The case of the mosasaur
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.
Several days later, Connor and Helen were sitting in the Home Office's cafeteria, eating the local food and enjoying it.
"Fast food! Expensive fast food!" Connor was saying cheerfully. "How much did I miss you!"
"Hmm. Warm, fresh, somewhat spicy. I can eat this, every once or twice in a while," Helen nodded in agreement. "Oh, hello there, Ms. Brown. Are you going to be joining our meal?"
"No," Claudia shook her head, regretfully. Though never a big fan of fast food, (there was the consideration of her figure to think about) she had to admit that Connor and Helen were having fun – without her. (But that's how it always is, a voice whispered in Claudia's head. Other people are having fun, and you have no idea how to join them in the first place. Claudia ignored this voice, though lately it was becoming harder to do so.) "Sir Lester is summoning us for some emergency."
Both Connor and Helen made faces. Neither of them had been particularly impressed by James Lester upon meeting him for the first time, and it was reciprocated, most likely. Still, to Claudia's surprise, neither of them made a complaint (like more hardened Home Office workers could've done), but followed Claudia without a fuss instead.
/
As the odd trio were approaching Lester's office, Helen's gorgonopsid joined them, making excited noises. "There you are, fellow," Helen said with a clear appreciation in her voice. "How are you today?"
"He's feeling fine, and so am I," captain Ryan joined them before Lester's office. "A fine fellow he is, and so are his smaller companions," he grinned in a conspirational way.
Claudia was barely able to hold in a sigh. Captain Ryan and his men became assigned to Claudia and her impromptu team after the debacle with the subway train a couple of weeks earlier. Since then, the mysterious anomalies of Connor and Helen failed to manifest once again, and while some (primarily Helen) appeared to be actually relieved at that, Claudia half-expected captain Ryan to be resentful at the lack of action, but he wasn't.
Of course, Helen's animal companions may have been a part of that lack. The giant gorgonopsid, obviously, still followed Helen around and looked slightly askance at everyone else, and the dicynodont still trusted only Claudia, but the trio of therocephalians have bonded with Ryan and his men easily enough, and they were a clear indicator that the time anomalies did exist, at least at some point in time, pun intended.
"Ah, there you all are! I see that you're just as eager to see you as always," James Lester joined the impromptu throng outside of his office.
"James, stop being snarky and tell us why you have summoned us," captain Ryan replied instead.
"There are rumours of a giant sea lizard eating people at a swimming pool near the Thames River," Lester replied sternly. "Go there and do your duty!"
The other four people (and one mammal-like reptile) just exchanged looks and left.
/
"So, a giant marine lizard," Claudia carefully looked at Helen and the gorgonopsid, who decided to come along the foursome, and no one, not even Helen, thought to tell it no. "Have you met any when you met your friend?"
"No," Helen replied, sounding slightly confused. "The Permian wasn't the time of any giant marine reptiles, but I met some in the Jurassic."
"The Jurassic?" Connor choked. "But the therocephalians, the dicynodont – they're Triassic animals!"
"They are," Helen admitted, "but before I came to Permian and Triassic, I was in the Jurassic, and I saw marine reptiles there."
"What were they like?" Connor asked, awed.
"Let's see," Helen looked thoughtful. "There were two kinds. There were the fish-lizards – the ichthyosaurs, I think, correct?" she turned to Connor, who nodded in agreement. "They were like dolphins, never came ashore, but spent all of their time in the open sea. The other were the long-necks, the plesiosaurs, who were more like seals or sea lions, which means that they came ashore to rest and to bask in the sun. Neither sounds particularly lizard-like, I admit, and neither looked very interested in eating me, when I was around."
"Then maybe it's not from the Jurassic," captain Ryan spoke up suddenly, "but from some other time?"
"Probably," Helen nodded. "Connor, you have any ideas what else can it be?"
"Maybe a mosasaur," Connor said slowly, "but I'm not so sure. After all, Lester's statement wasn't very informative, was it?"
"What we need," Helen said with a sudden certainty, "is a witness. That would make things easier, I bet."
/
And there was a witness – a rather traumatized young woman being harassed by the police about the supposed disappearance of her boyfriend.
"Right," Ryan exchanged looks with the others. "Let's start from here, shall we?" He (followed by Helen and the others) approached the woman in question and said, rather politely: "Excuse me?"
"What?" the police officer glared at Ryan. "And who are you?" He visibly cooled down once he realized that Ryan and his people had a rather officially military look upon them.
"We're with the government," Ryan said before Claudia could, "and we want to ask the young lady several questions about the lizard."
"So you believe me?" the young woman perked up somewhat.
"That depends," Helen said, sitting down and smoothly pulling out a writing pad and a pencil, "on a number of factors, starting with the fact, what makes you think that it was a lizard?"
