest. They had been sitting among the remains of a bloody meal. Dozens of gnawed pink bones were scattered on the ground, buzzing with flies. Nearby in the dust was a more disturbing sight: a pile of blood-soaked military fatigues and a discarded Army helmet. There was no escaping what the Kra had feasted on. "So that's how they clean up after a battle," Chase whispered to Kit. "They eat what's left of the enemy."

The sentries kept their rifles leveled at Chase and Kit until Gar hailed them with a Kra greeting. "Zootahn!" Chase recalled hearing it among the words Dr. Ogilvey had translated. Comrades, or something like that.

"Ick toto leetook," Gar went on, and the words had a surprising effect on the sentries. They lowered their weapons and fixed their eyes rapaciously on Kit and himself.

"Do you know what he just said to them?" Chase asked Kit nervously.

"Huh-uh. He said he's brought them more food!"

Chase looked up at Gar for a moment, wondering if the sincerity of the last three days had all been for show. The sentries approached until he could smell their fetid breath. Then Gar leveled the laser arm and fired two quick blasts. Both Kra dropped to the ground thrashing in their death throes. Each had a smoking hole in its chest.

Acting according to plan, Chase quickly mounted one of the Kra machines and Kit followed, settling in behind him as he snapped the canopy down. Gar lowered the canopy of his own fighter and moved off toward Arran Kra with Chase tailing him in their new prize. "Okay," Chase muttered. "That was the easy part."

On the prairie Gar sped his fighter to a swift run and Chase followed him closely. They headed for the left-hand tunnel of the citadel, dodging around the burnt hulks of tanks and fighting machines that littered the battlefield.

"I hope this works," Chase murmured. "Otherwise we're gonna end up like these guys." They passed one final smoldering tank and then were at the portal. They slowed to a walk as they neared two Kra sentries who lolled confidently beside their machines. Gar raised his machine's right arm in a salute as he walked past them into the opening. They responded with lazy salutes of their own.

It was Chase's turn to pass their scrutiny next. With only the dark tint of the canopy to shield him, he crouched low and Kit bent down too, lessening the chance the guards would spot them through the shadowy cover. When Chase raised the machine's right arm as Gar had, the guards returned his salute without looking them over closely.

"Whew," he wheezed as they moved into the tunnel entrance. "A shoot-out now wouldn't get us anything."

"Except dead," Kit murmured. She shuddered against his back and clasped her arms around him more tightly. He accelerated the machine a little, caught up with Gar and followed him into the gloom of the catacombs.

***

"An inescapable conclusion. That's what we have here," Ogilvey muttered to himself. He had looked around in every direction, searching—stupidly, he now realized—for some way out. He sagged, acknowledging the futility of any remaining hope. The bars of the cage were too sturdily constructed and its vicinity too heavily guarded to allow any real prospect of escape for him or the ragged soldiers interned with him. Outside the cage two Kra guards chatted quietly, their Kra-naga words obscured by the incessant drumbeat. But they were not the major cause of Ogilvey's sinking feeling. He watched with growing concern while two Kra, perhaps minor priests, washed and cleaned the stone altar beneath the idol's jaws. It looked as though they were purifying it for a ritual, the purpose of which Ogilvey could readily guess.

Then another Kra appeared on the raised altar platform whom Ogilvey immediately recalled from his first sojourn into the temple: Gar's co-commander, Oogon. He stood a head taller than his companions and moved among them with an air that seemed to intimidate even the other Kra. As before, he wore a headdress with double rows of long fiery red feathers sweeping back above the black feathers of his mane. In addition to his silver metal breastplate with ornate blood red enamel markings, braces of red feathers had been bound to his shoulders, elbows, knees and ankles to give him the appearance of a hellish Zulu general with the face of a dragon.

"Oogon," Ogilvey muttered to himself, "the High Priest of Death."

The frightful creature strutted back and forth underneath the idol in a fit of exultation. _I should feel honored_ , Ogilvey thought wryly, _to be a guest at Oogon's victory celebration._

The temple was slowly filling with Kra. As the two attendant priests finished sanctifying the altar, dozens of other Kra gathered in a recessed floor area below the altar. Oogon strutted, chanting softly to himself until the crowd filled the floor. Then he raised his arms to the demon god and bellowed, "Jalah Eng-Kan!"

The assembled Kra responded, "Tooveet Eng-Kan!"

Oogon launched into an invocation spoken so rapidly that Ogilvey could only occasionally catch the meaning. Raving about victory and greater triumphs ahead, Oogon pointed to the cage where Ogilvey and the soldiers were imprisoned, calling upward to the idol as if thanking the deity it represented. The other Kra shared his exuberance, bobbing their heads to the drum rhythm and punctuating his speech with tumultuous cheers that echoed powerfully in the chamber. Finally Oogon pointed a clawed finger at the cage and shouted, "Kootsah!"

The drumming immediately ceased and the Kra mob turned toward the cage expectantly. The nearest guard unlocked the gate and swung it open. Covered by the other guard's rifle, he stepped in among the captives. The men pressed back to the periphery to avoid him, but he had already selected his target. He went straight to MacIlvain and reached out a taloned hand.

The colonel's face filled with dread. "No," he pleaded, "Please..."

Other soldiers pressed forward to intercede but the guard outside growled and made it clear by gesture that he would shoot any man who laid a hand on his companion. The first Kra clutched MacIlvain's shoulder and roughly dragged him to his feet. The colonel seemed to realize the inevitability of his situation. He straightened and stood tall, shaking off any remaining fear. As the Kra pulled him toward the gate he paused momentarily by Ogilvey. "Sorry about the way things turned out."

"Yes." Ogilvey softly concurred. "Me too."

The Kra led MacIlvain hobbling out of the cage and latched the gate after him. As they crossed the floor to the altar, the crowd parted. The colonel walked as tall and bravely as his injured leg would allow, passing straight through the center of the bloodthirsty slavering Kra horde.

At the altar, Oogon barked a command and his two sub-priests sprang into action. They roughly stripped MacIlvain to the waist and then forced him down across the altar, stretching him out flat on his back. His empty brown holster hung uselessly over the edge of the stone block. The drumbeat started again and quickly intensified.

Oogon stood over the helpless colonel and renewed his raving incantation. Holding his arms up toward the stone idol's face he cawed, "Hoonahn, ke tooto—"

Ogilvey quietly translated the words to himself. "Hoonahs, like this one, are no more than animals. They have no spirits, despite their seeming intelligence. Soon, they will be nothing more to us than—livestock!"

The Kra horde, which had grown to forty or fifty individuals, roared its approval.

Inside the cage soldiers crowded around Ogilvey, gripping the bars and watching the proceedings in horrified fascination. Oogon pressed on with his oratory and Ogilvey continued his translation aloud.

"We Kra are the rightful rulers of this world. We lived here first and will rule Eka again. These mammals have no place here now. No place except... on the Altar of Death!"

A savage cheer reverberated through the chamber. The Kra acolytes held MacIlvain tightly across the altar. Oogon raised his head toward the blackness of the ceiling, let out a fierce shriek and then plunged his gaping jaws down onto MacIlvain's exposed belly. Poor MacIlvain screamed in agony as Oogon bit and jerked his head viciously from side to side. Sharp fangs tore into MacIlvain's body and pulled free a dark bloody mass.

"Good Lord!" Ogilvey gasped as the High Priest lofted the mass in his teeth. Oogon had, in a single bite, torn MacIlvain's liver from his abdomen. The colonel writhed in a death-agony on the altar as Oogon displayed the grizzly prize in his jaws and the Kra spectators roared in cruel delight. With a single motion, the High Priest tossed his head back and gulped the bloody mass down his throat. A new roar went up from the crowd as the outline of the liver slid down Oogon's long neck, gulped in a series of hard swallows.

MacIlvain lay on the altar, twitching in death and uttering a last expiring gasp. But Oogon was not content to let him succumb entirely through loss of blood. He spoke a word to the acolytes at MacIlvain's head and feet and they picked up and heaved the dying man onto the floor in front of the altar. The throng of Kra leaped on him, tearing out huge bites of flesh. Ogilvey averted his eyes from the frenzied rending and tearing as each Kra went in for his or her share.

As the horrid feast concluded and the temple drums settled back into a monotonous rhythm, Oogon and his acolytes formed a small procession leaving the altar and marching in stately fashion toward a dark doorway that exited the temple beyond the prisoner cage. Although Ogilvey was revolted by what he had witnessed and trembling in terror, he saw an opportunity as they passed. "Wait!" he cried.

Oogon stopped and looked him over coolly.

If he could just think of the words... "Ulan tzee-tah ne," Ogilvey pleaded in Kra-naga. "You must listen."

Oogon approached, looking him up and down imperiously.

He continued, "Gar netok," — "Gar says..."

At these words a fierce and hateful light filled Oogon's eyes. He thrust a hand between the bars and struck Ogilvey hard across the face, knocking him to the ground. As the professor sprawled on the damp stone floor Oogon snarled down at him, "Gar seestok en!" — "Gar is a traitor!"

The High Priest wheeled and strode away. Turning to one of the sub-priests, he cackled a few words. The acolyte nodded as they disappeared through the dark exit doorway together. Ogilvey put his glasses back on and dabbed at blood oozing from two claw-gashes on his cheek. He puzzled over what Oogon had said on his way out, turning the sounds over in his mind. A particular word had seemed familiar.

"Let's see," he mumbled. "nepoo... nepoo... um, oh yes, the plump one. That's it. The plump one dies next."

"Oh!" he exclaimed with a sudden chill running through him. He looked around at the soldiers. Every one of them was trim and lean, military fit. As he gazed at his own portly belly a soldier asked, "What did he say?"

Ogilvey replied glumly, "He said I have a weight problem."

***

In comparison to the catastrophe of the night before, the new day was kind to Matthew Davis. The Kra had not attacked his column since the showdown at the bridge. He had even managed a few hours of sleep in the back of his Humvee as it raced south along the highways of Wyoming and Colorado. Now, as morning turned to afternoon, he sat in the passenger seat slightly refreshed and thinking over his situation. The Kra certainly had the speed to overtake them but hadn't reappeared. The action at the bridge must have made it impossible for them to follow or convinced them close pursuit was too dangerous. No matter what had caused their reluctance, he knew he wouldn't breathe easy until he was underground again at NORAD. Even then his hopes would be bleak. With most of his force lost there was little he could do against the enemy from this point forward. The Kra had won. He knew that in his heart. How many times, he wondered, would he wish he had considered Dr. Ogilvey's offer? Could that old nut case really have arranged a truce? Would the Kra have bargained away their tactical advantage? The only question now was how long the Kra's mopping-up operation would last. Davis was determined it would be as long and painful as he could make it for them.

He thanked his lucky stars when Cheyenne Mountain came in sight and his Humvee led the little column up the charred approach road to the tunnel entrance. He could hear the whine of hydraulics, a third of a mile deep inside the tunnel, opening the massive iron doors to admit him. He spoke into his radio handset. "Okay, blast door controller, be ready to seal off the facility as soon as we get in."

"Roger," the static-filled reply came back.

While the convoy paused at the outer guard station, Davis looked nervously around the base of the mountain. He felt a heightened sense of danger. While on the highway, he had taken comfort from the convoy's movement and a notion they could get away from any pursuers. But with the vehicles moving slowly into the confines of the tunnel, things were different. As the checkpoint soldiers waved the column through and his Humvee entered the shadow of the tunnel he spotted a metallic glint several hundred yards away among the scattered boulders.

"I don't like being bunched up like this," he muttered to his driver as the column followed his Hummer in with the tank on watch at the rear. The thing on the hillside had looked too much like what he feared most—a Kra fighting machine crouching behind a boulder. Was his imagination going nuts on him after too little sleep and too much worry? He couldn't say.

Just as the tunnel cut off his view of the mountain, an explosion rent the air behind him. Davis wheeled around to see one of the two Bradleys engulfed in flame. Worse, he saw flashes of laser fire coming from every conceivable angle—an ambush! The tank's gun roared but Davis couldn't see the shell's effect as his Humvee raced deeper into the tunnel.

In seconds his driver pulled up to the internal checkpoint beside the outer blast door. Davis leaped out, ran to the entry guard station and shouted at the soldier positioned there, "Get that door closed!"

"Already closing, sir," the man replied. Indeed Davis could see the door moving inward although with agonizing sluggishness. In the meantime the two other Humvees rolled past him and stopped in a pullout area by the blast door, their crews leaping out and rushing through the narrowing opening. Then came the second Bradley, followed by the tank. The Bradley flew toward the checkpoint at a dangerous speed. Just when its driver should have hit the brakes, it took a laser round from one of the Kra machines. Davis watched in dismay as sparks and flame erupted from the top of the Bradley and it accelerated as a result of the explosion. It careened into the half-closed blast door, tipped over on its side, and exploded into flames squarely in the opening.

"Oh my God, no!" Davis moaned as the mangled door ground to a stop against the Bradley.

The last vehicle rolling was the tank. It stopped near Davis with its commander, Crom, staring in disbelief at the Bradley and the ruined entry door.

