Orn by Piers Anthony

The two bulls were between Cal and Tyrann, each herding its object before it. Cal was amenable; this allowed him to increase his distance from the carnosaur. He spied an inlet of water and headed for it, congratulating himself for a winning tactic.

Tyrann finally freed himself from the harassment of the bulls and charged in Cal's direction. Cal threw himself down a short steep bank and into the bay.

It was shallow. He had succeeded in covering himself with muck, but knew that two feet of water would hardly balk Tyrann for long. The carnosaur probably chased after water reptiles to depths of ten feet or so. He had made a tactical error.

Tyrann splashed down, sending muck flying. And sank in to his tall knees. Instead of firm bottom, it was ooze bottom, and the dinosaur's much greater weight put him as deep, proportionately, as the much smaller man. They were even. Cal chided himself for not realizing that beforehand. So far, he had prevailed more by chance than by application of brain, and that was not as it should be, if he were to prove anything.

Again in grotesque slow motion, man and reptile staggered through the swamp. But again the pursuer was gaining. Cal had supposed that Tyrann was basically a hide-and-pounce hunter, or a take-from-other-hunter bully: neither occupation requiring much stamina. But this chase had passed beyond that stage.

Cal looked for deeper water, hoping to lure Tyrann out beyond his safe depth. He was sure the dinosaur could not swim. Both of them would risk attack by swimming predators, but Tyrann would be the prime target there.

This, however, turned out to be a slender ribbon of swamp, extending like a tongue into higher ground. Deep water was too far away. He would have to slough along for a mile or more, and that was out of the question.

He heard Tyrann panting behind him. At least this was taking as much out of the carnosaur as the man. The creature had a lot more mass to haul around, and his energy requirements right now must be phenomenal.

Cal angled to the far bank and scrambled up. He gained distance as he hit the firmer footing. With another belated inspiration he ran along the bank instead of away from the water, tempting the dinosaur to chase directly after him. Tyrann did not understand about vectors; to him the direct route was the fastest and surest, whatever the terrain. So he waded after Cal rather than cutting to the bank and gaining high ground first. Cal's lead increased dramatically.

Tyrann was almost out of sight behind when the terrain shifted to favor him again. Nature played no favorites! Cal had been running downhill, toward the main swamp, and the land was becoming generally lower and flatter. Soon he would have no firm footing remaining, and would have to wade or swim again. That might get him away from Tyrann—but without that close pursuit, there would be nothing to distract the attention of the water predators from him. They were as dangerous in their medium as Tyrann was on his—and Cal's contest was with this reptile, not some aquatic monster. If Orn by Piers Anthony

he had to be eaten, it was only proper that Tyrann be allowed the honors. He had already earned this meal!

Cal reversed his field and ran headlong the way he had come, ducking down to avoid Tyrann's sight.

It worked; the dinosaur continued sloshing downstream. By the time Tyrann realized what had happened, Cal had a lead of half a mile.

He needed it, in order to cross the plain and achieve new cover. Tyrann came into sight again, making excellent time, probably spurred by increasing appetite. Nothing like a walk before dinner!

But the reptile's persistence was amazing. The chase had lasted a couple of hours now, and was far from over.

Yet this, of course, was the way Tyrann obtained his meals. He was not a swift runner compared to Struthiomimus, the "ostrich dinosaur," or an agile hunter compared to even primitive mammalian carnivores. He was limited largely to land, which meant that he seldom dined on Brachiosaurus in quantity. The young Brachs were of course available—but swift and small, and the fleet amphibious duckbills were similarly elusive. Stealth was not, as it turned out, Tyrann's way, nor was he particularly clever. Probably he dined on carrion as often as not, sniffing out the rotting carcasses of creatures who had perished by other means, then driving off other predators. But this would be an uncertain living at best, and live meat was a treat worth striving for.

No— Tyrannosaurus succeeded largely by determination. Once he fixed on his prey, living or dead, he never relented. Other things might intersperse themselves, such as the fir grove, a Triceratops herd, and swamp channel, but Tyrann would keep after his original objective until he ran it down.

That way his meal was certain, eventually. And his meager intellect was not strained, and his energies not wastefully dissipated in fruitless asides. Even the fleetest prey must succumb in time.

It had become a contest of endurance. Though the carnosaur was wounded—Cal could see the blood along the thigh where the bull had gored—he still had substantial physical resources—But the prey, in this case, had equivalent mental resources. Which would prevail—muscle or mind?

Cal headed uphill. Right now he'd be happy to trade a few points I.Q. for a few pounds of striated tissue in the legs and torso. The vagaries of the chase had caused him to bypass Camp Two, and he was ascending the mountain face beyond it. The climate was changing rapidly, both because of waning of the day and increasing elevation. This had to shift the balance somewhat in his favor, because he was a controlled temperature creature while Tyrann was not. He could function efficiently regardless of the external temperature, theoretically. A reptile in the cold was a reptile helpless.

Yet Tyrann continued to close the gap, and once more was within a hundred feet. Now Cal had to dodge around trees and rocks, lest he be overrun. Damn that giant stride of the dinosaur! This should have been superior terrain for the mammal with its myriad crevices, but none were secure for any extend stay. He had to keep moving.

He was tired. He was in excellent condition, considering past history, but a pressing chase of several hours was more than his body had been geared for. Tyrann, on the other seemed to have most of his original vigor about him. Endurance: yes. Or merely pacing.

Orn by Piers Anthony

Cal fell. At first he thought that fatigue had brought: low; then he realized that the mountain had thrown him down. The earth was rocking violently, and Tyrann was screaming with cantankerous surprise. It was an earthquake—far more severe than the tremor he had observed while on the raft yesterday.

Cal was small, light, and lucky. Tyrann was none of them.

The dinosaur was upended and rolled several hundred feet downhill to crash into the brush. Nature had played favorites this time.

Cal needed the reprieve, but he resented it. He wanted to win by his own abilities, nothing else. He sat down after the earth was still and waited for Tyrann to resume the chase.

The dinosaur was slow in doing so. A roughing of that nature was hard on him, because of his size. A mouse might fall a hundred feet straight down and survive nicely; an elephant might fall its own height and be killed on the spot, because of the problems its magnified mass brought. Tyrann had merely rolled—but that probably represented the most brutal punishment he had ever had. Internal organs could have been ruptured, bones splintered...

But no. Tyrann got up and resumed his ascent—but with only a fraction of his previous vigor. Now Cal could stay ahead without panting.

So it continued, slower. The air became cool and more than cool as dusk and height came together.

Even through his exertions, Cal felt it; his clothing had dried on his body and was fairly good insulation, but still he was not dressed for freezing feather. Yet Tyrann continued, bruised and scarred and shaken in more than the thigh, but seemingly unaffected by the temperature.

Of course! The dinosaur had considerable mass, and so was slow to cool. And his giant muscles would generate a large amount of heat, keeping him going longer. Tyrann could probably keep up the chase as long as Cal could, even into the snows of the upper mountain.

Unless Cal could trick him into remaining stationary for a few hours...

Meanwhile, he would have to drop down into the warmer region. He was quite tired now, and the buoyancy of the chase was giving out. If he rested in hiding, the cold would get him. And he couldn't hide anyway, even in the dark, because Tyrann would locate him by smell.

Yes, it was brains against brawn—but in what manner could brain mitigate the cold? If only he had warm clothing! Then he could ascend into the very snows, while the dinosaur slowly capitulated to nature. The mammalian form was superior; a hairy animal could have lost Tyrann easily here, or even turned and challenged him. A woolly elephant—

Cal stumbled, pushing himself up with difficulty. Why dream? It was his own body he had to make do with, and his own brain he meant to apply. Tyrann was still hardly more than fifty feet behind, but Cal had become used to that distance. They both knew that the chase had come down to its essential: the first to give way to exposure and exhaustion would forfeit the game. The sudden charges and matching dodges were over, as were the peek-a-boo games around trees. The rules were set, and the Orn by Piers Anthony

mammal could afford to stumble so long as he got up promptly.

Still he hesitated—and Tyrann hesitated also, as though waiting for him to proceed. They had become accustomed to each other, the tiny man and the giant reptile. They had been over much territory together, shared many experiences—even an earthquake. There was a camaraderie of a sort in experience and fatigue.

But he knew the dinosaur would gobble him up when that phase ended. Camaraderie did not presume amity. It was merely a kind of appreciation in adversity. He hesitated not from any sense of safety, but because something was trying impress itself on his cold-dulled sensitivities. Something warm.

Warm. The ground was wet and the wetness was soaking through his footwear and in that moisture was heat, as though he had stepped in the drain chute of an outdoor bathtub. But the temperature of the air was near the freezing point of water. What was this—a hallucination brought about by his deteriorating condition? Was he about to imagine himself falling into a lush warm paradise, a tropical garden near the snowline where rapture abounded... while in reality his feet froze and jaws of the carnosaur crushed out his life?

Tyrann approached at last, and Cal moved—uphill, feet sloshed in the drainage and absorbed heat.

The dinosaur feet also sloshed, and he paused to sniff the ground suspiciously No hallucination.

A quarter mile higher it was warmer than ever, the air and earth as well as the trickling water. They were in a high valley, a kind of cleft in the mountain; not far away Cal could make out light snow, still bright in the fading day. But with this deepening hollow it was beginning to be comfortable.

Ferns spread richly at the bottom, and toadstools and moss, and tiny salamanders scuttled out of his way.

Cal recovered energy as his surroundings became conducive, but Tyrann remained slow. One advantage of smaller mass was a faster response to changed circumstances. Conditions were improving; he knew it, but Tyrann did not yet. But in this narrow chasm he would hardly be able to lose his pursuer, and there were no hiding places. It was risky comfort, this winding summer crevice.

Unbidden, the explanation came to him. Volcanism! This was an overflow of a hot spring, the water emerging from conduits passing near the perpetual furnace of the volcanic mountain. The gully owed its warmth to the same force that heated this entire Cretaceous valley. No mystery at all, but something he should have anticipated. And that very realization, even so late, gave him the clue to victory!

The vegetation diminished as the temperature continued to rise, and he knew he was approaching the outlet of the flowing water. If it were a bubbling spring, he was in trouble; but if—

He came into the presence of the upper end of the cleft abruptly. This was a drainage ditch, formed by erosion, and above the emergence of the water the normal contours of the fountain resumed. The outlet pipe was a cavern, as he had hoped. Sweating now, Cal plunged in. The river here was too hot to touch for any length of time—perhaps 130° F.—but there was clearance at the brim. The opening was large: large enough for Tyrann. But still it meant mammalian victory.

Orn by Piers Anthony

He moved ahead, unable to see anything inside. Tyrann's outline showed against the faint light of the entrance, but Cal knew the dinosaur would not follow.

The key was this: while cold was inconvenient for the great reptiles, and slowly fatal in the regions of its intensity, heat was more critical. A reptile's peak efficiency was at a body temperature of from 95°

to 100° F.—about the same as for mammals and birds. But above that, the reptile would succumb more quickly than a mammal, because it lacked any internal heat-control mechanisms other than inaction. Cal could survive for a reasonable period in an environment of 115° F. or more; and reptile in the same situation would cook, literally.

If Tyrann were to enter this cave and remain for any length of time, he would die. Dinosaurs could not sweat.

On the other hand, Tyrann would soon grow hungry waiting outside. Indeed, he must be ravenous already. There was no food nearby. Cal would suffer too, of course—but he could rest in warm comfort, and drink water to ease the pains.

He heard a funny lapping sound and peeked out. Tyrann was hunched before the cave licking his wounds. There was blood on his body in many places besides the Tricer's gore wound. That earthquake had really battered him! No wonder he had settled for a relaxed pace at the end. The wounds that didn't show, the internal ones, must be even worse.

Cal found himself a comfortable ledge, sprawled out, and fell into a perspiring stupor. It occurred to him that one of the duckbilled dinosaurs, such as Parasaurolophus, might have entered this cave safely. That creature's nasal passages traversed the entire length of its enormous crest. This would make for super-efficient smelling ability—but probably also provided efficient cooling of the blood by evaporation from those passages. Perhaps more than one duckbill had escaped Tyrann by entering such a cave. However, hunger and the rising heat inside the mountain would have killed any creature venturing too deep, too long. Perhaps there were mysteriously defunct bodies washed out in the lower subterranean rivers every so often.

He slept.

XVII: ORN

" Tyrannosaurus rex was galloping after Cal, those awful double-edged half-foot teeth snapping inches short of his frail palpitating body, the feet coming down on him like twin avalanches. Snap!

and the rag-doll form was flung high into the air, striped grisly red, and that color reflected in the malignant eyes of the carnivore. One giant claw toe came at that torn form where it landed, crushing it into the ground; the jaws closed, ripped off an arm. Cal's tiny head lolled back from a broken neck, the dead eyes staring at me not with accusation but with understanding, and I screamed and woke."

Orn saw that the mam female was troubled. She had slept restlessly and awakened noisily, and now was in a continuing state of agitation.

Orn by Piers Anthony

"How close to reality was that dream? How great is my guilt? Cal wouldn't have gotten into that thing, if I hadn't forced the issue. If he's dead—I'm afraid to think of it—it's my fault."

Orn stood up and stretched his wings. There did not seem to be anything he could do for her. Her mate had deserted her.

"And Veg—I dreamed of him too. It wasn't love, it was sex, and ugly. I tried to split their friendship, and now they're both—gone. I should never have come with them to Paleo."

