Masterson’s eyes lit up, and he pointed rapidly. “It’s coming back. I’m going to get a shot at that baby!”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Owen said tightly.
“I’ve had enough of your advice,” Masterson replied.
The pterosaur was winging its way back to the jeep, gliding lower and lower. It looked something like an enormous bat with a peculiarly shaped head. It had a short, stout body, a fairly long neck and a short tail. Its wings were fully spread, some four feet from wing tip to wing tip. As it fell toward the jeep, Masterson readied his rifle for a shot.
Chuck could see every detail of the creature now.
Its front limbs ended in sharp claws. One finger of each limb was enormously elongated to support the membrane, which spread like a thin web and connected with the rear limbs.
The creature’s head was a long, flat, bony affair, terminating in a pointed beak at one end. The whole head gave the illusion of having been passed through a wringer. When the pterosaur opened its jaws, Chuck saw the sparkle of sharp teeth. Then the jaws snapped shut, and the reptile’s shadow fell over the jeep as the creature passed directly overhead.
There was the loud boom of Masterson’s gun breaking the stillness of the morning. The reptile’s jaws opened again, and a hoarse, high scream tore the air to shreds, ran up the spine like the blood cry of a banshee. The wings flapped frantically as Masterson squeezed off shot after shot. Chuck stood by helplessly, his fists clenched tightly. Then the pterosaur gained altitude, its long shadow gliding over the land. Higher it went, and higher, flying away from the thing with the fast-flying, steel-jacketed teeth.
“Brother!” Masterson said. “That’s the strangest darned bird I’ve ever seen!”
“It’s one of the strangest flying creatures that ever existed,” Chuck said. “But it’s not a bird.”
“Well, it certainly looked like a bird,” Masterson insisted.
“We may see some birds before we leave the Jurassic period,” Owen said. “As a matter of fact, the first feathered creatures make their appearance in these times. I don’t think you’ll recognize them as birds, though.”
“Well,” Masterson said, still dubious, “whatever that was, I’d have liked to take it back as a trophy.” He turned and started walking back toward the truck. “Hey, Brock!” he called. “Did you see that?”
The rain came at noon.
The clouds had been piling up on the horizon since about ten o’clock, darkening the sky, casting a deep pall over the land. Lightning streaks suddenly slashed through the gray overhang, illuminating the cycads and ferns with electric fury. The thunder rolled out of the mountains, shook its noisy fist at the land, and then the rain came.
It spilled out of the sky in a wet sheet that ran across the vegetation in lashing torrents. The leaves flapped in protest, raising their frantic plea to the shrieking wind and the flailing water. Roots tore at the earth, wrenched free. Evergreens turned over, rolled beneath the force of the gale. The waters began running down out of the mountains, filling the lakes, flooding the land and turning the ground into a mucky, rain-drenched quagmire. The entire party sat in the truck, listening to the wind rip at the canvas top and watching the rain sweep by outside.
And then, almost as suddenly as it had started, the rainstorm ended. The clouds pulled their tattered gray robes across the sky, trailing smokelike wisps away from the sudden rays of the sun. The earth smelled clean and fresh. The plants glistened with a million, sparkling, watery jewels.
The mighty beasts lifted their heads to sniff the air, raised their dull, flat eyes to the sun and came forth to soak up the warmth.
The storm had ended.
Masterson surveyed the mud with a disgruntled eye.
“Quite a mess,” he said. “Quite an unholy mess.”
“We’ll feel better when we’ve had something to eat, Mr. Masterson,” Pete said. He had set up a stone fireplace and started a fire with the newspapers from the truck. When the blaze was strong, he fed it from a bag of charcoal.
Owen had walked several yards from the group surrounding the fire. He returned with a worried expression on his face.
“I think we’d better find another spot for lunch,” he said.
Gardel, squatting by the fire, looked up suddenly. “Why?”
“We’re near a small lake, and there are sauropods in it. I don’t like it.”
“What the deuce are sauropods?” Gardel asked. “Some kind of fish?”
“Fish?” Owen was plainly surprised. “Maybe I’d better explain the life setup here a little more fully.”
Masterson nodded. “Maybe you’d better.”
“To begin with, the word ‘dinosaur’ covers a large group of reptiles — most of them of gigantic size. Within that group, there are further groupings, groupings that distinguish the different types of dinosaurs. For example, a stegosaur is any armored dinosaur. Sauropods are the largest of all Mesozoic reptiles. Theropods are carnivorous dinosaurs. Ceratopsians are the horned dinosaurs — none of which exist until later in geologic time.”
“I don’t get it,” Gardel said.
“It’s easy,” Owen replied. “These are simply methods of classification. For example, let’s take a horse. We can start by saying that he is a mammal. We can then classify him as that mammal which is a horse. And from there, we can go on to say he is a Shetland or an Arabian or what have you. Do you follow?”
“I think I understand,” Masterson said.
“In the same manner, we can pinpoint any particular dinosaur. The stegosaurs we ran into happened to be the genus called Stegosaurns, which is the type that gave the name to the entire stegosaur group. But there are other stegosaurs we haven’t as yet seen — and may not see.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Gardel said, nodding.
“Now, a pterosaur is a flying reptile. There are two subdivisions of pterosaurs. The one we saw earlier today was called Rhamphorhynchus.”
Pete’s eyes opened wide. “Wow!” he said.
“About the sauropods over there,” Owen said, pointing, “I think they’re of the Brontosaurus group, though I can’t be sure at this distance. Whatever they are, they’re darned big, much bigger than the stegosaurs we ran into yesterday, and I think we’d better get out of here while the getting’s good.”
“How far away are they?” Masterson asked.
“At the edge of the lake. About a hundred yards or so.”
“They won’t bother us,” Masterson said calmly.
“I might be inclined to agree with you,” Owen said, “if I didn’t know how trigger — happy you were. The sauropods are plant eaters, and I doubt if they’d be very interested in us as food.”
“I’m not interested in them, either,” Masterson assured Owen. “Don’t worry about them.”
“Did somebody mention food?” Denise asked, trying to lift the conversation out of the menacing route it was taking.
“Be ready in a few minutes,” Pete said. He stood over the fire, stirring a huge caldron of hot soup. He was reaching over for a ladle when the shadow fell over the ground again.
Masterson leaped to his feet instantly, his eyes turning eagerly to the sky. “Another one!” he shouted. “Another of those pterosaurs.” His face flushed with excitement as he sprinted for the truck. “Where’s my rifle?”
“You just said you weren’t going to do any more shooting,” Owen said desperately.
“I didn’t say anything like it,” Masterson yelled over his shoulder. He had his rifle and was already ramming cartridges into the loading chamber.