‘I hope you’ll be here when we go,’ I said and Sussman nodded.
‘Of course we will. Give us a shout if you need us.’ And they wandered off, presumably to spread the word.
We got stuck in again and set up the categories.
The star map; they wanted to map the night sky. Conditions would be ideal with no light pollution. I had no idea how different the stars would be all that time ago, but now was a good time to find out, I suppose. However, we’d need horizon-to-horizon vision, so we wouldn’t want to be in the middle of a forest. Ideally, we could set up on the pod roof and just leave the equipment to do its thing. I made a note to talk to the Chief about co-ordinates and how much control we would have. None, I guessed. We would almost certainly land in some boggy swamp, or under water. Don’t think about that. We colour-coded that black and moved on.
We looked at climate next, dividing that down into sub-sections, temperature, wind, rain, etc. Oxygen levels would be important. I’d heard CO 2 levels were higher then. Too high and moving all our kit around would be difficult. I made another note to talk to Helen about high-altitude medication. Climate was allocated blue.
Geology would be interesting. I wanted that one for myself, although I wouldn’t be telling Sussman that. There would be a certain amount of horse-trading and almost certainly tears before bedtime. We couldn’t bring anything back, so all samples must be photographed, catalogued, and analysed on-site. That meant even more equipment. And from what I could remember, the period was seismically active, so we could add being enveloped in pyroclastic flows to our list of fun ways to die. Geology was imaginatively coded brown.
Flora: again no samples; only photos, images, and on the spot analysis. No grass, if I remembered rightly, and lots of coniferous forests, though broad-leafed trees did exist. And flowers had evolved too, so we could expect big, stingy insects. Yay! Flora got green.
And so to the biggie – fauna; a field so big we decided to spend a week or so on research before coming up with a plan. Fauna was orange.
‘Like techies,’ said Sussman. ‘Big and clumsy with small brains.’
I frowned at him. ‘Don’t do that, Davey.’
‘Oh, I forgot, you actually talk to them, don’t you?’
‘Davey …’
‘Well, I’m just saying, I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.’
‘You haven’t got a sister and if you did she’d slap you senseless if you tried any of that crap on her, so give it a rest.’
He sat back in his chair. ‘You’re the boss; so who gets what, then?’
This was where he could be difficult if not carefully managed. ‘What do you want? Make a case. And don’t cherry-pick all the good stuff for yourself.’
‘I’d like the star map. I could do a good job there. You know I could. I’ll talk to Barclay about it. She’s red-hot at this sort of thing. She tells me what she wants and I set the equipment accordingly. Then I can liaise again when we get back. We’ll input the data and project a moving star map. It could be spectacular, Max and I’d like to do it.’
I thought. He was right. He certainly got on better with Barclay. They could produce something really exceptional. I nodded. ‘Yes, agreed. I’ll leave it with you, but I want daily updates and full training. If anything happens to you then I’m your back-up.’
His face lit up. ‘That’s great, Max. It’ll be the dog’s bollocks. You just wait.’ He paused and I knew. This was it. This was what he really wanted.
‘The dinosaurs … I’m thinking we could do something similar.’
I started to shake my head.
‘No, listen Max. We could do something along the lines of “A Day in the Life of …” We’ve done statics for junior schools – “A Day in the Life of a Medieval Peasant” or a Roman soldier or an Egyptian stone mason, you know the sort of thing. We can set up near a waterhole or some centre of activity. We’ll have everything coming down to drink, or bathe, or whatever they do. And there’ll be fights and kills and sex and cute babies. Max, just think, if we could pull it off, we can do a 3D holo for this. People could actually look up at some thumping great reptile as it passes twenty feet above them. We’ll have sound as well and the computer can add vibrations, even the smell of dinosaur shit. Barclay can work all that out. Come on Max, it’ll be awesome!’
It would too; images of actual dinosaurs, living, walking; a dinosaur experience. It was a brilliant idea, but he wasn’t going to get it easily.