Then the misty wake was upon them. White foam surged by the raft, lifting it precariously and causing the logs to shift against each other, and bits of island debris bobbed about.

The swell subsided and they viewed the island again. From this distance it seemed unchanged, but Cal knew that terrible havoc had been wreaked there. The mantas' warning had been valid.

Reminded, he turned to check on their otherworld associates. Circe, Diana, Hex, and Star stood on the roof of the cabin looking miserable. They would have had difficulty running over this wave; its changing configuration and bubbly surface could easily have inundated them. Though a manta could

"walk" on water, it could not swim within it, except for very brief scoops at speed. A manta had to keep moving swiftly or entirely, when the surface was liquid. These four needed the raft more than the humans did in this instance. Yet they could have avoided the problem nicely by traveling over deep water, where the swell of the tsunami was mild. Did they feel an emotional loyalty to the human party? It always back to what he did not know about them. Right now, however, his job was this planet, not manta.

In due course the second wave crashed over the isle. Others followed at about twenty-minute intervals, but the worst was over. The raft had saved the party.

"I believe it is safe to return now." Cal said at last.

"Why?" Veg asked.

Orn by Piers Anthony

Cal looked at him, so tousled and sweaty and strong. "Are you implying that the raft is better than a land base?" The notion was foolish: there was not room to spread his shells or them secure, let alone acquire more.

"I'm implying we can't travel far on an island."

"Travel! These winds are obviously seasonal. Once we drift from this vicinity, we'll be unable to return for months." Veg nodded.

So it was coming into the open already: the decision to mutiny, to break contact with the Earth authorities. Not completely, for the radio equipment could keep them in touch. But since they would be unable to return if so directed...

Veg wanted simply to isolate himself from a hateful influence, and Cal understood this entirely too well. Yet he could not so casually justify the abrogation of the mission. They were not here on any vacation, and too obvious a balk could trigger the trouble already building for them.

In addition, if this were Paleocene Earth, the consequence of activity on the mainland could ramify appallingly. What about the paradoxes of time travel? They had not yet done anything significant, for their traces on the island would have been wiped out by the tsunami—but such good fortune could not be perpetual. What would happen when some action of theirs threatened to change the nature of their own reality? Such paradox was patently impossible—but the situation could be extremely delicate.

"It seems to me we would have to move about a bit to gather information," Aquilon said. "For a proper report, I mean. We should at least map the continents—"

"Map the continents!" Cal knew she meant the floral and faunal features, since they already had the map, but still it was an excuse. "That would take a full-fledged survey party several years with a cartographic satellite. And we already know what they would find."

"That reminds me," she said. "That map. How do you know—"

"I'd have to go into paleogeography to explain that. It—"

"Summarize it," Veg said, irritated. He was holding his paddle and seemed anxious to use it, rather than talking. But Aquilon must have brought up this matter now in order to make sure Veg knew about it.

Summarize the concept of drifting continents? Cal sighed inwardly. It had to be done, though, and now did seem to be the time. Now—before they committed themselves to the mainland. "Well... the crust of the Earth may seem solid and permanent to us today, but in fact it is boiling and moving steadily. Like the surface of a pot of cooking oatmeal (he saw they didn't comprehend the allusion, but let it stand), it bubbles up in some regions and cools and solidifies and sinks down in creases elsewhere. Segments of the more solid, lighter material float, collecting above the creases until large masses are built up by the action. These are the continents—or rather, the single continent, that formed billions of years ago, then broke up as the convection patterns changed, drifted, reformed.

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Two hundred and fifty million years ago there were two great continents, two halves separated by narrow seas: Laurasia in the north, Gondwanaland in the south. These broke up into the present continents, and changes are still occurring. In time the Americas may complete their journey across the oceans and rejoin the main land mass from the other side—"

"Watch it," Veg said. "You're theorizing."

"Now I remember!" Aquilon said. "They verified the continental drift by checking the magnetism of the ocean floor. The metal in the rocks that bubbled up was aligned with the magnetic poles as the material cooled and hardened, so there was a record, and they could tell where it had been when."

"Something like that," Cal agreed, surprised that she had made the connection. "There were other ways to corroborate the phenomenon, too. Computer analysis showed how certain continents, such as Australia and Antarctica, made a precise fit despite being separated by two thousand miles of water.

The underlying strata also matched. All over the world, the changing continental geography could be interpolated to show the configuration for any particular period. The map I had you sketch strongly suggested the Paleocene epoch, since the major continents as we know them had only recently severed from the main masses and remained relatively close together."

"So where are we now—on Earth?" Veg asked.

"Our island here is some distance off the coast of what will be known as California. In our time Western America has overridden one of the Pacific rifts and so developed the San Andreas Fault, a source of regular earthquakes. This has been an active area of the world for some time, and no doubt this tsunami stems from—"

"We can't just sit here talking," Veg grumbled. "There might be another wave."

"And we really should take a look at California," Aquilon said. "The westerlies should take us right there, and I could paint some of the animal life for your report."

Cal perceived that she had an ulterior motive. She didn't truly comprehend something until she painted it, and she was intrigued by the notion of treading the soils of the past. She was not concerned about paradox.

"We aren't operating as an isolated party," he said. "There could be consequences—"

"Maybe we should take a vote," Veg suggested.

Cal already knew the outcome of that. Trust the group to revert to elementary democracy in this wilderness world. The others were not trained to appreciate the enormous fund of information available on the single island, or to anticipate the vagaries of seemingly steady wind. It would be far safer to remain here, and more efficient. Though there was that matter of the spores in the station...

and he could not outvote the two of them.

"Four out of seven?" Cal inquired.

Veg and Aquilon exchanged glances. They had not thought of this. If the precedent of voting on key Orn by Piers Anthony

decisions were established, the precedent of including the mantas as franchised individuals would also be in force.

"Manta suffrage," Aquilon murmured.

In the course of a difficult discussion the nature of the voting concept and practice was conveyed to the mantas: each entity to cast his ballot, the minority amenable to the will of the majority. Cal wondered whether the fungoid creatures really understood. They could easily cast a bloc vote. Should they have been considered as a single entity, one vote for the group of them? Too late now.

Cal called off the names in alphabetical order. Each voter would advance to the bow if he wished to travel on the raft, and to the stern if he wished to remain based on the island.

" 'Quilon." She stepped to the bow, and the tally stood one to nothing, raft.

"Cal." After he spoke his own name, he moved to the rear. The truth was that he did want to explore, and to get away from Earth's influence—but he did not want to alarm the others by giving his reasons, or to have it on record that he approved the jaunt. There were sometimes distinct advantages to a split decision, particularly when the results would be recorded and evaluated by unfriendly officials.

"Circe." Here was the test: which way would the manta jump.

Circe hopped to join Aquilon. Two to one.

"Diam." This could decide it, for Veg surely wanted to explore, and that would make a majority.

Diam bounded into the air, shaking the raft by the force of his takeoff, flared, and came down beside Cal. Two to two—and they were not bloc voting!

"Hex." That was Veg's companion. But if Circe had joined Aquilon from personal sentiment, Hex could not do the same, for Veg had not yet formally committed himself.

Hex joined the bow party, and it was three to two. The outcome was no longer in doubt, but the vote had to be officially completed.

"Star." Star had stayed with Cal throughout, as had Diam. Would he choose accordingly, as a matter of academic curiosity?

Star did. Three to three.

"Veg." And of course Veg went forward. The issue had been decided, and—what was far more significant—the mantas had voted as individuals.

The party of seven was about to travel, and Cal was glad.

VII: ORN

Orn by Piers Anthony

Time was long, yet it was nothing, for he only wandered and grew. He crossed inland mountains—the kind that developed from shifts and buckles of the ground, rather than from ash and lava—and plains and swamps, bearing east. Though he ran his limit each day, stopping only to feed himself, the summer was waning before he reached the new ocean formed from the widening chasm between land fragments. He had verified his general map: this land was now far away from its origin, and was still moving.

Increasing cold nudged him south. Many things had changed, and much of the landscape differed substantially from that of his memory, but that was the way of the Earth. It always changed, as the waves on the seas changed, and so bad to be resurveyed periodically for posterity.

The mams were everywhere. Small primes twittered in the occasional grassy areas, burrowing for grubs and tubers, and some peered at him from trees with great round eyes. They were generally fragile and shy, yet numerous; he fed on them frequently. Every so often he brought down a dino, horned, but clumsy and not very bright. This creature tended to become absorbed in his browsing and not be alert for danger.

There were also a number of snakes, and many liz and small amphibs, all feeding on the plentiful arths. And Orn did too, tearing open anthills with relish and picking up the scurrying morsels with his gluey tongue. Never in his memory had there been such regular feasting!

Aves filled the trees, benefiting even more from the arth supply. The birds had become more diverse than ever, and were now excellent fliers. Several lines swam in the ponds and rivers, and others ran along the ground as he did, though none of these were closely allied to him. His line had been landbound longer, and during more dangerous times; thus he was larger and swifter than these newcomers. Many of the others would never have been able to survive attack by a running rep.

Winter promised to be far more severe than his prior one on the island. Orn continued driving south, making good progress; yet the cold stalked him. There was nowhere he could set up a regular abode.

He could withstand freezing temperatures for short periods, but this sapped his strength. His plumage was not thick enough to protect him against a prolonged siege, even though many smaller birds endured winter well enough. He was becoming tired of perpetual travel; he was almost full-grown now, and beginning to respond to developing urges for other things.

He did not recognize in himself the nesting impulse, for only the sight of a nubile female of his species would clarify that. But he carried on with increasing and undefined hunger, hurrying somewhere while wanting to stay where he was. It was not only the onrushing season that disturbed him.

At last his southward progress was blocked by mountains. They were volcanic, and therefore to be treated with respect and fear. He trotted west, seeking a way around them, but was met after a day by a great ocean. He had crossed the continent again, intersecting the coastline here where the land mass narrowed. He had either to give up or to proceed on through this region; the nights of the inland area had become far too cold now for his comfort.

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The range extended into the sea, the individual summits diminishing to islands and finally reefs.

These isles would be warm, he knew—but Orn did not care to set up residence in such a precarious locale again. He could abide a quiescent volcano, or an island, but not the combination. That was too much of a trap.

So it had to be the land route. He had no memory of the territory ahead; the configurations of this landscape had shifted too rapidly and drastically in the past few million years. The wall of volcanoes was new, certainly—and if any prospective ancestor had penetrated it, that bird had never emerged to sire his line thereafter. Sometimes what Orn could not remember spoke as eloquently as what he could.

He found a promising avenue a few mountains from the coast and moved in. It was a pass of a sort—a fissure between two of the lesser peaks, overgrown with bracken and a tough new strain of grass. Some water trickled along it, but not enough; he risked thirst here. But better that than the other flow—of liquid stone.

The mountains were dead. He could read their histories as he passed, observing the remnants of ancient lava fields and mounded ash. The sides of the gully were weathered and overgrown with brush. He made a foray up one slope and brought down a young, slow-footed ambly who had strayed into this inhospitable region. He severed its jugular with a single contraction of his beak muscles, and fed quickly on the warm carcass. There was far more meat than he could consume at one time, but he had to tolerate the waste this time because of the need to save his strength for the climb ahead. An arduous, tedious search for small prey at this time would have worn him down, though ordinarily he killed no larger than his hunger, however vulnerable the prey.

The air was cold as he fed, and the warmth of the flesh he swallowed was fleeting. Almost, he desired, a little more activity in the old fire cones. Almost.

In the morning he outran the cleft and crossed the steep side of the smaller mountain, stiffening his feathers against the chill wind that struck at this height. Then he was over the pass, and it was warmer on the other side. Too much so: he smelled the fumes of an active volcano.

There was no way to avoid it. The cold of the heights forced him to seek the lowest valleys, and from the great basin ahead rose the live cone. Fires danced upon its rim, reflected from the hanging clouds above it, and as Orn approached the ground quivered ominously.

It took him a full day to skirt it, and he watched its every malignant gesture. This was not a lava mountain; this one was the more deadly gas and ash type. No plants grew near it. Yet he found arths amid the tumbled rocks of its perimeter, and one semi-stagnant pond, so his hunger and thirst were partially abated.

On the southern slope the volcano caught him. Monstrous gases swirled out of its cruel orifice, forming a burgeoning cloud that glowed of its own accord. As night came this cloud drifted south—following Orn. As it gained on him, slow-moving as it seemed, the thing began to rain: a downpour of incandescent droplets that accumulated voluminously on the ground.

