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You are reading from:
DANGER IN DINOSAUR VALLEY
(BOOK 10)
by Roy MacGregor
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"PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME."
Travis Lindsay had never shaken so much in his life. Not from the cold wind of
James Bay. Not from the thrill of Disney World's Tower of Terror. Not even from
the emotion of seeing Data wheeled out onto the ice the night of the benefit
game.
This was different: this was pure nerves.
Travis was terrified.
He was not so much frightened of a lie - which was why he was here - but
petrified, to the very bottom of his twelve-year-old soul, of the truth.
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"Your name?"
The man asking the question was staring at Travis, waiting. He was an older man -
an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - with a white brush cut so thick
and stiff it looked as if he could sand wood with the top of his head. His face,
however, was soft and flushed. He had his uniform jacket off, and there were
sweat stains under the arms of his shirt. A second Mountie, younger, square-jawed
and unsmiling, sat closer to the window, where he was surrounded by computer
equipment and switches. An open Pepsi can was on the desk in front of him,
condensation beading on the sides. Travis was suddenly aware of how badly he
himself wanted something cold to drink.
Travis cleared his throat to answer. A green line on the computer screen jumped.
The Mountie monitoring the line checked off something on a pad.
"T-Travis Lindsay," he finally said, his voice catching.
Even in the heat of the small room, he could feel the shiver of cold metal on his
skin. There were electrodes taped over his heart and to his arm, and sensors
attached to his temples and even to the index finger of his right hand. He tried
to tell his body parts not to jump - but they seemed to belong to someone else.
"Address?"
"Twenty-two Birch Street, Tamarack." He tried to be helpful; "You want my postal
code?"
The Mountie asking the questions shook his head. The other Mountie looked up at
him, blinking, and again checked something off on the pad. Did he think Travis
was trying to be smart?
"This is just to set the parameters of the computer," the first Mountie said.
"Just relax, son."
Relax? Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one on trial here, in the middle of the
strangest land any of the Screech Owls had ever visited.
How could Travis possibly relax when he'd just seen his best friend, Wayne
Nishikawa, leave this same room in the Drumheller RCMP headquarters with tears
streaming down his red cheeks? How could he relax when so many of his teammates
were waiting in another room to go through the same grueling experience. Sarah
was out there. And Lars. And Jenny. And Jesse. And Andy. Each one of them waiting
to take a lie-detector test.
It seemed the whole world had been turned upside down. It was March break, and
yet the younger Mountie had just pried open the window, and the welcome breeze
that fluttered the paper on the desks felt like summer. Over the hum of the
computer, Travis could hear the river churning behind the curling rink across the
street. Between the Owls' departure from Tamarack and this dreadful moment,
winter had vanished like one of those time-lapse shots the nature shows sometimes
had of flowers opening in super-fast motion. One day winter snowploughs in the
streets, the next day flooding along the low riverbanks.
There were television cameras in town - somehow, word had got out - though this
was no nature program. This was closer to science fiction, but there was no
button on a remote to push so that the two Mounted Police would simply flash into
a shrinking dot of light on a dark screen. This was real life - only it couldn't
possibly be! Could it?
"All right, Travis," the first Mountie said, apparently satisfied with the levels
he was getting off the monitors, "I'm going to ask you a series of questions,
now. You're simply to answer them honestly, understand?"
Travis cleared his throat again. The green readout line jumped sharply.
"Yes, sir."
The Mountie asking the questions smiled gently, then began.
"You are a member of a hockey team, correct?"
"Yes."
"The name of the team?"
"The Screech Owls."
"And you're out here for a tournament, isn't that right?"
"Yes."
"The name of the tournament?"
Travis's mind wasn't working right. He couldn't remember. The Prairie
Invitational? The Drumheller Invitational? The Alberta Invitational? Was the word
"peewee" in there anywhere? He didn't want the two Mounties to think him so
stupid, so he tried to bluff his way through the question.
"Prairie Invitational . . . ?" he answered hesitantly.
The green readout light jumped, a squiggly line like a ragged mountain range
forming on the screen. The two Mounties looked at each other.
The first Mountie smiled. "Care to try again, Travis?"
Travis coughed. The line jumped. "I, I don't remember exactly," Travis said.
"Something Invitational. I'm sorry."
"Drumheller Invitational Peewee Tournament," the first Mountie said, smiling as
he scribbled something in his notes.
The man didn't appear at all bothered by Travis's error. In fact, he looked oddly
pleased, as if Travis's little mistake had confirmed something. Travis didn't
know if that was good or bad, but it seemed the lie detector would react whenever
he wasn't absolutely certain of his answer. He would do no more guessing. And he
would certainly not be lying - whether he was hooked up to a lie detector or not.
"What happened yesterday to you and your teammates, Travis?"
Travis sucked his breath in deep. He felt like he was going to explode. In trying
so hard to appear calm, he was only making it worse. His arms and legs were
jumping on their own. His throat felt dry and tight. But there was no choice but
to begin, and to let the machine do its job. It was all so incredible to Travis.
He was no longer sure himself what had happened - and what he had seen.
"We, we went out on the bikes . . ."
"Where?"
"Out along the river. We wanted to look for hoodoos."
The Mountie nodded, one eye seemingly on Travis, the other tracking the readout
line of the computer. The line was a little wiggly, but steady, with neither high
jagged mountains nor sharp valleys.
"And?"
"And we also wanted to see where Nish had been."
"Who's Nish?"
"Wayne Nishikawa. We call him Nish."
"Your friend."
"Yes."
"Nish had already been there?
"Yes."
"And what made this place so interesting?"
"It was where he saw . . . the . . ." Travis's throat went thin as a straw. He
could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Both Mounties looked up, waiting.
"Where he saw the what, Travis?" the first Mountie asked.
"The . . . the thing he saw."
"The thing he saw?" the Mountie repeated. Travis thought he could detect a little
sarcasm there. Clearly, they didn't think Nish had seen anything at all.
"Yes."
"Did you believe Nish had seen anything?"
"No," Travis said. "Not then, anyway."
The Mounties exchanged the quickest of glances. Travis noticed that the second
Mountie, the one handling the computer, was smiling slightly. Travis didn't like
the look of that smile.
"And did you find the right place?"
"We rode off the trail and back over some hills," Travis said. "I'm not sure
exactly where we were . . ."
"Did you see anything?"
Travis looked down, swallowing hard.
"Yes." He spoke almost defiantly, certain that he would be challenged.
"And what did you see, Travis?"
Travis moved his lips but nothing came out. He tried to breathe in, but his lungs
had frozen. He felt slightly dizzy and shifted in his seat. He wanted to scream.
No wonder Nish had run out of the room crying. Travis felt close to tears
himself.
"What was it you saw?" the first Mountie asked again.
"I, I'm not sure . . ." Travis said.
Both men looked at him hard.
"Do you mean you might have seen nothing?" the first Mountie asked.
"No."
The Mountie's red face darkened further.
"But you're not sure what you saw?" he asked, his lips narrowing.
"No, not that. I know what I saw. But I can't believe what I saw."
The first Mountie smiled, encouraging.
"Just say what you think you saw, then."
Travis sat up in his seat, blowing air hard out of his cheeks. He swallowed and
looked directly into the Mountie's eyes.
"A dinosaur."
Travis looked from one Mountie to the other, waiting for a reaction. The first
Mountie was staring down at his monitor, watching the thin green line. The second
was also staring at a monitor.
The first Mountie expelled a burst of air just as Travis had done moments
earlier. The color had drained completely from his face. He looked ashen.
Travis knew why. He felt queasy himself.
The line hadn't even flickered!
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