PRIMORDIAL

The epoch insertion was executed with military precision. A two dimensional rift in the space-time continuum materialized and unceremoniously disgorged the woman onto the jungle floor. As sudden as it had appeared, the temporal fracture twisted sideways and dissolved into the ancient evening.

The woman sat up, uncertain if it was night or if the insertion had blinded her. The sensation of vertigo slowly diminished. She felt the gradual encroachment of heat and pressure subside in her body. Her ears rang with a hollow, almost musical wail. A faint glimmer of moonlight, as if being reflected from rippling water teased her vision. Slowly her eyes adjusted.

Kassandra Kimura was angry and terrified. Angry that the Court imposed the maximum sentence allowed for capital offenses, banishment to the late Cretaceous Period. She was terrified from the utter finality of being there. It was difficult for her to accept that this was it. Thousands of condemned prisoners had been exiled to the Cretaceous and none had ever been retrieved. To make matters worse, it was night at the insertion point and in the middle of a dense forest. Not that it was planned that way, the hyperspatial computers responsible for the hundreds of billions of calculations required for prisoner insertion could only be accurate to the day. It was Kassandra's bad luck that it occurred during the evening.

It was horrifying to be alone in the primeval forest at night, wearing only gray and white striped insertion overalls. A nearby shriek from the thicket behind her nearly frightened her out of her shoes. She whirled around to face the sound and saw a pair of covetous eyes in the gloom, glistening balefully before fading into the darkness.

The eclipsing trees spread so impenetrably and their leafage dispersed so widely she could see only a fragment of the moonlight. The stench of animal excrement and decaying flesh was everywhere. Occasionally behind her, she heard the crashing of branches and dead wood as if some great body was trying to probe through the maze of thicket, at a distance not immediately threatening, but unnerving all the same.

Kassandra Kimura was a week past her thirty-third birthday when the Court banished her to the Cretaceous. She was a tall and athletic woman with few friends. Her hair was cut short and dyed a shamrock-green with the head shaved on the sides. Her eyes were a startling cold blue. She never married. She always thought men were more of a nuisance and a liability than an asset. Kassandra liked little children, but desired none of her own.

Hour after endless hour she ambled through the tangled jungle, feeling her way around in the darkness, brush and thorns tearing at her overalls and skin. Only by the most gracious of miracles did she not fall prey to a predatory beast or some other unmentionable horror. At last she emerged from the forest into a moonlit glade that was several hundred yards across. It was like an island of knee-high grass and saplings in a verdant ocean of never-ending foliage.

The air in the glade was refreshing and pleasing. A tranquil breeze cooled the bare sides of her head and perspiring physique. There was another loud crack of splintering timber behind her, as if being crushed by the incomprehensible weight of a nightmare beast; this time much closer and followed by a penetrating chirping noise and a stark guttural croak.

Suddenly she realized that something was stalking her; sniffing her out. Fear clenched her like squeezing talons and her mouth became as dry as venerated ash.

On the far side of the glade, Kassandra saw the faint glimmer of dawn setting the tops of the trees aglow. Deep within herself she sensed an urgency to get to the other side. Whatever was behind her would soon emerge from the undergrowth and she didn't want to be there to greet it. If caught out in the open, thought Kassandra, I'll have no chance, no chance at all.

She started off at a brisk walk which quickly changed into a full gait. Not quite half way across the clearing she stumbled and fell. Reeds and sapling leaves cut her face. Kassandra's heart jackhammered inside her heaving chest. Each breath drawn was an unmerciful labor.

Staggering to her feet, Kassandra was nearly trampled by a small herd of frightened ostrich-like dinosaurs fleeing an unseen menace. Within fifty yards of the tree line, she paused next to a large boulder protruding from the soft surface. Kassandra was too exhausted to go further. She had to stop for a few moments to rest.

Behind her, at the far end of the glade, Kassandra's worst nightmare materialized in the form of a great theropod disengaging itself from the shadows cast by the rising sun.

She was astounded at how anything so big could be alive. It was at least ten tons of bone, muscle, and far too many teeth. The dinosaur stood twenty-five feet tall on two powerful piston-like legs. Its long tail, running almost parallel to its back, acted as a counterbalance to its enormous weight.

The predatory theropod crouched down into a flat-footed stalk and sniffed the ground and then tested the air. Raising its five-foot-long snout skyward, it hooted twice and pivoted its head towards the forest behind. Moments later, two juveniles the size of kangaroos, scampered out from the copse playfully nipping at one another.

