This time the carnosaur did not overshoot its mark by such a wide margin. I started reloading; but Inez came up and grabbed me around the neck, squealing: "Help! Ayudarme!"
I pushed her off, a bit roughly I'm afraid, saying: "God damn it, sister, will you get out of the way and give me a clear shot?"
Meanwhile Tom and the carnosaur had gone through their toreador routine for the third time. This time the carnosaur was only a few steps from Alvarado when it turned, so that one stride would bring it to a position to reach out and bite his head off. As it started forward, I got it into my sights and fired. The impact knocked it down, where it lay thrashing and snapping. When it started to get up, I gave it two more rounds.
This time it stayed down, though it continued to jerk and thrash.
I turned back to see how poor young Smith was doing. You can fancy my relief when I saw him sitting at the base of the conifer with his back against the trunk, muddy but apparently unharmed. Carlyle explained:
"I couldn't pull Will away from the beast alone, and Edred was loaded only with birdshot." (Ngata either forgot or ignored my order to carry buckshot in one barrel.) "So he jumped off the bank, waded out, and bashed the creature over the head with his gun butt. About the third bash, it got the idea that it wasn't wanted and swam off."
"How's your foot?" I asked Smith.
"Sore," he said, pulling up his wet trouser leg. His boot and thick sock had taken most of the punishment, but a few of the crocamander's sharp little teeth had gone through and punctured his skin, where a pair of big purple bruises were forming from the pressure of those jaws.
I hauled out the tube of disinfectant and the roll of bandage that I carry. We never did learn whether the crocamander had really mistaken Smith's foot for a fish or was trying, like a real croc, to pull him in to drown him. A crocodile would then cache him and eat him later, when the corpse had softened enough to come apart easily.
"And what of you people?" said Carlyle, while I worked on Smith's bleeding ankle. "What's that beast?" He pointed to the carnosaur.
"By God!" cried Sir Edred, examining the carcass. "I'm damned if that isn't a close relative of Teratosaurus! I want as much of it as we can take back with us!"
"Oh, no, you don't!" said Carlyle. "I need the head for my wall!"
"I need the whole thing to study!" said Ngata.
Those two had a rare old row until I stepped in. "Now look here, bods, you needn't argue the toss. I shot the blighter, so I can do what I like with the remains. Since you, Desmond, have already got the phytosaur skin, I hereby give the carcass of the carnosaur to Sir Edred, to do with as he likes. If you two decide to exchange your trophies, that's all right with me, so long as everyone's agreed."
Carlyle looked sober. "We-el, come to think, my walls are going to be pretty crowded already. So Edred can have the dinosaur and I'll take the pseudo-croc."
"Willard," said Ngata to young Smith, "How about giving me a hand with this carcass? Skin and skeleton both. limping but game, Smith did not object, since I suppose he was feeling guilt about having fallen into the river from sheer clumsiness. Ngata said to Alvarado:
"I say, old man, where did you learn to dodge slavering predators like that? I knew carnosaurs were not good at quick turns, but that's not a theory I'm keen to try out personally."
Alvarado grinned. "When I was younger, I wanted to be a bull-fighter. So I trained for it, but I also practiced my singing. Now singing gives a man a big appetite, and so I got too fat for the corrida. At least, my torero framing was not time wasted!"
There's little more to tell. On the way back to camp, the Alvarados acted like honeymooners, and that night I avoided noticing any changes in sleeping arrangements. Next day the transition chamber appeared, right on schedule. We loaded the gear and service personnel in first, leaving the sahibs and the guns for last in case something inimical showed up at the site. It took an extra trip by the chamber to fetch back all the bones and hides and pickled heads and other specimens to the present.
Eh? About Tom and Inez? No, so far as I know the Alvarados did not remarry. -I'm sorry I can't give the tale a proper happy romantic ending. Despite all their endearments on the way back to camp, the last I saw of them, as they left Prochaska's laboratory, they were quarreling furiously over something, but in Spanish too fast for me to follow. Watching them made me happy to have just a nice, steady, easy, humdrum domestic relationship. I get all the excitement I need on these time safaris.
So now you can see why I won't mix the sexes on these expeditions. It's not the dinosaurs and other animals that cause the main problems; it's the human beings. It was more by luck than by management that neither Tomas Alvarado stabbed Desmond Carlyle, nor Carlyle blew Tom's head off. You can reason and argue all you like; but when the primitive sexual instinct takes over, anything can happen. One of those in a lifetime is quite enough, thank you.
I'll admit that not even an all-male group is proof against such outbursts. Once I had an all-male party, of whom three—though I didn't know it when I signed them up—formed the comers of a homosexual love triangle, which came within a whisker of another murder. But that's another story.
IV
Miocene Romance
Have we ever acted as Cupid in connection with one of these time safaris, Ms. Pierce? Not really. You see, early in the history of Rivers and Aiyar, Time Safaris, we decided not to mix the sexes on our safaris. Come to think, there was one case that involved a romance of sorts, but it wasn't our doing. In fact, it was done in spite of us. The Raja—my partner, Chandra Aiyar—and I should have bloody well nipped it in the bud had we known what was brewing. And it didn't turn out as you might expect.
We had enrolled a pair of clients named Swayzey, father and son—James and Lawrence Swayzey. Jim Swayzey, the older of the two, who was paying for this safari, had a reputation as a hunter in Present. You understand, I'm sure, that there are bloody few places left on Earth where there are any really wild game animals, not half tamed from being penned up in parks and preserves and watched over by rangers. The older Swayzey paid extra for bringing his taxidermist along, to prepare animal heads and other trophies.
A couple of days after the Swayzeys signed up, a dollybird bounced into our office—excuse me, Ms. Pierce? Oh, "dollybird" is just our Aussie way of saying "sweet young thing." Anyhow, in came this gorgeous, auburn-haired young woman, in her early twenties, giving the name of Willow Lamar and saying she wanted a place on the Swayzey safari. I explained our policy of not mixing the sexes on these jaunts through time, having had unfortunate experiences with such mixed groups. At that she waxed wroth, as they used to say, accusing us of rampant sexism and threatening a class-action suit, one of those quaint Yank institutions that lets anybody sue anyone for anything, to the vast enrichment of the legal profession.
"Go ahead," I said. "Our insurance company assures us their lawyers can handle it."
"Oh, hell!" she said. "I might have known you'd have taken legal precautions."
"We got good advice when we started," I said. "Anyway, you look a bit small and delicate for hauling a big-game rifle around the trackless prehistoric landscape. It's a bloody rough country, with nothing resembling a road."
"Oh, I wasn't going to hunt anything."
"Eh? What then? Photography? We've had some nice—"
"No. I represent the S.T.L.O."
"What's that?"
"The letters stand for 'Suffer the Little Ones.' It's an animal-rights group, opposed to all hunting. To kill an animal that doesn't threaten you is the same as murder."