Orn by Piers Anthony

Orn fled before it, knowing that the smallest touch of that fiery storm meant annihilation. He did escape—but his retreat had been sealed off. He could not know what lay ahead, but death lay behind.

Exhausted, he perched at last upon a jagged boulder and slept nervously amid the drifting fringe gases of the storm. In all that murky region there was nothing alive but him.

Next day he came across a spring of boiling water. Where it overflowed into a basin and cooled sufficiently, he washed the cutting grime from his feathers and felt clean again. Once more there were arths; he scratched for grubs and had a partial meal.

After that there was more even ground, and he made good time though the unusually rough turf abraded his feet. The rocks were warm, and not entirely from the sun, with many heated ponds. He washed cautiously and drank the richly flavored water dubiously, but found no fish. He avoided the boiling mud and steaming fumaroles, and particularly the active cones.

It was an awful landscape, jagged in the distance, bare and dead up close. He longed for the end of it, but feared that there was no end. He felt too vulnerable without his memory to guide him.

Gradually the land leveled into a desert, and though Orn made excellent time here, he had to go without food and water for two days. Because of his rapid metabolism a third day would finish him.

Not at once, but by crippling him and thus preventing any possible escape. Yet he also lacked the resources to retreat. He pushed on. There was nothing else to do.

Though the evening brought relief from the ambient heat, this was scant consolation. The cold was severe, and he had to roost on the ground and half bury himself in dust as a hedge against it. Now he had no way to cleanse his feathers properly or to slake his terrible thirst. He almost felt like a mam, the way this territory wrung the moisture from his body; but no mam could have traveled this far.

On the second morning he lay stiffly for a time, waiting for the sun to restore what energy it might to his body. His flesh, under the battered and poorly insulating feathers was dehydrated—yet he knew that the day would soon dry it out farther. Would it be more comfortable to rouse himself for the terminal effort, or to lie here and let death visit him peacefully?

Across the brightening desert he saw the sunlight stab at a rising wisp of mist, giving it momentary brilliance as the beam refracted. This was the single instant of the day that these barrens had beauty, however slight.

Then his memory informed him what mist meant. Orn lurched to his feet, flapping his stubby wings in his eagerness, and staggered forward. He was weak, his feet were bruised, his muscles hurting, and he doubted that he could crack open a hard nut with his beak—but he covered the ground.

There was a gully where the mist had been. Within this depression was a cleft similar to the one he had followed into these badlands. And at the bottom of this crevice was a tiny flow of water.

Orn dug a pit in the sand with his broken talons and set his head in it. He lay there and the water trickled over his tongue.

He remained there all day and by night he was not thirsty any more.

Orn by Piers Anthony

He followed the river gully down, too hungry now to sleep. A quarter day's trek below his point of interception the first stunted vegetation appeared. He dug it out in the dark and swallowed it, hoping to find nutritious grubs within. He had not recovered enough to be able to tell by smell. Then he relaxed.

The following day was better. The cleft, at first only a few wingspans across, broadened out into a winding canyon, and creeping foliage covered its shadowed sides. It was hot, but not nearly as bad as the burning desert. The minuscule water had been reinforced from offshoot crevices and gathered into a running brook. Orn traveled slowly and recovered his strength.

At last there was enough water pooled for a proper washing, and he bathed with delight. Once more he could fluff out his feathers and protect himself better from cold.

But on the second day he climbed the canyon wall and poked his head over the rim and spied—a steaming mountain. He was not out of the volcano belt yet; the desert and cleft had been only a hiatus.

The canyon widened out and finally the water in it leveled and became salty. He was back at the sea.

But with a difference. He had passed the first major belt of mountains and reached a warmer area. He might be able to make a winter nest in a burrow by the water, within the protected canyon, and feed on fish.

Then he discovered the underground river.

It opened into the canyon wall: a squat tunnel from which warm water poured. He braced himself against its gentle current and entered the cavern. Light spilled from natural vents in the ceiling, and he saw stone columns he recognized as typical of such places. His ancestors had often stayed in caves. This was better, much better; he could winter here in comfort, going outside only for forage.

Unless other animals—predators—had the same notion.

Orn sniffed the slowly moving air. The worst came to him then, hidden before by the lingering insensitivity left over from his desert thirst: the rank odor of a large rep. He sought out the source, alert for rapid retreat. Not all reps were inimical, and this smell was borderline.

He found it lying half-submerged. It was a Para, five times Orn's own length and many times as massive. Its four feet were webbed for efficient swimming, and its tail was long and powerful. There was no armor on its body. Its head was equipped with a large scooplike bill that Orn remembered was used to delve into the soft muck of shallow ponds. It had monstrous bony crest that projected back so far that it effectively doubled the length of the head. Through this process the nasal passages ran, and to it the hot blood of the active animal was pumped for cooling in the heat of the day. Too much heat was deadly to reps, and the large ones had trouble dissipating it; thus this evaporative cooling system gave the Para an advantage over his cousins. Neither exertion nor noon sunlight was likely to harm him.

Nevertheless, the Para was dead, its flesh rotting.

Orn by Piers Anthony

This was a creature of the old type. Orn had not seen such a rep in anything but memory before, except for the crocs, but it was familiar in a way the tiny mams were not. Paras were among those reps who had dominated the world for much of his memory, and who until this moment had seemed to be absent from it.

Yet something had killed it. Not an animal enemy, for the creature was unmarked except for those bruises typical of inanimate encounters, and post-mortem infestation. Not thirst or hunger, for it was sleek and in potable water.

If this superbly equipped animal had succumbed within this cavern, far more its natural habitat than Orn's, how could Orn expect to survive?

Better to brave the dangers he knew, than to subject himself to the sordid and fatal mystery of this place. He would have to continue his journey.

VIII: AQUILON

They sailed due east. The Nacre's yardwork was crude—a wedge of rubberoid sheeting buttressed by palm fronds suspended on half a dozen transverse bamboo poles, vaguely in the manner of a Chinese junk. Nothing better had been available. It would have taken them weeks to form a suitable sail from natural materials, and they might not have held the wind any better than this cut-and-stretched balloon material.

When Veg wanted to slow progress, he let out a supportive rope and the sail collapsed in a mess of sticks; when he wanted full power, he hauled it back up, using all his brute strength.

It functioned, anyway. When the breeze was stiff, Aquilon judged that they made as much as five knots. Ordinarily the rate was more like two. Thus they traversed from fifty to a hundred miles per day, for the Nacre never rested. Respectable progress!

The sea air was balmy, the day clear. But the perpetually rolling waves lifted the raft, tilted it, dropped it, and lifted it again interminably, and very soon Aquilon was feeling more than queasy. She was sure the men had a similar complaint. She felt sorry for Cal, hanging bravely to a rope knotted around a log. Not only did he seem to be in continual peril of being washed overboard—that was why he had the rope—but he looked quite sick. Veg didn't complain, but he hadn't eaten all day. Aquilon herself had simply puked into the water and felt better for a while—until being blessed with the dry heaves. She wondered whether the mantas, perched in the cabin shade, had equivalent difficulties.

She tried to distract herself by watching the sights. The heaving seascape was no help at all, but she found she could see a good deal by donning her diving mask, immersing her head, and peering down through the water. Once she learned the trick of compensating for the flexing facade of the surface.

The sea, at first glance so desolate, was actually full of life. Aquilon had some familiarity with fish, Orn by Piers Anthony

having painted them many times and she had also done a number of dissections for anatomical illustrations. The species here were not identical to those she knew, but they fell into similar patterns, and some were so close she was sure only an ichthyologist would be able to differentiate the types. A school of herring drifted directly under the raft, flanked by a shark she couldn't quite see. Then a four-foot tuna cut across, and suddenly several flying fish broke surface and skated over the water, their fins spread like the wings of insects. Half an hour later she spied several cod, then some jacks, and finally a great lone swordfish fully eight feet long.

She lifted her head at last and doffed the mask, deciding that her seasickness was coming under control. It was late afternoon. The two men seemed listless, perhaps dulled by the monotony of the waves. Veg was spume-flecked; Cal now leaned against the cabin. The four mantas remained where they had been.

They would not venture forth in direct sunlight, of course; that was too rough on their eyes.

"Tennis, anyone?" she inquired with mock cheer. "Or maybe supper?"

But no one replied, and she wasn't hungry herself. There were supplies on board for several days, so foraging from the sea was not necessary. Yet.

She pondered this, since she was already feeling dismal. Suppose the map were wrong, and California was not within three or four hundred miles? Suppose they had to remain on the raft for two weeks? By then the stored food would run out, and the canned water. If they were to survive, they would have to fish, consuming the flesh and grinding out fish-body fluids to drink. It was feasible; they all knew the techniques, and the necessary equipment was part of the life-raft package. But Veg would not touch fish himself, and might refuse to bring in any for the others. She could do it herself—but she now shared Veg's viewpoint to a considerable extent, though her rationale was different, and wasn't sure she cared to go back to an omnivorous diet. It would make her feel unclean.

Would she eat fish if she got hungry enough, and drink fish juice? Would she kill another living, feeling creature in order to slake her own needs? She didn't know—but the feeling that she might made her feel again.

What value was a moral standard, if it disappeared the moment it became inconvenient or uncomfortable?

They took turns sleeping, one at a time—not from any urge for privacy but to insure that two were always alert to the vagaries of the sea. Their collective motion sickness was responsible for the pessimistic outlook for the voyage, she was sure, but meanwhile caution was their only resource.

She lay alone in the cabin, listening to the slap of the waves against the logs and trying to ignore the swells of brine that inundated the nethermost centimeter of her torso at irregular intervals. In time, she knew, she would acquire the reflex to hold her breath even in her sleep for those essential seconds, and would not even notice the involuntary baths. Human beings were adaptable; that was why they survived.

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Survival. It seemed to have less to recommend it recently. How blithely she had cast her ballot in favor of this stomach-wringing journey! Cal, at least, had foreseen what it entailed.

One overruled his judgment at one's peril. Now it was far too late to change course; the force of air driving them along would not permit it. With this clumsy vehicle they could not hope to tack into the wind effectively—and even if they could, it would take twice as long (at best!) to return to their island as the outward trip had taken. There was no way to escape at least another day of oceanic violence.

Yet she was dead tired, and sleep had to come. The mantas seemed to be comfortable enough on the cabin roof, so why couldn't she be likewise here? Gradually she acclimatized and passed into a fitful dream state interspersed with ten-second cold shocks as the pseudo-tide touched her again and again.

She found herself—no, not back in her cozy Earth apartment, for that physical comfort was empty in the face of the intellectual horror on which it rested. She did not like Earth; she had no fond memories to bind her to it. Space meant more to her, Nacre meant more, and the easy, sexless companionship of these two men. Her dream was of current matters, her nearest approach to joy: the day and night just passed on the island.

She stood conversing with Cal, and he was taller and stronger than in life, and simultaneously she painted the shells of his collection. They were ammonite fossils, extinct just yesterday, geologically speaking—extinct, that is, barely ten million years ago. And her picture grew as she filled in the color; it swelled and became real, and then she was walking into it, or rather swimming, for it was a living ocean habitat. All around her floated the cephalopods, their shells coiled, straight, or indecisive. Most were small, but some were large—fist-sized, even head-sized, their tentacles spread out hungrily, fifty or a hundred for each individual, plus the two larger feeder tentacles.

She was stroking lithely, but these clumsy-seeming mollusks were more agile. Their bodies matched the specific gravity of the water so that they neither lifted nor sank involuntarily, and they moved rapidly backward as they jetted water from their hyponomes. She could not catch any in her hands, try as she might. Soon she gave up the attempt, and then they drifted confidently closer to her, shells sparkling iridescently.

It was a wonderland of bright living coral and sponge and jellyfish and crabs and forestlike seaweed, with the abundant "bony" fish circulating everywhere. But the cephalopods dominated the scene—small squids shooting past in shoals, almost indistinguishable from fish at that velocity. There were also the relatives of the cephalopods: the belemnites, and the nautiloids and ammonites. The mollusks did not swim in the manner of vertebrates, however; they all moved by that same jet propulsion, using their finlike members only for guidance. The belemnites were cigar-shaped shells completely surrounded by flesh, almost like little manta rays with backbones fused.

They were feeding now, culling animalcules and tiny fishes from the water with their myriad tentacles and bearing them in to the mouth parts. Their big round eyes stared at her as she went along.

The individuals were getting larger; some were more than a foot in diameter across the coiled shell, and their short tentacles were six inches.

