The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series by Lin Carter Read Free Book Online Page B

shave…henceforward we must keep on the alert for such flying monsters—”
    The underbrush rustled as something big and greenishbrown came pushing through. It was bigger than three oxen, with a head the size of an oil-drum. Its cruelly beaked snout bore a short, curved horn thicker than my thigh, and there was nothing but fierce hunger in its little pig-eyes. It looked like the granddaddy of all rhinos, and it came thundering down upon us like a runaway locomotive.
    We sprang clear as it crashed into the crippled pterodactyl and sank that nasal horn to the hilt in the batbird’s leathery chest. It began to crunch and munch juicily, ripping off raw steaks, blood squirting all over; and it was one ugly customer, let me tell you! It stood about seven feet high and was about twenty feet long, and it must have weighed in at two or three tons. It had four squat legs, bowed out at the knees, and a huge, swaying paunch, and a thick tail like an alligator. The thing’s feet looked like those of an elephant.
    “What the hell is it?” I whispered to the Professor as we took hasty refuge in the bushes.
    “I don’t precisely know, my boy,” he panted. “Obviously a ceratopsian, perhaps a genuine triceratops, I don’t know…”
    “ You don’t know?”
    He glared at me with some asperity.
    “My boy, there are more than a dozen genera of ceratopsians, and I can’t be expected to recognize one at a glance! They look very different, you know, from their skeletons…but from the bony shield covering the monster’s neck, I should certainly say triceratops…but that is very interesting, very interesting indeed! For triceratops is known mostly from fossils found in North America—in the state of Montana, to be precise, where I believe the first skulls were discovered in 1888.”
    “Well, what’s it doing here in Africa?” I wanted to know.
    He shrugged helplessly. “My boy, your guess is every bit as good as mine!”
    “I think we’d better find a tree to climb,” I suggested. “That triceratops of yours is just about finished with his pterodactyl snack, and may require something more substantial for the main course—like you and me.”
    We found a huge, gnarly tree and climbed it. And not a minute too soon…
    * * * *
    Twenty minutes later we were still sitting there on a tree limb as the monster prowled with ponderous, earth-shaking steps around and around the tree, pausing from time to time to look up at us and grin, showing a vast pair of jaws and a mighty empty looking gullet. The thing’s head was at least seven feet from the base of that bony shield to the beaked snout, and looked fully capable of gobbling up both of us at one gulp.
    And it didn’t look like it was getting bored waiting for lunch, either.
    I gave the Professor a look.
    “Mostly vegetarians, eh?” I said sarcastically.
    Looking remarkably unhappy, the Professor made no comment.
    CHAPTER 6
    BATTLE OF THE GIANTS
    Before long it began to rain, which didn’t make the Professor any happier. He seemed to hate getting wet as much as any cat, and fussed and fumed as we sat there, treed by a triceratops, getting soaked to the skin in a warm drizzle. The shower, unfortunately, did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the lumbering monstrosity below, or diminish his appetite.
    I said something to that effect, and the Professor snapped at me waspishly.
    “The giant reptiles have very small brains, and the creature will lose interest before long and wander off, having forgotten what he was after in the first place,” he said brusquely.
    Like most of the Professor’s predictions, this one proved to be wrong, too. For, half an hour later, the brute was still lumbering about beneath our perch, and he was beginning to get impatient, too. This impatience took the form of giving the tree we were in a nudge or two with his horned snout. And let me tell you, three tons of armor-plated superrhino can really nudge! He shook the tree as easily as a housemaid