"Can you push it out of the way?" Davis called to Crom. A moment later the tank rammed the wreckage of the Bradley but it was too firmly wedged and there was no time to do anything else. Four Kra machines were coming down the tunnel toward them.

"You've gotta hold them here, son," he shouted at Crom, "until we get the inner door sealed."

Despite a hail of laser fire, Crom smiled grimly and saluted him. Davis found a small gap beside the blazing Bradley and squeezed himself in as the lieutenant called orders to his gunner and the tank's turret swung to point its cannon at the enemy. The first approaching Kra fighter sent several bursts of laser fire ricocheting off the skin of the tank, but the tank's gun roared in reply and the Kra machine exploded. The gun boomed again as Davis slipped inside and ran for the inner door, which by now was three-quarters shut.

Crom sealed his hatch and watched through the commander's gun sight as Quinn fired a round into another Kra fighting machine. It was a direct hit and the machine exploded. But as it fell backward in flames, two more immediately stepped forward to take its place, firing laser bursts that ricocheted off the tunnel walls. The tank's cannon roared again, and again an enemy fell. But now Crom saw something bad—really bad. Smoke was rising from his tank. They had pulled into the tunnel nose-forward and swung the turret around to face the rear. This left a weak spot exposed at the back of the tank, the engine compartment. The lighter armor there had been pierced by a laser shot. Now Crom nervously eyed the black smoke billowing up ever more heavily. The enemy temporarily ceased its fire, maybe reconnoitering after losing three machines. But when Crom saw orange flames rising up in front of his gunsight he knew it was all over. If his crew didn't bail out quick, they'd be toast—literally.

"End of the line, boys," he called out. "Abandon the vehicle."

The other crewmen climbed out their exit hatches and he followed, jumping down to the pavement as flames roared out of the engine compartment. "Come on," he shouted. "Let's move it before she blows."

The crew scurried through a narrow gap between the burning Bradley and the blast door. As Crom went in last, the tank's fuel reservoirs ruptured and a huge fireball filled the tunnel behind him. There was no time to gawk at the spectacle. Someone shouted that the inner blast door was almost closed and they rushed to it, squeezing in just as its gap narrowed to the point where a man could barely force his chest through. Seconds later the door slammed tight and Crom leaned against it, panting and eyeing his crewmates. He could hardly believe they were all with him inside NORAD, unburnt and in one piece: his driver, his gunner, his loader and—he breathed a sigh of relief—himself.

A female Air Force security officer stood in the whitewashed concrete hallway. She saluted and said, "Welcome to NORAD, sir."

"Glad to be here," Crom replied, still amazed he wasn't burnt or crushed to jelly by the door. "Can you show me where to get a weapon to defend this place?"

"Yes, sir," the airwoman replied.

# PART FIVE: The Most Desperate Hour

## CHAPTER 21

The time between Ogilvey's interpretation of Oogon's death sentence and its implementation was mercifully brief. The drums picked up rhythm as soon as the Kra had cleared the remains of their first victim from the temple floor. When the two guards came for him, Ogilvey went out quietly. His spine tingled as they escorted him through the mob of Kra hissing in anticipation of another blood-orgy. His knees felt weak mounting the altar steps with the horde appreciatively eyeing his arms, legs and belly in anticipation of a feast. No sooner had he reached the altar than Oogon strode from a dark doorway, bedecked in scarlet feathers and in the company of his two sub-priests. The High Priest looked at Ogilvey with the approving gaze of a meat inspector eyeing a side of beef.

"What a shame," Ogilvey said to him. "We could have taught each other so much."

Oogon squinted at him harshly and muttered, "Olekek tu vatta!"

Ogilvey pondered the translation for a moment. "Shut up and die."

As Oogon took his place beneath the monstrous idol's jaws, he motioned to the acolytes, who tore Ogilvey's shirt from him in tatters. They clutched his arms, lifted him off his feet and threw him on the altar. One sub-priest held his hands and the other his feet, stretching him tightly across the stone slab. He swallowed his terror as a horrific cheer went up among the Kra. "How many times," he mumbled, "have I dreamt of meeting pteronychus in the flesh? This was never how the dreams ended."

Oogon lifted his head and issued his shrill cry. The drums beat louder. He raised his hands and began the incantation that had preceded MacIlvain's sacrifice. "Jalah Eng-Kan!"

The Kra horde responded in unison. "Tooveet Eng-Kan!"

Oogon stepped near Ogilvey and another, louder cheer resounded through the temple. Standing over him, Oogon leered approvingly at the soft, white, and all-too-vulnerable belly flesh. The drums pounded louder. Saliva dripped from the deadly fangs and split-splatted on Ogilvey's belly, causing him to mutter, "Carnivory at its worst, that's what we have here." Trying to be brave, he chuckled, "So this is what they mean when they say you're consumed by your work."

***

Chase steered the Kra fighting machine down the corridors of Arran Kra, following the tail end of Gar's machine. It seemed they had descended halfway to hell. He was still getting the hang of the driving controls and, more than once, steered the machine into a wall or against a stalagmite rising from the floor, having to rely on the machine's fine motor skills to avoid a fall. The quahka would stagger but automatically regain its balance and move forward again.

In a dark corner of one tunnel, Gar paused his quahka beside a massive wall of stalactites. Sometime in the distant past a fissure had opened in the bedrock here, cleaving the tunnel from ceiling to floor. Over millennia the split had filled with sheet-like, flowing limestone formations that almost completely sealed off the tunnel. Gar raised the canopy of his machine and pointed to a narrow vertical gap penetrating the surface between two massive stalactite columns.

Chase stopped his machine, hunkered it down and opened the canopy.

"Tee nu deekoo," said Gar.

"This is the place," Kit translated.

As Chase and Kit climbed down from their fighting machine Gar closed his canopy, turned into a side tunnel and left them. By pre-arrangement, he was heading for another destination. But their objective was here. When the clank and whir of Gar's machine had faded away in the blackness of the side tunnel Kit whispered, "We're on our own."

They moved to the gap in the rock wall, from which a shaft of white light slanted into their dark corridor. Chase glanced through the small opening and was astonished at what he saw. On the other side of the veneer of flowstone was a chamber as large as an airport hangar, lit by harsh white lights high in its cavernous ceiling. In the center of this wide subterranean space were their objectives: two flying machines of silver metal, shaped like manta rays and about forty feet wide from wing tip to wing tip—Kra fighter aircraft.

He glanced around the interior of the chamber. As Gar had explained by pantomime and gestures, massive piles of boxes and crates filled much of the sepulchral space. These contained thousands of kekuah power cylinders. This was the main armament storeroom of the citadel.

"It'll make a big bang when it goes," he whispered.

Kit crowded her head near his to get a look. She pointed beyond the more distant aircraft. There, two Kra warriors guarded an entrance tunnel on the opposite side of the chamber.

"Reception committee," Chase murmured.

"What are we going to do?" Kit asked. "They'll see us."

"See me," he corrected. "You're waiting here."

"Oh no, I'm not," she protested in a whisper.

"Listen," he hissed. "There's no reason for both of us to risk going in there. You know how to drive that thing, don't you?" He pointed at their fighting machine.

"I think so."

"If they spot me, don't hang around, okay? Just take off."

"No." She looked at him earnestly in the dim light. "I won't run off and leave you."

He scowled. "I'm not going in there until you tell me you'll try to get away."

She shrugged her shoulders and said with a note of sarcasm, "Okay, my gallant hero. I promise to leave by myself if they catch you."

He pointed a finger at the tip of her nose. "And no heroics."

"You'll handle that yourself, right?"

"Don't worry," he replied. "I won't try anything fancy. I'm no Indiana Jones." He fetched the kekuah bomb from the walking machine and returned to the opening. He spun his cap around with the bill backwards on his head. Then he tried to think of something to say to Kit that would be a suitable farewell if he didn't make it back. The words weren't there. His mind was a jumble of thoughts. He caught her by the arm, planted a kiss on her lips and said, "Wish me luck."

She hugged him and whispered, "Just hurry and get back here."

"Believe me, I won't be in there any longer than I have to." He began squeezing himself into the opening with one shoulder high and one low to fit the vertical space. The gap was narrower than he thought, and crowded above and below by flowstone into a small window. Try as he might, he could not force both shoulders through the opening. He backed out and turned to Kit. "I can't get through."

She stared at him for a moment in surprise. Then she put out her hand and said, "Give me the bomb."

"What?"

"Give it to me. I'm smaller than you. Maybe I can get through."

"No way." He held the bomb out of her reach. "How you gonna handle those guards if they see you?"

"Well, what were _you_ going to do? Point a sharp stick at them?"

"I hadn't really thought about it."

She lunged and grabbed the cylinder from him. "Now stand back," she said. "Sometimes being smaller has its advantages."

"This is a bad idea," he muttered as she climbed up on the flowstone. She paused at the brink of the gap and impulsively threw an arm around his neck, pulling him to her and kissing him harder than he had kissed her a moment before. "Wish _me_ luck," she said, although her bravado was tainted by a faint tremor in her voice.

"I do," he whispered.

She crawled into the opening. As she forced herself between the stalactite columns, the damp chill of the slime-covered walls soaked through her shirt and set her heart pounding. The space within the gap grew narrower as she drew herself in. With one shoulder above the other as Chase had done, she pulled herself forward, half-wriggling, half-crawling across the slimy surface like a salamander. Just as her head and shoulders emerged into the light of the hangar, her hips stuck at the narrow point. She kicked her feet, which had lifted off the floor behind her, but her hipbones only wedged in tighter.

Exposed in the glare of the hangar lights, she began to panic at the thought of being seen by the Kra guards. Fortunately they were gabbing idly and staring away from her into the far hallway, from which the pulse of a distant drumbeat came. She reached out and found a handhold on a muddy stalagmite ahead of her, gritted her teeth and pulled hard. Her hips came free and she tumbled down the hangar side of the stalactite wall.

She was through.

She glanced quickly at the guards, worried they might have heard her fall, but they seemed enthralled by the drums' increasing volume and tempo. Her heart hammered as hard as the drums, goaded into high gear by the chill moisture on her skin and the dank musty smell of the place. She forced herself to inhale slowly to calm the fear racing through her. Then she turned and looked back through the opening at Chase. He gave her a thumbs-up sign that helped a little. At least _he_ seemed confident.

She looked around the inside of the chamber. The area near her was a forest of huge stalactite columns stretching from ceiling to floor. She moved into the shadow of one of these, peering around it at the nearest aircraft, twenty paces from her across the starkly lit floor. An inviting shadow lay under its wing. Beyond that and past the second ship, the guards chatted in their almost inscrutable language. Now, if she could just find the courage to dash across the lighted space...

Drawing a deep breath, she stepped out from behind the stalactite—and immediately leaped back. One of the guards had turned to look around the room. She froze behind the column, her heart in her throat, wondering if it had seen her and was rushing her way. Instead, the guards' placid conversation resumed. Pausing to collect herself, she peeked around the column again. The guards' attention had returned to the drumbeat. She scurried across the exposed hangar floor to the wing shadow, stopping beside a landing strut to let her heart quit racing.

A pylon was slung under the center of the wing with a huge gun barrel attached. It looked like the light cannon of a Kra walking machine but much larger. _That'll do nicely,_ she thought. Creeping to it quietly, she began searching for a place to rig the explosive charge.

***

Despite resolving to die bravely, Ogilvey found himself cringing under Oogon's cold gaze. Trying vainly to wriggle his belly away from the jaws of impending death but held tightly in place by the attendant priests, he had no choice but to look up into Oogon's baleful eyes. There was no escaping the fact that this demonically feathered monster would, in another moment, mete out a horrible death. He racked his brain for something to say, something in Kra-naga that would make the High Priest change his plans. But for once words failed David Ogilvey, both English and Kra-naga. His mind blanked with terror.

Oogon's incantation seemed to go on interminably as the drumbeat swelled and the Kra horde chanted insistently. The High Priest delighted in orating about hoonahs being God-given food for the Kra. Meanwhile the miasma of smoke from the urns made Ogilvey dizzy and nauseous. At last Oogon pronounced the climactic incantation, "Jalah Eng-Kan!"

"Tooveet Eng-Kan!" the massed Kra voices replied.

Oogon raised his hands to the stone god, issued a ferocious cry and—

The drumming stopped.

Ogilvey's heart pounded crazily. The awful moment of his death had arrived. But a commotion arose among the Kra at the far end of the chamber. Oogon turned his head and Ogilvey followed the High Priest's gaze. A quahka had entered through a dark portal and raised its canopy. In the cockpit sat—

"Gar!" Ogilvey cried in disbelief.

Gar uttered a bold challenge. "Nesooka, Oogon-hoo! Toto neko han."

Ogilvey silently translated. "Stop, Lord Oogon! Release my friend."

But how could Gar possibly hope to succeed?

"Saurgon-hoo deesotoh," Gar continued in powerful tones. "Lord Saurgon is dead. How else could the beam cease its work? And now your vote and mine are equal. As High Priest of Life, I say you must stop the killing. The hoonahs shall live."

