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.

“That was sweet, Ted,” Dianna said. Tears ran down her face, but she managed to sound cheerful. “But it’s no good. Captain Bill won’t get back in time, and I can’t swim all the way to the reef with my ankle slashed up. You’re going to have to send up a flare and swim away without me.”
I clenched her shoulder tightly. “If I have to, I’ll do the swimming for both of us.”

“I suppose you would,” Dianna said soberly. “But I can’t let you. Ted, I have to stay. Even if we manage to swim to the reef together, Captain Bill will only be able to take one of us. If you try to swim to the lifeboat, or wait until Captain Bill comes back, you will be killed. If the waves don’t get you, the fish will. It wasn’t just internal stress that made the floor cave in.” I already knew it, and as she gazed into my eyes, I could tell that she knew that I knew it, but would make the attempt anyway. “Please, Ted,” she sobbed. “Just go.”

I was hopelessly torn. I couldn’t bear to abandon her to her death, but I couldn’t just refuse her request. It was the infinitely sad look on her face that made me relent. “OK, I’ll leave you here,” I said, “but I’m coming back for you.” I picked her up and carried her toward a cylindrical shark cage on deck.

She didn’t struggle, but made it clear that she did not approve. “Ted, you are out of your mind,” she said coldly as I set her down in the cage.

“This cage will at least keep you safe from fish,” I said with phony calm. I handed her a breathing mask and an emergency air tank. “There’s enough oxygen here to keep you alive for fifteen minutes. I’ll go to the lifeboat, get some more weapons and ammunition and then come back for you.”

“Good bye, Ted,” she said in an emotionless tone as I locked the cage. “I hope I’ll see you again, some time.”

“I’ll rescue you or die trying,” I said. I rolled the cage overboard before she could try to discourage me. The cage sank straight down, into a deep underwater gulch. A glowing pink buoy at the end of a rope followed the cage overboard. I sent up a flare and dived overboard, just before what was left of Kon Tiki sank.

I swam for about 100 yards before I reached the reef. I sat on the coral and waved one of the lights on my diving suit around. Within moments, Captain Bill arrived. “Where’s Dianna?” he asked.
“She’s in a shark cage, under water. I figured I could come back for her.”

“Carlos thought you might do something like that. We’re all behind you, but we can’t wait long enough for two trips here and back. The boat is taking on water too fast. Anything we do has to be done now. Carlos had me bring two underwater pistols, a couple of spear guns and a `boing stick’, plus four replacement barrels for the boing stick. I found a shorter route back to the ship; climb in and let’s go!”

We cruised along for several hundred yards before we found what we were looking for. It was a deep and narrow gap in the coral reef, just wide enough for two people to swim through. The Manta could have gone through the gap, but not safely. “Go on in,” Bill said. “I’ll circle and try to draw the fish away.”

I swung out of the Manta’s lower compartment and swam into the gap. I turned on my three lamps and drew the two underwater pistols. With five air-sealed barrels each, the pistols were quite bulky. Their range was twenty feet or less, and they weren’t very accurate, but they were better than a boing stick against multiple targets. With the pistols, I could fire five shots at a time (after which the barrels had to be replaced), whereas the boing stick could only fire one shot at a time. I wanted to save the boing stick for a carefully aimed shot against a very big fish.

Halfway through the gap, I ran into some nasty customers. A six-foot coelacanth approached, but swam away after I fired a shot at it. Moments later, I ran into a group of four sharks. Compared to a great white or a tiger shark, these slender, eel-like creatures were puny, but they moved with the same deadly purpose. One of them could clearly inflict serious injuries, and four of them attacking in unison could easily kill a man. I opened fire without hesitation, and didn’t stop shooting until both guns were empty. Two sharks fled, and another turned on its dying companion. I discarded the pistols and drew the boing stick. I swam past the two fighting sharks; I figured that any shark that was busy eating another shark was no threat to me.

I figured wrong. The unwounded shark attacked me from behind. Its teeth scraped harmlessly against my air tank, but the force of the impact slammed me into the coral. My goggles cracked, and my weapon fell from my hands. I rolled over and punched the shark in the snout. It responded with a snap at my air hose, but I was ready for it. I caught it by the throat and shoved my fingers into its gill slits. The fish writhed like a malevolent fire hose, its jaws snapping inches from my air hose, but I had just enough strength to hold it at bay. I drew my survival knife and tried to stab it in the eyes or the gills. Abruptly, the shark jerked free and swam away.

I looked over my shoulder to see what might have scared it off. I was shocked to see the boing stick being dragged along by a strange current. I had just enough time to get a grip on the stock. However, the current was so strong that I was dragged along, too. I was being sucked toward an enormous hole that was barely recognizable as the mouth of a large fish resting on the coral. That gaping maw would have made an anaconda envious. The fish itself was a flabby, nearly shapeless mass that had the same orange spots as the color around it. It looked to be at least eight feet long. The flattened fish seemed to coalesce into a torpedo shape and then surged forward like an aggressive black hole.

I held onto the coral with one hand and fired the boing stick with the other. The weapon’s massive spring slammed into the cartridge, setting off an explosion in the airtight aluminum barrel. A 15 mm grenade sailed straight down the fish’s cavernous throat. It closed its mouth, thinking it had caught a morsel. When the grenade went off, it swelled up like a puffer fish. It then sagged and shrank like a deflating balloon, finally collapsing into a shapeless lump with a bloody hole in it.

Soon, the end of the gap came into view. I could see the glowing buoy, 15 meters beyond it. The buoy was obscured for a moment when something big swam in front of it. Fearing that Dianna was in trouble, I swam forward as fast as I could. I almost swam straight into the mouth of a five-meter fish. It was one of the placoderms, a heavily armored class of fish that dominated the oceans during this period. Given its size, it could only be one of a predatory genus called Dunkleosteus. The fish was coming fast; I didn’t have time to do anything except curse myself for not reloading the boing stick. At the last second, the oncoming placoderm swerved to avoid me. I managed to avoid being struck by its tail as it swam away. It actually swam even faster, until it vanished from view. I was puzzled by its behavior, but within moments, I realized the truth: It was fleeing from another fish. For an adult Dunkleosteus, that could mean only one thing: another Dunkleosteus.

I had already guessed what I was looking for: a large placoderm, perhaps as much as 10 meters in length. As I searched the darkness for the fearsome predator, I realized that the buoy was shaking. It was then that I saw the shimmering scales of a giant fish. It was silver-colored, with black stripes that made it hard to estimate its shape and size. It appeared to be about 30 feet long, with decidedly serpent-like proportions. As I watched, the fish raised its head. I shuddered with horror when I saw that it had the shark cage clamped in its jaws. It began swinging the cage back and forth like a terrier shaking a rat, slamming it repeatedly against a coral outcropping.

I knew that the chances of Dianna still being alive were slim, and my chances of killing the fish even slimmer. The sensible thing to do would have been to turn back, but that course of action never crossed my mind. I was willing to take any chances to save her, or merely to avenge her. Cold fury filled me, and I swam forward with a shout.

The placoderm looked at me. It looked more like a machine than an animal. Its face and fins were covered by large, angular scales that undoubtedly functioned as armor, though its real armor lay beneath its thin skin. It did not have teeth, but a saw-edged beak, with four pick-axe spikes in front. Extensive scars showed where its hide had been pierced by its own kind. I aimed at its face, but changed my mind when I saw that the cage was still in its mouth. I could barely see Dianna inside; she seemed to be moving, feebly. I shifted my aim to the fish’s midsection and fired—and missed.