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Their shells were varied, but nowhere did the markings of the septa show. She remembered that Cal had explained about mat: the sutures were the internal joining places of the septa, analogous to the dark rings inside a poorly washed coffee cup. They did not ordinarily show externally. Where the septum, or disk blocking off a segment of the interior was flat, the suture merely ringed the inside of the shell. But the more advanced ammonites had fluted sutures, reflecting a convoluted septum. She visualized the situation, using a straight shell for convenience rather than a normal coiled one: ammonites

The sutures became more and more complex as the ammonoids developed, until in the middle Cretaceous they were phenomenal. Loops formed within loops, resembling the profile of elaborate branching coral.

Aquilon contemplated an ammonite fully eighteen inches in diameter, tentacles as long as her hand reaching out from it. The creature was impressive in much the manner of a monstrous spider. She waved her hand at it, and it snapped back into its shell, closing its hood over its head. She laughed, making bubbles in the water (where did she find air to breathe? she wondered fleetingly, but this was immaterial) and waited for the cephalopod to lift its anterior portcullis and peep out again. So much like a hermit crab, she thought—only this was a hermit octopus, who constructed its own shell.

"Take me to your leader," she said as its eyes reappeared.

The ammonite nodded with its entire body and jetted away, its tentacles streaming behind. She followed, not really surprised.

Through bays and inlets of coral they swam, by algae-covered rocks and sea moss like green waving hair, and now and then a stray brown kelp anchored to the bottom with its top held near the surface by small bladders of gas. Purple, green, orange, solid or tenuous, the shallow-water plants decorated the reef. Starfish crowded near vaselike sponges, and beautiful but dangerous sea anemones perched on stones or the backs of crabs. Green spiked sea urchins and dark sand dollars dotted the bottom sand (where sand occurred), and green lobsters gestured with their terrible pincers. She had to swerve to avoid a giant ancient horseshoe crab. And the bivalves—they were everywhere!

She longed to stop and begin painting—but then she would lose the guide, for that fast-jetting mollusk gave her no time to lag. Tragedy!

Then, abruptly, she faced it; a coiled ammonite shell over six feet in diameter. Her guide was gone, perhaps afraid for its own safety, and she was on her own.

The tremendous hood hoisted up, a gateway almost as tall as she was in that position. Yellow tentacles snaked out, writhing toward her. She was frightened now, but she stood her ground as well as her buoyancy permitted. An eye the size of a small saucer fixed on her.

"Yes?" the king of the ammonites said. No bubbles rose, for it was not an air breather.

She didn't want to admit that its speech surprised her, so she asked it an inane question. "Are your sutures fluted?"

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A hundred tentacles formed a frown. "Are they fluted, what?"

She blushed. "Are they fluted, Your Majesty?"

The frown writhed into neutrality. "Honeyshell," King Ammon said, "my sutures are royally fluted and convoluted, each in the shape of a finely crafted crown. Would you care to examine them from the inside?" Its purple tentacles were extending toward her, each a yard long, and its mouth pried itself open.

"No," she said, quickly, backpedaling.

"One does not," Ammon remarked slowly, "say no to the king." Several of its red tentacles were coiling around projections in the coral reef, as though ready to pull the entire shell forward suddenly.

"I meant—" She cast about for the proper phraseology, "Your Majesty, I meant that I could never think of doubting the statement of the king so it would be insulting to suggest any closer inspection, Your Majesty."

The tentacles relaxed while Ammon considered. "There is that." Somehow she had the impression the king was disappointed. Now he was green.

"What I came to ask," she said humbly, "was why? Why do you need such a complex pattern, when no one can admire it... from the outside?"

" I can admire it very well from the inside—and my opinion is the only one that matters. And I am hungry."

"Hungry?" She didn't make the connection, unless this were a hint that she should get farther out of range. But the king surely could move through the water faster than she, and he had so many appendages! Brown, at the moment.

"I perceive you do not comprehend the way of the ammonite." Ammon remarked. "You vertebrates are powerful but clumsy. You have only four or five extremities, one or two colors, and your shell is obscure."

"We do our best to live with our handicaps," she said.

"Actually, you're decent enough, for a lower species," Ammon admitted graciously. "It behooves me to educate you. Pay attention: our primitive ancestors, the Nautiloids, had simplistic septums, hardly more than dismal disks, and so their sutures were aconvolute. They scrounged and scavenged after a fashion, gobbling down anything they could catch, and doubtless made a living of sorts. But we ammonites learned the secret of specialization: by varying the size of the space between the torso and the outermost septum, the early ammonite was able to change its specific gravity. Larger air pocket (actually a unique gas—but you would not comprehend the secret formula), and he floated; smaller, and he sank. Do you understand?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "That would be a big advantage in swimming, since you could maintain any level without effort."

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"Hm." King Ammon did not seem to be entirely pleased. "Just so. Now with a flat septum there is not much purchase, since the body is anchored only at the rim and the siphuncle. You know what the siphuncle is, of course?"

"No, sir," she said.

"Hm." The mollusk was pleased this time. "That is the cord of flesh that passes through the septa and chambers of the shell, right back to the very end. Have to keep in touch, you knew. I suppose your tail is a clumsy effort in that direction. At any rate, a convoluted septum, matching the configuration of the body surface, is a more effective base for adjustment of the volume of that gaseous partition.

So we ammonites have superior depth control. That enables us to feed more effectively, among other things."

"How clever!" Aquilon exclaimed. "I can see how you grew so large. But what do you eat?"

"Zilch, naturally. What else would a sapient species bother to consume?"

"I don't think we vertebrates are that advanced. I don't even know what zilch is."

Ammon's tentacles writhed and went rainbow at this astonishing confession of ignorance, but he courteously refrained from remarking on it. "Call it a type of marine fungus. There are quite a number of varieties, and naturally each ammonite species specializes on one. I imbibe nothing less than Royal Zilch, for example. No other creature can feed thereon!"

"By kingly decree?" She had not realized that ammonites were so finicky.

"By no means, though it is an interesting thought. No lesser creature has the physical capability to capture a Royal Zilch, let alone to assimilate it. It is necessary to lock on to its depth and duplicate its evasive course precisely, or all is lost. One mistake, and the zilch eats you."

Oh. "That's why your convolutions are so important. Your hunting is dangerous."

"Yes. I can, among other feats, navigate to an accuracy of two millimeters, plus or minus 15 percent, while interpenetrating the zilch with seventy-three tentacles." Gray members waved proudly. "And I've seldom been slashed."

This was beginning to sound like doubletalk to Aquilon. But she remained entirely too close to the king to risk contradicting him directly. He might yet develop an appetite for bipedal vertebrate à la blonde. "I'm amazed you can coordinate so well."

"Your amazement is entirely proper, my dear. You, with your mere five or six appendages, can hardly appreciate the magnitude of the task. And every unit has to be under specific control. The nervous system this entails—you know what a brain is?"

"I think so."

"Hm. Well, I have a sizable brain. As a matter of fact, the convolutions of my septa merely reflect the configuration of the surface lobes of my brain, which are naturally housed deep within my shell for Orn by Piers Anthony

proper protection. It is my advanced brain that sets me off from all other species; nothing like it exists elsewhere, nothing ever has, nothing ever will. That is why I am king."

Aquilon searched for some suitable comment.

Suddenly Ammon turned orange and lifted grandly in the water. She had supposed him bottom-bound because of his size, but he moved with exactly the control he had claimed, smoothly and powerfully. "There's one!"

She peered about anxiously. "One what?"

"One Royal Zilch. My meal!" And the king jetted off.

Now she saw his prey, a flat gray shape. "No!" she cried with sudden horror. "That's Circe!"

But the chase was already on, the monster cephalopod shooting backwards in pursuit of the fleeing manta. She knew how helpless the mantas were in water, and foresaw only one outcome of this chase. "No!" she cried again, desperately, but the bubbles merely rose upward from her mouth, carrying her protest snared within them.

She woke with a mouthful of sea water, her body soaking and shivering, and she still felt sick. She clambered out into the chill breeze. It was 4.00 a.m., or close enough and time for her shift on watch to begin.

Veg had the four-to-eight sleep, and she didn't envy him his attempt in the watery cabin. The mantas wisely remained oh the roof, seemingly oblivious of the continual spray. A gentle phosphorescence showed the outlines of the rolling waves, and the wind continued unabated. Now that she was fully awake and erect, she found the chill night breeze refreshing.

There was not much to do. Veg had lashed the rudder and cut the sail to a quarter spread, and the Nacre was stable. They had merely to remain alert and act quickly if anything untoward happened.

She did not expect to see more than routine waves, however.

"Cal," she ventured.

"Yes, Aquilon," he said Immediately. He did not sound tired, though he could not have had any better rest than she had had, during his turn in the cabin. This was a rough vigil for him. The fact that he was able to bear up at all meant that he had gained strength considerably since Nacre. That was reassuring.

"The ammonites—could they have been intelligent?"

She was afraid as she said it that he would laugh; but he was silent for a time, considering it. She waited for him, feeling the damp air in her hair, the vibrations of the shifting logs underfoot. No, Cal was not the one to laugh at a foolish question; he always took in the larger framework, the reason behind the statement.

"Highly unlikely, if you mean in any advanced manner. They had neither the size nor the metabolism Orn by Piers Anthony

to support extensive brain tissue, and water is a poor environment for intellectual activity. It—"

"I mean—the big ones. As big as us."

"Most ammonites were quite small, by human standards. But yes, in the late Mesozoic some did achieve considerable size. I believe the largest had a shell six and a half feet in diameter. However—"

"That's the one!"

He glanced toward her in the dark; she could tell this by the changing sound of his voice. "Actually, we know very little about their biology or life habits. The soft parts are not ordinarily preserved in fossils, and even if they were, there would be doubt about such things as color and temperament. But still, there are considerable objections to your thesis."

"In short, no," she said, smiling. She liked to smile, even when no one could see; it was a talent she had not always had. "Try this: could they have eaten a kind of swimming fungus exclusively, and become extinct when it disappeared?"

"One would then have to explain the abrupt extinction of the fungus," he pointed out.

"Maybe it emigrated to Nacre... " But this was another dead end. It had been quite convincing in her dream, but it lacked that conviction here. The mystery remained, nagging her: why had so highly successful a subclass as the Ammonoidea, virtually rulers of the sea during the Cretaceous period, become abruptly extinct? Survived only by its far more primitive relative, the pearly nautilus...

"What, if I may inquire into such a personal matter, brought the status of the cephalopods to mind? I had understood these were not of paramount interest to you."

"You showed me those shells and explained, and I—had a dream," she said. "A foolish, waterlogged vision... if you care to listen."

"Oh, I have enormous respect for dreams," he said, surprising her. "Their primary purpose is to sort, assess, and file the accumulated experience of the preceding few hours. Without them we would soon all be thoroughly psychotic, particularly on so-called contemporary Earth. Adapting to this Paleocene framework is difficult, but have you noticed how much less wearing it is intellectually than was merely existing on Earth? So it is not surprising that your dreams reflect the change. They are reaching out into the unbounded, as your mind responds to this release."

The odd thing was that he was right. She had longed to return to Nacre, because of the relief it offered from the tensions of home—but this world served the purpose just as well. She would rather be battered, seasick, and in fear of her life here, than safe and comfortable there.

But it was not entirely the freedom from Earth that was responsible, she knew. Cal, Veg, the mantas—she loved them all, and they all loved her, and Earth had nothing to match that.

She told Cal in detail about colorful King Ammon, and both laughed and it was good, and her seasickness dissipated.

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At eight, daylight over the water, Veg came up to relieve Cal. "Do snails have false teeth?" he inquired groggily. "I had this dream—"

Direct sunlight hustled the mantas back inside the cabin, the solar radiation too hard on them. There had been tree shade on the island, and irregular cloud cover; apart from that they tended toward the night. It was not that they were naturally nocturnal; but high noon on the planet Nacre was solid fog, and the beam of the sun never touched their skins. These four were more resistant to hard light than were their kin on Nacre, for they had been raised on Earth—but environment could modify their heredity only so much. They could survive sunlight here, but not comfortably and not long.

The day swept on, the wind abating only momentarily. Her heart pounded pusillanimously during such hesitations, anticipating the consequence of a prolonged delay in mid-ocean. What use would land within a hundred miles be, if they had to row the clumsy craft there? And should the wind shift...

