Free Landing Party: A Dinosaur Thriller by Rick Chesler

back along the narrow ledge—perhaps twenty feet or so—to where it met the volcano’s internal wall, which was solid with no opening of any kind. They began making their way around the perimeter of the roughly circular lake by walking along the ledge, counter-clockwise. Ethan walked lakeside, sweeping his beam across the water in search of any sign of the Boat Team, while Richard patrolled the wall, looking for dry passages that led off the shelf.
    They picked along in this way until Richard called out that he had found something. “Over here. Looks like a cave.”
    Ethan joined him at the rear of the shelf, and the two men shone their lights inside a cleft in the rock that was perhaps head high and ten feet wide.
    “Looks like it might jog to the right, back there.” Richard waved the light back and forth to illuminate the far end of the cave.
    “Let’s check it out.” Ethan stepped inside, had a brief look around in the main chamber, and then walked to the rear of the cave. To his right was a cul-de-sac, dead-ending about thirty feet further inside. Richard added his beam to the back wall, scanning it left to right until he froze it in place.
    “See that?” A pile of something—sticks maybe, or rocks—lay in a heap at the rear of the cul-de-sac.
    Ethan and Richard moved to the rear of the chamber. Ethan froze in mid-step when he got close enough to identify what he was looking at on the cave floor. “Those are bones.”
    Richard nodded, walking right up to the pile and kneeling in front of it so as to get a better look. “Human bones, at that.”
    Ethan took his point-and-shoot camera from his vest only to find it was soaking wet and now useless. He opened his pack and then dumped the non-working camera inside in case what pictures he had already taken could be retrieved later.
    “Should have just used this one all along,” he thought, taking out a waterproof camera meant for scuba diving. He didn’t know if diving would be necessary on this trip, but in his experience, it paid to be prepared. To that end, he’d brought along a compact scuba rig. It took up precious space and weight in his pack, but he was glad he had it, if nothing else for the underwater camera that went with it. He’d already lost two cameras on this trip. He needed something rugged that would hold up to the elements here. Then he chided himself for being so petty. At you haven’t lost your life, like Kai and George. He pictured Kai being tail-slammed by the ankylosaurus and George being consumed in the jaws of the plesiosaur.
    Ethan clicked off a few pictures of the bones, the camera’s flash dazzlingly bright in the cave lit only by two flashlights. He lowered his camera and studied the bones with his naked eyes. “Do you think…?”
    “They’re pretty recent. No meat, though, and many are cracked in half or totally pulverized. Like something massive just went to town on them.”
    “Right, like a dinosaur or dinosaurs. But do you think these are from more of the Tongans in the landing party?”
    Richard grabbed a bone and used it as a stick to topple part of the pile, exposing more facets of the remaining bones. “It would have to be confirmed by an anthropologist, I would think. I can say with certainty that these are human bones. Look at the skull there. But I am definitely not qualified to tell one race apart from another.”
    “The skull is weirdly clean, though, for recent bones, isn’t it? No skin or flesh of any kind.” Ethan snapped some more shots of the newly uncovered bones and skulls.
    Richard looked around the cave, at the walls, which were solid lava rock, with a couple of large rocks in one corner. He placed a hand on the nearest wall. “Still warm. We’re standing in a magma chamber formed by hot lava. It’s quite possible that the bones were submerged in lava for a time, which would remove all traces of flesh.”
    Ethan was about to reply when one of the rocks against the wall began to crack apart on