It was hard being cooped up in our tents for four days, especially when the flood waters rose so high that they lapped at our ankles. We got through it, though, without being tempted to kill each other. The paleontologists spent the time happily studying the specimens we had already collected. Rivera and Wang got into a very heated argument about whether the “Nemegtosaurus” skull found at the kill site was in fact the head of Opisthoelecaudia. Nemegtosaurus had previously been known only from the skull, while Opisthoelecaudia had been known from a headless skeleton. Since the known remains of the two “species” had been classified as two different kinds of sauropods, generations of paleontologists had assumed that they couldn’t be the same animal. Wang insisted that the skull must belong to the dead Opisthoelecaudia, while Rivera insisted that it was an “evolutionary impossibility”.
“So, maybe they didn’t evolve,” Dianna remarked quietly.

I asked Carlos: “What happens if the species do turn out to be the same animal? What will we call it then?”

“That’s happened many times before,” he answered. “The rule is, whichever name was given first is the ‘valid’ one, even if it is obscure, based on poor material, or flat-out inaccurate. That’s why we got stuck with things like Apatosaurus instead of Brontosaurus, or a whale whose official name translates as ‘king lizard’.”

I spent much of the time with Dianna, either talking or helping her check our equipment for water damage. I learned more about her. Unfortunately, Dr. Zapata also talked to her whenever he could. I had never told her about his reputation, but she obviously realized that he was being more than just friendly. She stayed polite, but I could tell that he was getting on her nerves. “He knows I’m engaged,” she finally complained to me on the fourth day of the expedition. “Why doesn’t he give up and go away?”

“Guys can be very persistent,” I answered circumspectly. “If he’s bothering you too much, you can come out with me to check on the vehicles. He probably won’t follow you out in the rain.”
“I think I will.”

By then, the rain was dying down, so we didn’t get too wet. The vehicles were in perfect condition, except for the Amphibian. Water was flowing in freely through the damaged tailgate. We found three fish and an exceptionally strange bird swimming around inside the bed. The bird had teeth, ludicrously small wings, webbed feet and legs that were splayed out at right angles to its pelvis. I netted the bird, and then lowered the tailgate.

We brought the bird straight to the paleontologists, who identified it as a hesperornid. A little later, I decided to ask the gathered paleontologists: “Is it really true that there are no ‘transitional forms’ in the fossil record?”

The paleontologists seemed hesitant to answer. (I think it was because Dianna was around, and they didn’t want her jumping on anything they said.) I was surprised when Carradine spoke first. “It’s true enough,” he said with complete candor. “In the strictest sense, a transitional form would have to be, first, part of a direct chain of ancestry, and second, intermediate in form and lifestyle between its ancestors and its descendants. No such animal has been found, and there is no reason to expect it to be found. The fossil record is much to poor to offer any sequences of direct ancestry. The best we can hope to find are ‘cousins’ removed from each other in varying degrees. Furthermore, it is clear that evolution does not proceed in anything like a linear fashion. The bird you caught is a perfect demonstration. While some birds were evolving more and more sophisticated flight systems, the hesperornids’ ancestors were evolving equally exotic features for an aquatic lifestyle. Evolution did not go in one direction, but several.

“Since the late 1900’s, all technical analyses of evolutionary relationships have been carried out through cladistic analysis. Cladistics is founded on the recognition that every taxon has both uniquely evolved or ‘derived’ features, and ‘primitive’ features which are shared with other taxa through common ancestry. Through primitive and derived characters, we can determine which organisms share a common ancestor, even if the ancestor itself is never found.”

“That sounds like circular reasoning to me,” Dianna said. “You assume that the features are evidence of evolution, and then use a diagram to show what you think happened but can’t prove. If there’s no direct evidence for evolution, why bother with the theory?”

“We do have plenty of evidence for microevolution,” Hutchins said. “With time travel, we can better document how microevolution leads to larger changes.”

“But I thought the fossils already show that species stay the same,” Dianna said calmly. “Time travel will just prove what you already know.”

Things went on like that for quite a while. Finally, Carradine said, “Look, what this comes down to is that scientists have to rely on physical causes. It’s useless to appeal to a metaphysical force that we can never observe.”

“Is that really different from what you already do?” Di said. “You don’t see common ancestors, but you try using cladistics to describe them. You didn’t see the animal that attacked that tyrannosaur, but you recognized the `terrible hand’ from its prints. Why shouldn’t the hand of God leave the same marks on our world?”

