“Shall we?” La started down the ramp. Matt and Martha followed as soon as they could get untangled from the harnesses.

It seemed idyllic. It was warm, but the sea breeze was pleasant, the bulk of the craft shielding them from the tropical sun. Seabirds cried out above them.

Above the tall trees, a dinosaur’s head reared up and looked down at them, tilting in curiosity.

“Trouble,” La said. Matt had the pistol out just in time for a dinosaur the size and apparent disposition of a large mastiff. It came loping down toward them with a murderous ululation.

Matt fired, the sudden bang loud as a cannon, and the creature stopped dead. But it hadn’t been hit. It advanced more slowly, clawed hands out, jaws open, white mouth with too many teeth. Matt aimed and fired again, and the bullet blew through its lower jaw. A gout of red blood rib-boned out. It screamed and staggered backward, and then a flying reptile appeared and dropped on its back with a dull thud and ripped off its face. Three more of them landed, then a fourth and fifth, and they started fighting over the carcass.

“Defense,” La shouted, perhaps belatedly. Weapon barrels bristled out all over the ship, and they began firing, a screech and a sound like a sledgehammer hitting on a metal wall.

Whatever the nature of the weapon, it was effective. One after another, the flying creatures dropped to the ground, to die in convulsions.

One hopped, half-flying, straight toward them. It went over Matt’s head and scampered up the ramp. He fired one shot and it ricocheted off metal.

Behind him, Martha had fainted dead away.

“Get back!” La said. “Into the ship!”

“Are you crazy? That thing’sin there!”

“Not anymore. Carry Martha.”

He scooped her up clumsily and staggered up the ramp, waving the gun around.

When he got inside the ship, there was no trace of the monster except a slight smell of fried chicken.

La hurried up the ramp as it rose. It sealed with a clunk and a slight drop in air pressure.

He’d put Martha on the couch and was kneeling by her head. “You couldn’t have killed it out there? Before it—”

“No,” she said calmly. “It wasn’t me out there; just a projection of me. Once it came inside the ship, I was in total control.”

“I guess we’d better behave ourselves. In the ship.”

“Ha.” She looked through the windshield at the carnage below. Three new flying reptiles were tearing apart the corpses of their brothers, wary of each other in spite of the abundance of food.

“Those creatures didn’t come about by natural selection, ” Matt said. “Not in twenty-four thousand years.”

“I’d assume not; they were bioengineered. By whom and what for is the question.”

He remembered what the Jesus figure had said. “Go south? Toward the radio waves?”

She nodded. “New Zealand or Australia.”

“Australia,” Martha said, sitting up on the couch, groggy. “Watch out for large animals.”

“Always good advice,” La said. To Matt: “I’ll go slowly. You don’t have to strap in, but you’d better sit down. I’d suggest the couch.”

He sat next to Martha and put his arm around her. She leaned into him, and they eased back as the ship rose gently.

“This will be a couple of hours,” La said, “staying in the atmosphere. Might as well try to rest.”

Sleep after that? Matt thought. But Martha was already nodding off, from nightmare to dream. He closed his eyes and enjoyed her closeness, resting without sleep.

“Wake up,” La said. “We’re under someone else’scontrol. Better strap in.”

They scrambled into the acceleration couches, staring out at a wonderland. A city that looked like a huge ice sculpture, an abstraction of sweeping curves and gossamer threads glowing amber in the light of the setting sun. There were no other aircraft visible. A large harbor had quiet enough water to mirror perfectly the fantastic skyline.

“We’re being hauled in by some kind of tractor beam. I can’t understand what’s coming in on the radio.”

“You wouldn’t expect to, would you? After so long?”

“You could hope. But I’m just broadcasting a few phrases over and over in fifteen languages. See what they—”

“Hello, there,” the speakers said. The husky voice could have been either male or female; it had a slight Australian twang. “Please don’t be upset that we have taken control of your vehicle. All traffic near the city is regulated by the city.”

“I used to do that myself,” La said.

“From how far in the past did you come?”

“Twenty-four thousand years,” La said. “Do you get many time travelers?”

“Not really. The last one was several centuries ago. Does your machine involve an inexplicable anomaly having to do with gravitons, lots of them, in another dimension? ”

“It does, in fact. Can you help us explain it?”

“We can’t, actually. We don’t currently have working time machines.”

“Damn,” Matt said. “Another jump.”

“Maybe not,” La said. “We may hold the key for them to produce one.”

There was a flat area ahead, blinking yellow. They settled into it, in front of rows of streamlined vehicles of various shapes and sizes.

The ramp eased down and let in cold air. Their suits warmed as they walked down it.

Just before La stepped off, someone appeared. Nude, with small female breasts and small male genitals. “You still have gender,” it, or she, or he, said. “Except for you. You’re like me.”

“In some ways, I suppose,” La said. “You’re a projection? ”

“Yes. No one alive speaks anything like your language. People, physical people, are also cautious about coming into contact with you. There has been no disease in about twenty thousand years, except for an outbreak of influenza brought by a time traveler.”

“From the past, or the future?” Matt asked.

“Always from the past. If people have come from the future, they’ve kept it secret.” He looked closely at Matt. “You’re not from the future?”

“No, I’m from the 2050s.”

“As I told you,” La said, with a trace of asperity.

“Well, you looklike you could be from the future. Dressed like that. And the way your ship is armed.”

“It helps,” Matt said, “when you run into huge flying reptiles with teeth.”

“Oh . . . you were up there, what you’d call Indonesia. That was not a great success.”

“Bioengineering?” La said.

“In a way. Sort of an amusement park, which turned out too dangerous to be really amusing.

“We’ve been more successful, working with species that already exist. In Africa, we have elephants and apes and such with augmented intelligence; they’re delightful. Starting from scratch, as we did with the dinosaurs and Martians . . . you’d think they’d be easierto control, but they aren’t; they tend to go their own way.”

“You’ve made Martians on Earth?” Matt said.

He squinted, an unreadable expression. “Why would you want to do that? On Mars, of course. Big puffballs that bounce around and keep to themselves. They stopped talking to us centuries ago, millennia. And their language now, if it is still a language, is incomprehensible.”

After an uncomfortable silence, La said, “Can you take us to someone in authority?”

“No. You can’t come into the city’s biosphere. And no one’s coming out here. Some were in favor of destroying you, to make sure you couldn’t infect us. But more wanted to investigate you.”

“That’s good. Shall we begin the investigation?”

“It’s over. You may go.” He tilted his head, as if listening to something. “I think you’d better go, now. Where did you come from, in the past?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Go there. You’ll find it amusing.”

“Will the people there be expecting us?”

“There are no people there. Nowhere but down here. Go now.” He disappeared.

“We should take him at his word,” La said. “I suspect we’re in more danger here than we were from the dinosaurs. ”