At dusk, windchapped and tired, they watched the mantas come out and glide over the water, their pumping feet invisible as they moved at speed. How clearly this illustrated the fact that mantas did not perambulate or fly or swim! They jumped, and their flat bodies braced against the air in the manner of a kite or airplane wing, providing control. They either sat still and lumplike, or traveled at from thirty to a hundred miles per hour; they could not walk. They were beautiful.

And they were hungry. Circling near the raft, they lashed at surfacing fish. She heard the whip-snap of their tails striking water, and saw the spreading blood. Cal brought out a long-handed hook Aquilon hadn't known was aboard and hauled the carcasses in. He spread them on the deck, and one by one the mantas came in to feed. Circe first—and Aquilon watched her chip the fish up into small chunks with her deadly tail, then settle on top of the mess for assimilation. Cal had placed a section of sail over the logs so that the fluids of this process would not be lost.

Veg did not watch, and neither, after a moment, did Aquilon. They all understood the necessity of feeding the mantas, and knew that the creatures could not digest anything but raw meat, and would not touch any but the flesh of omnivorous creatures—but this proximity was appalling. Circe had fed on rats in the theoretically aseptic farm-cellar of Aquilon's Earth apartment building, and this had been accomplished privately. No doubt Hex had similarly isolated himself from Veg in the forest at feeding time. Now it was hard to accept physically what they had known intellectually. Only Cal seemed unaffected—and of course he had foreseen this problem too.

Aquilon called herself a hypocrite, but still did not watch. Perhaps it was because she knew herself to be a member of an omnivorous species—evolved to eat anything, and to kill wantonly. Whatever brutality was involved in the manta's existence was redoubled for man's. What could she accomplish, deciding to stop eating flesh after indulging for a lifetime, and spawned from millions of years ancestry of flesh eaters? Years would be required to expel the tainted protoplasm from her body, and the memory would never be expunged. Yet how could she kill, now that she comprehended the inherent evil of the action?

She felt sick again. Damn her subjectivity!

Orn by Piers Anthony

In five days they spotted land.

"There she blows!" Veg sang out happily.

"That's land ho!" Aquilon corrected him. Fine lookout you'd make."

But she was immensely relieved, and knew the others were too. Diminished appetites had extended their stores of food, but the men were looking lean and the limit had been coming distressingly near.

Their camaraderie had never been tested by real hunger. Certainly it would have been ugly—a compulsive meat-eater, a vegetarian, and a woman wavering unprettily between, and nothing but fish...

But she was relieved because of the change in scenery, too. The sea, after the first day, had become monotonous; it had seemed as though they were sailing nowhere, accomplishing nothing.

The Nacre tacked clumsily along the shoreline, seeking an appropriate landing. Aquilon could not be certain whether it was mainland or merely a large island, but it was obviously suitable for foraging and camping. No smog.

"No really formidable land animals on Earth during the Paleocene epoch," Cal remarked, as though to reassure them.

"Good for Paleo," Veg said.

"Paleo?"

"Here. You want to call this world Epoch instead?"

Cal did not argue. Veg tended to identify things simply, and the names stuck. Henceforth this planet would be Paleo.

Soon a calm inlet opened, and Veg guided the craft so neatly into the cove that she knew it was blind luck. She watched for a suitable beach, wondering whether this was San Francisco Bay. Probably not; everything could have changed. Palms were in view, and conifers, and populous deciduous trees.

Birds flitted through the branches, uttering harsh notes. Insects swarmed. Flowers of many types waved in the breeze.

"Look—fungus!" she exclaimed, spying a giant puffball. For a moment she thought of Nacre again, the planet of fungi. But Paleo, really, was better, for here the sun could shine. In fact, she was coming to realize that Nacre itself had represented little more than an escape from Earth for her; there was nothing inherently appealing about it otherwise, except for the mantas. And it was not the planet Earth that soured her, but the human culture that infested it. Yes, yes—Paleo was better.

The raft drifted close. The bottom of the bay was clear now, small fish hovering placidly. The smell of woods and earth came to her as the wind subsided, cut off by the land. The soil-loam-humus cleanness of it filled her with longing.

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Veg touched her arm, and she looked up with a start.

Near the shore stood two hairy animals. They were four-footed, thickset and toothy, with long tails and blunt multiple-hoofed feet. Small tusks projected from their mouths, and their eyes were tiny.

The overall aspect was like that of a hippopotamus—except that they were far too small. The highest point of the back was no more than a yard off the ground.

"Amblypods," Cal remarked without surprise. " Coryphodon, probably. Typical Paleocene fauna."

"Yeah, typical," Veg muttered. "You never saw it before, but you know all about it."

Cal smiled. "Merely a matter of a decent paleontological grounding. I don't really know very much, but I'm familiar with the general lines. The amblypods are distinctive. One of the later forms, Uintatherium, had the bulk of an elephant, with three pairs of horns on his—"

"You figure any of those are around here?"

"Of course not. Uintatherium was Eocene. He could no more show up in a Paleocene landscape than could a dinosaur."

Veg's eyes ranged over the forest. "I sure would laugh if a dinosaur poked his head over the hill while you were saying that. You're so sure of yourself."

Cal smiled again, complacently. "When that happens, you'll certainly be entitled to your mirth. The shellfish I studied on the island were decisive."

Veg shook his head and guided the raft to shore. Aquilon noticed irrelevantly that his face was filling out with blond beard. The amblypods, startled by the intrusion, trotted off, soon to be lost in the forest.

Smoothly the Nacre glided in, cutting the gap to land to twenty feet, fifteen, ten—

And jarred to a halt, dumping Veg and Aquilon into the water. "Oops, struck bottom," Veg said sheepishly. "Wasn't thinking."

"Wasn't thinking," she exclaimed, cupping a splash of water at him violently. But she was so glad to touch solid land that she didn't care. The sea was hip-deep on her here, and she waded ashore gleefully, pulling strings of seaweed from her torso.

Veg, meanwhile, went back to fetch a rope and haul the craft about by hand. Cal, never careless about his footing, had held his place, and helped unwind the coil. Soon they had the raft hitched loosely to a mangrove trunk.

Aquilon wandered inland, content for the moment merely to absorb the sights and smells of this richly primitive world. Ferns grew thickly on the ground, and she recognized several species of bush and tree: sycamore, holly, persimmon, willow, poplar, magnolia. Mosses sprouted profusely, and mushrooms were common; but she saw no grass, to her surprise. Still, there had been bamboo on the island, and that was a form of grass.

Orn by Piers Anthony

Something launched itself from a shrub ahead, and she jumped in alarm. It was a brown streak that sailed through the air, away from her. She caught a glimpse of extended limbs, a web of skin, an oblong shape. Then it was gone; she heard the rustic of its ascent in other foliage. It was not a bird.

" Planetetherium," Cal said behind her. "Primitive insectivore, one of the prime mammalian stocks. A glider."

"Yes... " she said, seeming to remember it from her studies. She really had no excuse to be ignorant of mammalian lines, but time and other considerations had let her knowledge fade. Cal, with his appalling intellect, seemed never to forget a thing.

"Perhaps you should change," Cal suggested, "before you become uncomfortable."

She looked down at herself. Her clothing was plastered against her body, and she knew the salt would chafe as the moisture evaporated. Cal was right, as always.

Yet the air was pleasant, and despite the shade of the trees there was no chill. She wished she could simply remove her clothes and glide nymphlike through glade and fem, free of all encumbrance.

"Why not?" she said rhetorically. She began to strip, handing her wet garments to Cal stage by stage.

He made no comment, and did not avert his gaze.

So she ran, nymphlike, through glade and fern. It was every bit as glorious as she had imagined, except for a thorn that got in her foot. She had shed the restraints of civilization with her clothing, and was whole again.

Veg's mouth dropped open appreciatively as she burst upon him, but he said no more than Cal had.

The Nacre was tight against the shore: Veg's muscle had come into play. Her dry apparel was aboard, but she hesitated to seek it. Wouldn't it be better if they all were to—

No. Sexual tensions existed among them already at a barely submerged level. It would be criminally foolish to do anything to heighten them needlessly. Subdued, she boarded the raft and dressed.

They spent the night on the raft, anchored just offshore. There might be no dangerous species, but they preferred a little more time for acclimation.

In the morning the insects and birds were clustered thickly on the shore. The first were familiar, the second strange. Several large gray sea fowl swam around the raft, diving for fish. Aquilon stood on the deck and painted them, intrigued by their fearlessness. Were there no significant predators on the water? Or was the raft so unusual as to be taken for an artifact of nature? Or did they know instinctively who was a threat and who was not?

Veg brought the Nacre to shore again and tied up. This time there was no premature jolt. She wondered whether he had scouted the bottom to locate a suitable channel for the keel, or whether he had excavated one himself.

Orn by Piers Anthony

They ventured inland several miles, as a party. Here were oaks, beeches, walnuts, and squirrellike creatures sporting in them. Occasional tufts of grass sprouted in the hilly country, where the thickly growing trees permitted. So it was present, but not well established. Ratlike creatures skittered away as the human party approached.

"Were there true rodents in the Paleocene?" Aquilon inquired.

"Not to speak of," Cal said. "These are probably ancestral primates."

"Primates!" She was shocked.

"Before the true rodents developed, the primitive primates occupied that niche. They descended from trees, like most mammals, and took to the opening fields. But there wasn't enough grass, as you can see; it occupies a minor ecological niche until the Miocene epoch, when widespread dry plains developed. And the primates weren't completely committed. So the true rodents eventually drove them back into the trees, this time to stay. The primates never were very successful."

"Except for man..."

"A minor exception, paleontologically. Man happened to wobble back and forth between field and forest just enough to remain more generalized than most of his contemporaries. If he hadn't been lucky and clever, he would not have survived."

"I see." She wasn't certain how serious he was.

"Quite often it is the less specialized creature that pulls through," he continued blithely. "Conditions change, and the species fully adapted to a particular environment may have to change in a hurry or perish. Often it can't adapt. But the generalized species can jump either way. So although it seldom dominates, it may outlast those who do. Probably that explains the marginal success of the primitive nautilus, while the specialized and dominant ammonite vanished."

She had never thought of it quite that way. Man—as an unspecialized, lucky, but clever species, thrown into prominence by accident of circumstance...

A large running bird with yellow tail feathers appeared and scooped up a careless mammal that resembled a kangaroo rat. The bird, a good two feet tall, passed quite close to them before passing out of sight. Aquilon wondered whether the rat could have been an ancestor of hers, then chided herself: dead, it could not have sired much. At any rate, it would be foolish to interfere. Suicidally foolish, possibly, for any change in the life patterns here might affect those of her own time.

"The birds showed considerably more promise, initially," Cal said. "Actually, throughout the Cenozoic until the present, they have dominated Earth, reckoned in the normal manner."

"By number of species." she said. "So I understand. But diversity isn't everything, fortunately."

"Fortunately?"

"You don't approve of man winning out?"

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"I believe the world would have endured more amicably without him. It is not good to have a single species run amuck."

She saw that he meant it. She thought of contemporary Earth, and understood his point. Paleo was clean, unspoiled. Better that it remain that way, paradox aside.

The next few days they ranged more widely. They encountered more amblypods and both doglike and catlike carnivores. The pursuers, Cal explained, had long snouts for reaching out on the run; the hide-and-pouncers had sharp claws for holding and slashing, and short snouts. The ambushers buried their dung, to mute the giveaway odor; the chasers did not bother. The physical properties of what were later to be canines and felines and ursines were not random. Another line was the fairly substantial Dinocerata, ancestors to the monster Uintatherium of the later epoch. But all these mammals were stupid, compared to those that were to evolve; none would have survived readily on Earth of fifty million years later. She painted them all, and Cal made many notes on his voicetyper.

She learned to ignore the monotonous murmur of his descriptions as he made his entries.

This was a warm paradise—but she became restless. There was nothing, really, to do. It had been nice to dream of a life without responsibility or danger or discomfort, but the actuality palled rapidly.

It was late summer, and a number of the trees bore small fruit, and there were berries and edible tubers. Food was not a serious problem. She talked with Veg and Cal, but knew them both too well already, and she did not care to get too personal lest it came down abruptly to the male-female problem. She had not decided between them, yet; that was what restrained her, she decided.

"Going to get cold," Veg observed. "Fall's coming."

Of course he was right. They didn't know their exact location, and it probably could not be matched precisely to a modern-Earth geography anyway, but the number of deciduous trees said things about the seasons. There might be no actual snow here in winter, or there might be several feet of it—but it would be cold enough to make leaves turn and drop. They would have to prepare for the worst, or—"Let's go south!" she cried. "To the tropics, where it is warm all year round. Explore. Travel.

