Cretaceous Christa

It was that rare event, a perfectly normal, quiet day on the Christa. No sign of trouble anywhere.

Commander Seth Goddard was reviewing, with some satisfaction, the various read-outs around the ComPost, where he and Harlan were on duty. Everything looked normal, under control. The Christa was operating at peak efficiency.

The morning was so quiet that the most serious alarm he experienced was when he turned to check on a power relay reading, and almost tripped over Thelma. He was quite certain she had not been on the bridge a second ago. "Anything to report?" he asked, as she stood looking at him expectantly.

"Everything is currently within acceptable parameters, Commander," she replied, cocking her head to one side as she considered their situation, "although there appears to be an ionic storm brewing off the port bow."

"Is it likely to come our way?" asked Harlan, eagerly. He was not nearly as pleased as the Commander with the quiet shift.

"There is only a twenty-three point two seven per cent probability of that," replied Thelma, "although the course of such storms is always difficult to predict. By the way, Harlan, Miss Davenport asked me to remind you that afternoon classes start in three minutes."

"OK, thanks, Thelma," said Harlan, leaving his post at the Christa's helm. "I definitely don't want to miss anything." He exited the command post at unusual speed.

Let's see, mused Goddard, rubbing his chin, Harlan Band is actually eager to get to class. Eager to get to class, when he could be piloting the Christa, possibly with a storm coming up to challenge him? Tell me, Goddard, what's wrong with this picture?....

He was still pondering that question, several minutes later, when the sound of a piercing scream filled the Christa.

As soon as he recovered his presence of mind, Goddard realized that everyone else on the Christa had to be in the classroom. Plunging into the jumptube, he emerged to see five students milling around, while Miss Davenport lay flat out on the floor. Radu and Rosie looked rather shame-faced, but Harlan, Suzee and even Bova were still grinning.

"All right," he said, still slightly breathless, "what's going on?"

"Miss Davenport fainted again," replied Bova, making sure Goddard didn't overlook the obvious.

"I can see that," Goddard snapped. He bent down beside her. "What did you do to make her faint?"

There was no answer, as everyone tried not to look at him. He looked around, and picked Rosie as the weakest link in the conspiracy of silence.

"Miss Ianni," he said, in his sternest voice, "please tell me what went on here."

Rosie hooked her gloved fingers together behind her back, and stared down at the toe of her shoe with an air of intense embarrassment. "N-nothing really, Commander." She paused, but Goddard said nothing. He knew she would break down soon, and she did. "It was just ... Bova was demonstrating his science project for Miss Davenport," she said, looking up with her most ingratiating smile. "And he did a really good job, too. I think he deserves an 'A'."

"What was the project?" Goddard asked, not letting the pressure up.

Rosie faltered, her eyes dropping again. "Ancient ecosystems on Earth," she said, in a near-whisper. "And Harlan was studying holographic projection with Suzee, so they helped."

Goddard closed his eyes in horror for a second. In a choked voice, he pleaded, "Please, don't tell me you unleashed a holographic Tyrannosaurus rex on Miss Davenport."

"Of course not," said Bova.

"I'm glad to hear that," replied Goddard, "but what..."

"A Tyrannosaurus rex is from the wrong time period. I was studying the early Cretaceous. Besides, it would be too tall," explained Bova. "Its head would be through the ceiling. I made a Utahraptor instead - it fits in the room better."

He picked up a small holo-projector and pressed a button. Suddenly, long snapping jaws reached for Goddard's face; sharp claws whistled within millimetres of his chest. The five-hundred pound predator gave a blood-curdling roar, then froze as the animation ended. Even with the slight warning he had, Goddard came close to joining Davenport on the floor.

He stood still for a moment, his eyes closed, trying to get his heart rate back to something near normal. Finally, he felt able to speak again. "When you people dream up these schemes," he said, haltingly, "do you ever get the thought that maybe ... just maybe ... this is a bad idea? Do you?" He opened his eyes and glared at the assembled group. Everyone was nodding slightly. "Then why do you do these things?" he exploded.

"Because we're kids?" suggested Bova.

"It's part of our job description?" added Harlan, sensing that any air of repentance he might assume at this point would not be convincing.

Goddard gave both of them a look that made the Utahraptor look positively friendly, then leaned down over the still unconscious Miss Davenport.

"Miss Davenport?" he murmured. There was no response. "TJ? Are you still with us?"

Slowly Miss Davenport's eyes opened, but they were still dazed and unfocused. As memory returned, she suddenly sat bolt upright, her fingers digging into Goddard's arm.

"Teeth," she gasped, "Large ... sharp ... teeth. And claws...."

"It's all right," Goddard smiled down at her. "It wasn't real." She looked at him dubiously. "It was just Bova's science project. Very realistic, I must say."

"Oh, yes," Davenport tried to pull herself together and act as if several years hadn't been frightened off her lifespan. "Science project. Yes, I recall it now. That was a very ... graphic ... demonstration, Bova."

"Oh, that's not half of it," Bova answered. "I researched a whole ecosystem from ancient Earth, and fed it into the Christa's computer. You can use the program to model environmental change, asteroid impact, interactions between species, disease and predation patterns - anything you want to test as a reason for the extinction of some species and the rise of others."

"And there was no better way of introducing your project than by terrifying Miss Davenport?" asked Goddard. He had to admit, he would have found it funnier if he hadn't lived through that half-second of heart-stopping fear himself. "You're lucky you didn't scare her to death."

Bova nodded morosely, suffering from a severe case of second thoughts. It had sounded like fun at the time, but he now regretted letting Harlan to talk him into the scheme. He really wanted to do well on the project; he'd put in an amount of work that would have astonished Miss Davenport almost as much as the appearance of the Utahraptor. Somehow, he had the feeling that she would not now be as appreciative of his efforts as she might have been otherwise. Goddard's mention of the word "luck" also made him nervous. I was lucky, he thought. And since, for Uranusians, there's not much luck to go around, that means it may not be there when I need it.

Goddard was helping Miss Davenport to her feet. "Rosie, I think you should take her down to the MedLab and make sure she's all right. No knowing what...." His words were lost as the alarm sirens for the Christa started to wail.

Goddard opened a channel on the nearest intercom. "Thelma!" he cried. "What's going on?"

"The ionic storm I mentioned early has changed course," she answered. "It's coming straight across our bows."

Goddard made a frustrated noise. Of course, he thought. It would be too much to expect a single day to go smoothly for us, for a change. "To the ComPost, everyone," he ordered above the noise of the sirens. "On the double."

They all headed for the nearest jumptubes, except for Miss Davenport. An ionic storm seemed a minor annoyance compared to what she had just faced. With an air of brittle calmness that would have astonished the others, she turned, slowly and carefully, and walked down to the galley. Once there, she bent all her concentration on making herself a nice hot cup of tea; English breakfast tea, mild and soothing. When it was finally brewed, she sipped it slowly, holding the cup in both hands, apparently oblivious of both the sirens and the occasional lurching of the Christa as the vessel rode the storm. By the time she had finished, the Christa was out of the storm, the tremors running through her body had ceased, and everything was back to normal.

