"Countdown for Kalara"

by Richard L. Tierney

originally published Space and Time # 56, 1980

John Taggart is a student with a crap job, no money, and a hard-on against the human race.  One night he finds what appears to be a shotgun in the snow.  No ordinary shotgun - when you look through the site, you find not our world, but the world of the Jurassic era.  Not only that, if you pull the trigger, you shoot what you targeted in the site - in the Jurassic era.  Lucky John brings down a pterodactyl.

Moments later, a smokin' hot space chick appears in the basement of his apartment and picks him up and carries him off to her spaceship.

Not long after, John's former schoolmate, Jeremy Pitts, another intellectual and nihilist, and five weird-ass aliens materialize nearby and start searching for John.

 Meanwhile, John finds himself interrogated about the gun, something called "The Alliance", and discovers the ship has left earth - or rather, has left the present.  It, and he, are back in the Jurassic.  And he sees the hot chick (whose name, it tuns out, is Ylandra) and her male cohort handing the gun back to members of The Great Race.  John escapes from the ship and runs smack into his ol' buddy Pitts and his alien buddies.

Pitts informs him that he left the gun for him (John) to find, cuz he wanted John to join him on his quest to rid the prehistoric galaxy of the Kalarans, a race of basically humans who are nominally under the protection of The Great Race.  With the burgeoning war between the cone-bods and the flying polyps, Pitts figures The Great Race will be distracted while he blow up Kalara.  Oh, and by the way - Ylandra and her buddy are Kalarans.

Much space-opera action ensues, including daring escapes and the wackiest assortment of aliens this side of the cantina scene in "Star Wars".  John sides with Ylandra, but they cannot save Kalara.  Stealing a ship that can move through time, Ylandra drops John off back in the 20th century, while she flies off to some unknowable future.  John realizes that the asteroids and debris around Jupiter are the remains of Kalara, destroyed millions of years ago.

This is a wild space-opera, pure "Star Wars" stuff. It is, in fact, a sequel to P. Schuyler Miller's "The Sands of Time", a 1937 short story about time travel (this story, as well as "Countdown for Kalara", can be found in Chaosium's The Yith Cycle collection), and its Lovecraft connection is limited to a cameo appearance and an extended discussion of their history.  The story's probably more of interest to Miller fans than Lovecraft fans.  But it is a fun ride.