Survey."

"You sound as though we're staying here indefinitely," Cal remarked, but there was something funny about the way he said it. He's afraid of something, she thought, and that made her uneasy. Was it that a long-term residence would force them to revert farther toward the natural state, mating and homemaking? Or that doing so would upset the existing balance of nature and imperil the status quo on Earth, because of the paradox effect? Her inclination was to ignore that; somehow she doubted that what they did here could affect Earth there, whatever the theory might be. And if it did—well, so be it.

"Actually, there appears to be more than enough data on hand to render a report on Paleo," Cal continued.

She felt the skin along her forearms tightening—a nervous reaction once more common than now.

Orn by Piers Anthony

She had forgotten, or tried to forget, their assigned mission. The truth was that she viewed the prospective return to Earth, or whatever other mission awaited next, with misgiving bordering on alarm. She liked Paleo, bored though she had been with it a moment ago. She liked its wildness—"In wildness is the preservation of the world," she remembered from somewhere—and she would far rather tackle its problems than those of Earth society.

But they had little excuse to tarry longer. The onset of winter could be of little concern to them if they were to return to the station and report. Their radio equipment was in good order, and they could find the way by homing in on the master unit remaining in the tunnel.

But she was sure, now, that Cal did not want to go back, though she also knew it would be useless to challenge him on that. He comprehended something she did not, something that worried him deeply, but that he chose to keep to himself. He might allow himself to be persuaded to travel south—or somewhere, anywhere but back—if she could provide a strong enough pretext.

Yet she did not care to admit her true feelings yet. How did Veg stand?

"Can't sail back against the wind," Veg said. "More likely sink, tacking the whole way, and it'd take us a month in clear weather. Going to get hungry on the way."

Bless him! She felt a surge of special affection for the big, simple man, so naïve in manner but practical in action. They couldn't go back without enormous preparation.

"Of course." Cal said, unperturbed. "I was thinking of a radio report. We can not make a physical return until the wind shifts with the season—though that may occur any day now."

That did not reassure her particularly, though she wasn't sure why. Cal seemed to be agreeing to some procrastination, and a radio report would keep them officially on duty.

"I thought your report came at the end," Veg said.

"Not necessarily. We were to determine the status of the planet, then put the report on record for the next in-phase connection to Earth. It was presumed that these various delays would make the report wait a month or two, perhaps longer. But we've done the job. This is definitely Paleocene. All the fauna and flora check. We have exceeded coincidence by a millionfold; this can not be a foreign planet."

"How about the geography?"

"I explained about that. Their map seems accurate, and it is—"

"We could follow the coast a little and find out, maybe," Veg said. "Make sure there isn't some out-of-place continent, or something."

Clumsy, clumsy, she thought. That tack would never work.

Cal smiled ruefully. "In other words, you're voting with Aquilon again."

Was he asking to be outvoted? What was on his mind?

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Veg shrugged, missing the implication. "There's time to kill, and maybe we'll learn something new for your report. Better than sitting around here waiting for the wind."

"That's a transparent appeal to the researcher in me," Cal said. "You know I don't like to make a premature statement, and so long as the possibility exists of discovering something significant—" He sighed. "All right. I know how the mantas feel. They all want to remain here indefinitely. So a full vote would change nothing. We'll leave one of the two radios here under cover and mark the place.

That way, if anything happens to the raft, I'll still be able to make my report."

Aquilon smiled uneasily. Cal had yielded almost too readily.

They sailed by day, tacking along the shore and covering about twenty miles before searching out a harbor for the night. It was good to be moving again, even though there was now no tangible destination.

A month passed like the breath of the breeze, and it was good. Gradually the curve of the continent brought them around so that they were sailing south-southeast and largely before the shifting wind.

They had come perhaps eight hundred miles, and only verified that the Paleocene landscape was remarkably uniform, though she realized that this could be because their progress south roughly matched that of the coming fall season.

The mantas rode the raft the first few days, then took to traveling on land. They would disappear in the morning and reappear at the new camp in the evening. Sometimes only one or two would show up, the others ranging elsewhere for days at a time. Yes, they liked Paleo!

It was Circe who broke the lull, bringing news to Aquilon just before dusk. "Mountains? Tall ones?"

Aquilon inquired, reading the manta's responses so readily now that it was almost the same as human dialogue. "Unusual? Snow-capped? And—"

She spoke to the others, excitedly. "It seems there are extremely large mountains about two hundred miles south of us. Twenty thousand feet, or more. They form a virtually solid wall, and a number are actively volcanic. The mantas can't get past, on land, because of the cold, and they don't trust the water route either."

"How can an active volcano have snow on it?" Veg demanded. "It's hot, isn't it—or else the snow would put it out."

"Silly! Volcanoes aren't on fire," she reproved him. "One could shoot off in a snowstorm—or underwater, as many do." But she was thrilled. They were finally coming up to something atypical, something not suggested by the map or Cal's knowledge of Paleocene geography. Massive, active volcanoes, shoulder to shoulder, in America.

The mantas had been ranging far ahead, scouting the territory, yet had been balked by these, both on land and water. A mighty barrier indeed, for the mama's traveling range was good.

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"If that's the region the tsunami originated from," Cal said, "we had better approach it with exceeding caution."

Aquilon nodded soberly, but she was singing inside. This promised to be an unforgettable experience—and that, despite all the undertones, was a thing she ardently craved.

IX: ORN

The mountains were high, and chill winds swept through the pass. The range was new; Orn's memory of the landscape of this tropical section of the subcontinent indicated a flat plain sometimes submerged by an inlet of the ocean. Natural forces had come into play in unusual fashion to bring this orogeny where none had occurred before. Yet it was possible that his mental map was inaccurate, for this was at the fringe of it. None of his ancestors had gone far beyond this place, having been stopped by the sea. The range, and whatever land might lie beyond it, must have risen complete out of that ocean in the past few million years.

Orn would have turned back and sought another route, but it had been a long, difficult climb, game was scarce, and he was hungry. Prey might be near ahead; it certainly was not near behind. He ran on, generating new warmth to replace what the wind tore from him. If the lie of this pass were typical, the descent would begin soon.

It did. As Orn passed the ridge, the weather changed. The cold dry air became cold damp air that steadily warmed as he went lower. The stinging snow became ice mist, then rain.

He adjusted his wings to shed as much water as possible in their oil-starved state and went on. He wanted to reach the lowlands by nightfall, and fill his crop. The vegetation was increasing, but the ferns and palmetto bore no fruit.

It was getting warm. Orn recognized the type of soil underfoot. Volcanic in origin. This alerted him; he knew firsthand, and many times over, how dangerous volcanism was. Instead of getting out of it, he was going deeper in.

There seemed to be more regions of such activity than ever in the past, and had his mind worked that way Orn would have wondered what the world was coming to. Great changes were taking place all over the land mass, apart from the revisions of plant and animal life. It continued to be unsettling.

He came across a streamlet, and followed it down rapidly. Dusk was coming. Just as it became almost too dark to forage by sight, he found a shallow pool stocked with fat lazy fish, teleos. He jumped in with both feet and scooped two out before they took alarm.

He fed well and spent the night in a dense mag tree. The hazard of the mountain range had been overcome.

Orn by Piers Anthony

In the clear morning Orn looked out over the landscape. The stream fell away in a series of rapids and finally disappeared in a tangled mass of vegetation at the foot of the slope. A short distance beyond that lay the shore of a wide shallow lake. Many thickly overgrown islands spotted it, and portions were little more than liquid swamp. Far in the distance across that water rose another ridge of mountains.

The valley was hot. Jets of steam plumed from the bay nearest the live volcanoes and thick mists hung over much of the lake.

The valley was flat. Nothing stood taller than the height of the trees, and the majority of it was open water. It was, on the whole, familiar: this was the landscape of twenty million years ago, sharpest in his memory, though in greatly reduced scale.

He followed the stream down. Rushes and horsetails grew at the, edges of its shallows, and leafed plants bordered it everywhere. Tufts of grass were present high on the mountainside, but disappeared in the lowland, unable to compete there. Orn did not miss it; grass was tough and tasteless stuff and its seeds were too small for his appetite.

As the land leveled out, Orn lost sight of the overall valley. He discovered that it was not as flat as it had seemed from above; mist had filled in irregularities, concealing banks and gulleys and gorges.

The stream plunged into a mass of tall trees. A few were of the seasonal leaf-dropping variety that had taken over the continent of the north, but most were the memory-familiar ginks and firs. Here full-sized fern trees prospered, and many treelike varieties of cycad.

Game was especially plentiful. The little primes peeked out from the branches of the larger leafed trees and liz were abundant on the turf. Flying arths hummed everywhere.

He cut away from the river that was degenerating into swamp, and shortly came out on a bushy plateau punctuated by short barrel-bodied cycads and shrublike angios. Moss covered the occasional rocks. He trotted after a particularly large four-winged drag, not with any real hope of catching it but content to explore this wonderful, unexpected reincarnation of familiarity. Any pretext would do.

A huge, low shape rose before him. Orn was almost upon it before he was aware, having allowed pursuit of the winger to take up more of his attention than was wise. He had become careless, in this season of innocuous animals. He had smelled no large mam, so had relaxed. Foolishly.

It was a rep—a big one. It was not as tall as Orn, but that was because this creature's whole body was spread out against the ground. Its head was low and armored with bony scales, and four toothlike horns projected sidewise. Similar scales extended the length of the body, making the back a broad impervious trunk. Stout spikes lined each side, some as long as Orn's beak and as wickedly curved.

The tail was a blunt, solid mass of bone.

Orn remembered immediately. This was an Anky, one of the lines of great reps. It was four times his own length and disproportionately heavy and powerful, but no aggressive threat to him. Its massive armor was defensive, and it was a herbivore.

This was the second giant land rep he had seen here. The first had been in the cavern, mysteriously Orn by Piers Anthony

dead, but this one was healthy. Orn did not concern himself with the complex ramifications of his discovery, but did understand that where there was one live monster there were likely to be more. His relaxing reflexes were brought once more to full functioning, and he looked around alertly and somewhat furtively.

The Anky, slow-witted, became aware of him, and flexed its tail. Orn leaped back. A single sweep of that bludgeon could destroy him, were he so careless as to step within its range. The Anky was harmless—but normal precautions had to be taken. It could kill without meaning to.

The Anky took a slow step forward, the muscles in its short thick legs making the scales bulge outward. It was curious about him, in its dull way. He could easily outrun it, but preferred not to.

Guided by a memory functioning for the first time the way it should, Orn stood still. The Anky hesitated, then lost interest and took another mouthful of leaves from the nearest shrub. What did not move and did not smell threatening did not exist as a danger to it. Anky had forgotten him.

Orn moved on, alarming the rep again. This time he was not concerned; he had verified the reliability of his memory, and would trust it within this valley. The sun was high now; the mists had cleared and the brush ahead thinned out into a field of low ferns.

A herd of large animals came into view, grazing peacefully. Orn recognized these too: Tricers. Larger than the ones his ancestors had known, more horny—but also harmless, for him, when undisturbed.

He approached them cautiously, but they took no notice of him. Nearest was a large bull as long as the Anky, but taller than Orn, with a monstrous shield projecting from the back of the head. Three heavy-duty horns curved slightly downward from the region of eyes and nose, and mighty muscles flexed as it swung its head about. This was an animal no sensible creature tampered with.

Orn skirted the herd of fifty or more individuals and traveled on toward the main lake. The turf became spongy and the horsetails tall. And, significantly, the small birds became silent.

A head appeared above the mixed foliage. Orn jumped, spreading his wings in a reflex, that had nothing to do with flying. He recognized this rep, too—and now he was in for trouble. This was a Struth.

The Struth was about Orn's own height, and rather similar in physique at first glance. It stood on long slender hind legs, and its small head topped a sinuous neck. It was omnivorous, but did not attack large prey. Its diet consisted of arths, aves, mams, and anything else that offered, such as eggs and fruit. It was fleet.

The resemblance to Orn ended about there, for the Struth had small forelimbs in lieu of wings, and a strong fleshy tail in place of Orn's tuft of feathers, and a mottled smooth skin and a much uglier beak.

Its body, like that of any rep, varied in temperature with the heat of the day.

But its similarities to Orn were enough to constitute a problem, for the two shared, to a considerable extent, an ecological niche. They were direct competitors.