A few hours later, another crewmember made an unscheduled appearance in the galley. Bova was supposed to be doing an inventory of spare parts for the hyperdrive, but it was boring work, and being bored always made him hungry. Actually, most things made him hungry, but boredom was pretty close to the top of the list.

Humming one of his favourite songs, an old Uranusian funeral dirge, he dialled up a small snack on the food wheel. After rehydrating it, he examined it critically. Not bad, he thought; a quintuple-decker roast beef/chicken salad/ham/tuna/BLT surprise. Enough to keep him going until supper.

He was just about to take his first bite when he heard something breathing heavily behind him.

"All right, Commander, I'll get back to work in a minute," he said over his shoulder. Can't a guy even take a break to replenish his strength? he thought. It'll be my epitaph - he was worked to death, then starved.

A low, gurgling hiss came from behind him. Bova raised an eyebrow. He'd heard the Commander make many sounds of frustration over the years, but low, gurgling hisses were new. Puzzled, he turned to look.

He was face-to-face with the Utahraptor.

It would have given Bova quite a turn if he hadn't spent the last couple of years on board the Christa with Harlan Band. However, having survived everything Harlan had thrown at him in the way of practical jokes, Bova's nervous system had been toughened to the point where the sudden appearance of the predator scarcely made him turn a hair.

"All right, Harlan," he called out. "Very funny. That may fool Miss Davenport, but not me."

The room was silent, except for the heavy breathing of the Utahraptor. It swayed gently, as though poised to move in any direction, and the sickle-shaped killing claws on each foot flexed ominously. Its golden-brown eyes, with pupils slit like a cat's, never left Bova.

"Harlan?" Bova called again, turning slightly. He knew Harlan had to be watching this from somewhere, but he couldn't quite figure out where.

The movement probably saved his life. As he turned, the Utahraptor slashed out at him with one of its long, three-clawed "hands". Stunned, Bova found himself looking down at three gashes ripped along the front of his uniform. That shouldn't happen, he told himself. It's only an image ... not real....

He stared at the Utahraptor, then again at his uniform. He saw blood start to well up from a set of shallow scratches on his chest, which were starting to smart quite noticeably. Holograms can't hurt you, he thought, his mind still working with glacial slowness from the shock. That means ... that....

He raised his eyes to the Utahraptor once again. It shifted its weight slightly, as though it were going to spring. There was only one thing to do.

"Here, take it!" he yelled, throwing the sandwich at the creature with all his might. With the predator momentarily distracted, Bova dashed past it through the galley door, and flung himself into a jumptube for the ComPost.

The Utahraptor watched him go, then lowered its head and sniffed curiously at the sandwich. Finding it edible, it swallowed it in a single gulp. Like Bova, it found the sandwich suitable as a snack only, not a full meal, but the creature wasn't worried - it sensed there would be good hunting here.

If Bova had expected that arriving at the ComPost, torn and bleeding, having escaped death by millimetres (and one quintuple-decker sandwich), would have made him the centre of attention, he would have been disappointed. However, he was used to disappointment. Before he'd even fully emerged from the jumptube, Commander Goddard was snapping orders at him.

"Mr. Bova! Glad you decided to make an appearance. Go and help Rosie - the Christa's suffering some sort of system failure, and it looks like we're about to lose Thelma as well."

Afterwards, Bova would realize it might have been a good idea to speak up then, and tell the others that he had nearly been eaten by a Mesozoic predator that, as far as he could tell, was still stalking the halls of the Christa. But the urgency in Goddard's voice, and the look of alarm on his crewmates' faces, somehow drove other thoughts from his head, or perhaps it was simply that a mechanical failure was easier to cope with than the question of why his holographic creation had just tried to have him for lunch. He ran across the room to where Rosie was attempting, with little success, to revive Thelma.

The android was slumped against the communications console. Her eyelids were closed, but twitching slightly, as though she was convulsively scanning through her memory banks. As he leaned over her, Bova thought he could hear her mumbling something; "Taphonomic analysis ... Simpson Index ... punctuated equilibrium...."

"What is she talking about?" Rosie looked up at him, bewildered.

Bova shook his head; the terms sounded eerily familiar, but he couldn't understand the connection. "I'm not sure," he answered, "but I think...."

His words were drowned out by the shriek of yet another alarm. "For goodness sakes, what now?" he heard Miss Davenport wail, her hard-won equanimity shattered completely.

"We've just lost the port engines," Suzee responded, checking her console. "They quit, just like the starboard engines did a few minutes ago."

"Without those engines, we're dead in space," Goddard growled. "Sitting ducks if the Spung come across us. I don't care what it takes, but get us some power. Now!"

"Yes," added Harlan, looking disgustedly at the unresponsive helm, "this is embarrassing."

"All right, I'll try." Suzee was already kneeling down to remove a small access panel located behind the engineer's station. "Maybe I can jumpstart the engines from here." She squeezed one arm into the cramped space, trying to find the right switches by touch.

"Any luck?" Goddard tried to control his impatience, but it was difficult, with the Christa apparently self-destructing around them for no good reason.

"Wait ... maybe...." Suzee frowned as she continued searching blindly through the Christa's wiring. "I think I can feel a loose wire or something. Maybe that's what.... Ouch!" She jerked her arm out of the access space, and stared at her index finger with a look of shock mixed with indignation. "Something bit me!"

"There's nothing in there that can bite you," Rosie reasoned, as she left Thelma's side to tend Suzee's injury. "You must have gotten a shock, or cut yourself on a sharp edge."

"Oh?" Suzee shot back, "Well, if you know so much about it, why don't you fix the Christa?" As the words left her mouth, she realized their illogic, but her frustration with the situation had reached the boiling point.

"Let me try," Radu suggested softly. He figured it was safe to leave his navigation station; they weren't going anywhere under their own power. "If there's a short circuit or a sharp edge in there, my gloves will help."

Suzee moved over, and he reached into the access space. Unlike Suzee, he would have had a hard time identifying the parts his fingers contacted by sight, let alone by touch. Even so, after a few moments he thought he located what they were looking for; a thin wire or cord, apparently loose at one end. It seemed elusive as he tried to get a grip on it, but he finally caught hold of it between two fingers. However, as he tried to trace its source, a sharp pain shot through his hand. Taken by surprise, he jerked his hand back. He got an even greater surprise when he realized  what he brought with it.

A small animal was suspended from between his fingers; the loose wire he had been pulling on had actually been its tail. He gazed at it with a perplexed face as it swung upside down from his hand, squirming and trying to twist around for another bite. Either fearless or desperate, it seemed to be challenging him to put it down and fight like a mouse.

"Ooh," Rosie cooed, momentarily forgetting their problems at the sight of the tiny creature. "It's so cute! Here, give it to me, Radu, you're scaring it." Radu handed the animal over to her with very little reluctance. She held it in her palm, stroking its soft brown fur gently. "See?" she whispered. "It's all right, little one. You don't have to be afraid." Whether it was the warmth of her hand, or the gentleness of her touch, or simply the air of benevolence that Rosie seemed to radiate, the creature seemed to be soothed. It stopped struggling, curled up, and to all appearances went to sleep.

