Cretaceous Sea

'Slow down, slow down,' whispered Rick. 'They let you in on their plan?'

'Of course not,' said Con. 'But Daddy was drunk, and he let stuff out. God, Green's a creep. Scary too. But that's not my news. You've got to come to my room!'

Rick looked around, but spotted no one. 'Okay,' he whispered.

They walked rapidly to Con's chambers. Con pulled the curtains across the colonnade. 'That will give us pri-vacy,' she said.

'Doesn't this look suspicious?' asked Rick. 'I mean, both of us gone and the curtains pulled?'

'Then they definitely won't peek inside,' replied Con with a giggle. While Rick tried to recover his composure, Con walked into the back room. She pulled the dresser from the wall to reveal the hole in the plaster. 'Ta da!' she said. 'A secret passageway.'

'Where does it go?'

'It's so neat!' said Con excitedly. 'You're going to love it!' Without further ado, she got on her hands and knees and disappeared into the hole.

Rick followed and found her standing in the lighted corridor. 'Will you please tell me what's this about?'

'I found an elevator to the top of the mesa,' she said, already walking down the passageway. 'And there's a room . . . wait till you see it!'

Rick followed Con until they arrived at the room with the viewscreens. 'You're right, Con. This is fantastic! A paleogeologist's dream!'

Con beamed. 'I knew you'd like it. It must be some kind of observatory.' Rick walked over to one of the images of Earth. 'This is so clear!' He pointed to an area where a huge bay entered the interior of the continent. 'We're located here, near the northern coast. This is where I thought we'd go today,' he said, tracing their journey south.

'It doesn't look much like America.'

'Well, a lot of it's underwater in this time. That pen-insula there will someday be Mexico.' Rick's attention turned to a chart next to the satellite image. 'This is cool,' he said. 'Here's the same view shown as a geo-logical map. It shows the sea depth and . . .' He paused, looking perplexed. 'That's strange.'

'What's strange.'

Rick pointed to red lines on the chart that formed a series of concentric circles similar to those of a target.

'That's the location of the Chicxulub Crater.'

'The what?'

'Something that hasn't. . .' Rick's face grew grave. He stared at the top of the chart where there were num-bers arranged like those on Con's wall. They glowed red and pulsated:

'Oh God!' said Rick in horror.

'Rick?'

Rick ran over to one of the holographic displays of the solar system. He looked at it, searching for something. 'Shit!' he exclaimed.

'What's the matter?' asked Con, her voice filled with concern. 'Did we set off an alarm? Is it Green?' Rick whirled around, then froze when he spotted the image of the slowly tumbling rock. He stared at it with a dumbfounded expression. Con looked at it, too, and noticed that the rock had craters like a small planet. 'Those symbols on your wall... on these charts ... on that screen .. .' Rick said in a shocked, quiet voice. 'They are clocks. They're counting backward.'

'Backward? To what?'

'The K-T event.' Rick's agitation exploded into frantic activity. He dashed from the room, calling as he ran. 'Come on, we've got to find Joe! There isn't much time!'

'Rick, what's the . . .'