Rivers of Time

II The Cayuse

Yes, Mr. Ahmadi, we use asses for transport on these time safaris—oh, the proper Arabic plural is safariin? Very well, safariin it shall be. But as I was saying, when we have to move supplies and equipment, we use asses—no, I don't mean our arses or rumps. That's a bloody Americanism. Where I come from, down-under, an ass is a beast I ride on, while an arse is the part of me I sit on.

Why not power vehicles? Several reasons. One, only the smallest kind can fit into Prochaska's transition chamber and leave space for the necessary equipment and personnel. Two: There's no source of fuel in case we run out. Three: No roads. Four: If anything goes wrong with your off-trail vehicle, you're stuck. And finally, in an emergency you can eat an ass, which you cannot do with an OTV.

I suppose that, if one made enough trips in the transition chamber and brought back enough supporting equipment and people, one could put such a vehicle to effective use. It's like our guns. In theory, if we were stuck back there long enough, we might run out of ammunition and have to try making ourselves bows and arrows, which probably wouldn't work worth a wombat's arse. Even if we were competent bowmen and fletchers, the game's too bloody big. If you shot an arrow into a big theropod, you'd only rile him up to come looking for you to eat you. So we allow a large safety factor in extra ammunition.

Power vehicles are, you might say, on the borderline between what is practical and what is not. I was once talked into trying one out, and the results made it pretty plain that they weren't for Rivers and Aiyar, Time Safaris.

You want the story? Okay. It was seven or eight years ago, when Charles Redmond, the manufacturer, signed up for one of our trips. Like most trophy hunters, he wanted to go to the Cretaceous and bring back a theropod head for his new mansion—

What's a theropod? The Theropoda is one of the suborders of the Saurischia, which is one of the two orders of reptiles that in common speech are lumped together as "dinosaurs." The suborder Theropoda includes all the meat eaters: Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and such down to little ones the size of a chook. The big theropods are the only really dangerous dinosaurs. They will not only go after any other creature that looks edible, but in addition they're smarter than the plant eaters. Not that any reptile is an animal genius: but theropods are less stupid than most. All the others, the plant eaters, will generally leave you alone if you do the same with them.

Redmond was the head of Superior Motors, which builds all those lorries and recreational vehicles. From all I'd heard, he built the company up from nothing, and it was a major independent motor maker until one of the Big Three bought control a few years ago.

Redmond had the reputation of a whiz as a businessman, and he had got fantastically rich in the process. He turned out a pretty average sort of bloke: middle-aged, middle-sized, and well-set-up except for a bit of a paunch. But that happens to most men, especially if they lead sedentary lives.

Anyway, he came in with a gorgeous dollybird half his age on his arm. He introduced her as "Mrs. Redmond" and asked if we could set up a safari for the pair of them.

"Sorry," I said, "but we don't take ladies. To be exact, we don't take parties mixed as to sex."

Redmond started to argue: "Now look, Mr. Rivers—" in that forceful way of his, intense but still smiling and friendly, so it was hard to work up a real snit against him. That mannerism was probably half the secret of his success. But then the twist put a hand on his arm, saying:

"Oh, please don't insist, Charles! You know I never really wanted to go. You go alone, and I'll spend the time choosing rugs and curtains for the new house."

After more talk, Redmond gave in, saying: "Oh, all right, darling, if you don't mind my going alone."

So we made arrangements to whisk him, and one other sahib who had signed up for that slot, back to the Cretaceous. By this time we were well-enough organized so that it wasn't necessary for both Aiyar and me to go on every time safari. He was out in the Pliocene, and when he got back I should take Redmond and our other client while the Raja held down the office. I call Chandra Aiyar "Raja" because by descent he actually is lord of some place in India called Janpur, though nowadays that's purely honorary. He swears he wouldn't go back there and king it even if the Janpuris came and begged him to. He's safe in saying that, because we all know that will never happen.

Redmond signed up and then launched into a sales talk on Superior Motors and their new off-trail vehicle, the Cayuse. He was a hard man to say "no" to. Some people just have that ability. They become presidents, dictators, leaders of cults and religions, or tycoons like Redmond. At last, to shut him up as much as anything, I agreed to come round to his sales room nearby and at least take a look at the Cayuse.