Ornette still slept, fluffed out over the single egg. It was the youngest and fairest of the three, and now it was everything. Orn had picked the site for the nest, and he had erred; now two of his three chicks were gone. He could not mourn specifically, but he felt keenly that he should not have come to this island.

"But it wouldn't make sense for me to chase after them. I couldn't do anything, even if it weren't already way too late. All I can do now is hope. Hope that the two men I love are still alive, and that this strange but beautiful world can live as well."

Orn intended to guard that last egg more carefully. The mating cycle was over. There would be no new eggs until next season. This egg had been shaken by the earth one day, and almost smashed the next; another siege could occur at any time. Could he protect the egg against that? He felt the need, but could not formulate a resolution.

"I know what's bothering you, Orn. That egg's in a precarious spot. I'll move it for you, if we can find a better place. I might as well help someone. Maybe the worst is over....

The sun was lifting, a bubble of light behind flashing mountain silhouettes. Soon it would touch the hanging pteras and animate them. Daybreak was such a struggle for that type!

The mam got up and crossed to the main island. Orn knew she had to attend to her eliminations and did not wish to soil the nest area. Not all mams were that considerate.

He looked about. Several of the pines had been overturned in the quake, and the configuration of the peninsula had changed. Now a second bridge of land joined it to the island. That was not good; it would be harder to safeguard now. Another shaking like the last and there might be no peninsula at all! He had seen what the ground could do on the island of his own hatching. The mam returned and began to forage for edible roots. She had what smelled like food in her nestlike container, but appeared to be storing that. She found nuts from two varieties of flat-leaved trees and seemed to have enough to sustain her, though Orn could tell she was not fully satisfied. He, meanwhile, had hooked some fat fish out of the inlet and gutted them with beak and talon, offering the delectable innards to Ornette first. He wasn't certain whether this mam ate fish also. He offered her one but received an indefinable response.

"I think the main island is better for the eggs." She had started with her noises again. "It's less likely to sink under the wave." She was trying to convey something to him, and he had an idea what. He could feel the continuing tension in the rocks, the distant motions increasing local stress. The earth Orn by Piers Anthony

would twitch its tail again, soon. His memory informed him that changes normally requiring millions of years could occur in an instant, when the ground got restless.

"I'll scout for the best place, Orn." For a moment something like the innocent levity of a hatchling chick lifted her. "And you can call me 'Quilon, since we're on a first-name basis now. Short for Aquilon, the northwest wind. 'Quilon."

She tapped her own body as she repeated a certain sound, as though identifying her species. Of course such sounds were meaningless, but he would now think of her as the quilon giant mam.

She departed again, questing for something. He watched her thoughtfully as she retreated. Yesterday he had extended his tolerance to this quilon whose mate had deserted her (no bird would do that!).

Then the earth had moved and slaughtered two of his chicks and put the third in peril, and the quilon had helped him save the last. But for that, the problems of his own hatching might have been repeated here: one egg surviving, both parents dead fighting a crock. Now his egg would have a better chance, for there were three to guard it, counting the quilon. Perhaps it was her blunted nesting instinct: she guarded his egg because she had none of her own.

Mams were not notably trustworthy around eggs, but the circumstance was special. This was a strange, huge, clumsy, yet brave and loyal mam, with surprising comprehension despite her annoying noisemaking. It was almost as though she had her own type of memory, so readily did she grasp things. And she had saved the egg. She deserved his companionship.

The egg had to be moved. It was not safe here; a single tilt of the land could roll it into the sea, where the penetrating chill of the water would quickly extinguish it. But he could not move it; only the quilon could do that. Fortunately she was warm; that was the trait the mams had acquired even earlier than the aves. She could touch the egg without hurting it, and her digits, because they were soft, could lift it. He had no memory of any creature with this ability to turn seemingly useless appendages to such direct purpose. Limbs were generally adapted to running or foraging or fighting, while these unspecialized mam limbs turned out to be adapted for carrying a single egg!

But all this thinking and reasoning was hard. His brain had not been evolved for this, and only his solitary life and the radical change of the world had prompted this quality in him. Ornette depended on her memories far more than he did. It was as though his mind had mutated into something else in a jump like that of the strained earth—something unique and unnatural.

Then he felt it: the earth was beginning to break. He ran toward Ornette and the egg, but there was nothing he could do except settle down next to them and try to shield it with his body. If the ground jumped again, even this would not save it from cracking, for there was no proper padding beneath the egg.

The quilon ran after him. She scooped up the egg as Ornette jumped nervously aside, and held it cushioned in those almost hairless fleshy forelimbs.

Then the land broke apart. Orn was hurled into the water, to scramble back dripping; Ornette fell in the opposite direction, flapping her wings. Only the quilon remained upright, flexing her tremendous Orn by Piers Anthony

legs and leaning over the egg, protecting it.

The motion changed. Orn felt it: somewhere deep below a support had snapped. The land on which they huddled was sliding down, away from the island, becoming an island of its own. The water surged around it. The shudders continued, rocking the diminishing perch farther. The pines were standing in water now, and falling as the land slowly tilted.

There was nothing in his memory to account for this particular sequence, and he could tell that Ornette was as mystified as he. The quilon just stood with the egg, looking about. There was nothing any of them could do.

It occurred to him that the reason he had no memory of such an event—a fragmenting, slowly sinking island—was that no potential ancestor had survived the experience.

The last of the pines crashed down, tumbling over its fallen neighbors and splashing into the water.

Orn thought of using it to float to safety, but realized that the quilon could not do this while carrying the egg. Without that egg, and within it the nascent memory and experience of all his ancestry and Ornette's, there was no point in escape.

At last the motion stopped. Their new island was separated from the larger one by the length of a full-grown brach rep, and it was only slightly greater than the length of yesterday's croc in its diameter.

They stood on its highest point: a terrace near the original site of the nest bounded by an escarpment leading into the water where the isthmus had been before; the land had actually risen slightly here.

But on the opposite side the surface tilted down more gradually. Had the trees remained standing they would have been at an angle.

Where would the ptera sleep now? They would perish in the night unless they found new roosting.

The quilon settled down, supporting the egg on her thighs. She leaned over it, keeping it warm with her body and fore-limbs. Ornette looked, but did not challenge; it was safest where it was, and this entire sequence had left her confused. It was hard to accept, this control of the egg by the mam, but it seemed to be necessary.

How were they going to get away from here? This was no longer a suitable nesting site, yet even the short distance to the larger section of the island was dangerous for the egg! Unless the new bay were shallow...

"We might build another raft. Maybe the one Veg started is around, or pieces of it." The quilon was beginning to make sounds again, which meant she was returning to normal.

Orn stepped into the water, testing the depth. The footing was treacherous; he slipped and took a dunking. It was too deep, and far too chancy for the awkward mam. They would have to remain here at least until the chick hatched. They could forage on the island, swimming across individually. It would be an uncomfortable existence, but was feasible.

He sniffed. Rep, gross. Trouble!

As he scrambled back on land, he saw it: the towering head of an elas, the great shallow-water Orn by Piers Anthony

paddler. The quilon uttered a cry: "A plesiosaur!"

Orn had few direct memories of this creature, because its sphere of operations seldom overlapped that of his own species. He was aware of its gradual evolution from minor landbound forms struggling to come even with the large amphibs, finally returning entirely to the sea—and then a memory gap broken only by glimpses of the larger sizes, some with lengthening necks and others with shortening necks, until this line attained its present configuration: eight full wingspans from snout to tail, the neck making up half of that. It was primarily a fish-eater, but it would consume carrion or land life if available. Orn would not care to swim while an Elas was near, but had no particular awe of it while he stood on land.

The rep came closer, its tiny head carried high. It smelled them, and it was hungry.

"The quake shook it up. It's crazed. It's coming after us!"

Orn would have preferred that the quilon not choose this moment to make her meaningless noises.

Now the Elas was certain there was a meal here. The length of its neck was more than half the breadth of the island fragment. There was no section it could not reach from one side or the other, if it were determined. It could not leave the water, for that would destroy the mobility it required for balance—but they were vulnerable despite being on land.

They would have to fight it off, if that were possible. The ground and sea motion must have crazed the rep, so that it was not aware that it was fishing on land instead of in water. It was not particularly bright, but was dangerous.

The head hovered above the island, twice Orn's height. The neck curved back from it, then forward, in the manner of a wind-twisted rush. The alert rep eye fixed on Orn.

He leaped aside as the Elas struck. Like a plunging coconut the head came down, jaws gaping. The flat-flippered body lunged out of the water with the force of that thrust, and the jaws snapped within a beak-length of Orn's tail feathers.

This much his memory had warned him of: the Elas fed by paddling behind a fish and flinging its head forward suddenly, to grasp the prey before it could escape. Had Orn not jumped when the motion began, he would have been lost. Too quick a jump would also have been fatal, for the Elas could crook its neck about in a double spiral, and small corrections were routine for it.

But now the rep was in trouble. Used to dunking its head under the surface in the process of catching fish, it had not considered that land was different. It had bashed its snout hard against the ground. The jaws had actually snapped at the level of Orn's body, but reflex and follow-through had carried head and neck on down. Now its neck was spread full-length on the dirt and its mouth was bleeding where its teeth had crushed against stone and earth. Yes, it was crazed; it would ordinarily have been more cautious this near land.

Orn whirled and struck at the exposed neck near its joining with the torso. The creature was vulnerable now but would be deadly in its rage once it got reoriented. He dug his talons into the glistening, smooth-skinned column and, probed with his beak for some vital or crippling spot. But the Orn by Piers Anthony

mass of flesh was too great and strange; he did not know where the key tendons were, and claws and beak were lost amidst its layer of blubber.

Elas emitted a high-pitched squeal and hauled its up in a magnificent undulation. The head looped back to come at Orn from the side, and he was unable to break loose immediately because his members were mired. He was lifted helplessly into the air, dangling by both feet.

Ornette leaped to help him. She aimed her beak at rep's eye, but the Elas turned on her quickly and met her with wide-open mouth. She squawked once, pitifully, as the pointed teeth closed on her wing and breast; then she carried upward.

Orn fought loose and fell into the water a wingspan from the rep's front flipper. He tried to attack again, but the Elas was already paddling away, Ornette dangling.

Pursuit was useless. Orn could neither catch the Elas harm it, and Ornette was already dead.

Orn climbed back on the island, blood-tainted and disconsolated. It was not exactly grief he felt, but a terrible regret. Ornette had died defending him, as he would have died defending her, and both defending their lone egg. Now her companionship had been severed and he was alone again.

Except for the egg! The most important part had salvaged.

The quilon still warmed it. She had not moved during the struggle, and this was right. Ornette would not have attacked the Elas had the egg not been secure without her protection. Nothing took precedence over that egg.

Again the oddness came to him: stranded on an exposed island, he without his mate, the mam without hers, the two of them guarding the egg neither had laid.

What was there to do but go on?

XVIII: VEG

Veg recovered consciousness painfully. He was lying on a hard beach, his face against a wet rock, his feet in water, and he was hot. He did not know where he was or how he had come there. His head was aching, his innards soggy, and the rest of him was hardly robust.

He sat up carefully and waited for the resultant dizziness to pass. The beach was scant, hardly more than a hesitancy between land and sea, and the land itself was brief. In fact, it was no more than a pylon of rock jutting up from the waves, with a single ledge he perched upon. Similar to the jigsaw reefs separating this section from the main ocean, really—not that that improved his position.

He had lost his quarterstaff, but retained his knife. The quarterstaff idea hadn't turned out very well; nobody had any good use from the weapons. Well, next time he wouldn't bother. His clothing was torn, and his neck was welted with insect bites where it had been exposed. He wished he could puke Orn by Piers Anthony

up some of the muddy water he must have swallowed—but then he would probably feel hungry.

Strength seeped back unwillingly, and with it some spongy memories. He had fought a government agent—no, that was on Earth, too long ago, and the man had turned out pretty decent in the end. Veg had been arrested and put into orbit with Cal and 'Quilon and the eight, no seven, mantas. Then—here to Paleo, with four mantas and a trip on the ocean. And a bash with Brach, the arm-leg lizard ten times life size. And a bird, and—

He had made love to Aquilon! 'Quilon!

After that it became fuzzy. Her soft thighs, and Cal in trouble, and guilt and a swim and a run through the swamp and—

And here he was, tossed on a rock by himself. No friend, no manta, no woman, no bird. Time had passed; now he had a memory of shivering in the night and fading out again.

Why had he done it? After all this time, on three worlds—why had he taken her? It had not been a physical thing between them, only a promise. Now that promise was gone.

Then he remembered the rest of it. Cal—they had broken with Cal! The tyrant lizard was after his friend, while Veg had been mucking about with Aquilon. Too late he had remembered his loyalty and tried to get there. On the way there had been another quake that threw him into the water, and he had swum blindly, trying to get out of it.

He had been lucky he had not drowned. The waves had been bad enough, and any of the great sea animals could have gobbled him en route. Unless those swimmers were as shaken by it all as he.

He peered over the level water. They would not be shaken now—and the tide was rising. He had perhaps another hour before his island disappeared entirely.

Well, better get on with it. Maybe Cal was dead, and Aquilon too. But maybe they were just waiting for him to find them. He'd save his regrets for the facts.

He faced toward land and dived in, the splash a mark of defiance. The impact of the water against his skin invigorated him, and he stroked strongly for the shore. There were scratches on his back, and the salt sting did its part to spur him along.

