Six dinosaurs remained in the control room: the lieutenant, the engineer, the technician and the three operators. They watched horror-stricken as the ants poured in through every crack and crevice. It was as though the building had been submerged in a sea of ants, its black waters leaking in through every orifice. The view out the window was no different. As far as the eye could see, the ground was a roiling ocean of ants, the signal station a lonely island stranded amid it.
In no time at all, the entire control-room floor was carpeted with ants, save for a circle around the central console in which stood the six dinosaurs.
The dinosaur engineer hastily took out his translation device. He heard a voice as soon as he switched it on.
‘I am the supreme consul of the Ant Federation. We do not have the time to explain everything to you in detail. All you need to know is that if this signal station does not transmit its signal in the next ten minutes, Earth will be destroyed.’
The engineer peered confusedly at the dark mass of ants encircling him. Then he consulted the translator’s direction indicator. It pointed him towards three ants standing on top of the central console. The voice that had just spoken belonged to one of them. He shook his head at the trio. ‘The transmitter is broken.’
‘Our technicians have already reconnected the wires and repaired the machine,’ replied Kachika. ‘Please begin the transmission immediately.’
The engineer shook his head again. ‘We have no power.’
‘You don’t have a backup generator?’
‘We do, but it runs on petrol and now we’re out of petrol. We poured all the petrol we had into the trench outside and… er… set it alight.’
‘All of it?’
The lieutenant took over from the engineer. ‘Every last drop. Our only thought was to defend the station. We even used up the dregs in the generator’s fuel tank.’
‘Then go outside and collect what’s left in the trench.’
The lieutenant glanced outside and saw that the flames in the trench were dying down. He opened a cabinet in the central console and pulled out a small metal pail. The ants stepped back to clear an exit route for him.
When the lieutenant reached the doorway, he paused and looked round at them. ‘Is the world really going to end in ten minutes?’
Kachika’s answer came through the translator loud and clear. ‘If that signal isn’t sent, yes, the entire planet will be burnt to a crisp in ten minutes.’
The lieutenant turned and hurried down the stairs. He soon returned, setting the pail on the floor. Kachika, Jolie and Joya crawled to the edge of the console and looked down at it. There was no petrol inside, only half a bucketful of stinking mud mixed in with a lot of frazzled ant corpses.
‘All the petrol in the trench burnt up,’ said the lieutenant.
Kachika checked out the window and saw that he was telling the truth. The fires had gone out. She turned to Field Marshal Jolie. ‘How much time is left on the countdown?’
Jolie kept her eyes glued to her watch as she answered. ‘Five minutes and thirty seconds remaining, Supreme Consul.’
Kachika inhaled sharply and allowed herself a couple of those seconds before she shared her momentous news. ‘I have just received a call. Our forces in Laurasia have been defeated. When they attacked the Laurasian signal station, the dinosaurs guarding it blew up the building. The interrupt signal cannot be sent to Luna. It will detonate in five minutes.’
‘It is the same for Leviathan, Supreme Consul,’ Field Marshal Jolie said calmly. ‘All is lost.’
The dinosaurs did not understand a word the three leaders of the Ant Federation had said. ‘We can get some petrol from nearby,’ the engineer offered. ‘There’s a village about five kilometres from here. The highway is blocked, so we’ll have to go on foot, but if we’re quick about it, we can be back in twenty minutes.’
Kachika waved her antennae feebly. ‘Go, all of you. Do whatever you want.’
As the six dinosaurs filed out of the room, the engineer stopped on the threshold and repeated what the lieutenant had asked earlier. ‘Is the world really going to end in the next few minutes?’
The supreme consul of the Ant Federation looked at him with the shadow of a smile on her face. ‘Nothing lasts forever, sir.’
The engineer cocked his head in surprise. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever heard an ant say something philosophical,’ he said. Then he swung round and left.
Kachika made her way back to the edge of the central console and addressed the ant troops massed on the floor beneath her.
‘I need you to relay my instructions to all units with extreme urgency. All troops in the vicinity of the signal station should immediately take shelter in the basement. Troops further afield should seek out crevices and holes in which to hide. The government of the Ant Federation issues the following final statement to the citizenry: the end of the world is upon us. Every ant for herself.’
Professor Joya was quivering from her feelers to her feet, impatient to get going. ‘Supreme Consul, Field Marshal, let’s make our way to the basement,’ she said.
‘You go, Professor,’ Kachika replied. ‘Field Marshal Jolie and I will not be accompanying you. We have committed the gravest error in the history of civilisation. We have forfeited our right to life.’
‘The supreme consul is correct, Professor.’ Field Marshal Jolie dipped her antennae solemnly. ‘Though the odds are against you, I sincerely hope that you will somehow manage to keep the embers of civilisation glowing.’
Joya touched her antennae to those of Kachika and Jolie, the most heartfelt gesture of respect in the ant world. Then she scuttled down off the console and joined the tide of ants streaming out of the control room.
After the troops had evacuated, a hush descended on the control room. Kachika pattered over to the nearest window and Jolie followed her. From the sill, they witnessed an extraordinary sight.
Dawn was about to break, but the night’s crescent moon still hung in the sky. Suddenly, the angle of the moon shifted and the moon began to brighten rapidly until its silvery light became a blinding arc of electricity. The world below, including the scattering throng of ants, was illuminated in stark detail.
‘What was that? Did the sun just get brighter?’ Jolie asked.
‘No, Field Marshal, that was the arrival of a new sun. The moon is reflecting its light. A sun has appeared over Laurasia and is frying the continent as we speak.’
‘Gondwana’s sun should appear any moment now.’
‘Isn’t that it there?’
Intense light flared in the west, inundating everything around it.
The two ants watched agog as a dazzling sun began rising swiftly over the western horizon. It swelled until it occupied half the sky, and incinerated everything on Earth in an instant.
The shockwaves from the explosion took several minutes to reach the ants, but they had been vaporised by the heat long before that. All life was consumed in the furnace.
That was the last day of the Cretaceous period.
EPILOGUE
The Long Night
It had been winter for the last 3,000 years.
At noon on a slightly warmer-than-usual day in central Gondwana, two ants climbed out of their deep subterranean nest and up to the surface. The sun was but a blurry halo in the dreary, overcast sky and the ground was covered with a thick layer of ice and snow. Only the occasional outcrop interrupted the endless white expanse. Away on the far-distant horizon, the mountains were also white.
The first ant stared up at the colossal skeleton rising out of the snow. The plains were littered with such skeletons, but because they were white too, they were usually indiscernible. Today, though, from where the ant was standing, the bones were silhouetted in sharp relief against the murky sky.