What's a Cayuse? I understand it's the name of some tribe of Red Indians—Native Americans, they call them nowadays. Then the word was used for the horses the Native Americans rode in the old days, before the whites beat them into submission; and in the western states it's often used as a slang term for any horse.

Anyway, I left the office in charge of Miss Minakuchi and went down the street with the Redmonds to their agency and showroom. There in the center of the floor with a big sign stood the Cayuse. I can best describe it as a four-wheeled motorcycle, with two seats in tandem and no top.

"You see, Reginald," said Redmond. He followed the Yank sales pitch of immediately calling prospects by their given names as if they were old friends. "You see, it meets the objection you cited, of taking up too much room in the transition chamber. It's as compact as it can be made."

"What's its fuel?"

"Diesel 432."

"How far does it get on a liter?"

"Eighteen on a paved road. That's almost as good as some motorcycles."

He went on and on and finally said: "Look, Reginald, I have an idea. I'll arrange to give you a Cayuse, free, if you'll take it on our safari and let us get some publicity out of it.

"Just think of the freedom it would give you! Back in the Cretaceous you won't have to worry about some environmentalist nut popping up to say: You can't shoot that critter; it's an endangered species! Or another eco-freak saying: You can't run your jeep here: it'll tear up a fragile environment! You're free of all that long-haired nonsense, the way our ancestors—yours and mine—were when they first settled empty continents."

It struck me that the Native Americans and the Native Australians might see the process a little differently, since to them North America and Australia weren't "empty" at all. But it would not have been good business to argue the point. It was also plain that Redmond was the kind of businessman who would regard as "long-haired nonsense" anything that interfered in the slightest with the sale of his product. I did say:

"And suppose we're in the Cretaceous outback, and your Cayuse breaks down? Are you a bonzer mechanic, who can fix it?"

He hesitated. "Not really, Reginald. I can change a tire and things like that, but I'm not up to fiddling in the vehicle's guts. Tell you what! We've got a first-class mechanic here at the agency, Joe Voth. I'll bring him along with us."

"At the usual rates?" I said, not wanting him to come the raw prawn with me.

"Sure," he said. "Since Melissa's not going, it won't cost me any more than I'd already budgeted. Less, in fact, since the company will pay and it'll be income-tax deductible."

He started another sales pitch, about the wonders of Superior Motors and the Cayuse in particular. I cut him off, saying:

"Thanks a lot, Charles. I shall have to discuss your offer with my partner, who gets back from the Pliocene later this week. Now I've got to return to the office."

Actually, I didn't go back to the office. I went round to the Herald Building. I had a friend on the Herald, who had looked up the other sahib's record for me; and now I asked him to look up Redmond's.

The other client? He'd already signed up. He was Rex Ligonier, and what I learned through my journalistic friend was that he had inherited a stack, blown it by high living and bad investments, and tried to make it up by marrying an heiress. He hadn't held a steady job since, because this wife was always jerking him away to fix the plumbing in their summer home and the like.

Time was when a man in his situation would have simply settled down to enjoy life as a gentleman of leisure, but no more. Nowadays any grown man feels he has to do something to justify his existence: either to earn money or, if he's already rich, to volunteer for some unpaid do-good post. The Yanks started it with their Protestant work ethic; or maybe it was the Germans. In any case, it's spread to the rest of the Western world. I don't know if it's got to your country yet; but if it hasn't, it will.

Poor Rex Ligonier had tried several jobs, which his connections among the upper crust and pleasant personality enabled him to get despite lack of special training. But none had lasted long, because the wife would snatch him away. I'm no psychiatrist, but I suspect she did that as much as anything to prevent him from getting too independent and to keep him under her thumb. So now he suffered guilt about living on his wife's money without earning any of his own.

He had signed up with Rivers and Aiyar because, like the Redmonds, the Ligoniers had just built a big new house—a mansion, really. I thought my wife and I had a nice house, but Rex's made ours look like a dunny. Mrs. Ligonier thought the space over one of the fireless fireplaces needed the head of some prehistoric beast. She didn't care whether it was Permian or Pleistocene, so long as it was big and ugly—a "conversation piece." So she sent Ligonier to us.