"Is that our problem?" Goddard looked at Suzee. "We have a mouse infestation?" He could visualize hordes of the tiny animals, all chewing away at the Christa's wiring. No wonder, he thought, that we're dead in space.

"I'm not sure," Suzee admitted. "Perhaps ... but I've not seen any trace of them before. And that doesn't explain why Thelma's out of commission."

"Commander?" Bova finally spoke up, as he peered over Rosie's shoulder as she cuddled the little furball. It looked familiar to him; too familiar. He recognized the beady eyes, the long whiskers, the teeth that, unlike the long gnawing teeth of a rodent, were short, multicusped choppers, designed for crunching up bugs and other small prey. His earlier sinking feelings had finally bottomed out - he knew what was going on, even if he didn't know why. And they were in big trouble, much worse than a simple invasion of vermin. "This isn't a mouse."

"No?" Goddard didn't even turn to look at him, as he worked with Suzee to make sense of the readings on her engineering console. "What is it?"

Bova sighed. He almost didn't want to say the word; saying it meant admitting the problem, admitting that it was his fault, although he wasn't quite sure how. "It's ... it's an Aegialodon."

"It's a what?" Radu winced at the word. He shot a sidelong look at Miss Davenport, as if he feared she was thinking of including it on her next spelling quiz.

"An Aegialodon," Bova repeated, dismally. "They're a species of mammal from ancient Earth."

"An Earth animal?" Goddard started to pay a little more attention. "How would an Earth animal end up out here? We're still light years away from Earth."

"More to the point," Bova said, his voice still funereal, "they've been extinct on Earth for millions of years."

"Then there must be some mistake," Goddard replied, in reasoned tones. "What would an extinct animal be doing running around the Christa?"

"Yeah," laughed Harlan, as he watched Rosie still cooing over the little creature curled up in her hands, "it doesn't look too extinct to me."

"Have it your own way," Bova muttered darkly. "But you'll be extinct if you run into the Utahraptor that's lurking in the galley."

"I think that joke's been done to death today," Goddard said, his voice cold. What is wrong with this crew? he fumed to himself. Even in a crisis, they keep pulling these idiotic pranks....

"Well, I was almost done to death," Bova countered. He pointed to the rips in his shirt, edged with dried blood. "This one's real, not a hologram."

"Bova, you're hurt!" Rosie put down the Aegialodon, and ran to his side. "Why didn't you say something?"

"I wanted to see if anyone would notice," he sighed. "Nobody did."

Goddard felt a muscle twitch in his face as he watched Rosie examine Bova's scratches. He wouldn't put it past Harlan to do some minor bloodletting on himself to create the right atmosphere for a joke, but that wasn't Bova's style. For one thing, he'd be convinced he'd get tetanus or something. And a major crisis, like the one they were experiencing with Thelma and the Christa, would take his mind off something as upbeat as a practical joke.

Which, he realized, left them with the possibility, however remote, that there really was a prehistoric monster prowling around the ship.

"Suzee?" he asked, helplessly. "Does any of this make sense?"

"I'm not sure...." She paused, trying to figure out the possibilities. "Maybe ... if somehow Bova's program got transferred to the Christa's internal programming. We know that she has morphing capabilities ... but I've never heard of anything like this."

"Bova?" Miss Davenport asked, sharply. She was trembling, but she still managed to sound teacher-like. "You did remember to turn off your program before the ionic storm hit, didn't you?"

"Well," he temporized, "everything was happening so fast ... and the alarms were going ... and Commander Goddard was yelling orders, so...."

"So," Davenport summarized, glaring at him, "you forgot to take it off-line, didn't you? And when the Christa went through the storm, some of her circuits overloaded, and...."

"... And her self-repair mechanism must have cross-linked with any program that was running at the time, incorporating it into her main programming," Suzee concluded. She smiled, gratified at solving the mystery. "That's our problem, then. Bova's program is still running, and the Christa's giving it all her resources - she's even drained power from Thelma. All we have to do is get to the main processing terminal on Level 2, shut down the program, and we can get everything working again." The smile faded from her face. "Umm, Bova, just how realistic did you make your project? I mean, we just have to worry about one dinosaur, don't we?"

"Of course not," Bova snorted. What do they think, I'm just a kid who doesn't know a biosystem from a birdbath? he thought, indignantly. "It's a complete ecological system - predators, prey, vegetation. There's everything in it."

"Oh, my," Davenport said to herself. Feeling rather shaky, she sat down beside the navigational console. What a time he chooses to start doing his homework, she thought.

"All right," Goddard said, "we can cope with this. We just have to get down to Level 2." He hoped he sounded more sure of himself than he felt. "Are the jumptubes still online, Suzee?"

"No," she answered, grimacing in frustration, "we lost them shortly after Bova got here. We'll have to go on foot."

"No problem," Harlan said, trying to sound upbeat. "It still shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes to get there." He looked around, and squared his shoulders. "You guys stay here where it's safe. I'll go."

"Oh, sure," Bova said. "And I suppose you know how to disengage my program from the Christa's main computer?"

"Umm," Harlan thought for a moment, then brightened. "Well, maybe Suzee can come with me."

"Actually, if anyone goes, it should be me," Miss Davenport spoke up unexpectedly. "I know the Christa's computer systems better than Suzee."

Goddard broke in before Suzee could start a debate on whether her engineering skills would be more helpful than Miss Davenport's computer prowess. "Nobody's going anywhere alone. If we could possibly be facing..." he searched for the right military term to describe their situation. After a pause, he continued, "If we could be facing hostile wildlife, we may need everybody's abilities. We're all going."

"Great," Bova said under his breath, "we'll look like a walking buffet.  I can hear the Utahraptor now - 'Some Uranusian here, some Yensidian there, and oh, I'll think I'll try some Andromedan as well'."

Pointedly ignoring Bova, Goddard opened the ComPost door and strode out into the hall. The others followed; Harlan eagerly, the rest showing a certain amount of reluctance. When they finally emerged, their jaws dropped and there was a stunned silence for a moment.

Finally Radu spoke. "Maybe it's just me," he began hesitantly, "but I don't remember there being so many trees in the hallway before."

"Well, they're very pretty," Rosie said, trying to find something positive to say as she stared at the wall of vegetation before her.

The others continued to gape until Miss Davenport pulled herself together enough to offer an explanation. "The program must be even more fully integrated by the Christa than I had anticipated. She's not just creating individual creatures, she's morphing herself into Bova's ecosystem."

They looked around, and it was true. Where the Christa's richly patterned walls once stood, stands of conifers and palm-like cycads grew. The floor of the hallway had become a dirt path, lined with ferns and horsetail rushes. Looking up, they say that the ceiling was slowly receding, and had taken on a dull glow, simulating an overcast sky on a muggy summer's day. Some consoles and mechanical devices remained, but they were somehow camouflaged as rocks and bushes, so that they were hard to see.

"Well, we just have to get to Level 2 and reverse it," Goddard said. "... It is reversible, isn't it, Bova?"

Bova gave him the thin smile Uranusians show when things go as badly as they expect. "Actually, Commander, I have no idea at all."