Right about then, Carlos wandered in. He seemed preoccupied with other things, but stopped to put in a few words. “You can talk all you want about the supernatural intruding into our world,” he said. “But you don’t really know about it. You haven’t experienced it. If you had, I should think you wouldn’t want to know any more.” Then he grabbed a tool and walked out.

I decided to follow him. I found Carlos doing something with one of the shotguns. “Are you trying to re-enable the selective fire function on that gun?” I said accusingly. The combat shotguns were military surplus weapons. They had originally been capable of traditional pump action, semi-automatic fire and fully automatic bursts, but the third option had been disabled before the guns were sold to us.
“No,” Carlos said sheepishly. “I’m just, ah, cleaning it.”

“With a pair of pliers?” I asked rhetorically. “Carlos, you know it’s illegal for a civilian to buy, sell or restore an automatic shotgun. You could get five years in prison for that. I order you to stop.”

“Too late,” Carlos said. With a few deft movements, he reassembled the gun. “I’m finished.”
“If anyone else finds out about this, you’ll go to jail.”

“No, I won’t,” Carlos said. “It’s funny. There’s no law against owning an automatic shotgun, as long as it was purchased legally, and they can’t get me for modifying it here. That would be ex post facto law—70 million years post facto!”
“It’s still wrong,” I said firmly, “not to mention unsporting.”
Carlos laughed. “‘Sporting’ means the target has a chance,” he said with a trace of bitterness. “I wouldn’t dream of using a sporting weapon.”

‘There’re a few things I need to talk to you about,” I said to Carlos. “One of them is Zapata. He’s acting up. Dianna’s getting upset. What do we do about him? Hell—have you ever dealt with anything like this?”

Carlos contemplated the question for a moment. “Well, the first thing I gotta say is that things like this don’t happen that often—not nearly as often as most people would expect. The fact of the matter is, a field expedition is about the least likely place for two people to `hook up’. There’s a lot of structure, not much privacy or free time, an’, of course, completely unchecked BO. Not what most people would consider an environment for sexual escapades. For the most part, anything that goes on in the field is between spouses or otherwise ‘steady’ partners. Often as not, there will be a couple or two in an expedition sharing a tent. What goes on in there is their own business—but the easy money is on ‘not much!’

“A guy like Zapata is a pretty rare breed. One can work in the field for years without running into his like, but, on any given expedition, there’s likely to be at least one person who has. The typical profile is a respected, well-established professor, often married with grown children, who jus’ likes to bag some young meat once a year. The other party always seems to be a student or younger subordinate. I think what the type really gets off on is the feeling of authority, not the sex. They seem to be pretty good at seeing which ones will go for it and which ones won’t, and choosing their battles accordingly. S’long as it proceeds like that, it’s nobody’s business, least till they get home. The one time I’ve seen it get ugly was when there were two of ‘em on the same expedition, an’ they went for the same one…One man went at t’other with a rock hammer, t’other fought back with an axe, an’ I had to sit them down to chat with my 12-gauge. But that pretty colleen, she was brighter than most… She turned ‘em both down! That’s exactly what Dianna is going to do, an’ there’s nothing Zapata can do about it. Don’t worry about it.”

I nodded, feeling a little more at ease. “What did you mean in the tent just now?”
Carlos looked at me quizzically. “The best way I can answer that is with my own question. Will you accept that?” I nodded. “Good. Here goes. Do you really believe in your God?” I looked at him, stunned. “I don’t mean if you believe He exists. I mean, do you trust Him? And would you really want to know Him?”

“Yes,” I said, somewhat hesitantly.
“If you really mean that, you’re a more devout man than I,” Carlos said. “Me, I pray to the Mother. But I don’t treat Her like a best buddy or a bloody Member of Parliament. If I did, I don’t think I should like it if She responded. And why should you? What did the angels in the Bible always say? ‘Fear not!’ or ‘It’s good to see you, too’? Do you think any of the people who talked to them wanted to do it again?

“That’s the problem with modern religion, Christian or pagan. The old fears are gone, and the old respect has died with them. Instead of the Queen of Darkness, one gets Tinkerbelle. Not even that, really; the original Tinkerbelle at least had enough character to let Peter Pan pick up the poison! The ones that try to worship the Goddess in their cozy apartments with cards and Ouija boards and crystals—speaking of, what the f* do they think is in their crystals that couldn’t equally well be in a bag of sand?—they’re trivializing Her. They should be praying that She doesn’t take notice. They’re like the bloody old-fashioned alchemists, messing with things they don’t understand and hoping they don’t blow themselves up.”