"Kreeteegah!" Oogon cried in a rage. "Never shall it be so! The hoonahs will die!" Swiftly, he ducked behind the altar and came up with a tintza rifle. He fired a shot that narrowly missed Gar's head and chipped a shard of rock from a pillar behind him. Gar replied with a shot from his quahka's laser that missed Oogon but hit one of the attendant priests. The other attendant and the guards scattered. Gar fired another shot, but Oogon was moving too quickly to make a good target. He leaped away from the altar as other Kra began firing tintza rifles at Gar. Caught in a quickly intensifying firefight, Gar closed his canopy but kept firing his laser. One Kra fell and then another in a bedlam of shrieking, roaring, and laser fire. Shots glanced off the machine from all quarters but none hit a weak point. Meanwhile, Gar's cool and precise shots accounted well. In seconds, four Kra sprawled lifeless on the floor and the remainder scattered into shadowy doorways and niches around the temple. Those who had rifles fired sporadically and drew return shots from Gar.

Ogilvey suddenly found himself free, with one sub-priest dead and the other shooting at Gar from behind the altar. He tumbled onto the floor and his hand contacted, of all things, a tintza rifle dropped by the dead attendant. He quickly gathered the heavy contraption from the floor and did his best to level it at the second sub-priest. He pulled the trigger and a bolt of white-hot light ripped through the Kra's breast armor and went out the other side. Letting out a short, shocked cry, the creature keeled over and was dead by the time it hit the floor.

Bolstered by success, Ogilvey stood and glanced around the room. Gar was under fire from all sides and sooner or later a shot would find a weak spot in his machine's armor. Something else was obvious to the professor as well. Although the Kra were concealed from Gar, they were quite exposed from where he stood.

"Okay David," he muttered to himself, "you can play peacemaker tomorrow." He rested the heavy tintza rifle on the altar, singled out a Kra shooting at Gar from behind a pillar, aimed the weapon at him and squeezed the trigger. The creature fell dead with a hole blasted through its heart.

"Hah!" the professor exulted, taking aim at another Kra crouching behind an urn. "Like ducks in a pond." He fired and the Kra fell with its head blown open. "This is against all my paleontological instincts," he mumbled, choosing another Kra firing from a niche and pulling the trigger. "Destroying fine specimens. An irony of classic proportions," he babbled as the creature toppled. "A paleontologist killing off dinosaurs rather than studying them!"

Then a thought struck him. Where was Oogon?

The High Priest had vanished from the altar but Ogilvey didn't need to look far for him. He crouched behind the lower jaw of the stone idol, firing a tintza rifle again and again at Gar, the red feathers of his headdress dancing madly around his demonic face.

Reacting quickly, Ogilvey fired a shot that went over Oogon's head and shattered one of the idol's stone teeth. Oogon, seeing that he was out-flanked, turned and ran into the darkness beneath the idol's chin. Ogilvey took another hasty shot but the _chink_ of shattering stone told him he had missed his mark. The High Priest disappeared down a hidden passageway.

Not so, the other Kra. Ogilvey picked out another and shot it. Caught between his fire and Gar's, more Kra fell. Finally, the survivors retreated through whatever exits they could find, leaving the temple empty except for Gar, Ogilvey, the soldiers, and a dozen dead or dying Kra.

Gar moved his machine to the soldiers' cage and blasted the lock off the gate. The men cheered, burst out and scattered around the room picking up weapons of the fallen Kra. Now they had a chance. Ogilvey hurried to the fighting machine and Gar raised the canopy, cackling, "Good shoot, Ogil-vee."

"Ih-hee-hee!" geezed the paleontologist. "I am a terror with a laser rifle, aren't I?"

Gar turned his head, listening to a noisy clatter in one of the larger tunnels, heralding the approach of another quahka. He pointed to the rear of his cockpit and cawed, "Ogil-vee get in."

The paleontologist climbed up the machine's leg as swiftly as his short round body could manage and settled in behind Gar, who shouted to the soldiers, "Hoonahs! Follow us!" The soldiers gathered around the quahka, covering their retreat with captured Kra weapons as Gar steered the machine out the doorway through which he had entered the temple.

***

Kit knelt in the shadows under the flyer's fuselage, finishing the job of fastening the kekuah bomb to the laser cannon. She pushed the button on the box at the end of the cylinder and the green light came on. Surprisingly, the Kra numbers immediately began flashing through their countdown to detonation. A jolt of adrenaline rushed through her. She and Chase only had ten minutes to escape with their lives! She was about to move back toward the opening in the stalactite wall when a bedlam of shouts and ripping laser fire replaced the sound of the temple drums. An alarm blared. The guards immediately went on alert and began searching the hangar. One of them spotted Kit in the shadows. Uttering a reptilian hiss, he dashed toward her with his companion following a few paces behind.

Kit got up and sprinted for the rock wall. "Chase!" she shouted. "They've seen me."

By the time she reached the stalactite wall, the Kra were almost upon her. She leaped at the opening and began clawing her way through. Chase grabbed her hand and pulled. But at the same time she felt taloned fingers grasp her ankle and drag her back toward the hangar. There was a fierce tug-of-war between Chase and the Kra with her as the prize, but the two Kra outmatched Chase's strength and dragged her backward. As she slid back, Chase's curse of frustration told her he would be no further help. She clutched at every possible handhold in the rock opening, but a stalagmite broke off in her hand and she tumbled onto the hangar floor.

One Kra leaned down to grab her but the broken stalagmite offered one last hope. Using it as a club she caught the creature with a sharp blow to the head. He reeled backward and went down. She got up and dashed behind a thick stalactite column.

A desperate game of cat-and-mouse ensued, in which she dodged between columns with the second Kra in pursuit. She eluded him until the first Kra got up and joined the chase, coming at her from a separate direction. Working together, they managed to corner her against the flowstone wall. She raised her stalagmite club to defend herself.

"Who wants it first?" she shouted bravely.

Chortling with fierce glee, the two Kra closed in slowly with clawed hands raised...

Just then a heavy thud made the wall lurch behind her. She and the Kra froze momentarily. A second, heavier concussion ripped the wall open, sending her and the guards sprawling in separate directions as chunks of flowstone clattered all around them. When a fighting machine stepped through the opening, the Kra assumed it was friendly and cackled a greeting. Before they realized this was no friend, the quahka leveled its laser arm and killed them with two quick shots.

The canopy raised and Chase sat at the controls, grinning. "Well," he said, "don't just stand there."

Kit quickly climbed aboard the fighting machine and threw her arms around Chase. She began covering his face in kisses, but he had no time for formalities. He pushed her unceremoniously into her seat and pointed at the aircraft. "Aren't we due for an explosion soon?"

"Sooner than you think!" she cried. "The timer's been running quite a while."

Chase slammed the canopy down and steered the machine back through the hole in the wall. He floored the foot pedal and the machine sprinted along the tunnel going back the way they had come. Still hampered by inexperience, Chase negotiated the turns more by careening off the walls than by driving. A wrong turn slowed them among unfamiliar tunnels where Kra bearing tintza rifles and other weapons rushed past in all directions. Somehow, Chase eventually reached the final straight stretch leading out of the mountain. A circle of starlit sky was visible ahead.

"Why are you slowing down?" Kit demanded when Chase backed off the throttle.

"Those." He nodded toward the circle of sky, which wasn't entirely empty. Silhouetted against the sky glow, two shadowy Kra fighting machines stood at the entrance, facing inward.

"Any bright ideas?" Chase asked. He let up further on the foot pedal and the machine halted twenty feet from freedom. Over the wail of the alarm siren, a loudspeaker from one of the Kra machines projected a string of harshly cackled orders. The guard seemed to be saying, "Halt, who goes there?"

"We haven't got time for Twenty Questions," Chase muttered.

Both Kra raised their laser arms and leveled them at Chase's machine. Then the tunnel floor beneath them rocked from an explosion in the bowels of the mountain. The bomb had detonated.

"What do we do now?" Kit cried.

"This!" Chase yanked the right-hand control and the machine's laser arm swung up and fired off two shots in quick succession. One Kra machine, hit directly under the fuselage, burst into flames and toppled. But the second quahka was struck a glancing blow that ricocheted off its canopy. Its driver returned fire and hit the laser arm of Chase's machine. "Uh-oh," he muttered in dismay as it sparked and dropped uselessly to the side.

Seeing they had no weapon to fight with, the Kra moved its laser arm slowly and deliberately, taking careful aim.

At the crucial instant when the Kra fired, the ground shook violently from a second detonation. The Kra's shot went wide and Chase let out a maniacal howl. Pushing the foot pedal far forward, he raced his machine straight at the Kra before it could aim its laser for another shot. Simultaneously, the pressure wave from the second, much more powerful explosion struck from behind. The blast was so forceful that their fighter was picked up like a leaf and thrown face-first into the Kra machine. A hurricane-like blast propelled both machines out of the tunnel and cartwheeled them through the air. Kit and Chase were thrown about madly as their quahka hit the ground and tumbled down the mountain slope.

When it finally stopped moving, the quahka lay in a heap at the bottom of the slope with its arms and legs tangled. Kit and Chase climbed out through a split in the canopy and ran a few paces, diving to the ground when the shattered machine exploded in flames behind them.

The Kra machine lay nearby, as badly mangled as their own. The driver lay beside it, crumpled and motionless like his vehicle.

"Look at that!" Chase cried, pointing into the air above them. A mushroom cloud of incandescent orange flame rose above the peak of Sandstone Mountain. The entire mountainside was enveloped in smoke and flame and the ground trembled from the force of more detonations raging below.

"It's a chain reaction," Chase suggested, "tearing the guts out of the mountain."

Kit got to her feet. "I expected fireworks, but not like this."

The inferno within the mountain cast a red glow onto the bottom of a dark anvil-shaped cloud that towered into the sky, blotting out the stars.

Chase stood, rubbing at a sore spot on his flank. "You all right, Kit?"

She felt herself all over for injuries. "Some bruises and scrapes, but no serious damage. The worst is a banged-up knee." She tried gingerly putting her weight on the sore leg and it seemed okay.

"Come on then," said Chase, offering an arm to steady her. "Let's get moving. It's a long way back to the house."

"Hoo-ahh!" Suarez cried, looking through his infrared night scope. The screen amplified the heat rising up from mountain until the triangular peak looked like a volcano.

"Man, that's what I call sabotage." He watched the billows surging up into the heavens for a while. Then he spotted two human figures, a man and a woman. He was walking, she was hobbling fast, silhouetted by the infrared light. They skirted his tank on the right, heading in the direction of the ranch house. Moments after they passed, Suarez saw something disturbing. A group of Kra fighting machines emerged from the portals and fanned out across the prairie as if searching for the source of their troubles.

"We've still got to lie low," he said to his crewmates. "It's like a stove-in hornets' nest out there."

***

The tank in NORAD's entry tunnel burned for almost an hour. General Davis, Major Lewis and several other officers watched the smoke and flames on TV monitors in the command center, thankful that the blaze was keeping the Kra at bay. But as soon as the fire died down, a monitor caught glimpses of enemy activity at the jammed outer door. A group of fighting machines managed to climb across the overturned Bradley and from there nothing stopped them from reaching the inner blast door. A few minutes later, the monitor screen went blank and Davis felt, more than heard, the rumble of heavy explosions he knew were tearing at the inner blast door, or its hinges.

Eventually, one concussion was accompanied by a much louder roar. A voice came over the intercom, "Inner blast door breached."

"That's it," muttered Davis. "Our last line of defense is down."

Within minutes the command center's TV monitors showed hallways where NORAD troops were engaging Kra fighting machines, putting up a stiff resistance. Davis had seen to it that soldiers were stationed at every useful fire-point and now they were giving their all, every step of the way. But nothing Davis saw on the screens offered hope of more than a protracted last stand in an underground inferno.

Wearily, he looked at the wall display that had once shown tactical maps of North America and the world. Now the scope of the electronic projectors had been narrowed to map the corridors of NORAD itself. Red lines traced the tunnels already lost to the Kra, while those still held by NORAD were traced in blue. The amount of blue was shrinking by the minute.

Lewis pointed at a monitor showing a Kra machine in flames, cut down while trying to take a heavily fortified position. She smiled bleakly. "At least they're taking as many casualties as we are."

"Maybe more," Davis muttered, "but they keep coming, don't they? At this rate they'll overrun us completely before dawn. All that's left now is to make them pay dearly for victory."

His voice trembled, in part because he was fiercely proud of his men and women. At every turn of the tunnels, every steel doorway, there was a lethal exchange of fire and both sides were dying valiantly. He glanced around him at the taut faces of his officers and staff.

"Well, people, it seems we've come to the end-game. It's been a privilege to be your commanding officer. I only wish I had led you better." He looked at the grim faces of the Army, Navy and Air Force and Marine junior officers and enlisted soldiers around him. "I know you'll account for yourselves well when the enemy comes to this room. Find yourselves some good defensive positions and give 'em hell."

He picked up an assault rifle from a desk and grabbed a box of grenades, then went toward his office door as the group spread out around the command center, hastily arranging fire-points from file cabinets, furniture and upended tables. There was a round of clicks as they checked their ammo clips. Then a muffled explosion rocked the command center and everyone turned anxiously toward the TV monitor that showed the corridor outside the door. It was filled with billowing dust and against that backdrop were silhouetted the CVC-helmeted heads of several men at a barricade of crates and boxes. Davis recognized one of them: the tank commander, Abercromby, a particularly good soldier. He wished he had taken the time to say goodbye to him.