They started off, but quickly discovered that it was going to be difficult, more difficult than perhaps even Bova had anticipated. Under the influence of Bova's program, the halls had degenerated into twisting paths that no longer followed any predictable course, seemingly intent on leading them away from their destination. Even Radu's sense of direction became next to useless; he could tell where the main processing terminal was, but he couldn't anticipate whether the trail they were on would lead them towards it. Sometimes, their only chance was to leave the path entirely, and struggle through the trees and undergrowth, trying to avoid streams and deadfalls that blocked their way. They seemed to be forced to backtrack two feet for every three feet of progress made.

Even the noise of the ship had diminished, replaced by the sound of wind passing through the branches overhead, and the squeaking and rustling of small creatures in the undergrowth. At least, they didn't meet up with the Utahraptor, or anything else particularly dangerous. However, Miss Davenport was startled nearly into hysterics when a troupe of turkey-sized creatures rushed by them, squawking raucously, and once, as they turned a corner, they came across a tall, ostrich-like animal that was grubbing industriously through the soil that lay on what was once the Christa's deck. Rosie had to stifle a gasp of horror as it turned to look at them, the quivering hindquarters of another Aegialodon hanging out of its beak-like mouth. Bova said that the smaller creatures were Troodons, and the larger one was a Struthiomimus, but nobody was particularly interested at that point.

After about an hour of forcing their way through conifer thickets, horsetail ferns and spiny things that Bova, still in his tour-guide mode, informed them were called cycadeoids, they reached a small clearing and Goddard called for a rest stop. The others sat down gratefully, trying to find some place that wasn't soggy or prickly. They were damp with perspiration, and half-exhausted from the struggle.

"This is awful," Suzee complained, giving Bova a bitter look. "I'm hot, my hair is a mess, I'm thirsty, I have a terrible headache, I've scratched my face going through these bushes, and I'm itching all over. You probably programmed poison ivy into your simulation, didn't you, Bova?"

Nobody paid her much attention, since they were pretty much in the same condition, although Bova was heard to mutter dispiritedly that poison ivy was not known to exist in the Cretaceous period. With a disgusted sigh, Suzee rolled up her pantleg to get a look at a particularly itchy patch near her ankle. The clearing rang with her cry of horror.

"Ewww, gross!" she shrieked. "There are ... things on my leg!"

The others sat up to take a closer look. Three or four small dark round objects, like tiny grapes, were attached to the skin above her ankle.

"What are they?" Suzee cried. Without waiting for an answer, she continued, "Whatever they are, get them off me. Now!" She swiped at them with her hand.

"They're ticks," Bova explained. "Parasites that live on blood they suck from larger animals. Don't try to brush them off; they'll leave their mouthparts in the wound, and you'll end up with a festering sore."

Suzee quickly pulled her hand back. "Then how do I get rid of them?" she asked, desperately.

"Well, you could wait until they've finished feeding, and drop off on their own," Bova suggested. Suzee didn't look particularly impressed with this idea. "Or," he continued, "you could try burning them off. They don't like heat."

"Rosie," Suzee appealed. "Please...."

"Sure," Rosie said cheerfully, slipping off a glove as she concentrated on building up her body temperature. As she placed a finger on the back of each tick, it quickly disengaged its feeding apparatus and dropped off, leaving a tiny spot of blood on Suzee's ankle.

Suzee expressed her distaste by stamping on them as they tried to crawl off into the undergrowth. "Why?" she snapped, finally turning to Bova. "Why did you have to put ticks in your program?"

"Because they're important to the ecosystem," he answered defensively. "Little animals are just as significant as big ones. Ticks serve as a population check on the larger animals, by spreading disease."

"Disease?" Suzee asked, in a weak voice. "Do you mean that those horrible little things carry plague, or something?"

"Some of them do," he answered. "I programmed a one in four probability that they would carry an infectious agent of some sort."

"Oh, wonderful," Suzee moaned, slumping down onto a fallen log. "I ... I don't feel well."

"Now, Suzee, don't let your imagination get the better of you," Miss Davenport said sternly. "Bova's disease organisms can't affect Yensidians." Her voice lost some of its authority. "Can they, Bova?"

"I don't know," he answered, looking down at the remains of the ticks. He had to force himself to raise his eyes slowly to hers. "I really don't know," he said, in a near-whisper.

"I'll examine Suzee," Rosie suggested. She felt sorry for Bova, with everyone mad at him, but she didn't have time to try and comfort him. "Everyone else should make sure they haven't been attacked as well."

The crew spent several minutes checking the areas where clothing met skin; ankles, wrists, neck. The good new was that no one else had picked up any of the tiny parasites. The bad news showed up in Rosie's examination of Suzee.

"Her temperature is up two degrees above normal Yensidian levels already," Rosie said, her face unnaturally grave. "And she's got a blotchy rash forming on her skin. I don't have the equipment to be sure, but I think she's developing some sort of hemorrhagic fever."

"Is that serious?" Radu asked.

"Yes," said Rosie. She tried to find something optimistic to say, but couldn't. "I ... I think I should try to get her to the MedLab right away."

"That is, if the MedLab still exists," Harlan felt compelled to add. "Who knows what it could have turned into by now?"

Goddard took a deep breath. Well, he told himself, you wanted a problem with the Christa - are you happy now? He turned to the others. "All right, everyone, new plan. Radu, do you think you can find the Medlab from here?" Radu nodded. "Good. You and Rosie take Suzee, get her there as quickly as possible. Before you go, give me the best directions you have to the central processing terminal - I'll take Bova, Harlan and Miss Davenport." Harlan was about to protest that he wanted to go with Suzee, but a look at Goddard's face silenced him.

As Radu started down a side path, Suzee leaning against him and Rosie trotting beside them, he heard Goddard whisper, "For heaven's sake, be careful." He thought about calling back that he'd heard it, but he realized the Commander would know he had.

Bova felt even more nervous than he'd anticipated as he marched onwards with the Commander's group. Only after they'd split up did he realize how much he'd been depending on Radu to act as an early warning system for the approach of anything dangerous. And Rosie - he wished that he could keep an eye on her somehow. If she were eaten by something, it would be his fault. He tried telling himself that Suzee, in her bad mood, would be more than a match for any dinosaur foolish enough to mess with her, but he knew in his heart it wasn't true; she was really ill and that was his fault, too. He trudged along the path behind the rest of the crew, enveloped in a cloud of gloom.

The Commander, Miss Davenport and Harlan had stopped ahead of him, and were trying to apply Radu's directions to the confusing trail ahead. Bova sensed that they didn't particularly want his participation - no wonder, he thought, everything I've done today has caused disaster. He sat down a few feet away from them, absently picking bark from a mossy log, and wishing that someone would say it wasn't all his fault. No one did.

"I think we're almost there," Goddard announced finally. "See that boulder over there? I think that used to be the control console for the Level 2 maintenance system. The main processing terminal should be fairly close."

"Great!" Harlan said. "This was a lot easier than I expected. We didn't meet Bova's Utahraptor or anything." He sounded almost disappointed.

Don't, thought Bova in horror, don't say that. It's a well-known Uranusian principle. If you talk about something good, it goes away; if you talk about something bad that hasn't happened yet, it does. He looked around uneasily, expecting to see trouble staring back at him. It didn't surprise him unduly, therefore, when he noticed a movement in the trees ahead of them, and felt an eerie sense that something was watching him, but it did freeze him to the spot.