Orn had never physically encountered a Struth before, but his memory covered all of this. The rep, Orn by Piers Anthony

possessing some faint hint of the species recollection so highly developed in Orn, knew the competitor instinctively. They were not enemies in the sense of predator/prey, but the one could not tolerate the other in his foraging ground. The rival for food had to be driven off.

The Struth, despite the similarity in size, outmassed Orn considerably, for it had fat and muscle where he had down and quill. It was fresh, while he was lean from the difficult trek over wasteland and mountain. In the chill of night or height, Orn would have contested with it nevertheless, for his warm body did not become lethargic as the temperature dropped. His reactions there would be faster, his blows surer, his perceptions more accurate.

But this was the heat of the day, and of the lowland, and the rep was at its best in its home territory.

Orn, in these circumstances, would be foolish to fight it now.

The Struth was aware of its advantage. It charged.

Neither bravery nor cowardice were concepts in Orn's lexicon. He battled when it behooved him to, and avoided trouble at other times. He fled.

The Struth had routed its rival—but was not bright enough to realize it yet. The chase, once commenced, had to continue until it terminated forcefully in some fashion.

Orn was a swift runner, as he had to be as a landbound bird. But the terrain was new to him in detail, and the somewhat marshy ground was poor footing for his claws. He started with a fair lead, but the rep was gaining. This pursuit might be pointless for it—but it could also be fatal for him.

Orn dodged to the side, seeking to avoid the Tricer herd. The Struth cut across the angle, narrowing the gap between them rapidly. Only five body-lengths separated them now.

It would be useless to seek out the water and wade into it; the rep would merely follow, making better progress because of its solidity. Orn could swim on the surface, as the Struth could not—but deep water was dangerous for other reasons. He would need time to scout it out thoroughly before trusting himself to it, regardless of the chase.

The ground became mucky, inhibiting him more. The wet sand and clinging mud encumbered his feet, slowing him down critically and tiring him rapidly. It interfered with the Struth too, but not as much. The gap was down to three body-lengths.

Orn ran on, not exhausted but straining to his utmost. Soon he would have to stand and fight—and unless he were un-realistically fortunate, the outcome would be the same as that of the chase. He could hurt the rep, perhaps cripple it—but could not expect to overcome it.

A single bull Tricer grazed in the cycads at the edge of an inlet of marsh. Orn saw that in his haste he had trapped himself: ahead and to one side was a bubbling swamp that he dared not enter unprepared, even granted the time to do so, and to the other side was the massive horned herbivore. He had nowhere to go.

Except—

Orn by Piers Anthony

He did it, hearing the Struth one length behind. He lunged toward the bull as though to impale himself on the ferocious horns.

The Tricer looked up, huge and stupid. A green strand dangled from its beak. Its tiny eyes were obscured by the two vicious horns overshadowing them, and the semicircular flange of head armor stood higher than Orn himself. Yes, a most dangerous creature—but slow to initiate business. Its eyesight was not good, so it judged a potential enemy primarily by size and smell—and did not fear birds. Provided that it recognized them in time.

Orn ran up to it, fluttering his wings and squawking so that his avian affinity was quite clear—to almost any creature. He passed within a wingspan of the Tricer's head... and the bull merely stood there, attempting to make up its mind.

The Struth, however, did not dare try such a stunt. It was a hunter, and therefore not completely dense. Though too small to be a threat to the bull, it was too large to be tolerated by the herd. Orn saw the juvenile Tricers sporting near their dams. Actually, few reps guarded their eggs or protected their own young, but those infants who stayed with the herd tended to survive more readily than those who wandered free, so the effect was much the same. No—no predator was welcome here.

But the Struth, intent on the chase, did not sheer off in time. It approached the bull moments after Orn passed: just time enough for the monster to make up his mind. The Tricer sniffed, snorted, and whipped his terrible shield about, making ready to charge.

Already the Struth realized what was happening. The delay had been in implementation rather than cognizance. Now it halted and pulled back, the bull following. Finally the Struth ran back the way it had come, its original mission forgotten.

The Tricer pursued it a few paces, then stopped and resumed grazing. The episode was over, and Orn was safe.

Just as well. He had had no real quarrel with the Struth, and was happy to honor its territorial integrity. His only concern had been to protect himself.

He walked through the herd unmolested. This was good, because it gave him respite, but he could not remain here indefinitely. A Tricer cow might absent-mindedly step on him. And if anything should happen to alarm the herd, to send it milling or stampeding, he could be crushed between the bruising bodies.

Yet where was he to go? This was a pleasant and memory-familiar valley in type if not in detail, and he could reside here comfortably for some time. But it did not have that something which had increasingly urged him on.

He left the herd and struck for the mountain range that defined the valley. There at least he could find arths and fish to satisfy his returning hunger, and probably that elevation was free of large predators.

With this return of the old world had come the old dangers. He had allowed himself to become used to sleeping safely, and until he recovered his proper nocturnal reflexes he did not dare to sleep amid the reps. Though he could not visualize these until he saw them, he was aware that far more Orn by Piers Anthony

dangerous creatures prowled this valley than the ones he had encountered so far.

This, at least, was the gist of the diffuse array of thoughts Orn had as he climbed the slope.

He returned to the descending river and the volcanic soil, because these were now familiar.

Familiarity was life to him. There was danger from the heated earth and the rumbling mountain, but this known hazard militated against unknown hazards. The volcanic threat applied to all creatures, particularly the reps, and the environment was in fact more hostile to them than to him. He would utilize it until a larger area had been properly scouted.

He encountered no more of the large reps, though his sensitive eyes and nose picked up their profuse traces. There were numbers of them, mostly young, but these hid from him. The valley was not really more crowded than the surrounding areas beyond the badlands; it merely seemed that way because its denizens tended to be larger and more familiar. There were small mams in far greater abundance in the north country, while the huge reps were comparatively sparse. A few crocs, a few snakes. What had happened, there?

He dined on fish again, and splashed the clear water over his feathers, refreshing them. Time had passed, and now it was afternoon. He began to search for an appropriate lodging for the night. He preferred not to roost directly on the ground, but an ascent into a tree was impractical, here where the trees were stunted and scarce. Possibly a good thicket of thorns—

This was a serious matter, and Orn undertook his search carefully. He was looking for a permanent roost—one he could depend on during the entire period of his stay within this valley. Later he might develop other roosts, so that he could canvass more distant sections of the valley without having to make a long trek back; but this first refuge was essential.

The sun dipped toward the far side, making the range there thrust up in silhouette, and the clouds became pink. But still he had not found a suitable spot.

The ground was becoming warm again, signal of another subterranean furnace ahead, or at least a vent from the depths. It was as though the entire range were riddled with hot conduits. Orn became nervous, reminded again of what could happen in such terrain. He did not think of it at other times; the immediacy, as always, conjured the painful image. Yet he felt there was a certain security in water. Though the river channel might shift, it was protection against actual fire.

Accordingly, he followed an offshoot of the stream up toward its snowy source. He could, if necessary, spend this night in the coldest heights. The reps certainly would not be there. But this would not be comfortable, and it was too far away from the valley proper to be convenient as a regular thing.

He came across a waterfall, as the sun touched the far mountains. The brook passed over an outcropping of hard rock, forming a pool above and another below, and splayed in a shallow falling sheet between the two. The drop was somewhat more than Orn's standing height, but the force of the water was not great.

He recognized the construction. Behind such a sheet of water would be a concavity, where the less Orn by Piers Anthony

durable substrata melted away in the course of millennia. This was the way, in the life cycle of rivers.

Sometimes there was space enough underneath for a large bird to roost.

Orn braced himself and poked his beak into the waterfall. The cold water split, and his head went on through. There was space—but no adequate footing. In an emergency he might grasp one slanting ridge of rock with one foot, and hang on to the carved backwall with his beak, but certainly not by preference. This was not his roost.

Then something activated every perception and conjured a barrage of images, one tumbling over the other in unique confusion. Orn snapped back his head and stood rocking in the spuming water, sorting it out while his wings fluttered spasmodically.

The thing he had been unknowingly searching for—the nameless mission—the object of his quest—

Excitement! For he had seen the traces of a prior occupant of the emergency roost. The scrape of claw, the mark of beak—

The unmistakable spoor of another bird of his species. Another "Orn"—his own age, and female.

X: VEG

It was a truly awesome range: scarred volcanic cones set almost adjacent to each other to form a wall, seemingly solid, extending right into the sea. The ambient fumes suggested that the volcanic activity continued beneath the water, too, and there were very few fish.

"I don't understand this," Cal lamented. "This should be about where Baja California terminates, or will terminate, on our globe. This formation, to put it euphemistically, is atypical."

Veg maneuvered the Nacre into deep water, unconcerned with that aspect. He could see why the mantas hadn't fooled with this section; it was a real wasteland.

The mountains were followed by much more active cones. An almost impenetrable fog of gas and floating ash obscured portions of the shore. After that came desert, rent by jagged rifts. They drew the raft in only enough to view the desolation under strange foul clouds, and did not touch land.

At one point the wind reversed, pushing the Nacre far out to sea before he could angle it back. The smell was appalling. They had to tie shirts over their heads to keep the stinging particles out of eyes and lungs. The four mantas huddled inside the cabin, no more comfortable, though of course they did not need to breathe.

After days and nights of this another range appeared, even more massive and imposing than the first.

Its oceanic barriers extended far out, becoming mighty reefs with jigsaw-puzzle elevations poking through the surface. It was as though grotesque statues stood upon the water, mocking Jesus Christ.

Twice the Nacre was snagged, forcing them to disembark and struggle waist-deep in the gritty fluid Orn by Piers Anthony

to free it. But there were some few fish here, and corals, and crabs, and barnacles. To their dismay, they had to wear shoes in the water, for the fish had teeth and the crabs pincers, and the coral was sharp.

"But where there's life, there's hope," Aquilon said. Veg didn't think it was funny, but agreed that some sea life was better than none, for things must be about to ease up.

At last they spied deep water—but had virtually to portage across a final band of shallows. The solid raft, even without their weight or that of the mantas, projected too far down to make navigation easy, and it was crushingly heavy to haul about by hand. The palm wood had become waterlogged, making it worse. Veg had to dive under and remove the keel, and even so the raft caught on every conceivable piece of reef. He braced his feet against the rocklike coral foundation and hauled on the front rope, while Cal and Aquilon pried with poles.

Busy as he was, he couldn't help noticing Aquilon's anatomy as she strained at the raft. Her shapely legs were bare from the water level up to her brief shorts, and her midriff was open too. Her bosom flexed as her arms moved, each breast a live thing straining at the halter. Her blonde hair was tied back, but several major strands had pulled away and now whipped across her face erratically.

Ah, she was lovely now—far more so than when she had affected nudity that one time just after they landed. Clothes made the woman, not the man, for they supported and concealed and enhanced and made mysteries where mysteries belonged. Not that she was unattractive, nude; oh no! But now—now he felt like charging through the water, sweeping her up entire, and—

And nothing. With Aquilon it had to be voluntary—even in his fancy. The mere touch of her fingers on his arm meant more than the definitive embrace of any woman he had known before. Her smile gave him a shortness of breath, though he had loved her long before he had seen her smile. Even that time on planet Nacre, when she had made that shocking expression, as though the muscles of her face were connected up the wrong way—even then, his horror had been because he cared. In fact, it hardly seemed that there could have been a time when—

The raft broke away from whatever submarine object had held it, and Veg stumbled forward into deep water. He let go the rope and clamped his mouth and eyes shut as he hit. The warm bath tugged at his clothing, and trapped air hauled him immediately back to the surface before bursting out of his shirt in an embarrassing bubble.

For an instant his eyes opened under water. It was clear, here.

A gigantic fish was coming at him. It resembled a sword-fish, but it had a fin on its back like that of a shark and its eyes were each as big as a human head. The creature was well over twenty feet long, sleek, swift, and strong.

Veg propelled himself out of the depths and onto the reef in a manner he could never afterward recall. He stood at the brink, dumbly pointing.

The fish broke surface and leaped partially into the air, its tremendous nose-spine opening to reveal many small teeth. Vapor spouted from a blowhole over the eyes.

Orn by Piers Anthony

"That's no porpoise!" Aquilon exclaimed, amazed.

Cal stood open-mouthed. Veg had never seen the little man so surprised.

The creature departed as rapidly as it had come, never bothering to attack. Veg's knees felt weak.

That dinnerplate eye! "Never saw a fish like that before," he said shakily.

"Fish?" Cal was coming out of his daze.