The glittering silver form of a Kra fighter-walker appeared on the screen, striding out of the dusty haze and immediately raising an arm to fire a laser round. The troops in the corridor unleashed a volley of automatic rifle fire and a hail of sparks peppered the fighter, without effect. The bullets just glanced off its shining metal hide. Then Crom rose up with an anti-tank launcher on his shoulder and let loose an armor-piercing rocket. It traveled straight and true to the Kra machine, striking its nose and blasting it into a ball of flame. A cheer went up inside the command center as the blazing hulk toppled backward to the floor. Davis joined in with the last hurrah, but the cheers faded quickly as another Kra machine strode through the smoke and flame and raked the troops with its laser. The helmeted heads of Crom and the others fell away one-by-one. As they fell, the command center grew silent. The Kra stopped for a moment, pivoting right and left to observe the effectiveness of its fire. Satisfied, it strode forward past the camera's view.

Lewis had taken a position near Davis's office, behind a desk with a row of computers on it. She turned to him with a spooked look on her face. "That monitor's right outside," she said.

"I know," Davis replied. He leaned against his office doorjamb, preparing to steady his fire. The thud of an explosion outside made the iron door of the command center reverberate.

Lewis said softly, "It's been an honor serving with you, Matt."

Davis glanced at her and she gave him a thin smile. He nodded. "Likewise, serving with you." Her face looked tired but pretty under her helmet—and scared. Looking at her only made him feel more pain at what was inevitably going to happen to her, to him, to everyone, in a matter of seconds.

"There's just one more thing," she said, walking over to him.

"What's that?"

"A hug."

He opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace. They clutched each other tightly and he gave her a small kiss on the cheek. "Goodbye, Holly," he whispered.

"Goodbye, Matt."

She straightened and saluted. He returned her salute and she went back to her firing position. The door held against a second blast. But a third, stronger explosion bent it inward and a puff of dust wafted past the jamb.

Davis glanced at his watch, noting the time and date. "Five-and-a-half days," he muttered. "We held out for five-and-a-half days. Not much to write about in the annals of military history." He checked the clip in his M 16 and waited for the next blast, which he was sure would bring the door down. The grim vigil seemed to last an eternity. Davis wondered if this was the way it always went. Did time always stand still?

Then his eye caught a movement on a TV monitor. He couldn't believe what he saw. The Kra machine outside the door was walking away! It was moving back along the corridor the way it came in. There was a moment of stunned silence in the room. People stood up from their cover and watched the retreating machine, staring at the monitor until the Kra turned a corner and was gone.

"They're leaving," Lewis murmured. "But, why?"

As seconds ticked by, Davis's astonishment grew. "What in blazes?" he muttered. "They _had_ us. How do you figure?"

No one had an answer.

## CHAPTER 22

Sometime just before dawn Suarez dozed and was revisited by his feverish dream. He reached again for the blanket that hid his baby's face, feeling heart-stopping terror at what he might find. Maria was invisible in the darkness but her voice came to him calmly. "Everything's okay Vic. They're gone."

The morning sun seemed to come from nowhere, lighting her face. She smiled and a breeze blew her long shining brown hair across her cheek. "They're all gone, Vic. It's time for you to get moving, too. Vic?" She grasped his arm and shook him. "Vic, wake up."

He opened his eyes.

Maria wasn't there in the tank of course. But the cool breeze was real. Late last night, after the mountain stopped rumbling, he had cracked his hatch to let in some air. Now it was gusting on his face, fresh and cool, and the morning sun had angled in to wake him. He sat up and peered out from under the hatch cover. The mountain was torn open at the base and still fuming. Last night's miracle hadn't been a dream. The battlefield was still littered with burnt scrap-metal, but one thing was very different: there wasn't a single walking machine standing or moving anywhere.

His heart leaped inside him. "You're right, Maria," he whispered. "They're gone."

He threw open the hatch and thrust his head out into the glorious morning air. He looked left, looked right. Nothing. Back, front, nada. He smiled. Not a single Kra machine moving on the whole prairie. Nothing for miles around, except for a couple herds of dinosaurs peacefully grazing in the grasslands, making the scene look like a crazy mix of _Jurassic Park_ and _War of the Worlds_.

He called down into the tank, "All right boys, rise and shine. We gotta get this ramblin' wreck outta here."

"Wha—?" Ed Vecchio mumbled sleepily.

"Come on Eddie, fire this rig up. We're goin' home!"

***

Kit and Chase had escaped Arran Kra sometime around midnight, but their homeward progress was slowed by Kit's sore knee and a need to repeatedly hide from Kra patrols. As they walked down the last switchback on the road from the prairie, morning sunlight streaked the foothills. The last cricket songs were fading as they rounded the final turn that overlooked the house. Chase stopped to eye a fighting machine parked at the back door.

"It's okay," said Kit. "It's got Gar's insignia."

They hurried down the little footpath they'd climbed the other day and moved past the barn where Rufus was chuffing at a bale of hay he had dragged from the loft and spilled on the ground. Huey, Louie and Dufus romped in the pasture. Henrietta was settled firmly on the nest and showed no inclination to move. Lucky, Buck, and Nelda grazed contentedly near her, just inside a section of fence that had come down completely.

Kit and Chase approached the back of the house, with dawn light seeming to wrap it like a halo. Chase quickened his step but Kit clutched his elbow, favoring her left leg. He stopped and she bent to rub her knee.

"Banged up worse than you thought?" he asked.

"It'll be all right," she replied. But when she put weight on it, she winced. "The long hike has got it a little swollen."

On an impulse, Chase scooped her up in his arms.

"Put me down," she protested, but he ignored her and quickly carried her up the back steps, muscling the door open with a shoulder and letting her down lightly inside the threshold.

"Well, I'll be—!" cried Ogilvey, who was at the stove frying a pan of bacon. He grinned at them in long-toothed delight with a twinkle in his magnified owl-eyes. "Thank goodness you're all right. We had almost given up hope." He clapped Chase on the shoulder. "That was quite an explosion you made up there, son."

"We made," Chase corrected. "It never would have happened without Kit."

"Well then," Ogilvey grinned. "Congratulations are in order for both of you. Nice excavation work, Kit."

Gar was in the living room, hunkered down in the middle of the floor with his neck arched and his head resting behind his shoulder. He rose as Ogilvey hustled into the living room, followed by Kit and Chase.

"How about these two?" Ogilvey crowed. "Mission accomplished!"

"Gek kanah," Gar sighed.

Chase didn't get the words, but Gar's tone seemed unenthusiastic. "Well, don't get _too_ excited," he needled. "We must have wiped out at least half of them."

"Gah." Gar blinked slowly in a depressed-looking manner.

Kit touched Chase's arm. "Hey, go easy on that subject. I don't think Gar wants to hear about dead Kra."

"Oh, yeah," Chase said contritely. "I forgot he's on their side."

"The explosion," Ogilvey explained, "was bigger than Gar planned. He meant to decrease their war-making ability and thereby make his case for peace stronger. But the fire and subsequent explosions killed many more Kra than he intended. In any case," Ogilvey gushed with renewed delight, "it does both our hearts good to see the two of you safe and sound. We worried that the worst had happened when you didn't come home last night. The soldiers have already moved on. They fixed up a truck and left for NORAD."

"We'd have been here a lot sooner," Chase explained, "if we hadn't totaled our walking machine."

"Some driving lessons may be in order, eh boy?" Ogilvey remarked.

Chase let the comment slide. Kit sat on the couch and gingerly touched her puffy knee.

"Let me check that." Ogilvey bent to examine the injury. "I'm somewhat of a bone specialist, you know." He prodded and twisted until Kit grimaced. Then he straightened up. "I've seen worse. You'll want to put some ice on it."

Gar remained somber. Noticing, Kit asked him, "Are you all right?"

"Gah," Gar replied softly. His yellow eyes blinked glumly.

There was an emotion there, nearly indecipherable to humans, but Kit guessed what it was. "I'm sorry about your people," she said.

Gar stared at the floor. "Ikah-tat nagan."

Ogilvey nodded in comprehension. "Gar says you did the right thing."

After a moment of strained silence, Ogilvey went into the kitchen and turned off the burner under the crackling pan of bacon. "Come on everybody," he called. "Have a seat at the table. I've got bacon and eggs and hashed browns. Gar, maybe a raw steak will cheer you up."

***

A willow branch slapped the survivor's face, stinging his right cheek and stopping him in his tracks. He had been stumbling blindly through the scrub brush, stubbing his bare toes on willow roots, skinning his elbows on their trunks. Now he stood still a moment, collecting himself and rubbing the pain out of his cheek.

Where the heck was he? Who was he? He couldn't remember.

He had wandered out of the ruined citadel and then worked his way along this small willow-choked stream for hours. It was rough going without shoes or socks. His jailers had taken those from him days before. A while ago, he had spotted a half dozen of their fighting machines coming up the canyon, so he had decided to keep to the thickest part of the brush in the winding stream bottom. Eggshell Creek, that was its name. How did he know that, when his mind was blank about most everything else? His ears rang from last night's explosions and he was just about deaf. And fear that one of those creatures might follow him, catch him and kill him, gave him the shakes.

An open stretch of streambed surrounded by willows seemed a good place to stop and clear his mind. He sat on a boulder with his feet in the water and dug his toes into the sandy creek bed. The cool water eased the pain of his bruised toes and soothed his sore feet.

Memories came back in little bits and pieces. He'd been kept in a cage, a small one with barely enough room to stand up or lie down. But the cage had saved his life when the first explosion came and the roof caved in. Huge slabs of rock fell from the ceiling and crushed his jailers, but the cage kept the stones off him. The second explosion was so loud it had left a damnable ringing in his ears. And with the second explosion had come fire. An instant after the concussion a wall of flame had lit up the stone hallway and rushed into the chamber at him. He had pulled the covers of his bedding over himself as the flames overwhelmed him. And then he had shrieked and tossed the blazing bedcovers away, frantically swatting out the patches of fire on his tee shirt and pant leg. Mercifully, there had been nothing else flammable in the stone chamber so the flames had left him alive but writhing in agony on the damp floor. Overcome by smoke, he had passed out. When the pain of his seared skin awoke him, he had crept out the door of his cage, which was off its hinges. He had wandered the black corridors of the mountain for—how long?—maybe a few hours, maybe a whole day. But finally he had crawled out a small hole into the light of day. Now he meant to put as much distance between himself and the mountain as he could before nightfall.

He splashed some water on his face. Then cupped his hands and poured some over the top of his head to cool his overheated brain. After a few minutes the ringing in his ears let up and he heard something. A crashing sound sent a jolt of adrenaline through him. Something big was coming at him through the willows. Before he had time to stand, half a dozen large animals rushed out of the thicket. He slipped off the boulder and tumbled backwards into the stream, thinking he was a goner. But amazingly the creatures leaped over him and bounded off through the willows. After they had gone it dawned on him what they were. Elk. A small herd of elk running fast, like they had been spooked.

He sat up in the stream, soaking wet and gripped by a new urgent question. What had spooked the elk? The way they had jumped right over him, it must have been something they feared more than him.

The willows rustled. Before he could react, the elks' pursuer burst out of the undergrowth. It was—

A dog.

A black-and-white border collie. He laughed at the sight of it. When it saw him it immediately lay down on the stream bank with its two front paws stretched out. It gazed at him with friendly, warm brown eyes and panted a tongue-lolling doggie smile.

"Zippy!" he said without thinking. Then he started to chuckle. In response, the dog wagged his tail, splashed to him and licked his face, wiggling like a puppy. That got him laughing all the more. He had been prepared to meet death, but not Zippy. He hugged the dog and roared hysterically. He laughed till he cried. He could hear echoes of his laughter rolling off the broken face of the mountain. Sandstone Mountain. Things were coming back to him.

He let go of Zippy. The dog trotted a few paces away and stopped, waiting for him to come along. He stood up, dripping with creek water, and asked the pooch, "You know the way out of here, boy? I'm all turned around."

***

After breakfast, Kit, Chase and Dr. Ogilvey decided to create a window through the wooden patch on the back wall in order to keep a lookout from the kitchen. They went out and framed a small opening with two-by-fours and Kit steadied a painter's ladder while Chase climbed up and tacked a sheet of clear plastic over the hole. As Kit and Ogilvey stepped back to admire the result, they heard Zippy barking.

"What's he up to now?" Kit asked, turning to watch the dog trot down the hillside behind the house. "And who's that with him?"

Ogilvey shrugged. "I don't know. Looks like Zippy dragged someone out of a ditch."

The man was splotched with soot and muck and limping heavily but as he hobbled nearer, Kit's mouth fell open. "Daddy," she said quietly, not believing her eyes. Then she shouted, "Daddy!" and rushed to him despite her sore knee, like she was a little kid again and he had come home with candy. She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly and kissing his whiskery cheek over and over. Then she backed away and looked him up and down. "You look and smell like something the cat dragged in. What happened to you?"