Come to think, I suppose the Raja and I are as responsible as anyone for this new rich man's fad of hanging heads of extinct animals on their walls. A century or two ago, it was common to mount the heads of game animals—mostly deer of one kind or another, with glass eyes. But people who could afford the travel often mounted Asian and African species, like buffalo and rhinoceros.

Nowadays that's practically impossible, since what little wildlife is left is confined to preserves and sanctuaries, and the rangers are likely to shoot first and ask if you're a poacher later. I've turned down offers for the Raja and me to go back by ourselves and fetch the head of some particular prehistoric species, so one of these blighters can hang it up and tell tall tales of how he got it.

But that's not sporting. I tell 'em, if you want a dinosaur head, you can bloody well come back with us and collect it yourself. I shan't say I mightn't weaken if the bribe were big enough; I've got two children in college. But so far it hasn't been.

As for Rex Ligonier, he was a pretty average bloke in size and appearance; but younger than Redmond, with more hair. Redmond had lost most of his, and what remained was silvery gray. Ligonier had a much less aggressive manner than Redmond; in fact, downright modest and retiring. Where Redmond was ready to argue anything, especially if he could work in a plug for Superior Motors, Ligonier avoided argument. If you gave him a hot sell on the idea that the world was flat, he'd only say: "I'm sure you're right."

As for Charles Redmond, what I learned on the business side was all to the good. He was honest, fair, shrewd, and had energy enough for two.

On the personal side his record was spottier. The wife I had met was his fifth; he was one of those rich men who collect trophy wives. As fast as one began to look a little shelf-worn, he'd dump her and go after a younger one. One would think the girls would learn of his track record and catch on. Perhaps they figured they could shake him down in the divorce settlement for enough to live on forever. Not my idea of family life; but that wasn't our business.

The Raja got back with his Pliocene party on schedule. He hadn't lost any clients, and they brought back a couple of mastodon heads and heads of several kinds of buck. These were relatives of the present American pronghorn, with weird horn arrangements. One had four horns; one, two long, straight horns with a spiral twist; and one, a forked horn on the nose as well as a pair in the usual place.

While we tidied up from the Pliocene safari, I told the Raja about our next expedition, with Redmond and Ligonier to the Cretaceous. He was enthusiastic over the Cayuse; but then, Chandra Aiyar is enthusiastic over every new idea, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

The original plan had been for him to hold down the office while I nursemaided Redmond and Ligonier; but the prospect of driving the Cayuse around the Mesozoic outback so excited him that he begged to come along, too, leaving Miss Minakuchi in charge. I gave in, largely because our calendar for the rest of the year was already pretty full. There were bloody few time slots left in Prochaska's schedule that we could have fitted a safari into, between those already reserved for the scientists.

So on a fine spring morning we gathered in Professor Prochaska's building, outside the transition chamber. Besides the Raja and me there were Charles Redmond, Rex Ligonier, and Joseph Voth, Redmond's mechanic. Voth was a short, hairy bloke who looked like something left over from the Pleistocene; but he was quiet and respectful enough, seldom saying anything but "Yes, Mr. Redmond" and "No, Mr. Redmond." And of course there were Beauregard Black and his crew, together with the camp equipment and the dozen asses to haul the stuff when we shifted camp.

We had chosen a time a millennium after one of our first safaris (or safariin, if you prefer), the one on which we lost a client to a tyrannosaur because the other client of the pair wouldn't follow orders. At this period, the chamber materializes on top of a rocky rise, from which you can see the Kansas Sea to the west, the big sauropod swamp around the bayhead, and to the north the low range that the Raja named the Janpur Hills after his ancestors' kingdom. Sixty or seventy million years earlier, there had been an active volcano to northward in sight of the place, but in the later Cretaceous that had long since been extinct and eroded away. A geologist tells me that in the Janpur Hills he'd found remnants of lava flows from that volcano.