"Commander?" he whispered softly.

"What?" Goddard asked irritably, over his shoulder.

"I think we should..." Bova swallowed and tried to get his voice back. "RUN!" he finally managed to yell. Regaining the power of movement at last, he threw himself into the others, trying to force them into a run. His sense of panic was contagious, and spurred them forward - that, and the sound of something huge crashing towards them through the trees.

They didn't waste time trying to see what was following them - it sounded like a herd of particularly bad-tempered elephants, and all too clearly it was gaining on them. "Those trees," cried Harlan, the fastest, pointing out a stand of tall conifers ahead of them. "They're our only hope - climb them!"

"I can't..." Miss Davenport started to protest, but by then she'd reached the base of a tall, pine-like tree, and, with a boost from Harlan, made an astonishingly quick ascent into its branches. Bova clambered up behind her, his heart beating so hard he was sure it would knock him loose from his perch. Harlan and Goddard struggled up into the branches of a slightly smaller tree beside them. Finally, they could look down and see what was pursuing them.

"Bova," Goddard hissed in great irritation, "I thought you said you didn't make a Tyrannosaurus rex!" He gazed down in horror at the creature below him. The fifteen-foot tall predator was pushing its massive snout alarmingly close to Goddard's feet. The head was armed with dagger-like teeth and huge jaws that looked capable of swallowing any one of the crew whole. A bony ridge ran from the base of its neck along the massive body to the tail, a length of over twenty feet. Snuffling, it nosed around the base of the trees like a frustrated beagle, clearly puzzled by the disappearance of its anticipated dinner. It never thought to look up - normally, no prey large enough for it to bother with could be found in trees, so its brain wasn't programmed to search there.

"I didn't!" Bova whispered back hoarsely, stung into defending the scientific accuracy of his creation. "It's an Acrocanthosaurus. It's a much more primitive animal than a Tyrannosaurus."

"Does that mean it's less dangerous?" Harlan asked, trying to find some ray of hope in their situation.

"No," replied Bova glumly. "Just older."

"Commander?" Miss Davenport was, for once in her life, completely uninterested in the educational aspects of their situation. "What do we do now?"

Goddard stared back at her, and shrugged slightly. He felt utterly helpless - absolutely no idea came to mind. They could either leave their treetop sanctuary, and be eaten, or stay where they were, as the Christa continued to convert herself into a spacegoing dinosaur habitat. In his frustration he kept thinking, this was never covered in officer's training!

"Maybe," Harlan said, after a few minutes of silence, "if the people in one tree distracted it, the others could slip down unnoticed, and make it to the terminal."

"Yes," Goddard said, considering the idea. "Bova, do you think that if you hit that thing with an electric charge, it would keep its attention long enough for Harlan and me to climb down and...."

"There's no sense in you and Harlan going, Commander," Miss Davenport cut in. "Neither of you have the necessary skills to disable the program." She closed her eyes for a second. "I will go."

"No, Miss Davenport, it's not your responsibility." Bova could hardly believe he had said the words, but it was definitely his voice. "It's my program - I created this mess in the first place. I'll go."

"I think we're nearly there," Radu told Rosie. Nothing looked the same to him, but his internal sense of direction was telling him they were less than one hundred yards from the MedLab, or at least where the MedLab used to be.

"Great!" she replied, the corners of her mouth turning up, but he realized that it wasn't a true smile - it was less real than the simulated thicket of trees through which they were making their way. They both looked back uneasily at Suzee, who was leaning against a gnarled trunk, gasping for breath. Her face was covered with tiny red blotches, and she was shivering with fever. The sound of her teeth chattering seemed to Radu to drown out all other noises in the area.

"Do you think you can make it?" he asked her, trying, like Rosie, to keep the worry out of his face and voice.

"Make it?" she answered vaguely. "Of course I can." Any chance that he might have been reassured was lost as she continued, waving a hand aimlessly, "I've been able to build tachyonic flux generators since I was five. Why shouldn't I be able to now?" She tried to take a step forward, stumbled, and fell to her knees.

"All right," Radu said gently. His heart was wrung with pity, but he knew it was the last thing Suzee wanted. "You don't have to walk any further if you don't want to." He bent down quickly and scooped her up in his arms. It was perhaps the worst indicator yet, that she didn't even attempt a flirtatious comment at his actions. He turned to Rosie. "Come on, let's hurry." She nodded wordlessly, as she fell in behind him.

They had only gone a few paces, though, when they heard Suzee suddenly gasp, "Stop! Stop!"

"What?" Radu looked down at her in bewilderment.

"You idiot," she replied in weak irritation, "you were about to walk right in front of it. You'll get us killed for sure."

Radu and Rosie looked at each other. Clearly, her mind was going, and she was starting to hallucinate. "We've got to get there right away," Rosie whispered. Radu nodded, and stepped forward again.

"No!" Suzee moaned. "What's wrong with you? Don't you see it?"

"What?" Radu asked, helplessly. "There's nothing ahead of us but trees." As he looked ahead,  though, he felt a sudden surge of hope. He thought he could see the outlines of the MedLab door, camouflaged as a cavemouth in a moss-covered cliff, through the wrinkled gray tree trunks ahead.

"No," she tried to shake her head in protest, but it flopped back weakly. "Look up - look way up. Can't you see it? It's not a tree, it's...."

Rosie and Radu exchanged mystified glances, then raised their eyes. They realized that the Christa's ceiling had definitely receded - the trees were now towering at least fifty feet over their heads. As they gazed upwards, they noticed something strange. One of the trunks seemed to be bending and moving, twisting through the branches of the other trees, which were relatively immobile. This particular trunk didn't seem to have leaves, they noticed, as their eyes slid back down, or branches. Even over the noise of Suzee's chattering teeth, Radu could detect a strange grinding noise emanating from it.

Suddenly, as though an optical illusion had resolved itself into a recognizable pattern, they could see it. Radu's jaw dropped, and Rosie's normally ruddy complexion paled.

They were looking at a giant sauropod dinosaur, a relative of the brontosaur, as it grazed among the treetops. And it had placed its twenty-ton body directly between them and the MedLab.

"Radu," Rosie whispered, as they quickly took cover behind a stand of treeferns, "what do we do now?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Just how dangerous is that thing, anyway? Would it attack us?"

"I'm not sure," Rosie said, trying to remember what she'd learned from Bova's project while helping to set up the practical joke. She peered around the ferns to get a closer look for a moment. She could see its head, large for any normal animal but absurdly tiny for the size of the creature, poking in and out of the treetops, munching constantly on twigs and juicy conifer needles. Periodically, a descending bulge in its long neck would indicate the passage of food downward towards its stomach. They didn't realize it, but the grinding noise came from huge stones inside its yard-long gizzard, that crushed the food into a digestible mush. "It's a plant-eater," she concluded. "It won't try to hunt us, anyway."

