Time Crunch Read online

  Surface area, Chase thought again. Not of a cylinder … but of a water tank!

  He grinned, knowing he’d nailed it. Surface area described the “skin” of the cylinder. But a water tank would be sitting on the ground … so you wouldn’t have to paint the bottom!

  He began punching his calculator, figuring the surface area without the bottom of the tank. He then figured out the amount of paint he’d need, coming up with 164.85 gallons.

  He began to raise his hand, but quickly stopped himself.

  Point 85 gallons?

  Really?

  No one was going to buy .85 gallons of paint.

  He quickly rounded the number up and raised his hand.

  “Max,” the teacher finally said to a boy in the front row. “You had your hand up first. What’ve you got?”

  “He needs 235.5 gallons.”

  Mr. Scherrer sucked in his breath and scrunched his nose. “Oooh! So close!”

  Max’s face fell, and half the hands in the room dropped as students with the same answer checked their notes, wondering where they’d gone wrong.

  The teacher took another few answers—none of them right—then turned to Chase.

  “Mr. McCord, you’re smiling at me. Like to tell your classmates where they slipped up?”

  Chase felt a rumble of appreciation for his teacher. Mr. Scherrer hadn’t asked for Chase’s answer: guessing he’d figured out the trick, he was asking for Chase to explain it.

  “Good one, Mr. S.,” Chase said. “It’s a double trick question. The first thing is that since the tank’s sitting on the ground, you don’t have to paint the bottom”—

  There were moans from students who’d fallen for the trap, and Max actually slapped himself on the forehead.

  —“and when you calculate the amount of paint you get a decimal, so you have to round up to the nearest gallon.”

  There were more groans as frustrated students realized they’d been fooled again (and most of them now realizing—like Chase—the question had been way too easy).

  “Well done—”

  The teacher stopped as a sullen-looking man strode into the room.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” the principal said. The man looked around the room, spotted Chase, and crooked his finger. “Mr. McCord, would you come with me, please? Bring your backpack.”

  Surprised and a little worried (being pulled out of class by the principal was rarely a good thing), Chase stuffed his books and papers into his pack, then followed the gloomy man from the room.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’re not in trouble,” the principal said. “But your father’s called and excused you for the rest of the day. Someone’s coming to pick you up.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Don’t really know,” the principal said, though his voice suggested he didn’t approve, whatever the reason.

  The man turned down a hallway … and not the one leading to the office.

  “Where are we going?”

  The principal used the same brooding voice. “Apparently, you’re not being picked up by car.”

  Huh?

  Chase didn’t know how to process that, but heard a rumble like approaching thunder before he could respond. The noise increased, becoming so loud it began shaking the building. The principal opened a door leading outside, motioning for Chase to lead the way.

  The thunderous noise was coming from the sky, and Chase looked up to see a jet aircraft approaching the school football field. Rather than streaking through the sky, the strange plane was actually slowing as it dropped toward the grass. Chase saw the engines rotate, pointing down to allow the craft to land vertically.

  Ah, he thought. One of Mr. Wolff’s new toys.

  Mr. Wolff—the father of Chase’s best friend Zach—was CEO of a company that built exotic airplanes. Mr. Wolff often took Zach on business trips, and Zach—in turn—sometimes invited Chase along.

  “Gotta have someone to hang out with,” Zach once explained. “You know, when dad’s in meetings.”

  As a result, Chase had often flown on the company’s unique airplanes, though never on one able to take off and land vertically.

  Haven’t even seen one of those!

  The jet kicked up wind like a hurricane—dust and leaves and frenzied bits of paper whirling across the field—then settled softly to the grass. The whine of the engines subsided as a startled gym class gawked from behind a fence.

  “Zach came to get me?” Chase asked, raising his voice to be heard over the engines.

  “Don’t really know,” the principal said in the same glum voice.

  After a moment a clamshell door opened behind the flight deck, dropping a set of steps to the grass. Chase expected to see Zach come bounding out of the plane, but instead a tall, thin man in a white shirt appeared. The man looked around, spotted Chase, and began waving.

  Chase looked up at the principal—

  “Sorry ’bout this!”

  —then sprinted across the grass toward the jet.

  The man in the door was the pilot, a man Chase met during an adventure a few months earlier. Chase raced across the field and up the steps.

  “Captain King! Hi!”

  “Hello, Chase,” the pilot said, shaking Chase’s hand. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “You, too.” Chase glanced past the pilot into the flight deck: the copilot—a man Chase didn’t know—was adjusting knobs and flicking switches. A skinny birdlike man sat just behind him, pecking away on a laptop. “Where’s Captain Carter?”

  “On another assignment today—”

  Chase had already turned away, looking back into the cabin. Eight tough-looking men in jungle-camouflage fatigues were sorting through some kind of supplies. But—

  “Where’s Zach?”

  “Zach’s not here,” one of the men called. He was a gruff-sounding man with a face that could have been made from an old football. He gestured to Captain King, who gave Chase a clap on the shoulder before closing the door and returning to the flight deck.

  The brusque man dropped into a seat and motioned for Chase to join him.

  “What’s going on?” Chase asked as the engines began spooling up.