He seemed dazed, but as he stared into her face a smile dimpled his scruffy cheeks. "It's a long story, Little Girl."

"C'mon inside, Daddy. We'll get you cleaned up." She took his arm and pulled him toward the back porch, but he paused to look over the patch on the kitchen wall.

"I leave you here a couple days," he mumbled, "and you wreck the place. Who are _these_ people?"

"You don't remember them?"

He took a good look at Ogilvey. "Oh, yeah, the dinosaur digger. I'll bet you're having fun."

"After a fashion," Ogilvey agreed.

"Let me tell you." Daniels pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "That was one crazy buncha overgrown lizards up there. That try-anna-saurus ate my new bull."

"Tyrannosaurus," Kit corrected as she'd done a hundred times before.

"And them other buggers, they caught me snooping around their spaceship and took me to meet the big reptile himself—Oogon."

Ogilvey's eyebrows raised. "You were held prisoner by the Kra?"

Daniels squinted hard at the professor. "How'd you know what they call themselves?"

"It's a long story," Ogilvey replied. "But I've seen them sacrifice other humans. Why did they let you live?"

"Well, they wanted to study me I guess. I seen 'em eat some people, though. It ain't pretty. But they kept me around because I was their first uh, specimen, you know? They wanted to learn English from me, which is a good joke on them. And they wanted to know how the Army's organized and how our cities work and our electricity and stuff like that—which I wouldn't tell 'em."

"So, when the mountain blew up?" Ogilvey prompted.

"Some of it blew up, you mean. Not the part I was in. There's still plenty of mountain left up there. I ducked out after the excitement was over. Gave 'em the slip and wandered around till Zippy found me. It's good to be home. I could use a change of underwear."

A noise came from the kitchen. Kit said, "Um, Daddy, there's someone else I want you to meet."

Daniels turned to take a hard look at Chase at the top of the ladder. "Howdy, Mr. Wolf-Chaser. Seems like we've already met."

Chase nodded down at him but Kit went on, "That isn't who I meant."

He gave her a quizzical look. At that moment Gar stepped onto the back porch. "Now Daddy," Kit began as Will staggered backward, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

"Sweet Jesus!" he cried. "You're living with the enemy."

"Calm down Daddy," Kit soothed. "He's friendly."

Her father regained his composure but squinted apprehensively at Gar as Kit made a formal introduction. "Daddy, meet Gar. Gar, meet Daddy."

"Dad-dee," said Gar, bobbing his head in greeting.

Daniels was at a loss for words. After a moment, Kit broke the silence.

"Gar helped us blow up the mountain. He's a good friend."

"Whew," Daniels wheezed, relaxing a bit. "Well then, I guess I'm pleased to meet you, Mister Gar."

He looked sidelong at Ogilvey for help. "Do I shake his hand?"

"No," Ogilvey said. "Just a nod will do."

Daniels nodded and Gar nodded back and said, "Gekkan-Ukek."

Ogilvey translated, "That's the traditional Kra greeting to a friend."

"Okay," said Daniels, looking at Gar in bewilderment. "Gekkan... You too."

The sound of barking at the front of the house made everyone pause. Kit said, "I wonder what's got Zippy all worked up?"

## CHAPTER 23

Chase caught the worried glance Kit gave him as she went into the kitchen heading for the front of the house. He came down off the ladder and followed her and the others as they went out onto the front porch. When he heard Kit say, "What is it Zip—?" and then, "Oh-oh," he stopped short and ducked to the side of the doorway. Pressing himself against the wall, he peeked out at a group of a dozen or more Kra warriors dismounting a semicircle of fighting machines that faced the house. Several aimed tintza rifles at Kit, Ogilvey, Will and Gar, who stood frozen on the porch. Kit glanced back at Chase with a look of desperation but he put a finger to his lips. She gave the barest of nods and then turned to face the Kra, leaving him undetected inside the living room. He ducked low and scurried to the kitchen, stopping to see if the Kra had spotted him. They hadn't. The first part of the plan coming into his head had succeeded.

Now for part two. Gar's machine was parked outside in back. Chase stole through the kitchen and as he went out through the pantry he had to suppress a chuckle. This rescue business was becoming routine. He stepped onto the back porch anticipating the Kra's surprise when he rounded the house with laser blasting. But it was his turn to be surprised. A tintza rifle came up under his chin. He held very still. On the other end of the tintza rifle was a Kra warrior, which cackled nastily as he raised his hands. It ushered him through the house to the porch with the others. Kit gave him a crimped smile. "Nice try," she said.

Zippy continued barking and circling until one of the Kra raised a tintza rifle and fired a shot that sent him scurrying off, yelping but unharmed. "Hey!" Kit cried, then thought better of making any more noise.

The gravel parking area in front of the house was half-ringed by the fighting machines and their dismounted drivers. Within this semicircle of leering and cackling warriors was a familiar figure wearing a headdress of blood-red feathers.

"Oogon," Ogilvey muttered. There was no mistaking the High Priest's ornate feather-fringed armor, his haughty demeanor and the evil glare in his red eyes. He came to the foot of the steps and uttered some enraged cackles and caws at a pace that only Dr. O could translate. The professor leaned near Kit and Chase and whispered, "He's just condemned us to death."

"Again?" Kit asked wearily, but a bit too loudly. The Kra behind them jabbed her in the ribs with his rifle. Seeing the act of cruelty, Chase doubled a fist, but thought better of using it.

Suddenly Gar interrupted Oogon's speech by raising an arm and calling out loudly, "Teenah!" which Chase understood to mean, "Wait!"

Gar strode boldly down the steps and went to the center of the encircling arc of warriors, where he began an oration in a loud voice, gesturing at Oogon and then at Ogilvey as he spoke.

Ogilvey translated, under his breath, for Kit and Chase. "Gar has invoked his authority as High Priest of Life to make a case for us, and for humanity. He says enough have died on both sides. He says that, thanks to him and to, um, well, me, the Kra and humans have opened a dialog that can lead to peace. He says this world has room for us all, Kra and hoonah—I mean, human—alike."

Among the onlooking Kra, a few nodded in agreement. Others remained hostile.

"Ka-a-ahh!" Oogon charged into the center of the group, confronting Gar with a long string of venomous words. Ogilvey translated these too. "Oogon rejects the peace offer and vows to recover his forces and press on with the attack. Gar counter-argues that, without Saurgon to vote in the matter, Oogon lacks the authority to overrule Gar's opposing vote."

More Kra nodded their assent.

Suddenly Oogon raised his hands as if appealing to a deity on high and shouted, "Kra a-koota!"

The mob of Kra fell silent. Oogon shouted the phrase again. "Kra a-koota!"

"Oh, my," said Ogilvey. "I've heard of this, but never thought—"

"Kra a-koota!" Oogon shouted again and this time many of the surrounding warriors echoed his words. "Kra a-koota!"

"What is it?" Kit asked.

"It is the only way the Kra can settle such a deep dispute between two equal leaders: a duel to the death."

Gar spoke a few resolute words and Ogilvey translated again. "Gar has accepted Oogon's challenge. He says if he wins, we go free and the Kra make peace."

Oogon bellowed his agreement and a roar went up from the warriors. As they cheered in savage anticipation, Oogon turned to a Kra near him and snapped, "Neggok! Kelloo aseetan."

Neggok, a high-level Kra officer by the look of his ornate armor and yellow feather trim, hurried to a quahka and returned with an armload of sickle-shaped knives. Gar and Oogon were each given two of these weapons, which they lashed to the insides of their ankles.

"It's— It's to be like a cock-fight," Ogilvey explained tremulously. "With blades attached to their feet."

"Like utahraptor claws," Kit observed in horrified fascination.

Once the blades were secured to each foot, the two combatants cast off their breast armor and helmets. As they began circling each other, the Kra formed a ring around them, shouting encouragement or repudiation as each saw fit.

Oogon attacked first. Rearing up, he directed a vicious kick at Gar's stomach. His foot lashed out with enough power to disembowel but the sickle failed to find its mark. Gar leaped aside and before his opponent could recover his balance, countered with a side-slash of his foot that narrowly missed Oogon's thigh. They separated, each still untouched, and resumed their wary circling. Saliva dripped from Oogon's jaws and from Gar's as well. Each combatant feinted forward and back, looking for a momentary advantage to close for a killing kick. Oogon leaped high, flailing with both feet, but Gar leaped up as well and parried with his feet, counter-slashing with his own sickle claws. Again, no thrusts found their mark. But at each flurry of kicks a roar went up from the Kra mob.

Now, Oogon tried a new strategy. He caught hold of Gar's arm and drew him into position for a gut-splitting kick. Gar twisted away and Oogon's foot missed its mark, narrowly. For an instant the two combatants stood off balance, side by side with their arms entangled, each trying to force his opponent into position for a fatal slash. Being equal in strength, they pivoted first left and then right in a circling death-dance that would end fatally for one of them.

Oogon lunged and sank his teeth into Gar's neck, giving a mighty shake of his head to set his teeth deeply into Gar's flesh. Blood gushed from a dozen wounds made by the dagger-like fangs. Kit turned and buried her face on Chase's shoulder but Chase kept his eyes on the fight. It seemed Oogon had won. Then Gar gave a mighty heave and momentarily pulled the High Priest of Death off balance. Pivoting his body to face Oogon's, Gar lashed out with a sickle-bladed foot—and struck true. The blow caught Oogon square in mid-gut and made a ripping sound as Gar's foot tore downward, laying Oogon's belly open wide.

Oogon pulled free of Gar's grip and staggered back. His face registered the reptilian equivalent of shock and disbelief. Gar clutched his bleeding neck and observed Oogon keenly. The Kra mob fell silent. A drizzle of blood spattered the gravel at Oogon's feet. The High Priest of Death wavered. Watching the red puddle spreading under him, he gasped for breath once, twice—and then collapsed.

But the urge to fight was strong in Oogon, and like a stricken prizefighter, he rolled to one elbow and tried to rise although he was weakening rapidly from loss of blood. His head drooped and a mantle of dullness clouded his eyes.

Gar looked around sternly at the silenced Kra. Slowly, boldly, he began to speak. "Toonag tettani hasto—"

Ogilvey whispered a translation. "By right of Kra a-koota, I am your undisputed leader. Lay down your arms."

The Kra began to comply but Neggok hissed defiantly. He leaped between Gar and Oogon, leveling a laser rifle at Gar and squawking a pugnacious streak of Kra words.

Ogilvey whispered, "This Neggok claims to be Oogon's second in command. Now he claims the title of High Priest of Death."

As Oogon collapsed in a final death throe, Neggok cawed shrilly at Gar. Ogilvey, gaping in amazement at the turn of events, continued to translate. "As the new High Priest of Death, he vows to carry on as Oogon did. He says all hoonahs must die, and those who help them as well." As shouts of acclamation from many Kra confirmed his ascension, Neggok called to several, who obediently leaped on Gar and forced him to the ground. They stripped him of his sickle weapons while their new leader uttered more Kra-naga words that Ogilvey translated. "Before you die, Gar, know this. We will retreat to the high valleys and make war on the humans again, and this time we will be victorious." A roar went up among the Kra, but Neggok silenced them with a gesture. He cackled a command, and one of the two Kra grabbed the feathers of Gar's mane, bending his head backward. The other raised a sickle blade to Gar's throat.

With all eyes focused on the crisis, Chase saw an opportunity. Unobserved, he suddenly sprinted to the end of the porch. Before his guard could react, he leaped aboard the nearest quahka and immediately powered it up. He snapped the canopy down just as his guard fired a tintza rifle shot. The laser glanced off the canopy and Chase returned fire, putting a huge hole through the warrior before he could fire a second shot.

As most of the Kra scattered for their quahkas, Chase leveled his laser arm at the two who held Gar. A quick shot put a hole through the one about to slash Gar's throat. The other dashed away, winged but not dropped by a second shot.

Next, he turned his weapon toward Neggok as the renegade rushed toward his fighting machine, sending a blast after him that narrowly missed. By this time, other Kra were getting their machines moving and Chase was threatened by potentially overwhelming firepower. Some of the quahkas backed away carefully, maintaining neutrality, but several fired laser blasts at Chase. Beams ricocheted off his canopy or missed by small margins. He returned fire, but one shot took out a knee of his walker. As it tumbled over sideways he hit the canopy release and rolled away on the ground just as another shot demolished the machine in a ball of flame. He tried to rise but as he reached his hands and knees, the laser arm of a quahka pointed in his face, just inches away. He straightened upright on his knees and held up his hands. The firing around him stopped and his captor's canopy raised. A Kra in green feathers cackled a triumphant laugh, covering him with the laser arm.

The Kra appeared divided. While some quahkas continued their cautious withdrawal, others crowded their machines closely around that of Chase's captor. As canopies raised, Chase recognized the leering face of Neggok, who muttered a few Kra-naga words that meant, if Chase understood them correctly, "Now, you will die."

