Dinosaur Wars

Chapter three - The blue cathedral

Sven stopped screaming. He retreated to the wall and leaned his long body there as if he needed this to prop him up. He still held the lantern in his hand. Addison stood rivetted to the spot, as frozen as the monster that loomed before him. Eventually, he dared to breathe. He backed up to Sven and took his lantern then lifted it above his head.

Adam rounded the corner and halted as abruptly as his uncle had. It took him a moment to realize that the beast was as still as stone.

"What is that?"

His uncle didn't reply. The massive head leaned down. Its open jaw had a crowd of long teeth, thick as broom handles. They curved back like daggers. The mouth could easily fit a man in, whole. Two small forearms, each ending with two claws, were attached to its chest. These seemed puny in comparison to the muscular bulk of the rest of the animal.The lantern's light flickered down its scaly body but didn't touch the darkness and solid shadows beyond.

Uncle and nephew tentatively stepped around the giant head. A shaft of blue light appeared above them, slanting high in the air. This thickened, broadening as it moved toward the ground. The sun was coming up, refracting light through the cave's ceiling. This roof arched up like the interior of a cathedral. Enormous hexagonal crystals grew on its surface. Some formed clusters like gargantuan chandeliers. As the sun rose higher, beams of blue began to criss-cross between the crystals' facets. At first these were dark, the night-blue of indigo, the navy blue of the sea, but began to lighten to vivid cobalt. The beams splayed and flickered, connecting with each other with intricate patterns. The shadows beneath them began to lighten and take form.

Addison and Adam began to see that they were in a cavern, a vast hollowed-out dome. Monumental shapes towered above them.

Everywhere in the cavern were perfectly preserved dinosaurs. There were dinosaur families, dinosaurs with nests of eggs, meat-eaters and herbivores - from the smallest animal to the browsers of tree tops rising several storeys into the air.

Jagged lines of ultra-violet began to flick between the clusters of crystals - a kind of cold lightning that, when it struck, made splashes of teal and aquamarine. The crystals themselves would momentarily darken when they received these forks of lightning, then would ignite again, brighter than before and radiate more lightning.

And as the sun rose higher, the full extent of this 'blue cathedral' revealed itself. Structures like skylights made of crystal reflected down into the cavern, firing all the 'chanderliers'. They all seemed lit from within by a brilliant, pale blue. Discharge lines skittered between them, then patterns of light would radiate out from the bunched crystals as if a stone had been thrown into a glittering pool

Addison walked slowly into this prehistoric 'zoo' in awe, as did the rest of his party. As they breathed, puffs of steam came out of their mouths - a refrigeration effect of the cavern. Beneath their feet was a blue, viscous liquid. The dinosaurs, too, were covered in this liquid. Every so often on the cave floor were depressions, small hollows containing clutches of numerous eggs. The hollows brimmed with the same blue substance. A drop of the liquid fell onto Addison's face. He looked up, wondering if the crystals produced it.

Addison pulled a notebook from his pocket. He began to sketch the cavern interior. He stooped to examine the creature that had caught Adam's attention. The size of a large man, it had powerful jaws full of the teeth of a carnivore.

"Look at that claw. A couple of swipes of that, it'd carve you in half!"

Adam pointed to the foot of the animal. Two toes rested on the ground, supporting the beast. The third stood upright. This toe was about six inches long and shaped like a sickle and was razor-sharp along its bottom edge.

"What are these things, uncle? What are they doing here?"

"I'm certain they're dinosaurs, Adam. The origin of the fossils we've been scavenging. That first beast we saw, it has the exact same shape as that fossil skeleton I've been constructing in the barn. Tyrannosaurus-rex, the tyrant lizard. But these aren't fossils. As to what they're doing here, I don't know. I simply don't know. Perhaps they were sheltering from whatever it was that killed them. Perhaps this was their last refuge."

"Must've been some threat - they don't look like they'd scare easily."

"True."

Addison crouched down and touched the blue substance with his forefinger. He rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb. It was soft and sticky, like paste for glueing wallpaper.

"Not at all unpleasant"

The rest of the party wandered around, hesitant, gazing up at the mighty beasts. Adam walked further into the cavern.

"Look at this one!"

Addison spied him, a miniature man next to a massive tree-trunk. When he adjusted his mind to what he saw, Addison realised Adam stood next to a leg of a giant several storeys high. Four tree trunks reached up to a barrel-shaped body the size of ten steam locomotives piled together. Spines ran along its back. And attached to this was the swoop of a neck, like a swing-bridge over a chasm, that ended in a surprisingly small head. At its rear, a tail twice as long as its neck tapered to a bull-whip end. Addison calculated that it must have been over 100 feet long, from snout to tail tip.

"You'll be the talk of New York, uncle!"

The old man smiled.

"If we could bring New York here. We have no way of moving such big things."

As Addison spoke, a mist like a very fine, blue rain descended on them. This glowed and shimmered as it fell, making the air bright and opaque. It settled on their skin and hair, a fine sapphire blue that absorbed into their skin.

Addison had a sudden start. He thought, for a moment, that he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. One of the massive beasts shifted its head. Surely that was not possible? And then he realized ripples of light passed through the descending haze. Light flickered and made shadows at different angles on the animals. It was the light and shadow that moved, not the dinsaurs. It was obvious that they were artifacts, frozen in time, yet with tissue immaculately preserved.

"No, we couldn't take such huge animals. It would take a team of engineers, machinists and builders to construct ... I don't know what, vehicles, I suppose, to move them. No, we couldn't take these monsters."

                                                                                     *****

Again the line of mules and packhorses trekked through the desert. The beasts carried modified water pouches that now contained dinosaur eggs immersed in the blue liquid. The mood among the workers was buoyant. Indeed, everyone seemed fresher, brighter. Even Jack Dime stepped lightly on his bowed legs, the limp from his gout-afflicted foot gone. He had fully recovered from the bullet wound.

Pat and Sven strode side by side, leading mules behind them. Sven broke the silence.

"They say you haven't seen everything until you've been to the East."

"Or Australia."

"But I haven't seen anything as frightening as that."

"Or as big ... whatever they was."

They walked on, quietly. Again it was Sven who broke the silence.

"And I haven't ever seen anyone driven through with a bullet one day stand up the next with not even a scratch."

"Me either."

"It's Lazarus stepping up from his tomb. It's a miracle."

"Or the work of the Devil."

Sven thought on this a moment, then quickly crossed himself. A drop of the blue liquid spilled out of one of the containers and landed on the sand. It fizzled on the hot surface and was absorbed. After the last feet and set of hooves passed the spot, the sandy soil shifted minutely. It stirred. A green shoot curled upwards. It rose with increasing speed then suddenly stopped, instantly blooming into a scarlet desert flower.