The Raja and I and the sahibs crowded into the chamber with our packs and guns, and the Cayuse was wheeled in. It was a tight fit, which we managed only by having two of us—Richmond and the Raja—sit on the tandem bucket seats. I gave Bruce Cohen, the chamber wallah, the all-clear signal, and he spun his dials and pushed his buttons.

The transition through time is bloody upsetting the first time you experience it. You get vibration, nausea, and vertigo, to the point where Cohen has equipped the chamber with airsickness bags for those who feel crook. He's fussy about keeping his transition chamber neat.

As usual, the Raja and I got out first with our guns ready, just in case. Then the others; we had to manhandle the Cayuse out because the slope of the ground put the floor of the chamber half a meter above the ground on the door side. Then Cohen closed the door. The chamber gave a shiver and disappeared with a whoosh on its way back to the twenty-first century, to fetch Black and his crew and the asses. This took three more trips.

The first day, the Raja and I took Redmond and Ligonier on the usual hunt for fresh meat. Voth wasn't interested in hunting. He preferred to stay in camp and check out the Cayuse, to make sure every nut was tight and no tubes leaked.

I tossed a coin to see who should get the first shot, and Ligonier won. When we came upon a pair of man-sized thescelosaurs eating leaves, I whispered to Ligonier:

"There you are, Rex. Have a go!"

Ligonier raised his rifle and squinted. He held it steady enough—I had checked him out on the target range and found him competent—but he didn't fire.

After a while he lowered the rifle, took a few deep breaths, and tried again. Again he didn't fire.

At last he lowered the gun and turned a pale, strained face to me. "I'm sorry, Reggie. I just can't."

"Huh? What's the matter, sport?"

"I just can't make myself shoot anything alive. If I had to kill all my own meat, I'd be a vegetarian."

"You poor guy!" murmured Redmond. "Want me to shoot it for you, Rex?"

"I'd consider it a favor," croaked Ligonier in a strangled voice. "Go ahead!"

All this cross-talk had aroused the thescelosaurs, which started to trot away. Redmond coolly brought up his rifle and cut loose with a bang. One thescelosaur dropped instantly, kicking and writhing as reptiles will even if you cut off their heads. The other ran. Redmond, we found, had made an excellent shot, drilling the thescelosaur through the small brain in its skull, even though the animal was moving, with its head jerking back and forth like a chook's.

"Good-o!" I said. "Anyone want to butcher it?"

"Let me," said the Raja, and went to work on the twitching carcass with that bloody great knife he carries. In record time he had the guts out and the remains ready to lash its legs to the carrying pole.

While he was doing this, I kept an eye on Ligonier, in case he should faint. Rex didn't pass out, but his skin got paler and more greenish, and his eyes got bigger. At last he muttered "Excuse me!" and bolted off to some nearby bushes. There I could hear him chundering his guts out.

By the time he came back, we had the pole and the carcass hanging from it ready to hoist to our shoulders. Ligonier insisted on taking one end of the pole, as if to make up for his downfall as a hunter. As he plodded on, with Redmond taking his turn on the other end of the pole, I asked Ligonier:

"Do you usually have this sort of trouble?"

"Y-yes; 'fraid I do," he said. "Not that I've ever done enough hunting to matter. Can't stand the sight of blood."

"Then why in Aljira's name did you come on this safari, if you knew you weren't fitted for it?"

He gave a helpless sort of wave with his free hand. "My wife insisted ..."

"Think you're up to trying again?"

"I'm determined to do so, Reggie! I won't have people thinking I'm—that I'm not ..." He let it trail off.

Then the Raja took the front end of the pole, and Redmond came aft. I must say that Charles Redmond was decent about the whole thing. Some men would have made nasty digs at Ligonier, casting doubts on his courage or his manhood. But not Charles Redmond; his approach was:

"Sure, Rex, you just had a bad day. Next time it'll be different. Get in there and fight! When you drive the Cayuse, it'll give you the feeling of power you need!" (Trust Redmond to work in a sales plug for his vehicle!)

When we got back to the first camp, there was Joe Voth going over the Cayuse with a rag, shining up its brightwork. He looked up and said:

' Mr. Redmond! I think it's ready to go; but I gotta tell you about something."