Salt? He had thought this area was fresh water, from the stream and swamp. But maybe that was only when the tide was out, or in the river channel itself.

Something moved in the ocean. A snout broke the surface—a mighty beak. Veg saw it coming toward him.

A swimming Tricer?

It was a huge sea turtle, attracted by the splashing. Veg had little concern for turtles ordinarily, but this was hardly the kind he was accustomed to. It was twice as long as he was, with a heavy leathery skin instead of a true shell, and its beak was horrendous. Its two front flippers were roundly muscled Orn by Piers Anthony

paddles, propelling it rapidly forward. This was the beast that Cal had termed Archelon, when they had observed it from the raft. The only reason Veg remembered the name was its resemblance to Aquilon. Arky, he had dubbed it, and forgotten the matter; but it didn't seem quaint or funny now.

The head alone must weigh as much as Veg did!

He treaded water, uncertain how to react. He didn't think turtles ate people...

Arky glided up, sleek and swift in its element. Veg realized that he had been foolish to judge its capabilities by those of its cousins he had observed on land. This was a mighty creature, capable of wiping him out casually. He gripped his tiny-seeming knife. Would it even pierce that skin?

The turtle sniffed him. Veg wasn't sure that was possible with its head under water, but it remained the best description. Then it decided he was not edible, and nudged away, its ballroom carapace brushing his legs. He felt giddy with relief—a sensation rather strange to him. Obviously he wasn't as much recovered as he had thought. The cuts on his back smarted again.

Arky lifted its head above the water. Veg followed its seeming glance—and spied a ripple coming in from the open sea.—It was another creature.

And—he saw the disk of a manta, also coming toward him. That was immensely reassuring. Hex, probably, on the lookout for the lost party. Now he could get in touch again, and find the others.

Provided they still lived. That quake had been rough.

Hex arrived before the sea creature, but not by much. The turtle floated just under the surface, twenty feet away, facing the swimming newcomer. Veg, now assured of his safety, stroked once more for shore.

He heard the thing come up behind him, splashing softly, and had to look. It was a mosasaur—the most vicious reptile of the sea. Thirty feet long, the torso highly flexible, the tail splayed vertically and quite powerful enough, and four paddle-shaped limbs. The head was narrow, the nose pointed, but the jaws were lined with ample sharp recurved teeth. A kind of crest or ridge commenced at the neck and trailed all the way back into the tail, and this waved ominously just above the water as the creature swam. It was as though the worst features of crocodile, turtle, and shark had been combined and magnified—and Veg was frankly terrified.

Suddenly Hex's protection seemed scarcely sufficient. Mosa was too big, too ugly—and most of its body was shielded by water. It could come at him from below, and the manta would be unable to strike.

Mosa circled both him and the turtle, as though considering which one to attack first. Arky, fully alert to the danger, rotated in place, always facing the predator lizard. Evidently the turtle did not trust its armor to withstand Mosa's teeth, though possibly it was only the turtle flippers, which could not be withdrawn into the body, that it was concerned about. If Arky were worried, how should Veg feel?

The shore was far too far away; he could never make it now. The diminishing rock he had nighted on was still fairly close, thanks to his dawdling—but he couldn't get there either while Mosa was Orn by Piers Anthony

watching.

Hex paced above the water, making a tight circle inside that of the mosasaur. The reptile was aware of the manta, but not particularly concerned. Probably it thought Hex was a pterodactyl, waiting for the remnants.

Veg was pretty sure Mosa would decide on the warm, unarmored appetizer: himself. Then, invigorated by the morsel, it could tackle the tougher turtle at leisure. No particular genius was required to select the easy prey.

Mosa decided. It angled smoothly in toward Veg.

Hex struck out the exposed eye.

The reptile didn't seem to realize what had happened, immediately. It continued its charge, drifting in the direction favored by the remaining eye, its teeth snapping.

Veg started to swim for the rock. Mosa spotted the motion and came at him again, jaws wide. By accident or design, its good eye was under the water, safe from Hex's lash.

Veg had an inspiration. He launched himself at the big turtle.

Mosa sheered off, momentarily confused by the combination of objects: two together in the water, a third in the air. Veg remembered something Cal had said once, about animals becoming confused by more than two objects; they could not count. Arky was also confused, unable to concentrate on Veg while the dangerous lizard was so close behind. It was also annoyed by the manta.

Veg bypassed the beak and touched the smooth hull. It might not look like a turtleshell, but it seemed rock-hard. He got behind it and stayed close. There wasn't anything much to hang on to. Mosa made a feint, and Arky forgot about Veg as it braced against the greater menace. Hex continued to pace the surface. It was an impasse of a kind.

Mosa circled, adapting to its limited vision. It had no intention of giving up the chase; in fact, the taste of its own blood might well be stimulating it to some berserker effort. And it seemed to Veg that mosa did have the physical wherewithal to prevail, for it outmassed man, manta, and turtle combined and was fully adapted to combat in the ocean. Even completely blind (Hex might yet get the other eye) it could probably sniff him out and finish him off. Arky was only a temporary cover; once the turtle decided to depart, mosa would pounce on the mouthful remaining, shrugging off the superficial lacerations Hex might inflict.

It was death in the making for him. A kind of checkmate demise, as one piece after another was nullified, but inevitable. Somehow the end no longer frightened him the way he thought it should.

Had there been an element of chance about it, he might have been eager and nervous. As it was—

Chance struck. A school of sharks converged on the scene, slim sleek missiles of appetite. In a moment mosa, the wounded one, was the center of attention.

Suddenly Veg understood what had happened. He had dived off his rock, originally, making a splash Orn by Piers Anthony

that attracted the turtle. But meanwhile his scratched-up back had been bleeding into the water, and mosa had smelled it. Then the commotion and mosa's own injury had alerted the sharks...

Chance? Maybe less than he had supposed.

But very soon those killer fish would come after him.

Mosa was now in a fight for its life. No single shark approached the reptile in size, but there were as many as a score of them, some as long as fifteen feet, all maddened by the blood. Already they had torn great gashes in mosa's hide. Several of their own number were dead, for mosa as an individual was more savage than they—but now the checkmate had been reversed.

Arky, no dumb bunny, took this opportunity to dive for safer territory. Its mighty flippers clove the water, creating a turbulence that jounced Veg around and towed him under.

Then the turtle was gone, moving more rapidly than he could follow.

Veg struck for the rock. Two sharks detached themselves from the main platoon as though central command had allocated them, and cruised after him. Hex sliced up their projecting fins and set them to fighting one another. This diversion was sufficient. He made it to safety.

He stood ankle-deep on his isle and wondered what he would do when the tide made him available to the sharks again. Hex could not divert them indefinitely. Veg could not expect luck to save him again. He was not, in sober analysis, one of those hero types who won out no matter what the odds against success. He felt empty without Cal, and deep remorse for the split that had overtaken them. It hadn't really been Aquilon's fault, either; she hadn't meant to make trouble like that.

How easy, now, to pass judgments on his prior conduct.

Hex perched on the highest point of the rock, his foot splaying out to grip it clumsily. It was a sitting and pushing type of foot, rather than a grasping member, and the posture had to be uncomfortable—but Hex appeared to be staying until the end. There was no use in Veg himself trying to climb that point; it was too small and steep for anything but a perpetual balancing act, and this would only postpone the finish, not change it.

Where was Cal now? The manta Circe had said the tyrant lizard was after him, alone. That was sure death for the little man. But Cal was funny about that sort of thing. He might have found a way to—

Impossible. What could a man, any man, do against Tyrann? Cal was digested by now.

No, he couldn't be. Not his friend!

Veg realized that he had only to ask Hex. The manta would surely know. A snap of the tail would tell him Cal lived; two snaps—

He choked on the question. It would not come out. He was afraid of the answer.

The water was at his knees. Already a small shark was circling the rock, waiting.

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Should he die without knowing?

Maybe this was his punishment for despoiling Aquilon.

Veg looked across the water, at the savage valley, the snow-topped mountains, the islands reaching into the sea, the level horizon showing beyond the channel between the large harbor islands, Silly and Cherybdis. He looked, expecting nothing. And saw a ship.

XIX: CAL

Tyrann's bulk almost blocked the opening. The carnosaur was sleeping, his body spread out along the stream bed to capture every vestige of warmth therein. The hot water from the cavern puddled at his nose and coursed along his neck—the only thing, in this snow-line dawn chill, that was keeping him reasonably functional. The flesh was discolored where the hottest water touched, but evidently the reptile had elected some heat discomfort in spots instead of the lethargy of cold all over. Probably it inhaled warmth this way. This was courage of a kind.

Cal stood just within the cave mouth, where a refreshingly cool circulation occurred, and surveyed the situation. It was possible that Tyrann was playing possum, waiting for the prey to come out—but Cal doubted that the reptile was capable of such subtlety. It was not an art large predators usually needed for survival. Tyrann would normally sleep until the heat of the day raised his body temperature to a suitable level. In the valley this would be a simple matter—but the chill of this upper region was apt to make it a long sleep indeed. It had been a mistake for Tyrann to settle down here, for without continuous muscular exertion to maintain his body heat, he could not survive.

Probably Cal could climb right over the ugly jaws and be on his way with impunity. Victor in their contest, he could make his way along the shore to the Paleocene camp. It might take him several months to make it, and there would be other hazards—but if he made it to that radio, his course was justified. To the victor belonged the spoils—the spoils of a world.

Yet he hesitated, looking down at the great prone reptile. He was not afraid of Tyrann—indeed, had never been—for he understood the creature's needs and motives. They were the same as his own: survival. Tyrann accomplished his purpose by size, power, and determination. Cal used his intelligence—and determination. The fact that he had won did not mean that his cause was morally superior. It meant simply that he had demonstrated a greater capability for survival, in this instance.

If he summoned the forces of Earth (for casuistry aside, that was surely the gist of his report), he would be pitting an advanced world against a primitive one. That would not be a fair contest. Very soon the dinosaurs would be extinct again, and Paleo would be just like Earth: crowded with neurotic humans, its natural resources depleted...

Veg and Aquilon were right. His alternate universe framework was theoretical. Each world was a separate case, and the means did not justify the end, particularly when it meant the destruction of a known world for the sake of unknown ones... that might in time be ravaged anyway. Man did not Orn by Piers Anthony

have the esthetic authority to do such a thing to any world, and Cal had to judge by the case before him. He could not throw Paleo to the omnivore.

Studying Tyrann, Cal knew himself to be a hypocrite. The truth was that he had expected to lose, and thus preserve this world a moment longer. He couldn't accept victory, and had never intended to. He had argued the ugly cause merely to put both sides on record. That would be important, in the Earth-sponsored court-martial that would follow the abrogation of their assigned mission. That could protect the trio to some extent, and the mantas. Selfish motive!

Tyrann was too noble a brute to be arbitrarily extinguished at man's convenience. Let Paleo remain unspoiled a moment, geologically speaking, longer. Let the dinosaur find his own destiny. Let the king of the reptiles rule today, even if extinction was inevitable tomorrow.

But Tyrann would die today, in effect, if he remained before the cave. He had cooled off during the night, since the tremendous muscular dynamo of his body had cut down into torpidity. A lot of heat would be required to revive him, and it might never get warm enough long enough here in these mountain reaches to do the job. Tyrann could sleep himself into starvation.

The hot water, at least, would have slowed the process, and in any event it would take some time for ten tons of flesh to cool completely. If Tyrann were brought to consciousness—before any further heat loss occurred, and while his considerable bodily energy resources remained...

Cal stepped out of the cave, feeling the chill immediately. He kicked the yard-long snout where the water made it tender. "Wake up, lazybones!" he yelled.

An eye flicked open, but Tyrann did not stir. That insidious cold remaining in his flesh immobilized him, though the sun was now hot upon his flank and the water softened his belly. The mighty reptile had a mighty chill; he could not leap to full awareness and performance the way a mammal or bird could.

Cal put a foot on Tyrann's nearest tooth, slung his knee against the nose, mounted to the top of the head and tromped about. "Get on the ball, sleepy! I don't have all day!"

A hiss of annoyance issued from the tremendous, flaccid throat. The muscles of the bulging neck tensed and Cal slid off, caution not entirely forgotten. The skin was hardly sleek, this close; it hung in elephantine folds, mottled and blistered, and infested with insectlike parasites. Tyrann, he thought, probably itched hugely in his off moments.

Cal scrambled around the looming shoulder, avoiding the clenching, almost-human extremity below it, and trotted to the side of the gully. "Can't catch me!" he shouted. He pried a fragment of rock out of the rubble and lobbed it toward the head. It missed, but the second had better aim.

Tyrann bestirred himself. Water gushed down the channel as the ponderous body elevated. Stones splashed into it, dislodged by the hulking, careering shoulders. Clumsily, laboriously, Tyrann stood up and turned about.

Cal danced along the gully, skirting the hips and tail barely in time. He paused only long enough to Orn by Piers Anthony

be certain the reptile was on his trail again. Then he plunged downhill, following the warm channel.

He wasn't worried—yet!—about being caught. It should be at least an hour before Tyrann was really alert. By then—

By then, perhaps, they would be well into the warm valley and he could slip away, leaving the monster frustrated but alive. Cal had won his victory; all he wanted now was to return Tyrann to his habitat. After that—well, he no longer had need of the journey up-coast, since he was not going to make the report. He'd just have to hope he had misjudged the intent of the Earth authorities.

