Rick was already in the passageway. His voice echoed from it. 'Hurry, Con! Follow me.' Puzzled and frightened, Con rushed after him. She saw him smash through the plaster-and-wood barrier to her quarters. Rick ran over the debris without pausing and, jerking the curtain aside, dashed out into the morning. Con, who was barefoot, had to pick her way over the splintered barrier before chasing after Rick. She spotted him at the dining pavilion. James had returned, and Rick was questioning him in a loud, anxious voice while Con's father and Sara looked on with bleary expressions. She heard Rick say, 'It's a matter of life and death.'
James said something Con couldn't hear. Rick turned toward her and yelled, 'Come on, Con!' before dashing toward the path to the plane. Con ran after him, ignoring her father's calls. When the path got stony, she found it was too hard on her feet to run and slowed down to a brisk walk. When she saw Rick again, he was talking to Joe, who was holding the picnic hamper.
'We can leave as soon as the plane's loaded,' said Joe. 'There's only the cooler left.'
'No, no,' said Rick. 'Leave this
'That's impossible,' replied Joe.
'Don't you know what this island's for?' asked Rick incredulously. 'Don't you know where you are?'
'All I know is we're at this godforsaken place, because Sam said it was safe,' answered Joe.
'Safe?' exclaimed Rick. 'Safe? Maybe it was safe when you came here with Sam, but how long ago was that?'
'Over three months.'
'Well, I have news for you,' said Rick. 'This place was built to observe the K-T event. That's why it's de-serted. Sam didn't need to change history—only fools would stay here.' Con grabbed Rick's arm. 'You're scaring me,' she said.
Joe turned to Con. 'Do you know what he's talking about?'
'Sixty-five million years ago, a nine-mile-wide meteor hit the Earth,' said Rick. 'It's called the K-T event. It wiped out the dinosaurs. It wiped out damned near every-thing. Only for us, it isn't 65 million years ago. For us, it will happen today. In a few hours. Now do you see why we have to leave?'
'Can't do it,' said Joe.
'Weren't you listening? This is the greatest catastrophe on record. Fire . . . earthquakes . . . darkness . . . tsuna-mis . ..'
'What's a 'tsunami'?' asked Con.
'Tidal wave,' said Joe.
'This one will be hundreds of feet high,' said Rick.
'Do you have proof for any for this?' asked Joe.
'You sealed off the proof yourself, Joe,' said Rick. 'It's all there in that room with the screens. You can see the meteor ... plot its trajectory . . . see where it will hit. There's a running countdown! You should have looked at what you were covering up before you hid the doors.'
'You found them, I see.'
'Con did, no thanks to you.'
'Green's not going to like this,' said Joe.
'Screw Green! None of that stuff matters now. If we don't go, we'll die!'
'Rick, the time machine takes two weeks to store enough energy for the trip back. We don't have enough power to reach our time.'
'We don't need to reach our time,' said Rick. 'Just move us a few months downwhen.'
'It's not that simple,' said Joe. 'I need coordinates.'
'I'm only talking about a few months, figure them out.'
'Look, Rick, the Earth spins, it rotates around the sun, the sun rotates around the galaxy, the galaxy's moving . . .