The Dunkleosteus dropped the cage, turned its head, threw open its gaping mouth and shrieked. It was a sound like water running through a pipe, modulated into a trilling screech. To my horror, the door of the cage fell open, but the fish’s attention was fully on me. I swam to the side, dodging a lunging attack from the fish. As it sailed past me, it did a tight turn. I found myself encircled by the predator.

The fish opened its mouth, and a powerful current almost pulled me in. I clung to the coral with one hand, while holding on desperately to the gun with the other. I managed to get one of the extra barrels loosed from my bandoleer, and let it fly into the fish’s mouth. The jaws closed on the shiny object. There was a double explosion, and the fish went reeling back. I swam away, furiously unscrewing the used barrel. When the fish came after me, I threw the barrel, and the fish veered off. But, when the barrel bounced harmlessly off its head, it advanced again.

I turned off all but one of my lamps and dropped the lit lamp as an extra distraction. I swam toward the cage, and screwed on a new barrel as I went. As soon as the replacement barrel was attached, I turned around for another shot. The fish was right behind me; the lamp had failed to distract it. I almost swallowed my breathing mask in horror. I barely had enough time to fire. The sharpened tip of the grenade plunged into the fish’s bony head, but the force of the impact was too great. The tip snapped before detonation, and the grenade ended up exploding in the midst of some coral. Fortunately, the explosion stunned it momentarily. I had just enough time to escape once again.

The fish had clearly had enough from me. It let out a warning shriek, and then turned back toward the shark cage. I couldn’t allow that! There wasn’t enough time to replace the barrel. I had to get the fish’s attention, and then somehow stay alive long enough to reload. I unscrewed the used barrel and then banged it frantically against the coral. The fish stopped, grunted and looked back at me. I threw a big chunk of coral, which bounced off the fish’s head. That was enough provocation for it to come back for more. As the fish wheeled around for another attack, I turned on a wrist lamp and pointed it at the fish’s eye. Its pupils contracted violently under the brilliant light. The fish shrieked in pain, and then launched itself at the agonizing light source. I dropped the lamp and the barrel, and then scrambled up the face of the reef. There was an impressive thump as the gullible and half-blinded predator smacked headfirst into a coral outcropping. I smiled and screwed in a new barrel.

In the bright moonlight, I could see the fish thrashing about like a drunken comet. I fired at the fish’s body, but missed by a matter of inches. The explosion left the fish unharmed, but angrier than before. Once again, I frantically removed the barrel. I realized too late that the fish was looking directly at me. It squealed like a pig and swam toward me. When I threw away the barrel, the fish paused to watch it fall, but did not try to eat the gleaming object. As soon as I pulled the last barrel from my bandolier, its gaze shifted back to me. I froze and tried to conceal the barrel in my clenched fist. The fish seemed to be unsure exactly where I was. I prayed that it would look away for just a few seconds. Instead, the fish swam slowly toward me.
There was a thunderous “CLANG-NG” from the direction of the shark cage. The fish froze. There was another clang, and the fish looked away. I brought the barrel and the boing stick together and started twisting. I followed the fish’s gaze to Dianna, who was now swimming away from the shark cage. Her copper hair shone in the moonlight. The fish squealed in alarm and went after its escaping prey. I paddled after it, attaching the barrel with one last twist as I swam. I turned on my headlamp to get the fish’s attention.

This time, the fish did not pause. It turned around and snapped at me with one smooth motion. However, I was ready for it. I pulled the trigger and fired a grenade at the joint between its head and its shoulders, where some flexible skin showed between the plates of armor. The grenade struck, stuck, and then exploded. The fish keeled over like a jack-knifing truck, landing on its side against the coral. It continued to move, but all it did was flop along the bottom. With the monster apparently out of the way, I swam to Dianna.

She was heavily bruised and bleeding in several places. Her skin was red from the cold. Nevertheless, she managed to swim sluggishly out to meet me. I clasped her clammy hands, and then embraced her fiercely. When I let go, her eyes were wide with surprise. I tried to break the tension by pointing to her tiny air tank. In response to my implied question, she showed me the air gauge. There was a little less than five minutes of air left, just enough to get her to the lifeboat. I locked arms with Dianna and swam back the way I had come. As we neared the gap in the coral, Dianna tugged on my arm and pointed the other way. I looked over my shoulder and gasped in horror. The Dunkleosteus was up and swimming, though it was listing to starboard. Blood poured from the side of its head like billows of smoke. The fish was obviously seriously injured, but it still looked quite deadly. I started paddling as fast as I could, draggling Dianna forward relentlessly. Behind us, there was that strange hydraulic scream. I didn’t have to turn around again to know that the fish was in pursuit.

When we were just a few feet into the gap, there was a second scream, closer than before. I estimated that the fish had halved the distance between us, but I wasn’t going to look over my shoulder to check. I tossed the boing stick over my shoulder and swam even faster. There was a fantastic crunch as the fish pulverized the weapon with a single bite. I had bought us a fraction of a second. There was thumping and more crunching as the fish crashed against the sides of the gap. The tight space was slowing the fish down even more, but the noises made it clear that the fish would soon catch up to us.

As we approached the end of the passage, a coelacanth (perhaps the same one I had shot at before) approached menacingly. As soon as it got a good look at our pursuer, however, it turned tail and fled. Just when it looked like we were both fish food, help came from a most unexpected source. The fifteen-foot Dunkleosteus that had fled before suddenly plunged down upon its rival. The force of the impact slammed the bigger fish into the coral. The sound of the collision was oddly melodic, like someone hitting himself over the head with a bottle. The vengeful smaller fish tried to wrap its jaws around the other’s throat, but it didn’t have enough gape to do more than scratch the other fish’s armor. The big fish retaliated by biting into its attacker’s right pectoral fin. A deafening shriek echoed through the gap, with the coral acting like a natural megaphone. I didn’t see any more of their battle, but we could feel the sounds of combat reverberating in our bones.

Captain Bill was waiting a few yards beyond the gap. I swam up to the captain, and we touched facemasks to talk. “Take the Manta, and get Miss Gonzalez to the lifeboat. I’ll swim back on my own,” Bill said. “I’m going back to the ship to retrieve some specimens.” Before I could protest, he twisted the Manta’s throttle and sent me careening away .

Just then, the smaller dunk emerged from the gap. I strapped Dianna into the lower compartment and then took the controls. I pulled away just as the victorious fifteen-footer emerged from the gap. It might have overtaken us, if Captain Bill had not fired a harpoon into its side. I pushed the craft to full throttle and quickly outpaced the fish. I looked over my shoulder and saw the fish still on our trail, dragging the captain behind it. “Didn’t have to swim back yourself, after all,” I said with a smile. My smile vanished when I saw the form of the larger Dunkleosteus lumbering along behind them both.

I surfaced dangerously close to the lifeboat. “Nice piloting, Ted,” Carlos snarled sarcastically. “Now get your sorry butt on board and help bail!”

I didn’t climb in until Dianna was safely aboard. By then, she was passed out. “Get her wrapped up in an electric blanket,” I ordered. I put a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “You’re a brave woman. You did great.” She sighed and smiled in her sleep. I gazed blissfully at her face, and wondered how I could have denied my feelings for so long.
A brawny hand clapped down on my shoulder. It was Dr. Smith. “Mr. Flockman,” he said, “where is Captain Bill?”
“He’s swimming back,” I said.