"Because it looked like one!" the young woman said very firmly.
"Really?" Helen asked, turning her writing pad around – she had quickly drawn a rather realistic-looking sketch of an ordinary lizard upon it. "You mean like this?"
"No!" her interlocutrix replied with a huff. "It had flippers for feet – almost like oars, and an oar-like tail..."
"Like this?" Helen had drawn rather sketchy-looking outlines of oars around her sketched lizard's legs and tail.
"Yes!" the young woman said. "Exactly! Well, not exactly but close enough..."
"So, Connor, what do you think?" Helen turned to the resident palaeontologist. "A giant marine lizard with flippers for feet and a finned tail?"
"Sounds like a mosasaur of some sort, and that's not good," Connor shivered. "They may've been related to lizards, but they behaved more like dinosaurs – carnivorous dinosaurs. Think a T-Rex that went to the seas, basically."
"Excuse me, but what are you talking about?" the police officer erupted. "This is an official investigation, this woman is a suspect in a murder criminal case-"
"One more thing," Claudia picked up her courage and peaked from behind Ryan. "Did you see that giant lizard? Would you say that it was big enough to eat your friend?"
"Yes!" the young woman said without hesitation. "And it was powerful enough to crack one of the building's underwater windows without really trying, you know, and they're made from somehow tempered glass that can resist underwater pressure..."
"And there is a cracked window she's speaking about?" Claudia turned to the head of the police investigation.
"Yes," he drawled out, clearly unhappy about it.
"That's all that we need to hear," Claudia said firmly, "and here, take this card. If the police get too overbearing, call this number and tell John Luso – he's a lawyer – that Ms. Brown of the Home Office has recommended him to you."
"Thanks," the other woman replied gratefully, but Claudia and others were already leaving.
/
"Now that that's over, how are we to kill it?" captain Ryan spoke as soon as they were out of the earshot of the police and their suspect.
"With great difficulty, if at all," Helen replied before Connor could. "First, though, Connor, can you please tell us something about the animal?"
"I already told you everything that we currently need to know beforehand," Connor said, visibly unhappy. "It's an alpha predator, basically a cross between a T-Rex and a modern killer whale, it probably didn't come ashore to breed or to sleep, but it could hunt in the shallows as well as in deeper water. Before the mass extinction, they were even coming into fresh water, so odds are our quarry is quite comfortable in Thames... and we're not going to kill it, are we?"
Helen looked thoughtful. "Probably not. I believe that it's almost impossible to get a kill shot in this murky water, and if we don't kill it outright it'll come after us and kill us." She looked at the others. "What? We're not going to be standing ashore and looking for it from there, are we?"
"No, what we need is a boat," Ryan said thoughtfully.
"Makes sense," Helen agreed. "I was thinking that we make a bait ball and when the mosasaur takes it, we stick with some sort of a harpoon that has a buoy attached to it to prevent the animal from diving. Then we capture it, or kill it, or something. How does that sound?"
"Um, if we attack the mosasaur on Thames in a boat with a harpoon won't it attack us back and capsize the boat?" Claudia said meekly and was surprised to see Helen genuinely surprised.
"I haven't thought of that," the other woman said quietly. "Well, there goes this idea. Who's got another one?"
"Maybe not," Ryan said suddenly. "Helen, you and Connor go and get us a bait ball – it's a much better idea than you give it a credit for. Ms. Brown, you're coming with me."
And so the little group parted ways.
/
"That was embarrassing," Helen muttered to Connor, as the two of them, flanked by her gorgonopsid, and followed at a discreet distance by a couple of Ryan's men, "I got to admit, I should've seen the flaw in the plan-"
"Eh, don't think about it," Connor said cheerfully. "It was still a lot better than to just hunt the mosasaur from the shore. Just don't think of yourself as unfallable, and that will be fine."
Helen just nodded noncommittally, failing to say that her oversight was born primarily by her supreme confidence in her ability of handling that mosasaur even in water and a capsized boat, than from anything else. "Right," she said instead, "let's go and get us a bait ball."
"And how are we going to do that?" Connor suspiciously asked.
"The usual way. We buy it. Gentlemen," she turned and faced Ryan's men directly, "while me and Mr. Temple are buying fish, can you go and buy us some raw meat for the bait as well?"
"Sure, ma'am," one of the soldiers replied, sounding slightly surprised, "what sort of meat?"
"Connor? Any suggestions?" Helen turned to the palaeontology student. "Did mosasaurs eat meat to begin with?"
"Yes," Connor said, looking slightly embarrassed. "They ate everything they came across in the seas, most likely. They ate bony fish, they ate sharks, they ate other marine reptiles, and they ate flightless aquatic birds such as Hesperornis..." Connor trailed away as a loud avian cry caught everyone's attention – and it came from a large, flightless, aquatic bird.
