In everyone’s life, there are crucial moments that seemed unimportant at the time, but that one looks back on as life-changing events. One of those moments in my life was my first encounter with a highly unusual aircraft. I can look back on it now and see that it ultimately led to the best thing that ever happened to me. But I still wish I had followed my instincts and quit my job, rather than fly that plane.

On that fateful day, I had my first meeting with Naughtenny Moore’s latest client, a film maker named Dino Caproni. He wanted to make a documentary about Cretaceous Argentina, home of Giganotosaurus, the largest carnivorous dinosaur, and Argentinosaurus, the largest dinosaur. He was the heir to a very successful aircraft company, and promised to give the firm its biggest payment yet. However, the offer came with one important string: He would make the film from one of his company’s own planes. I was offered the honor of flying it.

Man, I wish I had quit my job!

I was standing in the company garage along with Carlos, Dianna and Dino, waiting for the plane to arrive, when I looked up and saw a flying saucer descending from the sky. It descended slowly, silently, almost vertically, as if it were being lowered by an invisible pulley. Its mirror-like surface made it shimmer like a disco ball. Dianna, Carlos and I stared in silent shock. I, with my training in aeronautics, had more reason to be startled than they did. Everything I knew about aircraft told me that what I saw was impossible. The craft was moving very slowly, I judged no more than 30 kilometers per hour, and at an angle of over 30 degrees. By all rights, it should have fallen out of the sky. For a moment, I thought that it might be a hovercraft, held aloft by a downward-pointing jet engine. But I already knew that was impossible. It was much too quiet. As we gaped, and Caproni looked on in silent glee, the plane touched down on a maintenance road and rolled for no more than ten meters before coming to a stop.

I ran forward to examine the strange craft. The first thing I noticed was that the skin of the craft was transparent plastic, ten meters wide, and a little short of two meters high. The second thing I realized was that it was not a “flying saucer” in the truest sense. Its shape was more like an egg, with the big end in front. Two vertical fins projected from the dorsal surface. A ducted propeller was in the rear. There was no discrete fuselage. The cockpit was in the center of the craft, and a protruding blister at the front contained space for recording equipment and for two observers, lying on their bellies. The only person in the craft at the moment was a pilot. I noted that he did not look happy.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Caproni. “Aeronautic engineers, they say ‘flying saucer’ not practical. And they mebee right, for most things. But for observation plane, flying saucer ideal. It go real slow, it go straight up or straight down, it practic’ly float in place. Only helicopter do that better, but de helicopter be more expensive, stay up not so long and scare all de animals away with de noise. For de intimate quality I want in my film, de Gossamer Starship is the only way. And I dink you mebee de best man to fly it.”

“Why is that?” I said warily.
“Well, de Starship, she be a great plane. But, she got no tail, and most pilots, dey used to tails, and when dey fly Starship, dey say, “I can’t fly it! It no good!” He glanced pointedly at the pilot who had just vacated the plane. “But you, I know you good pilot, no need tails.”
“I would think you could find someone at least as qualified,” I said.
“Mebee, but where, and for how much? You already work for company, you good wid planes. An’ besides, how many oder people can say dey win dogfight?”
“Do what?” Di said.

“When I was flying planes for the Columbian government, I once survived an attack from a hostile aircraft,” I said. “I can tell you about it some other time. Well, Mr. Caproni, let’s go ahead and get this over with.”

The Gossamer Starship took off after a short run down the runway. As we lifted, I made a grudging mental note that it would be easy to take off in the field, where runways were whatever we could find or make in the dirt. I soon found that it handled well, too, though anyone not experienced with tailless airplanes would have had a hard time. With Dino’s encouragement, I attempted the steep dives that he said it was capable of. It performed excellently. The transparent hull took a little getting used to, but soon I went from nervousness to a kind of euphoria. Together with the low speed and steep ascents and descents, the transparent hull encouraged the feeling that I was truly floating. I soon found myself attempting things beyond what Dino suggested. I did maneuvers which, in any other plane, would have brought me crashing into the ground. By turning into the wind, I even managed to hover in place. “Beautiful! Beautiful!” Caproni gushed.

After I landed, I personally shook Caproni’s hand. “This is the best plane I’ve ever flown!” I said. Looking back, I’m not sure why I felt the way I did. It was mainly the downright ethereal quality of the plane. I think I was also infected with Caproni’s perpetual enthusiasm. I think my mood was encouraged by Dianna’s newly bare ring finger.

Man, I wish I had quit!

That evening, Dino treated the staff to a dinosaur movie marathon, played on the Ora’s built-in video system. They were all very old, with the youngest being a little shy of 90 years old. Most featured dinosaurs created from small models, animated, and then projected against live-action footage to look like full-sized creatures. One was made by the even more primitive method of slapping artificial protuberances on dime store reptiles. Dino skipped to the next film after Carlos and the other paleontologists threw things at the screen.

We all watched with interest, sometimes bemused, sometimes perplexed, and sometimes thrilled with genuine wonder. The best were the two oldest: The Lost World and King Kong. Dino said that they had been made by an animator named Willis O’Brien. The models weren’t that good, especially in the former film, and much of the action was scientifically ludicrous. But I was very impressed, sometimes even unnerved, by the vivid aliveness conveyed through those silly-looking models. O’Brien’s dinosaurs were not impersonal, stone-faced monsters that devoured extras on cue. They were characters that did everything a living animal would. They scratched themselves; they snarled and lashed their tails; they would retreat, as well as attack; they even sneered at each other. At times, I couldn’t help feeling as if O’Brien had really seen the living animals, and then done the best he could to show them within the limitations of his medium.

King Kong got the most reactions. It was a story about an island infested with Mesozoic monsters, and ruled by a twenty-foot-tall ape called Kong. A mildly insane film maker went to the island, accompanied by a band of sailors and one beautiful woman. The woman, naturally, fell into the hands of the ape, first on the island and then in New York City. The paleontologists loved the dinosaur sequences set on the island, usually cheering for the dinosaurs and booing when they were defeated by the humans or the gorilla (though the one mammal specialist felt obliged to cheer for his own kind). Carlos led the wild cheering during an on-screen sauropod attack. While the humans were following Kong in a raft, a swimming sauropod sank their boat, killing four swimmers in the water and chasing the survivors onto land. When the slowest member of the group tried to take refuge in a tree, the sauropod sneered and plucked him out of the tree. The scene ended with the triumphant sauropod with its head to the ground, apparently feeding on its victim. The paleontologists loudly debated the merits of the scene. “It’s plausible enough,” Carlos opined. ‘Sure, sauropods were herbivores, but they still might bite someone to death as a matter of territoriality.”

The paleontologists really went wild over a wrestling match between the title ape and a carnosaur. The combatants punched, grappled and tossed each other in maneuvers that would have killed real animals of their size several times over. Of course, everyone but the mammalogist cheered for the dinosaur. When the dinosaur sprang back to its feet after being tossed, with its tail lashing defiantly, Carlos called out, “Yeah! Show that monkey who’s boss!” Even the mammalogist groaned when the gorilla killed the dinosaur by reaching into its mouth and breaking its jaws. “If that had really happened, the gorilla would have lost his fingers,” Carlos griped.