“He’s a bloody idiot,” Carlos muttered. The leaky boat suddenly rocked with an impact. A fish was attacking us. Dianna moaned and rolled against me. Carlos shouted, “Eat this!” and tossed a small object overboard. Seconds later, there was a blinding flash, a spray of steam and a stifled shriek. I looked over the side to see the fifteen-foot placoderm, glowing from within as if it had swallowed a 10,000-watt spotlight.

“What was that?” I asked Carlos in awe.
“An incendiary micro grenade,” he answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “Just a little souvenir I brought back from Indonesia. It contains a substance similar to thermate that burns quite a bit hotter.”

I remembered his legal troubles after using illegal flechette shells on one of our expeditions. “Is it legal?” I asked.
“Well…. it’s never been banned…”
“Do you have any more?” I asked.

“Yes, one more,” Carlos said warily. “We also have the last boing stick and the Super Uzi. Why do you ask?”

“Because there’s another placoderm around, twice as big as the one you just killed,” I explained grimly. “It almost ate Dianna and me. I wounded it with a grenade, and that fried fish down there attacked it, but the last I saw, it was coming this way.”

“You’re saying that there’s a predator out there that survived a hit from a 15 mm grenade,” Carlos said incredulously, “and Captain Bill still decided to come back on his own?” I nodded. “That f*ing lunatic!”

“Well, lunatic our no, we have to wait for him,” I said. “You’re the one who always says, `leave no one behind.”

Carlos shook his head. “No, we have to go. Bill ain’t coming, and if we wait, we could be in danger,” he said. “There’s an older tradition, y’see: ‘The captain goes down with the ship.’ Bill’s carrying it out. And I suppose that he’ll try to take the fish with him. He brought a case of dynamite, y’see…”

I needed no further convincing. I moved away as fast as the boat would go. Moments later, a column of water shot up from the depths. Dead fish and broken coral showered down. Our captain was gone. We all cried, but I grieved most of all for ourselves. For I was sure I could not fill his shoes.

We barely managed to reach a tiny atoll 40 miles from the time bell. A brackish stream provided us with a safe harbor. I used a harpoon to spear what turned out to be a three-foot-long scorpion-like creature called a eurypterid. It was a malevolent-looking creature with an awesome array of pincers and mouthparts. It looked like nature’s answer to the Swiss Army knife. There were cries of dismay and disgust when I tried to bring the squirming arthropod aboard. I almost threw it back, but Carlos stopped me.

“Don’t do it, Ted,” he told me. “That’s a valuable specimen, and it could make a good meal. But, ah, try to hold it over the water, at least until it stops moving.”

We finally ran aground about half a mile up the river. “Our first priority is to start a fire,” I announced. “Everyone except me, Dianna and Dr. Horne is on wood gathering detail. I’m staying here with the wounded.”
“Ted, I’m not hurt too badly to walk around,” Dianna said irritably.

“Di, you’re suffering from the early stages of hypothermia!” I shouted. She was taken aback by the outburst. I took her hands and helped her out of the boat. I then said, gently, “Your fingers are ice cold, and you can probably barely feel my hands.” She nodded reluctantly. “You’re in no shape to wander around gathering wood. Please, stay here, and I can help you get better.” She nodded again, and smiled. “Good. I have to change Dr. Horne’s bandage and put some more antibiotics on his wound, and then I’ll do yours. While I’m doing that, why don’t you take off those wet clothes? The blanket will keep you warm until we get a fire going. Don’t worry, I’m a gentleman. I won’t peek.”

I found myself thoroughly distracted by the sound of Dianna undressing. It was a struggle for me to keep my gentleman’s word. After what seemed like an eternity, Dianna walked back into view, with the blanket wrapped around her like a long, flowing robe. She huddled beside me in a fetal position. “I do feel warmer,” she said, “but I can’t wait for you to start a fire.”

Starting a fire proved extremely difficult. The wood the others gathered (if it could even be called wood) was green and usually wet. Even my most valiant efforts produced nothing more than feeble wisps of flame that burned out in a few seconds. The others soon built up a very large pile of wood, even as I tried in vain to light it. I grew increasingly frustrated. Finally, I made an outrageous proposal. “Carlos, couldn’t we start a fire with your incendiary grenade?”

“Sure,” he answered in a sarcastic tone. “The fire would burn itself out within 20 seconds, and it would endanger anyone within a radius of 20 meters, but yeah, you could start one.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Actually… There might be a way…”

Over the next few minutes, Carlos developed a fantastic plan. We moved the pile onto a sandy area next to the river, while Carlos dug a deep hole next to the pile. Carlos ordered us back 30 feet before planting the grenade. He set it for a timed detonation, dropped it in the hole and then frantically buried it. As he ran over to join the rest of us, he shouted, “Whatever you do, don’t look directly at the grenade!”

There was a brilliant flash and a muffled “wummpfsshh.” When I looked up, I saw a radiant column of dust and steam rising 30 feet into the air into the air. Within seconds, another column of steam rose from the woodpile. After about 10 seconds, the pile burst into flame. “It’s like when Elijah defeated the priests of Baal,” Dianna said through chattering teeth. Then she cheered.

We eagerly gathered in a semicircle around the fire. It wasn’t that warm, and it gave off an unpleasant moldy smell, but after the chill of the Devonian sea, it felt wonderful. Dianna curled up next to the fire, using her hands as a pillow. I knelt beside her and adjusted the blanket. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and smiled. “Thank you, Ted,” she told me. “Thank you for everything.”
I nearly choked with emotion. “You’re welcome,” I said hoarsely.

Carlos provided a merciful distraction. “We ought to roast the eurypterid,” he said. “There’s only two days of food left in the boat, and we need to conserve it.”

We roasted the giant chelicerae over the fire. I took a bite, and decided it was fine. However, Dianna was reluctant to eat such an unsavory creature. Carlos tried to encourage her. “Think of it as a big freshwater lobster,” He said with forced cheerfulness.
“Carlos,” Dianna said somberly, “I know what lobsters eat.”
“In that case,” Carlos said with a sight, “just close your eyes and pretend it’s a PUC. That way, it will at least seem surprisingly tasty.”

We ate quietly for a while. I helped Dianna crack open an armored leg. I felt desperate to tell her what I had longed to for man months, but I had to wait for the right time. After an hour or so, the others started leaving to set up camp, until we had the fire to ourselves. As soon as we had privacy, I spoke loudly and boldly: “Dianna… Dianna, I love you.”

She looked up at me blankly, obviously uncertain how to react. “I-I-” Her words trailed off. After further thought, she answered, “I care about you, too.” She sounded hesitant, even reluctant. There was a full minute of silence. Everyone else tried not to look at us.

I reached down and took Di’s hand. “Di, I don’t just care about you,” I told her. “I strained to keep from shouting. “I love you. Don’t you understand? I’m in love with you!”

She gently pulled her hand free. In a voice even huskier than usual, she said, “Ted, I know you feel that way now, but…”
“I’ve felt this way for two years!” I shouted. Her sad expression nearly silenced me, but I continued brashly, “Every mission I go on, every morning I wake up, I hope that I can spend time with you, and get to know you better.” I paused to wipe a tear from my eye, and then continued in a whisper, “I meant it when I said I would save you or go down with you. I couldn’t bear to live without you!”
“Ted, don’t say that!” Dianna’s face and voice were full of despair.