The dawn transmuted to full daylight and the tyrannosaur had not yet seen her. Perhaps it was sniffing out the herd that nearly trampled her. Maybe it would stay on that side of the glade and wait for some unsuspecting herbivore to appear. It had no reason to cross the glade. Kassandra stood frozen with her back up against the boulder, watching, praying that the predator would move along and not cross the glade.

Seconds seemed minutes. The morning sun shed its light on the tyrannosaur family. The juveniles stood like comical statues while the adult continued to scent the air and the soil.

A large mosquito, a wasp, or something landed on her throat and fell down inside the front of her shirt. She jumped up and screamed and slapped at her breast. Grabbing the outside of her shirt, Kassandra trapped and squashed the bug inside. Her contortions to get at the crawly thing did not go unnoticed.

The giant carnivore locked its eyes on Kassandra and arched its head up like a fighting cock preparing to attack. It gave out a wonder-provoking bellow. The beast was coming for her, lumbering at first. The earth shook with each thunderous footfall as the beast gained speed and momentum. It closed the distance with colossal strides as the little ones trailed behind. In bewildered panic, Kassandra turned to flee and ran into the boulder. Stunned by the impact, she fell on her backside.

Dazed, she staggered to her feet. She felt like she had been detached from her body and was a spectator watching everything in a slow-motion nightmare. Kassandra heard the massive air exchange of its panting lungs. She would never make the trees now. The carnivore was nearly on top of her. Her only chance was to get to the other side of the boulder and hope that the monstrosity was as stupid as the books she had read in school suggested, and would pass her by. The books knew nothing.

The matriarch craned its neck around the boulder and hissed. Its eyes were clear and clever. It was not a stupid, dull-witted, sluggish carrion eater. Madame Tyrannosaur was a swift, crafty, and adept hunter. She had a frightful face adorned with hornlets and bright blue and red scales. It hooted once and the two younger tyrannosaurs, partially covered with down feathers and chirping with fevered excitement, appeared from the other side of the boulder. Kassandra waited for the inevitable attack and prayed that it would all be over soon.

Kassandra smelled the rancid herbage and dung stench of the brute as it maneuvered its massive head with bird-like jerks into a better position for locking its jaws onto her. She felt its hot and putrid wheezing breath over come her body and saw the rows of crimson stained banana-size teeth, some of which waggled, loose, as if ready to shed to make room for new ones. Drool poured from its mouth by the buckets. Her mortal life was at an end. Kassandra Kimura knew she was moments away from being eaten alive.
********
By the late twenty-second century, the nations of the Earth were finally at peace with one another and had formed a single centralized government. Funds and technologies once normally earmarked for war and destruction were now being spent on spaceflight, research, and the general betterment of global human life. Astounding breakthroughs were achieved. Laws of physics, once thought concrete, were shattered. Humanity thumbed an indignant nose at Einstein as the secrets to interstellar flight and time travel were unlocked.

Not wanting to meddle with the past, time-travel was left in the hands of historian observers. But with global abolition of the death penalty and the ever-increasing cost of maintaining inmates at the lunar penal colony, an innovative young bureaucrat came up with the idea of imprisoning those meriting a death sentence in Earth's ancient past.

The idea was hotly debated for years. Cost-effectiveness wasn't the issue. It was a thousand times cheaper to dump offenders in the Cretaceous to fend for themselves than take care of them over the course of their lifetime. No one argued the monumental savings. The big worry was that with thousands of criminals on the loose in the Earth's distant past, there was the risk they might screw up humanity's future. When it was proved that an unarmed human being in the Cretaceous had an average life expectancy of two days, a week tops, of dodging predatory dinosaurs, even that didn't silence the critics. The project was on the verge of being shelved when the same innovative young bureaucrat came up with another brainstorm; the Chicxulub Factor. The Chicxulub Factor removed all doubts of human interference with Earth's past and silenced all critics.

The Chicxulub Factor, or more specifically the Cosmic Zap that wiped out the dinosaurs, was a ten mile wide asteroid that struck Earth near Marida, Mexico sixty-five million years ago. The impact left a gaping crater 190 miles wide and sixteen miles deep and made the Nagasaki and Hiroshima nuclear explosions look like a couple of New Year's Eve firecrackers. Chicxulub dwarfed the 1908 Tunguska comet strike in Siberia by a factor of ten. The majority of life within a five-thousand mile circumference of Chicxulub perished in a firestorm. The entire planet was shrouded with soot and smoke for years. All criminal insertees were deposited within a one hundred mile radius and within a year of the collision, thus eliminating any possibility of insertee interference with human evolution.
If the carnivores didn't get them, Chicxulub was certain to.

