Cretaceous Sea

'Rick!' she called out in an uneasy voice. The eerie opalescent plane seemed to absorb her words. Con ap-proached it. The colors reacted to her presence, the hues becoming more vibrant the closer she came. As she reached out to touch them, her fingers began to tingle. When they were a few inches away, the tingling turned to pain. Con jerked her hand back, and the pain slowly disappeared. She became truly frightened. Someone had tended to her, but only minimally. This scarcely seems like a res-cue! she thought. Rather, she sensed that she had been kept alive for some purpose other than her own benefit. Looking for evidence of her keepers, Con spied foot-prints on the sandy floor. Most led to the empty former storage room. Little of the plaster on the far wall re-mained, and the doorway it covered was now revealed. It was sealed by a featureless silvery panel. The trail of footprints ended there. Con dreaded what might happen when the panel opened.

'Calm down,' she told herself. 'First things, first. I've got to take care of myself.' Con checked out the bathroom, which was also choked with sand. Despite this, it still responded to her com-mands. Con craved a hot bath, and immediately began to scoop the sand from the tub. Someone had already cleared out the toilet.

The hot water helped ease Con's apprehension, but only slightly. The tub was gritty. There was no soap or shampoo, and neither were there towels, yet after what she had been through, a bath of any sort was the height of luxury. After Con had cleaned herself as best she could, she washed her filthy clothes. It took several water changes and much hand scrubbing before she had a mar-ginally clean tee shirt along with a pair of panties and trousers. The socks were beyond saving, and the shoe and sandal were unnecessary. Con decided to remove the nightstalker down from her jacket before attempting to clean it. Con was wringing out her clothes when she heard voices in the room. It sounded like people rapidly singing a tuneless song while popping their lips. Con quickly be- gan to dress in her wet clothes. She had her panties and her tee shirt on when two people entered the bathroom.

One of them pointed something at Con. The other spoke in perfect English. 'Understand there is a weapon pointed at you. If you move suddenly, it will stop your mind.'

Con slowly raised her hands. 'I understand.'

'You will come into the outer room and sit down on the bed.'

Con obeyed. There was a third person waiting in the room. He held the charred remains of the gun. Con looked at him and the two other persons. Her first im-pression was that they were prepubescent children en-larged to the size of six-and-a-half-foot-tall adults. They had the bodies of young gymnasts and perfectly sym-metrical faces. Their dark hair and eyes and their olive complexions, accentuated by the metallic dot on their foreheads, gave them an East Indian look. In their im-posing presence, Con felt like a toddler among the 'big kids' at elementary school. Despite their youthful ap-pearance, these people carried themselves with the grav-ity of adults. Their large, stern faces were devoid of childhood innocence.

'Who are you?' asked Con. 'Where's Rick?'

'Are you referring to the male?' asked the person who looked like a gigantic fourth-grade girl.

'Yes, is he all right?'

'We will ask the questions,' stated the boyish man with the weapon. 'You will answer them.'

'Please,' begged Con. 'I have to know about Rick.'

'We will inform you about his status when we are sat-isfied by your responses,' said the woman. 'Truth is es- sential. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' said Con meekly.

'Where did you get this?' asked one of the men, hold-ing out the remains of the gun.

'It was on the plane.'

'Where did you get the plane?'

'It was here on the island.'

'Who constructed this facility?'

'It was already here when we arrived,' said Con. 'I thought you built it.' Her three interrogators began conversing among them-selves in their strange, rapid language. / don't think they expected that answer, Con thought. She decided their question, and the reaction her response provoked, proved Joe's assertion that history had been changed. Yet, if that's the case, why are they here? The rapid conversa-tion ceased, and the second man produced what appeared to be a small rock from the folds of his clothing. He spoke to it and a gray, rectangular plane materialized in the air a few feet in front of Con.

'This is data from an unknown probe,' said the woman. 'Identify what you see.' An image appeared in the rectangle. It was so clear, Con felt she was peering through a window. On the other side of the window were her father and Peter Green. Green was moaning and covering his eyes. They were inside the cabin of the probe. Beyond the probe's clear walls there appeared to be fog or smoke, brightly illu-minated by the glow of flame.