I leaned closer to her. “It’s true,” I whispered. I stroked her arm, and let my fingers stray. “More than anything, I want to live and die by your side. I want to know you; I want to be with you. I want to—I want to have a family with you.”
“Ted,” Dianna said coldly, “take your hands off of me.”
I reluctantly let go. “Please, Di,” I said, “I couldn’t bear it if you said no…”

Dianna sat up abruptly. “That’s the problem,” she said. Her voice was almost a hiss. “Look, I want to get married as much as anyone, but I want to be a wife, not an idol. Are you ready to serve and be served? Are you really ready to spend your life with me—the real me? I don’t even know if you love me for who I am, or just for qualities you imagine that you see in me.”

I felt hurt, and a little ashamed. “Trust me, Di,” I told her, “I do love you for who you are. We’ve spent too much time together for me not to understand you.” I tried to pat her on the shoulder, but she pushed my hand roughly away. She then started scooting away from me. “Please, Dianna,” I begged, “just think about it.”
The indignation passed from her face. “I already have,” she said. “A long time ago. But I made a decision, and I thought you felt the same way.”

“Ted,” Carlos interrupted, “we need to go check whether the raft is repairable.”
Carlos and I inspected the raft. The extent of the damage was daunting, but there was nothing that we couldn’t mend in a day. We thanked our respective deities that the raft was made of bulletproof carbon fibers; otherwise, we would have sunk within minutes of the collision with the reef. Lesser materials would have ripped wide open. The fabric of the raft had instead received scores of tiny punctures. We actually had to look closely just to find where the raft had been damaged.

“Ted, I want to talk to you about Dianna,” Carlos said casually. “The way you feel is no secret to me. You know that. But this was a bad time, Ted. You’re hurting her when everyone needs to be at their best. Maybe when she isn’t—quite herself. That wasn’t necessarily just her talkin’. Apart from purely psychological trauma, she has a nasty wound in the leg and who knows what from the beating that dunk gave ‘er. We should check her over in the morning. By `we’, I mean NOT you.”

“Could this change her, permanently?”
“That’s a tricky question. The human brain is a fantastically resilient organ. I once met a guy in a VA hospital who walked right into a helicopter rotor, an’ could still do the junior jumble. On the other hand, it’s a very sensitive organ. I’ve seen guys die from head injuries that nobody even noticed till after the fact. The best advice I can give is to ease off. Let her recover, and keep yourself focused on getting all of us home alive. When the time comes, you will both know what’s right.”

At Carlos’s insistence, I slept as far away from Dianna as possible. I left my tent in the middle of the night, and wandered past Dianna’s tent. As I walked past, I heard a soft sound. I stepped closer, and confirmed that I had really heard what I thought I had. Dianna was crying. I went back to my tent feeling sadder than ever. At Carlos’s insistence, I slept as far away from Dianna as possible. I left my tent in the middle of the night, and wandered past Dianna’s tent. As I walked past, I heard a soft sound. I stepped closer, and confirmed that I had really heard what I thought I had. Dianna was crying. I went back to my tent feeling sadder than ever.

In the morning, Dr. Horne was dead. He had apparently died in his sleep from an infection. I ordered heavy applications of antibiotics even to minor wounds, though for all we knew, our drugs could be as useless against Devonian bacteria as an air pistol against a tank. I became downright paranoid about Dianna’s myriad cuts, scrapes and scratches. If I could have, I would have immersed her in a tub of antibiotics. She resented my fretful attention, and emphatically refused to let me administer the medication myself. I reluctantly let Thatcher do it. I stood by and watched nervously, fearing that that my dearest one might die if the first mate missed a single scratch. Dr. Smith tried in vain to dispel my fears. “He could have died of the injury itself, not bacterial infection,” he told me. “Maybe the pteraspid punctured a lung.” I could tell that he didn’t believe what he was saying.

Dr. Horne’s mortal remains presented quite a problem. It seemed inappropriate not to bring his body back to the present for burial. However, I loathed the idea of making a perilous sea voyage with a dead body aboard. The worst part was that we had no way to preserve the body. In fact, we had nothing except his own sleeping bag to cover him with. It did not help that giant arthropods were already finding their way to his carcass. With some reluctance, I suggested that we bury him in the past. The others readily agreed, though I sensed a measure of guilt behind their enthusiasm.

After burying Horne, Carlos, Smith and I got to work repairing the life raft. As I worked, I was annoyed in the extreme by a bumble bee-sized insect that kept flying in my face. I finally took off one of my moccasins and waited for the bug to land within range. Within moments, the arrogant arthropod landed right in front of me, and I smote it mightily. “Damn bug!” I said. It was only then that I noticed that the two paleontologists had stopped what they were doing.

Carlos stared intently at my shoe. “Dr. Smith,” he said, “Do you by any chance recall how old the first known winged insects are?”
“Early Carboniferous,” Smith answered, with a note of excitement mixed with dread.

I guiltily lifted my shoe. About half of the insect was stuck fast to the sole. The rest was mashed into the bottom of the life raft. “You’re saying this is the first winged insect ever discovered?”
Carlos nodded. “And you just pulped it. I’m afraid you’re going to have to donate your shoe to science.”

I reluctantly handed over the shoe. My extra pair was back with the time bell, so I had to walk around barefoot. Dr. Jurgidsen carefully examined the pulverized insect. “This is actually no worse than a typical fossil insect,” he mused. “I can’t do a proper scientific description without a microscope, but I can tell that this is a new type of insect. Its wings could fold, so it must be more advanced than dragonflies. It would be wonderful if we could catch more specimens.”
“If we do, can I have my shoe back?” I griped.

In the afternoon, we piloted the raft through the brackish marshes around us to test my repair job. “This is the kind of environment where our ancestors thrived,” Smith enthused as we poled our way through a half-submerged prairie of horsetails.

“I guess we should be careful, or we might poke great-to-the-ninth-power grandfather’s eyes out,” Dianna snapped. I was troubled by her foul mood. She was always taking skeptical jabs at paleontologists over their belief in evolution, but she had always maintained a polite tone before.

We finally anchored the raft and climbed out to explore the marsh. The water was no more than waist-deep, so we could simply wade around. Dr. Smith speared a few fish, while Carlos and Jurgidsen caught small fish and a few invertebrates with butterfly nets, while I cast about with my trusty rod and reel.

The swamp held a menagerie of wonders and horrors. Dianna was attacked by a small creature that looked and acted like a leech, but was really a jawless fish. I pulled the mouse-sized thing off her leg, and then ordered her back in the raft. Dr. Smith speared a boxy placoderm called a bothriolepid, and made the unpleasant discovery that it could produce an electric current. Fortunately, all he suffered was a mild jolt. Once, we caught a glimpse of a heavily scaled fish the size of a crocodile. It swam away without showing any interest in us. The marsh plants rustled in its wake like long grass.

The arthropods we saw were far more pleasant. There were lots of spiders, some so small that they could barely be seen, and others as large as tarantulas. Some slid like ice skaters across the surface of the water, others sat in webs strung between the horsetails, and I saw a few that floated through the air on the breeze, casting out iridescent drag lines behind them. There were plenty of flying insects about, but we didn’t catch many. Once, a giant, six-winged dragonfly cruised over our heads. It was like an attack helicopter with a rainbow paint job. Carlos took a swipe at the bug, though its two-foot wingspan was almost twice as great as the diameter of his net. He managed to knock the titanic insect into a nosedive, but it recovered just before hitting the water and flew away.

