Terrence E. Zavecz

Note: A newer version of this novel is available: "NullBots". NullBots is retitled with minor changes and corrections to the story. The wildest fantasy of the mind paled before the magical advance of late twenty-first century science for all but teenage Hailey Sharpe who sees wave drives and colony planets as dull compared to the thrills of Manga. When her father accepts a job, Hailey's world shrinks to one bag and a hurried flight to the orbital Skyport. Job relocation transforms to desperate flight aboard an incredible starship to a beautiful world of strange new friends, amazing technology and fearsome dinosaurs. The wonders of Cretaceous Station aren't enough. Hailey desperately needs to experience a live tyrannosaur first hand and so presses young Gabriel into sneaking her off-station into the jungle where she gets her wish and much more when they encounter an ancient AI controlled installation. Challenged as never before, Hailey discovers she is uniquely able to manipulate this world thanks to her affinity with her newly implanted 'Hive Tab' augment and she enters a universe of time travel, robot societies, human augmentation, self-replicating swarm robotics, tachyon synaptic networks, drones of pure gravitic energy and multi-dimensional forces clashing in an ancient struggle that threatens more than the world of the dinosaur. A struggle in which reluctant Hailey Sharpe finds herself a pivotal player. Hailey Sharpe and the NullBot Swarm - Book III of the 'Crucible Series'

WHAT IS THE PRICE OF PROGRESS?What do a CEO and entrepreneur, a paleontologist and naturalist, physicists, engineers and special operations teams along with a water mine on Europa and Jupiter have in common?The answer is a goal to travel faster than light, colonize the stars and, most of all, survive among the dinosaurs. Cretaceous Station SeriesNot fantasy Not Science Fiction but ratherExtrapolated Science. Reality is always stranger than fiction. So why not firmly ground your fiction on the hard rock of science?These are the action packed stories of the 322 scientists, soldiers and their families who worked to take mankind to the stars but found they first had to travel to a strange and distant past.Each chapter cites references for current science and a discussion of fact verses speculation. You will be amazed at just how strange these creatures we call dinosaurs were._______________________________Mankind is on the threshold of establishing it's first colonies on other stars. One company, GraviDynamics, has led the way with first their discovery of near instantaneous communications and now a star drive. GraviDynamics has already launched a starship using it's proprietary interstellar drive pushing it to the Sun's nearest neighbor. This marks a major goal for the researchers but they still have one big problem. Contrary to the predictions of their models, their ships refuse to accelerate faster-than-lightspeed (FTL) and colonization, even at the speed of light, would require hundreds of years to travel to the nearest human-friendly stars. However, the scientists think they have a solution. The researchers are convinced that the problem is in the design theory for their StarShip Drives and they only need to fine-tune the models. This presents another major problem since the tests must measure the universal constants of the universe at least 50 million years in the past or the future. Nodal Convergence records the experiences of Mark Nolen, Matthew Zoeller and the 322 scientists, engineers, soldiers, women and children, explorers all, and their quest to propel mankind to the stars The research team and their security personnel use their Argos starship to set up a Cretaceous Era research station on the shores of a tropical inland sea in an area sixty-five million years in the past that today we call Texas. The crew of the Argos discovers a tropical earth without seasons and of unexpected beauty. Surprises begin with their first steps on the vaguely familiar yet strange Earth of the Cretaceous. Then the discoveries being to quickly appear and even their early results suggest that the expense and risks of the expedition may be justified. Then the humans encounter the dinosaurs. They are not the slow, leather covered, drudging reptiles of paleontology but the perfected product of a hundred million years of evolution. The expedition discovers an ecology of unexpected beauty hiding a world of intense danger. An ecology filled with a vibrancy of life that will soon be lost in the tragic passing of an era through cataclysmic events. It is also a world filled with menace of a very alien intelligence that threatens their very existence. Ironically, their experiments soon find that the seeds of one species extinction harbor an unanticipated opportunity for the ultimate survival and continued evolution of the human race ... and perhaps others. If they can survive.

"Sure T-Rex is big, mean, unbelievably fast and they hunt in packs. Yeah, True ... but they aren't the ones that scare me "Cretaceous Station Book IIIt was a study of the unknown.Mankind's first steps to the stars oddly enough began with a trip to the past. A very distant past.They began a colony; a research colony to study the universe from a different perspective. Of course, getting there was half the battle. But they did it They discovered time travel of a very limited sort. The problem was you could only travel to very specific periods that centered on the system's greatest disasters. You know, the major extinction events.They setup the research facility and ... what? Oh yeah, the dinosaurs. Well, the dinosaurs weren't a big problem if they took the proper precautions. Scientific breakthroughs followed one after the other. The goals of the expedition seemed in easy reach. Then the others showed up. They weren't big like T-Rex. Oh yeah, they shared every other characteristic of that marvelous monster but they were different in so many frightening ways. Worst of all they were smart. Oh yeah, they were very, very smart and they liked the pain.________________________We've heard about them all our lives but we really didn't know them.Plans are underway for the expansion of the Cretaceous Research Station from a five-year project to a permanent settlement with a StarPort and a unique resort. Their biggest problem is funding and they, of course, need approval of the board.Then they encounter new representatives of a race that is a hundred times older than that of the humans. Their desires and drives are different and their goals are unobvious but one thing is obvious. They are very, very intelligent ... in an alien, very deadly way.If they wish to survive, the Cretaceous Station explorers must pit their technology and intelligence against the increasingly savage attacks of these aliens.Then again, just who are the aliens?The humans who have come to transform the land or these dinosaurs who suddenly find them very interesting?