The expedition to the Devonian was the most ambitious yet. Thanks to new shock absorbers on the time bell, we were able to go further back in time than ever before—360 million years into the past. We arrived with the Kon Tiki, an experimental, lightweight catamaran that could be dismantled and loaded into a space a fraction of its size. When assembled, it was 80 feet long and almost twenty feet wide, but when dismantled, it could fit into a 50 x 50 foot time bell and leave room to spare for the amphibious tractor we used to launch it.

The Kon Tiki was a truly amazing boat. It was very light, and had redundant safety systems that would keep it afloat in the face of almost any disaster. If something ruptured one of the bulletproof inflatable pontoons, the pontoon could seal itself, and an elaborate computer system would pump in new air to make up for any drop in pressure. As if that wasn’t good enough, the pontoons had many internal chambers. A truly catastrophic rupture might flood one chamber, but the water would not spread to the next. The manufacturer had boasted that it was “unsinkable by natural forces”. Carlos shushed a salesman who repeated that claim. “Don’t say that!” he said. “The Earth Mother loves a challenge.” I’m not sure if he was being serious when he said that. In retrospect, his remark seems prophetic.

As usual, the expedition lasted two weeks. However, the days in the Devonian lasted only 18 hours, so we had less time than usual to explore the era. To make the most of our limited time, we planned to spend most of the trip on the open sea. We collected many specimens, and took measurements of temperatures. To our unpleasant surprise, the climate was very cold. After my trip to Cretaceous Australia, I had been looking forward to what I expected to be warm weather. Jurgidsen, one of the three paleontologists who came along, explained that this was a time of fluctuations in temperatures all over the world.

The trip was uneventful, until the ninth day. In the twelfth hour of the Devonian day, we sighted an approaching storm. Our captain, a retired US Navy man named Bill MacGregor, decided to wait out the storm in a small harbor formed by the coral reefs that we had been studying. I must mention the remarkable appearance of those reefs. In modern reefs, the individual polyps are all right next to each other. In many Devonian reefs, on the other hand, there were spaces between polyps, giving the coral a psychedelic polka dot look.

Carlos asked Captain Bill if he was afraid that the storm could sink the boat. “Boats less sturdy than this have survived worse storms,” Captain Bill answered, “but I never take chances. Besides, even a storm that doesn’t sink us or capsize us could still kill somebody.”

The storm was loud and fierce, but the reefs proved sufficient to protect us from the tall waves thrown up by the storm. Unfortunately, there was no protection available from the nearly horizontal rain that came streaking at us. Each drop hit like an air pistol shot. Needless to say, we all stayed inside as much as we could. I sat in a chair near the middle of the boat and talked with Carlos. In the third hour of the storm, our problems really started.

The first sign of trouble came from the boat’s computer. Dianna was the one who noticed the red-lettered message on the screen: “WARNING: multiple ruptures in starboard pontoon.” Not very concerned, she brought up a diagnostic display. According to the diagnostic readout, the ruptures were in two adjacent chambers, right next to the central transverse spar. (The central spar was one of three titanium beams that spanned the width of the boat.) She pointed out the problem to Captain Bill. “I wouldn’t worry about it, lass,” he said. “It would take a lot more than that to sink this boat. Besides, there’s not much we can do about it in this storm. Keep an eye on it, though.”

Fifteen minutes later, I felt the boat shudder. “Did you hear that?” Carlos said immediately. “It sounded like a muffled gun shot.”
“No,” I said, “but I felt something.”

At that moment, Dianna rushed past us. She hastily climbed up a ladder to the bridge, shouting to Captain Bill, “Another chamber just ruptured! The damage is spreading!”
Before she could climb up the ladder, Captain Bill came sliding down. “We’re going to have to make repairs, then,” he said calmly. “I’m going to suit up and go overboard. Flockman, come with me. Thatcher,” he called up to the first mate, “you’re in command.”

We both donned diving suits and went overboard. I was armed with a boing stick. With this notorious weapon, I was supposed to defend Captain Bill from any dangerous animals that approached. There were plenty of fish around, but the only ones that looked potentially dangerous were a large coelacanth and a couple of small sharks. Fortunately, they showed no interest in us. I felt safe enough to look at the ship for myself. I gulped when I saw the damage. There was a hole more than six inches in diameter in the bottom of the boat. Along the edges of the hole, shredded rubber and fabric bulged outward. I remembered the shudder I had felt, and guessed that a chamber had somehow become over-inflated, causing a rupture. (This is the most widely accepted explanation for the sinking of Kon Tiki, though no one has ever explained how the re-inflation system could have failed so grossly.) The hole was not the worst of the damage. Beginning at the hole, the bulletproof outer fabric had run like cheap pantyhose. The tear in the hull was four feet long, and grew by several inches as we watched.

Captain Bill didn’t need to see anything more. He immediately signaled me to go back up. I climbed aboard first, and the captain came after me. As soon as he was back aboard, he pulled off his diving mask and shouted, “All hands, abandon ship!”
The ship immediately fell into chaos. Carlos inflated a life raft, while the scientists frantically gathered what they could of our specimens and footage. Dianna tried to talk to the captain over the din. “What happened?” she asked.

