“Okay?” Ben asked.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Drake said and jumped off, belaying down the elasticized rope, but faster than he wanted with the added weight of Helen.
Ben came down, trying to keep up. They had over 100 feet to drop to the cave floor, and at about halfway there came a massive crack of thunder, and it felt like they suffered an electric shock.
Everything went black and Drake felt himself falling in space.
CHAPTER 53
“Bingo.” Henson jumped to his feet. “Outta the park.” He held both fists up and grinned through his straggly beard.
The cameras were focused on the southwestern quadrant of the sky and recorded the collision event. The smaller asteroid struck the comet — both were rebounded away, like billiard balls, just as both the astronomers hoped.
However, the celestial impact was like fireworks on an astral scale, and it lit up the night-time Amazon jungle like it was noonday. The locals reported hearing thunder from a cloudless sky, but no one could verify it.
Gallagher damped down his enthusiasm and rubbed his face — something was off. The thing was, it was already well after the impact. They had been watching like hawks, but somehow they’d missed the actual intersection event. He remembered watching the impact drawing close, but then everything went black in his mind, as if he was somewhere else for a while. But now they were back.
“That’s it,” Henson said, folding his arms and turning in his seat with a huge grin plastered across his face. “We’ll probably never see them again.”
Gallagher nodded. “Like you said, probably. Neither was destroyed by the collision. Primordia’s path was certainly disrupted, but we won’t know what its new cyclical orbit is going to be for many years yet, or at least until it stabilizes. For all we know, it’ll come back in 10 years, or every 100 years, or maybe even every single year. And maybe next time it’ll come closest to New York, or London, or… ” He turned and lowered his glasses, “… Texas.”
Henson put his hands together and looked skyward. “If you’re up there, Superman, please make it happen over Texas.” He laughed and then turned to his friend. “Nah, Primordia has been visiting us every 10 years like clockwork for who knows how many millions of years.” He shrugged. “Like I said before, everyone’s luck eventually runs out.”
“Well, not us.” Henson sat back. “At least they both spun off away from our planet, so I’m calling it as dodging a bullet. No one is reporting any debris falling to Earth so the impact and ensuing fragment disbursement all occurred well away from us.”
“Sad, I guess.” Henson sighed and turned to his aged and now very gray fellow astronomer. “It always came closest to the Venezuelan jungle. I wonder if they’ll miss it, or even notice.”
“No one knows, no one cares.” Gallagher turned in his chair, shifting his bulk. “After all, my friend, life is like a box of chocolates.”
“Oh, shut up.” Henson went back to reading his comic.
EPILOGUE
“I woke up in a field,” Emma said softly.
Ben nodded. “The rain shut off like a tap. We all fell, but it was like we fell into a vacuum. Like you, we blacked out, I think, or were in some sort of other place… no, more like between places, for nearly an hour according to our watches.”
“It was horrible.” She turned, her eyes wet. “We had lost everything. We were cattle, farmed for our meat.” She buried her face in her hands. “Zach, you, the world, was all gone, and only I could see it.”
He rose from his chair and came and sat next to her, throwing a large arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him.
“We stopped it.” He exhaled. “Andy said he had so much left to do and see. Whatever that was, it must have been the major keystone events that changed everything.”
She turned to the large windows that looked out on the green fields of Ohio. The sun shone, and there were far trees whose leaves glittered in the sun as a gentle breeze ruffled their branches.
“Was it real?” she asked. “Did it really happen?”
Ben grinned and thumbed over his shoulder to the staircase. “There’s a tiny flying reptile in a cage in Zach’s room; you better believe it was real.”
She returned his smile. “He wanted you to bring him back something cool, remember?”
“Then mission accomplished.” Ben snorted softly. “And he can keep it until it grows big enough to carry off a cow.”
There came the skittering of paws, and a golden-haired missile launched itself to land between them on the couch. The wriggling golden lab was all wagging tail and licking tongue. Ben grabbed it and rubbed its head, and then looked into its face.
“Belle, if I told you, you came within an inch of never existing, would you believe me?”
Belle just wriggled her enjoyment from the attention even harder, and Emma stroked the dog’s head, calming her. Belle relaxed between them and Emma stared down at the dog for a few more moments.
“You know what? We should tell someone,” she said.
Ben bobbed his head. “Well, the story was pretty fantastic.”
“So tell it, make your ancestor proud.” She leaned across to him. “After all, it was his correspondence with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that started everything.”
“Maybe I should tell it. As a story, let everyone think it’s fiction, but with a message.” He tilted his head. “Just not under my name.”
“Then use your middle name — Greig — and change Ben to Beck, after one of my favorite singers.” She shrugged. “Let’s call it Primordia, and use it as a warning.”
“Don’t mess with the past, huh?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Our world, us, and everything in it, is all just a big series of fluke events. We can’t mess it up ever again.” Emma nodded to him. “Go on, do it, tell the story.”
AUTHORS NOTES & THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
Many readers ask me about the background of my novels — is the science real or fiction? Where do I get the situations, equipment, characters, or their expertise from, and just how much of any element has a basis in fact?
For the entire PRIMORDIA series, in the case of the hidden plateau deep in the Amazon jungle, the novel, The Lost World, was my blueprint. And for the re-evolution phases, I nod to one of the modern great Sci-Fi writers by the name of Ray Bradbury, and his tale called the ‘Sound of Thunder’ written in 1952.
Many of the creatures I include actually existed. However, some do not — these are the ones where I let my imagination run wild and describe what could evolve, and also, if mankind didn’t exist, just who or what would be there in its place.
In this story, I further explore the paradox of time travel; can we really change the future through what we do in the past? Some theoreticians say we can. Others say we can’t and that time is immutable. I include theories arguing for both cases.
Finally, Emma’s words at the end of the story are in fact my words: “Our world, us, and everything in it, is all just a big series of fluke events.”
Enjoy it while we’ve got it!
The Troodon, a relatively small, bird-like dinosaur (appox. 100lbs) of the Cretaceous Period was among the first dinosaurs found in America. The genus name is Greek for “wounding tooth,” referring to the teeth that were lined with razor-sharp serrations.