Security at the station was lax. It was guarded by just one platoon of dinosaurs and they were there mainly to pre­vent the occasional Gondwanan citizen from inadvertently wandering too close. Enemy spies and saboteurs barely figured on their list of concerns. In fact, Laurasia was more interested in the safety measures at the station than Gondwana was; they had lodged numerous protests with Gondwana, demanding that security be tightened. Other than the guards, just five dinosaurs were responsible for the day-to-day running of the station: one engineer, three operators and one maintenance technician. Like the guards, they had no idea as to the station’s purpose.

In the station’s control room was a large screen displaying a sixty-six-hour countdown. The countdown had never passed the forty-four-hour mark. Every time it reached that point (typically in the morning), the image of Emperor Dadaeus would pop up on another blank screen. The emperor only ever uttered one short sentence:

‘I command that the signal be sent.’

The operator on duty would stand to attention and answer, ‘Yes, Your Majesty!’ Then he would move the mouse at his terminal and click once on the ‘Transmit’ button on the computer screen. As soon as he did that, the large screen would display the following information:

– INTERRUPT SIGNAL SENT

– INTERRUPT SUCCESS RETURN SIGNAL RECEIVED

– COUNTDOWN RESET

Then the screen would reset to 66:00 and restart the countdown.

On the other screen, the emperor would watch these proceedings intently until the reset countdown began anew. Only then would he breathe a sigh of relief and depart.

For two years, this process was repeated every day like clockwork. No matter where the emperor was, whether in the imperial palace, on tour or even on a state visit to Laurasia, he always called the signal station every day at this time. He had never missed a day.

The dinosaurs who worked at the station found all this perplexing. They had been told that under no circumstances was the signal to be sent without the emperor’s order, but if the emperor wanted the signal sent every day, he had only to say the word: there was no need for him to personally give the order every day. Even the operators themselves were unnecessary. A transmission device on an automatic timer would do the job perfectly.

The sixty-six-hour countdown was also most mysterious. What would happen if it was left to run its course?

The only thing they knew for certain was that the signal was extremely important. The intense expression on the emperor’s face as he watched the signal being sent told them that much. But of course there was no way they could possibly have imagined what was really at stake – that this signal deferred Earth’s death sentence by one more day.