"Didn't you see it? With the beak and the—"

"That was Ichthyosaurus," Cal said, as though it were marvelously significant.

Now Aquilon began to react. "The reptile?"

The reptile.

Veg decided there was something he was missing, but he waited until the Nacre had been reloaded and they were on their way again before challenging it.

The treacherous reefs enclosed a moderately shallow ocean basin about thirty miles across. Into this projected two large islands separated from each other by a one-mile channel. They were mountainous; ugly black cones rammed into the sky from each, and yellow-brown vapor trailed from one.

"Scylla and Charybdis," Aquilon murmured. "Let's go around."

Veg obligingly angled north so as to pass Scylla on the western shore, heading in toward land. His keel, replaced, was not properly firm, but the weather in this cove was gentle and he had no trouble.

About three miles separated the island from land, and on both sides were small white beaches backed by tangled jungle. Nearest to the water were tall tree-ferns, but inland, up the mountain slopes, he could make out the solid green of stands of pine and fir. There was a light haze, and every so often he sneezed.

"Heavy pollen in the air," Cal explained.

"Now that we're on the subject," Veg said, "what's wrong with that fish being a reptile?"

Aquilon looked at Cal. "He just won that bet about the dinosaurs, though he doesn't know it!"

"I did?" Veg asked. "All I saw was a big-eyed fish, dark gray with a light-gray belly and a snout that almost rammed me. And you—"

Cal looked serious. "Nevertheless, its presence forces us into a considerable reappraisal."

"Funniest looking dino I ever saw! How long did you say they've been dead?"

Aquilon reached up to ruffle his matted hair. She, at least, was at ease. "Extinct is the word, not dead.

And it's been about seventy million years, on Earth. The dinosaurs died out at the end of the Orn by Piers Anthony

Cretaceous."

"So they've been gone five million years, here—and we haven't seen one yet, and maybe we won't unless we go back into the Bodacious."

"Cretaceous," Cal said, missing the outlandish joke—another sign that the man had been badly shaken up. "The name comes from the Latin word Creta, meaning chalk. So it's the chalk age. Chalky limestones such as the White Cliffs of Dover—

"So the dinosaurs were full of chalk," Veg said, wondering how far to take this game. "Used it in their big bones, I guess."

"I'm afraid that's not quite it. The chalk came from the compacted skeletons of billions of single-celled animals, the Foraminifera, who lived in the shallow seas. But such animal chalk deposits are hardly more than an episode in the seventy-million-year period of the Cretaceous."

Veg remained solemn. "On Earth, maybe. But this isn't Earth."

"But it is," Aquilon murmured. "Paleocene Earth. Dawn of the age of mammals."

"I know what mammals are," he said, looking at her bosom.

"Mammaries," she said, correcting him without embarrassment. "Typical of the mammals."

"Whose distinguishing trait is—hair," Cal added, suppressing a smile.

Veg let that pass, seeing that Cal had gotten over his disturbance. "So if there are dinosaurs, this would be Creta instead of Paleo. Now how about this famous fish?"

"Cal just explained," Aquilon said. "It's not a fish. It's Ichthyosaurus—a swimming reptile. Its ancestors walked on land, and it breathes air."

"Same as a crocodile. What does that prove?"

Call took over. " Ichthyosaurus is a member of class Reptilia, order Ichthyosauria—the swimming reptiles. It is not considered to be a dinosaur. The dinosaurs are actually a popular composite of two reptilian orders, the Saurischia and the Ornithischia, respectively 'lizard-hips' and 'bird-hips'. They were primarily land or swamp dwellers."

"Somewhere in there I think you brushed near my question. Icky is not a dinosaur, just as I thought.

Good. So now tell me why you figure it's so significant, this fish-reptile. What's it got to do with dinosaurs?"

"He's got you there," Aquilon said to Cal.

"They were contemporaneous phenomena. The Cretaceous was the zenith of the reptilian radiation.

Almost all the lines flourished then—and almost all died out before the Paleocene. The Ichthyosaurus passed before a number of the land-dwelling forms, so—"

Orn by Piers Anthony

"So if Ichy's still here, so are the dinos," Veg said. " Now I make the connection. It is like a dinosaur poking his snout over the hill."

"Of course that doesn't necessarily follow—"

"Oh, no, I'm happy to have it follow. Serves you right."

"But you see, this is the Paleocene," Cal said. "The ocean fauna, and everything we have observed on land—the evolution of the other species is cumulatively definitive. Dinosaurs have no place here, no place at all, unless—"

"Unless?" Veg and Aquilon were both curious.

"Unless there is an enclave. An isolated carryover of the Cretaceous fauna—doomed to extinction, but surviving the demise of its age by a few million years. Those sea reptiles that fed on fish or belemnites might endure, such as the particular ichthyosaur we encountered, but not those specializing in ammonites. Though why there should be no fossil record—"

"It could have happened on Earth," Aquilon said. "We might yet discover a submerged bed of fossils that proved—"

"Down!" Veg whispered ferociously.

They obeyed immediately, cutting off the conversation. In silence they followed his gaze.

They had been rounding the green bend of the island Scylla, Veg now poling the craft along.

Standing, he had the best view, and so had seen it first—but it made them all flinch. In the silence one of the mantas poked around the shady side of the cabin: Hex, getting his own eyeful.

It was a tremendous serpentine neck, seeming at first to be truncated just short of the head. The column projected fifteen feet from the water and was barely a hundred feet from the raft. It was smooth and round and gently tapering—and as Veg examined it more closely, he found that it terminated in a head hardly larger than the neck's smallest diameter. An eye was half hidden under a kind of fleshy crest, and beyond that was a rounded, wrinkled snout. Despite the small appearance of the head, he judged that the jaw was a good two feet long. That creature could, Veg reflected, finish a man in just about three bites lengthwise.

Plumes of vapor formed above the crest, signifying the location of nostrils, and now Veg could hear its heavy-bellows breathing. There had to be a lot more body out of sight beneath the water, for he could make out no expansion and contraction of the visible portion as the air rushed in and out. As they watched, the minuscule head dipped in toward the land, to take a swipe at floating foliage there.

The teeth were pegs that clamped rather than cut or chewed. The creature either hadn't noticed them, or it considered them to be beneath notice.

Veg poled the Nacre quietly backward. Slowly they rounded the turn of Scylla, passing out of sight of the monster, as it lifted its head high to swallow.

That is the biggest snake I ever heard of," Veg announced when they had achieved the limited safety Orn by Piers Anthony

of distance.

"No snake could lift its head like that, that far." Aquilon said, obviously shaken. "Not unless it were over two hundred feet long—and that's unlikely. I think that's some other swimming reptile. There was one with a long neck, wasn't there, Cal?"

Cal smiled with some obscure satisfaction. "Yes there was, Aquilon. Some types of plesiosaurus. But such a creature could hardly stand still in the water like that, and would not feed on watercress. This is a reptile of quite a different nature—a true dinosaur, in fact. We saw only a tiny portion of it."

Aquilon stood up straight. "Of course! The thunder lizard— Brontosaurus!"

"No. Not quite. The head does not conform. The brontosaur's nostrils were at the apex, and I doubt that many survived much beyond the Jurassic. This would be its later cousin, the largest of them all: Brachiosaurus."

"Brach," Veg said, pinning down the name. "Sounds like some fantasy hero."

Aquilon merely shook her head, not recognizing the designation.

" Brachiosaurus—meaning 'arm-leg,' because its arms are longer than its legs, in a manner of speaking. Brontosaurus was the other way round, its hips being higher than its shoulders."

"I always thought Bronto was the largest dinosaur," Aquilon said.

"Bronto weighed as much as thirty-five tons. Brach may have gone up to fifty tons."

"Oh."

"Quite innocuous, except through accident. The sauropods are herbivorous, and would not become violent unless hard-pressed. But their size—"

"Vegetarians." Veg said. "Good guys. Let's get acquainted, then."

"With fifty tons of nearly mindless reptile?" But Aquilon shrugged. She, like Veg, seemed to have become inured to a certain extent to personal danger—and Paleo so far, was as safe as Nacre had been.

They advanced again, cautiously. The head and neck remained, feeding as before, resembling a crane as it hoisted up and down, with visible bulges from the down-traveling boluses of greenery.

"Harmless, you said." Veg murmured, losing his bravado as he was forcefully reminded of the scope of this creature.

"Bear in mind that the sauropods are not very bright, as 'Quilon mentioned." Cal said. "And as you mentioned, big vegetarians—"

"Are good guys—but sometimes squish nasty little carnivores by accident." Veg said, smiling.

"The carnivores were not necessarily small, in the age of reptiles. But as I was explaining, this Orn by Piers Anthony

creature may run eighty feet in total length, and it takes time for the neural impulses to travel along its—"

"Yeah, I know about that." They were whispering now, subdued by the presence of the giant. "So if Brach thinks we're food, some kind of new turnip maybe, and wants to take a bite, it'll be a while before he gets around to doing something about it."

Aquilon was now busily painting the portrait of the fleshy column. "By the same token, if it changes its mind and decides not to take a bite, we may be halfway down its gullet before it desists."

Cal smiled. "Actually, it could probably desist from biting quickly enough, since its brain is adjacent to its eyes and jaws. But larger motions—"

They were now quite close to the feeding head, lulled by its pacifistic and plodding manner.

Down—bite—up—swallow, and repeat. Veg glanced into the cabin to see how the mantas were taking it, and discovered that only two remained. The others had evidently left during the excitement, perhaps taking advantage of the temporary overcast that now existed. But he couldn't spare the time to investigate; Brach was too important.

Closer yet, and—an impressive view. The skin of the neck, rather than being smooth, was covered with wartlike tubercles, and on the head wrinkles overlay creases on bulges, the topology changing with every slow shift of the jaw. The mouth swept up leaves, stems, water, and mud from the bank, straining some of it back out in the haphazard process of mastication. Brach was either very old or very ugly. But the muddy water still concealed the rest of the reptile's body.

"I heard once that if a dinosaur were walking along," Aquilon. remarked, "and discovered that it was about to step over a cliff, by the time it could make its legs halt it would have gone over. So its very size led to its extinction."

"Like much hearsay, not true," Cal said. "I suppose that if a creature the size of Brachiosaurus were proceeding on land at a full gallop, its mass could carry it over the cliff in such a situation. Fifty tons do not stop on a dollar. But Brach would never find himself in such a predicament."

"Why not?" Veg's own query, though he was hardly interested. This dialogue was merely a way of rationalizing the incredible and postponing healthy fear. They were talking too much. Yet the monster went on feeding.

"Because Brach would not be found innocently trotting along like that. Full-grown, he's far too heavy to walk on land with any comfort. He must stick to water, or at least swamp, so that his body is buoyed up."

"So I see," Aquilon said.

"Brach, much more than Bront, is adapted for deeper water," Cal continued. "Note the placement of the nostrils and the angle of the head. But his range is sharply limited to the coastal shallows. His presence here, rather than Bront's, is an indication that the flat swamps are less extensive than they were. And of course we've seen that directly. Evolution is never random."

Orn by Piers Anthony

"Perhaps we should get moving again, if we're going to," Aquilon said gently.

"But all we've seen is his head!" Veg protested facetiously. Fifty tons was too large, even if all he could actually see were two or three tons; it alarmed him.

"That's all anyone usually observes," Cal said. "Assuming that anyone before us has had the opportunity. Better be satisfied."

Veg was willing to be convinced. He poled the craft into deeper water, and he and Aquilon took up the paddles. They passed about forty feet behind the busy head. He judged that Brach was standing in about twenty feet of water—and that implied much about its size.

His paddle struck something. "Obstruction!" he said. "Log, maybe, under the surface. Sheer off before we—"

Too late. The raft collided with the object, jarring them all. Veg felt the rending of the keel as it tore off. There would have to be substantial repairs.

"Reef?" Aquilon inquired, brushing back hair that had fallen across her face.

Veg probed with the pole. "Water's deep here. I can't find bottom." He angled the pole forward, searching for the obstruction.

Cal had been shaken harder by the bump, partly because he was less robust physically, and partly because he had not been anchored by a paddle. He must also, Veg thought, have been preoccupied.

Veg himself was able to accept something like a dinosaur on Paleo, but the concept evidently came harder to Cal. The little man was sitting very still now, recovering his wind while the others assessed the situation.

"Move out—fast!" Cal snapped.

