End of an Era

I shrugged. "It’s important to us."

Diamond-snout looked at me, its head tilted in that gesture I associated with puzzlement. "Oh," it said at last — or maybe it was just a reptilian throat-clearing. "Well, we will speak again." A pause. "Soon." The three dinosaurs strode away, back into the forest.

Klicks and I scrambled up the crater wall. It had been a heck of a lot easier getting down than it was going back up, even in the lighter gravity. I practically filled my boots with soft dirt in the process.

Once we were alone inside the cramped confines of the Sternberger’s semicircular habitat, Klicks sprawled out on his crash couch, fingers interlaced behind his head, and said, "Well, what do you make of that?"

I hated the man’s infinite calmness. He had to be as excited as I was. Why didn’t he show it? Why did I have to show it so transparently? "This is incredible," I said, and instantly regretted my hyperbole.

"Incredible," said Klicks, savoring the word, or, more precisely, savoring my use of it. "Yes, that it is. This changes everything, of course."

"How do you mean?"

He gave me one of those looks, the ones he saved for times when he thought the person he was talking to was a little on the slow side. "I mean about our mission. T\he discovery of the Hets is more important than any paleontological research we were going to do."

I felt anger growing within me. Nothing was more important than dinosaurs, as far as I was concerned. "We’ve got a job to do," I said, as evenly as I could.

"Oh, yes indeed," said Klicks, unlacing his fingers. "We have to bring the Hets forward in time, of course."

I stared at him, dumbfounded. "What?"

"Think about it, man. By our time, Mars is dead. Completely abiologic. Every probe since Viking has confirmed that."

"So?"

"So something wipes out the Hets between now and then. We’ve got the opportunity to jump the ones that are here forward, past whatever event kills them. We can repopulate Mars."

"We can’t do that," I said. My head was pounding.

"Sure we can. You saw how small those Het slimeballs are. We could take back hundreds of them. It’s just a question of balance. Once we empty our water tank, we’ll have plenty of room and a big mass deficit that we’ll have to fill with something before the Huang Effect switches states. It might as well be the Hets."

"We were going to bring forward some biological specimens. Maybe even a small dinosaur. They’ve got a habitat all set at the Calgary Zoo—"

"We can do that, too. They’re not mutually exclusive propositions."

"I don’t know," I said slowly, trying to buy time to think. This was all happening much too quickly. "Maybe it’s not our place to do something like that. I mean, we’d be playing God—"

Klicks rolled his eyes as though I’d said something incalculably stupid. "Jesus, man, what do you think bringing home a baby Ornithomimus would be? After all, they’re extinct, too."

"But this is intelligent life. It just seems—"

"Seems that we should ignore it? Brandy, how would you feel if the shoe was on the other — the other pseudopod? Some natural disaster wipes out all of good old H. sap. Wouldn’t you want some guy to play Noah for us? We can prevent the extinction of a — what’s that word the science-fiction writers use? — a sentient lifeform."

He mispronounced it, saying it as three distinct syllables. "That’s sen-shent," I said. "It rhymes with quotient."

"What the hell difference does that make? I’m talking about a bold, sweeping move and you’re going all picayune on me."

"Details matter. Besides, we don’t have to decide this thing ourselves; we’re just the test mission. When they send the big multinational mission next year, they can haul the Hets forward, if it seems the right thing to do."

"Point-five-oh," said Klicks.

This time I failed his little test. I looked at him blankly. "What?"

"The Huang Effect has a 50 percent uncertainty, thanks to the parts of the Throwback calculations that are quantum mechanical. The chances of the big timeship hitting even this same century are minuscule." Klicks shook his head. "No, my friend. No one else can make the decision. This is it, the one and only opportunity to save the Hets from extinction."

My throat felt dry. "But doubtless eventually another mission will hit this particular time. Maybe not one from the twenty-first century, or even the twenty-second. But eventually."

Klicks scowled, his one continuous eyebrow bunching like a knotted shoelace. "Haven’t you been reading the papers? Ever since Derzhavin was assassinated by those resurgent hardliners, things have gotten a lot worse between the Americans and the Russians. And even if they do work their differences out, if the global warming trend continues, we’re not going to have enough food to feed ourselves. I wouldn’t count on there being anyone left by the twenty-second century."

"Oh, things aren’t that bad," I said weakly.