A sudden, piercing report of gunfire echoed across the Cretaceous glade and reverberated in the trees.
The majestic theropod stood straight up, then fell off to one side and began convulsing and thrashing about, and then died.
Suddenly a six-foot tall sickled-toed theropod, screeching like a riled eagle, charged out from the copse.

It gaited toward her at an incredible rate of speed. It looked like something that was a cross between an ostrich and a crocodile. At the last moment it veered and attacked one of the two fleeing juvenile tyrannosaurs. The animal kicked with its right foot, slashing a gaping hole in the young predator's abdomen, spilling some of the moist guts onto the damp earth. Abandoning its kill, it went in pursuit of the other, quickly overtaking and dispatching it in the same efficient manner it had its sibling.
"Time to leave!" Kassandra said to herself.

Kassandra began running for the forest when out from behind a splintered fallen conifer tree stepped a...man! A gaunt narrow-faced man in his mid to late thirties clad in tattered insertion overalls holding a twelve gauge, pump-action shotgun. His overgrown dark hair was unkempt and full of lice, as was his scraggly bearded face which sported a Cheshire cat grin. The man's eyes were carbon-black and deeply recessed. His knuckles were swollen and nodulus. Several of his fingernails were missing, ripped out, as if he had been clawing at something. Slightly under six feet, he was skinny and peaked. His odor was powerful and malodorous, he smelled like gangrene and feces and sweat. The stranger looked as if he belonged in a hospital for the terminally ill instead of an ancient jungle. Kassandra nearly ran him down.

"Who are you!" said the man.
"Who am I!" she said. "Who the hell are you!"
"I'm the one who just saved your bacon, lady!"
"Where'd you come from?"
"Same as you, lady. I'm an insertee."
"Who are you?" persisted Kassandra. The shock of seeing another human being where none were supposed be, at least live ones, dissipated. "How'd you get a weapon? They don't allow insertees to have weapons."

"Not now," he said, his voice wheezing as if he was in great congestive distress. "We'll play twenty questions later. We have to get our derriere's out of here now. Fresh blood draws a crowd."
"Did you see the number that two-legged lizard with the big toenail did on the two smaller ones?"
"Of course I saw. I sent him in before they got any ideas about feeding on you."
"What!" exclaimed Kassandra.
"He's with me."
"What!"

The man whistled loudly through decayed teeth. The animal stood up abruptly with a large gobbet of flesh hanging from its jaws. A second later it was at a fast trot in their direction. The dinosaur was a streamlined killer constructed for attack. It had a slenderly built body poised on two powerful legs that combined speed and agility with wicked weaponry. The long bony tail that stretched out stiffly behind acted as a counterbalance and facilitated maneuverability while sprinting. A lightweight head perched on a slim neck bore a frightening array of teeth. But the real strength of this demonic predator lay in the horrendous combination of its long grappling hook-like front claws and the crescent-shaped inner toe claw on each foot.

"Oh my God!" said Kassandra.
"Not to worry," assured the man. "That's Jack, and as I said, he's with me. I'll tell you all about it later. But we've got to leave here right now...this very second."
Jack stopped a few feet from the man, ignoring the woman. He was a beautiful creature. His skin, like coarse sandpaper, was light gray and tan with dazzling multicolored tiger-stripes running vertically from his head down his back to the tip of his tail. The dinosaur rubbed his blood stained snout affectionately on the man's chest. Saucer-eyed, Kassandra's jaw dropped open. She was flabbergasted.

"Watch out for these leaves," he said, moving it out of her path with the barrel of his gun. "They have thorns and they're toxic."
After an hour of tramping through the thicket, Kassandra stopped and knelt. "Mister, I can't go another step. I have to rest. I haven't had any sleep, food, or water since I've been here."
Kassandra started to sit down on a long, thick exposed root of a tall Pinopsida tree.
"Not there," said the man. "The resin of these coniferous trees is sticky like you wouldn't believe, sort of a natural flypaper, and a real bitch to clean off."

The man was right. Kassandra saw where hundreds of small insects and lizards had gotten trapped and entombed in the yellowish brown resin. She sat down on the ground at the foot of the tree and crossed her legs.
"My name is Carter," he said, handing her a canteen made from a cantaloupe-size eggshell. "Small sips or you'll just throw it up."
Kassandra gulped the water down.
"Easy with the water," said Carter, sitting down next to her.
"Do you have anything to eat?" she asked.
"Dried meat," he replied, handing her a strip.