"Good," replied Radu, feeling much reassured. In his Andromedan upbringing, he had never had much experience with wild animals; species such as the gerkels, that his people had brought with them, were, if not fully domesticated, relatively tame. Still, it made sense to him that herbivores, even giants like this one, would be much less dangerous than meat-eaters. Based on this reasonable assumption, he did what seemed to him the only thing he could do to get Suzee to a place where she could be helped.

He stepped out from behind the treeferns, and stood directly in front of the animal. "Hey!" he called, trying to get its attention. He waved his arms. "Hey, down here!"

The sauropod finally noticed the tiny creature on the ground. It stopped eating, and its huge eyes swivelled towards him, as though saying, "Are you talking to me?"

Radu gave Rosie a reassuring look over his shoulder, and waved his arms again. "Shoo!" he cried, rather pleased at remembering this human term for sending away unwanted animate creatures. "Get lost! Move!"

The sauropod took a half step back. The slight figure in front of it looked insignificant, but it wasn't sure. Its tiny brain held only two responses to potential threats. It could retreat, but it was in prime feeding territory - if it lost much feeding time during the day, it might not  be able to ingest enough calories to keep its huge body going. Its other response was much more active, and effective - so effective, indeed, that its species had survived the end of the Jurassic era, when most of its relatives had gone extinct. It was, in fact, one of the most lethal defenses ever devised by plant-eaters, sufficient to enable it to face the monstrous Acrocanthosaurs and deadly Utahraptors.

Slowly, it turned, so that its hindquarters were facing Radu. "See, Rosie?" he said over his shoulder. "It's going."

"Be careful, Radu," Rosie warned, nervously. She knew about more about wild animals than Radu, and something about the creature's response struck her as wrong - it didn't seem to be moving off as quickly as it should.

"It's more afraid of me than I am of it," he answered. He felt good - he'd faced down one of the giant creatures, and it had given way. He just wished Harlan had been there to see it. Turning back to the creature, he called out, "Get along, you  ... you big baby." As an added inducement, he picked up a tiny pebble and tossed it at the animal's flanks.

It was a bad move. The touch of the pebble, light as it was, triggered a signal to the animal's miniscule brain announcing that it was under attack. Switching into active defensive mode, it unleashed its most deadly weapon. Its whip-tail.

Unimaginably strong muscles in the sauropod's haunches flailed the long tail to the right, then the left. The last ten feet or so of the tail were not muscled, but formed a stiff, bony rod, iron-hard, that sliced through the air at tremendous speed. Radu didn't even see it coming - he just heard a whistling sound, then a deafening crack. It was like being hit by a baseball bat wielded by a twenty-foot arm - the impact lifted him off his feet and sent him sailing through the air. He crashed into a stand of trees, and slid to the ground, limp and motionless.

Crouching low, Rosie hurried to his side. "Radu!" she whispered frantically. He didn't respond, or even move. Rosie's heart caught in her throat. "Radu!" she whispered louder, shaking him.

"What?" he asked, finally opening his eyes. "What ... happened?"

"It hit you," Rosie explained, "with its tail. And I thought you were ... well, you were hurt. Are you all right?"

"Sure," he said, trying to give her a reassuring smile. "I'm OK. Just let me get my feet under me and we can...." The smile faded and turned into a spasm of pain as he tried to push himself up. "Rosie, I think something's wrong."

"Can you get up at all?" she asked.

He gritted his teeth, and tried again, but it was useless. It hurt just to breathe; getting to his feet was impossible. "I'm sorry, Rosie," he said apologetically, "I think you'll have to go on without me. Don't worry about me - I'll be all right."

Rosie raised up as much as she dared, and peered towards the MedLab. The sauropod had once again taken a position that would block any direct access to it, and was stripping greenery from the trees with a determined air, as if to say "Here I am, and here I plan to stay". She shook her head. There was no way she could get around it; they would have to wait until it moved away. By that time, what would be left of the MedLab? And now she had two patients to worry about, not just one.

They both flinched as a twig snapped loudly behind them, but it was Suzee, who had used the last of her strength to pull herself over to them.  She collapsed beside Radu, shivering and muttering under her breath. Rosie couldn't tell whether she was delirious or trying to say something to Catalina.

Rosie had rarely felt so helpless. Clearly, even if the sauropod moved soon, neither Radu nor Suzee would be able to make it to the MedLab on their own, and Rosie doubted that she would have the strength to carry either one of them. And if she left them alone, in their condition, they would be easy prey for any carnivore prowling the area. There was nothing that she could do, nothing except to hope that things were going better for the others.

Bova, she thought desperately, please, get this program turned off, and quickly.

"All right, crew," Goddard said. "Everyone ready now?"

No, Bova wanted to say, maybe tomorrow - next month - next year, but I'm not ready now. However, he didn't see any benefit from making his doubts known, so he kept his mouth shut. He figured that way they wouldn't hear his teeth chattering.

"Good," continued Goddard. "All right, Harlan, here goes!"

He and Harlan had collected several armfuls of conifer branches and cones. At Goddard's signal, they began bombarding the Acrocanthosaurus, as it sniffed hungrily around the base of their treetop refuge. At the first impact, it roared angrily, looking around in bewilderment to see where its unseen attacker was. After several moments, and some shouts from Goddard and Harlan, it finally tilted its head back far enough to see them perched tantalizingly close above its head.

Growling deep in its throat, it stretched up as far as it could. Its red-rimmed eyes glared at its two tormentors, who responded with another shower of sticks and cones. It gnashed its long, serrated teeth in irritation, and leaned its full weight on the tree, which shuddered slightly.

"OK," shouted Goddard, "I think we've got its attention. Go!"

I can't believe I'm doing this, Bova thought, but he could feel himself loosening his grip on the branch and climbing down. Hearing something beside him he looked up in alarm. "Miss Davenport?" he whispered. "What are you doing?"

Davenport's face was dead-white, but she looked resolute. "You cannot do this on your own. You need assistance, and I am the only one in a position to give it."

"OK," he whispered back. Part of him was grateful to have help - another part of him warned that if Miss Davenport chose any time soon to pass out, she was on her own.

"Get going, you two!" Goddard motioned at them. The gesture provoked another roar from the Acrocanthosaurus, which pushed harder against the tree. They could hear the sound of snapping roots, and the tree tilted slightly.

"Come, Bova," Davenport whispered, "I don't think we've got much time."

"There it is!" Miss Davenport said, as she peeked cautiously through the foliage. She could see the central processing terminal clearly. Whether by chance or for some internal reasoning of the Christa, the terminal had not been morphed at all; it stood, looking incongruously artificial, under a spreading cycad, in the midst of a patch of ground pine.

"Yes," replied Bova, "not that we've got any chance of getting to it." He looked hopelessly out at the terminal. Not just one, but several Utahraptors, a whole pack in fact, sat in front of it, enjoying the simulated sunlight filtering through the trees. The terminal might as well be back on Earth for all the good it would do them.

"This," said Davenport after a second's reflection, "is going to be a problem."

"Problem?" he asked, as loudly as he dared. "We're sunk! We've got no chance at all! I don't have enough energy left to keep all of them off - not for more than a minute or two. They'll rip us apart before we get anywhere near the terminal!" He was horrified to realize that he was at the verge of breaking into tears, and choked them back with some difficulty. I can't cry over it - over the fact that I've probably gotten myself and everyone else killed, he thought. I'm a Stardog, not a baby. "I'm sorry, Miss Davenport," he added, huskily.

