Nodal Convergence - Excerpt

Chapter 3: Cretaceous Station

"Brachiosaurus was built like a giraffe and may have fed like one. But most sauropods were built quite differently. At the base of the neck a sauropod's vertebral spines, unlike those of a giraffe, were weak and low and did not provide leverage for the muscles required to elevate the head in a high position. Furthermore, the blood pressure required to pump blood up to the brain, thirty or more feet in the air, would have placed extraordinary demands on the heart …  and would seemingly have placed the animal at severe risk of a stroke, an aneurysm, or some other circulatory disaster. If sauropods fed with the neck extended just a little above heart level, say from ground level up to fifteen feet, the blood pressure required would have been far more reasonable."

Peter Dodson, Natural History, "Lifestyles of the Huge and Famous", Dec. 1991

The earth passed beneath his feet, the sky rose beneath him and his world spun round. He landed flat on his back and instinctively held his breath to allow the spasms of his diaphragm to pass. This wasn’t the first time he’d had the wind knocked out of him. It was however, one of the few times in his life that someone had the gall to laugh at him and Colonel Daniel Drake didn’t like it.

"I didn’t trip, stop laughing!" The Colonel gasped back to Seth Sassaman as he pushed himself upright and almost ended up flat on his face.

Seth suddenly realized what he had just done, "Sorry sir, but you should have seen the look on your face. Here let me …" Seth took a step off the Hunter’s ramp and yelled as he flew up and over landing alongside his Colonel.

Dan reached over to grab Seth’s shoulder and commanded, "Stop, don’t move. Adrian," he called over his radio, "check the ship’s field. You must have forgotten something. We were just thrown flat on our backs."

"Nothing’s wrong with the ship or its field Colonel. In fact, you’re outside the perimeter now, so it should have no effect on you," Adrian smartly responded from inside the Hunter.

Dan grabbed Seth’s shoulder and slowly stood up. Things felt odd. He took a step. "So much for the protective face masks. We both lost...shit, what’s going on here. I feel like I have springs on my feet. Adrian call Matt Zoeller and ask him to come online so we can talk."

"Hi Dan," Matt, high up in the ship, returned the call almost instantly. "I have to agree with Seth’s original reaction, you both look pretty funny on the vid. It’s gotta be all over the ship by now."

"The most obvious explanation is a change in the strength of the local gravity," Matt continued. "You didn’t feel it until now because the Hunter maintains a constant one–earth gravity. However, when you stepped out of the Hunter’s field ... well, at least you didn’t fly off like some bird when you took that step. I’d guess from what I saw on this vid, the local gravity is something more than Lunar, maybe about 0.8 G. You’re going to have to step a little easier until your reflexes adjust. Remember too, be careful when you reenter the Hunter’s higher gravity. Make sure you grab onto something."

Seth had gotten up while Dr. Zoeller was talking and started experimenting with small steps and jumps. "This is really fun, ain’t it? Smell the air! It’s clean and the scents are so sharp I can feel it fill my lungs with all these new aroma’s and energy. Watch this..."

"Seth’s high energy is probably because of the higher oxygen content.” The Colonel responded, “Lord knows what else we’ve subjected ourselves to by losing our masks here. Seth, if you break a leg by jumping around like that I’m going to restrict you to quarters until it heals. Stop it!

"Adrian, ask Paul Wenford to start a gas analysis. I want to know exactly what we are breathing. Have security come out, but tell them to be careful when they do. They still need to wear masks unless I say otherwise. Setup a security perimeter while we unload the equipment. Teams of at least two, no less."

Another transmission from Doctor Mark Nolen on the Argos broke into the conversation, "Dan, you just made my day. Do you realize that in one simple step you justified our whole expedition? No expensive test equipment. No arduous note taking and lab recording. Just one security chief laying flat on his back!"

"What do you mean Mark? Expedition is over?"  The Colonel shot back.

The joy was evident in Mark's reply, "No, far from it Dan, but with a simple slip you’ve shown that the gravitational pull on the earth has changed. This means that either the mass of the earth has grown very significantly in our timeframe or some of the so-called universal constants are actually variables. We know that the planet’s mass has not changed significantly, so it’s now a matter of determining what variables we need to modify in our gravitonic models. The question now remains, is it the gravitational constant itself or some other so-called universal constant? For the first time we know that we are on the right track and that’s half the battle."

 

End Excerpt