Progress was faster than that. In ten minutes they were out of the snow region. In twenty, the air was appreciably warmer, almost comfortable. In thirty, away from the opening gully—

"Veg!" he cried. But it wasn't Veg.

The man nodded briefly, hands on his steam rifle. "Dr. Potter, I presume."

The exchange had taken five seconds. It was enough of a pause to bring Tyrann into sight. Still clumsy but recovering nicely, the dinosaur bellowed and charged down at them.

Almost casually the stranger aimed his weapon and fired. A hiss as the steam boosted away the shell and dissipated; a clap of noise as the projectile exploded. As Cal turned, Tyrann began to fall. His head was a red mass.

"Just about in time for you," the man remarked. "Where are your companions?"

Tyrann was dead. The great body still twitched and quivered, and would continue to cast about for some time but the head had been blown apart by the explosion. The shell must have scored directly inside the mouth: an expert shot. It was a cruel demise for the carnosaur, and an unnecessary one; at this stage as horrifying as the murder of a friend Cal's reaction of grief and outrage, rather than grateful relic was evidently noted by the stranger, for one of his eyebrow rose in mild puzzlement.

Cal identified the stranger now: an Earth-government agent, similar to the one he had known as

"Subble". There were many of them, all basically similar to each other, differing only in superficial respects. This was deliberate. They were, in a manner of speaking, made that way. This one was dark haired and heavy-featured—but the body was that of a superman, and the mind, Cal knew, was abridged but very strong. This man would be able to quote all the Bible and much Shakespeare, but would not have studied either creatively. He would have no truly individual personality. His past prepared memory, his present a specific mission, and future irrelevant.

The question was, why was he here? Here on Paleo, the world of the paleontological past. Here in the reptile enclave. There should be no human beings here, apart from the trio.

The only sensible answer was that the trio had been followed. That suggested that Cal's worst fears had been realized. Their debate about the nature of his report on Paleo had after all been academic.

"Come with me," the man said gently. Cal offered no resistance. He knew the agent could kill him or severely incapacitate him in a single second or an hour, whichever combination he chose. And would, if the occasion warranted. Obviously this encounter had been no accident.

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"I am Taler," the agent said as they walked south. So he was of the generation after Subble: the T's.

Agents tided to go by three-letter codes, modified for pronunciation, each generation (speaking mechanically, not biologically) was uniform. A given individual would react to a given situation in a manner so similar to that of his pseudo-brothers that the coordinating computer could accept his report without modification for individual bias. This was said to facilitate law enforcement immensely, in its various and often obscure ramifications on violent Earth.

But why had an agent been dispatched at all? This was supposed to have been a civilian mission. He was pestering his own mind with rhetorical questions. The answers were all there, if he cared to bring them forth. Why an agent? Because the civilians were no longer needed. It had already made its decision with regard to the disposition of Paleo.

Cal had not made any specific reports, but had been aware at the radios maintained a carrier signal, pinpointing their geographic whereabouts at all times. The one in the Paleocene camp was probably still broadcasting. The other must have stopped when the raft had been upset by Brachiosaurus, drowning the equipment. This could have looked very much like sabotage.

All he had promised had been an eventual technical report: colonization of flora and fauna, climate and geography. He had tied to deliver his conjectures on the nature of the planet itself—the alternate-world framework. That would have been for thought, for it suggested that there was not merely world available, but an infinite number, if only connections to them could be established. Paleo, instead of representing merely a regressed Earth, implied a new universe, some of whose worlds could be very close in nature to the modem Earth.

But the short-thinking authorities had not waited. They had evidently concluded that if a party of three could survive this long on Paleo, it was habitable and safe, and therefore wide open for exploitation. No doubt many corporations were eager to make their investments and begin profiting.

So a more substantial investigation had been organized—in fact, it had probably been in the making before the trio was ever assigned. No wonder they had been boosted through so precipitous back at the orbiting station! If the guinea pigs were to used at all, it had to be immediately, lest the larger mission be delayed. Report? No more than a pretext to conceal from trio their true insignificance.

So Cal's notion that Earth would patiently wait for delayed report had been wishfully naïve. That was not nature of the omnivore.

Cal repressed his further thoughts, aware that the agent could ferret them out quickly if suspicious.

They arrived at Taler's camp. A glossy-fabric tent had been pitched in the forest, stark contrast to the ancient ginkko surrounding it. Inside the tent sat another agent, operating radio. Yes—they were in touch.

"Taner," Taler said, introducing his comrade.

Taner spoke into the mike. "Calvin Potter secured. Fungoid loose."

Secured? Another line of conjecture opened up. An ugly one. He had not been even nominally Orn by Piers Anthony

rescued—he had be taken prisoner. And they were searching for the mantas.

Why? Why indeed! Here was a world for the taking provided the mantas didn't take it first. Any two of them could sporulate by committing suicide, and cover the planet with the very population the Earth-government abhorred: advanced fungoid entities. That would ruin it for colonization by certain definitions, and reduce the spoils to ashes.

Perhaps it would be better that way. The manta, at least, was an honorable creature.

Taler turned to him. "I see you comprehend our purpose, Dr. Potter."

Oh-oh. He had forgotten, for the moment, the uncanny abilities of these men. By studying his reactions to stimuli—and words themselves were stimuli—they could virtually read his mind.

"Precisely," Taler said. "Now it will be easier for us all if you choose to cooperate. Where are the other members of your party?"

They would run Veg and Aquilon down soon enough anyway—perhaps already had. Presuming the two had survived quakes. A speedy pickup—yes. Taler was testing him in the manner old-time police had verified the performance of their drugs or lie detectors by asking preliminary questions to which they knew the answers. "I left them on a small island on the eastern bay, together."

"And the fungoids?"

That was another matter. "I told them to get lost."

"You are a clever man, Dr. Potter."

Cal smiled grimly. "Common sense suggested that where there were two such highly trained agents as yourselves, others could also be present. Since I actually asked the mantas to observe my encounter with the carnosaur but not to interfere, I am reasonably certain that I have been under observation by them. Since it does not appear to be to their advantage to have these creatures captured by you, it was natural that I express my sentiment."

"However obliquely, and with insufficient precursive tension on me in time. Two fungoids were in the vicinity," Taler admitted. "They departed when you amended your prior inductions by suggesting that they 'get lost.' Our personnel were not quite quick enough."

"It would have been messy," Cal said, "had I suggested instead that they attack."

"Correct." Taler pulled aside a flap of the tent and revealed beneath it several heavy cables. These divided and subdivided and fed eventually into the material of the tent itself.

Suddenly Cal was very glad he had warned the mantas clear. The tent was a network of filament! The moment sufficient power was applied, he was sure, the entire surface would flash like a nova, blinding every sighted creature nearby. The agents would have some kind of protection—polarized contact lenses, perhaps—but the mantas would have been destroyed. Alive but dead, for the sensitive eye was virtually their sole sensory apparatus.

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That showed how well Earth understood the manta metabolism, now. For in death the bodies of the mantas would dissolve into spores, and in country like this it would not be possible to be assured of destroying every drifting bit of life. Living mantas were no such danger; and a blind manta would be innocuous—unable to strike either in life or death.

"Now we shall have to run them down the hard way," Taler said, showing no malice. "That may mean considerable damage to the area."

Cal knew the agent meant it. But the matter was out of his hands now. "What about the others?"

"We picked Vachel Smith off a rock in the ocean, and one fungoid accompanied him voluntarily.

They are confined aboard ship in good condition. Taner is about to go after the girl and her companion. I see you did not know your associates had separated."

"I hadn't known any mantas had rejoined them, either. Well, at least I'll have company in the brig."

XX: ORN

The island was still dark as Orn roused the sleeping quilon with a careful nudge of his beak.

Something was wrong. There was an alien presence he could not fathom—the same horror he had experienced the first time he had encountered the giant mams and supposed, erroneously, to be an aspect of their own strangeness.

She woke nervously, brushing her forelimbs against his under feathers, touching the warm egg for reassurance. He knew that gesture. It meant that she feared for the egg, that some danger threatened it. And that was why he had alerted her, for he did not like this odd visitation. Would she sense it too?

"Circe!" she exclaimed. "You came back!"

She saw it! And—she was not frightened. Her reaction, her sounds, were of relief and welcome, not apprehension.

"Veg—Cal—are they safe? Where are they?"

She was trying to make contact with it! She was friendly to this un-creature. It could not, then, be a threat.

Braced by this realization, Orn concentrated on the spot of greatest disturbance. If the quilon could perceive something there, so should he. His eyes were better than hers, and his nose too.

All he found was an unfamiliar growth of fungus: a tremendous toadstool. He could not read its life history, for it deviated too far from the lines he knew. It had not been there when they fought the Elas. But it was the nature of these things to sprout very rapidly.

It moved.

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Orn looked to discover what had dislodged it, but observed no cause. There was no wind, and no animal had brushed against it. The ground had not quaked. The water had not washed ashore.

"They're safe!" The quilon was happy. She liked to see the toadstool move.

"Is the water clear now?" She was making query-noises. Orn was able to comprehend more and more of her mannerisms and read her intent. But he could not determine her precise concern. She was smarter than most mams, but fell short of Ornette's level, and was subject to meaningless and transitory expressions.

The toadstool disappeared. Astonished, Orn left the egg momentarily to probe the ground where the thing had grown. It was as though it had been lifted away by the wind—the wind that wasn't there.

Surely the quilon had seen the phenomenon. Plants never moved of their own volition!

"Circe is checking out the region. We'll have to move off this rock, Orn, and we can't do it while the reptiles are about. I think I can manage the egg, provided the water isn't too deep and nothing attacks us. Circe can guide us—"

Orn wondered whether this continuous noise could have been what drove the male mam away.

Certainly it was irritating, when there was the problem of foraging while guarding the egg against both known and unknown menaces. Already that chatter had brought upon them a disastrous visitation by the Elas.

The toadstool reappeared, blown like a frond in a gale. Orn was able to see it clearly now that he was aware of its properties. These were contrary to all that his memory told him. But gradually he was able to accept that this fung had somehow evolved entirely separate from his own ancestry. Just as the ordinary animals had split from each other and developed over the millennia into dissimilar lines, so had this. Perhaps it had happened entirely in this valley, unvisited by any of his own line. Thus its utter strangeness, that had rendered it virtually imperceptible to him except as a vague horror, was not really so sinister. A creature with metabolism resembling that of a plant, yet as active as an animal. A creature without wings that flew. Now that his mind had conjured the necessary evolution of the species—a fung that reached for organic food, then jumped for it, until it had become dependent on such motions for sustenance—he could accept it.

Just as a mam could become as large as a small rep, and make perpetual noises, so could a fung become a flying toadstool.

The thing had planted itself in the ground again, and the quilon was making her noises at it. Perhaps the two odd species, mam and fung, had evolved together, and somehow understood each other. Such a connection would be no more remarkable than what he had already observed in this changed world.

The quilon faced him. "Circe says there is now a deep and treacherous chasm between us and the main island. The fault must have opened up there, and we can't cross it unless swim. But I can't swim holding the egg. I mean I might try it, but the cold water would kill the embryo. But Circe says the bay between us and the mainland is shallow, maybe only chest deep on me. The quake must have pushed up the bottom in a ridge parallel to the fault—well, no use trying to explain that to you. She Orn by Piers Anthony

can show us the best route across, so we can wade. And she says there are no big reptiles in the immediate area right now, and no sharks: they're all gathering around some battle several miles away, where there's a lot of blood. Something like that—I'm not sure. There's a sleeping duckbill by the main island, and he won't bother us anyway. But the tide's coming in; we have to do it right away if we're going to, otherwise it'll be hot by the time the water's low again, and the sea predators will be out in force."

Orn ignored her chatter. It was dawn—the best time for hunting, because most of the reps were torpid, though not the sharks. He would have to forage for the mam as well as himself, since she had to warm the egg. He had observed that she did not consume fish, sticking instead to tubers and berries from the island. He could cross over now and sniff out some roots for her, then feed himself.

The toadstool flew out over the sea again. The quilon stood up, lifted the egg— and walked into the water!

Orn squawked and fluttered after her, appalled at her folly. The cool sea would deaden the life in the egg! But she only made vocal noises at him, refusing to be summoned back.

He was helpless. Any measure taken against the quilon would surely immerse the egg—the very thing he sought to protect. He could not carry it back himself; he had to wait for her to do so. He realized that she meant no harm—but she did not seem to comprehend the danger. How could he make her understand?

She stepped cautiously away from the rock, the water rising to her removable hip-plumage. She held the egg against her fleshy breast with one forelimb, balancing with the other. She was moving away from the main island, following a course suggested by the motions of the flying toadstool.

Orn started swimming, being too light to maintain his footing at this depth. The quilon, well over half immersed, continued toward the mainland. She wasn't even trying to get to the island!

He had no notion how to abate this bizarre exploration. Had he known the mam was prone to such action, he would never have left her with his egg. Now all he could do was parallel her course and hope she would turn back before the egg was lost. He would have to kill her if she sacrificed it through her stupidity—but he did not want to do that.

The sea beneath him was clear. Small fish circulated temptingly, and he was hungry, but he could not go after them now. He could not see through to the bottom, for it was quite deep, though where the quilon walked it was unusually shallow. Memory told him that earth faults under the sea were sometimes like that: one side high, the other low, or two ridges separated by a chasm. But how had she known?

She was in now almost to her head. The egg was precariously lodged on her shoulder, nestled in the yellow mane that descended from her scalp. Both her forelimbs were raised to shield it. This was not adequate coverage; the egg would soon grow cold there, even if the water that was already plastering her artificial fur to her bifurcated udder did not rise farther. He swam closer, though he could do nothing.

