"I've put together the most experienced staff possible," continued Green, without the slightest hint of what had transpired. "James Neville's family ran safari camps in the Serengeti for three generations. His hospitality and exacting standards are renowned throughout Africa. Now he is bringing his expertise to our new frontier. We couldn't be in better hands."
James smiled modestly at the compliment. "Mr. Green has kindly provided me with a new challenge. I will do my utmost to meet it.
"Our chef, Pandit Jahan, was handpicked by James himself," said Green. "He assures me there is none bet-ter." Pandit bowed his head toward the guests. "Joe Burns is our pilot. He'll operate both the time machine and our sight-seeing aircraft."
"You won't be operating the time machine yourself?" asked John Greighton.
"As I said, I'm on vacation. I believe in getting the best people available, then giving them responsibility. Joe's already better at it than I."
Joe grinned. "Thank you, Mr. Green. That's quite a compliment."
"Last, but not least, is the newest member of our team, Rick Clements, our naturalist and guide. Don't let his youth fool you, he's had ten years' worth of field expe-rience and..."
"In the Cretaceous?" interrupted Con incredulously.
"The Cretaceous fossil beds," replied Rick.
"Have you ever seen these animals alive?" asked Con.
"Not yet."
"Rick has studied paleontology at the graduate level," said Green. Con muttered, "Some guide!" just loud enough to be heard.
Rick flushed at the remark, then noticed Green was glaring at him as if this were his fault. Great, Rick thought, this is the girt Green wants me to baby-sit. Up to then, his first impression of her had been a good one. She did not have that rich person's face like her father and his fianc6e or, for that matter, Peter Green. Her fea-tures appeared natural, not altered to fit the current fash-ion. Rick took that as a good sign. She had the trim body of an active person, and her hazel eyes had an intelligent look. After her snide comment, he feared all those things were simply superficial, and she was a rich, spoiled brat after all. 6
CON WAS NOT USED TO CHAMPAGNE AND SHE CLIMBED
the stairs to the time machine with a little difficulty. She hoped no one noticed. Aware that she was not in full control, she regretted that third glass. She had already insulted the guide. Hopefully, she would not fall on her face also.
She was led to a high-backed seat that appeared more com-fortable than it really was. It seemed to have been designed for a much larger person. Certainly, its molded contours did not match her body. After she sat for a moment, the seat's sides moved and gripped her waist snugly. Con let out a surprised squeak. Her father grinned. "Didn't you listen to Peter's warning?" She didn't answer. She was fighting to subdue her growing unease. The idea of time travel had sud-denly been transformed from an abstraction to imminent re-ality.
The stairway silently rose as the opening in the floor closed up. To Con, it seemed that the edges of the opening simply grew together like a rapidly healing wound. Soon there was no evidence that there had ever been an entrance to the cabin. Joe announced they would depart in a few minutes, then disappeared into the control room. Con avoided looking at the column in the center of the cabin. The thing inside it made her dizzy, and she was already feeling dizzy enough. Instead, she stared at the viewscreens on the opposite wall.
The image on the viewscreens shifted, and instead of dis-playing the fence, they showed the ground of the courtyard. There was a sense of motion, and the viewscreens revealed that the time machine was rising rapidly. The building below was lost in an irregular patch of darkness set in a grid of lighted streets. The machine entered a cloud, and the view momentarily dissolved into dark gray. The image of the city reappeared on the screen, though this time it was delineated by radar or some similar means. The pattern of streets and buildings receded rapidly. The view changed again, and Con gazed at the tops of moonlit clouds.
"How high up are we going?" asked John.
"About twelve miles," answered Green. "Then we'll com-mence time travel." A few minutes later, the saucer slowed to a stop. Con nervously waited for something to happen. At first, she no-ticed no change at all. The cabin was eerily silent, and there was no sense of motion. Con was watching a viewscreen when something passed in front of her eyes. She couldn't make out what it was, but it emanated from the strange cyl-inder inside the transparent column. The cylinder was trans-forming, enlarging. Incorporeal tendrils shot out beyond the clear column into the cabin. They seemed to move about as if blown by imperceptible winds. The tendrils thickened into arching branches and became more numerous, yet retained the disturbing quality of seeming simultaneously real and il-lusory. It's as if nothingness has taken on a form, thought Con. What was even more disturbing was that the groping entities altered everything they touched. The column and the floor and ceiling surrounding it no longer existed. They had been transformed into writhing nothingness.
The nothingness grew and, to Con's horror, advanced to-wards her. She shrank back into her seat. If it had not tightly gripped her, she would have fled and cowered against the wall. I'm drunk, she told herself, but she knew that wasn't the cause of the frightening vision before her. An arch of dazzling fog enveloped Con's foot. She felt like it had been painlessly amputated. Another streamer flowed through her thigh, and it, too, was removed from her consciousness. Only when the nothingness washed over her like a wave did she regain a sense of her body. Now she felt like she was falling, that the solidity of everything around her had only been an illusion. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing had sub-stance, not even herself.
The sensation lasted for 65 million years or, perhaps, only a nanosecond. Duration was irrelevant. Time, in any mean-ingful sense, did not exist. Then it returned abruptly. Solidity surrounded Con. Her body had reality again. The memory of her surreal journey slipped from her mind almost instantly, as if it were beyond her power to conceive of it. What re-mained was a faded disquiet, the echo of a forgotten night-mare. She wiggled a toe and felt it move. The ordeal had left her unscathed. Then, to her surprise, she realized that it had also left her sober.
Con gazed about the cabin. The transparent column seemed virtually empty, the cylinder inside reduced to an insubstantial, flickering thread. The viewscreens peered down on cloud-flecked, blue-and-turquoise sea. The clouds glowed gold in the late-afternoon light. Con peered at the faces of her traveling companions. They looked relieved as the terror of the journey faded.
The saucer began to descend, and Con could make out more details of the sea below them. The water was so clear that the drowned landscape beneath its surface was plainly visible, like a topographic map drawn in shades of green and blue. As they approached, she caught fleeting glimpses of creatures that swam in the sea or flew above it. The images on the viewscreens shifted toward the horizon. The island she had seen in the holovision was visible in the distance, standing out against a backdrop of shadowed mountains.
"There she is," said Peter Green, "Montana Isle."
"God, it's beautiful," exclaimed Sara.
"Sure is," agreed John.
The flight to the island took only a few minutes, but to Con it seemed longer. She was anxious to leave the time machine and its vague, yet disquieting, associations with fall-ing. Also, their destination looked beautiful and peaceful. She would be glad to feel it solidly beneath her feet and experi-ence it with all her senses. Eventually, the time machine halted a few hundred feet over the island, then gently de-scended. Only the viewscreens indicated that they had ar-rived—the landing was so soft that it had been imperceptible. An opening formed in the cabin floor revealing stairs leading down to sand-strewn rock. Warm, strangely scented air flowed in. Con's chair relaxed its grip. The new world awaited. PETER GREEN HAD slipped from the role of host to that of a guest. It was James Neville who gave the orders now. He rose from his seat and addressed Rick and Pandit. "I'll show our guests to their accommodations. You follow me with their luggage, then get started on dinner." James led the guests down the stairway while Rick and Pandit scurried for their luggage. Pandit was obviously used to the drill, but the delay in seeing the island was torment for Rick. He grabbed a pair of bags and hurried after James.