Dakota Seas

By C. George Lynn

Dean Samuels, a brilliant geophysicist, has created a computer-driven device that utilizes magnetic acceleration and gravity yield (Maggie) to achieve the miracle of time travel.

With the assistance of his lifelong friend, Guy Lazarus, Samuels is transported back to the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs ruled the earth. Once transmission is complete, Lazarus must dismantle the equipment and move everything to a safe location before insurgents can steal the priceless technology. After narrowly escaping a devastating bomb blast and deadly pursuit, Lazarus locates his former girlfriend, Betsy Pettis, on a ranch hidden deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota and reconstructs Maggie. Now he must face the perilous mission of finding Samuels on an earth seventy million years younger and returning him to the present.

Can Lazarus successfully locate Samuels, survive a near-death encounter with a monstrous Tyrannosaurus Rex, and evade the subversive forces plotting to steal Maggie's incredible technology?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 18, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595836475

C. George Lynn

C. George Lynn holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Geology, and is a partner with an environmental consulting firm. He resides in St. Louis with his wife, Nancy, and their two daughters, Heather and Chessey.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1 

It was well after midnight when the call came to Lazarus. Dean was highly emotional, and the conversation was clouded with overtones of anxiety. After making a poor attempt at apologizing for calling so late, Dean suddenly blurted out, I need you to come to Rapid City right away, Lazarus. I need your help.

What’s come over you? Lazarus replied, still half-asleep. You sound like you forgot to take your Ritalin. What’s going on?

I can’t tell you any more right now. You need to get out here as soon as possible.

Is it my folks, Dean? Are they all right? Lazarus had a sudden shift in concern.

No, no, your parents are fine. After a long pause, Dean whispered into the telephone, I’ve done it, Lazarus. I’ve achieved particle acceleration through time. This is a breakthrough in all aspects of science—physics, chemistry, and biology. But no one must know.

Why? Lazarus asked, trying to lighten the conversation. Do you think you’ve got the market cornered on black magic?

Listen, smart ass, just be in Rapid City Friday night or I’ll send you to the Cretaceous!

Dean’s receiver hit the telephone. Lazarus knew that he had really irritated his old college roommate, but he’d done it before and never gotten such a temperamental response.

Send me to the Cretaceous, indeed. Lazarus muttered to himself angrily for being awakened at such a late hour. I don’t even want to go to Rapid City.

After much tossing and turning, Lazarus found it impossible to get back to sleep that night, bothered by the unusual tone of Dean’s voice, and his incredible declaration concerning particle acceleration through time. Had Dean actually achieved the impossible, Lazarus wondered over and over again, or was he hallucinating from overwork? He knew nothing short of a long airplane flight to Rapid City would answer this haunting question. By dawn, he realized sleep had escaped him and he might as well get up and make reservations for an evening flight. Lazarus was disgruntled because he knew this would screw up his plans for a weekend getaway with an attractive blond administrative assistant he was courting, but he felt obligated to help his friend in a time of need. At least it better be a time of real need, he fussed, or Dean would have some serious explaining to do.

Two days later, when the airplane’s wheels touched the landing strip, Lazarus felt relieved that this part of his journey was now over. The cramped twin engine shuttle plane had bumped and jerked all the way to Rapid City through mountains of black and ominous thunderclouds, spilling drinks and food that was better left unserved. He would be sure to let Dean know this was no pleasure trip, along with the amorous weekend he was missing. When they reached the terminal and the passengers began to deplane, his thoughts about the flight and home quickly vanished at the first glimpse of Dean.

Leaning up against a gray concrete roof pillar, Dean looked terrible. He was all rumpled up as if he’d slept in his clothes, wearing a gray spotted sweater and jeans, with only leather sandals on his feet for slogging through the rain. Lazarus’s image of Dean while in college was that of a fairly striking individual, standing six feet tall, lean, and blessed with long sandy hair that he combed to the side. The ladies liked Dean, and he liked them, but he was shy and so poorly skilled in the art of dating that he usually preferred to hide in the physics lab on weekends rather than face another embarrassing attempt to carry on an intelligent conversation with a University of South Dakota coed.