“You know something?” Carlos said to me after the film. “This expedition is shaping up to be just like King Kong. Think about it. We’re led by a crazy film maker. We’re going to a land filled with dinosaurs. We even have a beautiful damsel and a handsome adventurer.”

“Yeah? Well, we also have a big monkey,” I told him. “Just look in the mirror.”
“Ouch! Harsh, harsh. Too far, Ted,” Carlos said. He seemed to be waiting expectantly for further comment.
Finally, I said, “Look, are you insinuating something?”

“Insinuating? I’m flat out saying it,” Carlos said. “I know how you feel about her.”
“Well, I don’t know what you mean,” I said, feeling flustered.
“The gentleman doth protest too much,” Carlos said, feigning an English accent. “Would you know what I was talking about if I told you she felt the same way?” He laughed. “She thinks about it, too. Not as much, maybe, perhaps not even consciously, but the feeling is there. If you asked her, I think there’s a very good chance she would say yes.”

“Oh, shut up!” I said. “You’re being ridiculous. Besides, even if we did, we couldn’t. We’re professionals and coworkers. And I can’t very well make a move now. She’s hurting. That would be taking advantage of her when she’s vulnerable.”
“Maybe so,” said Carlos. “But that doesn’t mean she’d say no. C’mon. I’m sure I’m not saying anything you haven’t already thought about. You should be asking yourself, why not?”

“You’re imagining things, Carlos,” I said as I walked to my car. He just laughed. On the drive home, and all through the rest of the night, I furiously pondered everything he had said.

A month later (subjectively speaking, of course), we were in Cretaceous Argentina. We brought along four vehicles: two Things, the Ora armored car and, of course, Caproni’s plane. Over the first week, Caproni and I flew five successful missions, documenting the surrounding area. We would feed our footage directly to the people on the ground, who stood ready to drive over and provide close-up documentation of anything important we might see. A technician came along on each flight to maintain the camera equipment and communications gear. Usually, the technician was chosen from among Caproni’s group, but Di came along on one flight. We spent much of the time talking to each other casually, but inside, I felt excited and scared. I pushed the plane to its limits, secretly hoping to impress her.

We concentrated on observing the activities of a herd of argentinosaurs. There were almost a hundred of them, moving in a loose column along a fern prairie of shrubs and small trees. We frequently glimpsed smaller animals moving with the herd. Iguanodons and smaller sauropods stayed close to the argentinosaurs, presumably because the invincible giants afforded a measure of protection against predators. However, carnivores were not entirely deterred. Birds, lizards and small carnosaurs moved about with impunity, snapping up prey that was driven out in the wake of the herd. Occasionally, we caught glimpses of larger carnivores (though none comparable to Giganotosaurus), following at a distance and waiting for an opportunity to take prey. The ground crew found the aftermath of a successful hunt. A young argentinosaur, weighing “only” 15 tons, had been killed by a pack of one-ton predators called Megaraptor. Track ways revealed a grueling struggle, typical of dinosaur predation. The juvenile had been attacked by surprise and wounded. Over an estimated four hours, it had moved in and out of the herd, with the raptors following behind. Its elders protected the juvenile when it was in their midst, but paid no heed when it fell further and further behind. Eventually, the juvenile had been left behind entirely, and five predators had attacked in unison.

The kill provided our first evidence of Giganotosaurus. Among the carnotaur tracks were those of a much larger carnosaur, which had moved in and dispersed the pack. Several shed giganotosaur teeth were found in the carcass, and a front leg was entirely missing. The giganotosaur had apparently eaten its fill from the haunches and then carried away the forelimb, perhaps for later consumption, but more likely for a mate or its young.
Dr. Diego, a paleontologist specializing in taphonomy, estimated that the kill was about a week old.

It was debated whether or not to kill one of the argentinosaurs. Carlos and I opposed it emphatically. “I shot a sauropod once before, on our trip to the Morrison,” I said. “It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. We got swarmed by carnosaurs, used up half our ammunition for the entire trip and finally had to leave most of the carcass behind. And remember, the biggest carnosaurs then only weighed one to two tons. In this time and place, that’s the lower limit for big-game predators!”

“What about Giganotosaurus itself?” said Dr. Indigo, the mammalogist. “Would that be worth shooting?”

I considered, but shook my head. “I don’t think so. We’d have the same problem with attracting other carnosaurs,” I said. “Besides, there’s not much we could learn from a carcass that we don’t already know either from fossils or other specimens collected through time travel. It would be more beneficial to observe the living animal.”

“Yes!” Caproni said. “And that is what we shall do!”

At the end of the first week, scouting ahead of the herd in the plane, I made an exciting discovery that would change the course of the expedition. I excitedly presented our photographs to the rest of the group that night. “The argentinosaur herd appears to be moving toward this thinly vegetated area here,” I said, highlighting an area of a few square kilometers. “About a dozen adult argentinosaurs are already there. If you look closely, you can see small depressions, about a meter wide. By our count, there are no fewer than 52 of them. We believe, and Dr. Jonston concurs, that these are nests!

“Our observations show that younger argentinosaurs are protected from predators by moving in the midst of the adults. Therefore, the arrival of the herd is most likely timed to coincide with the hatching of the first eggs. We estimate that the herd will reach the nesting area in the next two days. We have the unprecedented opportunity to observe a dinosaur hatching.”

We eagerly planned how we would photograph it. There would be daily fly-bys in the Gossamer Starship. As soon as the hatching started, the ground crew would move in to observe.

Carlos offered a voice of caution. “The argentinosaurs are protective of their young, and with hatchlings, they’re going to be especially vigilant. Those adults already at the site have probably been guarding the nests the whole time. They may not be the most attentive parents, but they certainly aren’t going to let us drive right in. Any close-up work will have to be conducted by a small group on foot. I nominate Ms. Gonzalez, Diego and myself. The Ora should be standing by a klick or two away. If things go wrong, the rest of the team will move in, kick ass with the 20 mil, pick us up and get the hell out of there.”

Over the next two days, we set the plan in motion. Three days later, Caproni spotted the first hatchling emerge from the nest. At Caproni’s request, I hovered about 100 meters above the nest. For the first time, nervousness broke through my delight at flying the plane. Hovering was tricky; there was always a risk that a change in the wind or some hiccup in the plane would break the delicate equilibrium and send the craft out of control. When I had hovered before, I had always been high enough that I could regain control if something went wrong. But now, we were so low that a problem could easily cause a crash. I realized that I had allowed Caproni’s infectious enthusiasm cloud my judgment.

I grew doubly nervous when the animals around us began to take notice of the starship. An argentinosaur reared on its hind legs, reaching well over 50 feet into the air, and roared. It undoubtedly mistook us for one of the large pterosaurs that were circling over the nest. Through Dino’s camera feed, I got a disconcertingly good look at it. It bared its teeth, just like the sneering dinosaurs of O’Brien, and two red sacks on its snout inflated. I didn’t worry about that, but I was more than a little perturbed by the pterosaurs. Some of them had wingspans even greater than my plane, and they were beginning to behave aggressively. One, with a wingspan of 40 feet, swooped down on me from above, pulling up just before it smacked into the canopy. I had won that game of chicken, but there was no guarantee that I could win the next. There was no telling what might happen if one collided with the plane. During standard aircraft tests, the plane had stood up to high-speed impacts from ducks and chickens. But a collision with a pterosaur weighing over 100 pounds would be an entirely different matter.

