"That is my first."
"It isn't even that. It's a dinosaur."
"Pah! It is a dragon. An African dragon. And it has been cruelly abused."
"No, we just tranquilized it for the trip back to America."
"How are you getting it back?" Remo asked, interest detectable in his voice for the first time.
"You got me there. B'wana King has worked out all the details. I'm just the glorified babysitter."
Chiun caught up with them and asked, "Where are its wings?"
"Wings?"
"I did not see wings. Or stumps where they would be attached."
"It doesn't have wings."
"But it does breathe fire?"
"Not that anyone ever noticed," Nancy said patiently. "Maybe his pilot light went out," Remo said dryly.
Chiun made a face. Nancy frowned at Remo. But inside she smiled. He was funny in a flat sort of way.
They came to the Land Rover. It was parked down the line, sitting between the rails as if that were a perfectly natural place for it to be.
"You didn't drive it up like that?" Nancy blurted out.
"The shocks are pretty good," Remo said. "Or were."
"So how are you going to get it turned around?"
"Little Father."
The two didn't speak a word. They just deployed on either end of the Land Rover. Remo took the front, and the little man named Chiun the back. They grabbed the bumpers, bent, and Remo said, "One."
They straightened their spines. The Land Rover came up with them, its tires hanging low on loose shocks.
"Two," said Remo in a voice devoid of strain.
They walked in a half-circle until the Land Rover was turned around. They stopped. "Three," said Remo. And they bent down, setting the vehicle back on its wheels.
"How did you do that?" Nancy asked in a shocked-thin voice.
Remo grinned good-naturedly. "Practice. We can actually bench press three Land Rovers each, but we don't like to show off."
"What I just saw was impossible," murmured Nancy, circling the vehicle.
"Then you didn't see it," Remo told her, waving her into the Land Rover. She got in back. Remo took the wheel, the old Oriental beside him.
Remo got the motor started and they began bumping along.
Every bone in Nancy's slim body rattled. She began wishing she'd packed a jogging bra and folded her arms under her chest. That helped. By the time they got up to a reasonable speed, Nancy found it tolerable. If she kept her teeth clenched tightly.
Keeping her mouth closed proved impossible. The Old Asian was talking in a high squeaky voice. Not talking so much as complaining.
"Perhaps we should speak to the King of Gondwanaland," he was saying.
"About what?" Nancy asked, puzzled.
"Proper respect."
"He means gratitude, as in reward," Remo called over his shoulder.
"Excuse me," Nancy said. "But why on earth do you want a leg off an Apatosaur?"
"A what?" Remo and Chiun said simultaneously.
"Apatosaur. That is the scientific name for the species."
"Lady, I had every plastic dinosaur toy ever made. That's a Brontosaurus back there."
"You should get current. Modern paleontologists call it a Apatosaurus."
"What's that mean?"
"Deceptive reptile."
Remo made a face. "I like Thunder Lizard better. Sounds more dinosaurian. Like Pterodactyl. That was another neat dinosaur I used to collect."
"Pterodactyls were not dinosaurs, I'm sorry to inform you."
"The hell they weren't."
"Listen, I don't know where you went to school-"
"St. Theresa's Orphanage. Never mind where it is. Or was."
"Fine. But knowledge about dinosaurs has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. You see, what you used to know as the Brontosaur never really existed. That is, its bones were confused with another sauropod. We now call it Apatosaur."
"It's still the biggest dinosaur that ever was, right?"
"No, there are bigger. Supersaurus. And Ultrasaurus. All sauropods like Apatosaurus. And let's not overlook Seismosaurus, the biggest known sauropod. You'd have liked him, Remo. He was known as Earthshaker Reptile."
"Your Greek is abominable," Chiun said disdainfully. "I cannot understand half of what you say."
"Dinosaurs are classified into orders, such as saurischia, which are lizardlike, suborders like sauropoda, the four-footed herbivores like our own Old Jack-"
"Can I explain this to him?" Remo asked plaintively.
Nancy leaned back in her seat. "If you can."
"Chiun, try to follow this. Back before there were humans, dinosaurs ruled the world. They were giant reptiles."
"Not all of them." Nancy said quickly. "Some were birds. "
"Like Pterodactyls, right?"
"Wrong. Like Triceratops."
Remo hit the brakes. Nancy almost landed in the front seat with them.
"Triceratops!" Remo exploded.
"Yes."
"Triceratops with the three horns? Built kinda like a rhino?"
"Yes."
"A bird?"
"Yes!"
"Since when?"
"Since they came on the evolutionary scene during the Late Cretaceous period. We now know they were Ornithischia, bird-hipped."
"They're birds because of their freaking hips?"
"Simplified for the twelve-year-old mind, yes."
"Bulldookey," said Remo. "Birds don't grow horns and run around goring other animals."
"The modern ostrich does."
"That's the bird that hides its head in the sand at the first sign of trouble? Right?"
"True," Nancy admitted.
"Then I rest my case. No way a Triceratops would hide its head if a Stegosaur trotted by. He'd bite the other guy's head off, and hide that."
"For your information, a modern ostrich can kill a full-grown lion."
"With what? His fluffy tailfeathers?"
"No, by pecking the lion into submission with his beak. Ostriches are fierce and mean-tempered, and if you place an ostrich skeleton beside an Iguanadon skeleton, you'd see what I'm talking about."
"I'd see squat, because one's a reptile and the other is a goofy bird. End of story. Where did you get this crap, anyway?"
"You can look this up in any modern encyclopedia."
"Wanna bet?"
"Certainly. Let's say ten thousand dollars, shall we?"
Nancy offered her hand to shake on it. Remo hesitated.
"Too rich for your blood?" Nancy asked sweetly.
"I have to think this through," Remo muttered.
"I thought so."
"Thought what?"
"All talk and balk, that's you."
Remo frowned. "Little Father, what do you think?"
"Only a fool would wager against a woman who owns a dragon," the Master of Sinanju said thinly.
Behind them, the train was rattling along, getting closer. The steam whistle blew one long blast when it rounded a shallow turn and the engineer sighted them.
"Unless you're looking forward to abandoning ship," Nancy suggested, "I suggest you start us rattling along again."
Fuming, Remo got the Land Rover going. He was silent a while, then he asked, "Triceratops didn't have feathers, did they?"
"No."
"Good."
Nancy couldn't resist. "But you know, Pterodactyls had hair," she said in a bright voice.
"They did not!"
"Sorry to pop your bubble, but you should really read up on these things."
"You are both talking nonsense," snapped Chiun.
"Why would we do that?" Nancy wanted to know.
"To dissuade me from living to the fullest span of my years."
Nancy frowned. "Say again?"
"I'll tell it," Remo said. "One of his ancestors had a close encounter of the dragon kind a few centuries ago, and made off with a whole skeleton."
Nancy perked up. "Do you still have it, Mr. Chiun?"
"The proper form of address is Master, and no, Yong consumed it to the last finger bone and wing rib," Chiun said flatly.