“I need a bloody bigger net!” Carlos exclaimed.
“I wish we had a shotgun and some birdshot,” Jurgidsen said. “Then we could shoot it down.”
“What good would that do?” Carlos asked rhetorically. “The blast would tear it to pieces.”
“Probably, but all we need to describe the species is the genitals.”

I caught eight fish, mostly coelacanthoids. Dr. Smith joyfully identified one of my catches as a very early ray-finned fish. That evening, I managed to start a fire without the help of the grenade, so we were able to cook and eat some of my catches. The ray-fin went into a specimen jar.

I had a very strained conversation with Dianna. We both tried to avoid discussing the events of the night before. The conversation inevitably led to how we were going to get back to the time bell before retraction. Dianna was very concerned about our navigation sensor. “The weather is interfering with the signal from the beacon,” she said. “It keeps fading in and out, and sometimes I get false readings. On top of that, I think the device is damaged. It’s working now, but… there’s no telling if it will keep working all the way back to the bell.”

“Getting dropped in the drink could foul up most any machine,” I commented. A question rose to mind, about what was normally the definitive innocuous topic. “Um… How is the weather?”

“Hard to say,” Dianna said. “The storm front that swamped Kon Tiki has already passed us by, but the seas will stay choppy for the next day or so.”
“Will there be any more storms?”

“Yes,” she said with grim certainty. “I couldn’t give you a precise time, but there’s going to be another major storm within the next 48 hours, and once it hits, it could be days before it blows over. We obviously can’t afford to wait. If we don’t set out by the day after tomorrow, we won’t make it back.”

I decided to wait one more day (one Devonian day, that is) before setting sail, though by the end of our second day on the island, I wished I hadn’t. We had made all the preparations we could on the first day, so all we could do on the second was wait and worry. Being around each other only made Dianna and me feel worse. It was that, more than anything else, which drove me to take the boat out for a test ride on the open sea. Carlos and Thatcher did most of the piloting. We circled the island for almost five hours. Thatcher had a rather unsteady hand at the helm, which made Carlos extremely upset. “The seals are holding, so we should be fine if you don’t tear any new holes in her,” he once snarled at the first mate. That was one of his milder comments. There were times when I feared (however unreasonably) for Thatcher’s safety.

I was relieved when we finally sailed back to shore. Dianna was waiting for us, obviously worried. The first thing she said as we came ashore was, “Why did you stay out so long?” Tears came unexpectedly to her eyes; she wiped them away in anger. “We were worried about you.” She turned around and stalked back to camp. Even from behind, I could tell that she was blushing furiously.

“Notice,” Carlos whispered, “that she was the only one worried enough to wait for us.”
We set sail at dawn, which in the eighteen-hour Devonian day comes only a few hours after sunset. We all were tired, and Dianna was feeling ill. She vomited so often that a shark could have traced our course just by following the puke. She tried to conceal how badly she felt, and loudly insisted that any signs of illness were purely the result of seasickness. I could tell, however, that she had felt bad even before getting in the boat. I once again feared that she had picked up some deadly Devonian disease.

While she was busy being sick, I put a hand to her forehead. It was much too warm, especially considering the chilly weather. “You have a fever,” I told her.
“I know,” she admitted wretchedly and then vomited again. A few minutes later, she sat up and looked at me. “Do you still think you’re in love with me?”
I gazed at her face for a moment, and then pointed at my chin. She understood my signal, and wiped a streak of slime from her own chin. She missed a spot, so I pointed again. When she was done wiping her face clean, I patted her on the shoulder and said, “More than ever.” Her reaction was a little hard to interpret. For one reason or another, she promptly got sick again.

Thatcher kept us at a cautious pace of 5 knots. Carlos berated him constantly for going too slow, while at the same time chastising him for carelessness whenever we came within a hundred meters of a possible reef. We had to go miles off of our hypothetical straight-line course to avoid all the reefs, so at sunset, we had come barely 20 miles closer to the time bell. We spent the night on another island. Though I felt Carlos was being too harsh with the first mate, I didn’t trust Thatcher to navigate through dangerous waters in the dark.

We only got about six hours of rest before setting sail again. I woke up at the crack of dawn, and found that Carlos was already awake. I discovered him on the shore, keeling in ankle-deep surf. “G’morning, Ted,” he said when he heard me approach. The sound of his voice chilled me. He was talking in a special tone of his, a strangely flat tone that is usually a sign of sheer, abject terror. “There’s something here I think you should see.”
I could already see it. I stepped closer, and cringed. For several minutes, we just stared. Then we heard soft footsteps behind us, followed immediately by a scream. I turned to see Dianna rush to the water’s edge and be sick again. She had awoken and come to see what we were doing, only to behold a sight that would make even a healthy person nauseous.

“Any idea what kind of fish this is?”
“It was a shark, beats me what kind. Don’t much matter.”

We woke up Smith and had him take a look. We didn’t want anyone else to have to look at the grisly find. “Stethacanthus,” he said immediately. “I can tell by the funny brush structure on its dorsal fin. Alive, it would have been about a meter and a half long. Too bad the rest of it is gone.” There was slightly less than half a meter of the shark left.

There were long moments of awkward silence before Carlos asked the obvious question: “What killed it?”
“It’s hard to say,” Smith said hesitantly. He stared at the remarkably smooth edge where the shark had been sheered in two. “Whatever it was, it cut this fish in half with just one bite. It did a very neat job of it, too—this thing looks like it was snipped in two with a giant pair of scissors.” He concluded with a sigh: “Most likely… Dunkleosteus.”
Smith carefully photographed the mutilated shark before we dragged it back out to sea. “There’s something else I should mention,” Smith said. “Sharks don’t have swim bladders, and so they sink to the bottom after they die. To be washed ashore, this shark must have been killed in shallow water. Chances are that the attacker isn’t far from here. It might still be in this harbor.”

“Great,” Carlos muttered. “Just f*in’ great.”
We had a mishap as we packed up our things. As he was taking down the tent, Jurgidsen found a strange, worm-like creature hiding underneath. “It’s an onychophoran!” he exclaimed. “Somebody get a specimen jar!”

Thatcher and I ran over to capture the creature. It was more than two feet long, and about an inch thick. It resembled nothing so much as a moldy kielbasa with lots of stumpy legs. We were out of empty specimen jars, so after some deliberation, we got rid of a coral sample and prepared to place the worm in the now-empty jar. Thatcher bent down to pick it up. “Which end is the head?” he asked.

“The end with those two feelers,” I told him. On a few occasions, I had seen and handled modern onychophorans. As Thatcher reached for the worm’s tail, it suddenly reared up like a cobra and turned to stare into his eyes. I suddenly remembered an important fact of onychophoran biology. “Watch out, they spit!” I said.

Thatcher looked at me funny. “What?” he said. At that moment, the onychophoran sprayed him with disgusting gray foam. He shrieked when some of it struck him in the eye.

“I said, they spit,” I repeated, very unnecessarily. “It’s how they catch their prey.”
The worm tried to make a low-velocity getaway, but it only got a few feet before Carlos stomped on it and cut its head off. He then helped me tend to Thatcher. We washed his eye out with purified water, but the damage was done. “I’m not blind,” the first mate groaned, “but I’m seeing spots.”