  “We’re not actually joining Zach and his father, as you probably thought,” the man said in a voice like broken gravel.

  “Then where are we going?”

  The man nodded toward the other men before turning back to Chase.

  “This,” he said, “is a rescue mission.”

  2 The Mission

  CHASE FELT HIS jaw drop.

  “A rescue mission? What’s going on?”

  “Your friend Zach is in trouble,” the man said. “And quite a bit of danger.”

  “What kind of danger?”

  The man frowned, and Chase sensed him hesitate.

  Like he’s not certain how much to tell me.

  There was a roar like a passing train as the jet’s engines throttled up; the plane began to shake. Without taking his eyes off the gruff man’s face, Chase dropped into a seat and buckled his lap belt. A moment later the jet rocked and then began rising into the air. The ride quickly smoothed out as the plane moved forward, climbing and gathering speed.

  The strange man took a quick look out the window, glanced at his watch, then turned back to Chase.

  “I’m told you’re a smart kid,” he said. “And that you figured out the whole ‘Time Snap’ thing a few months ago.”

  “I had some help,” Chase replied modestly.

  “And that you understand the concept of interdimensional travel …”

  Chase nodded. He understood there was more than one reality in existence: more than one universe. That there were, in fact, many alternate, parallel realities, all of them existing simultaneously like mirror images of one another. Chase had once even interacted with some of them.

  Shoot, I’ve even met my own “twin” from one of them …

  “Mr. Wolff’s company,” the man co
ntinued, breaking into Chase’s thoughts, “has developed a method for traveling from one reality to another. Or, if you prefer, from one universe to another.”

  Chase felt his eyes widen. “You can do that? Like, whenever you want?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, of course. But the key is understanding that not all realities have existed as long as ours. They haven’t yet reached the same degree of progression, so traveling to one of them—”

  “Would be like going back in time?”

  “Essentially, yes.” The man’s face wrinkled. “We don’t actually travel through time, of course. But when we enter a reality that exists at a time earlier or later than our own, it’s hard to tell the difference. It does seem as though we’ve traveled through time.”

  “Jeez, Louise.”

  Chase sat back in his seat, overwhelmed by the revelation. A couple of months earlier, he and Zach and others experienced a bizarre accident, a weird “Time Snap” in which the past, present, and future had been thrown together.

  With disastrous results.

  But that had been an accident, the result of a freakish, one-of-a-kind mishap. The idea of visiting other realities whenever you wanted was staggering.

  But that’s exactly what the guy’s saying …

  THE JET WAS still accelerating. A panel on the bulkhead said it was climbing through 10,000 feet and traveling at nearly 300 knots—more than 345 miles an hour—but Chase was barely paying attention.

  “You really can travel into alternate realities?” Chase asked, wanting to be certain he understood. “Anytime you want?”

  “Absolutely, yes.”

  “But how—”

  “I’ll let Jaffa explain it all a little later,” the man said, gesturing to the birdlike man behind the pilots. “But for now, we need to focus on Zach. He’s in trouble, time is short, and we need your help.”

  “My help? Why? Where is he? What’s the—”

  “Okay, okay … here’s the situation. Mr. Wolff allowed Zach to join an excursion to what—in our world—would be the Mid Mesozoic Era—”

  “What?”

  “It was a reward for earning an A in biology—”

  Chase couldn’t help rolling his eyes: That again?

  “—but he became separated from the group. The aircraft was forced to leave—”

  “What? You left him? You actually left a fourteen-year-old kid behind in some slimy Jurassic swamp?”

  Chase shook his head in disbelief.

  How could anyone do that? How could they actually leave anyone alone in a world filled with dinosaurs?

  Chase couldn’t begin to imagine what Zach must be going through.

  The man was speaking again.

  “Believe me, it wasn’t as thoughtless as it sounds. Several people were attacked and critically injured. They needed medical attention, and when they weren’t able to find Zach they were forced to leave without him. But that’s why we’re here. We’re on our way to get him, and to bring him home safely.”

  Chase still couldn’t believe it. But: “Why me? Why am I here?”

  “Because you’re his best friend. You know him better than anyone, including his parents. You know how he thinks. We’re hoping that once we … arrive … you might give us insights into what he might have been thinking. Or planning. We’re hoping you’ll be able to look at the situation through his eyes, step into his shoes, and help us retrace his steps. We think you’ll be the key to finding him quickly.”

  The man paused, then added: “We weren’t exactly upfront with your parents: they believe you’re simply on another trip with the Wolffs and that you’ll make up your school work when you return. Believe me, we didn’t want to be so … deceptive. But we didn’t have time to do things, well, more properly.”

  He gave Chase a strong look.

  “I know this is all happening pretty fast, but we’re going to land to refuel in about an hour. If you want, we’ll let you off and see that you get back home before you miss too much school.”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s entirely up to you.”

  “No, no,” Chase said quickly. “Count me in.”

  Actually, he thought, it all made a kind of weird sense. With his friend lost in some primordial swamp, Chase had a better chance of knowing what he might think—or do—than a bunch of commandos who’d never met him.