Again they responded to the need of the most urgent member. First it had been Veg, spotting Brach; now it was Cal, not as winded as he had appeared. They had worked together long enough on Nacre, and now on Paleo, to know almost intuitively when life depended on instant cooperation.

As the raft began to move, thanks to the strenuous efforts with the paddles, Cal explained: "That was no log or reef. That was the tail."

Aquilon looked at the troubled water behind. "The tail—of the dinosaur?"

But again events provided confirmation. From the water came the tip of a massive fleshy extremity, stirring up waves.

Veg peered across at the head. "It's still feeding. This can't be the same—"

Then the head stopped chewing and sifting. It lifted and rotated to face them, while the tail struck the water furiously.

"... that slow reaction time," Aquilon murmured.

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"Keep moving," Cal said urgently. "It's aware of us now, and that blow to the tail must have hurt. If it decides we're an enemy—"

"Harmless, you said," Veg repeated, with some irony.

"Oh, I'm fairly certain it won't attack. Its natural inclination would be to flee from danger. But—"

"We did bruise its tail," Aquilon said.

They could all see it now, as the tail lifted clear of the waves again. Diluted blood streamed off it.

Their keel had cut a gash in the spongy flesh—not a serious injury to an animal of that size, but enough to color the surrounding water.

"Smarts, I'll bet," Veg agreed with some sympathy. A wound of that magnitude in a lesser creature would have been fatal. It was several feet long and inches deep.

Then the water churned in earnest. Brach had made its decision.

"Move!" Cal cried. "He's running!

The two mantas remaining in the cabin popped out, though there was still direct sunlight. They sailed over the surface. Veg knew they couldn't keep it up long; the sun would burn them terribly and injure the eyes.

But the dinosaur was coming toward the Nacre! The tiny yet ponderous head looped about, gliding low over the water, and the neck threw up a white wake. The tail retreated its tip skipping over the waves smartly. Between the two—a distance of about fifty feet—something like a whirlpool formed, and from it several tiny indentations spun off.

"Divert the head!" Cal called. "Don't attack! Herd it!" He was addressing the two mantas, who now circled the raft uncertainly. "Bluff it! Move it aside!"

Hex and Circe (Veg was sure he recognized them) seemed to understand. In turn they swooped at the head, banking with kitelike flares of their bodies. The head reacted fairly quickly, flinching away from them, but still approaching the raft. As Cal had explained, it took time to change the course of such a mountain.

Brachiosaurus came at the trio—but the head missed by twenty feet, the eyes not even focusing on them. Water surged aside, rocking the raft as though a huge mass trailed that worm-like forepart. In a momentary eddy they saw the speckled flank, and the muscular rhythm of it.

The body missed them by only ten feet, and that because the raft moved with the current of water thrust aside.

Then the main torso was beyond, and they balanced precariously on the swell, relieved. In that unguarded moment the tail struck. It was not the cutting whip of the manta, but its blind ponderosity was fully as devastating.

The tail rose from the water under the rear edge of the Nacre and flipped it over.

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Aquilon dived away sidewise, hitting the water before the raft toppled. Veg hooked his right arm around Cal's mid-section, lifted him as the Nacre came up, and shoved off to the left. The raft hobbled endwise, sinking into the water; then it rebounded and seemed to fling itself on over. Veg kicked his feet, keeping his arms wrapped around Cal, driving away from the splash.

The waves subsided. The dinosaur was gone, the raft inverted but steady, and already the two mantas perched on it. Aquilon waved, snowing that she was all right. And, blessedly, a cloud dimmed the sun, giving the mantas relief.

Veg lifted up Cal, hoping the man had not taken in much water, but his concern was needless. Cal blew out the breath he had held during the upset, smiling. Veg kept forgetting that his friend had recovered considerably since Nacre. Cal remained small and light, but by no means infirm.

Veg let go, and together they swam back to the raft. Aquilon joined them there. They peered at one another over the shattered keel, and at the two mantas.

"Does this seem familiar to you?" Aquilon inquired with simulated brightness. Her hair was dark and lank, now that it was wet, and her eyes more gray than blue.

He knew what she meant. Back on Nacre, at once like yesterday and a decade past, they had begun the adventure that was to meld them into the trio. Beginning at the corpse of a tractor, and knowing that their journey back to the human camp would be a terrible one. Blood had been shared, literally.

He clung to the edge of the raft and looked about at the debris. A can of kerosene floated nearby, but there was no sign of the lantern it serviced. Beyond it was a wicker basket, empty of the food it had carried. Aquilon had found ways to occupy her nimble fingers during the long southward voyage, fashioning things from natural materials; it hurt him to see her handiwork adrift. Most of their equipment remained lashed to the raft, for the bindings were tight. It would be a tedious job getting it loose safely, but could be done.

Their radio set, so carefully conserved if used, had ripped away from its mooring, and now surely lay in the bottom of the channel. Their theoretical contact with civilization was gone.

Yes, it was like old times—and he wasn't sorry. They could stay lost forever here, and he'd be satisfied. A friend like Cal, a woman like Aquilon, and of course the mantas.

At least the paddles remained. One was broken, but could be mended or replaced: palm fronds were plentiful. The stout bamboo pole was undamaged.

It would be pointless to try to right the raft here. They would have to haul it onto land, then see what they could salvage... Most of their supplies could survive such a dunking.

Hex and Circe took off and pounded over the water. At once they circled back. "Oh-oh," Veg said.

Trouble?"

Two snaps, almost in unison: each manta agreeing. They seldom spoke at once like this.

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"Predators!" Cal cried, "I should have thought! The wound—"

He meant the blood that still discolored the water around them. Veg knew that Cal still did not like to say that word—blood. Of course the flavor would attract the vicious creatures of the sea. Brach must have bled gallons, kegs, barrels...

"Sharks!" Aquilon exclaimed.

And the three human beings were out of the water and aboard the inverted raft. Veg was sure that neither of the others was aware of scrambling up, any more than he was. When one thought of sharks or crocodiles while swimming, one left the water in a hurry, that was all.

It was no mistake. There were sharks, invulnerable to the lash of the mantas' tails because they swam below the surface. Veg splashed with the good paddle—how had he brought that up with him?—and they retreated, but not far.

Cal's face was pinched. "The sharks won't come up after us," he said. "But the reptiles—if Kronosaurus ranges these waters—"

"Who?" Aquilon had the broken paddle, and was fishing with it for the floating pole. Veg let her fish; if he moved over to her side, the raft would tilt, and stability was suddenly very important.

" Kronosaurus—a short-necked plesiosaur. Fifty feet long, jaws twelve feet long, the size of a small whale—"

"I get the message," Veg interrupted. Prodded by this vision, he thought to pry his own paddle against his side of the raft, pushing forcefully outward so that the Nacre nudged toward the pole Aquilon wanted. She hooked it in, then went after the kerosene.

They conferred hurriedly and decided on the obvious: landfall at the nearest point. That way the Nacre's beach-bead could mark the spot where the lost radio lay on the ocean floor. Assuming recovery of it would do any good at this stage, since it hadn't been sealed against such total and prolonged immersion. He and Aquilon started paddling.

"Harmless, you said," Veg muttered, his spirits rising as they passed out of the pink water, spotting nothing but frustrated sharks. "Would run from danger, you said." But he was smiling.

"It did run, if you mean Brach," Cal replied. "But it ran to deeper water. Most of its enemies are land dwellers."

And they had been between the dinosaur and deeper water, and Brach was not very bright. It figured.

He still had not seen the creature. Only its head and tail, and a portion of its shoulder.

The sharks, apparently satisfied that no advantage remained in following the raft, disappeared. But no one offered to swim.

Laboriously they brought the raft to poling depth, and then shoved the ungainly monster up against the shore.

Orn by Piers Anthony

Fern trees leaned over the water, giant cousins of the plants Veg once had picked by hand near his cutting acreage on earth. A strange conifer rose above them, its needles bunched peculiarly. He saw no grass, no flowers. Half-floating water plants massed at the tideline.

"Cretaceous landscape," Cal murmured. "Astonishing." But he sounded awed rather than surprised.

There were, fortunately, no shore-dwelling predators in sight. Calf-deep in muck, Veg and Aquilon hefted the loaded raft up. But it was far too heavy to be righted this way. They would have to hold it while Cal braced it with sticks; in this marshy terrain there were no rocks to set under it, and no really solid footing. But first they had to slide it up beyond the level of high tide, so that it would not be carried away in the night."

"Aquilon, you steady it while I heave," Veg said.

They tried, but the Nacre lifted only inches while his feet skidded away in brown slime. "No use," he grunted. "We'll just have to take it apart and rebuild it right side up. Might as well make camp."

He was not unhappy at the prospect. Sailing, he decided, was not his forte; hiking and camping were better. It reminded him of their other hike together, on planet Nacre. Something had begun then between him and Aquilon. Something intriguing. More and more, his mind was coming to dwell on that. His gaze met hers, over the raft. She realized it too. Their return to Earth had cut off what had been developing; she had wanted it that way for some reason. But now—now there could be a middle and an end to that beginning.

No, he did not mind being stranded for a few days or weeks or longer. He did not mind danger or hardship. To be here in the ancient forestland with Aquilon, here for the second session...

"Probably Brach wouldn't have been feeding here if it weren't fairly safe," Cal remarked. "A large land carnivore might bite off Brach's head, and that would be, eventually, fatal. Reptiles die very slowly. So while I couldn't call our encounter with the monster exactly fortunate, it does have its redeeming aspect We can't tell what we might have met, farther in."

"Still, let's not try to camp right here," Aquilon said, looking down distastefully at the bubbling goo covering her feet. "Sleeping in a flooding cabin was bad enough, but this—"

There was something hilarious about it, and Veg laughed. Aquilon tried to glare at him, but looked at her mired ankles again and joined in.

Yes, it was good to be back. Earth was like a pressure cooker with the temperature rising and the escape valve blocked. They were better off here.

The two remaining mantas, Diam and Star, had rejoined them at some point, perhaps while he was preoccupied with the problem of landing the raft. Veg was sure they agreed. They hadn't been scouting this territory just for the fun of it.

Orn by Piers Anthony

Night found them camped under a large tree whose stout branches and small twigs gave it the aspect of a stiff-armed octopus. Each twig had a cleft, fan-shaped leaf, unlike the branching greenery of conventional trees. This was a ginkgo, and Cal seemed to feel it was something special, though he claimed they existed on contemporary Earth.

They were in a lean-to improvised from cycad barrels, palm fronds and fern leaf, on a rise overlooking the beachhead. Cal had designed it, showing more practical ability than Veg had expected. Veg had done the brute work, collecting the peculiar wood. Aquilon had plaited fibers to make the roof tight. Yes, they were a functioning team, a good one.

The finishing was a more tedious task than the designing or building, and Veg had time to loosen the nylon bindings of the Nacre, get the logs enough apart to free the supplies within the crushed cabin, and begin ferrying supplies to the camp. Cal and Aquilon remained cross-legged by the lean-to, weaving fern stems in and out.

Veg kept a sharp lookout for life, hostile or otherwise, though Hex was with him and made an effective bodyguard. He did not know much about dinosaurs except that they were big and dangerous—even the herbivorous ones, as the wrecked raft testified. Brach would not be wandering on land, however, if what Cal said was true—and of course it was. But other creatures might be found anywhere. Brach would not have been so ready to flee to deep water unless there were things on land it feared.

A creature that could frighten a fifty-ton dinosaur could hardly be ignored by a one-tenth-ton man.

Unfamiliar birds twittered in the tree-ferns, scouting for bugs. Small things scuttled in the brush. Fish swam in the water. There was plenty of life, but nothing to fear, yet.

He lifted the last of the cases they had decided to move, brought it to his shoulder, and tromped through the sludge. Yes, they all had to be alert here, on guard against unknown menaces. But the air was wet and warm, the biting insects had not yet discovered him, and he felt marvelously free.

Perhaps he would die tomorrow in the jaws of some monster whose name he could not pronounce—but he would die a man, not a sardine.

Hex ranged ahead as they came out of the swamp and recovered firm footing. It was dusk, growing too dim for him to see clearly, but he liked the challenge. The manta drifted to one side and stopped beside a tree—a maidenhair, Aquilon called it, but it looked exactly like the ginkgo—and stood as a black blob. By tricks of vision—looking slantwise at specific objects, narrowing his eyes—Veg could still make out good detail. What was Hex looking at?

He came up and peered. Was that a—?

It was.

Veg squatted down beside the manta, holding up the teetering carton with one hand while he cleared away obstructing foliage with the other.