The Extinction Code Read Free Page B

and above that of his contemporaries, none of whom would think to seek higher knowledge.

    Channing lowered the letter and stared at it in silence for several long seconds.
    ‘Will you tell me what the hell’s going on?’ Weisler demanded.
    ‘Why not?’ Channing whispered vacantly and then stared up at the rock face before him. ‘We’re in the right place and the wrong place.’
    ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
    ‘This can’t be possible,’ Channing murmured again.
    ‘Damn it man, what does the letter say?’
    ‘That we’re in the right place, but the wrong time .’
    ***

III
    Channing broke free from his catatonic shock and hurried up the hillside, scrambling for purchase amid the rocks. Weisler leaped up in pursuit, struggling to keep up as Channing climbed up toward a narrow ledge a few yards further up the hill.
    The sun was now beating down with almost unbearable strength as they ascended the hill, Channing’s shirt soaked with sweat and his breath coming in short, sharp gasps as he climbed and finally reached the ledge. He clambered up onto it, and immediately he saw what he was looking for as Weisler dragged himself onto the ledge and knelt alongside him, gasping for breath.
    ‘Jesus, where’s the fire?’
    Channing did not respond as he looked at the rock formation before him.
    The face showed obvious signs of disturbance by human hands and tools, and although Channing was no tracker he could see a few scattered boot prints in the dust where somebody had been working the site, maybe for a couple of days or so. But it was what was protruding from the rock face itself that stunned him into a sort of reverential silence.
    ‘That’s a bone!’ Weisler said, and whipped out a camera from his satchel.
    Channing knew that it was a bone, or to be more accurate the fossilized remains of a bone, buried deep in the strata for sixty five million years. His career experience was such that he did not need to study it for more than a few moments to know what he was looking at.
    ‘Tyrannosaur,’ he whispered.
    The bone that Weisler was now photographing avidly was almost a yard long and lined with razor sharp teeth several inches in length, the whole bone and likely the skull with it still mostly concealed inside the rock from which patient hands had begun to liberate it. The classic lines of a theropod carnivore were obvious, perhaps even to the layman, but as Weisler was clearly beginning to realize, that was not what was odd about the remains.
    ‘Wait one,’ he said. ‘Scientists have been digging these things up out here for years, so what’s the big deal?
    Channing didn’t know quite where to begin, and suddenly he found himself beginning to understand why whoever had written the letter had no desire to be associated with the spectacular remains they had located out here in the barren Montana wilderness.
    ‘It shouldn’t be here,’ Channing replied finally.
    ‘Sure it should,’ Weisler insisted. ‘It’s a dinosaur, right? They’re buried all over the place out here.’
    ‘But not here,’ Channing insisted.
    Weisler sighed and lowered his camera. ‘I don’t get it.’
    Channing pointed down the hillside, and across it at the thin line of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary running through the rock strata.
    ‘The K–T Event, the asteroid impact that struck the Chicxulub peninsular and caused a devastating extinction level event, occurred down there.’
    Weisler looked down at the line, and then turned to the remains in the cliff face.
    ‘The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs,’ he said quietly.
    ‘It ended their reign sixty five million years ago,’ Channing confirmed. ‘Virtually every scientific discipline accepts that the event was the end of the dinosaur line, and no scientist has ever discovered the remains of a dinosaur after that event.’ He turned to stare at the jaw bone lodged in the solid Montana rock face. ‘Nobody has ever discovered dinosaur remains above