"Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven."

The distance between the center of the Earth and ground level here in the Red Deer valley might have changed by several hundred meters in the last 65 million years. Unfortunately, the geomorphologists working on this project couldn’t agree on whether the landforms would have shifted up or down during that timespan. To avoid the possibility of our ship arriving underground — killing us, of course, not to mention causing one hell of an explosion as matter tried to force itself inside of other matter — the Sternberger had been hauled a kilometer above the Badlands by the Sikorsky. Just before Ching-Mei threw the switch to activate the Huang Effect, we would be cut loose. The interior of the Sternberger would lock into stasis — a stopped-time condition, the first creation of which had won Ching-Mei a Nobel Prize in 2007 — until ten minutes after we arrived in the Mesozoic. Plenty of time, supposedly, for us to come crashing to the ground and for the mountain of debris we would kick up on impact to rain out of the sky.

That’s the theory, anyway.

"Seven. Six. Five."

I thought of something funny in those last few seconds. If I did die, my will still named Tess as my beneficiary. Not that I owned much of value — just a beat-up Ford and the townhouse in Mississauga — but it seemed strange that my ex-wife would get it all. I guess that would be all right if both Klicks and I died, but I didn’t like to think of just me buying it. After all, since Tess had taken up with Klicks — just how long had they been seeing each other, anyway? — my estate would in essence go to him, too. That’s the last thing I wanted.

"TWO. ONE. ZERO!"

My stomach lurched as the cable was released -