She couldn't get it into her mouth fast enough.
"This ain't half-bad. What is it?"
Carter grinned his Cheshire cat grin and said: "You can be sure it ain't beef. What's your name?"
"Kassandra, with a K."
"Well Kassandra with a K, what did you ever do to rate Club Cretaceous?"
"It was stupid," she replied. "I should've known better."
"What was stupid?"

"I knew this man," said Kassandra, "who happened to have a wife that was a representative to the Global Congress. What a certifiable bitch! No sense of humor at all. I guess she didn't appreciate our occasional rolls in the hay. Anyway, they found the husband dead one day with his lower extremities laser-zapped. I didn't kill him...but guess who got left holding the proverbial bag?"
"Yours truly?"
"Right. You know how it works, Carter. Who're they going to believe...some government number cruncher like myself or a member in good standing with the Global Congress?"
"Number cruncher?"
"Economist. I was an economist for the Bureau of Global Statistics. I have sort of a natural ability; some call it a gift, with numbers. I like working with numbers, unlike people and especially men, numbers have never lied to me."

"Sounds like bad luck," said Carter.
"Bad luck had nothing to do with it." said Kassandra. "I was set up and framed by the wife. She used me to get rid of her husband. I'll find a way out of here...or some way to even the score with her."
"Little chance of that, I think," said Carter. "You forget there's sixty-five million big ones, give or take a millennia, between the two of you."
"I forget nothing," she said. "I will find a way."
"What was the year of your insertion?" asked Carter.
"2288...and you?"
"2293."

"It really messes with your mind," said Kassandra. "You were inserted five years after me, but got here first. How long have you been here?"
"Six months, I think, maybe more?"
"So who'd you kill?" she asked rather bluntly, wondering how dangerous he was to her. "How'd you manage a weapon?"

"I didn't kill anyone. I was an executive officer on an interstellar vessel. I relieved an incompetent captain of command and threw her inept ass in the brig. The Service didn't buy it. As far as they were concerned, incompetency and captaincy was a contradiction of terms. So after being found guilty of unlawful imprisonment of a senior officer and mutiny, I was tagged, bagged, and zapped to the exotic Club Cretaceous. As for the shotgun, a buddy of mine must have paid off the insertion tech to slip it and several boxes of slugs into the chamber with me."

"Seen anyone else?" she asked.
"Not any live ones. Just an occasional body part. I was inserted with some old man. He didn't last an hour after we got here. I never knew his name or what he had done to deserve this place."
"Dinosaurs?"
"Scorpion sting. They are lethal...and I mean lethal. He went into convulsions and died within seconds of being bitten. Scorpion venom was how I was able to dispatch the tyrannosauroid that had you earmarked for breakfast."

"What!" Kassandra nearly choked on the jerky.
"When I saw how quickly the old man died, I got this idea to pin the little buggers down with a stick and then insert a hollow reed into their stingers to collect the venom. Afterwards I smear it on the twelve gauge slugs...and presto, poison bullets."
"How long do you think we have before the big rock hits?" asked Kassandra.
"The asteroid?"
"Yeah. I couldn't even pronounce what they called it. Some old Spanish word."

"I have no idea," replied Carter, gazing solemnly at the ground. "The asteroid is the least of our worries. This place is not conducive to human life. It's just been plain old dumb luck that I have lasted as long as I have."
"Don't sell yourself short," she said. "You must be doing something right."
"Well, that's easy for you to say," rebuked Carter. "You've only been here a few hours. You haven't seen what I have seen. This whole place wants to eat you, even some of the plants. You can't so much as get a drink of water or take a crap without something trying to take a bite out of you. I kid you not, dumb luck has a lot to do with me still breathing."

"What about your little friend over there with the overbite problem?" said Kassandra, nodding in the direction of the sickle-toed dinosaur, standing a few yards away, erect and sentry alert.
"Jack? If you run into any of Jack's relatives and don't have a tall tree handy to scurry up...you're toast. I've seen just a couple of his species tear into one of the large plant eaters and disembowel it. Except for the flies, the sickle-toed theropods are the most vicious creatures in this place."

"Flies?" she replied weakly. The anxiety in her eyes was unmistakable. Kassandra loathed insects. The thought of anything with more than four legs started her stomach churning. "Carrion flies. That's why I was in a hurry to put distance between us and the glade. I've seen clouds of them as thick as smoke drive the large predators away from their kills. They're like airborne piranhas."