On this stormy night, in the shadowy lights of the half-closed airport, Dean looked more like a decrepit old man to Lazarus than someone supposed to be his own age. The sandy hair was rapidly thinning, and even though an attempt had been made to comb it, several strands hung down around his face in disarray. Dark circles ringed his eyes and a two or three-day stubble covered his cheeks and chin. Lazarus was so taken by Dean’s appearance that his first words came out abruptly.

Dean, are you feeling all right?

We have to hurry and get out of here, was all that Dean dared to mutter under his breath, either from exhaustion or for fear of being heard. Lazarus looked around suspiciously, expecting to see men in black suits emerge from hidden doorways. It was late in the evening and the terminal was nearly empty, except for the few remaining souls that shuffled off the plane from pittsburgh. A night guard sat hunched over in one of a long row of gray vinyl chairs across the aisle from the arrival gate, dozing peacefully. Nearby, a black custodian pushed his cart full of cleaning solutions and dust mops down the aisle, stopping occasionally to dump cigarette butts out of overflowing ashtrays.

The situation did not seem particularly threatening to Lazarus. Nevertheless, he felt Dean grab his arm and usher him out of the terminal and into the parking lot without exchanging a word. This was not the Dean of old, he thought to himself. Where was the sarcastic, outspoken scientist expounding on unbelievable theories that he had grown to know over so many years? Lazarus could only surmise that a real crisis had occurred.

Once inside the car, he probed Dean for answers. What’s the problem, Dean? Has something gone wrong with Maggie? Dean looked intently at Lazarus, his eyes fixed on him.

You can’t imagine what’s happened. I desperately need your help, but I can’t talk about it here. Lazarus nodded in agreement and swallowed hard at the same time, for he knew someone as driven as Dean could not be taken lightly.

As Dean plowed through the wet and blackened streets of Rapid City heading north toward Sturgis, they rode in silence. Rain pelted the windshield of Dean’s late model corvette, which the wipers efficiently swished away. Lazarus found their monotonous movement to be hypnotizing. As the wipers moved back and forth across the windshield, Lazarus stared into the darkness. His thoughts began to drift backwards in time.

Dean had once explained to him several years ago at a bar in Kansas City, during a boring geophysics seminar, the theory of magnetic acceleration induced by gravitational yield, or MAGY. Lazarus, not wanting to miss an opportunity to chide Dean, christened it Maggie because she was, he boldly proclaimed, the only female that Dean would ever call his own. Dean was not amused but the name stuck. As he and Lazarus sat in the dark and smoke-filled bar sipping martinis, Dean carefully described Maggie’s functions and the process by which she could send objects to another period in time.

So far, Dean asserted, the theory is only plausible for the past, since the future has yet to occur. If something or someone were transmitted to the future, it or they would be lost in oblivion. The concept seemed logical to Lazarus at the time, especially after several martinis.

The process is two stages, don’t you understand? He always said don’t you understand, to determine whether you were still with him. The first thing that has to be achieved is gravitational yield. I don’t just mean simple free-fall or the lack of gravity experienced during space travel, but a total release from the earth’s gravitational field. With the earth spinning on its axis at 1,521 feet per second, free-fall is not the same as gravity yield. We are still rotating with the earth and the atmosphere around us, which is why we aren’t instantly propelled backwards around the globe as it continues to spin forward or counterclockwise on its axis. What I am talking about is total yield from the earth’s gravity, which would allow you to put the brakes on and stand still for an instant in time. Don’t you understand?

Lazarus gazed at Dean through intoxicated eyes and mustered a reply. What I understand is that you’re nuts, and stopping something in time and space is impossible. Besides, gravitational yield only locks you in time for a moment, and has nothing to do with sending you backwards to another period in time.

All right, he replied dryly. Didn’t I say this was a two-stage process? That’s why you did so poorly in physics and chemistry, you could never follow directions. Now listen up, so you can at least understand the concept.

Just then the barmaid returned, and Dean responded with total silence. Lazarus ordered another round of martinis, while Dean refused to speak further until she delivered the drinks and was back at the bar.

The second stage of this process, he continued in a subdued tone, is much more difficult to achieve than the first. With that declaration Lazarus spit half of his freshly salted martini on the floor, partly in disbelief, and partly by the humor he found in this outrageous statement. Dean glared menacingly at him from across the table, so Lazarus regained his composure and decided to refrain from any further outbursts.