"For what?" she replied, with an air of someone whose mind was on something else.

"For - for making this stupid program in the first place," he began, "and forgetting to turn it off when the ionic storm hit us. And for playing the joke with the hologram on you. And all the other jokes I played. And ... " He was planning to list all his misdeeds back to his original arrival at the Starcademy, but his voice grew quavery again, and he had to stop to regain his composure.

"That's not important now," Miss Davenport replied, to his surprise. She stared hard at the Utahraptor pack basking beside the terminal, then turned her full attention to him. "Bova, you created these creatures." He nodded. "You know their strengths, and their weaknesses. Summarize them for me."

"Their strengths?" he pondered. "Well, for starters, they're large, exceptionally strong, active hunters, capable of working cooperatively in a pack. They're highly intelligent (for dinosaurs, that is), armed with strong jaws, razor teeth, and sharp claws...."

"Perhaps," Miss Davenport suggested, "it would be more productive to concentrate on their weaknesses."

Bova thought about it for a while. The Utahraptors didn't have a lot of weaknesses to deal with. "They're susceptible to some of the diseases that the ticks carry," he suggested.

"Well, we can't sit here waiting for them all to fall ill," Miss Davenport dismissed that suggestion. "Is there anything that they can't do?" He shook his head. "Anything that they're afraid of?"

The question triggered a memory lurking in the back of Bova's mind. He recalled programming the behaviour  patterns of the Utahraptors. It was difficult work - some things could be deduced from the fossil record of old Earth, other things had to be extrapolated from other animals. He had designed them so that, like most animals, they would be driven by hunger, the urge to produce and care for young, and the desire to avoid being eaten by other animals. And finally, he remembered programming in something else - a fear of a natural phenomenon that nearly all animals dreaded.

He started looking around frantically. Miss Davenport eyed him in some alarm. "What are you doing?" she finally asked, in bewilderment.

The sense of relief sweeping over Bova made him break into a real smile, for a change. "Grab some branches, Miss Davenport," he instructed. "They're afraid of fire."

They searched the ground around them, and found a number of dry conifer branches. Bova set them alight with a high-voltage spark. "They won't last too long," he warned Miss Davenport. "Probably not long enough, in fact. Actually, they may blow out before we get the program deactivated. Or, it could start to rain...."

"Never mind that now, Bova," Miss Davenport urged. "The quicker we start, the less chance of anything going wrong."

Bova wasn't too sure of that; all he knew was that every nerve in his body was telling him it would be suicide to approach the waiting predators. Twice he gave his legs the command to start walking, and twice he found they were trembling so hard he couldn't move. Come on, he told himself severely, don't be such a wimp. Harlan wouldn't stand here shaking; Radu wouldn't either. Even Miss Davenport is brave enough to do it. What would they say if they get eaten because you were too scared to help them? Of course, if they get eaten, they won't be around to say anything, but anyway.... He realized that his internal debate was simply wasting time. Trying to ignore all the Uranusian instincts that were telling him this was a very bad idea, he stood up and stepped out of his hiding place. Holding a blazing branch in front of him, he approached the terminal. Miss Davenport followed, with her own torch at the ready.

The Utahraptors rose as they approached, hissing and bobbing their heads back and forth. They were hungry, and the two figures approaching looked just right for a late afternoon snack, but the smell of smoke and the crackling of the torches sent fear-messages of adrenaline through their systems. They withdrew slightly, but, to Bova's disappointment, didn't turn and run. Still, he and Miss Davenport managed to reach the terminal safely.

"Good," Miss Davenport said, examining the terminal readouts, "it's still operational. See if you can disengage the program."

Bova tried, but it was clearly not going to be easy. He found it difficult to concentrate, having to keep one eye on the Utahraptor pack while trying to make sense of the strange readings produced by the terminal. Instead of its normal, easily understood responses, the Christa's computer seemed to have lapsed into some prehistoric code of its own, describing incomprehensible problems such as "syntax errors", "stack overflows" and "general protection faults". Occasionally, it would stall completely, leaving Bova with the mysterious choice of "Abort, Retry, Fail?". He kept choosing "Retry", although failure seemed to him to be the only likely outcome of his efforts.

"Hurry, Bova!" he heard Miss Davenport say, with a rising quiver of panic in her voice. "The torches are almost out!"

The Utahraptors had noticed this fact even before she had. A series of signals ran through the pack; bobbing heads, slight changes in posture, soft grunts and hisses. They transmitted a message that, if put into words, would be "Not now - but soon, very soon. Get ready."

A large female, apparently the pack leader, approached cautiously, her head low in a stalking posture. Miss Davenport poked her torch at it awkwardly, trying to drive the creature back. To her alarm, the torch chose that instant to fizzle out, leaving her defenseless.

The Utahraptor's eyes widened. Standing tall, she gave a deafening roar that clearly meant, "Now! Attack!" The rest of the gathered behind her, as she started towards the terminal.

"Bova, do something!" Miss Davenport shrieked.

Bova looked up from the terminal as the pack leader lunged forward, and Miss Davenport slumped unconscious to the ground. Except for the hungry pack around him, he was alone.

The pack leader drew back, somewhat puzzled. Prey did not normally respond to her approach by lying down, and Miss Davenport's unorthodox behaviour left her somewhat uncertain as to how to proceed. She looked around, and decided to shift her attention to the target that was still moving.

"Go away!" Bova tried to yell, but his mouth was suddenly so dry he could hardly make a sound. He seized his torch, and hurled it at the beast instead. Immediately, he regretted the impulse, as he realized he'd just thrown away his main weapon. The raptor leader dodged the torch, and took two steps toward him, growling softly deep in her throat.

Bova tried to gather his thoughts; how to keep the pack away from the terminal, while untangling his program from the Christa's main processors? He'd tried to avoid using his electrical powers, for fear he might accidentally fry the computer's circuits, but he realized now that he had no choice.

As the leader approached, he hit her with as powerful a charge as he could muster. The animal gave a harsh scream, and retreated, shaking her head groggily, but to Bova's dismay, the rest of the pack didn't seem terribly impressed. A hulking male stepped forward, chomping its jaws hungrily.

Zap! His next bolt nearly knocked it off its feet, and it retreated. He was rewarded with a few seconds in which he could concentrate on his program. He sensed he was almost there; if only he could give it his full attention....

Two younger Utahraptors, driven by growing hunger, moved towards him, slinking low along the ground. He drove them back yelping, but he realized he didn't have much power left; his electrical reserves were almost drained. Still, he could once more make a few uninterrupted entries into the terminal. Finally, a familiar screen flashed on the console; he had reached the heart of his program! Just a few more entries, and he could shut it down.

A menacing growl came from behind him. Bova turned to see the pack leader less than ten feet away. She had recovered from the shock he had given her, and had cleverly decided to attack from a different angle. He tried one last defensive charge, but he was almost out of energy; his antennae sparked, but nothing much resulted. He watched helplessly as the creature crouched, readying herself for a spring.