  Especially when Zach’s “goofy” factor is going full blast.

  And as far as “tricking” him into coming, he understood that, too. Talking to Chase’s parents and getting their permission would have taken time, and the men were in a hurry.

  Yeah, I can just see that conversation:

  “Hi, Mrs. McCord? Yes, we’re wondering if we could take Chase back with us to the time of dinosaurs. What? Oh, absolutely, yes … we’ll certainly remind him to be careful!”

  He almost grinned.

  Yeah, no way would that conversation end well!

  Chase knew he’d have some heavy-duty explaining to do later. But in the meantime, every second they delayed could mean the difference in whether Zach made it or not.

  Chase inhaled deeply, knowing he had to go: there was no way he’d turn down a chance to help his best friend. But still …

  “Who’re you?” he asked.

  “My name’s Smith,” the man said. “I work for Mr. Wolff.” He gestured to the men behind him, who were sorting through piles of exotic military gear. “We’re a special … extraction team.”

  Chase nodded. The eight men had the look of soldiers all right … commandos who’d been there, done that, and were probably able to scale sheer cliffs with their fingertips.

  He felt a sense of comfort knowing they were coming, too.

  “And Zach’s really in the Mid Mesozoic right now? That’s the Jurassic Period, right?”

  “Late Callovian Stage, if you want to be technical,” Smith said. “There’s no way to pin down the precise date, but we’re talking 165 million years ago.”

  Jeez, Louise, Chase thought, shaking his head. It was almost too much to comprehend.

  He looked back at Smith.

  “So where are we going now?” he asked.

  “We’re on our way,” Smith said. “We’ve got a ways to go, but … we’re on our way.”

  3 Into the Forest

  CHASE GAPED.

  “You mean we’re going there right now?” He reeled, remembering that Time Snaps weren’t at all pleasant and were, in fact, sort of painful.

  “Yes. It’s just a matter of finding the point of entry, then surging an enormous pulse of energy through the aircraft to make the transition.” And then, as if knowing what Chase was thinking: “But don’t worry. Controlled entries don’t hurt. They’re not like what you experienced before.”

  “Okay, but, well … this is all just happening so fast! I can’t believe we’re really doing this.”

  “Don’t worry,” Smith repeated. “We’ve done this several times, and it’s perfectly safe.” He pointed toward the flight deck. “Jaffa—he’s the man sitting behind the pilots—determines the time and place of entry. It involves precise mathematical calculations—I’m sure he’ll explain it to you once we’re on the ground—and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Mathematical calculations? What if he gets them wrong?”

  “Well, in that case we’ll punch into a reality other than the one we’re aiming for.”

  “Has that ever happened?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And what if it does?”

  “If we fly into a reality without knowing our exact coordinates, it would be difficult to get back home again.”

  “Difficult?”

  “Well, close to impossible really.” Smith reached over and patted Chase’s knee. “But don’t worry … Jaffa’s good at this. And besides, we’re all here, too. We wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t confident of getting back home again.”

  Chase didn’t reply. Everything was happening too quickly to process. On t
op of that, he felt a sense of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach. It was a sense he’d felt before—a sense that told him something wasn’t right about all this.

  And it was a sense that had never let him down.

  SMITH LEFT TO check on his men, and Chase moved next to the window. He could see towns, cities, highways, and farms as the plane shot along at—he checked the dial on the forward bulkhead—32,000 feet.

  Jeez, Louis, he thought. The Mesozoic Era!

  Mesozoic meant “middle animal,” and was often referred to as the age of reptiles.

  The age of dinosaurs!

  The Mesozoic Era stretched from about 252 to 65 million years ago, and was divided into the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. The Callovian Stage—the one to which they were travelling—was a division of the Mid Jurassic.

  And the animals!

  Pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, stegosaurs, ceratosaurs, ankylosaurs, allosaurs, brachiosaurs, giganotosaurs …

  The names and images spun through his head.

  And those are just the scary ones!

  He shook his head.

  When he thought of “reptiles,” he pictured horny toads, blue bellies, and chameleons: innocent little lizards he could pick up and hold in his hand.

  But Mesozoic “reptiles” included ten-ton carnivores and forty-ton sauropods.

  T-rex, he thought. Paleontologists had differing opinions, but Chase believed tyrannosaurs mostly existed in the Cretaceous. So if they were really travelling to the Callovian Stage—in the Mid Jurassic—they’d miss the King Tyrant Lizard by tens of millions of years.

  Even so …

  It was too incredible to believe. As was Smith’s calm, matter-of-fact announcement: “We’re on our way.”

  As if the trip was nothing more than an excursion to the local shopping mall.

  THE JET FLEW FOR another hour before setting down at a remote country airport, landing on an actual runway like an ordinary aircraft. As the crew refueled the jet—Jaffa still tapping away on his laptop—two of Smith’s men left, returning with several pizzas, boxes of cheesy bread sticks, and frosted bottles of Coke, Dr Pepper, and Mt. Dew.

  No beer, Chase noticed as he chewed on a thick slice of hot meat lover’s, washing it down with gulps of cold Dr Pepper. He thought men like these would be chugging beer by the keg, but—