The pterosaur dive-bombed the plane again and again. After the third time, I pulled out of hover. That was a catastrophic mistake. Seeing my plane move away only encouraged the pterosaur to attack again. This time, it struck from behind, hitting my canopy and then getting sucked into the prop. The plane shook; gore spattered on the canopy, and the engine stopped. The Starship began losing altitude rapidly. Any other aircraft would have nosedived straight into the ground then and there. Instead, the Starship made a very steep descent, which grew steeper as we went lower. I managed to pull out of the dive with barely ten meters to spare. Just when it looked like I might get back in the air, a cantankerous argentinosaur stepped into my path. I pulled up steeply, just enough to crash into its neck instead of its descending feet.

*********************

I’m Carlos Wrzniewski. I convinced Ted to let me tell my part of this story, so we’ll take turns telling it for a while. Maybe this way you’ll get a few of the facts straight. When the Gossamer Starship crashed, I was driving a Thing toward the nest site. I wasn’t paying attention to the transmission, and didn’t realize anything was wrong until the transmission ended in static. Dianna screamed “TED!” so loud I almost got distracted from my driving. “What’s wrong?” I say.

“The plane crashed,” Di says. “It crashed into an Argentinosaurus!” Understand, she’s not being hysterical. She’s saying this almost dead pan, like she’s not sure if it’s real or not.
“Well, what do we do about it?” I say. And she’s just looking blank.
“We have to find them,” she says.

“What do you mean ‘we’?” I say. “You have all the gadgets. The plane has an automatic beacon. Take a bearing on his location.” So she does that, and starts plotting a course, but then the beacon goes out. “Well, where is it?” I say.
She says, “It’s gone!” I say, “OK, then where was it?” She gives me directions. And in a few minutes, we find the plane. It was upside down, about two klicks away from the nesting site. The thing was covered in blood. Dianna, she’s shaking, and Diego, he looks like he’s going to be sick.
I stop the Thing and get out. Before I go to check the plane, I get an Eliminator out of the back. Can’t be too careful, that’s what I always say. I touch Dianna on the shoulder and say, “Get the Tactical rifle and the camera.” But she just sits there, starting to cry. She says, “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

I told her, “We won’t know until we check the plane. Are you gonna come?” She sits there a moment, then gets out and gets a gun. Diego opts to stay behind. I’m already convinced that at least two out of three crew members are dead. I can see that Caproni’s bubble is caved in, smashed against a tree trunk. Not one chance in ten he got out in time. As for Ted, I’m not even thinking about it. I can already see that the plane slid for quite a way upside down, and if the canopy wasn’t caved in, then it probably sheered clean off. I figure, the only person who had a snowball’s chance in Alice, Australia, of getting out alive is the technician. I look back at Di, and I can tell she’s thinking the same thing. I tell her, “Stay here. I’ll go look.” I shoulder the Eliminator, and it feels like it weighs 100 kilos instead of ten. I climb on top of the wreck (or, rather, the bottom) and look. And now I’m the one staring. Finally I say, “The plane’s empty!”

Dianna runs over. “What happened to the transmitter?” she says.
“Most likely, destroyed or disabled in the crash,” I say. Di just shakes her head.
“That beacon wasn’t a delicate piece of equipment. It’s designed to survive crashes a lot worse than this. The only way to disable it would be to bash it with something heavy on purpose.” She thinks a moment, “Oh, s*!”
I think I know what she’s thinking, and I don’t like it one bit. “The beacon was portable, wasn’t it?” I say. “If they had to leave the plane, they could have brought it with them so we could track them easily. But then maybe somebody is carrying it…”
Dianna’s frowning. “I didn’t register any significant movement between when the plane crashed and when the transmitter went out,” she says. “It must be within a few meters of here.” She thinks some more. “Is there a way to look around inside?”
“You mean besides the obvious?” I say. She blushes, and then looks through the transparent belly. “I can see where it should be,” she says. “It’s gone; they must have taken it with them…Oh, no. Oh, my God…” She just stands there, staring.
“What happened?” I say. She points.

“The transmitter is built to run on either internal batteries or on power from the plane. You see those rectangular things on the floor—well, the ceiling? Those are the batteries. The technician must have grabbed the transmitter and forgot the batteries. Unbelievable.”
I shake my head. “Not unbelievable, Di; it’s common. In military circles, this sort of thing is called ‘fog of war’. When people are in dangerous situations, they stop being rational. Instead of planning and thinking through their actions, they fall back on instincts and routines. It can save a man’s life, and his sanity. But sometimes, the process short-circuits. That’s when things like this happen.”
“So, what do we do? We can’t track them, and chances are they don’t know it. It seems…hopeless.”

“You ever study classical mythology?” I say. She shakes her head.
“I picked up bits and pieces in school and from books and movies. But no, I’ve never studied it. Why on Earth do you ask?”
“Well, in the old days, people had gods and goddesses for just about everything. One of the major goddesses was for hunting. The Greeks called her Artemis. The Romans called her…Dianna.” She just looks at me, kind of blank. “Look, I know that won’t mean much to you, but just think it over. The master of the hunt is your namesake. You gotta think like her and be like her. Do that, and nothing is impossible. Now—let’s hunt!”

*********************

While they were looking at the plane, I (Ted), Caproni and the technician (her name was Rosita Perez) were navigating the nest. We had survived the plane crash with nothing worse than bruises. Caproni had tumbled out of his bubble on impact. I had fared the worst. When the plane had hit the ground upside-down, the canopy over my head remained miraculously intact, but I hit my head against it repeatedly. I ended up unconscious, and Caproni and Perez had to drag me out.

I regained consciousness as a group of dinosaurs approached. I heard the telltale shrieks of carnotaurs. “Are you all right?” Caproni said.
“I can walk,” I said. “Do you have the shotgun? The transmitter?” They showed me both. Caproni also had a video camera. I took the shotgun. It was loaded with armor-piercing buckshot; I had three extra drums stored in my vest. “The carnotaurs will be interested in the plane, not us. But it will behoove us to get out of here. Come on!” I led them away, toward the nest.

On reaching the nest, we were greeted with a spectacular sight. The sauropod herd was marching past at a few miles per hour. Meanwhile, dozens of newborns were galloping toward them. The hatchlings were the size of large rabbits, and their gait was like a rabbit hopping. Six adults monitored the trail of the newborns, while another four watched the nest. There was little need for the adults to move about. With necks about 40 feet long, they could nudge a newborn or drive away a predator simply by swinging their necks. Despite the vigilance of the sauropods, predators took a steady toll on nestlings. Pterosaurs swooped down, carrying off baby sauropods the way hawks carry away mice. Crocodiles and large lizards lunged from the underbrush to seize infants. I saw one infant captured and smothered by a big snake. Small carnosaurs, ranging from the size of turkeys to the size of men, ran about snatching infants. The most successful of these were sickle-clawed dinosaurs called noasaurs, resembling but only distantly related to the famous velociraptors. These hunted in groups, with some feinting in and out of the underbrush to distract the adults while others made the kills.

