g. The fauna, modern and Pleistocenic,
overlapped. And the surface features were little altered from the
twentieth century. The rivers ran along familiar paths, the hills
and bluffs looked much the same. In this corner of the Earth, at
least, 150,000 years had not changed things greatly.

Boyhood dreams, Hudson thought, were wondrous. It was not often
that three men who had daydreamed in their youth could follow it
out to its end. But they had and here they were.

Johnny was on watch, and it was Hudson's turn next, and he'd
better get to sleep. He closed his eyes, then opened them again
for another look at the unfamiliar stars. The east, he saw, was
flushed with silver light. Soon the Moon would rise, which was
good. A man could keep a better watch when the Moon was up.

He woke suddenly, snatched upright and into full awareness by the
marrow-chilling clamor that slashed across the night. The very air
seemed curdled by the savage racket and, for a moment, he sat
numbed by it. Then, slowly, it seemed--his brain took the noise
and separated it into two distinct but intermingled categories,
the deadly screaming of a cat and the maddened trumpeting of a
mastodon.

The Moon was up and the countryside was flooded by its light.
Cooper, he saw, was out beyond the watchfires, standing there and
watching, with his rifle ready. Adams was scrambling out of his
sleeping bag, swearing softly to himself. The cooking fire had
burned down to a bed of mottled coals, but the watchfires still
were burning and the helicopter, parked within their circle,
picked up the glint of flames.

"It's Buster," Adams told him angrily. "I'd know that bellowing of
his anywhere. He's done nothing but parade up and down and bellow
ever since we got here. And now he seems to have gone out and
found himself a saber-tooth."

Hudson zipped down his sleeping bag, grabbed up his rifle and
jumped to his feet, following Adams in a silent rush to where
Cooper stood.

Cooper motioned at them. "Don't break it up. You'll never see the
like of it again."

Adams brought his rifle up.

Cooper knocked the barrel down.

"You fool!" he shouted. "You want them turning on us?"

Two hundred yards away stood the mastodon and, on his back, the
screeching saber-tooth. The great beast reared into the air and
came down with a jolt, bucking to unseat the cat, flailing the air
with his massive trunk. And as he bucked, the cat struck and
struck again with his gleaming