Kassandra became pale and started to hyperventilate. She looked as if she was about to throw up. She turned to one side and did just that.
Carter's cadaverous face showed no hint of sympathy for her. "You'll pardon me if I don't offer you my hanky," he said, "I just happen to be fresh out of them. You need to understand that we are here to die. There will be no rescue; no reprieve."
"You are such a Prince of Assholes!" She fought back tears and was angry at herself for it. "If you feel that way about it, why in the hell don't you just shoot yourself in the foot with one of your scorpion bullets!"

"Oh, I've thought about it, believe me, in exactly the manner you suggested."
Kassandra grabbed the weapon and buried the business end of it in his chest. "If you don't have the balls for it, I'll oblige you!"
Swift as light, Jack was moving on the woman with his mouth agape and his long grappling hook-like front claws reaching for her.
"No Jack!!" yelled Carter hoarsely. "Jack halt!!"

The dinosaur obeyed. Its jaws were less than a foot away from Kassandra's head. Its eyes, as intense as any living creature could be, were affixed on her. The nervous animal was torn between disobeying its master or risking harm to come to him. In the worst way, Jack wanted to bite Kassandra Kimura.
"Moment of truth," said Carter coolly.
"I'll do it," she replied, not looking at the rows of long pearly-whites just inches from her right ear. Jack's breath was torrid and rank. "Just say the word."

"I believe you." The Cheshire cat grin appeared on his face. "If you haven't any objections, I say we get the hell out of here? I have a cave of sorts not far from here."
Slowly, he took the weapon from her. Jack snorted loudly and back-stepped to one side.
"Your place? I suppose you'll want to show me your etchings?"
"Did you have something better to do today?" said Carter. "A hot date perhaps?"
Kassandra just gave him a, Yeah! Right! look.

By the time they reached Carter's cavernous encampment, the late afternoon sky was as gray as ash behind the dark outlines of sable palms and fern trees. Lightning streaked low across the horizon, occasionally touching down on a distant plain. Carter had claimed squatters rights on a spacious cave several hundred feet up the side of a dormant volcano which provided a panoramic view of the forest below. It was like standing on the roof of a tall building gazing down over a city of flora.

Kassandra walked in ahead of Carter with her hands in her pockets and stopped next to a circular formation of stones used as a crude fireplace. "How quaint," she quipped facetiously. "How'd you find it?"
"I was chased up here," he replied.
A sudden thud startled her. Jack had plopped down off to the side of the entrance.
"I named him after Jack the Ripper," said Carter. "That nineteenth century English fellow who liked to slice up women with a..."

"I know who Jack the Ripper was," said Kassandra, as if her intelligence had been insulted. "How'd you come by him?"
Carter sat down on a rock in front of the cold campfire and propped his shotgun up along the cavern wall. Kassandra sat down across from him and watched as he chipped flint into a small half oyster shell containing bits of dry grass and leaf fragments. After a minute or so, a thin wisp of smoke ascended upwards.

"I came across Jack a week or so after my insertion," said Carter. "He wasn't much bigger than a chicken. He must've gotten separated from his pack."
"Pack?"
"Yeah, the sickle-toed theropods are pack-hunters."
It was getting dark and rain started to fall. The droplets splattered like little water filled balloons. A loud thunderclap drew her attention towards the aperture. Lightning outlined Jack's erie silhouette as he lay statue-still, oblivious of the deafening peals and the dazzling luminary fingers gracing the heavens.

"You were telling me how you came about Jack," she said.
"That's about it. I started feeding him and he got attached to me, kind of like a dog would. He grew really fast."
"You said you've been here six months," said Kassandra. "Why in the hell have you been hanging around here? Even on foot you could've put a lot of distance between you and your insertion point. Why haven't you tried to get away from the impact area?"
"What's the point?" he replied, trying to hold back a coughing spell. "Safe range is much too far away."

"What's the point!" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You could've tried! You were an interstellar flight officer! You disappoint me, Carter. You don't strike me as the type who would just roll over and die."
"We are both already dead."
Kassandra looked away in disgust. After several moments she said: "Well, you can stay here and wait to croak. I'm getting the hell out of here. I'll follow the sun west. I may die on the way, but it'll be on my feet."

"Did they give you an injection prior to your insertion?"
"Yeah," she replied. "So...so what? They said it was a vitamin shot."
"If you believed that, I have a bridge I would like to sell you."
"What ARE you talking about?" said Kassandra. She didn't like where the conversation was going.
"Do you really think they would give a condemned insertee a vitamin shot before insertion? Now you disappoint me...I thought you were much smarter."