"Eh?" said Redmond.

"While I was working on the machine, one of them big dinosaurs come out of the trees and kind of wanders over this way."

"What land?" I asked.

"Jeez, Mr. Rivers, I wouldn't know about them things. All I know is, it scared the shit out of me, and me without no gun—"

"I can tell you," said Beauregard Black. "Joe called to us, and I done told him it was a harmless plant-eater. It was one with that long spike sticking out the back of its head: a Para—Para—"

"Parasaurolophus," I prompted him.

"Maybe it was harmless," said Voth; "but who wants an animal big enough to squash you if it steps on you hangin' around? And that's what it did, just hang around, all the time rolling its eyes at me and the Cayuse."

"What finally happened?" asked Redmond.

"Oh, after a couple of hours it wandered off. I ain't seen it since."

The Parasaurolophus, Mr. Ahmadi? That's one of the bigger hadrosaurids or duckbills. They're all plant-eating bipeds, and several of the family have peculiar crests in the form of spines or fans. The Parasaurolophus has a single tube, over a meter long, sticking backward out of its skull like the horns of an oryx. Only it isn't a horn, since it ends in a bulbous tip. They once thought it was a kind of snorkel, for breathing under water; but that proved wrong when a better skull showed that the tube was closed at the end, so it couldn't be breathed through.

Now they argue as to whether it's a kind of resonator, to give the animal a carrying bellow; or to provide extra fining to the breathing system to make their sense of smell keener. Maybe it's both. Duckbills need keen senses of sight, sound, and smell, to warn them of things like a tyrannosaur. They don't have armor like an ankylosaur, or horns like a ceratopsian, nor can they run so fast as one of the so-called ostrich dinosaurs. The duckbills' defense is their early-warning system, to enable them to perceive a carnosaur before the carnosaur perceives them and to get the hell away.

Anyway, since both Redmond and Ligonier were pretty bushed by their first day's hike, we decided to let them take it easy the following day and make our first camp move the day after. Redmond had an excellent pair of binoculars. He and Ligonier spent that day taking turns looking through these glasses at distant dinosaurs and identifying them, like a couple of bird watchers bubbling over at the sight of a yellow-bellied sap-sucker.

During the afternoon, a Parasaurolophus loomed up out of the greenery and came to the edge of the camp. We all piled out with our guns; but the big hadrosaurid ignored us, staring at the Cayuse, which was parked in the open space between the tents and the site of the transition chamber.

"All right, Rex," I told Ligonier, "there's your head if you can make yourself shoot it."

"Okay," said Ligonier, and took aim. But the same thing happened as the day before. He aimed and aimed but couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Then he lowered his gun, saying: "It's no use, Reggie. Besides, it doesn't seem sporting to shoot it while it's just standing there gawking, a few meters away. It would be like those guys who pay huge sums to walk up to a white rhino, raised on a game farm and as tame as a cow, and shoot it."

"Depends on what you're after," I said. "Do you want me to shoot it for you, as Charles did with the thescelosaur?"

"No, sir! I'm determined to do my own shooting!"

He aimed some more but never did fire. After a while, the hadrosaurid, who had ignored us, opened its mouth and gave a bellow or moo. It certainly was a carrying sound; like a foghorn, or somebody playing a chord on the organ at maximum volume. The vibration went right through you.

Rex Ligonier hoisted his rifle up again, but again without shooting. The hadrosaurid gave another toot. Beauregard Black said:

"You know, Mr. Rivers, if I didn't think it was a crazy idea, I'd swear he was tryin' to make time with that there tractor thing, even though it don't look much like a female hadrosaurid."

"Perhaps," said the Raja, "the diesel fumes act as a pheromone."

"Hey, Charles!" said Ligonier. "Here's your chance to breed a cross between a dinosaur and your Cayuse!"

"We didn't design it for that," said Redmond. "If you got a lech for a lobster, what could you do about it?"

"Ouch!" said Ligonier. "It gives me the willies just to think about it!"

The dinosaur gave one last, mournful toot and walked off.