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The quilon stopped. "Too deep. I can't keep my footing. If I lower my arms, I'll float, and the egg will unbalance me—"

Sometimes such sounds seemed to signal a change of intent. Would she turn back now?

She worked her way back until the mam drew entirely out of the water. She held the egg close before her, warming it though her torso was wet. Then the toadstool came near, bouncing on the surface, and angled away in a slightly different direction. She followed it.

Again she went as deep as she could go, and again she uttered her frustrated sounds and retreated.

The toadstool circled, seemingly unable to point the way again. Now would she give up this hazardous enterprise and return his egg to land and safety?

Safety? Even the mainland, with its rampaging reps, was safer than the hideously exposed bit of rock they were stranded on. Had it been possible to move the egg even to the main island—but the canyon in the sea prevented that.

Then Orn realized what the quilon and her obscure acquaintance were attempting to do. Shallow water leading toward the mainland, while the tide was low—

He went into action. He dived, spreading his wings against the water to provide the impetus that would send him under. He explored the bottom with his beak and eye.

Ahead of the quilon the ridge descended, then rose again to a level he thought she could navigate. If she could cross that deepest portion, she could travel a long way toward land—perhaps all the way.

But she could not pass the hollow without immersing the egg. Perhaps only four lengths of her body, about four wingspans, separated her from the resumption of navigable shallows.

This was not the type of thinking Orn's mind was made for, but his long apprenticeship in solitary survival, coupled with the present pressing need, sharpened his abilities. There were problems memory could not solve, and this was one such: how to get the mam female across the gap without dunking the egg—and soon enough so that the rising tide would not make it entirely impossible.

Had there been floating wood, memory might have sufficed. His ancestors had utilized logs to cross from island to island upon occasion, or from side to side of deep rivers. But there was no log here.

Orn himself was the only thing afloat—and only the relative stillness of the water enabled him to maintain his balance. Waves, or any other threat, could swamp him, for he was top-heavy and lacked webbed feet. He was actually better at swimming under water than on the surface, because there his abbreviated wings were effective.

But in this emergency, his abilities might be enough to save the egg. And the egg was paramount.

Orn paddled up and nudged the standing quilon. She was silent now, and water seemed to have splashed onto her face though the egg was dry. There was a certain unhappy handsomeness about her as she stood balked, and he wondered to what extent mams had genuine emotions.

But there was no time for such idle considerations. Orn nudged her again, trying to make her understand. The egg could be saved, if her dull mam brain could rise to the occasion.

Orn by Piers Anthony

For a moment she did not move. Then, slowly, she placed one forelimb across his back, bearing down on his body so that he sank in the water. She was astonishingly heavy, but he spread his wings somewhat and kicked his feet and maintained his position. He could not endure this for long; his instinct and memory cried out against such proximity to a foreign creature. But long enough—

She moved the egg until it rested partly against his back, just above the water. Then she pushed slowly forward. Her body went down, but the egg remained high, its weight borne by his feathers.

At the place the mam had balked before, her feet left the bottom and she floated. Orn paddled desperately to maintain his balance as she lost hers. It was difficult; he was tilting irrevocably over—

Then the quilon's stout legs began to kick in the water, driving them both slowly ahead and restoring joint balance. He steered and she held the egg on his back. A single bad wave, even a gust of wind, would topple them.

The toadstool circled rapidly, as though even its vegetable intellect were aware of the crisis. Orn glanced at it—and saw the suggestion of motion in the distance behind it. Something was coming!

Almost, in his instinctive eagerness to scramble for safety, he dislodged the egg. But he controlled himself after a single jerk and went on paddling. Perhaps it was only one of the sporting cory reps, who were unlikely to stray this far out from shore.

Progress was so slow! Only by poking his head under the surface and noting the locations of the bottom features was he able to determine that they were moving. If a predator rep came upon them now—

It did. It was the Elas, the flippered paddler who had carried Ornette away before. Already it was hungry again, or merely mischievous, and their motion in the shallow water had summoned it from its hiding place. Here within its feeding ground they had no chance at all to escape.

The toadstool broke its circle and went to meet the Elas. Orn could not watch closely, for his balance remained precarious. He saw the fung rise high in the air as though it were a ptera and pass over the lifted head of the rep. Nothing happened—but the Elas emitted a tremendous honk of pain.

Then it was retreating, and the smell of its blood came to him. Had an old wound reopened as it strained to snap up the toadstool? Or had it merely been frightened by the oddity of the fung, the blood remaining from the wound Orn had inflicted on its neck before?

Orn was satisfied that they were safe again. Joy was no more a part of his nature than was grief, and the security of the egg was what mattered. Somehow the rep had been turned away.

The animal panting of the quilon became loud, and his own respiration was labored. He was, in the aftermath of the rep threat, quite tired. He had been subjected to a double strain—the weight of the quilon and egg on his back, and the fear of the Elas when he was impotent as a fighter. But they were over the shallow section again. He honked, trying to convey this to her, and finally she stopped kicking her heavy-boned feet and pushed her round extremities down until they struck the bottom sand.

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The rest of the crossing was easy. Twice more he had to assist the quilon, the rising tide making the portages longer, but now they were both familiar with the routine. The flying fung guided them unfailingly, selecting the best route. Orn was coming almost to like such toadstools.

Secure at last on land, they lay on the pleasant beach, the egg warmed between them. The toadstool also rested nearby, a hump with a single peculiar eye. He could see it quite clearly now, though it remained a most unusual phenomenon.

The quilon had been right; the drive for land had been best. The chick still lived in the egg for he could feel its living presence. With the Elas remaining so near, they would have been perpetually vulnerable on the fragment island. Now they had a chance, and the egg too. The mainland was by no means ideal for nesting, but the island had turned into a death trap.

Orn looked about. He knew the terrain because he had pursued Ornette here during their courtship.

Not far back from the shore the snowy mountains rose, riddled with their caverns and gulleys and heated waters. Somewhere near the snowline there might be a suitable nesting site. The cold would make it doubly difficult to warm the egg, but this was necessary to escape the predator reps, who ordinarily would not ascend that far.

He stood and led the way, and the quilon followed, submissive now that she had done her task. She held the egg closely against her damp body, enclosing it with her forelimbs so that as little as possible was exposed to the air. Actually, the heat of the day was upon them, so this was no longer critical.

The fung vanished into the brush; he spied it only occasionally.

Between shore and mountain was a level plain, an extension of the larger one the Tricer herds ranged on. Here the palms were well trimmed, showing that the huge reps had foraged here recently. Though he did not fear them himself, he was not certain how they would react to the large mam. They might ignore her—but if they did not, the egg would be in peril again. He decided to change course so as to avoid the local herd.

Then he sniffed something else. It was another large mam of the quilon species—a male.

Orn did not know whether this was good or bad. The male had left the female, and perhaps this return meant a reconciliation. But it could also mean trouble. Orn would not ordinarily interfere with mam courtship and mating rites—but he needed the quilon female to transport the egg, and to warm it while he foraged. He could not hatch it alone.

Before he could make a decision, the male approached. It was not the original mate.

There was a babble as the two mams vociferated at each other. The toadstool had taken off at the first whiff of the visitor; Orn smelled it in the vicinity but could not spot it.

The haphazard dialogue continued. Orn picked up the sequence of reactions from the female: surprise, comprehension, anger, fear. She did not like the stranger, but was afraid of what might happen if she made an open break. She suspected the male of malicious intent. Her concern was not primarily for herself, though; it was—

Orn by Piers Anthony

For the egg!

Orn was already charging as the realization hit him. His wings flapped to boost his speed; his beak aimed forward. Headfirst, he launched himself at the strange male quilon.

The creature was not facing him, but from it a bolt of lightning emerged. A terrible heat struck Orn, searing the feathers of one wing and the flesh of that wing and the bony substructure, and lancing on through his body. The wound was mortal; he knew it as he completed his charge.

The female mam struck the intruder with her free limb, but he caught it with his own and was not hurt. This also Orn perceived as the signals of death spread through his running body. The male was swift and deadly and without compassion. He would kill them both and smash the egg. This certainty kept Orn going when he should have fallen. Only by somehow bringing the mam enemy down could he give the egg a chance—even the ugly chance Orn himself had hatched with. His own parents had died defending their nest and eggs from a marauding croc; Orn would die defending his egg from a predator mam. It was the way it had to be.

But he knew too that it was not to be. He had thought these mams to be slow and clumsy and not wholly intelligent. He had foolishly judged from the pair that came in peace to mate. The other mam was in his strength, and was devastating. This one would prevail.

Yet he continued, his legs somehow supporting the momentum of his body. He could at least strike at it, perhaps wound it...

Then a shadow came upon that scene.

The male quilon had one limb taken by its grasp on the female, the other lifted to ward off Orn. Its stout hindlimbs were anchored in the soil. Only its head was free, this moment, to move about. It turned.

The shadow passed.

There was a gash across the mam's head, where the eyes had been. The shadow returned. Orn recognized it now. It was the flying fung, moving with dizzying speed.

Fire lanced from the male again, scorching brush and trees but not the toadstool. A second gash appeared, almost circling the mam's throat. Blood pounded out.

As Orn finally collided with his target, only a few heartbeats from the time he had started the charge, he knew that both of them were dying. His weight jarred the male's grip loose from the female. Only she and the fung—and the egg!—had survived this brutal encounter.

"Circe!"

Orn collapsed in a heap with the mam, his blood mixing with that of his antagonist. He no longer had command of his body, but he could hear the female quilon's sounds. She never was silent!

"Circe! We've killed an agent! There may be others in the area, and they'll wipe us all out. They've Orn by Piers Anthony

come to take over Paleo, I'm sure of that. We'll have to cover the evidence. In a hurry."

The toadstool slowed and came to rest. There was blood on its tail.

"The Tricers! Can you stampede them?"

The fung was gone.

Then she was standing over Orn, touching the feathers of his neck with those uselessly soft digits.

She still supported the egg. "Orn—you're alive!"

He had not known that death would be so slow. He was helpless, but now he felt no pain. There was only a gradual sinking to the sound of her dialogue, now gentle and no longer annoying.

"No—you can't survive that burn. I'm sorry, Orn. I—I didn't mean it to end like this. I'll save your egg. I'll keep it until—"

Her paw caressed his neck feathers. "The Tricers are coming. I have to get out of here, Orn. With your egg. Those brutes will flatten everything, so no one will know, I hope. How he died, I mean.

Keep Paleo sacrosanct...

"I—you were a gallant soul— are one—and I love you. You diverted the agent so Circe could—you gave your life for ours, and I'll always remember that. Always.

"Goodbye, Orn."

She was gone, and somehow he knew she would preserve the egg. That was all that mattered.

The ground rumbled and shook. Tricers—stampeding! Orn tried to move, but could not, before he remembered that the effort was pointless. Their sound was loud, their massive hooves striking the ground in a gargantuan raindrop pattern. They were coming here! The entire herd, charging along the narrowing plateau, converging on this spot, their growing cadence like the shaking of a volcano.

There would be nothing but a beaten trail, after their passage.

Orn was satisfied.

XXI: VEG

He stood on the deck and watched them bring Cal in. Hex stood beside him, in his shadow, impassive as only a manta could be.

The ship was anchored in water of appropriate depth near the mouth of the great swamp. It was a double-hulled military yacht, chemically powered but capable of fifty knots. Veg assumed that the agents had assembled it piecemeal this side of the transport tunnel, since it would have been impossible to beam the entire ship through as a unit. A big job, requiring skill and time, though of Orn by Piers Anthony

course the agents would have been programmed for it. They must have started work the moment the trio set sail on the Nacre. He didn't need Cal to tell him what that meant about the importance of the trio's original mission. They had simply been a test case, human guinea pigs, sacrificial lambs or whatever, sent through on the spur of the moment to verify that the transfer equipment was in working order and that men could survive the jump. A few days to allow for any subtle residual tissue damage, then a few more to make sure there were no slow-acting poisons on Paleo. Probably Noodlebrain had thought he was sentencing them to death, and it had been sheer luck that everything had functioned properly.

The tiny cutter docked beside the yacht. A derrick hoisted Cal and one of his captors to the deck. In a moment Cal passed across the line marking Veg's area of confinement, and the two friends were together again.

"There's a force screen or something," Veg warned him as they watched the cutter cut east. He still felt the awkwardness of their last discussion. How could things be the same between them, after...

Aquilon?

Cal nodded. He knew all about such things. If any of them attempted to jump ship or even cross the line on the deck without authorization, the invisible alert screen would trigger automatic weaponry that would blast them immediately. The remains would be netted and englobed in seconds, so that the atmosphere would not be contaminated by their corpses. This was mainly for Hex's benefit, since his demise would release a cloud of potent spores. Earth had learned its lesson in that regard.

" 'Quilon?" Cal inquired.

"It didn't work out," Veg said; then he realized with fierce embarrassment that Cal had not been referring to their sexual liaison. "I left her on the island, when I heard about—" He broke off, aware that that was wrong too. Cal had not asked for help, in his contest with Tyrann.

"So Hex tattled," Cal murmured, smiling briefly.

"Yeah. Circe, anyway." The tension was broken; Cal understood. "How'd you make out?"

"Taler shot it."

"Oh." That was too simple. It meant Cal didn't want to talk about it, any more than Veg wanted to talk about his own adventure. And Cal would have explained about the other mantas by now, the missing ones, if he intended to. Something was going on.