The rain finally stopped that night. The next day was uneventful—that is until around sunset. Dianna decided to take a shower. I chivalrously stood guard, armed with an Eliminator. I was more concerned about Zapata playing Peeping Tom than about attacks from the wildlife. I surveyed my surroundings, if only to fight the temptation to take a peek at Di. When she was about halfway done, Carradine ran up. “Mr. Flockman, you must come immediately,” he said. “I’ve found an Alioramus print in the camp.”

I switched on the Eliminator’s night scope. “Dianna,” I called back, “I have to go attend to something.”

Carradine led me to the bottom of the next hill, at the very edge of the waters. Carlos was already there, with the newly modified shotgun in his arms. “The trace is under water,” Carradine said. “It’s just one toe print. I think it was made this morning, when the water was several feet higher.”

I gazed into the murky water. There was something there that looked like a print, on close examination, but it seemed quite unidentifiable. “Could it have been made by an aquatic reptile?” I asked. “Like, say, a turtle or a crocodile?”
“It’s unlikely,” Carradine said. “There’s evidence of a claw mark.”
“Besides,” Carlos said, “a crocodilian is about as dangerous as any dinosaur.”

I gazed through the scope. A somewhat primitive infrared sensor provided me with a black-and-white image of heat sources. All I saw was a faint gray speck, probably a drowned mammal. I double-checked, and found that I was looking at a living mammal that was paddling against the current. “The mud and the water are obscuring heat sources,” I said aloud. “The creature will be tough to find.”
That was when Dianna screamed.

Needless to say, Carlos and I rushed over as fast as we could. Long before we reached the hilltop, I heard a screech, and the sound of heavy feet retreating into the forest. I was relieved to find Dianna safe, crouched behind the shower curtain. Robertson was thirty feet away, with his pistol still in his hands. The only sign of the dinosaur was a streak of blood in the water. “I shot it in the chest. It won’t be back,” he said confidently. At that moment, there was another “chug-a-chug” from beyond the next hill.

“Damn right, it won’t be back!” I shouted as I rushed for the Amphibian. “We’re going to kill it!”

“Yeah!” Carlos said as he ran after me. “I mean, sneaking into camp was bad enough, but threatening a defenseless woman in the shower? That’s f*in’ melodramatic!”

We spent almost an hour driving around in the growing darkness, trying to track the wounded creature down. I drove the Amphibian, while Carlos blasted suspicious-looking objects with automatic bursts. “I got it!” he said after one object exploded in a red burst of gore. He squinted at what was left. “Well, I got something…” From far away, there was a defiant “chug-a-chug”.

“I want two people on watch all night!” I fumed as we got into camp. “If that thing comes within 100 meters of the camp, I want to know about it.” I angrily slammed the door and stalked away. Then I stepped on the tail of a very large lizard…

I was paralyzed but fully conscious as Carlos and Zapata rushed me into the dissection tent. The scent of the peppermint spray seemed more unpleasant than usual. I heard Dianna shout my name. When I didn’t respond, she came over to me and shouted in my ear. I was touched, but the sound was painful. “Don’t shout,” Carlos told her. “Making noise isn’t going to bring him out of this. Anyway, I think he can hear and see just fine. I’ve seen symptoms like this before, when one of the men I was training with got bitten by a blue-ringed octopus.” He sighed. “He didn’t make it, but others have.”

“Will Ted die?” Dianna asked bluntly. Her normally husky voice came out as a hoarse whisper.
The medic answered: “I can’t say without more information. What did this?”

“It was a lizard, probably genus Estesia,” Carlos said. “I had to sever its jaw muscles to make it let go. We can take a sample of the venom…”

“It won’t make much difference,” the medic said. “There’s no way we could create an anti-venom fast enough to do Mr. Flockman any good, even if we had the right equipment.”
Di said, “Level with me doc. Can you even do anything to help him?”

“Probably not,” the doctor said. “We don’t have even the most rudimentary equipment for treating a poisoning. Call it an unfortunate oversight. I suppose all we can really do is wait and pray.”
For a moment, Di leaned over me. “I intend to,” she said.