Kassandra didn't really think they would give a condemned prisoner a vitamin shot before insertion, and she was too smart to believe that the Court gave two hoots in hell about her body's metabolism level. "Well?" she demanded impatiently. "Are you going to tell me, or are you just going to sit there like a cow pie in a pasture?"

"The shot they gave you," began Carter, "was their backup to industrious insertees. Some of the most cunning criminal minds in the solar system have been exiled to Club Cretaceous. You don't have to be a hyperspatial computer scientist to reason out that a few of the insertees will avoid the dinosaurs and find a way to get beyond the range of the asteroid impact."

"Wait a minute! I thought the asteroid WAS the backup!"
"Oh no," replied Carter, shaking his head. "The injection was their backup to the asteroid."
Bewildered, she rubbed the temples of her head with both hands, as if trying to soothe a migraine. "Well, what was in the shot? I never believed it was a vitamin."
"Some kind of human immunodeficiency virus," replied Carter grimly. "I'm not a medical person, but as I understand it, the damn bug works on disarming the body's immune system and leaves you vulnerable to any sickness."

"How do you know all of this? Is this some bullshit story you're trying to lay on me!"
"Look at me, lady!" he retorted, ripping open the front of his overalls. Carter's chest was covered with purple lesions and skin discolorations. The skin was tight, as if it was stretched around his rib cage. "Do I look like someone who would try to lay one on you? I heard about it long before I got into trouble with the Service, from a ship's physician who had too much Andromedian Ale. Apparently the virus was engineered solely as a backup to the Chicxulub Asteroid. He came to me the next day after he'd sobered up, scared out of his mind, pleading with me that I never breathe a word of what he had told me."

Aghast, Kassandra spoke dejectedly, "Those scurvy bastards." "Yeah, those bastards...you got that right and there's nothing we can do about it."
Carter didn't have to say any more. It all made perfect sense to her that the Court would do something like that.
"You look exhausted," he said, changing the subject.
Carter got up and unrolled a mat woven of some sort of reedy material that resembled palm leaves and placed it on the cavern floor near where Kassandra was sitting. "I made this myself. It's not much, but it's better than the bare ground. It doesn't get very cold in here"

She crawled over to the mat on her hands and knees and then glided down head first onto its coarse surface, coming to rest on her stomach as graceful as a swan landing upon a glassy lake. "Where are you sleeping?" she asked, struggling to keep her eyes open.
"I have another mat. Don't worry, I won't bother you."
"I'm not worried about that." Her reply was consistent with a person who was more asleep than awake. "What's your first name?"
"James. I prefer just plain Carter."
She didn't respond.

Kassandra awoke with a gasp and sat up on the mat. It took her a moment to recollect herself. "I've got it," she muttered to herself, "that's it." She looked around and discovered that Carter was not inside the cave.
"Carter," she called.
"Out here," replied his voice from outside the cave.
Kassandra stood up and stretched. There was a slight chill inside the cave; she was stiff and sore. She started for the opening and stepped out into the warmth of the new day.

The early morning sky was a pellucid blue, outlining dark smoking volcanoes on a distant horizon. The jungle, still wet from the previous evening rain, sparkled in the sunlight. The colors were so green and vivid that they could almost be heard. The air was rich with the foulness of rotting flesh and animal dung, yet above the rankness, a faint fragrance of blooming flowers prevailed like good over evil.

Carter was sitting on a rock with his shotgun draped across his lap. Jack was nowhere to be seen.
"This is the nicest time," he said, "in the morning after a rain like we had last night. It helps wash away a little of the stink until it warms up. I sent Jack out for breakfast."
"I've got it, Carter," said Kassandra.
"You've got what?" he asked.
"I have an idea as to how we might nail them. They think they're so clever, but I wager we can get them."

"Them? Whatever are you talking about?"
"Last night I kept having this dream about the bugs and things that were trapped in the resin of that coniferous tree we were at yesterday. The one you told me to watch out for and not get on my hands or clothes."
"I remember," he said. "So...so what?"
"Do you recall what happens to tree resin that fossilizes?"

"Yeah," replied Carter. "It becomes..." He had to stop and think for a moment about his academy geology class. "It becomes amber."
"That's right."
"So what?"
"Well," continued Kassandra, "whatever gets entrapped in the resin is preserved during the fossilization process."

"Can you just cut to the chase please?"
"They injected both of us with an infectious and fatal virus before insertion, right?"
"That's right."
"Suppose," said Kassandra, she was smiling as if she was really on to something, "we take a blood specimen from one of us, encase it in the resin, bury it, and then..."
"And then what?"
"And then over the eons the stuff fossilizes into amber."

