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.”