Dr. Gregory Paul sat frozen with confusion as his assistant reached into the time machine's cockpit and keyed a new sequence into the control box.
"What the...?" he said, unable to frame an appropriate question.
Randal Waterfield, his assistant, grinned and looked at him with wild eyes as he pulled the canopy's release mechanism. "Good-bye, Dr. Paul. Enjoy your trip--wherever you end up." Then he drew a handgun from his lab coat and calmly fired bullets into the input buffer until his gun clicked empty.
The time machine shuddered as its power system engaged and its canopy slid firmly into place. A panel of lights flashed Christmas-tree colors before his eyes. The Plexiglas-lined cockpit reflected Dr. Paul's face, his hair a dark wispy cloud over a lined forehead. Fear inched along his backbone, dancing upward like the ice-cold head of a charmed cobra. He focused on the shattered control box and realized this would be a one-way trip. Without the input buffer, he could never program the time machine to return.
Randal's smile was predatory, wickedly carnivorous. "Don't worry about your invention. I've got your drawings, and I'll make sure the world learns about it."
Lights flickered, and Dr. Paul's stomach lurched. The nylon straps holding him in the seat bit into his shoulders as the machine dropped through the air in sudden deadfall. Less than two seconds later, impact drove the breath out of his lungs and mashed the back of his head into the seat's soft cushion. The screech of tearing metal raked his ears, and a warm, dusty aroma wafted over the cockpit, mixing with lingering traces of stale gunpowder.
Outside the cockpit, everything was dark. The flashing lights blazed against the vacuous blackness, alternating in eerie silence. Dr. Paul unbuckled the restraints and rubbed his shoulders painfully. He peered outside but saw nothing through the reflections of his warning lights.
He slammed his open palm against the flat top of the control panel. "Damn Randal Waterfield! Damn him to hell!" He should have seen it coming. Only a fool would have missed the envy and greed that glittered in the young man's eyes.
Calming himself, he released the canopy. The covering raised with a hydraulic wheeze, thunking solidly into place.
Swamp gas as thick as pancake batter teared his eyes. He gagged and covered his nose, but the arm of his lab coat did little to keep the smell from clogging his nostrils.
Dr. Paul stood and looked around, blinking his eyes clear and trying to adjust to the darkness. The moon was a thin sliver. Its early first quarter light painted a silver sheen over a landscape of harsh brush and gnarled trees, their branches twisting and hovering above the swamp like a witch's bony fingers preparing to snatch up an unsuspecting newt. A cottony mist coated the ground, obliterating the area's features. The sounds of insects gradually built, their raspy songs intertwining in the night air as if each frequency rose separately from the depths of the swamp. A cold breeze blew damply against him, and he shivered.
Where was he?
He stepped out of the machine, and his feet sank into semisolid ground.
A large splash came from all directions at once. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Had that been the splash of a crocodile leaping into the murky swamp? No. A crocodile would merely slip quietly into the water with black, death-filled eyes drawn to a focus on its intended victim. Perhaps the sound was a swamp cat, a nocturnal predator who would wade through shallow water with its powerful forelegs, then drag its lifeless prey up into one of the low branches for its feast.
An insect flew past his ear with a solid sound--a hornet's drone rather than a housefly's buzz. Dr. Paul ducked, then crawled back into the time machine. He flipped the release mechanism again and shut the canopy. It shut with a satisfying click, placing a barrier between himself and the swamp.
A shiver ran through his bones, and he imagined ooze crawling over his skin.
He was used to feeling uncomfortable.
He knew all about conversations that stopped when he walked into rooms. He knew whispers in the hallway and tittering laughter about his experiments. He knew performance reviews with the department chairman, and wondering if the false secrets other people whispered of him would deprive him of the tenure his work so richly deserved. And he knew about people's eyes that grew hooded upon his arrival, about women who giggled at his comments then turned away to talk to anyone else in the room, about returning home alone with his embarrassment and his unspoken desires.
No one had ever accused Dr. Gregory Paul of being bold or decisive.
But in all his life, he had never known the fear he felt now, the kind that gripped him like a frozen glove clutching his heart. The kind that made him have to think to breathe. He had never before been in the outdoors like this. He had never camped out as a kid or even stayed out until dawn playing in the park like some of his high school classmates had done.
Gregory Paul, professor of physics, was truly alone and truly lost. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know when was--and in a sense, he even wondered who he was.
The flashing lights broke him of his stupor. It was too dark to see much of anything inside the cockpit, so he reached out and punched various shutdown buttons, each one dousing a set of blinking lights. The digital readout still functioned. He smiled sheepishly at himself. He had been so caught up in recent events that he hadn't even thought to look at it. Its cold blue numbers read -68,252,122. He stared at the number, letting it register in his mind.
With ice cold clarity, Dr. Paul realized exactly when he was--sixty-eight million years in the past, right at the tail end of the Mesozoic era.
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