Carter had an intrigued look on his face, but still didn't see what her point was. "Am I missing something here?"
"Let me finish," she insisted. "Blood DNA and viruses are virtually indestructible. The blood specimen just might survive until some geologist within a millennium of our time finds the fossilized amber, frees it, and then infects somebody. We nail them or their ancestors or their descendants with what they injected into us. Sort of a retroactive abortion."

All in about two seconds time, the look on Carter's withered face, went from utter astonishment, to a Cheshire cat grin, to deep, unsubdued laughter.
"What's so funny?"
Carter couldn't answer. Tears streamed down his face into his beard. He rolled off the rock he was sitting on, bellowing with laughter.
"What's so damn funny!" she repeated, nudging him in his butt with her foot. Carter's laughter was becoming infectious. Kassandra started laughing also.

After several minutes, Carter regained his composure, but it was apparent he had to fight off the urge of another outbreak. At that moment, Jack appeared with a furry rat-like creature hanging limply from his jaws. At the sight of Jack with breakfast in his mouth, Carter lost it and again slipped into an uncontrollable laughing state.
"I really fail to see the humor in this," said Kassandra.
"My dear," replied Carter, still laughing and trying to talk at the same time, and pointing to the dead mammalian creature Jack had dropped in front of them, "don't you think you would have better luck with trying to kill off all the mammals that might someday evolve into human beings than with your retroactive abortion scheme?"

"It's not a scheme!" she insisted. "Maybe a little far-fetched, but still, I think, a viable idea. As far as your idea of killing off the indigenous mammal population around here, they are going to buy it when the asteroid hits."
"Viable!!" Carter started off on another laughing tangent.
"Stop it damn it! You're disgusting!"
James Carter didn't stop until his peals of uncontrollable laughter turned into hacks of uncontrollable coughing. He was on his hands and knees spitting dark red blood. After his coughing subsided, Carter said, "I knew I was going to die here, but I never dreamed I would die laughing."

"Are you all right?" she asked. "Can I get you anything?"
"I'm all right," he replied, "but I don't think I have much time left."
"I guess this is what I have to look forward to, isn't it?"
Carter nodded.
"Wouldn't you like to at least try to get even with the bastards?" she asked.
"Of course I would, but as you pointed out, this whole place is going to be one big hole in the ground sometime very soon. What makes you think your retroactive abortion scheme has any better chance of surviving the impact than any of the mammals around here do?"

"I'm not stupid," said Kassandra earnestly, "and I do see the futility of it, but maybe, just maybe, if we bury it deep enough, it might survive. I really don't know. What I do know is, that I have this deep burning desire inside of me to at least try to do something, however feeble or however ridiculous it may sound, I have to at least try. I know in my heart I do not deserve this, and from what you have told me, neither do you."
Kassandra didn't have to say any more. Carter could see that she was a woman driven and single-mindedly determined. Kassandra Kimura was going to pursue her retroactive abortion idea with or without him. Why not? he thought, if it makes her happy.

"How do you propose to do this?" asked Carter.
"Well," she started, "I figure we need two eggs, one about the size of a chicken's egg and one the size of your canteen will do nicely. After we drain out the yolks, the smaller one we'll fill with our blood specimen and the other with coniferous tree resin. We then insert the smaller egg into the larger one and bury it the back of your cave. My guess is that when the asteroid strikes, it'll bring down this whole mountain on top of the cave, thus sealing it up."

"The viscosity of the resin is like molasses in January," said Carter. "It'll take forever to fill up the larger egg."
"Well, the rest of my day is free. Did you have a hot date or something else going on I should know about?"
"Touché," conceded Carter. "You have a beautiful smile, Kassandra with a K. I wish I could have known you back in the real world."

Kassandra was visibly stunned by the flattery. Usually she took such comments from a man as an insult because they had some ulterior motive attached to them. Somehow she could sense his sincerity.
"Do you feel up to starting our little project?" she asked.
"Yeah, let's do it. I'll be fine as long as I don't have to do any sprinting. There are plenty of nests. Robbing one shouldn't be too difficult."

They secured the eggs they needed without incident and drained the yolks. The process of dripping resin into an empty cantaloupe-size egg was tedious at best. Carter held the eggshell steady while Kassandra gathered a blob of the stuff on the end of a twig and then scraped it off into the small hole at the top of the egg. It was early evening by the time the egg was filled with the brown, translucent semisolid resin.

