Read Online The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series by Lin Carter - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lin Carter
Ads: Link
the world like an ordinary pigeon.
“Harmless?” I asked the Professor in a stage whisper—for a yard long is plenty long enough for something to take a chunk out of you. He shrugged.
“Harmless enough…a coelurosaur is a scavenger, an eater of dead things…no more dangerous than a vulture, and with similar tastes in nutrition.”
I wasn’t about to debate how dangerous vultures can or cannot be, although I remember a grisly tussle I had with a couple of the ugly birds in the Kalihari Desert (they insisted I was dead, and thus fair game; I insisted I was alive…I won).
“Harmless, then?” I repeated, unlimbering my shootin’ iron.
“Harmless.”
“Dinner,” I said succinctly, and pumped a slug into the little dinosaur. It expired, twitching, taking about as long to die as a snake does. With brains as small as most dinos are supposed to have, it must have taken quite a while for the notion that it was deceased to have penetrated that small, hard skull.
I could swear that it was still twitching, even after I had chopped it up and was roasting the more tender bits of it over a fire.
And thus it was we ate our first true meal in Zanthodon, living off the landscape in the approved pioneer manner.
And—incidentally—became the first humans on record to enjoy dinosaur steak. (Tough, and a little gamy; but not all that bad!)
* * * *
Getting to sleep in what could easily pass for broad daylight was another matter entirely. After we had chewed and swallowed as much of filet of coelurosaur as could be expected of us, we drank and washed our hands from a small bubbling spring which gushed from a pile of rocks, and started looking around for a safe place to sleep.
And learned there really are no safe places to sleep here in Zanthodon.
I knew this for a fact the third time I fished a wriggling nine-inch horned proto-lizard out of my bed of grasses.
We gave up the dry land and settled for a perch in a tree. And at that we had to tie ourselves to the trunk and sleep sitting up, straddling a branch between our legs.
I was so sleepy by that time that I just figured that anything smart or agile enough to climb the tree to get at us was welcome to the meal. Hell, a man has got to sleep once in a while…and it had certainly been a long and busy day.
I have no idea how long I slept—and I refuse to bore you by repeating all that stuff about no sun in the sky and so on—but whenever it was that I did wake up, I was stiff and sore in every muscle, and had a kingsize headache and a mouth that tasted as if a particularly nasty little furry animal had decided a few weeks ago to hibernate therein.
By the time I climbed down stiffly from the tree, I discovered muscles in places I had never known I had muscles. Since I am, by comparison, young and fairly limber, you can imagine how Professor Potter felt.
And not having a steaming hot mug of black coffee to wash down our breakfast of cold, greasy coelurosaur leftovers did nothing to improve our dispositions, I assure you. Still and all, the life in the great outdoors is supposed to be hearty and bracing, and also good for you. Maybe it is: it just takes a little getting used to.
We continued our trek through the Devonian jungle. And by this time I was getting pretty damn sick of that Devonian jungle. My idea of jungle comes from watching Tarzan movies, and I feel cheated without lots of jungle vines and exotic, flowering bushes and long grasses and stuff…and apparently, grasses, bushes and flowers just plain weren’t around during the Devonian.
We kept on going until we could go no farther.
We had run into a sea.
* * * *
We came to the edge of a bluff, and there before us stretched a vast, seemingly endless expanse of water.
Oily waves heaved sluggishly under misty skies, and the glimmering slimy tides broke with a slow, pounding rhythm against fanged barriers of lava rock thickly encrusted with sea growths. The sea expanded before us, stretching to the dim
“Harmless?” I asked the Professor in a stage whisper—for a yard long is plenty long enough for something to take a chunk out of you. He shrugged.
“Harmless enough…a coelurosaur is a scavenger, an eater of dead things…no more dangerous than a vulture, and with similar tastes in nutrition.”
I wasn’t about to debate how dangerous vultures can or cannot be, although I remember a grisly tussle I had with a couple of the ugly birds in the Kalihari Desert (they insisted I was dead, and thus fair game; I insisted I was alive…I won).
“Harmless, then?” I repeated, unlimbering my shootin’ iron.
“Harmless.”
“Dinner,” I said succinctly, and pumped a slug into the little dinosaur. It expired, twitching, taking about as long to die as a snake does. With brains as small as most dinos are supposed to have, it must have taken quite a while for the notion that it was deceased to have penetrated that small, hard skull.
I could swear that it was still twitching, even after I had chopped it up and was roasting the more tender bits of it over a fire.
And thus it was we ate our first true meal in Zanthodon, living off the landscape in the approved pioneer manner.
And—incidentally—became the first humans on record to enjoy dinosaur steak. (Tough, and a little gamy; but not all that bad!)
* * * *
Getting to sleep in what could easily pass for broad daylight was another matter entirely. After we had chewed and swallowed as much of filet of coelurosaur as could be expected of us, we drank and washed our hands from a small bubbling spring which gushed from a pile of rocks, and started looking around for a safe place to sleep.
And learned there really are no safe places to sleep here in Zanthodon.
I knew this for a fact the third time I fished a wriggling nine-inch horned proto-lizard out of my bed of grasses.
We gave up the dry land and settled for a perch in a tree. And at that we had to tie ourselves to the trunk and sleep sitting up, straddling a branch between our legs.
I was so sleepy by that time that I just figured that anything smart or agile enough to climb the tree to get at us was welcome to the meal. Hell, a man has got to sleep once in a while…and it had certainly been a long and busy day.
I have no idea how long I slept—and I refuse to bore you by repeating all that stuff about no sun in the sky and so on—but whenever it was that I did wake up, I was stiff and sore in every muscle, and had a kingsize headache and a mouth that tasted as if a particularly nasty little furry animal had decided a few weeks ago to hibernate therein.
By the time I climbed down stiffly from the tree, I discovered muscles in places I had never known I had muscles. Since I am, by comparison, young and fairly limber, you can imagine how Professor Potter felt.
And not having a steaming hot mug of black coffee to wash down our breakfast of cold, greasy coelurosaur leftovers did nothing to improve our dispositions, I assure you. Still and all, the life in the great outdoors is supposed to be hearty and bracing, and also good for you. Maybe it is: it just takes a little getting used to.
We continued our trek through the Devonian jungle. And by this time I was getting pretty damn sick of that Devonian jungle. My idea of jungle comes from watching Tarzan movies, and I feel cheated without lots of jungle vines and exotic, flowering bushes and long grasses and stuff…and apparently, grasses, bushes and flowers just plain weren’t around during the Devonian.
We kept on going until we could go no farther.
We had run into a sea.
* * * *
We came to the edge of a bluff, and there before us stretched a vast, seemingly endless expanse of water.
Oily waves heaved sluggishly under misty skies, and the glimmering slimy tides broke with a slow, pounding rhythm against fanged barriers of lava rock thickly encrusted with sea growths. The sea expanded before us, stretching to the dim
Similar Books