Like I was saying, smart guy, the second stage is much more difficult. Realize, of course, that particle acceleration through magnetic fields has been around since the first cyclotron was built in the 1930s. E.O. Lawrence invented the concept, and the government exploited it. That’s really all superconducting super colliders are. Great big magnets accelerating atomic particles to the speed of light. Dean took a swig of his martini to clear his throat, and spoke even more slowly and quietly.

Consider, however, an entire mass traveling at the speed of light! He paused and looked at Lazarus, waiting for a response.

C’mon Dean, get real. he replied in disbelief. You can’t just stick a solid mass in a particle accelerator and have it spin around like Mary PopI

pins!"

Brilliant deduction. I can tell you didn’t sleep through every physics class. Lazarus leaned back in his chair and smiled, proud of his limited knowledge in such an abstract subject. However, Dean was not impressed and the barmaid was not around to share his moment of glory.

What you don’t realize, Dr. Wisenheimer, is that in a state of complete gravity yield, atomic particles lose their cohesive strength. In this state, a solid object can be magnetically accelerated through time, but not, and I repeat not, in space. The object can then be reassembled molecule by molecule at the exact same point of transmission, only at a particular time in the past. You might be interested to know that I have achieved both stages with Maggie.

Drunk or not, this statement was too profound for Lazarus to ignore. As verbose as Dean could be, he was not prone to lying, and was certainly no storyteller. Lazarus almost had to believe that Dean had accomplished something, but had no concept of the magnitude.

If I get this right, you are saying that you can take a solid object, say a bowling ball, remove it from the gravitational field of the earth, and magnetically accelerate this ball backwards in time. Aren’t you afraid of hitting somebody in the head?

No, Dean replied sharply. Unlike the superconductor super collider that accelerates particles through a magnetic field, I accelerate the magnetic field around the bowling ball, which is why the bowling ball ends up in the same location but only in a previous time. As drunk as he was, Lazarus was amazed how Dean always seemed to have an answer that dripped in logic.

But, and this is a long ‘but,’ you picked an object that cannot be used in Maggie.

A catch. Lazarus knew there had to be one in this fairy tale. The Achilles heel of any good time travel machine.

So why not a bowling ball, Dean? Too heavy?

No, you have failed to remember the most important axiom of time travel. You can never transport anything in time that could influence history. If this happens, our world would not exist as it does today. This is the ultimate danger, what some people call a paradox. I call it an aberration.

Can you imagine driving up to a fresh outcrop and see a bowling ball embedded in the rock? Lazarus exploded into laughter. That would send Dr. Tom back to the drawing board, wouldn’t it? Dean cracked a smile and even laughed under his breath. Quickly, however, he became more intense. His voice lowered as his eyes widened. So far I’ve successfully transmitted a piece of limestone. I figure if it ever does get found, no one will worry too much about how a single stone got there.

What do you mean? Lazarus asked soberly, as if someone had just slapped him. Didn’t you just reverse Maggie and bring it back? Dean took a swig of his martini, grimaced and stared at the floor.

The only thing that I haven’t been able to do is bring something back. I just haven’t been able to figure that out yet.

Holy Christ, Dean! You mean you can’t bring something back from the past? You’ve created a one-way time machine. It’ll be hard to get volunteers for test flights, don’t you think? Lazarus threw down the last of his martini and grinned through the bottom of the glass. This was a mistake. Dean was already turning red and coming across the table for his throat.

No, you numskull, I’m not done yet! he screamed. This machine will bring something back, and I’m going to prove it to you!

By this time the martinis, together with Lazarus’s skepticism about Maggie, made Dean forget where he was. He quickly sat back down in his chair and looked around at two dark figures in the shadows of another room. His brow wrinkled with concern. In a hushed voice he spoke the last words of the evening to his sole confidant.

Let’s get out of here. Someone has found out about Maggie.

CHAPTER 2 

Lazarus was so lost in thought that the sound of Dean’s car door closing was a jolting wake-up call to the present. Dean had parked inside the upper level garage to his sprawling house, one that was hidden among tall pine trees at the end of a long twisting driveway. Lazarus only knew this because he’d been here before. Tonight he didn’t even notice when the engine was turned off.

Dean was already on his way into the house by the time Lazarus realized where he was. With the garage door rapidly closing behind the parked corvette, Lazarus climbed out and followed him into the large open living room.