A woman stood amidships, fiddling with radio equipment. She was tall, slender, and blonde—rather beautiful, yet quite unlike Aquilon. Veg had been observing her with covert admiration, wondering what she was doing here on this man's mission.

"Taner reports island evacuated," the woman said, every syllable clear though she did not seem to be striving for precision. "Proceeding to mainland."

Cal looked at her. "Earth is keeping extraordinarily close tabs on its representatives," he remarked.

"I've seen three agents so far, with evidence of at least two others, and reporting in at every turn."

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"They figure Paleo will corrupt somebody, otherwise," Veg said. "The way it did us."

"A telling point. I believe I would have termed it 'enlightenment', however."

"And a gal aboard too."

"That's nothing to interest you," Cal said with an obscure expression. "That's a female agent."

Veg was shocked. "That little thing? A superman?"

She glanced their way and smiled. "Tamme, at your service."

Veg recalled the things the agent Subble had been capable of back on Earth. He looked again at the girl. He shook his head in negation. She would not last long in a lumberman's free-for-all, whatever her training.

Tamme was watching him. "I would, you know," she murmured.

For the third time in as many minutes he felt quick embarrassment. Damn that mind-reading ability of hers!

She laughed.

Cal looked thoughtful, but did not comment.

"Contact," Tamme said. "Bird and woman. Fungoid concealed." Then she paused, frowning. "Taner dead."

Taler's head appeared in the hatch. At least Veg thought it was Taler; they were all so similar they were hard to tell apart unless they were together. "So the report was correct. The fungoid can upon occasion dispatch an agent."

" She must have had a hand in it," Tamme said. "Shouldn't have sent a man for that chick."

"You have to admit we aren't exposed much to attractive feminine types," Taler replied.

She threw something at his head. The motion was so rapid and controlled that Veg was only aware of the jerk of her full blouse and the flash of metal in sunlight.

Taler moved simultaneously, plucking the object from the air before his face. He held it aloft, a trophy. It was a tiny stiletto—and had he not been ready for it, the point would have skewered his nose.

They were only playing, but they were deadly. All of them. That sudden murder of their companion seemed to mean nothing more to them than an ineffective tactic. Unless this whole little episode was merely a show to impress the prisoners.

Yet Subble had seemed like a decent guy, and he had been an agent not many letters removed. SU

compared to TA—SUBble, TALer, TAMme, TANer...

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Taler came to them. "It appears there is some difficulty picking up Miss Hunt. We are also interested in the three outstanding fungoids. Is the present creature able to contact others, if set free to do so?

There is no need to answer."

No need indeed! Veg was familiar with this type of interrogation. The agent merely asked questions, and gauged the response from the bodily reactions of the listener. There was nothing an ordinary man could do about it.

But why were the agents so intent on capturing all the trio and the mantas? They could survey the planet and make their report without reference to those who had gone before. The trio wasn't important any more, if it had ever counted for anything here at all, and this campaign hardly seemed worth the effort.

Well, Cal would know. Veg would follow his friend's lead.

"If you do not cooperate," Taler said gently, "we shall have to undertake a search-and-destroy mission. That could mean the death of Miss Hunt, too."

Cal did not speak, but Veg's pulses leaped angrily. Aquilon—dead?

"Interesting," Taler remarked. "Dr. Potter is even more enamored of Miss Hunt than is Mr. Smith.

But Dr. Potter refuses to be influenced thereby. Since a threat of this nature would therefore be ineffective, I make none; I merely advise you that the element of risk does apply to Miss Hunt so long as she is beyond our jurisdiction."

Taler now addressed himself completely to Cal. "We shall begin with a humane nerve gas. This particular formula should render all mammals unconscious on contact. Reptiles and amphibians will be affected to a lesser extent. Plants will suffer some loss of foliage in the following days and a few will rot. Representatives of the third kingdom—"

"Blinded," Cal said.

Taler signaled to Tamme. "Lift the barricade."

Something clicked off. "You'd better explain it to Hex," Cal said to Veg. "He's your manta."

"I'm not sure myself what's going on. You want Hex to fetch 'Quilon?"

"These gentlemen," Cal said, "want very much to have all four mantas here on the ship, alive, because if any two should die on Paleo their spores could spread and mate and produce many thousands of mantas to take over the planet."

"That wouldn't be so bad. Mantas aren't destructive."

"These gentlemen wish to preserve Paleo for human colonization, however."

Veg smiled bleakly. "Oh. They'd have trouble, with all those mantas."

Then something occurred to him. " I don't want Earth to colonize, and 'Quilon doesn't either. We Orn by Piers Anthony

already had that out."

"I have come to agree with you," Cal said surprisingly. "Paleo should be preserved as it exists. But although I decided not to make my report, events have made the issue academic. The agents are now in control."

Veg experienced a mixture of emotions. He was gratified to learn that the schism between them was gone, that Cal was now on the side Aquilon had espoused—but angry that Cal should so readily submit to the demands of the agents. It was not like Cal to yield under duress.

Taler spoke, facing Veg. "Your friend is very clever. He has already outwitted me once, and I am not a stupid or gullible man. No agent is. Now he is planning to betray us again. I must therefore request that you address your manta immediately, without further conversation with Dr. Potter."

The manner was polite. Taler could afford courtesy. Veg knew that he was fully capable of enforcing his demand, and needed no bluster.

But the other remark! So Cal had not surrendered! That was especially good to know. But what had Cal planned? Could Veg figure it out in time?

"Instruct your manta," Taler said, his voice still mild but carrying just that hint of urgency required to make his point. Further delay would mean considerable unpleasantness. Veg did not fancy himself to be a fool.

But what could he do, except as told? "Hex," he said, and the manta rotated on its foot to face him.

"These men have—do you know what nerve gas is?"

Two snaps of the tail.

Veg turned to Taler. "I have to explain—"

"Nerve gas is a substance that can be released into the air," Taler said. "It will fill the entire valley within an hour, barring exceptional atmospheric conditions. It will blind all eye-bearing fungoids without killing them—and the damage is probably irreversible."

"Do you understand that?" Veg asked Hex. He wondered how the agents had developed and tested this chemical, with no mantas to try it on. Could it be a bluff?

To his surprise, Hex snapped once. The mantas were getting better at picking up human speech and grasping its content.

"They will release this gas, if you don't go and tell 'Quilon and the other mantas to come here—to surrender. We can't stop them."

One snap.

"So guess you'd better—"

Something crackled. Veg saw Cal fall to the deck.

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"Remain where you are," Taler snapped. He was facing Hex, who had not moved, and his directive was as much for the manta as for Veg. "Your friend was about to impart inappropriate information to you and the manta. I had to anesthetize him immediately. He will recover in a few minutes, unharmed. Instruct your manta."

"They aren't kidding," Veg said to Hex, furious but helpless. "I don't like it, but I have to tell you to go bring Circe and Diam and Star back here—and 'Quilon too, of course. They'll kill us all, otherwise." Inside he was chagrined that he hadn't been able to follow Cal's plan, whatever it was. By the time Cal woke up, Hex would be on his way, and it would be too late.

"Very good," Taler said. "The barrier is down—but the creature will be covered by our cannon until out of sight. We are equipped to englobe the remains in seconds. It has one hour before we release the gas—no more."

"One hour, Hex," Veg repeated dully. "So make it fast. I—" He turned to the agent again. "You promise not to hurt any of them, or us?"

"If you cooperate. Our interest is in completing our mission; there is no personal bonus. The group of you will be assigned elsewhere, where there need be no restriction on your activities or those of the fungoids. You have my given word. That is not sacrosanct, of course, but is a statement of intent."

Veg remembered Subble once more. The man had kept his word all the way, though he hadn't been obliged to. He had to trust Taler that far.

"It's okay for all of us, if you make it in one hour," he told Hex. "Tell them that. Now get going."

Hex leaped into the air and was on his way, a disk skipping across the water. He was traveling at something like a hundred miles an hour, and in about a minute had disappeared into the foliage fringing the swamp.

Veg lifted Cal to his feet as Taler departed. In a few minutes, as predicted, the little man recovered, though he had a scrape on the head where he had struck the deck. Veg raged to see the injury done, but knew that protest would be useless.

"Sorry," Veg murmured. "I couldn't figure out what you wanted, and the bastard wouldn't give me time to think, and he could read my mind anyway, so I just had to send Hex off."

Cal gripped his hand momentarily. "It's all right."

"I blew it. I'm just not smart enough."

"On the contrary. It was essential that I be out of the way so that I couldn't blow it, as you put it. They were already suspicious of me. You they assumed were safe."

"I am safe," Veg said. "Mad as hell, but safe. And I can't even slug one of them. I tried that on Subble, and got smeared."

"Yes, I'm sure Taler read that fury in you. So now Hex is telling 'Quilon and the other mantas the Orn by Piers Anthony

ultimatum. What do you suppose they'll do?"

"What can they do? No sense having that gas turned loose."

Cal only smiled.

Half an hour passed before a manta reappeared, alone. It glided in while the cannon tracked it and landed neatly on the deck. It was Circe.

Taler came out immediately. "This is not the same fungoid," he said.

"It's Circe—'Quilon's manta," Veg explained.

"Miss Hunt is ready to be picked up?"

"I guess. The swimming isn't so hot hereabouts."

Taler swung lithely over the rail and dropped into a second cutter. In a moment he was speeding in the direction Circe had come from. Veg wondered how he was so sure of the way, then realized that the sharp perceptions of the agent would make location easy. It was her cooperation Taler required, nothing else. Her agreement would bring in the remaining mantas.

Tamme was on deck, her efficient yet feminine manner disquieting. She had sex appeal, and he knew she read his appreciation of that, and read his attempt to repress and conceal his reaction. She hardly bothered to hide her amusement.

Fifteen minutes later Aquilon was brought aboard, along with Hex. She held what had to be one of Orn's eggs in her arms; Veg had no idea how she had come by it. There was a bruise on her cheek that he didn't like to look at, suspecting that he had put it there; but that was the least of the change in her. She was not the same woman he had known and loved.

"It's been a long time," Aquilon said. "Four nights and three earthquakes since we three were last together..."

"Three nights, two earthquakes," Cal said.

"You must have been very busy, not to notice. Four—"

"Now don't you two start fighting again," Veg interposed quickly. "Could have been ten days and nine earthquakes, for all I remember, and what difference does it make?"

She smiled, becoming the girl he had known. She held no grudge against him.

Still, they stood there somewhat awkwardly. Veg knew he really hadn't managed things very well.

First, siding with her against Cal (and had it been sex that decided him?), then trying to go back to Cal when the man didn't want help, and getting stranded himself. Finally, he played the betrayer to them both by sending Hex off... no, he had no congratulations coming.

Suddenly he realized that the hour was up—and Cal's two mantas, Diam and Star, had not come in.

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"Release the gas," Taler said. Tamme, who seemed to handle more than radios, opened a chest and brought out several sealed cannisters. Frost glistened on them; they had been stored cold.

"That's pointless now," Cal said. "The two mantas are already dead."

Taler studied him. "You play a dangerous game, sir."

Cal nodded. "There is a world at stake."

Tamme spoke into her mike. "Parley has failed. Two fungoids have spored. Too late for enclosure.

Proceed with alternate." She returned the cannisters to their compartment.

"What happened?" Veg demanded. "I thought they were coming in!"

Aquilon touched his hand in that way she had. "They knew what the invasion by the Earth omnivore meant. So they died, and Hex cut them up and spread the spores while Circe reported back here to the ship. By now those spores are all over the valley. They can't be wiped out."

"But I told Hex—"

Taler cut in, seemingly without malice. "Dr. Potter was aware that Miss Hunt would not honor that request—and that she would correctly interpret its real meaning. Had Dr. Potter been conscious at the time your manta left, I would have fathomed his sensation of victory, and thwarted his plan. As it was, I picked up nothing from him except his nonspecific chord of emotions. In my confidence, I failed to read him later, and I attributed Miss Hunt's confused state of apprehension concerning her treatment at our hands following her involvement in the termination of Taner. Therefore I did not question her, assuming that the remaining mantas were on their way separately." He smiled with good-natured rue. "I have not before been so readily outwitted by a normal man."

Veg's mind was spinning. Cal had been walking a tightrope while juggling flaming torches barehanded! So many complex factors were interacting. This was a type of contest alien to him, and one he had certainly not appreciated at the time.

"Why did 'Quilon and Circe come in, then?"

"Two sets of spores were sufficient," Aquilon said. "No point in having us all die."

"But we didn't follow through on the bargain," Veg said. "We didn't bring in all the mantas. So the agents don't have give us any break. Maybe they'll kill us all, now."

"Does it matter?" Aquilon inquired dully, staring at the egg she held.

"Revenge would be pointless," Taler said. "Mr. Smith's bargain was made in good faith; it did not occur to him that the others would not honor it. We agents are realistic, not recriminatory—otherwise we would have brought you to accounting for the damage done by the three fungoids back at the Earth station, and particularly for the one that escaped entirely. But we chose instead to learn from the experience, and so we followed you as rapidly as was feasible."

"You mean you didn't plan to come here anyway?" Veg asked, wondering just how bad a mistake that Orn by Piers Anthony

manta break at the station had been.