"Hesperornis," Connor muttered excitedly, and moved forwards. The bird emitted one more cry and dived.
"New plan," Helen caught Connor firmly by the collar. "First we buy fish, meat, and twine, and then we're calling captain Ryan and Claudia. Got it?"
The others nodded in agreement.
/
"So, Claudia, why're you so quiet?" Ryan asked the blonde woman. "I admit, you're never particularly loud, but today you're quiet even by your own standards. What's up?"
"I don't know," Claudia confessed, "I guess I'm just feeling redundant. Helen and Connor are complimenting each other quite nicely, and you're taking care of the rest. Where does this leave me?"
"Bull! You're just important as anyone else here!" Ryan shook his head. "You helped that poor girl out and you saw the flaw in Helen's plan that no one of us could."
"Not even you?" Claudia couldn't help but ask.
"Yeah," Ryan nodded. "In case you hadn't noticed, my plan consisted basically of hunting the giant lizard from the shore – not the most efficient way of doing this, to be sure."
"But how are we going to do this?" Claudia persisted. "If that mosasaur will capsize the boat, I mean?"
"Not this one," Ryan smiled assuredly, as the two of them approached a wharf with a rather impressive looking hydrofoil of a boat with the words and numbers "Super tanker 1969" painted on its side. "Oi! Wilder! Are you there?"
"Ryan," a man somehow similar to Ryan, with somewhat ill-fitting civilian clothing upon him. "What's up? Please tell me that it is a coincidence that you're here with a date when there are rumours of a sea monster in Thames."
"Sorry, Wilder," Ryan shook his head, sounding not very sympathetic at all. "But Ms. Brown and I need to loan your boat exactly to capture it."
"Someday, Ryan," Wilder muttered crossly, "someday..."
/
When the hydrofoil, piloted by Ryan and manned (or, rather, womanned) by Claudia approached the rendezvous place with Helen, Connor, and the others, everyone (except for Connor), was busy putting the bait ball together.
"Hi, everybody!" Ryan yelled cheerfully. "All aboard the "Super tanker 1969"!"
"What sort of a name is it?" Connor asked, honestly confused.
"Not mine," Ryan said, somewhat cheekily, "this hydrofoil hydrocraft belongs to a mate of mine from the military times, and he owed me a ride on it. So, here we are." He paused and faced the other members of his team. "So, where are we going to start?"
"Well, due to a lucky encounter with an aquatic flightless bird we now know where the underwater time anomaly is," Helen confessed. "So, if we start upstream from it, we probably have a better chance luring the mosasaur into it, captain."
"What flightless bird?" Claudia asked, alarmed.
"That one," Connor pointed to a black feathery neck and a red, leathery, featherless, beaked head bobbing from beneath Thames' waves. "These birds lived alongside mosasaurs and were hunted by them. We were thinking that once we get the bloody bait ball into the water, the birds will come and eat it, and the mosasaur will come to eat both them and the bait, or whatever. What do you think?"
"Sounds like a plan," Ryan nodded thoughtfully, even as he reckoned he saw a large, somewhat armoured back of the marine reptile appear briefly on the water's surface. "Claudia?"
The Home Office member nodded. "Let's do it."
/
The bait ball was carefully lowered in the water, attached to the hydrofoil with a firm steel cable and a winch. As soon as it went into the water, several man-sized shadows, moving through the water as easily as if they were fish, went towards it, looking as determined as if they were torpedoes. Another, much bigger, completely different shape surged after them, coming from below, looking for all things like a giant lizard.
"And we're off! Slowly!" Claudia yelled to Ryan. "They've taken the bait!"
From his position at the steering wheel, Ryan nodded and began to move the hydrofoil forwards, relatively slowly. Since both the flightless birds and the mosasaur were quite fast in their own right, this slowness went none too slowly, actually, and soon the underwater time anomaly (Connor was keeping a watch for it with an underwater periscope) was in the sights.
"Time anomaly straight ahead!" Connor yelled from his vantage point even as he climbed further up the deck, away from Thames.
"Roger!" Ryan yelled back. "Cut the bait ball!"
Even as Ryan yelled it, he steered hard to the right. The bait ball, swinging on its cable, swung to the left, caught in the underwater current that was leading to the time anomaly. As soon as it was cut away from the hydrofoil, it went on towards the time anomaly, both because of its own momentum and the current. The flock of Hesperornis followed the bait ball, and the mosasaur followed the flock. Within moments, the strange procession passed through the time anomaly, which fortunately snapped shut just behind the mosasaur's snaking tail.
"Well, that was easy," Ryan said cheerfully to the others.
Connor, Claudia and Helen exchanged looks and threw several remaining fish heads at him instead.
End
