Somewhere on the planet Irignum, far beyond the desert
on which the ship temporarily sat, Tobit had been chewed and mauled by the
spike-toes, but they had found him just too distasteful to digest. His life support system, though torn in
places, was not palatable, and it was actually toxic to alien life. Smaller scavengers, including other
bipeds, crawlers and flyers managed to eke out a few bites of meat by sticking
their heads into the torn openings of the suit to get at the flesh. They too found the experience
distasteful, so it was up to the insects and bacteria to finish off Tobit’s
remains. The tough digestive
tracks of the planet’s predators and scavengers may not have been poisoned
outright by the microbes filtering out of the alien’s suit, but a new creature
had invaded earth’s air that was particularly lethal to dinosaurs and their
kin: a crystal-like structure that was necessary for Revekian metabolism but
would prove to be fatal to many creatures during this age.
Earthlings
would one day call it a virus.
Within a few millennia it would have spread around the globe and caused
the extinction of the dinosaurs and many orders of reptiles on earth and allow
the mammals to finally take control.
Flying reptiles and the dragons of the ocean would also become extinct,
as would several other unrelated species in the sea. It would, during its early stages of mutation, have no
effect on mammals, birds and other reptiles of the planet, including the
crocodiles and their kin. Turtles,
snakes, and lizards would continue to thrive, as the mammals and birds took
over the niches once occupied by dinosaurs. The new plants would continue to encroach upon the receding
margins of the jungle, as the climate also began its climactic change. A vastly improved order of insects, who
depended upon the flowering plants, their pollen and fruit, would continue to
converge upon the rain forest, prairies and ever-expanding fields of grass,
flowers, and fruit bearing trees.
Meanwhile the virus would mutate during the evolution of the planet to
become the worst killer of all time.
******
While
poor Tobit lie in the forest to be consumed by insects, microorganisms, or
small scavengers who were able to tunnel into his suit, Varik would lie intact
inside his muddy tomb. The stream
of mud that had overflowed the banks of the nearby river had covered the
surrounding floor of the jungle, so that small lizards, mammals, insects, and
even birds would become part of the strata in which he was entombed. Quickly covered in advancing mud, they
too were encased forever in the sludge.
As Varik decomposed slowly inside his ruptured suit, he would gradually
deteriorate away as would the muscle inside an ammonite shell or the flesh of
the dinosaurs who became fossils in the earth. The metallic and plastic substances making up the alien’s
life support system had a far greater half life than such materials on earth
but would gradually be dissolved and replaced by the earth’s own minerals,
until they too became fossilized: a crystalline replica of Varik’s life support
system and bone structure, an enigma for geologists and paleontologist to
ponder someday when Varik was discovered in the rock.
The
lush rain forest of Northern Arizona gradually gave way to a changing
landscape, a process that took many millions of years. Mountains rose and fell, the sea moved
in and out, and countless species of mammals and birds evolved, lived for a
spell, and then become extinct, until, after the last great ice age, there was
a great desert filled with ancient wind-worn rocks, much similar to the desert
on which the aliens’ ship had escaped to so long ago. The remnants of ancient volcanoes, lakes, and great forests
(now petrified as multicolored rocks) stretched over the landscape of Northern
Arizona where dinosaurs and aliens once roamed.
Into
this scorched and tortured land, a sound broke the stillness. A cloud of dust marred the cloudless
horizon. Once again in this
no-man’s-land, bipeds appeared.
This time they did not come as a great vessel out of the sky or migrate
as primitive hunters and gatherers from the north as such nomads had done for
thousands of years before the White Man appeared. This time they rolled across the desert in a small, compact
vehicle that threw up a great dust cloud in its wake. From the jeep, an excited sound from one of the bipeds burst
forth as he pointed at a likely outcrop of rock. Out jumped one of the bipeds, with the other not far behind.
“Look
at the fossils in that rock!” the first one cried.
“It’s
a bonanza!” the second biped crowed, doing a clumsy jig.
For
several moments the excited amateurs pecked away at their discovery, their
geological picks ringing discordantly in the desert air, until the first biped
stopped suddenly, slapped his forehead in disbelief, and pointed down at the
rock. There, after a large chunk
of late Cretaceous shale fell away, were the remains of Varik’s life support
system, preserved almost perfectly in the rock. While Varik had long ago disintegrated inside, his suit had
been replaced by minerals that defied rust. His arms, legs, torso, and helmet segments were perfectly
preserved, but, as seen in fossil seashells, the inside of his suit was made up
of the matrix of the rock.
“Jeeezuz,
Ralph,” the first biped seemed to shudder, “it looks like a space suit in this
rock!”
“Impossible,
Hank.” Ralph shook his head. “It’s gotta be a fluke! I’m sure it’s something else!”
“No…
Ralph,” said Hank slowly, bringing his eye right up to the rock. “It’s too
uniform…. It looks like there’s an inscription of some sort on this fossil.”
“Ralph,” he whirled around excitedly “do you know what this means?”
“I
dunno,” Ralph sighed wearily. “…. Sunstroke? We couldn’t both
be having the same dream! I’ve
never seen a fossil like this before!”
“Ralph,”
Hank slapped his forehead again in disbelief, “this rock is sixty-five to
seventy million years old. It’s
late Cretaceous. When this
thing—whatever it is—began to fossilize, there were still dinosaurs around.” “ Tyrannosaurus rex, the tyrant king,
still ruled,” he framed his words carefully. “…. Now it turns out that they
were not alone. If what I see
isn’t a dream or we’re both not stark raving mad, this is an alien, Ralph. During the Age of the Dinosaurs, extraterrestrials
once visited earth! Look how small
it is and how large its helmet is, as if it had a tiny body and yet a great big
head.”
The
alien shared the same slab of rock with countless fossilized mammal, reptile,
and avian bones, but so far the two explorers had not seen dinosaur bones,
which had been the original goal of their expedition today. For several hours Ralph and Hank dug
around the fossilized space suit, until it was almost completely
uncovered. As Hank took one more
peck at the rock, however, the fossil began disintegrating in pieces before
their horror-stricken eyes. As they
tried to hold various sections in place, the suit continued giving way, until
the remains of Varik, the Revekian, looked like potsherds of a bygone race,
everything that is, except one perfectly preserved boot, which Hank quickly and
almost tearfully protected with both his hands.
“I
hope your brought some glue,” he muttered to Ralph, as he lifted it carefully
out of the rock.
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