"Not this particular party. The original expedition was to consist of normals—extraterrestrialogists, geologists, paleontologists. When we realized the potentialities of your fungoids, this military unit was substituted." Taler faced toward the mainland, as though watching for something. "You have demonstrated that as a group you are too valuable to waste. Future agents will be programmed to avoid mistakes of the nature of those we have made here, and you will be reassigned as agreed."

Veg shook his head dubiously. "So you're letting Paleo go, after all that trouble?"

"By no means. Our alternate program to salvage the planet for mankind is already underway.

Observe."

They looked across the water. Smoke was rising from the valley—a wall of it on the west side, near the trio's original camp. The breeze was blowing it east.

"You're burning the enclave!" Aquilon exclaimed, horrified.

"The spores, as you pointed out, are beyond recovery. It is necessary to destroy them and the habitat in which they might prosper. We are doing so."

"But the dinosaurs! They have nowhere to go!"

"They are part of that habitat," Taler said. "This will hasten their extinction, yes."

She stared at the smoke, stricken.

"You can't get all the spores that way," Veg said, similarly palled. "They're tough. Some will ride high in the sky, it stays cool. Some will settle in the water—" He stopped, wondering whether he had said too much.

"Some spores will survive, inevitably," Taler agreed, "But the point is that they require hosts for their maturation. By depriving them of these—chiefly the omnivorous mammals of valley—we are making it impossible for them to develop. Some will drift beyond the mountains—but as you saw, landscape is barren, and their numbers will be diffuse after hurdles of fire and snow. The ocean is not a conducive habitat, either, since the fungoids are land-based. The probability is that a long-range program of survey and extermination will prevent any fungoid menace from erupting."

"The whole valley!" Aquilon said. "How could it possibly be worth it!"

"Perhaps you should have considered that at an earlier time. We were prepared for this contingency, but it was not our desire to destroy the enclave. You forced it."

"I didn't know!" But it sounded to Veg as though she lacked conviction. She certainly should have guessed that the omnivore would not be easily balked.

"Dr. Potter knew."

He was right, Veg thought. Cal would certainly have anticipated the consequence of his plot. Had he Orn by Piers Anthony

betrayed Paleo after all, making dupes of those, like Veg and Aquilon and the mantas, who would have saved it? Veg did not look at him.

"Some will escape," Cal said. He sounded worn. "The spores can survive for many years, and there will be an entire planet to hide on. In as little as a year some will mature sufficiently to respore, and there will be no way to control that secondary crop of mantas. It will be cheaper to vacate Paleo than to police it effectively. Your superiors will realize that in time, and act accordingly. This valley had to be sacrificed for the sake of this world."

"You are gambling with genocide," Taler said. He turned to Veg and Aquilon. "If I were this man's companion, I would be afraid."

Veg watched the smoke rising, knowing that Cal had foreseen this and probably planned on it, and understood.

XXII: QUARTET

Aquilon stood holding Orn's egg: a nine-inch shell containing all that remained of a gallant pair of birds. She had wrapped a soft blanket about it, but could not be satisfied that it was warm enough.

She kept turning it so as to hold a new face of it against her body, lest any side chill. This was an unreasonable fear, for the air was warm and the egg's requirements were not that critical; she suspected it would survive up to half an hour in isolation at normal temperature, and perhaps more.

All it needed was a general, mild warmth, such as that provided by a clothed human body.

Tell that to my female psyche, she thought. Orn had died protecting her—because she held the egg. It was her egg now, never to part until hatched. There could never be enough warmth for it.

Smoke shrouded the dinosaur valley. Soon the enclave would be a mass of embers—all because she had tried to fight the ruthless agents. She was a murderess now; it had been at her behest that Orn and Circe had attacked that agent Taner, who so resembled Subble. Almost, when she had seen him first, she had capitulated. But then she realized what his presence meant...

Cal thought it was worth it. But his analytical brain was sometimes frightening. Even human colonization, with all its inequities, would have been better than this. Why had he set it up this way?

Everything had turned out wrong. The night of love with Veg had aborted; she knew now that she did not love him. Not that way. She had loved Orn, in a fashion—only to see him die. Such a noble spirit!

Now there was only the egg.

She could not get close enough to it. She cradled it with one arm and reached under the blanket with the other, pressing her hand between its rough surface and her own abdomen. She found the catches on her blouse and disengaged them, opening her bosom to the egg. Still it was not close enough. She released her brassiere and slid it up over one breast and then the other, letting it cling just beneath her shoulders while her softly resilient breasts pressed yieldingly against the shell. Then, almost, she felt Orn by Piers Anthony

close enough.

The fires were rising. Open flame showed in patches at the west fringe, licking at the cycads.

Obviously it was not a natural conflagration; it ate too readily at green wood, consuming living fern and horsetail as well as ground debris. Tongues of it snaked out over the water, sending up gouts of vapor. No—this was the incendiary product of man, the omnivore. Like its master, it destroyed every living thing it touched, and despoiled the nonliving.

She suspected, intellectually, that Cal was right. Earth had been ready to move in on Paleo from the start, and the actions of the trio had had little bearing on that decision. Only if they had turned up some imperative reason for caution would this rape have been blunted. Carcinogenic vegetation, poisonous atmosphere, super-intelligent enemy aliens—one of these might have done it. But dinosaurs? They were merely a passing oddity, a paleontological phenomenon. Animals.

Animals. Suddenly she realized what it meant, this fire, in terms of life, of feeling. This was not merely the destruction of an anachronism. These were living creatures.

Veg and Cal beside her had field glasses, and both were using them silently. She was occupied with the egg, her naked flesh embracing it, giving it warmth, drawing some subtle comfort from it. She would not be helped, Paleo would not be saved, nothing useful would be accomplished, were she to witness the enlarged optic details of the fall of the reptile kingdom. She needed no glasses. She saw the distant orange flickering, the smoke smudging up, and that was already too much. The camps they had made, the raft, Orn's body... everything, incinerated at the behest of the omnivore.

She turned about, glancing at Charybdis to the south—and saw the smoke there too. They had not overlooked any part of the enclave! Yet she had not seen any agents traveling about to start those devastating blazes.

The water rippled. Things were swimming past, outward, fleeing the heat, though surely there was nowhere to go. Fish, reptiles—and the latter had to come up for air. Ichthyosaurus with the monstrous eyes? No, this was a paddler, Elasmosaurus. The same, perhaps, that she and Orn had fought. Was that a scar on its neck? Was it blind of one eye?

It passed the ship, hasty, frightened, pitiable.

Fire bathed it. The reptile struggled in the water, burning, dying, and the odor of its scorching flesh was borne to her across the brief distance between them. She did not need to turn to see the agent with the weapon. That would be Tamme, an omnivore with female form. Naturally these butchers would not allow any large swimming reptile to escape, for it might conceivably serve as host for a microscopic manta.

She hugged the egg. How could she sit in judgment on her species? She herself had killed, useless gesture that it turned out to be. She was an omnivore too.

The dream of bliss was cruelly ended. The idyll of Paleo had been revealed as genocidal naïveté.

What good was it now to feel sorry for Elas, the one-time enemy plesiosaur? It was less vicious than man.

Orn by Piers Anthony

She had known it before. She had seen this on earth, this savagery.

She held the egg, wondering whether it would not be kinder in the long run to dash it against the deck.

Veg focused the glasses on the fringe of the valley, fascinated in spite of himself. The fire burned everything, even the ground, even the water. The lenses brought every detail within arm's reach.

Amazing, how quickly and uniformly the fires had started, spaced to spread across the entire valley.

They must have fired incendiary shells, and must still be firing them, because new centers of flame appeared at intervals, hastening the death march of orange.

He had seen such carnage before. They had burned his own forest, back on Earth, and for the same reason: to get the manta. The omnivore (now he was thinking in manta terms!) was ruthless. He had thought to foil it, here on Paleo, but that never had a chance to work.

He sneaked a glance at Aquilon, keeping the glasses to his face and pointed forward. She stood beside him, wild and beautiful, holding the egg she had saved. A blanket covered it and her shoulders, though the air was warm. Through an open fold he thought he saw—

He snapped back to the glasses. A trick of vision, surely. But, bewilderingly, his eyes suddenly stung, and the glasses seemed to cloud for a moment. He remembered his night with Aquilon, the joy of which had faded so quickly. It was as though he had expected more than a mere woman and was disappointed to have found her, in the dark under a tarp, to be less than ethereal. It seemed to him now that it could have been anyone he embraced then. Should have been anyone... but her.

He saw now that he wanted a dream Aquilon, not the flesh 'Quilon. And the dream had been sullied.

And his friendship with Cal had been demeaned.

The reptiles were charging into the water, trying to escape the fire, but it pursued them. Tricers, Boneheads, Struths and Ankys, drowning simultaneously, inhaling water and flame. With them, he was sure, were many more mammals, too small to show up amid the giants. And birds, and insects.

Veg was not, despite his pretenses, a violent man. But had he had any real opportunity to wipe out this shipload of killers, he would have done so.

He saw a large duckbill, Para-something-or-other, smash through the smoke and dive into the sea.

For a moment only its bony crest showed above the surface, and it seemed that smoke plumed back even from that. Then the dinosaur came up, reared skyward—and a jet of flame shot from its nostrils.

It had taken in some of the chemical, and its lungs were afire. A true dragon for the moment, it perished in utter agony.

And farther out to sea the head of Brach emerged, clear of the fire. But the stupid brute was charging the wrong way again, going toward the conflagration. Back! Back! he mouthed at it, to no avail.

Monstrous, it lumbered out of the water, fire coursing off its back outlining neck and tail and Orn by Piers Anthony

pillarlike thighs. The tiny brain tried to make sense of the agony surrounding fifty tons of body, and could not; burning brightly, Brach keeled over like a timbered redwood tree and rolled with four trunks in the air.

For a long time Veg watched the spasmodic twitching of Brach's smoking tail, until at last that smoke seemed to get in his own eyes, and the stench of it in his nose, and he cried.

Cal watched the destruction of the reptile enclave with severe misgiving. It was true that he had foreseen this, even precipitated it, but the cruelty of the denouement was ugly. Certainly the extinction of most major lines of reptiles was inevitable, here, regardless of the actions of man. One could no more halt that natural process than one could turn back the drifting of the continents. But the dinosaurs did have the right to expire in their own time and fashion, rather than at the fleeting convenience of man.

The masses of herbivorous reptiles had thinned, the majority already perished in the flaming ocean.

Now the carnivores, unused to fleeing from anything, were coming into sight. Struthiomimus, birdlike predator; several young Tyrannosaurs; then a real giant—

He refocused the glasses. That was no carnosaur! It was an ornithischian dinosaur, a bipedal herbivore. Iquanodon! But of what a size! Sixty feet from nose to tail tip, as scaled on the range measure of the field glasses. Larger than Tyrann full-grown, and heavier in proportion, for the gut was massive. A total weight of twelve tons, at least. A herbivore would be heavier-set, of course; the digestive apparatus had to be more voluminous...

If a biped that size—the largest ever to tread the had hidden unsuspected in the valley, what other treasures been concealed? The lost opportunities for study...

Yet it had to be. He had intended to set the manta loose before the Earth mission arrived, knowing it would arrive. But he had misjudged how soon. He had debated with Veg and Aquilon, putting it all on record so that the investigators would know he had intended to summon them. And he had so intended—but he had meant them to arrive too late. They would have discovered that Veg and Aquilon, despite their stand, were innocent. That the mantas had traveled with him—and apparently acted without his knowledge and against his wishes. Acted to take Paleo for the third kingdom, for the manta. Cal himself would have been gone, presumed dead, for the plan did not tolerate any interrogation of him by agents. Thus the Earth invasion would have been balked, and the other two either deported again or simply left on Paleo, but not punished.

But in his vanity he had delayed, seeking to vindicate his right to make such a decision for a world.

And in so doing, he had thrown away his chance to make it. And so he had been caught, and had had to play the game the hard way, making it expensive for everyone. Perhaps if he had not suppressed his real thoughts and intentions, had not constructed his elaborate justifications for the sake of verisimilitude—

Yet it changed nothing. The age of reptiles was finished here, whether man came or not. And the Orn by Piers Anthony

battle was for Paleo, not the class of mammals or the class of reptiles, or even the kingdom of animals or fungus.

No, the battle was not even for this world. He could have advised the mantas long before the actual enclave had been discovered. The enclave was nothing, Paleo was nothing—nothing more than the convenient battleground. There would be a million enclaves, a billion Paleos, and trillions, quadrillions, quintillions of other alternate worlds. That was what the confirmation of the parallel-worlds system meant. He had known, despite his earlier words to Aquilon, that it could not be the paradox of time travel. Paleo had to be one of an infinite series of parallels, each differing from its neighbor by no more than an atom of matter, a microsecond of time. The two went together, space and time displacing each other in a fixed if unknowable ratio. No alternate world could match Earth exactly; no two alternates could jibe precisely, for that would a paradox of identity. But they could come close, had to come close—and Paleo and Earth were close (or had been, prior to the crossover), almost identical physically, almost identical temporally—even though to man's viewpoint sixty-five million years was not close, and an intelligent flightless bird was not close. Such distinctions were trivial, compared to those between potential other alternates.

Perspective. If Aquilon liked Orn, she could find millions like him, in those quintillion other frames of reality. And millions of other Aquilons were finding those Orns.

Yes, it was vast. A sextillion worlds, each complete in every detail down to the atomic level. A septillion worlds, octillion, nonillion decillion—there were not numbers in the mind of man to compass the larger reality. Infinity trailing behind Earth, ranging back to the age of reptiles, the age of amphibians, the age of fishes, the age of invertebrates—all the way back to the primeval formation. Millions of contemporary Earths discovering millions of Paleos, raping them...