Carlos had to pilot us out to sea. Thatcher couldn’t resist the chance to belittle Carlos’s skill, and he groaned constantly about the pain in his eye. Carlos answered Thatcher’s criticisms with blistering profanity. Meanwhile, Dianna got sick again, and didn’t lean over the edge in time. As if that wasn’t irritation enough, Jurgidsen chattered incessantly about the significance of the onychophoran. “It’s the link between arthropods and earthworms,” he repeated at least a dozen times, “and this is the oldest terrestrial one yet discovered.” For once, Dianna passed up the chance to argue with someone about evolution. I grimly put it down to her ill health. After about thirty minutes of this misery and bickering, I felt quite prepared to start throwing people overboard.

“Ted?” Dianna groaned as we sailed out of sight of the island. I looked at her expectantly, hoping that she might have something personal to tell me. No such luck. “I think something is following us.”

She pointed to a patch of water about a hundred yards behind us. I looked closely. There was definitely an unusual amount of rippling at the surface, which would be consistent with a large fish near the surface. “Put the boat in low gear for a few minutes,” I said grimly. “I’m going overboard.”

I had abandoned my scuba gear on the night of the wreck, but I still had my goggles and flippers. I quickly donned those, and armed myself with our remaining boing stick. “Ted—you don’t have to— to—” Di stammered.

“I think I do,” I told her. “Don’t worry; I’m just going to see what’s down there. No matter what I see, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I then jumped overboard.
The water was a bit murky, but there was no missing the creature nearby. In the bright morning sunlight, the Dunkleosteus’ silvery hide shone almost as brightly as the sun itself. It was obviously swimming after us, and it accelerated when it saw me. It kept correcting for a list to port, and once I saw a glob of blood pop out of its mouth. It was undoubtedly the same one I had fought before. It quickly closed to a distance of fifty yards, almost twice the range of the boing stick. I fired my single shot into a coral outcropping, gambling that the fish had learned to fear the weapon. As I had hoped, the fish turned and swam away. However, it retreated a bit too slowly for me to write it off as a threat.

I promptly returned to the boat. “It’s a `dunk’, the same one that got Captain Bill,” I gasped. “I scared it off with a shot, but it may be back.”
“Before we leave,” Carlos growled, “we really ought to kill that thing.”
It was a very long and very hard day for Dianna. On the day before, she hadn’t had to do too much work, because we had been more concerned with navigating the dangerous reefs than staying on a set course for the time bell. As we drew nearer the time bell and the beacon, it actually became harder to keep ourselves pointed in the right direction. She had to struggle to make sense of the readings, while her sickness only grew worse. I tried to comfort and encourage her as best I could. She seemed to be warming toward me, though I knew better than to assume that it was reciprocated affection. “I think this might be easier,” I told her at one point, “If we tried singing a song.”

“How ‘bout The Song for Gulf War 7?” Carlos suggested. “So long, Mom, I’m off to waste Saddam…”

Dianna skewered him with a bloodshot stare. No further discouragement was necessary. “I have a better idea,” she said. “Let’s do a song they used to sing at my church…”
I had never heard Di sing before. I discovered at that moment that she had an enthralling contralto voice. Soon, we all joined her in song.

I’ve followed another false shepherd
I laid with another wolf in sheep’s skin
No I’m all alone in a valley dark.
Will you leave the ninety-nine to search for me?
And the ninety-nine, will they mind?
Don’t they all get lost too?

They say, ‘You can’t cross the same river twice.’

You can’t go home again can’t do it over again
Forgetting is the best you can get.
Father, can you forget my sins? Can Your water wash my stains away? Can Your Spirit make me over again? Can I come home again?

And when I’m washed up on that furthest shore,
Will you sift the wreck for me?
And if you do, can you pick me up and say,
‘My child, I died for you to live again.
I have kept my best in store.
And it doesn’t matter where you’ve been
When you come home again.

Some time later, Dianna started talking to me about my spiritual life. Before long, the conversation wound its awkward way to the subject of my parents’ death. “Did something happen that made you stop going to church?” she had asked bluntly.
“I suppose I stopped attending church regularly after my parents died,” I said after a moment of thought. “I know I’ve told you about it before. They were both killed in a plane crash while they were on their way to a new mission field.”
“Did you blame God for that?” she asked softly. There was sympathy and sadness in her voice.

“I suppose there were times when I felt a little angry at Him,” I said, “but the real problem was that I blamed myself. When they died, I was on my way to the United States to go to college. If I hadn’t made the decision to go to a college in the US, I would have been flying the plane.” I stared gloomily into the distance. The black clouds of a storm front could be seen well above the horizon. When I looked closely, I could make out gray streaks of rainfall.

“You thought God wouldn’t forgive you for leaving your family?”
“I never really thought about it that way, but I suppose so,” I said. “I certainly put myself through a lot of grief, thinking over whether I should have stayed and whether I could have helped them.” I spent a minute in thought, and then continued, “I guess the worst thing the accident did was shake my sense of purpose. I had really felt that it was God’s will for me to go to the States, and I was sure that it was God’s will for my parents to go minister to hunter-gatherers in Ecuador. But after my parents died, it seemed like I couldn’t be sure of anything.”
There was more silence. Di finally said, “If it’s any help… If it wasn’t for you and your American training, I would be dead.”

“But if it wasn’t for you and me, Captain Bill would still be alive,” I said bitterly. I Looked into her face, and saw an expression of deep sadness and barely-restrained anger. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” I said immediately. The prompt apology didn’t help. Fortunately, Carlos broke in with something that did.
“You ought to know,” he said sternly, “that Captain Bill was going to go back no matter what. He would have done the same things you did, but without someone to back him up, he wouldn’t have had a chance, and he probably would have gotten himself killed in the process. Don’t either of you blame yourselves for what happened.”
Hours passed, largely in silence. The sun drew inexorably toward the horizon, and the storm front drew inexorably nearer. About half an hour before sundown, Dianna let out a horrible string of curses. What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did the device go out?”
“No, but I’ve been misreading it for the last half hour,” she said through tightly clenched teeth. “We’ve gone past the island where the time bell is.”
“That is bad,” Carlos said.

As we tried to get the boat pointed back toward the island, things suddenly got much worse. Our boat was struck from below, so hard that we almost capsized. “What the hell’s happening?!” I shouted as our boat rocked for a second time.
“I think our acquaintance the Dunkleosteus is back,” Carlos said coldly. He drew the submachine gun and fired over the side. While he was shooting, the fish struck again from the other side.

“Shine the lamp on the water!” I shouted to Thatcher. I frantically replaced the boing stick’s barrel, and cursed myself for not replacing it sooner. But then, I reminded myself, if I had reloaded it sooner, I might not have remembered to save the barrel. “I’m going to toss the used barrel overboard,” I said. “With any luck, that will draw the fish away, and I’ll be able to shoot it.” Without waiting for replies, I tossed the spent barrel as far as I could. Thatcher shone the light on the rippling region where the barrel sank. I leaned over the side, ready to shoot the fish as soon as it showed itself. That was nearly the last thing I ever did. The Dunkleosteus leapt from the water like a marlin, lunging straight for me. Carlos grabbed me and pulled me back, saving my life. The fish still came within inches of biting my arm off. The fish slammed into the boat and sank its toothless jaws into a gunwale. I was thrown backwards onto Dianna. There was a volley of shots, followed by a hissing sound. Carlos had shot the fish at point-blank range, forcing it to let go of the boat. Air flowed freely from two large punctures.