The Raja and I had decided to make our first shift of camp in a south-southwest direction, to get near the sauropod swamp. We would not go directly to the borders of the swamp, as we had done on other safaris. For one thing, the lowlands round the swamp are heavily grown with cycads willows, so you have to worm and hack your way through them. The ground is muddy underfoot, so you gain half a centimeter in stature with every step, from the mud that sticks to the soles of your boots.

While the Raja and I are well hardened to this sort of thing, we find that for most of our clients it's just too bloody exhausting. The last thing we want is to have a client drop dead of a heart attack; bad for business. Having poor young Holtzinger eaten by a tyrannosaur almost put us into bankruptcy.

There is, however, a stream of modest size, which feeds into the swamp to the east. The Raja has named it the Narbada; says he's waiting to come upon a really big river before he calls it the Ganges or the Brahmaputra. The ground is more negotiable and the vegetation less crowded than nearer the swamp.

Besides, we had that OTV of Redmond's with us. I didn't see how we could ever get it through that great thicket bordering the swamp. When we got it there, if we weren't careful where we parked it, it would sink out of sight in the ooze and never be seen again.

We routed our sahibs out early, so Black and his boys could strike the camp. They'd become bloody efficient at it; in less than an hour after the tents were vacated, they had the whole thing bundled up and loaded on the jacks.

There were no special incidents on the way to our new camp on the Narbada. We saw a few dinosaurs and other animals, including a big ankylosaur, the squatty armored kind. This bloke just hunkered down and waved that big tail with a bone club on the end, to warn us not to get close enough to bother him.

Redmond said he had better ride the Cayuse, since he was used to it. And he did, maneuvering it around obstacles with the confidence of an old-timer. The rest of us hiked.

By early afternoon we had arrived, and in another two hours the boys had the new camp set up. Then the Raja asked Redmond if he could have a tryout with the Cayuse. He was full of boyish enthusiasm, although in fact he's a mature family man just as I am. Redmond said certainly, and showed him how to work the controls.

Where the Narbada River makes a bend, there's a wide, sandy beach on the inner side of the curve. We were camped on the flat above the beach. Away went Chandra Aiyar, waving his hat and yelling:

"Yippee! Git along, little dogie!" and other American stockman expressions.

He ran it up and down the beach, going faster and faster. Then, at one end of his travel, he whipped it into another tight turn, only this time he made the turn where the dirt beneath his wheels was wet. The Cayuse skidded, spun round wildly, and went into the Narbada with a tremendous splash, taking the Raja with it.

The Cayuse fell over on its side in somewhat less than a meter of water, pinning the Raja's leg beneath it. By bending and stretching, he could just barely get his face out of water. He shouted:

"Help! Blub-blub!"

Everybody yelled and began to run around like a bunch of headless chooks. I roared for Black and the boys to fetch a rope.

"Gonna tie it to him and pull him out?" asked Redmond.

"Don't be a fool!" yelled Ligonier. "He's pinned, can't you see? First we've got to haul the machine off him. Can I take it out there, Reggie?"

"That's really my job," I said. "The swamp has some big crocs that make those of our time look like lizards. If one of them comes up the river ..."

"Hell with that!" said Ligonier. "Gimme!"

He snatched the end of the rope and splashed out. When he got to the Cayuse, hip-deep, he crouched down and tied a loop, under water, around the steering post. Then he waved to the rest of us to pull. He had proved that there was nothing wrong with his courage, and I suspect that the same thought occurred to him.

We pulled, and the vehicle came up. When it got into ankle-deep water, Joe Voth waded out, heaved it upright, and wheeled it ashore by pushing. I don't think any of the rest of us could have done that alone; Joe was a bloody strong bloke.

After him came Rex Ligonier and Chandra Aiyar, with one of the Raja's arms around Ligonier's neck to help him to walk. Luckily his leg wasn't broken, although he had a bruise the size of your hand and limped the rest of this safari.

While the rest of us clustered round the Raja, asking how he felt and was anything broken, Joe Voth just looked up from the machine with a reproachful expression. He said:

"You hadn't oughta done that, Mr. Raja. Ain't no way to treat a good piece of machinery."