It was perversely difficult for me to get to sleep. Carlos talked to me for a while, even though I couldn’t respond in any way. “We’ll wait one more day for the water to subside,” he explained to me, “and then we’re moving out for the hunt. We have had sporadic responses from the tracking device, so we know roughly where to go. Dianna, the medic and Zapata will be staying in camp with you. I’m afraid we’ll have to take the heavy weapons with us, but you will have the assault rifle, the ‘modified’ shotgun and a few varmint rifles. Carradine told me to leave this by your bedside, just in case you have any more night visitors.” He showed me Carradine’s revolver, and then left it there. Dianna came in afterward and read from her Bible. Before she was done, I had finally fallen sound asleep.

In the morning, everyone came into the dissection tent and ate breakfast. I couldn’t raise my head to look around, but the sound of activity was soothing. Carlos and Dianna made a point of speaking to me. “You’re lucky,” Carlos said at one point. “You can have breakfast intravenously.”

I spent most of the day unconscious. At one point, I was rudely awakened by electrical shocks as the medic restarted my heart. Some time later, I heard the medic say, “The poison’s effects are strengthening, but they should reach their peak soon. If I can keep him alive through the night, he will probably make a complete recovery.”

The next memory I have is of waking up when someone touched my arm. Dianna was standing over me with a radiant smile on her face. Bright sunlight streamed through her copper-colored hair. “Good morning, Ted,” she said simply.

I don’t have many memories of that day. The medic watched me closely, and Di dropped in frequently. Carlos even talked to me over the radio. “Hang in there, mate!” he said cheerfully. “In another week, we can all go home.”

By late afternoon, I was able to speak again, barely. I told the medic about an unpleasant tingling sensation all over my body. “That’s a good sign,” he told me. “It means the neurotoxin is wearing off.”

Most of the memories I do have of that day are unsettling ones. Several times, I heard assault rifle or shotgun fire from very close by. Once, the sustained gunfire sounded like nothing short of a pitched battle. I later learned that a young ankylosaur had charged the camp, only to be felled by a score of assault rifle bullets and half a dozen shotgun slugs. I was even more disturbed afterward, when I heard Dianna and Zapata arguing at the edge of hearing. I correctly assumed that he was pressuring her to spend the night with him. The ultimate fright, however, came in the middle of the night.

I was awakened by a series of loud, short ripping sounds. I woke up gradually. I didn’t even open my eyes until after the fifth of those sounds. By then, I had no doubt that something was trying to break into the tent. Each rip was the sound of a claw stabbing through the bulletproof fabric of the tent. Any good stabbing weapon could penetrate the fabric; however, it was virtually impossible to tear or cut material lengthwise. The would-be intruder had to stab into the fabric repeatedly, until the holes it made combined to produce an opening big enough to walk through.

With curious detachment, I wondered what animal was trying to break in. The moonlight through the tent showed a silhouette scarcely taller than a chicken. Its claw thrust again, and I saw that it was straight, not curved. It could only be a Borogovia, perhaps one of the same pair that we had encountered at the sauropod kill. As I watched, the borogove pushed the fabric apart like a pair of curtains and entered the tent. Vivid zebra stripes and large, jewel-like eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight. I could see its head pan about, surveying what it had discovered. Suddenly, the whimsical name did not seem nearly as appropriate. It took a long sniff at a carton of PUCs beside it, only to turn away with a contemptuous snort. (As Carlos remarked later, this was surely a sign of its great intelligence.) That was when its luminous eyes fixed on me.

The borogove let out a quiet chirp. Another, larger borogove squirmed in through the hole in the fabric. The pair strode toward me, sniffing loudly. “Help!” I shouted. My voice was too weak for the others to hear, and may have convinced the dinosaurs that I was too feeble to defend myself. The larger borogove walked right up to me and pressed her snout against my belly. She took one last sniff, probably to determine if I was too sick to be edible.

I was already fumbling clumsily for the revolver. I almost knocked it to the floor. Finally, I managed to wrap my numb fingers around the grip and pick up the weapon. I took aim at the smaller borogove and fired. The bullet struck home, knocking the small dinosaur clear across the tent. His mate got nasty powder burns inside her nostrils. She made a hacking sound, like a cat coughing up a hairball, and then threw her head back and shrieked. I fired a second shot, missing her long and slender neck by a fraction of an inch. She had had more than enough. She turned and fled; I shot her as she struggled through the hole in the tent. She still managed to escape, but she didn’t get far. Seconds later, a burst of assault rifle fire rang out. Dianna had collected another, mostly complete troodontid for our team.