Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall by Thomas Hopp

Author:Thomas Hopp
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: science fiction, ebook, war, dinosaur, free, alien invasion

In the barn’s tack room they gathered some hoops of baling wire and several lengths of heavy chain. Kit even found an old padlock and key to secure their hostage. When they brought the gear into the house, Ogilvey was still kneeling beside the unconscious dinosaur, which lay between the coffee table and the fireplace. He stared at it in overawed silence. As they set the shackles down in a pile near the pteronychus, Ogilvey smiled. “I can’t believe what this old scientist’s eyes are privileged to see.”

He addressed the beast itself. “It’s astonishing that you and I should meet in the flesh. You don’t know how long I’ve worked, how often I’ve wondered what it would be like.”

Kit and Chase built a makeshift manacle from the baling wire and chain, which they used to bind the animal’s wrists. Then they ran a longer chain through the manacle and wrapped it around the nearest of the sturdy pine-trunk columns that supported the ceiling beams. Not until they’d run another length of chain around both ankles and looped it around the post did Chase finally feel comfortable pausing to take a good look at the creature. He and Kit sat down on the couch while Ogilvey, ever the professor, began a running discourse.

“What we have here,” he grinned, “is the height of dinosaurian evolution, the counterpart of what Homo sapiens is among mammals.” He leaned over the creature, nearer than Chase thought sensible, his owlish eyes round with excitement. “It seems more like a bird than a reptile, doesn’t it? Yes!” He answered his own question without waiting for a reply. “Rather like a big, beautiful cassowary with just a bit of crocodile thrown in for teeth and tail. In fact,” he said, holding up a rhetorical finger, “it is indeed an intermediate stage between those two, evolutionarily speaking.”

He moved to the head, from which the tongue still lolled and the eyes remained closed. “This crest is every bit as tall as a cassowary’s, and perhaps a bit taller. And these facial colors, glorious! Look at the yellow stripe of skin and short feathers surrounding the eye, and these stripes of black, orange and scarlet on the crest.” He moved a finger just above each feature as he described it, his nearness to the formidable jaws causing Chase to shake his head.

“But the teeth,” he went on, “are much more advanced than crocodilian teeth, most assuredly the teeth of a theropod dinosaur.” He moved his pointing fingertip a fraction of an inch above them. “Note the recurved shape, the serrations along the edges, much like steak knives. Perfect for cutting flesh.”

Kit shuddered. “All that and intelligent too.”

“Yes, highly intelligent, from the look of that machine outside. But notice the variety of feathers,” Ogilvey enthused like a child looking over a new toy. “Nothing I excavated ever had a trace of feathers. The fossilization process rarely preserves them. But look at this fellow. He’s got black contour feathers over most of his body, just like a crow.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.