I estimated that the predators were killing about one of every four infants that hatched. However, the predators took their own casualties. The sauropod adults frequently sniffed the bushes, and stomped if they smelled a predator. When in distress, the infants would let out a high-pitched whistle, which would draw one of the adults within seconds. The most successful predators were those that killed the infants before they cried out. If the infant did cry for help, a predator that did not run or hide fast enough would either be creamed with the swinging neck or seized with the teeth. In a spectacular fatality, a pterosaur, about as big as the one that struck the Starship, was hit by an adult’s swinging neck as it carried off a still-screaming infant. It was like a pigeon being hit with a baseball bat. The pterosaur flew for over a hundred yards before landing in a pitiful heap. Two adults sniffed and nudged at the infant, but it was dead. When the pterosaur tried to lift one of it broken wings, a third adult ducked its head, seized the winged creature with its teeth and flung it against a tree. “These guys would do Willis O’Brien proud,” I murmured.

The hatching went on for hours. The eggs at the edges were among the last to hatch, so it was some time before the attention of the adults came our way. We hid behind a heap of manure, hoping that it would mask our smell as well as hide us from sight. In his dedication, Dino crawled on top of the manure pile to continue filming. I switched the ammunition in the shotgun, replacing the buckshot with a drum of tungsten slugs.
Then we heard the shots.

Dianna and I (Carlos) are walking from the plane toward the nest when we run into one of the silliest-looking dinosaurs that ever lived: the Carnotaurus. A carnotaur is set apart from other dinosaurs by several features. For one thing, they have a broad, flat horn overhanging each eye. No one knows what they’re for. They’re too small and fragile to be of any use in combat. They can’t be sexual display features, because we’ve found them on both males and females. Who knows? Maybe they’re an evolutionary adaptation for keeping the sun out of their eyes. Another thing is that they have unusually short, deep skulls. Finally, the upper jaw is significantly longer and a lot more heavily built than the lower one. The net result is a babyish, buck-toothed, bunny-eared caricature of a dinosaur. Even their teeth look fragile, and hard to take seriously. The only thing that might keep you from laughing is the fact that they weigh one metric ton each.

“No worries, mate,” says I. “We can take down this guy easy. But we aren’t gonna shoot unless we have to. For every carnosaur we kill, the smell of blood could attract five more.” The carnotaur hisses, and changed its skin color to fluorescent orange. I fire the Eliminator into the air, which makes it take a few steps back. I work the bolt and load a new round. I’m playing it cool, but then Dianna loses hers and shoots the thing through the eye. A head shot with a dinosaur is always an iffy proposition, but it worked well enough this time. The dinosaur falls right over, for all intents and purposes dead on impact. Di’s drilled the brain practically front to back. Much to our dismay, the sound of our guns gets answered by the roar of an argentinosaur.
I lead the retreat to the Thing—or, rather, where we had parked the Thing. We get there just in time to see Diego driving away. “Sweet Mother!!” I say, “what are we gonna do now?”
Di looks over her shoulder. Then she says, like, deadpan, “I think we can rule out climbing trees.” I look, too, and I see a couple argentinosaurs coming straight for us. They aren’t running, in the technical sense; as far as we know, the big sauropods don’t even do that. But with those long legs, what’s a brisk walk for them is 20 k per hour. Something that big moving in that way messes with one’s sense of perspective. The first thing you think is that they’re half as big, half as close and moving at half the speed that they really are. When they’re maybe half a klick away, I fire. “You missed,” Di says.

“You think you can do better, you try shooting this thing!” says I. I reload, real fast. Di fires a couple shots with her gun, which is kinda like gunning for bear with a BB gun. I keep shooting. After three shots, the leading sauropod goes down, and the one behind it stops. But the one still standing rears up on its hind legs, and it wails. I fire my last shot into the argentinosaur’s chest, and it staggers back and falls over. It roars one more time and dies. That’s when we hear the answering calls. Dozens. Hundreds.

“Great,” Di says. “Now it’s calling reinforcements. Do you have a backup plan?”
“I’m thinking,” I say. Right then, three more sauropods come out of the forest. The sensible thing to do is run, but why bother? There’s no place to run to, and the sauropods have endurance on its side. Dianna starts firing two-shot bursts at the closest sauropod, first at the legs, then at the chest. It staggers and falls, but it’s clearly still alive. Another comes at us from a different direction, and it gets within biting range. It takes a snap at me, and believe me, those heads only look small compared to the rest of them. Then Di fires her last three shots at it, and Sweet Mother! She blows the thing’s brains out. Not that it makes much difference. The dinosaur keeps coming, with what’s left of the head hanging down like dead weight. We try to avoid it by going right, but it goes right too. For one horrible moment, I think it’s still trying to get us. Then I realize, it’s simply yawing off course. I lunge left, and knock Di right off her feet. The sauropod misses us, barely, and keeps going for maybe 300 meters before it falls over.

I point to a stand of bushes. “Let’s get in there and keep a low profile,” I say. “With any luck, the sauropods will look around a bit, decide the trouble’s over and go away.”
“And if we’re unlucky?”
“Then it’s not gonna matter much whether we’re hiding there or standing here, will it?”

*********************

The sounds of shooting drew two argentinosaurs away from the nest, but the rest only grew more suspicious. I (Ted) pulled Dino down when one of them came too close. The head came down so close I could have reached out and touched it. It seemed to be looking right at me. It twitched an almost pig-like nose, apparently sniffing me. The lips pulled back, making that horrid sneer. I was sure it was going to attack. But, for some unfathomable reason, the head pulled back, and the giant walked away. I looked at Dino and Perez. They were trembling.

“We’re safe, for the moment,” I said. “I think maybe the smell of the manure fooled that one. Now we have to go in the direction of those shots. The others may be in trouble. Is there any way to signal them?”
“The beacon can be used as a transmitter,” Perez said. She confidently pulled it out of her pack. “Strange. The battery light’s not… Oh, no! I left the batteries on the plane!”
I looked at her in shock. “You mean the beacon’s been down the whole time?” She nodded. I wanted to swear, but words seemed to fail. “All right,” I said finally. “It’s a problem, but not insurmountable. We know where the others are from the shots, anyway. They can radio for help. They probably have already. Let’s go…”

We moved swiftly but stealthily through the trees. There was very little in the way of cover; there was little underbrush, and the trees were nearly stripped of leaves. I watched the others. Perez moved and glanced about furtively, in a subdued kind of fear. But Dino still seemed genuinely excited. He still had his camera out, and he filmed the scenery with every appearance of happiness. I made a note to watch him carefully. The bellows of the argentinosaurs could be heard in every direction. I listened for the sound of gunfire. Finally, we reached where I thought the shots had come from.