Dean lived alone, so he had a decorator fill the place with stainless steel sculptures, a gray leather sofa that wrapped around the front of a white marble fireplace, and a few other esoteric knickknacks. The only light in the house when they entered was an eerie purplish-pink glow emanating from an electron globe that displayed mini-lighting storms inside. The glass sphere was almost two feet in diameter.

You can put your things in the end bedroom, Dean finally spoke. Excuse the mess, I haven’t had a housekeeper in for quite a while.

That was readily apparent. Although somewhat organized, Lazarus was still appalled by the clutter that was everywhere—piles of unopened mail, magazines stacked three feet high, and rolls of newspapers that looked like fire wood stacked in a corner.

Dean, Lazarus said dropping his suitcase in an overstuffed chair. You look like crap, and I’m tired of all the mystery. What the hell’s going on here?

OK, OK, he grumbled. I guess you deserve some explanation. How about a drink and something to eat first? Lazarus felt his stomach growl in response, suggesting that food would be the only acceptable excuse to delay a more serious conversation. After rummaging through microwave dinners and finding a couple that looked reasonably edible at 1:00 o’clock in the morning, they sat down at the glass kitchen table, ate the nuked meals, and washed them down with some cheap wine. Dean began to talk when they were finished, but it was obvious he was tired and worn.

Lazarus, do you remember what I told you in Kansas City at that bar? I mean about Maggie and what I had accomplished?

I remember you said that Maggie could transmit an object into the past, but that you were unable to retrieve it. I have to admit, though, I’m not sure I believed any of your outrageous claims, especially the stuff about time travel and that Maggie process you described.

Believe it. Dean replied firmly. Believe every bit of it, because time travel is a reality, and I’ve done it. He spoke with such force that Lazarus was startled.

Look, Dean, I know you’re obsessed with Maggie, but don’t let it make you crazy. Besides, how do you know it works? When we spoke in Kansas City, you said you couldn’t get an object to return. So how do you know it really went anywhere at all? Lazarus had pondered this very question when he woke up the next day in Kansas City with a throbbing hangover from too many martinis. How can you be sure it worked?

At the time, I couldn’t, Dean said as he rose from the table and walked over to the high glass windows that formed one wall of the expansive kitchen. I couldn’t be sure then where the objects went, but I knew they went somewhere. After gravity yield and magnetic acceleration were accomplished, whatever I placed in Maggie’s chamber was gone forever. That’s all changed. Now I know where the objects are going, and I can get them back. But this has created a problem that requires your assistance.

"You mean you’ve figured out how to get an object back from the past?

That’s a fantastic accomplishment! You’ve actually succeeded with Maggie?

The success may be short-lived, He said with a concerned look while gazing out the window. I said that I knew where an object was sent. Don’t you want to know how I know?

I assume the instruments you’re using can calculate the precise time period. What other way could you?

You’re right in that respect. Dean explained. The digital analogue computer, or DAC as I call it, can be used to calculate the time of arrival, something like a glorified kitchen timer. The trouble is, the computer has to measure time in millionths of a second. Once an object is in gravitational yield, the earth continues to spin at 1,521 feet per second while the object stands still. It’s basically frozen in time. So for every millionth of a second that an object is in gravitational yield, the earth has continued to rotate in space, and time. I have to compensate for this constant motion, and calculate the trillions, no quadrillions of seconds that have passed since a particular time period occurred, let’s say the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago. That calculation determines the rate of magnetic acceleration required to propel an object back to the desired time period. Do you understand?

This was the ultimate understatement, Lazarus thought to himself, after hearing Dean’s attempt to simplify an incredibly complex system. If he tried to pack all this geophenomena into his own head, Lazarus was afraid it would explode like a watermelon hit with a sledgehammer.

I understand the concept, he said, trying to humor Dean. I guess what all this means is that the digital analogue-whatever is a critical timepiece.

Exactly! And that’s why it’s so important to the success of Maggie. Time marches on, so to speak, from the time of departure to the time of arrival, and the DAC has to compensate for this differential in order for the recovery process to work. Without complete accuracy, I can’t bring something back. I have to know exactly when I sent it, how long it was gone, and the transmission time back and forth. A few millionths of a second error could bring an object back to the 15th century rather than now, or worse, to a future time period and oblivion.

The process was almost beginning to make sense to Lazarus, but he was having trouble fitting all the pieces of this intricate puzzle together at such a late hour. He had to be able to think like Dean, which was