earlier this afternoon, scattering to the ground and disappearing like ghosts as he’d turned back to look over his shoulder.
Now, was that real? Did I really see that?
‘We were lucky,’ said Kelly, ‘that it only got the one of us. I mean, did you see the size of that thing? Bigger than a killer whale.’
‘This is the age of the big predators,’ said Whitmore. ‘Big ones. The golden age for the giant carnivores.’ He looked ashen-faced, shaken still, even several hours after the incident. ‘And we’re prey.’
‘It’s not the golden age for much longer,’ said Franklyn. ‘If this is sixty-five million years ago, then we’re near the end of the Cretaceous era. Something happens soon on Earth that wipes out all the big species. Fossil hunters call it the K-T boundary. Beyond that thin layer of sedimentary rock, you don’t find dinosaurs any more. Certainly not the big ones.’
‘Good,’ said Laura.
‘The big asteroid?’ said Juan. ‘That’s what killed them all, right?’
Franklyn shrugged. ‘It’s still debated. Could have been an asteroid, or a super volcano. Or it could simply have been a sudden climatic shift. Whatever extinction event happened, the large species were extremely vulnerable to it.’
‘It won’t happen while we’re still here, will it?’ asked Jasmine. She looked as unsettled and shaken as Whitmore.
Franklyn snorted dismissively. ‘Unlikely.’
‘So,’ Edward muttered softly. ‘Now there’s only fifteen of us. If no one comes for us, we won’t make it, will we?’
The others huddled around the fire heard that and it stilled their quiet murmurings until all that could be heard was the soft draw and hiss of the waves and the crackle of burning wood.
Becks broke the silence. ‘Leonard, I have constructed a pair of crutches for you.’
Howard eased himself up on to his elbows. ‘We’re still going on?’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes, we’re nearly there.’ He pointed up the beach. ‘Another four or five miles around this bay and we should be there. It’s our only hope… so we’re going on.’
Whitmore nodded. ‘Right. We can’t go back now.’
Laura shuffled closer to the fire, hugging her shoulders against the cool night air. ‘This will work, won’t it? Somebody will find your message and they’ll come for us?’
Liam grinned. ‘Sure they are. They’re already looking for us. And hopefully leaving them this message will help them narrow down their search. Trust me… it’s going to work out all right.’ He looked at Becks. ‘Right?’
She nodded, seeming to understand that the others needed to hear something positive and certain from them. ‘Liam is correct.’
CHAPTER 42
2001, New York
Sal looked at her. ‘How can you be so sure?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I can’t be a hundred per cent certain. But look, if Liam and the unit survived the jump, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they’d do. I mean, that’s all they can do.’
Sal looked up from the mug of coffee in her hands, across the dim archway, illuminated by the fizzing ceiling strip light, towards the shutter door. It was gone eleven now. By this time on any normal Tuesday, the three of them would have been settling in for the evening: Liam on his bunk with his nose in a history book and a bowl of dry Rice Krispies on his chest and Maddy surfing the Internet. But tonight she and Maddy were both up and sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for midnight to come. Waiting for the ‘reset’. She could hear the softly growing hum of power being drawn in through the mains, building up and being stored in the capacitor. Come midnight they would feel an odd momentary sensation of falling as the time field reset and took them back forty-eight hours to 12 a.m. Monday morning.
Maddy was certain, or at least working hard to give that impression, that immediately after the reset happened and they appeared in Monday one stroke after midnight, there’d be a welcome party waiting outside in the backstreet and very eager to meet them.
Who, though?
Maddy said that ‘secrets have a way of drifting up’. What she meant by that was that advance knowledge of a time machine appearing in New York in 2001 would surely ultimately end up in the hands of some shady government agency, men in dark suits. Something as important, something so profoundly monumental as that could only end up in the hands of secret service spooks. If that was the case… then, Sal hoped, Maddy was going to find a way to cooperate with them to get Liam back.
And then what? What exactly?
Interrogation? For sure. Because they’d sure as shadd-yah want to know every little thing about this place and the machinery inside and how it all worked. They’d want to know every little thing. There’d be endless questions about the rest of this mysterious agency, how many others? Where are they? Who’s in charge?
Sal really wasn’t so sure she wanted to jump back to Monday and face that.
There was the other possibility, of course — that they jumped back and no one was there waiting for them.
Maddy’s logic was quite black and white about this. Sal realized she’d thought this all through very thoroughly. If nobody was waiting for them, then that could only mean one thing. If there was nobody outside waiting for them, then Liam and the support unit had never survived the explosion. Or, if they had survived, then they’d been unable to get a message to them; they were lost in time for good, never to be seen again.
She looked at the digital clock on their kitchen table, red numbers that glowed softly and changed all too slowly.
11.16 p.m.
Oh jahulla… I rea-a-a-ally hate waiting.
CHAPTER 43
65 million years BC, jungle
Liam stared up at the steep slope in front of them, rising up from the turquoise sea and the narrow strip of gravelly beach. It was covered in canopy trees, dangling vines and the swaying fronds of ferns. Thick jungle once again. He’d grown used to the reassuring comfort of being out in the open, where he could see anything coming their way from afar.
‘It’s just beyond that?’
Becks nodded. ‘Affirmative. One and a half miles north-east of this point.’
The rest of the group were wearily bringing up the rear along the broad beach, none, though, daring to splash through the water this morning. Leonard was struggling at the back on the shingle with his crutches, but there was Edward and Jasmine helping him along.
‘I have the calculation now,’ said Becks.
‘What’s that?’
‘When in time we are.’
‘Oh.’ Liam arched a brow. ‘When did you do that?’
‘I set the routine running thirty-three hours ago, identifying and cataloguing each tachyon particle in our vicinity before and after the jump. Two billion, ninety-three million, three hundred and twenty-two thousand, nine hundred and six particles before. And seventy-three million, one thousand, five hundred and seventy-two identified particles after.’
Liam rolled his eyes. He didn’t need a blow-by-blow account of the maths. ‘That’s great. So… what’s the