Chase looked around desperately but saw no means to escape what was about to happen. Then a ripping noise cut the air. Just as he recognized it as the sound of an incoming artillery shell, the projectile hit the fighting machine that was covering him. The quahka exploded into smoke and flames and the green-clad warrior vanished. Detached arms and legs—mechanical and Kra—hurtled in every direction. The force of the explosion knocked Chase flat on the ground but left him uninjured. The rest of the Kra scattered in their quahkas as pieces of the demolished machine clattered around them.

Astonished, Chase turned and looked up the hill to see where the shot had originated. High on a switchback overlooking the house—was an Abrams tank.

Suarez kept his head tightly locked into his command gun-sight. "Target destroyed," he shouted to Quinn. "Pick another." As the enemy in front of the ranch house scattered, Quinn shifted the pointing angle of the turret slightly and took aim on a second machine. The gun thumped and the muzzle flashed and another round was on its way as Walt hefted a third shell to reload.

As the second shell completed its arc and demolished another fighting machine Suarez thought to himself _the best defense is a good offense_. He had sighted the enemy only a moment before as the tank reached the final switchback and came in view of the house. When he spotted the Kra he knew they would see him too. Without hesitation, he had ordered his men to open fire. Excitement and hope rose in his chest. Maybe this was the 'something good' he had told Crom to expect from Fox Troop's sacrifice.

Another round left the cannon barrel and a moment later another machine exploded, along with the Kra who had just climbed aboard.

"Keep 'em coming," Suarez shouted as the rest of the Kra dispersed in disarray. A fourth round missed its target when the fighter-walker put a zigzag jink in its retreat. Suarez counted nine machines moving off fast. Meanwhile, the occupants of the house ducked inside with their Kra friend.

At the moment Suarez had bigger things to worry about than those folks' safety. He had enemy on the move, some of whom were firing their weapons in his direction. As another round from the cannon exploded near two machines that turned to fire laser shots, setting them reeling on their mechanical legs, Suarez popped his hatch and seized the grips of his machine gun. He sent a spray of bullets pocking the ground around the enemy and sparking across their canopies.

"Yeee-haw," he shouted as the last enemy holdouts fired a few more wild shots and then turned to flee. "They're on the run. Keep firing."

Quinn sent more rounds after the elusive machines, which eventually disappeared up the canyon in front of Sandstone Mountain. Suarez looked to the sides and to the rear for any other threats, but there were none. Juniper trees partially obscured their position from the enemy and Suarez guessed the Kra might be confused as to how many tanks—or how few—were attacking.

"They must think we're a doggone brigade," he laughed. "They're gone. Solid gone." His crewmates let out a cheer. "We did it, boys," Suarez exulted. "We finally chalked up a win!"

A minute later the tank rolled to a stop in front of the house. Chase, Kit, Will and Dr. Ogilvey stepped onto the porch. Gar stood cautiously behind them. Suarez grinned and snapped them a salute. "Fox One at your service, folks."

***

Twelve hours after the Kra withdrawal from NORAD, General Davis stood outside the tunnel entrance, squinting in the unaccustomed noonday sunlight. A task force of three Humvees was provisioning for a trip to Montana. The mystery of the Kra retreat had cleared up with an astonishing call from Captain Suarez, describing the explosions that had devastated Arran Kra, and explaining how Gar had killed Oogon. The Kra forces, so dominating for days, were now just scattered remnants. Such a miracle had seemed beyond the power of prayer a while ago.

As the troops boarded the Hummers, Davis went to the young man in the passenger seat of the lead machine. The man's left arm was in a sling and he had bandages on his neck and face from a laser near-miss.

"How's that arm, Abercromby?"

"It'll be just fine, sir. They only winged me."

"Good," he said to the lieutenant. "I don't like sending a detachment this small across so much country without support. But I guess you know how it is. I can't spare a larger force. I can't emphasize enough how important your mission is. The enemy has suffered a catastrophe up in Montana. They're hurting as bad as we are, so this might be our best chance to make peace on our terms. I'm counting on you to get up there and make us a deal before any more fighting breaks out. Otherwise this whole thing's gonna start up again as soon as they get back on their feet. Think you're up to the task, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take it easy with that injury," said Davis. "I'd go myself, but I'm part of a chain of command again. The President's back in the White House and the Pentagon's up and running, so I've got bosses again. We're rigging a good transmitter on top of the mountain here so I'll be in coded contact with you twenty-four hours a day. Any questions?"

"No, sir."

"Carry on." Davis saluted.

The lieutenant snapped a crisp salute with his good right arm and then turned to his driver. "Okay, let's get this show on the road."

As the three vehicles roared away Davis called after them, "Give my regards to Gar, the Kra." It was nothing short of a miracle, he thought, to have a second chance to accept the dinosaur leader's peace offer.

Holly Lewis joined him, smiling. "Matt," she said, "I've got some updates from the field. The news is not all bad."

He frowned. "Better give me the bad part first."

"The enemy succeeded in linking up from Montana to the Gulf Coast late yesterday. But the good news is they seem to be reining in their troops. Most sightings this morning have been of machines in fixed positions or withdrawing toward Montana."

Davis smiled. "Maybe this peace initiative has a chance."

As the column of Humvees disappeared around the first bend in the road, Davis turned to walk back inside NORAD. He offered an arm to Holly and she took it, linking her wrist around his elbow. As they strolled, she asked, "Do you think we can get a favorable a truce, Matt?"

Davis shook his head slowly. "I don't know. It'll be ninety-nine percent bluff on our part. But it just might work out."

"Our bargaining position's pretty strong, Matt. Things out there aren't as bad as we had come to believe."

"How so?"

"A lot of news came in while you were up north. I didn't get a chance to tell you, given the desperate circumstances when you got back."

"What news?"

"The Navy dispersed beautifully when the first day's warnings went out. Ships cruised individually under cloud cover and kept silent. The beam couldn't find them, so most everything out there in all fleets is still intact."

"Excellent!"

"Even the Joint Chiefs are okay. Their plane was destroyed on the ground before they boarded it and it took a couple of days for them to hook up with the President in all the urban chaos back east. You might say they were caught in a colossal traffic jam."

"How about the world situation?"

"Other military forces didn't fare as well as ours. The Kra made great advances in South America and Africa. But even in those places there is hope because the world capital of the Kra is at Arran-Kra. Gar is in charge there and he's willing to make a deal with us."

Davis grumbled, "We've still got a long way to go to recover our strength. A lot of hardware was destroyed."

"Quite a bit. But even that's not as bad as we thought. There are a whole bunch of units checking in with minimal damage, just knocked out power and communications."

"And that moon weapon?"

"Phaeon's been out of action since the attack by Clementine."

"She must have walloped 'em good. Let's hope they're knocked out permanently."

"We've traced a few weak radio signals to sources up there. So there may be some remnant of the base."

"That's something I want you to keep a close watch on."

"I will, sir."

## CHAPTER 24

The next morning Kit awoke to the twittering of the tiny pterodactyl family outside her open window. She noticed the sun streaking in at a steep angle and realized she had overslept. She sat up in bed and stretched, appreciating just how much she had needed a good night's sleep and a morning without a catastrophe.

She went to the window in her nightshirt, sat on the bench and leaned out to watch the tiny winged creatures scuttle over the pine logs. Their mouse-like nervous energy kept them in constant, noisy motion.

"Too cute for words," she smiled. They leaped off the wall in unison at the sound of her voice but buzzed right back when they saw she was no threat. They were all beaks and tiny fingers and toes and fuzzy leather wings and little short-tailed butts. The babies had grown since she saw them last and were nearly as big as their mother. She was the black-headed, white-bodied center around which the little mouse-brown things came and went, crawling, hopping, flitting, or clinging to the wood upside down, right side up or sideways, quick and lively as chickadees.

The buzzing of yet another pair of wings heralded the arrival of one more member of the little flock. "There's Daddy!" Kit exclaimed as another black-and-white flyer landed on the wall. He was the most colorful character of the bunch, sporting a red topknot on his head like a woodpecker. He carried a large green caterpillar that wriggled in his toothy beak. The baby pterodactyls rushed to surround him, fluttering their wings and begging like infant birds—if infant birds could cling to the vertical wall of a house. The father chose the widest mouth, stuffed in the caterpillar, and then buzzed off on another hunt.

Kit smiled at the tiny family's antics. The last time she had seen them they had been scattered by the winged hunter. Now they were reunited and chattier than ever.

She looked up at Sandstone Mountain. It loomed tall above her, golden-hued in the morning sun, but it had changed. The top of the mountain, once a single peak, was cleft by the explosions she had set off inside. Wisps of smoke still rose between the two new crags, giving the mountain a volcanic look.

She slipped into her jeans, western shirt, and boots, and trotted downstairs, discovering along the way that her gimpy knee already felt much better.

Her father was in the kitchen clearing breakfast dishes from the table. "Big crew to cook for this morning," he smiled. "And that Gar sure eats a lot of breakfast steak. I saved you some, along with some scrambled eggs and potatoes. Have a seat and I'll dish it up."

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in the patched-up breakfast nook. As her father put a plate of hot food in front of her she quipped, "You're feeling pretty chipper for an escaped prisoner."

"Yes, I am, Little Girl. I expected this place to be a lot worse off than it is, with all the shooting and bombing."

"We're lucky," she agreed. She watched his face as he loaded the dishwasher. The traumas of the last week hadn't changed him much, except he looked a little thinner and his white buzz-cut hair was longer. "You know," she began, "we still have some things to talk about."

"I know, Kit. You want to be a paleontologist. I had a lotta time to think things over while I was stuck in that cage. I decided you'd best do what's right for you. I'll manage the ranch somehow."

"But things have changed, Daddy. I have a new respect for all the work you've put into this place. It was one of the things that made our survival possible. I think I see what Dorothy meant in the Wizard of Oz. There's no place like home."

"Yeah, but a father ain't got no right to tell his daughter what to do. You gotta follow your nose. Go ahead and do whatever you want. Go and study paleontology. Be whoever you want—"

"Shut up and listen, would you, Daddy? Maybe doing what I want means staying right at home. There are plenty of dinosaurs to study around here, or hadn't you noticed?"

He put a pan in the sink and started scrubbing. "I'm just saying I realize how important school is to you."

She looked at his care-worn, weathered face and said, "I love you, Daddy."

He kept scrubbing. "I love you too, Little Girl."

Hearing voices outside, she took a last sip of coffee and went out onto the back porch. Ogilvey, Chase and Gar were gathered around the fighting machine like teenaged boys with a hot car. Chase had his cap turned around backwards and he and Ogilvey were listening closely as Gar, who sat in the driver's seat spoke into his radio transmitter.

A good morning in Kra-naga seemed in order, so Kit called out a phrase Ogilvey had taught her. "Ula-kannek!"

Gar raised his head and echoed her greeting. "Ula-kannek tota!" According to Kra custom, Gar accompanied his greeting with a bob of his head. Kit tried to mimic the movement without much success. Kra body language would take a while to get used to. Gar sometimes seemed like an overgrown goose despite the body armor and the overload of teeth and claws.

Ogilvey beamed at the exchange. His whiskery cheeks stretched in a wide grin. "Gar is in contact with the Kra troops," he explained. "Most of them acknowledge his authority and accept the inevitability of peace. Although he's still trying to convince Neggok and a few other renegades."

Rufus was at the barn, raiding the hayloft again. Kit was surprised to see Lucky joining the yearling parasaurolophuses to get a share of the hay. The young duckbills were nearly horse-sized already and Lucky seemed to fit right in. Inside the barn's main doors, dozens of U.S. Army troops, stragglers who had been trickling down from the prairie in twos and threes, were arranging a temporary bivouac until transport back to NORAD could be arranged. It was heartening that so many had survived the battle. A majority of the troops had pulled through according to Captain Suarez, who was overseeing their reorganization and resupply. It was heartening too, that the soldiers seemed nonchalant regarding Rufus, although they kept clear of him. That was a refreshing contrast to the near-fatal confrontation the last time they had met.

"What a change!" Kit rejoiced. "Such peace and calm. I can hardly stand it."

"Parasaurolophus family life is beautiful, isn't it?" Ogilvey observed. "Gar tells me they'll quite probably find their way right back here after their winter migration."

"Migration?" Kit questioned. "You mean they won't be staying with us?"

"No," replied the paleontologist. "Winter here is too harsh for their young. They'll migrate down to the grasslands of south of Texas or the bayou country of Louisiana."

"But that's a thousand miles away. Can they really go that far?"

"They're long-legged creatures," Ogilvey replied. "They migrated from the North Slope of Alaska to the southern bayous in their times. This trip will be just a short commute for them. I suppose the Texans may complain when dinosaurs show up on their doorstep, but they'll have another reason to claim everything is bigger in their state. And the dinosaurs won't stay long. Each spring the animals will return to lay eggs and hatch their young here in Montana's summer heat."

"I'll miss Rufus and Henrietta," Kit lamented. "Are you sure they'll come back?"

"I think so," Ogilvey replied. "Modern birds return to the same nesting grounds. Presumably, they'll do the same. And, if you get lonely for dinosaur company, Gar assures me that quite a few species can brave the cold of Montana's winters."

"Really?" said Kit. "Like what?"