We all stopped. Perez gasped. We were in a large clearing, close to where the plane had gone down. 15 argentinosaurs were wandering around, sniffing loudly and bellowing to each other. Three more argentinosaurs lay dead. I instantly dropped to the ground, for all the good it might do. Perez did likewise. Dino hid behind a tree. The dinosaurs showed no signs of noticing us. I watched them closely. They were not making any kind of systematic search; instead, they simply milled about aimlessly. (Dinosaurs obviously aren’t very smart, and there is little in the way of actual coordination between members of a group.) But, as I watched, the dinosaurs’ limited attention seemed to shift gradually toward an unusually dense clump of vegetation.
“I think there’re some people hiding there,” I whispered. “We need a diversion, something to draw their attention away from those bushes. Dino, can you play back what you’ve recorded?” Peering around the tree, he nodded mutely. “Good. Here’s what I want you to do…”

*********************

Dianna and me (Carlos) are hiding in the bushes. It’s working well enough; the only problem is, most of the bushes are gnetophytes. Never heard of them? No surprise; all but one genus are extinct, and good riddance. These are primitive flowering plants, which lack leaves. Instead, the branches have chlorophyll all over the surface, and all of these branches end in sharp little points. No wonder the argentinosaurs didn’t eat them. The whole time we’re hiding, the bushes are poking us. Fortunately, the argentinosaurs seem to have pretty thin skins. When one of them came sniffing after us, it would get a few good pokes in the nose and then back off.

So, it looks like everything will work out all right, until a certain big fat idiot decides we need help. As we’re sitting there, taking our pokes while we wait out the dinosaurs, we hear this high-pitched whistle. Suddenly, all the dinosaurs freeze. Then they all hustle for one spot, except for one which rears up on its hind legs and lets out this incredible roar. One of them carelessly steps in the gnetophytes, but we just barely avoid getting pulped. “What was that?” Di asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say, “but it sounded recorded… Sweet Mother. Ted’s trying a trick we used in the Morrison. He’s playing back a dinosaur call to draw away the dinosaurs. That idiot.”
“Did it not work in the Jurassic?” Di asks.
“Oh, it worked real well,” I say. “We used a recorded Allosaurus roar to scare off a whole pack of ceratosaurs. Unfortunately, it attracted several real allosaurs.” Meanwhile, I see that the trick really is working now. The whistle gets played again, this time on our left. The dinosaurs keep following the sound—all except one. It paces in circles, still sniffing. Then it turns its tail toward us, and suddenly I see this mist coming out of its rear end. It’s not urine (technically, dinosaurs don’t urinate) but fluid from a pair of scent glands at the base of its tail—like a skunk’s, only much larger and even fouler. It doesn’t just stink, it makes my eyes water and my skin burn. I have to pull my shirt over my face just to keep breathing. “Sweet Mother!” I say. “We’ve always figured the tails were most dangerous—but we never counted on the anus!”

Finally, the argentinosaur lets up and walks way. Rosie Perez runs over to us, then takes a few good steps back. Dianna shouts, “Where’s Ted?”
Perez looks like she’s about to cry (though maybe it’s just the sauropod spray. “He went with Dino!” she says. “He said Dino would have to have protection… so they went together. I think they gonna die.”

Now, Dianna bites both lips, and I’m sure I see tears coming down from her eyes. “He must have had a plan,” she says. “What does he want us to do?”
“He found a tree that’s climbable,” she says. “We’re going to climb as high as we can. The others will join us… if they are able.”
Dianna just stands there, like she’s in shock. “Di. You OK?” I say.
She looks at me, and her face is going red. I think she’s about to scream, but she doesn’t. Instead, she just says real soft, “How could I possibly be OK?”
I put a hand on her shoulder, and I’m ready to pull it back in case she tries to bite it off. “All right, bad question,” I tell her. “Do you feel well enough to run?” She nods. “Good. Let’s go.”

*********************

I (Ted) followed Dino in a full run. It was remarkable how quickly he could move. I had trouble even keeping him in sight. He played the call over and over again. We could hear the argentinosaurs’ feet pounding behind us. I worried that they would catch up with us too soon. They moved at about 12 miles per hour, which doesn’t sound like much, but just try maintaining that speed for more than a few minutes! I was already feeling exhausted, but Dino seemed to just go faster.

“Watch out!” I shouted to Dino. He stopped just short of a suspicious dark space beneath a fallen tree. It was none too soon. A lurking noasaur erupted from the hole. It was only three feet tall, but heavily armed. It could have killed him easily, but it hesitated to attack a prey so much larger than itself. It took a cautious swipe with a clawed hand. The film maker sidestepped the attack, then I blasted the noasaur to pieces. I winced when I heard angry bellows from the sauropods.

We finally doubled back, leaving the argentinosaurs to search in confusion for the young one they had been following. We moved further into the trees, hoping to avoid being spotted by suspicious stragglers. We encountered one watchful sauropod that was keeping an eye on an opening in the tree cover. We dropped to all fours before it could see us, and crawled past under the cover of a large log. However, we found the way blocked by a six-foot crocodylian lying beside the log. I threw a rock at the croc’s nose. It grunted menacingly, but did not move.

I pondered the dilemma. Trying to crawl by a live croc was obviously not an option. Shooting it was equally out of the question; that would only draw the sauropods to us. The same held true if I tried to shoot the sauropod. With a hit to the head or neck, I had a very good chance of killing it, but the blast would attract many more. The safest option was to try to outwait the sauropod. But how long would that take?
My blood froze when the sauropod roared. I was sure we were spotted. Then something roared back. I looked toward the trees, and spotted a carnosaur that had somehow escaped my attention. It could only be a giganotosaur. It stood well over ten feet tall. It was well-camouflaged in hues of brown and green, except for a bright red crest on its snout. The sauropod thrust its head over the log and roared again. The sound was deafening. The giganotosaur stepped forward, letting out a steady hiss. I feared that we might be trampled in a clash between the giants. But then the sauropod backed off and walked away. The giganotosaur let out a triumphant roar before retreating into the trees. It might have won the battle of wills, but more sauropods would be on their way. Dino and I got up and ran like hell.

About 20 minutes later, we were all together about 30 feet up a tree. We were safe, as long as no one fell asleep and dropped out. “Didn’t you once fall out of a sequoia?” Carlos asked.
“Yes, but it was someone else’s fault,” I said defensively.
“Is this really the best plan?” Di said. “I mean, as soon as the argentinosaurs leave, this place is going to be swarming with them. Mightn’t we be safer if we tried to get somewhere else on foot?”

I shook my head. “Going on foot would be too risky,” I said. “We would have the carnosaurs and the argentinosaurs after us, especially with the sauropod spray on two of us. Besides, we need to plan for rescue, not just temporary safety. The first rule for wilderness survival is to stay in one place, and this is the first place the rest of the party will look for us.”
“You’re assuming they will look at all,” Carlos said darkly. “For all we know, Diego may have told the others we’re dead.”
“I know, but this is still our best option. What do we have in the way of ammunition?”
“I have another clip of .38 ammunition,” Di said. “Carlos used up the Eliminator rounds. How about you?”
“I have two drums of shells, one buckshot and one of slugs,” I said. “That gives us a total of 29 shots. If one dinosaur attacks, we can stop it easily enough. I don’t expect to have any trouble, at least from the carnosaurs. They won’t bother climbing a tree to get at us when there’s 400 tons of dead meat on the ground. How about communications? Is there a way to contact the Ora?”

