"Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor - Boundary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

She finished freeing the small round stone that had been in her way, then stood up, dusting
off her hands before extending one for a handshake. “Hello, Director Bonds.”

Bonds was sweating and trying not to show how winded he was from the walk. He’d been
quite a field scientist himself before he became director of the museum, and was probably a
little embarrassed to discover how far out of shape he was from a few years of chair-warming.

At a gesture of invitation from Helen, he squatted at the edge of the work area, the others
clearing out of the way. “Marvelous. Simply marvelous. A death scene, you think?”

Helen scratched her chin thoughtfully. “Too early to tell. There’s something… Well, let me
hold off before I jump to conclusions. But look at this. See? That’s the K-T boundary, all right.
There’s no doubt about it.”

“Jesus.” The director was practically bouncing up and down in restrained professional
excitement. “No-one’s ever found a dinosaur this close to the boundary!”

“Close?” demanded Helen. “It’s not close. It’s right on it.”




Chapter 2

Two weeks later, Bonds was back again, bringing more help and equipment. By then,
Helen and the people on her crew had managed to clear the first skeleton, half of the second,
and had discovered yet a third on the other side of the first. To say the museum director was
happy would have been an understatement on a par with saying the Titanic had experienced
some difficulty on its maiden voyage.

Helen, Joe, and Jackie were also clearly happy, but someone who knew them better than
the Director might have noticed something a bit odd in their reactions. They welcomed the
newcomers and showed them around, agreeing that it was clearly a death scene, but that they
hadn’t drawn any firm conclusions as to the sequence of events yet.

That was true enough, as far as it went, Helen thought, but…

They relaxed a bit once the Director left. Helen needed to talk to the new paleontologists
alone, without the Director hearing things that might make his funding the venture politically
difficult. It was extraordinarily hard to think that way, but with what they were finding, the
circumstances were also extraordinary.

“Funny.” One of the new guys, Michael Jennings, shook his head slightly. “The way the
skeletons sit, I don’t think they were fighting at all. Drowned, maybe? Flash flood?”

“Maybe,” Jackie said.
 “Found any wounds?” another asked. “Broken bones? Evidence of toothmarks? Clearly
they didn’t get eaten much, or whatever did it would’ve taken them apart.”