"Those wooly pachyrhinosaurs. Gar says there's never been a better cold-adapted creature in the history of the world. They lived in the Arctic, for goodness sake. They grow heavy winter coats of fur—or dino-fuzz, or proto-feathers, or—"

"We get the picture, Doc," Chase muttered sarcastically. "And thanks for reminding me about them. I still haven't told my boss at Yellowstone what happened to the pickup."

"—and," Ogilvey continued without noting Chase's concern, "there are some other cold-hardy species Gar has tried to describe to me without much success. You see, many dinosaurs never showed up in our fossil collections. Mountain species lived in areas where erosion was the rule rather than sedimentation, so their bones weren't buried. They disintegrated over time, rather like what will happen to the T rex."

"The T rex!" Kit said edgily. "What about it?"

"Ahh," exclaimed Ogilvey. "I should have mentioned it sooner, Kit. Come along with me."

He walked toward the front of the house, motioning Kit to follow. "And you too, Chase. You should see this."

Kit and Chase fell in with the professor as he walked to the front of the house. But when he started walking out along the driveway, both of them balked.

"Now wait!" Kit admonished. "Chase didn't even bring a stick with him."

Ogilvey chuckled and waved them forward, grinning impishly. "I assure you there's no danger. Come along." He led them to the place where the tyrannosaurus had emerged from the woods, and then plunged into the underbrush. Kit and Chase followed cautiously. Ogilvey bumbled ahead of them through the thicket babbling, "I guess we know who's the top predator in this ecosystem—you, Chase."

"How do you figure—?" Chase began. And then he stopped in his tracks. Ogilvey had swept some brush aside to reveal, laid out on the ground—

"The tyrannosaurus!" Kit gasped. She fell back against Chase, who caught her in his arms. "It's dead, isn't it?" she asked. "Not just sleeping?"

"Dead, of course," said Ogilvey. "I've long since checked its pulse."

Chase released Kit and they went forward to gape at the unmoving giant. "Dead of what?" she wondered.

"I'm not certain," Ogilvey replied, "but gunshot wounds may have played a role. Either it bled to death, or more likely, it died of a massive infection."

Kit was puzzled. "Don't dinosaurs have immunity to modern germs?"

"Certainly," Ogilvey responded. "This isn't H.G. Wells' _War of the Worlds_ we're living through. Rufus and his family would be sick if that were the case. But I suspect this rex may have developed an infection in the wounds on his flank and breast. That's where you shot him, isn't it, Chase?"

Chase nodded, staring at the huge carcass morosely.

The animal's death throes had created a clearing in the woods. Kit, Chase, and Ogilvey circled the body, inspecting it. They moved along the tail, past the immense hind legs and the small front appendages, which were feathered like stubby wings. As they moved past the massive head, which lay outstretched as if still taking its last gasp, Kit shuddered. Staring at the five-foot-long jaws and eight-inch teeth, she murmured, "I remember those jaws coming at me."

Chase put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "I guess it's not so dangerous now."

The tyrannosaur's eyes were partly open, sunken and glazed.

"It's been dead for more than a day," Ogilvey declared as he leaned near to study the pattern of heavy scales on one of the brow horns.

Two crows cawed from an overhanging branch, looking eager to get to work on the bounty of carrion.

Chase sighed. "The Tyrant King isn't so powerful after all, is he?" He stood silently beside the rex with his cap off and his head bowed.

"What's the matter?" Kit asked, seeing the regret in his face.

"It doesn't matter how fierce a carnivore seems in life," he said. "They all look pathetic when they're dead."

"Death is a part of life," Ogilvey asserted.

"Yeah, but this time the bullets are mine. I'm supposed the one who saves carnivores, not kills them. I feel like one of those gun-happy yayhoos that shoot my wolves."

"On the other hand," Ogilvey rejoined as he measured the length of a tooth with his thumb and forefinger, "you had a good reason to shoot, or Kit wouldn't be with us right now."

Chase nodded in agreement. "If it comes to that, I'd kill a hundred tyrannosaurs."

"That's the spirit!" Ogilvey exclaimed. "But it won't come to that, because we'll soon have countermeasures to keep rexes at bay. Kra fighting machines can control them as Gar demonstrated so well with the utahraptors. The electric bolt."

"Don't forget Rufus," Kit added. "He and Henrietta make pretty good watchdogs."

"Watch-ducks," Ogilvey chuckled. "Furthermore, in the fall the rexes will follow the plant eaters down to the Gulf Coast. You'll be free of them for the winter, although the Texans may have some issues. Sounds like a negotiation for a species-reintroduction specialist, wouldn't you agree, Chase?"

"I hadn't given it much thought," Chase replied, "but it is the same job I've been doing, isn't it?"

"Now, as to this fellow," Ogilvey went on, running his hand along the stiff tan-and-brown striped feathers that ridged the back of the rex's neck, "there's the little matter of preservation. In a few weeks, the crows and coyotes will leave nothing but bones. Then gnawing rodents, rain and sun will crumble even those. Given enough time, every trace of this magnificent specimen will be lost—unless someone collects it for a museum. Any suggestions as to whom that might be, Kit?"

"Who would do that?" Kit asked without much thought. And then her face lit up. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I would!"

"Yes, yes, my dear," said the paleontologist. "It is my hope that as society—human-and-Kra-society—gets back on its feet, you will be able to start an undergraduate paleontology project with this specimen. I would be proud to be your faculty advisor. Let me suggest a thesis title: Collecting and Mounting the First One-Hundred-Percent Complete Tyrannosaurus Skeleton. How does that sound? Past generations of paleontologists only dreamed of such a thing. I tell you Kit, it's the dawn of a new age in paleontology and we're at the forefront!"

## CHAPTER 25

The Danielses' flower garden was bordered on one side by a sandbagged machine gun emplacement but it was still showing off its June beauty. Flowers of every kind had survived the trampling combat boots. Chase watched Kit gather an armload of scarlet columbine, pink daisies and yellow snapdragons. He leaned an elbow on a sandbag wall and admired how her long sand-colored hair fell down as she bent to pick a flower and how she brushed it back when she stood.

She flashed him a good-natured smile. "What are you gawking at?"

"Pretty flowers," he said.

She went along with his line. "They are pretty, aren't they?"

"Beautiful." He meant more than the flowers. He went to her and put his arms around her. She didn't resist as he drew her near and kissed her. The kiss, and the honey smell of the flowers, and the warmth of the day, and the joy they each felt at having survived, combined to sweep them both into a rapturous and long-lasting kiss and embrace. Kit clung to Chase tightly, dropping the flowers and abandoning herself to the delicious moment of tender sharing.

After the kiss, Chase nuzzled her cheek. He whispered, "I think I'm falling in love."

"So am I," she sighed. After a moment, she bent to gather the flowers and said, "I've got to put these in a vase right away."

They strolled out of the garden arm-in-arm and headed for the back door of the house. As they passed Ogilvey and Gar at the fighting machine, Ogilvey chortled, "We'll need more than flowers to prepare for a peace negotiation." He followed Kit and Chase into the house gabbing as he went, "We'll need to arrange the place. Tables, chairs, pencils, paper, and plenty of raw meat."

Gar remained seated in the quahka where he had been communicating with his fellow Kra. In a quiet moment he reflected on private thoughts. Sitting with his long neck arched and his head bowed, he prayed quietly.

"Go to Eng-kan, my brothers and sisters who died on these lands. Go to him in peace. Tell Eng-kan the Kra are done with war. Ask him to guide us on another path. Ask him to change even the heart of Neggok, who would restart the fighting.

"My dead comrades, you are to be envied, for you return first to the hallowed ground where our ancestors lie. I wonder, do you share the afterlife with hoonahs? Do they also sit at the side of almighty Eng-kan in the Hall of Eternal Feasting? You dead know the answers long before the living can ever hope to.

"Eng-kan, I pledge upon the souls of our fallen soldiers that there will be no more killing—not of hoonah, not of Kra. I shall keep this pledge until the day when I too am at your side.

"Before that day, Eng-kan, grant that I see again my beloved Gana."

Gar visualized the graceful curve of Gana's neck and her crest's stripes of dark brown and delicate pale orange. In his imagination, her beautiful amber eyes looked deeply into his, a radiant light shining in them. She was the most beautiful female among all the Kra. He imagined her sitting in the center of their nesting couch of golden yellow, the long feathers of her forearms fanning out in a familiar greeting flourish of black and iridescent blue-green stripes. He imagined how she rose to show him an egg cradled in the nesting couch, perfectly oval and luminously white. How fragile it looked, and how dear.

Another image crowded into Gar's mind. The brooding chamber was shattered in the cold vacuum of the moon. In a swirl of gray moon dust, he saw not an egg, but broken fragments of eggshell, scattered like dead flower petals.

He looked up at the waxing form of Noqui, the moon, rising in the eastern sky. "My friend Ogilvey tells me hoonahs have destroyed Illik base and all who remained there," he murmured. "But I cannot believe this. Those on Noqui will yet join us here. Gana and I will dance the mating dance and watch our children hatch. She is not dead."

***

A thousand miles away in a JPL parking lot, Diedre Porter looked at the moon, glad the blue death rays were gone. Frank Johnston was hot wiring an abandoned car even though they didn't plan to drive anywhere. When the engine started she sat in the passenger seat. Trying the CB radio, she said, "Daddy Longlegs? Are you out there?"

The familiar voice came back. "I sure am. You caught me sunbathin' in the nude. I wish you could see my scar."

"Glad I can't."

"Anyways, Sweat Pea, whatcha got goin'?"

"We want to contact NORAD."

"No problemo. I been doin' some fancy wiring these days. Got things rigged up so's I can connect you direct. Please hold, your call is being transferred."

A minute later Daddy Longlegs came back. "I got y'all patched through to General Davis at NORAD. Go ahead, General."

"Hello–ello–ello, JPL–L–L," the general's voice reverberated through redundant radio connections. "We–we–we owe you a lot." The sound clarified as someone made an adjustment. "You and your little space probe will go down in military history."

"Thank you, General," Diedre replied. "I hadn't even considered there _being_ any more history books, let alone Clem being in one. While you're writing, don't forget Lloyd Andersen. He gave his life."

"Understood and duly noted. I'll pass that on to the President personally and he'll notify Congress. They're in session as we speak. It's amazing how little damage the enemy did to civilian structures. They were after communications, power and military hardware, and they missed quite a bit of those. You got anything else going on there in Pasadena?"

"No. And you're right. JPL didn't get hit as bad as I thought, only two buildings. But we're going to lie low for a while. I've got to pay some attention to my poor cat, Lupe."

"Good plan. By the way, we got word the Pasadena National Guard is patching up the power grid and setting up a food distribution center until the civilian supply lines get moving again. Go check 'em out."

"We'll do that."

"As far as we know, the military situation in Southern California is stable. Not many dinos out that way although they've spotted something called a mosasaur swimming off the coast. Might make surfing kind of interesting."

"Roger that, General. We'll keep our feet dry."

"Good. Let's hope things stay calm in Pasadena. We've got some pretty bizarre critters running around the High Plains. Anyway, I'd like to thank you again for all you did and wish you well. Right now I'm needed on another line. We've got a critical negotiation about to start in Montana. Please keep in touch. Davis over and out."

"Roger, General," Diedre replied. "Sweat Pea—I mean Porter—over and out."

"And goodbye to y'all twice," Daddy Longlegs chimed in. "Your time has expired, please deposit twenty-five cents."

"Goodbye, Daddy Longlegs. Don't get a sunburn." Diedre hung up the handset and asked Frank, "What are you going to do next?"

"Oh, I don't know. Hole up here for a while, I suppose. There's a couch in Lloyd's office."

"Naw," Diedre responded. "You'd get awfully lonely hanging around here all by yourself. Why don't you come over to my place and stay?"

Frank chewed nervously on his mustache. "I wouldn't want to be a bother."

"After all we've been through? A bother? Come on," she cajoled. "I've got a guest bedroom, the water still works in my house, and there's plenty of food." She knew that last bit would get him. He perked up, so she went further. "I've got a pizza in the freezer that's probably starting to thaw by now. Maybe we can heat it on the gas grill."

He grinned. "You got beer?"

She nodded. "Might be a little warm, but it's wet."

"How about chips? You got chips?"

"Yeah, Frank."

"Salsa?"

"Come on, Frank. Let's go home. I'm getting hungry myself."

***

Suarez parked his tank at the rear of the house beside Gar's machine. He kept his crew on station in case a hasty defense was needed. Dr. Ogilvey had said the enemy were coming to lay down their arms, but Suarez would only believe that when he saw it. At lunchtime old man Daniels brought out some sandwiches and coffee and Suarez and his men sat on the tank's decks while they ate.

"There's our guys from NORAD," said Quinn, pointing at the county road. Three Humvees were moving fast in their direction. The convoy came up the drive and pulled up one, two, three in a line beside the tank. When the first man got out of the lead vehicle, Suarez couldn't believe his eyes.

"Crom!" he sang out, jumping down from the tank and hurrying to embrace his friend. "Man!" he exclaimed, "it's good to see you. I never woulda believed it."

"Me neither," Crom rejoiced, looking Suarez over like he had risen from the dead. "How did you ever pull through, Vic?"