Carlos emptied the rest of a magazine into the water. “Don’t like bullets, huh?” he shouted. “Well, you might as well give up ’cause there’s no way you’re gonna get us without taking a lot more of ‘em!” With my ear pressed against a gunwale, I was able to hear a shriek from the fish. It struck us yet again, this time from below, knocking the raft several feet into air. Miraculously, the boat landed right side up.

I lay groaning on top of Dianna, which would have been a rather pleasant way to spend my last moments if she hadn’t been throwing up. I expected a final strike that would sink our craft, but it never came. Moments later, Thatcher shouted, “It’s swimming away!”
“Must have decided we were too tough to handle!” Carlos cackled.
“No, it must have realized it had worse problems than hunger,” Dianna said between heaves. “Don’t you feel it?” I certainly felt it: the first rain drops of the arriving storm.
“We’ve got to hurry!” I said. “Get a bearing on the time bell, Di!”
She was already examining the machine. She shook her head, and then bent over and sobbed. “It’s no use. The machine’s broken. Or the batteries are dead.” She vomited again, which couldn’t have helped matters.

“Can you fix it?” Carlos asked.
“In the dark, on a leaky boat in rough seas, in fifteen minutes or less? Not a chance, even if it is repairable”

“Any idea which direction we should go? A guess?”
Dianna waved over her shoulder. “I don’t know!” she said through her tears. “That way, maybe. Who knows? Doesn’t really matter; we’re doomed anyway.” She threw herself flat in the rising water within the boat.

I hauled her up. “Stay together, Di,” I told her. “We’ll find a way out of this.”
She hugged me tightly. “I don’t think so,” she told me. “But you know something? I’m glad we’re in this together.”

Carlos actually turned the boat in the direction Di had pointed, but Thatcher was trying to stop him. “The fish could have spun the boat 180 degrees!” the first mate was shouting. “Even if she’s remembering the readings correctly, she may have lost her bearings during the attack. You’re gambling with our lives!”
“You got a better f*ing plan?” Carlos retorted coldly. He pushed Thatcher aside and reached for the throttle.

At that moment, I saw something. “Wait!” I exclaimed. Carlos hesitated. “The time bell should be that way,” I said, pointing about sixty degrees from our current heading.
“You sure?” Carlos asked. It sounded like a rhetorical question.
“Do you have a better plan?” I retorted, trying to match his caustic tone.
“Why not?” Carlos mused. He swung the boat around and gunned the throttle as hard as he could. Thatcher was too shocked to protest.

Minutes passed. The boat sank lower and lower. “I see an island!” Dianna cried out. My spirits rose when I saw the telltale streak of luminosity where the sea crashed against the shore. However, the boat sank lower yet. Carlos pumped the accelerator repeatedly in a desperate effort to nurse a little more speed from the boat, while the rest of us frantically bailed water with our bare hands. Smith dumped out the contents of one of the hard-won specimen jars and began using it like a bucket.

The island drew nearer. I felt almost certain that my hunch had been wrong. This was not where the time bell had landed. It was only by chance that I had led us to land at all. We might make it to shore, but we would never return to our own time. For a few minutes, I fantasized that we could still survive. We would live off the land. Dianna and I would start a family, and there would be a thriving colony of humanity. I mused about the shock and confusion that would occur if paleontologists in our own time were to find fossil evidence of our settlement. In the face of facts, however, my whimsies evaporated like snow in the desert. We were vagabonds 360 million years from home. Our supplies were already nearly exhausted. Even if we were able to keep warm and gather enough food to live on, we probably wouldn’t last long. Once our water filters failed, in six months at the most, Devonian germs would begin to take their toll. Some of us would be killed outright, while the rest would be debilitated until they succumbed to starvation or the elements. We would be lucky if any of us were still around after a year. Some of us would go much, much sooner, and I knew with heart-breaking certainty that Dianna would die first. Cold water sloshed freely into the boat. We would sink before we reached shore, I decided, and it would be very much for the best. I impulsively pulled Dianna to me and held her while I cried.

Just when I was resigned to our doom, Smith cried out, “I see light—light from the time bell!” I looked up, and through a mist of tears, I saw a shining electric star: a floodlight on one corner of the bell. I promptly let go of Dianna, and we both began bailing more furiously than before.

Despite our best efforts, it looked like our boat was going to sink just short of shore. “Sweet Mother, preserve us!” Carlos bellowed. He pumped the accelerator one last time, and the boat seemed to pick up speed. Suddenly, we accelerated even more, and our boat began to rise higher in the water. We were caught in an ocean swell. Thatcher seized the tiller and banked the raft to keep it from capsizing. Dianna took my hand, and we both murmured prayers as we cruised toward our destiny. Carlos cried out something much less spiritual. The next thing I knew, we head run aground on some rocks in about four feet of water.

We hastily unloaded the boat, racing the rising waves. Carlos and Thatcher ran ashore with the last of our specimens moments before an exceptionally strong wave sucked the boat out to sea.
“You gotta tell me,” Carlos said after we reached base camp, “how did you know the island was here?”
I sighed; it was time to confess. “It was just a hunch,” I said. Reluctantly, I explained, “I was just looking at the sea, and I saw this silver streak that I realized was the Dunkleosteus. It was heading this way.”
“WHAT???” cried Thatcher. Carlos was for once at a loss for words. He just stood and stared with his mouth hanging open, as if searching his vast vocabulary for words foul enough to express his feelings.
“I just figured, with a storm rising, the dunk would head for the nearest safe harbor, which would be on the island where we landed,” I finished lamely. Carlos’s legs seemed to get weak, and he abruptly plumped down in the sand. Finally, he responded, not with words but with laughter. He laughed and laughed until the Paleozoic woods rang with the sound. Every lungfish and giant bug in the vicinity must have been badly frightened.
Dianna smiled and said, “It just goes to show, even a vicious creature like that fish can do some good.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said, wiping a solitary tear from his eye. “So can a big, dumb meathead like you, Ted.”

We spent our last day in the Devonian trying to collect enough specimens to make up for the tons of lost payload. I chopped down a large tree, which helped. After that, I went fishing. Since we had no boat, I fished from the amphibious tractor. Carlos and Thatcher came with me.

I caught four fish in an hour, all fairly small. “I think something spooked the fish,” I said. “When we were here before, I did better than this in half as much time.”
“I can guess what spooked them,” Thatcher said. “Look!”
On the beach a few hundred meters away, a fish had washed up on shore. Carlos steered the tractor to shore to see what it was. It was a big placoderm, almost ten feet long, and it was not in good shape. Something had bitten off most of a fin and tried to crush its head. “Looks like our friend is back,” I said.
“Should we go back to base camp?” Thatcher asked.
“No,” Carlos said coldly. “We should troll the bay until we catch that dunk. It’s a matter of honor. Captain Bill could still be in that thing’s belly. There may not be much left of him, but we have to try to bring back whatever we can for a decent burial.” I could tell from the look in his eye that he was more concerned with avenging our captain than retrieving his body. I didn’t object; I felt the same way.