Di shook her head. “We weren’t able to retrieve the batteries for the beacon. We don’t have any other communications gear, except what was in the Thing.”
Carlos scratched his chin. “Actually… maybe we do!” he said. “Let me see the Tactical.” Dianna handed him the rifle. After a few moments of examination, he cracked the biggest grin I’ve ever seen. “Excellent! Take a look at this. There’re three settings: One for safety, one for semi-auto… and one for taking pictures. The electronic scope was built to double as a kind of camera phone. That way, if a `tactical marksman’ sees something important, but it’s too risky to shoot, he can photograph it and send the image straight to his superiors. It’s perfect for reconnaissance work. Normally, it sends signals with microwaves, which aren’t much good without satellites, but if they kept the gun to the original specs, there should be a back-up radio transmitter.” He frowned with intense thought as he flipped through the options in the gun’s little computer. “Here it is. Good!” He handed the gun back to Di. “Try sending a signal every thirty minutes. The others should respond eventually… if they’re listening.”

“This really a wonderful opportunity!” Dino said gleefully. “My camera, it shoot in the dark. I can film carnosaurs eating kill. It not be wonderful?” I and everyone else looked at him in stunned silence. Carlos looked like he was ready to throw Caproni out of the tree.
We tied ourselves to the branches with belts, ropes and clothing. Realistically, there was no way our improvised straps could hold up anyone who started to fall, but they would at least keep us from rolling off the branches in our sleep. Di tied herself in with a long-sleeved overshirt. I felt a little uncomfortable next to her, so I moved several branches over, almost to the other side of the tree. Then we waited, and waited. Once, we heard the sound of the Ora’s cannon. “Sounds like they’re five clicks away,” Carlos commented. The sound was repeated, more faintly. The Ora was moving away.

“Care to make a change of plans?” Di said loudly.
“No, they’ll come back when the sauropods clear out,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “We’re still better off up here.”
Within a few hours, the sun was setting. As expected, the carnosaurs became bolder. Five giganotosaurs came out and started feeding on the dead sauropods. It was unclear whether they were a pack, or just individuals that converged on the same place. I’m inclined to think that the latter was true. Only two of them, apparently an adult and a juvenile, would even feed at the same carcass. Smaller carnosaurs gathered, waiting expectantly for the giganotosaurs to finish. Pterosaurs of all sizes swept down, snatching scraps of meat when the giganotosaurs weren’t looking. Gathering crocodiles were bolder. Dozens of them swarmed in like a Biblical plague of reptiles, tearing off chunks of meat with impunity. One of the gigans was driven away from its carcass by a pair of crocs even longer than itself. “Terror crocs,” Carlos whispered. “Probably genus Sarcosuchus.”

A little while later, a terrible contralto screech announced a new arrival. The gigans looked up from their feeding apprehensively. Moments later, an eight-foot-long, crocodile-like head thrust through the trees, and the scream was repeated. The noise was deafening. A gigan actually turned tail and ran. The creature advanced, revealing a bizarre body that seemed to go on indefinitely. It did not look much like a dinosaur, but it walked on two legs and was too big to be anything else. It was over 60 feet long, and stood well over twenty feet high. The arms were unusually long, and bore one long sickle claw on the largest finger of each hand. Perhaps a quarter of its height came from a tall sail on its back. I recognized it as a spinosaur, though if not for the sail, I would have been at a loss to identify it. The strangest thing about it was its bearing. It looked and acted more like a bloodhound than any carnosaur I had seen. Where an ordinary carnosaur on the hunt would stand tall, with head raised high on a curving neck, this one seemed to stoop, with the unusually long neck held straight, the claws nearly scraping the dirt, and the nose held mere inches above the ground. The spinosaur strolled through the clearing, indifferent to the roaring of the gigans and ineffectual snaps of the crocs. It began to feed on the abandoned carcass, and the gigans and crocs relaxed and resumed their feeding.

I dozed off, but was dimly aware of a rising wind that made the branches swing and creak. Most people would have found it unnerving, but I found it soothing—at least as long as I was too drowsy to give it much thought. An hour or so later, I was awakened by Dianna’s screams.

A pterosaur, with a wingspan of over twenty feet, was attacking her. It hung like a bat from a branch over her, while striking with its wing-claws and its beak. She dropped her gun, which landed with a loud thud. I heard tearing fabric; the pterosaur was shredding a shirt she had used to tie herself up. I had to lean out precariously to bring my shotgun to bear, and I could still only see the pterosaur’s left wing. My first shot was a miss, and the recoil from my awkwardly-held gun nearly knocked me out of the tree. I had to grab the trunk with both hands to steady myself. Fortunately, the gun was strapped to my shoulder. I heard a loosed branch tumble to the ground. When I raised the gun again, the pterosaur was hanging on to Di’s own branch and slashing at her leg with one wing. When it heard me pump the shotgun, it came at me with wings flailing, held aloft more by occasional contact with the branches than by the lift from the wings. I fired; its body thumped against the gun barrel, and claws scratched at my legs. Then the pterosaur went crashing down through the branches, still flapping its wings. I lowered my gun in satisfaction, then froze. The pterosaur’s severed head was lodged in the trunk a few inches from my ear.

“We got trouble,” Carlos whispered. I looked down, and almost cried out. The spinosaur was heading toward us, its long nose pointing at our tree like a compass needle. When it reached the tree, it sniffed around the base. There was a nasty slurping sound as it sampled what was left of the pterosaur. Then its head jerked abruptly up. It easily reached twenty feet in the air. Grasping the trunk with its forelimbs for support, it reared up higher still. After a moment of pondering, I fired at the sail. I hoped that a painful but not life-threatening blow would drive it away. The spinosaur roared in pain, and from that close, the noise was positively painful. Rather than back off, it swung its head in my direction. Three times, it inhaled loudly. Then, for reasons known only to itself, it turned away and returned to its carcass.

“That was too close,” I said.
“It ain’t over,” Carlos said. “We gotta get that gun back. And by `we’, I mean you.”
I gave Carlos the shotgun and started down. The climb was one of the most unnerving experiences of my life. It was considerably more difficult than the climb up, thanks to the close approach of the spinosaur. The dinosaur had scratched up the bark and snapped a number of branches, making it much harder for me to find handholds and footholds. Nevertheless, I made it down without serious incident. Then, just as I was bending over to pick up the Tactical, a giganotosaur roared. It was less than twenty feet away.
I snatched up the rifle, fumbling in my desperation. Before I could even get hold of the grip, the gigan had reached me. Imagine my shock when it walked right past me! It was the adult of the pair, and the youngster was right behind it. If the adult noticed me at all, it gave no sign, but the young one glanced at me and shrieked a warning. The elder gigan roared again. This time, something—several somethings, in fact—roared back.

Carlos says that in an emergency, people stop thinking and run by instinct. That was certainly how it was for me. I was ten feet back up the tree before I had any definite, conscious impression of what was going on. I nearly fell out when something ran into the tree. I had a brief glimpse of a dinosaur with big claws and no head pressing against the trunk, its legs still moving. I did not pause from climbing. It was now clear what was going on: We were in the middle of a carnosaur turf war, and the decapitated animal below me was the first casualty. A cacophony of hideous screams and colliding bodies made the branches shake. After almost falling out again, I stopped at a stout branch about twenty-six feet off the ground and held on tight. Three dinosaurs ran past the tree, making the branch swing. I recognized one as the little gigan by its screams. Behind me, there was an unfamiliar scream that was cut off in a gruesome, soggy crunch. Another dinosaur went by, so big and loud that it could only be the adult gigan. It was moving slowly, with the halting tread of a wounded animal. It staggered at the base of the tree and slammed against the trunk. The impact nearly catapulted me off the branch. Then the gigan started moving again, gaining momentum until it was managing a slow jog.

