Hunting dinosaurs isn’t especially dangerous if you make all your moves smoothly and correctly, and don’t commit foolish mistakes like catching a twig in the mechanism of your gun, or stepping on the tail of a sleeping carnosaur, or then climbing a small tree the dinosaur can pluck you out of. Even clumsiness isn’t fatal if you have sound judgment, are in complete control of yourself, and take whatever extra care is needed to make up for your lack of coordination.
So on a fine spring day we gathered with our gear at Professor Prochaska’s laboratory here in St. Louis. The service personnel were our longtime herder Beauregard Black, two camp helpers, and a cook. By then the Raja and I were experienced enough so we didn’t feel that both had to be along on every safari. One could stay behind to hold down the office; that’s why I’m here now, while the Raja takes a group back to the Eocene.
This time, however, we agreed that the Raja should come along, because the period was new and also because it was our first safari mixed as to sex and therefore an experiment. The Raja is better at human relations than I. He can calm down an excited man—excuse me, person—or cheer up a despondent one, or jolly along a bad-tempered one in a way I’ve always envied.
On other safaris we had taken the party coasting about the local area, breaking camp and setting it up again half a dozen times. We decided that this time, since we had some decided tenderfeet, one a female, we had better leave the camp where we first pitched it and merely make one-day walkabouts in different directions. So we didn’t need a train of packasses to haul our gear around the country.
Eh? Why don’t we use off-trail vehicles? In the first place, we could take only those of the smallest kind—practically toys—because of the size of the transition chamber. In the second, there’s no source of petrol in case we run low on fuel. In the third, Mesozoic country is often so overgrown and poorly drained that even the most versatile vehicle would have a hard time. And lastly, if your jeep breaks down or skids into the river, it’s done for; you can’t get it back to the transition chamber. The asses, on the other hand, can live off the country; and in dire straits you can eat them—if some hungry carnivore doesn’t beat you to it. You can’t eat a petrol-powered vehicle.
The sahibs, the sahiba, the Raja and I crowded into the transition chamber with our guns and packs. It was policy for the guns to go first, not knowing what sort of reception committee might be waiting for us. The operator squeezed in after us, closed the door, and worked his buttons and dials.
I had told the laboratory people to set the timer for May first, 175 millionB .C. So the chamber wallah set his dials for that date and pressed the red button. The lights went out, leaving the chamber lit by a little battery-powered lamp. The sahibs gave some grunts and groans at the vertigo and vibration, and that horrid feeling of being in free fall. But the Raja and I had been through all this before.
When the spinning dial hands stopped, the operator checked his gauges to make sure he could safely set the chamber down. It wouldn’t do to land it in an inland sea or on the side of a cliff. Sometimes he has to move the chamber back and forth in time by half a million years or so to find a soft landing. This time we were lucky to come down on fairly level soil. Another button opened the door.
As usual, I jumped down first, my gun ready. I hadn’t been in the Triassic before, but I’d read up on the period. I saw rolling country with water in the distance, and a fairly heavy growth all around of trees and shrubs you find nowadays only in the form of little “living fossils,” they call ’em, like horsetails and ferns. For real trees we had araucarias, trees of the ginkgo type, and cycads looking much like palms. No grass, of course; that didn’t evolve for another hundred million or so, and likewise no flowers.
The only sample of the fauna I saw on that first look-around was one little lizardy fellow running away on a pair of long hindlegs. I was watching it disappear into the ferns when Sir Edred Ngata shouldered me aside, whipped up his shotgun, and fired, bang-bang! at the vanishing two-legger. I said:
“Hey Sir Edred! You agreed to shoot only when I told you to!”
“I say, I’m frightfully sorry!” said Ngata. “But it looked like a thecodont, one of those that evolved into the big dinosaurs. One of my objectives is to get some specimens to mount or dissect. I suppose I missed; but please, let me go look!”
He started off, but I said: “Damn it, Sir Edred, reload your gun first! And keep heavy buckshot in one barrel!”
He turned back with a shamefaced grin. “You’re right, of course. And forget the ‘Sir.’ Just call me ‘Edred,’ will you, old boy?” Ngata was an amiable sort of bloke whom it was hard to stay angry with for long.
Meanwhile the rest of the party came out of the chamber, which vanished back to the present to pick up Beauregard and his crew and the kit. All this took a bit of time, during which I scouted around to pick a campsite near a stream.
As soon as camp was pitched, our first job was to get fresh meat. Being unfamiliar with the period, I asked Sir Edred for advice. We wanted an animal, preferably a plant-eater, not too large (which would rot before we got it eaten) or too small (in which case there wouldn’t be enough to go round). Ngata said:
“If I were you, I’d try for a dicynodont. I think you’ll find them on the higher ground.”
“What’s a dicynodont like?”
“Just imagine a hairless, saber-toothed sheep and you’ll come close.”
Since it was too late in the day to start out, we stayed in camp. The service personnel bad set up one big tent for themselves and four small ones for the rest of us. I put Ngata and Alvarado in one tent, Carlyle and Smith in another, and gave one to Inez Alvarado. The Raja and I took the remaining tent, since we should have to consult on managing our party. Also, since we went watch-and-watch, there was no use waking up one of our lambs every time we changed watch.
If the Alvarados had been a normal married pair, I should have given them a tent to themselves. But I didn’t know if they were currently on a screwing basis—excuse me, Ms. Brownlee—and it’s not the sort of thing one cares to ask people right out.
Sleeping proved not so easy as one might think. Besides the big cockroaches, whom the smell of food brought swarming into the camp, the insects included a huge cricket whose chirp sounds like a burglar alarm going off.
Next morning we set out on our routine meat hunt. We went uphill, pushing through vast fern beds; there didn’t seem to be any game trails. A heavy growth of ferns can give you a real workout to wade through, so we were soon filthy and drowning in sweat. Besides, the ground is so broken by nullahs that every walk is an up-and-down scramble.
We saw a pair of coelophysids—slender, longtailed, bipedal flesh-eating therapsids weighing about as much as a small man—ah—person. They were prowling through a fern brake, looking for smaller creatures to snap up in those narrow, toothy jaws. As soon as they saw us they took off and vanished. Carlyle, our one really dedicated hunter, sent a shot after them but missed.
When we got to higher ground, the ferns thinned out. All the while, Smith clicked his camera this way and that. Ngata dashed excitedly about, banging away with his little 28-gauge shotgun. Now and then he came back holding up some little lizardy fellow before popping it into his collecting bag. Once I said:
“There’s a little one!”
I pointed to a stubby lizardlike animal, no bigger than a rat. Ngata brought up his shotgun; then said:
“No, better not. It looks like an ictidosaur, and I might shoot one of my own ancestors!”
“At which point, I suppose you’d vanish like a blown-out match flame?”
“Or all of us might,” he said.