We agreed that there had been enough excitement for one day. Voth spent the rest of the afternoon and half the night meticulously taking the Cayuse apart, cleaning and drying each part and lubricating it where that was called for.

The next day we started out just looking at things: a couple of sauropods downstream, around the mouth of the Narbada, where it loses itself in the swamp. The prevailing genus of sauropod at this time and place is the Alamosaurus. It's only medium-sized as sauropods go, most adults being under twenty meters; though we occasionally find one up to thirty, which is bloody big. While they like the swamp margins because of the unlimited supplies of greenery, it's not true that they are confined to watery places. They walk perfectly well on dry land and often do, when their never-ending hunt for fodder takes them away from rivers and swamps.

We didn't see any theropods for Redmond's trophy, nor anything to furnish Ligonier with his conversation piece. There was one of those super-crocodiles, Phobosuchus, lying on a sand bar with its mouth open so little birds could pick its teeth, and a few small pterosaurs circling round after insects. And speaking of which, the insects harassed and bit our sahibs, despite the repellant they had smeared on themselves, until they were glad to call off the nature watch.

After lunch, I noticed that Redmond and the Raja had their heads together, while Redmond lectured on the fine points of the Cayuse. At last they straightened up, and Redmond said:

"Watch how I do it, Raja!"

He climbed into the front seat and started the engine; there's no mistaking that popping Diesel sound. He engaged the clutch slowly, so that the Cayuse started off as gently as a baby's kiss. He ran it along the stretch of beach that parallels the water, on much the same route that the Raja had followed earlier in his cowboy act, but more slowly and cautiously.

All went smoothly until he got to the end and started to turn around. He'd gone father than the Raja had, where the beach narrowed down till he could not make the turn all at once. He had to back and fill.

While he was doing this, we all jumped as that terrific moo or hoot or honk or bellow—whatever you want to call it—of Parasaurolophus drilled through our skulls. The big hadrosaurid stepped out of the trees and bore down on Redmond and his Cayuse with two-meter strides.

Redmond took one appalled look and saw the creature looming over him, not only with its big forepaws reaching out but also its great hook-shaped male organ, as long as a man is tall, extruding and getting longer by the second.

I don't know whether Redmond thought the hadrosaurid was going to bugger him; but he did the only thing he could. He opened the throttle to full.

At that precise instant, the hadrosaurid grabbed at Redmond with one big four-fingered paw. It's not really a hand, since it has no thumb and can't move its fingers separately, as we can. But it can curl the paw into a hook, and it caught the collar of Redmond's bush jacket. As the dinosaur hoisted Redmond out of his seat, the engine roared and the Cayuse took off like a scared wallaby. It's too bad nobody had his camera ready, though I doubt if a picture of Redmond dangling from the dinosaur's paw would have sold many Cayuses.

The hadrosaurid glanced at Redmond, evidently decided that he would be no good eating, and tossed him aside. Then it trotted after the Cayuse. The unguided vehicle plowed into the river and kept going until, a dozen meters or so from shore, it dropped out of sight. The engine gave a sputter and stopped.

The hadrosaurid waded out to where the Cayuse had disappeared. It put its head down under water, so that all we could see of it was that long spine in back. After a few seconds it raised up again and gave another long toot. It may have been my imagination, but to me the cry had a mournful note.

It stood there, alternately ducking its head and rearing up to honk, for a couple of minutes. Then it looked about in a wary sort of way. The reason soon came to light. Out from the trees appeared a theropod, a gorgosaur. This is much like the famous Tyrannosaurus, but is smaller, more lightly built, faster, and if anything, more dangerous.

The gorgosaur was moving fast, bobbing its head with each long stride. It bore down on the hadrosaurid, standing half submerged in the river. The hadrosaurid turned to flee, but too late. The gorgosaur's jaws snapped on one of the hadrosaurid s hind legs, bringing it down with a tremendous splash. As the victim tried to struggle back on its feet, the gorgosaur put a clawed hind foot on its body and shifted its grip to the hadrosaurid's belly.