"Individual initiative." Suarez smiled, tapping the side of his helmet with an index finger. "I played the fox."

Crom grinned. "Hey! I've got some big news for you. NORAD got through to Fort Bliss on their new radio network. Our wives are fine. Your kids are fine. El Paso's fine. They even patched me through to Jessica for a minute. She says Maria sends her love."

"Man," Suarez said, letting out a deep sigh. "That's the best news I've heard in my life."

"There's more," Crom went on enthusiastically. "According to scuttlebutt, everyone in the unit is going up a grade. Promotions all around."

"For those that survived," Suarez replied soberly.

"And that's quite a lot of us," Crom reassured him. "Those Kra walking machines are pretty nasty tank-killers, but they tend to disable them without an explosion. Most of the crews escaped, even during the retreat. Now they're trickling in to NORAD. Just like those guys you've got bivvied in the barn."

Suarez said, "It does my heart good, seeing so many of them pull through after all that shooting."

"Like you told me at the start of this, Vic, a soldier's gotta follow orders and hope for the best. Seems like it all worked out pretty well."

"Yeah," Suarez agreed. "I guess Davis had to run the show the way he did. I don't know if I'd have done anything different if I was in his boots. He called it like he had to."

"And we fought it like we had to," Crom added. "Davis and Lewis are up for new stars."

"They deserve 'em, seeing how things turned out."

"Captain! Er, Major Suarez!" Ed Vecchio suddenly called. "Here they come." He scurried for his driver's hatch and climbed in.

A line of four Kra fighter-walkers was moving down the road from the high prairie. They came on at a slow pace with their weapon arms lowered. As Suarez's men took their stations, the Kra fighter-walkers pulled up in a line beside Gar's machine, facing the Army vehicles. They hunkered down, and as their canopies began to open Suarez murmured, "This is gonna be interesting."

***

Within an hour the Kra and U.S. Army soldiers were inside the ranch house, taking places on opposite sides of the big dining room table, which had been carried into the living room for the occasion. Suarez sat in the center of the U.S. Army side, acting as the official United States representative. Crom on his right and they were backed up by Quinn and Walt in the Danielses' office, communicating with NORAD via the CB radio.

Gar squatted on a raised cushion in the center of the Kra side with two Kra officers on his left and two on his right. Dr. Ogilvey, acting as translator for both sides, sat at the head of the table. Chase, Kit and Will Daniels settled into spare chairs in the dining room.

Dr. O convened the meeting by rapping on the tabletop with a coffee mug, spilling some coffee in the process. "We are gathered here," he began, "to draw up the most momentous peace agreement in the history of the planet: a truce between mammals and dinosaurs. Until last week, I am sure those of you on the human side of this table thought this issue was settled sixty-five million years ago. Some of you on the dinosaur side may have expected a quick victory, but you've gained a new respect for your adversary."

Heads nodded on both sides of the table while Ogilvey paused to translate his remarks into Kra-naga.

Will whispered to Kit and Chase, "It's gonna be a long negotiation if that old windbag keeps blabbing."

Despite Will's prediction, the afternoon's talks moved swiftly. One issue and then another was nailed down until a whole series of points had been debated and approved by both sides. The central tenet of the negotiations was that the U.S. would agree to the Kra establishing a reservation centered on Arran-Kra, similar to an American Indian reservation. In exchange, the Kra would renounce claims to any other parts of the U.S.

A highlight of the deliberations came when Suarez passed along a question from the President. "He wants to know," Suarez read from a printout Walt had handed him, "how the Kra intend to make reparations for the destruction they've caused to our military hardware and communications infrastructure?"

In response, Gar reached into a pouch he had brought with him. He pulled something out and set it on the table, eliciting gasps from the humans present. It was a lustrous gold ingot, larger than those kept at Fort Knox and covered with ornate Kra artwork and lettering. "Vit theez vee pfay you."

"Pfay?" Crom puzzled.

"Pay," Ogilvey corrected. "The Kra will pay with gold, if that's suitable."

"I'll bet it is," Suarez murmured, his gaze transfixed by the shine of the ingot.

"Gar tells me," Ogilvey explained, "his excavation teams have recently broken through into the Kra equivalent of Fort Knox. He assures me they intend to buy you as many new military toys as you would like. He wants to be sure the Kra's new allies are the strongest human force on earth, for the sake of the Kra's own security."

"And our communications?" Suarez asked, reading from a list.

"New satellites all-round," Ogilvey said with Gar nodding his concurrence. "Just put it on the Kra account. And to top it off, once humans have demonstrated their peaceful intentions toward the Kra, Gar is willing to allow the transfer of Kra technology. That includes the secret of making kekuah and those magnificent fighter-walker machines."

"Sweet!" Chase exclaimed. "I could use one of those."

Gar uttered a few more words to Ogilvey, who translated, "Gar tells me there are mines on Noqui—er, the moon—from which the Kra extract massive quantities of strategic minerals, everything from molybdenum to gold to tantalum. These will be shared with humans if we play nice from now on. Beyond a mere economic recovery, the Kra intend to join us in a new Renaissance and a world far more prosperous than we've known until now."

"Speaking of the moon," Suarez said, looking again at his list, "I've got another item here. The President insists that the death beam up there should never be repaired. It should be decommissioned permanently."

Ogilvey discussed this with Gar briefly and then asserted, "Gar intends to see to it personally. He plans an expedition to the moon aboard a Kra spacecraft that is already in earth orbit. He suggests you, Major Suarez, as leader of the human contingent. Any interest?"

"I didn't sign on as a spaceman but, well, why not?"

At suppertime, both sides paused to partake of a dinner feast prepared by Will Daniels. An entire side of beef barbequed over an open pit was served to the humans. The other side of that same beef was served raw on the bone for the Kra contingent. Both sides praised the quality of the beef and the chef's skill.

"I can tell you who's easier to cook for," Will said to Kit, Chase, and Ogilvey while carving more beef off the oversized rotisserie near the garden. "Kra don't even like salt on it, let alone cooked."

"You'll have to try barbequing a side of dinosaur," Ogilvey quipped. "I hear duckbills taste like chicken."

"Not Rufus!" Kit exclaimed. "Or any of his—"

"No, no no!" Ogilvey reassured her. "Not your pets, of course. But Gar tells me there are some very tasty tenontosaurus herds roaming the hills."

"I'm willing to cook whatever you can catch," said Will. "Except maybe one of them try-anna-saurs. They look kinda stringy from what I've seen of 'em, which ain't much."

"I for one," Ogilvey responded, "would not want to be part of any hunting party that went after such a formidable beast. They're best left alone."

"The way I see it," Will said, "a T rex ain't much worse than a grizzly bear. Either way, if you're caught out in the open without a gun, you're history."

"I agree," said Chase. "Although I think rexes have a speed advantage over bears."

"And a tooth advantage," Ogilvey added. "But don't fear. Gar assures me tyrannosaurs were not very common at the end of Cretaceous times, so their population will be kept in check. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm due back at the negotiating table." He took a step toward the house, where the table was cleared and ready for more deliberations between Kra and soldiers. But he paused a moment to speak confidentially to Chase. "By the way, young man, your skills as a species re-establishment specialist may be pressed into service soon. When Gar learned you are a wildlife manager and not normally a wildlife killer, he said that you and he are like brothers. You're both dedicated to preserving life on earth. Gar is in charge of the Kra's re-establishment program, but he is in need of a human counterpart, one who will look out for mammalian interests including wolves and cattle and humans." The doctor pointed a finger at Chase's Park Service name badge. "May I tell him Ranger Chase Armstrong accepts the position?"

"Sounds like an awfully big responsibility," Chase hesitated.

"Don't be so modest, boy. Your name has been mentioned to the President of the United States and he's impressed with your credentials. There aren't many who can say they have darted wolves and shot a tyrannosaurus as well."

"Killing that rex is not something I'm particularly proud of."

"Play your cards right, Chase, and you'll be darting tyrannosaurs someday. The President wants you to help in the great balancing act of reintroducing dinosaurs here in Montana while being fair to folks like the Danielses. There's not much trouble east of the Mississippi. Gar's old enemies, the Khe, were environmentally irresponsible back in the Cretaceous. They had already wiped out all the largest East Coast dinosaurs before the asteroid struck, so there are no East-Coast species to reintroduce. In fact, the situation at the end of the Cretaceous was much like now. The great herds were in the West. The Kra protected the big animals on reserves similar to Yellowstone National Park, against encroachment by the Khe civilization. Now, I've just perused Washington DC's latest negotiating stance. The President and Congress accept the Kra's request to designate land on National Forest property in Northern Yellowstone country and along the Rio Grande valley adjacent to Big Bend National Park as dinosaur rangelands."

Will Daniels quipped, "Sounds like the Mexican border's gonna be patrolled by the baddest immigration agent of all, namely T rex."

Ogilvey nodded. "Those migrations may indeed stop, but the migration route for Montana dinosaurs to the Big Bend is problematic. If the dinosaur herds follow the Front Range of the Rockies and then the Rio Grande Valley, they can travel most of the way on National Grasslands, National Forests and National Parks. But they'll need to cross some privately-owned land too. The U.S. and Kra will need permission from hundreds of ranchers and farmers for dinosaur migration rights across their property. I know there'll be some hard bargaining but the Kra have what's necessary to make a deal. As any rancher knows, money talks. So prepare yourself, Chase. You'll be managing more than wolves soon. You'll find yourself in a Kra walking machine, wrangling the greatest animals that ever lived."

"And _you'll_ be busy too, Kit," Ogilvey declared. "You'll be getting the best paleontology training imaginable. I intend ask the university to build a research facility on the prairie near Sandstone Mountain, right next to Arran Kra. We'll have our work cut out for us. Just imagine describing every single species of Late Cretaceous dinosaur. Not just their bones, but their anatomy, their social systems, their—"

"Personalities?" Kit asked, watching Gar walk by on his way to the negotiating table.

"Exactly."

Will Daniels grumbled, "I ain't so sure about having a dinosaur city pop up right in the middle of my grazing lands."

"Don't worry," Ogilvey replied. "Gar has convinced the Kra to outlaw sacrifice, human or otherwise. And he's taken quite a liking to steak, as have the other Kra. I predict the price of beef will skyrocket locally with the Kra as your biggest customers."

Daniels grinned. "I could get used to that."

"Now if you'll excuse me," Ogilvey said as he headed for the house, "I believe the negotiators have resumed their places."

Kit and Chase followed him in and watched from the doorway as the professor took his place at the head of the table and gaveled the session to order. As Ogilvey began what promised to be another long-winded speech, Chase put an arm around Kit's shoulders. "What say we leave these guys to their work and get out of here?"

"Sure." She smiled and wove her arm around his waist. They strolled arm-in-arm out the back door into the early evening light.

"I know of a great boulder we can go sit on," said Chase.

"Sounds good to me," Kit replied.

###

## ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas P. Hopp was born in Seattle, Washington, where he lived his earliest years in a housing project on the banks of the Duwamish River. Good grades at West Seattle High School and the University of Washington as well as a perfect score on the Graduate Record Examination got him into the Biochemistry Ph.D. program at Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Hopp studied genetic engineering at Rockefeller University and then helped found the multi-billion-dollar biotechnology company, Immunex Corporation. He discovered and patented genes for the immune stimulating hormone interleukin one. He also created genetically altered animals with human genes as well as the first commercially successful nanotechnology device, a molecular handle called the Flag epitope. He worked in the field with paleontologist Jack Horner, excavating bones of the nest-building duckbilled dinosaur Maiasaura. He published scientific articles on his brooding-to-flight hypothesis, in which wing feathers of birds developed first for nesting and then for flying. He plays guitar and bass, and has performed onstage with blues legend John Lee Hooker and rock supergroups The Kingsmen and The Drifters. He has lived in San Diego and on Manhattan Island, but now lives in Seattle. Visit his official web site at http://thomas-hopp.com or to learn the very latest about him, visit his blog at <http://thomas-hopp.com/blog>.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This new edition of _Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall_ has benefitted from the input of a number of people. I'd like to thank Pamela Goodfellow, whose popular fiction courses at the University of Washington nurtured the first drafts of _Dinosaur Wars_. The editorial staff of iUniverse Books provided great insight on how to make the second edition better than the first. Shelley Young provided stellar editing and discussions on this third edition. As before, my thanks also go to Steve Sweeney for invaluable information on tranquillizer darting and radio collaring wild animals, and Mark Orsen for helpful pointers on cover art and for conceptual discussions about dinosaur brooding behavior. Finally, I offer heartfelt thanks to my father Ed and my son Ian, whose enthusiasm for _Dinosaur Wars_ has remained unshakable.

## Books by Thomas P. Hopp

The Dinosaur Wars Trilogy

Earthfall

Counterattack

Blood on the Moon

Peyton McKean Medical Thrillers

The Neah Virus

The Jihad Virus

Short Stories

Saving Pachyrhinosaurus

Riding Quetzalcoatlus

Something in the Jungle

Hatching Alamosaurus

The Treasure of Purgatory Crater

A Dangerous Breed

The Re-Election Plot

The Ghost Trees

Blood Tide

Visit the Author's Official Blog Site

www.thomas-hopp.com/blog