“I think something—maybe the nose of one of those pteraspid jawless fishes—pierced the pontoon and went all the way through one of the walls between chambers, and then got stuck there until the re-inflation system pushed it free,” Captain Bill explained hastily. “That left a big hole, and the water that leaked in is sloshing around, creating stress and enlarging the leak. Unless this storm dies down, the leak will keep getting bigger, and the weight of the water will pull the central transverse spar loose. If that happens, we’re sunk.”

Meanwhile, Carlos was arguing with the other paleontologists about what specimens could come with us. “What’s this?” he asked, holding up one jar.
“That’s a soft coral colony, which may be the ancestor of the hexactilinian corals,” Jurgidsen said.
“And this?”
“Possible member of the extinct phylum Tullimonstra,” Jurgidsen said. “It’s more valuable than anything else we’ve collected, and possibly some of the staff.”
“They pay me to bring back live clients, not dead invertebrates,” Carlos said. He dropped the jar and picked up another. “What’s this, a hagfish”
“Yes,” Horne answered. “It’s the earliest true myxenoid yet discovered.”

“Back in the present, they haul up these by the thousand,” Carlos said. “Is there anything we can learn from this that we can’t learn from them?”
“Well, the internal anatomy is essentially the same as modern forms, but we ought to study the biochemical differences in their slime secretions…”
Carlos tossed the jar overboard. “There’s too much slime in the present as it is,” he said. He picked up a jar formed with a spiraling mass of brown matter. “Please tell me this isn’t a fish turd.”

“It could provide valuable information on the diet of early chondrichthyans!” Smith said. Carlos shook his head and threw it overboard without comment. This went on and on, until half of the specimens that the scientists considered important had been consigned to the depths.

After we launched the lifeboat, things went from bad to worse. After Thatcher, Carlos, two scientists and numerous specimens had been loaded onto the life raft; the Kon Tiki banged into it and slammed it against a coral reef. The result was a substantial leak. Captain Bill ordered the lifeboat moved a safe distance away from the ship and the coral. Thatcher finally piloted it to a spot 300 yards away, where a wall of coral provided even better protection from the waves. This was further than anyone could hope to swim safely, so Captain Bill had to start taking the rest of us over in a small, two-man submersible called the Manta. The first to leave was Rachel Larson, a marine biologist and filmmaker. I was left on the ship with Dianna, a scientist named Horne, and Leo De Ortega, our medic.

As Captain Bill drove away, there was a sudden, shrill squeal of metal, and the floor beneath us shook. That was when all hell really broke loose. The jolt knocked Dr. Horne and Dianna off their feet, and sent a tank full of live specimens crashing to the deck. Water and fish spilled everywhere. Horne screamed. At first, I thought he had only been hit by a shard of glass (of which there were mercifully few, thanks to the tendency of composite glass to stay together even when broken). Then I saw a foot-long pteraspid flopping along the deck, its triangular nose stained with blood. The fish had stabbed Horne in the shoulder, and now it was headed for Dianna. I grabbed her and pulled her to her feet, but I wasn’t fast enough. The fish’s deadly bill grazed her ankle and narrowly missed my foot. The fish continued to flop its way across the deck, until it finally managed to throw itself overboard.

De Ortega immediately grabbed a first aid kit and began tending to their wounds. Within minutes, he had Horne’s shoulder and Di’s ankle bandaged up. Upon his return, Captain Bill examined the boat from below. “The crossbeams between the transverse spars are buckling,” he told me. “It’s not safe to wait here much longer. I’ll take Horne now, and come back for Dianna. You and De Ortega will have to swim to the nearest reef. I’ll pick you up on the other side. If you have to abandon ship earlier than expected, send up a flare.” I wanted to protest that it was too dangerous, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that he already knew the risks. I held my tongue and accepted it. At least Dianna would get back safely…

De Ortega cocked our last boing stick. “Don’t worry, we can do just fine. Since I’m slower anyway, I’ll take the boing stick and cover your back,” he said. He attached a flashlight and turned it on.

The ship’s frame let out another squeal of distress. I thought I heard an answering scream from the water, but didn’t have time to wonder about it. The boat jolted again. De Ortega dropped the weapon, which went sliding across the deck. The medic ran after it, stopping it with his foot just before it slid overboard. When he bent down to pick it up, the floor beneath him suddenly caved in. De Ortega fell into the water, never to be seen again.

Water came rushing in through the hole in the floor, while the floor itself buckled and sank. I grabbed Dianna again and hauled her back from the invading sea, but there were no safe places left aboard ship. The crossbeams had given way, and now the Kon Tiki was freely tearing itself apart. The central spar slowly turned, tearing loose what remained of the boat’s internal structure and ripping both pontoons wide open. The back half of the boat plunged beneath the waves, leaving Dianna and me on the forward deck with perhaps a minute to go before the rest of the ship went down.