We owe you young people an apology.”

The deep and confident voice belonged to the senior officer in the Drumheller detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He was standing in the centre of the camp kitchen, the only room large enough to hold all those who had been called together for this moment.

Travis sat at a table with the other six who had seen the dinosaur. Nish was beaming, as if he were about to be knighted by the inspector. Sarah was there, smiling. And Lars, Andy, Jesse, Jenny. All of them. And all of their teammates. And, of course, Muck.

“Mr. Block has been arraigned this morning in a Calgary court. He is in custody, pending Monday’s bail hearing. We cannot comment on the charges or the case, of course, but we can tell you that it seems you were right and we were wrong to doubt you.”

“ALLLLL RIIIIGHT!” Nish shouted. Everyone in the room, Mounties and players, looked at him as if he had just dropped in from another planet.

“We knew, naturally, that there never was any dinosaur,” said the inspector. “That was impossible. But we knew nothing about the powers of hypnotism and suggestion. I’m told, however, that while under hypnosis, you can’t be made to do anything you don’t wish to do, but you can be made to imagine things, even as a group, if conditions are right and the hypnotist knows what he is doing.”

It was all becoming clear to Travis. Nish, after all, had said he’d fallen asleep while undergoing that one-on-one session with Block, and they’d thought it a great joke, but it now seemed clear that Nish was intended to fall asleep. All the other talk, about “chemistry” and “focus,” was just blarney while Block used the hot room and his purring voice to get people to fall under his hypnotic spell. And the fan that Travis had watched before he dozed off–it was the same thing. All part of the scheme.

“You will be interested to know that my men did indeed find something in exactly the place you identified out in the hills,” the inspector continued.

Travis could sense the room go very quiet.

The inspector laughed. “No, I’m afraid not an Albertosaurus, though I think some of my officers wondered at times if they might come face to face with a monster.”

Everyone chuckled politely. Travis and Nish strained to see what it was that two of the Mounties were carrying into the room.

“This,” the inspector continued, “is a remote-control sound system. It’s not very big, you’ll notice. But it certainly sounds big.”

One of the officers flipped a switch. The machine hissed, then growled deeply, the fierce sound filling the room and threatening to burst the walls.

The roar of the Albertosaurus!

“Turn it down, Mac!” the inspector shouted. The machine clicked off. “We believe this device was hidden out there by someone, probably our Mr. Block. It was set off by a remote sensor. Body movement, say a bike passing by, would set it off. Anything that happened after that probably took place in your imaginations.”

In some ways it was really quite simple, thought Travis. Block had probably found it quite easy to insert the idea of a living Albertosaurus in their heads. They’d all seen the life-size models at the Royal Tyrrell Museum and were all excited about dinosaurs. All they had to do was hear that sound, and their minds would do the rest of the work for Block. He’d probably experimented first with Nish, who obviously had the wildest imagination on the team, and then tried it out on the six he’d selected.

They weren’t a Russian unit at all. And their selection had nothing whatsoever to do with playing hockey.

It had everything to do with a very public hoax, and millions of dollars.

“I think Mr. Munro has something to say to you all,” the inspector said.

He nodded to Muck, who fidgeted awkwardly, then stepped forward. Nish began a small smattering of applause that caught on, and grew. Muck grimaced and shut them down by raising his right hand.

“We have a game to play,” Muck announced. “We’re still here for a hockey tournament.”