Strangely, at that moment, Bova found himself feeling calm. He realized he only had seconds left, seconds in which to save himself and the others, but things seemed strangely clear and unhurried, as though everything was happening in slow motion. It felt as though he had all the time in the world. He turned his back on the pack leader, and resumed work on the terminal. A thrill of hope ran through him as a message appeared - "Do you want to end this session? Yes/No". He chose "Yes" most emphatically.

"No!" he wailed. Just as he thought he had succeeded, the "Abort, Retry, Fail?" message appeared once more. He frantically entered "Retry", as a roar from behind him told him that the pack leader had begun her final leap towards him. He turned and watched her helplessly, knowing that the last thing he would ever see would be a monster he had created himself. Time appeared to slow down further still; she seemed to hang gracefully in the air, caught in mid-leap, her deadly killing claws extended....

After a few seconds, Bova realized that it wasn't just his imagination; she really wasn't moving. Everything around him seemed to have halted. The other animals were immobile; even the wind in the trees had stopped. Only the thumping of his heart told him that time was passing. Turning back to the terminal, he saw the that the console now read "Program halted; end now?" "Yes" he entered.

"Yes!" he repeated out loud. "End the whole thing now." The ship gave a slight shudder, as if in agreement. As he watched, the suspended pack leader slowly faded away. Her bared teeth remained visible for a few final moments, then she was gone completely.

By the time he managed to revive Miss Davenport, the rest of the Utahraptor pack had disappeared, and the Christa's systems were well on the way to morphing her back to her old self.

Late that evening, Bova finally got up the nerve to go to the MedLab.

It wasn't that he was hurt or ill himself. Earlier, Rosie had dabbed some antiseptic on his cuts, and they were healing nicely. However, nearly all the rest of the crew were there, for one reason or another, and he knew he would have to face them eventually.

He stood nervously outside the door for a few minutes, trying to figure out what approach to take when entering. He tried out several facial expressions, from nonchalant to pitiably miserable. None seemed to really express his exact feelings. How were you supposed to greet people after your science project had run amok and nearly killed them?

He was just about to give up and go away, when the door slid open. Rosie reached out, seized his arm, and pulled him into the room.

"There you are," she giggled. "Radu said he could hear you outside the door. Why didn't you come in?"

He muttered something inaudible and changed the subject quickly. "H-how is everyone?" he asked, unable to raise his eyes to look at anyone directly.

"Oh, everyone's going to be all right," Rosie said, as though it would be obvious. "When you turned off the program, the germs that were making Suzee sick were deactivated. She's recovering nicely."

"Nicely?" Suzee moaned. "Look at me! My face is still covered with blotches - I'll be a complexion disaster for days!" She tried ineffectually to pull the collar of her uniform over as much of her face as possible.

"You look fine," Radu said, weakly but gallantly. "I can hardly notice them."

"You shouldn't try to talk, Radu," Rosie cautioned. He'd been the most badly injured; the whip-tail had cracked several ribs, and done some internal damage. Rosie had debated putting him in the Healing Chamber, but he'd refused, claiming he was needed for navigation. She'd compromised by making him to promise to stay in bed whenever not actually required on the bridge for the next two weeks.

"What about the Commander and Harlan?" Bova asked, still feeling exquisitely uncomfortable.

"I just wish when you'd turned off the program, you'd have given us some warning," Goddard growled from the cot where he lay. "After all, we were twenty feet up in a tree." His mouth twisted as a jolt of pain shot through his wrenched back.

"Yeah," Harlan laughed. He looked oddly debonair with a pristine white bandage wrapped around his temples. "It was quite a ride when it disappeared from under us."

"Oh, they'll be fine," Rosie said, dismissing their complaints with a wave of her hand. "Just some bumps and bruises. Tomorrow they'll hardly notice them."

Bova smiled weakly in relief. Apparently, his program hadn't left anyone with permanent damage. To his even greater surprise, no one seemed to be holding it against him, at least not too badly.

"Visiting time's over," Rosie said, with mock severity. "They need their rest to recover." Bova was not unhappy to let her shoo him out into the hallway.

Once outside, she turned to him with a more serious expression. "How are you and Miss Davenport coming with the systems check of the ship?" she asked.

"I think the Christa's going to be OK," Bova answered. "Thelma's back online, and she helped us locate and delete all my program's code." He looked around furtively. "At least, almost all of it." He allowed a faint, mysterious smile to cross his face.

"I don't understand," said Rosie. "Why didn't you delete it all?"

Bova reached into his pocket and pulled out the holo-projector. "I thought I'd save just a little bit of it," he explained. "It should be perfectly safe - the projector isn't connected to the main computer. And I thought you might like this."

He placed the projector in Rosie's outstretched hands, and pressed the start button. Something  soft and furry quickly materialized.

"Oh!" breathed Rosie. "It's the Aegialodon." She stroked it gently, as it made a soft squeaking noise of greeting.

"It's the perfect pet to have on the Christa," Bova explained. "It doesn't eat anything or make much noise, and you won't need a cage for it. It won't even trigger Miss Davenport's allergy to fur. Although," he looked around uneasily, "perhaps you shouldn't let her know I've let any of the program remain at all."

"Of course not," Rosie answered, still gazing entranced at the tiny creature in her hands. "It'll be our secret."

"I just wanted to give you a present," he said. "To - to apologize for almost getting you eaten."

Rosie looked up at him, her eyes shining. "Thank you, Bova," she said softly. "It's about the nicest present anyone's ever given me."

She started to leave, then turned back impulsively. "Thank you again," she whispered. Then she leaned forward; before he realized it, she'd planted a kiss on his cheek. As he stood staring at her, she stepped back, grinned and waved. "Good night," she said. Then she was gone, back to her patients in the MedLab.

As Bova walked back to the boys' bunkroom, he let the day's events run through his head. On the down side, he'd spent much of his time trying to outrun or outwit man-eating predators. Most of the rest of the crew were nursing injuries because of him. He'd even had to erase the project that he'd spent so long on, before Miss Davenport had assigned him a final grade.

On the other hand, nobody had actually been killed, Thelma and the Christa seemed to have recovered, and even Miss Davenport would have to admit that he had actually created a working model of a Cretaceous ecosystem.

And Rosie had kissed him.

All things taken in the balance, he reflected, it added up to a pretty good day.

Author's Note: The Utahraptors, the Aegialodon, the Acrocanthosaur and the whip-tail sauropod can all be found in Robert T. Bakker's excellent novel, Raptor Red. It's the best novel I've ever read with a dinosaur as the main character (in fact, it's the only novel I've ever read with a dinosaur as the main character). Dr. Bakker, who popularized the idea of warm-blooded dinosaurs, proves that science doesn't have to be boring. Incidentally, the phrases Thelma mutters in the Command Post are taken from his non-fiction, but no less entertaining, book, The Dinosaur Heresies. Taphonomic analysis is the study of what happens to bones and other remains in the environment before they become fossilized; the Simpson Index is a measure of the biodiversity of an ecosystem; and punctuated equilibrium is a proposed mechanism of evolution.

Also, thanks galore to KayLynn for all her research and editing help with this story!

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