I felt something brush my shoulder. “Grab it, Ted!” Carlos told me. They had managed to make a rope out of two carrying straps. I mutely hooked tied the gun to the straps. They hauled it up, then lowered the rope again. I climbed up the rest of the way, holding onto the rope with both hands while pressing my feet against the trunk. I started to slip when a strip of bark peeled away, but found a footing on a sufficiently sturdy branch. Carlos took my hand and pulled me the rest of the way up. I felt Di’s soft hands strap me back in. By then, my eyes were shut, and soon I was fast asleep.

When I finally awoke, it was morning. The big carnosaurs were gone, except for a few stragglers who lay next to the sauropod carcasses, too stuffed to move. Glancing down, I saw the decapitated dinosaur lying on its side at the base of the tree. In the light of day, I could see that it was a Megaraptor. The crocs had chewed on it a little, but the carcass was largely untouched. One arm was missing, but it was clearly not a recent injury, let alone one from last night. I wondered if it had been lost in some previous conflict with a Giganotosaurus. A short distance away, there was another, hideously mutilated raptor carcass. I looked up, and met Carlos’s gaze. “There were six of them,” he told me. “Caproni filmed the whole thing, though I doubt if many people will want to see it. It looks like they weren’t interested in the sauropod carcasses. They were after the gigans, especially the little one. Two went after the little one, while the other four slashed the s* out of the adult. The gigan evened the odds real quick, though. It beheaded one, sent another away with one leg barely on, and then it turned around and walked right over that one. Last we saw of it, it was running into the woods with ten feet of intestine hanging out. I imagine it’s dead by now.”

I looked to my right, and saw Di sleeping on the next branch. Carlos leaned over and whispered in my ear, “She called out your name, you know. Once when the plane went down, and once when you were trying to get back up the tree.” Then he continued, in a normal voice, “We finally contacted the Ora. The others will be coming soon.”
Sure enough, it was less than twenty minutes before the Ora came in sight. They parked the Ora directly beneath the tree, allowing us to slide down the rope and land on the roof. Di allowed me to rest on a cot in the upper deck of the Ora, where she and the other women of the expedition normally slept. Once, I peered out through half-closed eye and saw her sitting beside me, her chin resting on the mattress.

That evening, Dianna and I had dinner together. We both felt awkward, and didn’t talk much, but it was still nice to have each other’s company. I finally told her the story of my “dog fight”: “It happened in 2059. It was the last big year in the campaign against the drug cartels. All along, it had been a war of attrition. We destroyed, on average, 90% of their crops—not counting the loss of productivity from area-denial agents. Meanwhile, they shot down 20% of our planes, mainly with missiles and flak guns. The only question was, which side could sustain their losses longer. The cartels were stretched to the limits of their resources, but they still had enough for a last push back. They started using things they had held in reserve before. One of those was the Black Baron.

“The ‘Black Baron’ was a pilot, or, for all we knew, several pilots, flying a turboprop military trainer. It had been fitted with a full complement of weapons: missiles, machine guns, and a ‘Cyrano’ 57 mm cannon. It was painted black, with a red devil’s face on the nose. It wasn’t the only fighter they deployed, but there was no mistaking it. It appeared regularly in certain areas. Our planes were utterly defenseless. Have you ever seen an eagle go after a pigeon? It was worse than that. Our standard planes were ‘flying wing’ tankers. They had no tail and no discrete fuselage, just one huge delta wing, 60 meters in span and fat enough for a man to sit in the leading edge. They got the nickname ‘flying tortoises.’ The closest thing we had to weapons were some obsolete chaff launchers in the rear. In the event of hostile fire, the only thing we had going for us was that, apart from us, there wasn’t much in the plane to be hit. Even so, we might have been safe if we had had a military escort. But that was ruled out as a matter of legal etiquette. Officially, we were a civilian `agricultural’ project. Under any other name, what we were doing would have been illegal. Involving military air craft would have meant abandoning that pretense. So, the only remotely effective defense we had was protection in numbers. They sent us out in scores, even in hundreds. On a good day, an encounter with serious resistance would only wipe out half of them.

“When I met the Black Baron, I was flying in a mid-sized formation: two dozen planes. With a full load, the Tortugas had a speed of barely 200 kilometers per hour and a ceiling of well under 1800 meters. On this occasion, we were spraying secondary-growth rain forest between two mountain ranges. Guns in the mountains could shoot down at us. We flew in a zigzag formation, two alternating lines of planes. I was seventh in the staggered line

“The first plane in set off a cluster of off-route mines planted in the trees. That’s a mine turned on its side, designed to fire at passing vehicles. They launched a bunch of sub munitions, which exploded if they got near enough to an aircraft. All this made for a solid cloud of flak halfway across the valley. 3 planes got hit, one of which had two engines fail. That was enough to foul up our mission, because it wasn’t safe to turn around, so every plane behind it had to slow down or maneuver to get around it. Of course, we also had to crowd in to the middle to avoid the thickest of the trees. And, the narrowest part of the valley was still ahead of us.

“At the bottleneck, flak guns opened up. We started dropping our loads and pulling out. The first two got out with no problem. The plane with the broken engines was third, and it had trouble pulling up even with its load gone. The rest of us had to slow down and delay our own drops. The flak guns started eating away at planes here and there. One lost a pilot to a lucky shot, and a copilot took over. Then the hostile plane came down. The first we knew about it was when a missile blew out the whole cockpit of the plane ahead of me. It didn’t go down right away. Sometimes, one of these planes with no crew left alive would fly until they ran out of gas and then coast to a stop. The plane yawed right, into my path. I dumped everything I had and managed to pull up enough to get over it. A plane that had been ahead of me had to swerve to avoid me, and clipped another plane. They both went down. I almost rear-ended another plane, but at the last moment, it went down with the cockpit shot out. The Black Baron went right in front of me, blasting away with 14.5 mm wheel guns and that damn cannon. The planes that it didn’t get were driven right into the flak guns, the trees and each other.

“The Black Baron did a loop and shot up the planes behind me. It fired one more missile, a few short bursts with the cannon, and a steady stream of wheel gun fire. That was it—the entire flight, gone. Another plane came barreling up behind me, still in a steep banking ascent that the pilot started just before he was blown away. It almost tore my wing off. The whole time, we were getting major flack. Our radio man was killed. Then the cannons went quiet, and the Black Baron closed in.

“The first thing he did was fire the cannon. Pow-pow-pow-pow: half the engines are gone, and there’s a hole in my wing big enough to fly another airplane through. I barely kept it in the air. As it was, I ended up tilting to port. Then the wheel-guns started up. Every time one went into the plane, I heard it knocking around. These were smart shells, homing in on parts and crew. One of them found my copilot. When the wheel guns went silent, I was the only one left alive. I suppose the Baron thought I was dead. I was a little uncertain myself.