Sooner or later those parallel crossings would intersect, and Earth would meet Earth with an insufficient spacing between them. A decade perhaps, or a minute—and there would be unique war.

Better that this Earth ravish this Paleo, delayed by the manta. Better that the lesson be learned that way, now. Coexistence had to be learned, and the very hardest coexistence was with oneself. Earth might get along with an alien world, but not with another Earth. The rivalry would be too immediate, too specific. Without bloody experience of the Earth-Paleo nature, the later and major confrontation would be disastrous. As the three-year-old might fight with the two-year-old for a favored toy, and gradually learn to interact more reasonably, so Earth would fight with Paleo.

But it remained hard to abide, the brutality of this first meeting. If only there were some way to come at maturity (individual, species, world) without passing through immaturity...

Memory. It began far, far back in the half-light, wetter and warmer than much of what followed. He floated in a nutrient medium and absorbed what he needed through his spongy exterior. He reached for the light, a hundred million years later, needing it... but brushed against the enclosing shell and was restrained. He had to wait, to adapt, to grow.

Orn by Piers Anthony

There was warmth, but also cold. He moved restlessly, trying to achieve comfort, to get all of his suspended body into the warm section of his environment. And he remembered that too: somewhere a billion years ago he had struggled between freezing darkness and burning light, and satisfied his compelling hunger by growing into an absorptive cup, a cylinder, a blob with an internal gut, by extruding fins and flukes and swimming erratically after game. He formed eyes, and gills, and a skeleton, and teeth, and lungs, and legs, Ornet remembered.

POSTSCRIPT: CALVIN POTTER

The Cretaceous enclave of a world otherwise representative of the Paleocene epoch of Earth captures one of the more remarkable episodes in the history of our planet. For more than two hundred million years the reptiles dominated land, air, and the surface of the sea; then abruptly all but a few forms vanished, vacating the world for the primitive mammals and birds.

Quite a number of theories have been advanced over the years to account for this "time of great dying" but none have been completely satisfactory. It has been suggested for example that "racial senescence" was responsible: the notion that species, like individuals, gradually age and die. No evidence supports this, and it fails to explain the survival and evident vigor of reptiles such as the turtles and crocodiles, or the much longer tenure of creatures like the horseshoe crab. Another theory was pandemic illness: perhaps a plague wiped out most reptiles without affecting mammals or birds or amphibians. Apart from the fact that disease simply does not work this way—it can decimate, but seldom exterminate, a widespread and varied population—the gradual diminution of numbers of species in the late Cretaceous argues against this. Why should it attack one species at a time, then later strike many others simultaneously? Various types of catastrophes have also been proposed—solar flare, worldwide flood, etc.—but again, the selectivity of such an occurrence is not explained, and no record of it is found in relevant sedimentary deposits. The rocks show an orderly continuity from Cretaceous to Tertiary, wherein the great reptiles disappear and, later, the small mammals appear. The changeover could not have been violent.

More recent theories have been more sophisticated. Did world temperature become too cool for most reptiles, so that they gradually became torpid and unable to forage effectively? This would account for the survival of the warm-bodied mammals and birds. But a substantial cooling would have been necessary, and there was none at the time, as illustrated by plant life. Could the opposite have happened: a devastating heat wave? Again, the record denies this.

Radiation? A science-fiction writer suggested that fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field should periodically permit the planet to be bathed in increased radiation from external sources, increasing the mutation rate of animals disastrously. If a magnetic lapse occurred when radiation from a nearby supernova struck, there could indeed be biological havoc. But why only among the reptiles and certain sea creatures? Radiation is one of the least selective forces.

There was a radical change in vegetation during the Cretaceous period. The angiosperms—flowering Orn by Piers Anthony

plants—suddenly became dominant. Did the herbivorous dinosaurs find the new vegetation, particularly the grasses, too tough to cut and digest? Another science-fiction writer thought so. But plant revolution came before the extinction of the dinosaurs and many of the hugest reptiles flourished for millions of years amid the flowers. They were able to adapt, and the dental equipment of Triceratops, for example, shames any developed since short of a lumbermill.

Could the mammals have competed so strongly with reptiles as to exterminate them? Direct physical oppression seems an absurdity, for the dinosaurs held the mammals check quite readily for a hundred million years. One has or to visualize a pack of mice attempting to bring down Tyrannosaurus.

Mammals might, however, have eaten reptile eggs but again, it is strange they would wait so long, then be completely effective. The swimming reptile Ichthyosaurus gave live birth, so should have survived. And why did the land eggs of the turtle and crocodile escape?

No—to comprehend the decline of the great reptiles, must first grasp the geologic cycle of which they were a part. No form of life exists in isolation, and evolution and extinction is never haphazard.

Definite conditions promoted the ascendance of the reptile orders while suppressing the amphibians and mammals. The later reversal of these conditions demoted the reptiles in favor of the mammals and birds. The dinosaurs were doomed to transience by their very nature.

The surface of the Earth has always been in motion. One facet of this is termed "continental drift".

The continents owe not only their positions but their very substance to the convective currents of Earth's mantle. This turbulence brought up the slag and guided it into floating masses that accumulated considerably. Though normally separate, at one point several came together to form the segments of the supercontinent, Laurasia/Gondwanaland.

Such a situation has occurred more than once in the past. It is marked by a particular complex of phenomena: subsidence of mountains, the intrusion of large, shallow bays or inland seas, diminution of tremors and volcanic activity, and extraordinarily even climate. In sum: a very quiet, conducive environment for life.

In such case, the competitive advantages of amphibianism or internal temperature control are academic. When the temperature of land, water, and atmosphere at sea level varies only from 10° F.

to 20° F., day and night, season to season, century to century, warm-bloodedness is a complication irrelevant to rival. Indeed, it may be moderately detrimental, since it requires a higher rate of metabolism and therefore makes food intake more critical. The mammals perfected this control, involving the development of a hairy covering (to retain body at), compact torso (same), sweating mechanism (to cool that compact furry body when necessary), improved teeth, ribs, and posture (to hunt and feed more effectively, to meet demands of increased appetite), live birth (because infant exposure would be fatal), and sophisticated internal regulatory mechanisms. But while the mammals struggled through the numerable false starts and the tens of millions of years necessary to accomplish all this, the reptiles were simply growing large and savage. The birds undertook a similar program, and were similarly overshadowed by their flying reptile cousins.

Thus developed the age of reptiles, extending from the Premian period through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous: two hundred twenty million years. The reptiles were not as complicated as the birds Orn by Piers Anthony

and mammals, but they dominated the world-continent.

But eventually this tremendous land mass began to break up, as the convection currents formed a new pattern. North to south, east to west, the continent was sundered. The Americas were shoved away from Europe and Africa; Antarctica broke from both, and from Australia. A crack in the land widened into a chasm, to a strait, to a channel, to a bay, and finally to a sea: the Atlantic Ocean. This was no overnight occurrence; it took millions of years. Though there were many severe tremors associated with the upthrusting of matter through this rift and the other rifts of the world, they posed no immediate threat to life on land. The severance of the Americas became complete just before the end of the Cretaceous; the other continents separated at other times, but geologically the fragile fragmenting was rapid.

The consequences of this breakup were multiple. The ocean floor was re-sculptured, disturbing ancient breeding and foraging grounds. Enormous quantities of continental debris were dumped into the oceans, for a time affecting the chemical properties of the water. Volcanism was restimulated, affecting the atmosphere. And the motion of the fragments brought about stresses leading to new orogeny: tremendous mountain ranges like the Rockies and Andes, that remade weather patterns and dehydrated inland plains. The physical restructuring of the world inevitably brought about a shift in climate, and this in turn affected life.

The plants reacted massively. Forms that had been minor suddenly had a competitive advantage: the angiosperms, or flowering plants, that did not leave their reproduction to chance. The increased winds and mountains and oceans and deserts worked against random fertilization. The older gymnosperms did not become extinct, but assumed a minority role in the new ecology.

This change in vegetation necessarily affected the animals. The arthropods—chiefly the insects—radiated astonishingly because of the offerings of the flowers, and the spiders followed them. The insectivores—mainly mammalian and avian, together with the reptilian lizards and amphibian frogs—multiplied in response, for this food supply seemed inexhaustible.

The large reptiles were only indirectly affected. They were not insectivores, and even the flying ones were adapted to prey on fish, not flies. Reptile herbivores were capable of adjusting to the new foliage, or surviving in reduced numbers on the less plentiful old-style plants. The variety, but not the vigor, of their species declined, while the carnosaurs continued much as before. But their young began to be crowded by the burgeoning other life. Full-grown mammals and birds, hunting in packs or flocks, began to deviate from their normal diet and prey on newly hatched reptiles, and so added a factor to the ecological balance. This was an annoyance rather than a calamity, for even new-hatched reptiles were more than a match for most other species, but it presaged the new order.

The revised geography struck far more specifically. The ponderous ornithischians could not thrive in steep mountains dry deserts or icy wastes, and were restricted by the violence of the landscape. As these untoward conditions developed, they migrated from large sections of the new continents, and the carnosaurs of course accompanied them. The disappearance of vast continental seas and swamps severely limited the range the massive sauropods and the paddlers of the shallows. Unkind wind patterns ravaged the pterodactyls. But many suitable places remained, and the net effect of the change Orn by Piers Anthony

was concentrate the reptile orders in smaller sections of the world and reduce their meanderings, not to bring them anywhere near extinction.

The climate was another matter. The overall temperature changed only slightly, becoming cooler.

This by itself was important. What counted was not the average but the range, so-called temperate climate developed: actually about as temperate as the world has ever known. The even seasons shifted to hot summers and cold winters. An individual summer's day might range from 50° F. low to 100° F. high. A winter's day could begin at that low and drop fifty degrees, reptile biology simply was not equipped to handle such extremes. A heat wave in summer could wipe out enormous numbers; a prolonged freeze in winter did the same. The warm-bodied creatures, in contrast, were ready, and only a fraction of their number failed to adapt. This, more than anything else, drove the reptiles as a group to the tropics, and reduced their territory drastically.

And here the most direct aspect of the continental breakup came into play. For the individual land masses were not contiguous. They were now isolated by deep water. The reptiles could not migrate far enough. North America, for example, drifted too far north to have a tropical zone, and was completely separated from South America for some time. Stranded, the reptiles were subject to the full ravages of geography and climate, and they expired. Some few survived for a time in local enclaves, but such existence was tenuous. These extremely confined areas were subject to volcanism and recurring tremors and drastic alteration by shifts in the prevailing winds or drainage. Inevitably the reptiles there were destroyed, whether in a few hundred years or a few million.

The dinosaurs could have survived all the other changes and met the challenge from other classes of vertebrates—had they been able to travel freely over the world, for there was always suitable pasture somewhere. But the fragmentation of the original land mass restricted them at the very moment, geologically, that they could least afford it. Far from being coincidence, this was inevitable. The age of reptiles on land was finished.

The sea reptiles had their own problems. Those tied to the shallows who laid their eggs on land, such as Elasmosaurus, expired with the others, for the shallows were gone. Those fully adapted to deep water, such as Ichthyosaurus, suffered severe competition by flourishing sharks and, more deviously, by restriction of their diet. For an earlier revolution had occurred in the water: the teleosts, the so-called bony fishes, had appeared. These had stronger skeletons than did the earlier types, and possessed an air bladder modified from a one-time lung that enabled them to match the density of the surrounding water and float at a given level without muscular effort. For the first time, vertebrates were able to compete specifically with the invertebrate ammonites, who for hundreds of millions of years had possessed this controlled flotation ability and thrived. The fish, however, were superior swimmers. This did not eliminate the ammonites, but it did restrict them. When the continental breakup ravaged the oceanic geography and chemistry, the ammonites lost out. Those swimming reptiles who preyed exclusively on ammonites followed them into oblivion.

Thus, medium by medium and type by type, the life of the world was transformed by the breakup of the master continent. It was not that the birds drove out the flying reptiles, or that the teleosts and sharks drove out the ammonites and certain corals and swimming reptiles, or that the angiosperms drove out the gymnosperms, and certainly the mammals did not drive out the land reptiles. But the Orn by Piers Anthony

conditions of each habitat changed significantly, and shifted the balance to favor new species. Those forms of life that were ready for harsh extremes of geography and climate and chemistry prospered; those that were not did not.

But what of the few surviving reptiles? These were the ones who were equipped to endure the new regime. The crocodiles and turtles were able to forage either on land or in the deep sea, so neither the sharks nor severe temperature extremes could eliminate them entirely. They were able to migrate from an unkind continent to a kind one, and did so, and have lasted until the present. The duckbills might have joined them, as they were strong swimmers and fast runners on land—but they had to feed on land, so could not remain in the water for weeks at a time. The snakes and lizards were small enough, and suitably shaped, to reside on and in the ground and trees; for them the arthropods and small mammals represented an improved diet, and deep burrows shielded them from winter's cold and summer's heat. They survived largely because they were small enough to utilize such shelter; the dinosaurs' specialization in large size worked against them fatally.

Have there been other extinctions as the continents drifted into new configurations? Certainly, many of them, though few as impressive as this one. There will surely be more. When the land moves, life must follow. The real mystery is not the great dying, but why this natural course remained a mystery for so long...

Copyright © 1970 by Piers Anthony

ISBN: 0-380-40964-X