Colony by Benjamin Cross (best way to read books .TXT) 📕

intelligent. Its visual acuity seems to have increased dramatically, and its teeth and jaws developed to allow it to exploit a wider range of foodstuffs.”

“I’m pretty sure the creatures that attacked me and Darya this morning were chasing fish before they were chasing us,” Callum said.

“That’s entirely plausible. Probable even,” she replied. “As Doctor Lebedev will know, if there’s one food source which remains abundant year-round in the Arctic, it’s marine life. If I’m not mistaken, the polar bear, the known apex Arctic predator, subsists almost entirely on seal meat. At any rate, all of these adaptations allowed Troodon not only to survive but to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions.” She laughed. “It’s remarkable when you think about it. This is one of the harshest environments on earth – adverse climate, limited food supply, long periods of complete darkness. But it was nothing evolution couldn’t handle.”

“This is true,” Darya said. “And what you say makes lot of sense. But surviving in the Arctic is very different to surviving mass extinction that kills almost every living thing.”

Ava smiled. “You’d think so. But it’s not necessarily all that different. Whichever version of the extinction event you subscribe to, in all likelihood the thing that finished off those remnant dinosaur populations – the animals that weren’t killed immediately, that is – was a long volcanic winter. The huge quantities of ash thrown up into the atmosphere, be it from volcanoes, a meteor, whatever, would’ve blocked out the sun, plunging the earth into darkness and cold. It would’ve been like one long polar night, one that would’ve lasted years, maybe even decades. Without light, most florae would’ve died away. Herbivorous fauna would have perished, and with no fresh meat on the menu, the carnivores were next, unless—”

“They’d already adapted to similarly harsh conditions,” Callum said.

“Precisely. It’s like I was telling you before, Doctor Ross. The idea that some species of dinosauria may have slipped through the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is nothing new. I’ve been advocating it most of my career. But I’ll admit, I never would’ve expected that species, or any derived from it, to have survived all the way through to present.”

“Sixty-five million years is a hell of an innings,” Callum said.

Ava nodded. “Damn straight. If it’s true, then it’d make this creature a member of a very exclusive club: one of the most successful faunal species known to man.” While talking, she had manoeuvred herself around to face the others, perching herself on the creature’s torso as if it were now no more than a beanbag. Her eyes were alive with discovery, her cheeks flushed with colour. “It’s not unprecedented, though. It’s what’s known as a Lazarus Taxon.”

“A Lazarus Taxon?”

“After Lazarus in the bible, the guy Christ was supposed to have resurrected. Palaeontologists use the term to refer to groups of animals, taxa, that go AWOL from the fossil record only to reappear alive and well.” She looked to Darya. “You’ve heard of the coelacanth?”

She nodded. “It is type of fish found in only two places in the world, the east coast of Africa and the north coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. I know it is very old order of fish.”

“Cretaceous old,” Ava said. “And it’s a classic Lazarus Taxon. The coelacanth turned up frequently in the Mesozoic fossil record, just like troodontids, and everybody assumed that it subsequently went extinct. Then a museum curator observed one caught in a fisherman’s net back in the 1930s. Turned out local peoples had been fishing coelacanth out of the water for generations. Anyway, the point is they survived.”

“I wonder how did they manage this,” Darya said.

“A combination of being hardy and just plain managing to go unnoticed is my guess,” Ava replied. “Food and temperature requirements have continued to restrict their range, which in turn has limited their numbers, keeping them rare. They’re extremely long-lived, up to a hundred years, and they’re also reclusive by nature. They spend most of their lives hiding out in deep underwater caves. The life of a coelacanth is so well camouflaged, even time itself overlooked them.”

“You think these Troodon successors have evolved along the same lines?” Callum asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? This island is the ideal place for a species like this to have carved out their own successful little niche. Its remoteness means that it was the last landmass on earth to be discovered by modern man, and as far as we know,” she looked to him, “the place has never been properly settled by humans.”

“As far as we know,” he agreed.

A satisfied smile appeared on her face. “It’s remarkable. All the elements have come together to preserve these creatures. A remote wilderness, virtually untouched by humans precisely because of the hostility of the environment, and a creature perfectly evolved to exploit those conditions in self-sufficient isolation.”

“Until now, Doctor Lee,” Lungkaju said. “Until now.”

He had been quiet for so long, just listening to Ava speaking, that the sudden sound of his voice, like the end of his singing, made an impact. He cocked his rifle. “But I think that whatever these creatures are, we should not wait here for them any longer.”

Chapter 13 The Compound

1

The ice had melted. The ground had thawed. The compound itself was unchanged. It was just as Koikov had left it when he, Sharova and Yudina had first raced to Dolgonosov’s aid.

Koikov shuddered and reached for a papirosa. Shit! Only two left in the carton. He lit up, inhaled deeply and began refamiliarising himself with the layout. The remaining buildings were arranged in a grid pattern to the west of the partially constructed runway. There were seven in total: four dilapidated huts and three Nissen-style hangars, rusted semi-cylinders beaten into disrepair by the extreme conditions.

The three concrete heads of the interconnected bunker system sat to the east. The forklift was still parked out front, forks lowered towards the entrance, a snapshot of the moment Koikov had first heard Dolgonosov’s screams. In the background, the remains of the fixed crane towered over the northern end of the