The battle sent up so much splash that it was hard to see just what went on. Presently the gorgosaur straightened up with a rending sound and a huge mass of the other s guts in its jaws. Holding the hadrosaurid down with one hind foot, the gorgosaur reared up and spent several minutes gulping that mouthful down. Like snakes, their skulls stretch this way and that so they can engulf an astonishing mass ail at once. It stood there, going gulp, and a few centimeters of mouthful would disappear; gulp, and in would go a little more, until it was all gone. We could see the throat distended until it looked ready to burst as that huge gobbet went down. Rex Ligonier excused himself and went off into the bush to be sick.

The gorgosaur started to reach down for another gulp, when Redmond's rifle banged near me. He had picked himself up, covered with sand and mud, and fetched his gun. The Raja had got his and my guns from our tent and was just handing mine to me.

Down went the gorgosaur with a great splash. Redmond said: "There are our trophy heads. When we get 'em ashore, I'll take the theropod's, and Rex can have the other."

The trouble was that, being reptiles, they took forever to die, although Redmond had again made an expert brain shot. It was almost sundown before those two dinosaurs stopped thrashing and twitching. I waded out and saw what had happened to the Cayuse. I got a rope around the gorgosaur's leg, and we started to haul it ashore. When not even all the men—the Raja with his crook leg and I, the sahibs, and the helpers— could fetch it, Beauregard hitched up the asses as well. With their help we got the animal up on the beach.

Then we started to do the same with the hadrosaurid. We were coming along great when Ligonier yelled:

"Hey, we've got more company!"

So we had. One of those giant Cretaceous crocodiles, alerted by the blood washed down the river to the swamp, had swum upstream and grabbed the hadrosaurid's other leg, the one we didn't have the rope belayed to. That halted the salvage operation. We pulled on the rope, men and beasts, while the croc backed water with its tail. Neither party could gain more than a centimeter on the other. I couldn't see much of the croc in that muddy, bloody water; but I should guess it was about a fifteen-meter specimen, big enough to swallow a man whole.

After several minutes of this tug-of-war, the croc tried another stunt. Since they're unable to chew their meat, they swallow it whole. This means they have to separate their prey into pieces of manageable size. This one did a fast barrel roll, turning over and over, until most of the leg came off with a rending sound, then it swam back downstream with this limb in its jaws, which allowed us to finish hauling the remains ashore.

"All right," I said, "if you blokes want the heads, you'll have to start cutting them off, now. We're moving camp tonight."

"Good God!" said Redmond. "You crazy, Reggie?"

"Not so crook in the head as I should be if we stayed here. Those two carcasses will attract more theropods, and probably more crocs as well. We should find ourselves in the middle of a battle royal over the carrion, and a carnivore who gets ranked out of his share will go after the asses or us. If we tried to fight them off at night, we should probably end up shooting one another."

They grumbled a bit, but I made it plain that was how things were bloody well going to be.

"But my Cayuse!" said Redmond.

"Seems to have fallen into a pothole," I said. "It's two or three meters down. We should need a cove with diving gear, who didn't mind the chance of being seized by a croc, to get a rope on it."

Ligonier said: "I'm a good swimmer. Bet I could dive down there for long enough to slip a noose in place."

"I don't doubt it," I said. "So could the Raja, or so could I in a pinch. But at night, with the reptilian guests due any minute, it would be too bloody dangerous. We can't afford to lose our clients; bad for business. I'm afraid we shall just have to charge that buggy to experience."

We had a hectic time striking the camp that night and feeling our way away from the river by electric torchlight. There's not much more to tell about this safari. Loads had to be redistributed to let the Raja ride an ass, since his leg was still painful to walk on. We pitched two more camps, watched more Cretaceous fauna at work and play, and returned to the original site for Cohen to pick us up. We got our clients home safe with their trophies.

But you can see, Mr. Ahmadi, why we're not partial to motor vehicles on time safaris. It's a crook enough job, keeping the local carnivores—carnosaurs, creodonts, or saber-tooths, as the case may be—from eating either us, or the asses, or both. But having a dinosaur fall in love with your transport is one bloody thing too much!