After returning to the cave, they sat down together next to the stone fireplace and discussed the best way to collect the blood specimen. Carter handed Kassandra a flint chip and extended his wrist out to her and said, "A little nick right here ought to do it."
"Aren't you afraid I might slip? said Kassandra, smiling. "You could bleed to death, or get some sort of infection."

"And cheat the virus or the asteroid out of their due?" replied Carter facetiously. "I should be so lucky."
After the blood specimen was collected into the smaller egg, Kassandra tore off a long strip of material from the sleeve of her insertion overalls and wrapped it around the wound on Carter's wrist. She then sealed the opening in the top of the smaller egg with some clay and placed it into the larger egg filled with coniferous tree resin. They watched as the smaller egg sank slowly into the resin and then out of sight. Kassandra sealed the larger egg in the same fashion as she had done the smaller one.

"Well," said Kassandra, "all that remains is to dig the hole."
The cave extended about thirty yards back into the mountain and ended abruptly. It took them most of the night, digging in the volcanic rock by torchlight, with flat stones and sticks to scoop out a single hole the diameter of the egg and to a depth that was equal to the length of Kassandra's arm. Kassandra lowered the egg into the hole and then both of them covered it up.

"It's done," remarked Kassandra with less than an obvious hint of satisfaction.
"What now, Kassandra with a K?" said Carter, as if he was half expecting her to come up with some other hair-brained idea.
"I could use a bath...and in case you haven't noticed, so could you."
"A bath? What's that?" said Carter. "Only joking," he added, when in the torchlight he saw Kassandra's right eyebrow rise slightly higher than the left one. "I know a place a couple of hours from here. A hot-spring and geyser. I'll take you there in the morning."

They slept fitfully until sunup. After a less than appetizing breakfast of roasted marsupial, they started down the slope of the volcano en route to the geyser formation. Jack was waiting for them at the edge of the forest. Carter's condition was worsening.
"You don't look so good," said Kassandra, her tone permeated with concern. "Are you sure you're up to this? We can go another time."

"I think I'm near spent," said Carter, slowly sitting down on a rock.
"I'll help you back to the cave."
"No," he said, waving her off. "Let's just rest here a minute first."
Kassandra sat down next to him.
Every rasping breath he took was a painful labor. His face was slug-white. She put her hand on his forehead. "You're burning up," she said, looking into his watery eyes. She wasn't sure if his tears were because of illness or sadness. A solitary tear started to flow, but didn't get past the dirt and grime under his eyelid.

"I've got a problem with what we did last night," said Carter.
"You mean with the blood specimen?"
"Right. I'm not comfortable with this revenge thing, even though it probably doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. I just don't feel good about myself. It bothers me that I would even think about risking countless others just to try to get back at the few who did this to me and to you."

"I...have been thinking along those lines myself," she conceded. "After we covered up the hole, I had this sudden feeling, a distasteful feeling, that I had become what I detest most."
"It'll be a cancer on both of our souls," said Carter profoundly. "I say we dig it up and toss it off the cliff and let Providence or whoever is in charge of the universe deal with them."
"Okay," said Kassandra, nodding her head in agreement and smiling. "We'll do just that. We'll go back to the cave and do it now."

Kassandra had to help him. She slung the shotgun around her neck, put her right arm round his waist and Carter's left arm around her waist. They were starting up the slope when they heard a commotion behind them. When they turned around, they saw Jack bobbing his head up and down and scratching at the ground with his left foot.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Kassandra. "Why's he acting so skittish?"
"We may have company," replied Carter. "Give me the gun...quick!"
"Oh great!"
They waited several minutes, expecting some giant theropod to charge out of the forest. When none did, Carter yelled, "Jack!"

Jack ignored him and continued bobbing his head up and down and clawing at the earth.
"I think we may have a bigger problem," said Carter.
"Jesus! What could be worse than a...!"
"Earthquake," he responded, cutting her off. "He's done this before, but usually the earth has already started to move by now."
There was a loud double crack of distant thunder on the horizon as curt as the opening notes of Beethoven's Eroica. It was not an earthquake that had the dinosaur so worked up. "What was that!" exclaimed Kassandra looking skyward, the concern in her voice more than a little evident. "It sounded like a sonic boom."

"That my dear," replied Carter rather pointedly, "was the signal for game over."
"The asteroid," she muttered, with certain finality. "I didn't expect it this soon."
The fear that only a condemned person can know was in her eyes.
"Carter!"
"We won't feel a thing," he said. "It'll be like being in the middle of a nuclear explos--"
A millisecond of blinding light bleached out their facial features, followed by complete vaporization. Mother Nature closed the book on the age of dinosaurs.