“I expected a coup de grace with the cannon or another missile. Like I said, even a Tortuga with no crew could still coast its way to a landing and get back in service. I had seen at least eight air-to-air missiles in the racks. The only reason I can conceive why he didn’t do it is that those missiles are worth almost as much as our planes.

“What he did instead was try to ram me. It’s a lot more practical than it sounds, against an unmanned aircraft. He slowed down and nosed up alongside me. First he sliced into the skin of the dorsal surface with his own wing. I was tempted to roll and take him with me. He probably thought the same thing, without realizing I was still alive, and went around to get at me from below. He jammed into the tip of my high wing. I started to roll…”

“—and then you brought the wing down,” Dianna said. There was a darkly satisfied tone in her voice.
“That I did,” I said. “I saw his canopy fly off, followed by one propeller. After I landed, they found blood and hair on the bottom of the wing. They also found this.” I solemnly took something out of my vest. Dianna gasped. I twirled the 14.5 mm shell in my fingers. “They found this in the floor of my plane, right under my seat. The explosive filling was removed, of course.” I shook it, and it rattled. “The bomb squad filled it with shrapnel they found in the rest of the cockpit, and gave it to me as a souvenir: the bullet with my name on it.”

“Wow.” There was a long pause. “God must think you are one special guy.”
I shook my head. “I survived by driving two other planes into the ground. Were the people in them not special enough?”
Dianna tried to turn the conversation. “You did quit your job, of course…”
I laughed. There was a trace of bitterness there, but it was still a healthy laugh. “The Colombians had me under contract. I flew for them at least a year, or they paid me nothing. I made a counterproposal: They let me go with pay for seven months’ work, or I showed this souvenir to the newspapers. A satisfactory arrangement was reached.” After a long pause, I tossed the shell to Di. She yelped in surprise. “Take it. It’s a gift.”

All the while, other people were talking and moving around below us, but we were not disturbed. Not until we heard Carlos speaking to Diego.
“I don’t hold what you did against you,” Carlos said, in a calm but utterly chilling tone. “A lot of people in your position would have done the same thing. Even I might have done it. But that doesn’t remove the need for discipline.” Diego said something I couldn’t make out.

I froze in alarm when I heard the sound of a drum being removed from a shotgun. “This is what we used to do in the army. If you slept or ran out on your duty and left your mates in a lurch, you had to play a game. It’s traditionally known as Russian roulette.” I heard the plink of shotgun shells hitting the deck. “We use different numbers of shells, mostly based on how serious the offense was. Sometimes, we’d leave only one shell in. Sometimes, we’d only take one out. I’d say you deserve about five. See? Every other shell, gone.” The drum went back in with a loud slap. I ran downstairs. “Round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows…”

I reached the deck and found Carlos with his back to me. He had Diego backed into the corner of the lab. Just as I opened my mouth to call for help, Carlos pulled the trigger. The roar of the gun resounded through the lab. Carlos turned around and smiled. “Hi, Ted,” he said. Then he stepped aside. Diego was slumped against the wall, his chest a mass of red. Carlos nonchalantly picked up a shell and bit into it. His lips and teeth were stained pink.

“Riot shells,” he said, “full of rock salt. Somebody decided to dye it red for extra effect. Diego should figure it out when he wakes up.”
“If he had a heart condition,” I said, “you might really have killed him.”
Carlos grinned wider. “Who says I wasn’t trying?” He stalked out. I checked Diego’s pulse, and found that his heart was racing. After a few minutes, he got up and ran out of the Ora. To my knowledge, neither he nor Carlos has ever spoken about the incident. I suppose both of them will say I made it up. But I know what I saw.

I returned to Dianna. We talked some more, mostly aimless chatter. Finally, Dianna said, “I’ve had a really rough time the last few months. And the whole time, you’ve always been there for me. I, well, wanted to say thank you.” She leaned over and hugged me. I think my heart must have been beating as fast as Diego’s. I wanted to tell her how I felt. I wanted to show her. I yearned to kiss her on the lips. I nearly did. But I remembered the Starship. I had felt the same dangerous thrill at the stick of that plane. In the end, it was that thrill which had caused the disaster. I had a feeling that if I said and did what I wanted, the woman in my arms would not reject me. But I also had a feeling that it could lead to another disaster, which might be even more painful than the physical danger I had gone through in the plane crash.

I gently disengaged from Dianna. “You’re welcome,” I told her. Then I briskly walked out. I stepped out of the Ora, and walked for the better part of a hundred yards into the Cretaceous night. I had no weapons, and there had been reports of noasaurs prowling around camp. But I didn’t care. I stared up at the stars and the moon, shining brighter than they would in the clearest skies in the present. I felt as if my heart had been broken twice: first by a plane, and then by a woman.
I never heard the approaching footfalls. “Hey, Ted,” Carlos said. He did not try to start a conversation, but simply stood beside me, gazing up at the skies.
I finally broke the silence. “I haven’t told her yet.”
Carlos nodded. “That’s probably the right thing.” After long minutes of silence, he said, “Want to try to recover the Starship?”
“Hell no. I’d just as soon dynamite it.”
Carlos looked directly at me. “It’s been pretty bad, hasn’t it? But c’mon. That’s not really what’s on your mind. “
“I suppose, ‘Why?’ Just generally, why things are the way they are. Does that even make sense?”

Carlos grinned, his teeth glinting in the moonlight. “Maybe not, but I definitely understand. When I was at war, I would think ‘why?’ every day, every night, every hour. I would keep wondering if Somebody out there wasn’t looking after me. And sometimes, I wanted to tell that Somebody, ‘F* off! I just wanna live my own life!’” He chuckled. “It messes with your head. But if you’re really fit for the job, eventually you learn to stop asking so many questions, and just deal with whatever comes at you.”
“Have you ever actually done that?” I asked pointedly.
Carlos laughed long and loud. “Okay. So it’s more of an ideal than it is a practical philosophy. But I have learned to deal with it, and I think you will too. And who knows? Maybe, once you stop searching all the s* that goes on for mystical signs, Somebody will actually show you what you’re really meant to know.”

I smiled. “There’s a story in the Bible about a prophet who asked God to speak to him,” I said. “Afterward, there was a storm, and an earthquake, and probably some other stuff I can’t think of off the top of my head. But in the end, God really spoke through a still, small voice.”
Carlos nodded, slowly and thoughtfully. “Sounds like a very practical man. I like that. Incidentally, have you noticed what you’re standing in?” I looked down, and yelped in surprise. I had been dimly aware that I was standing in a depression. The moonlight revealed it for what it was: a giganotosaur track! Carlos laughed again, not unkindly. “See, Ted? That could be a lesson to everybody: If you’re looking for signs, look down before you look up. Now, let’s mosey on back to the Ora, shall we?”

I went back, feeling somehow comforted. I was still confused over what (if anything) to do about Dianna. But, when I looked past my imagined grievance with the Almighty, I could see that it had been the wrong time to try to start a romance. For the rest of the trip, I did my best to keep are interactions casual, and before long, I was back to thinking of her as a friend and coworker. And so it remained—until the next time we faced life or death together.