We discussed how to go about catching the Dunkleosteus. “We ought to use the power winch on the tractor,” Carlos said. “Maybe use a big fish for live bait.”
“No, you can’t cast with the winch,” I said. “It’s best if I reel it in with my rod and reel. Then we can sink a boat hook into it and hold onto it with the winch.”
“Holding onto it won’t be the problem,” Thatcher said. “The problem will be killing it before it can smash our craft to pieces. It must be at least twice the size of the amphibian.”
“The most important thing will be using the right bait,” I said. “We know the fish is attracted to shiny objects. I have an idea for something that could work even better than a real fish…”

Over the next fifteen minutes, I hastily assembled a new lure. I fashioned it from strips of silver fabric that I cut out from an insulated blanket. I attached them all to a small light, which would make the cloth shine even brighter. The final product was about two feet long. I proudly held up my creation and twirled it. The silver strands shone brilliantly in the sunlight. “No Dunkleosteus can resist it,” I said.

“I just hope you have better luck with fish than you do with women,” Thatcher said. I shot him a venomous glance.
“Are you sure you can take the dunk with that rod?” Carlos asked.
“No problem. People have caught great whites with this rod,” I said, a little defensively. “The estimated maximum load is three and a half tons.”
“That fish out there probably weighs more than that,” Thatcher said. “It’s as long as a prize great white, and its armor would make it hundreds of pounds heavier than a shark of the same size. One good tug could snap your rod like a twig.”
“It will hold up,” I said confidently. “Just remember, I’ll be counting on you to take it out as soon as I get it within range.” Doubt entered my mind when I remembered my own failure to kill the fish before. “Actually, I have more doubts about the boing stick than I do about the rod and reel. Do you think the grenade blast could get through all that armor?”
“It won’t matter, because I won’t be aiming for the head,” Carlos told me. “No offense, but that was one thing you did completely wrong when you fought it before. The boing stick is designed to be fired into the belly. The idea is for the shaped charge to cause massive damage to internal organs. Ideally, a shark will have its stomach blown out its mouth.”

On that optimistic note, we went back out to sea. After another hour of fishing, I hooked something BIG.
“Holy s*!” Carlos exclaimed. “That thing is gonna snap!”
“Don’t worry, it’s made of aircraft-grade graphite fibers,” I said. “Flexible, but incredibly strong.” The rod was bent into an “F” shape. As I slowly reeled the fish in, the rod bent ever closer to an inverted “U” shape.

Words can’t describe the grueling battle I had with that fish. I would reel in a few feet of line, only to be forced to let almost as many feet back out when the fish tried to pull free. I was slowly wearing the fish down, but I was being worn down too. My hands blistered, and the ache in my muscles grew exponentially worse. Every few minutes, we would hear an eerie hum over the noise of the engine. That was the Dunkleosteus’ scream, reverberating through our hull. Disconcertingly, the screams did not grow fainter or less frequent as the duel dragged on.

After three hours of fighting, I had the fish within shooting range. When it showed its metallic face, Carlos fired a grenade at it. There was a gout of blood, and I could tell that the fish had grown weaker when I resumed reeling the line in. However, there was still plenty of fight left in the fish. Soon, it was thrashing about at the surface, raising its body halfway out of the water. Carlos fired another grenade, but missed. “Steer for the shallows!” Carlos called to Thatcher. “We don’t want to give this thing room to dive!” He then tried softening it up some more with the Super Uzi.

Thatcher did as instructed. I continued to reel the fish in. Just when it seemed that victory was assured, catastrophe struck. Without warning, my reel exploded. Fishing line flew all over the deck. It then immediately began to move like a herd of earthworms as the fish rushed for freedom. I grabbed the loose spool off the deck and tried to pull it in by hand, but it was obviously a hopeless fight. All I got in return for my efforts was a nasty cut when the line slashed through my glove.

“I’ve got a better idea!” Carlos shouted. Dropping his weapons, he grabbed a fistful of line and knotted it around a fixture on the boat deck. “Haul ass, Thatcher!”
Thatcher brought the Amphibian to full power. To my amazement, Carlos’s hastily made knot held against the fish’s best efforts. “Don’t act so surprised,” Carlos said when he noticed me staring at the knot. “I wouldn’t have lasted long in the Indonesian occupation force if I hadn’t been able to tie people up securely.”

The fish fought back so hard that it made the craft rear back like a horse. It might have broken loose, if our tracks hadn’t finally touched bottom. The added traction allowed Thatcher to overpower the fish. Soon, we had the fish thrashing around behind us in waters barely five feet deep. As we neared dry land, Carlos pushed the boing stick into my hands. “Go finish the job,” he told me.

Filled with bravado, I climbed out of the Amphibian and waded toward my harnessed foe. The water was up to my shoulders. I held the boing stick just above the waves and carefully aimed at the fish’s body, just behind the pectoral fins. The fish raised its head out of the water and screeched. In the air, the noise was like nails on a blackboard. The fish slowly turned to face me, obviously preparing for a vengeful last charge. Still, I held my fire, savoring the moment. Finally, I spoke: “Smile, you spawn of a fish!” Then I fired. There was a spray of blood and flesh. The fish let out one last groan as it rolled over on its side. Then it was still, except for a feeble post mortem twitching of its tail.
Carlos waded up beside me. “Sheesh. Bad puns are supposed to be my department,” he said. I paid no attention. Something was happening to the slain fish. I waded nearer.
“Sweet Mother!” Carlos exclaimed. I shot him a dirty look. “Hey, no pun intended,” he said. We both stepped nearer. There was genuine awe in Carlos’s voice as he continued: “Maybe this was why it—she—was so aggressive. She was eating for…” His voice trailed off as he tried to count the slender, translucent young that were streaming out of the fish’s body. Each was about six inches long. By my count, there were at least seven of them. There’s no telling how close the mother had been to term, but her offspring were obviously quite capable of surviving on their own. We watched in silence as they swam swiftly away.

“It’s a shame you didn’t catch any of the young,” Smith told us after we hauled the Dunkleosteus back to camp. “However, this will vastly improve our knowledge of arthrodire biology. We should take a picture of the three of you with the fish, for posterity.

Carlos, Thatcher and I posed in front of the giant placoderm. At my insistence, Dianna stood with us. It took some persuading, for the dunk smelled even worse than ordinary dead fish. “Without your help, I wouldn’t have survived our first encounter with it,” I reminded her. Carlos and I put on our biggest smiles for the camera. Carlos held the boing stick, while I held my “trusty” rod. The damage to the rod was irreparable, but
I keep it on my wall as a trophy. The fish itself was shipped to the Smithsonian in an oversized cargo container full of formaldehyde. Careful measurements showed that it was 29 feet, 8.73 inches long and weighed 10,568.95 pounds. I have been officially credited with the largest fish ever caught with a harpoon, though they put an asterisk next to my name in the record books.

“Maybe they should have just created a new category: ‘fish caught with rod, reel, submachine gun, grenade launcher and tractor’,” Carlos mused.
The remains of Captain Bill MacGregor were found “mostly intact” in the fish’s stomach. He was buried in a cemetery in Maryland, as per his wishes. (It was obviously not an open casket service.) I still sometimes regret that we did not bring back Dr. Horne, but my guilt was assuaged when I learned that his will called for him to be cremated and his ashes scattered. I like to think he would have been satisfied to be buried in the prehistoric world he spent his life studying.

Hours before we returned to the present, I had a talk with Dianna. “I still haven’t made up my mind,” she told me. “To be frank, I think I need to get to know you a little better before I can make a decision. Please don’t ask me about it again; when I make my decision, I will tell you. Until then, be patient, and know that I do care about you.”
You might say it took a lot of time—360 million years, and 6 weeks.