The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series Read Online Free Page A
Author: Lin Carter
Tags: Science-Fiction, adventure, Fantasy, edgar rice burroughs, lost world
about as much practicality as I pack around in the tip of my little finger. Over one of Kenal’s lousy dinners—bad fish and raw onions and undrinkable Turkish booze—I asked him the value he estimated for the fossils and rare minerals he hoped to find in the Ahaggar.
“Value, my boy? Dollars-and-cents, you mean? Practically worthless…but the value to science —”
“I thought so,” I groaned.
He looked prim. “I perceive, my boy, that you consider me a science-for-the-sake-of-science fanatic…not so at all, I assure you. Fossils are worth little on the open market, that is true, unfortunately; but the region into which we are traveling is known to contain rich fossil beds ranging from the Upper Jurassic to the Lower Cretaceous…we can expect to find the remains of brachyosaurus, one of the largest of all giant saurians, and we can hope for gigantosaurus and perhaps even dichraeosaurus…also iguanodonts and even small pterosaurs. When Werner Janensch of the Berlin Museum excavated in and about those regions back in 1909, he discovered a spectacular skeleton of brachyosaurus and discovered over fifty specimens of kentrurosaurus, an African relative of the stegosaur.”
“You’ve got my head swimming,” I confessed. He snorted.
“I assure you, my boy, that a well-preserved and complete skeleton of any of the above reptilia will be an intrinsically valuable find.”
“How old is this underground place you hope to discover?” I asked, more to swerve the conversation away from all those jaw-cracking names than from any other motive.
“I believe that Zanthodon was formed in the middle of the Mesozoic, which means it has existed for something like 150,000,000 years.”
One hundred and fifty million years sounded like a lot of years to me, and I said as much. I also pointed out that he said the Ahaggar region abounded in Jurassic and Cretaceous life forms: and now he was talking about the Mesozoic.
He disintegrated me with a look of vitriolic contempt.
“Mighty Mendel, boy, didn’t they teach you anything at University?” he snapped. “If not, then pray permit me to inform you that the Mesozoic Era began some two hundred million years ago and terminated about seventy million years B.C. It is divided, I will have you understand, into three major subdivisions; and these are known as—taking the earlier period first—the Triassic, which lasted 35,000,000 years, the Jurassic, which was of similar duration, and—lastly—the Cretaceous, which extended for some sixty million years.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. And rapidly changed the subject entirely.
And about time, too.
* * * *
So I got myself hired to go volcano-hunting and dinosaur-digging. Well, I’ve had worse jobs, I suppose.
Of course, I could have turned the Professor down flat when he tried to hire me. His wacky scheme sounded dangerous and uncertain from the beginning. But, if you will recall, I had left my last employment with about seventy bucks in my jeans, and by this time, after grubbing around Port Said for a couple of weeks, the exchequer was down to less than fifty. Which wouldn’t last long.
To be blunt, I needed a job. Any job.
This fact the Prof figured out back during our first conversation together, when we had drinks at the Cafe Umbala after I rescued him from the two muggers. I had been ordering my meals there for the past two weeks, and when the check came and I tried to coax Tabiz to put the bill on my tab, it turned out to be a bit too heavy already.
“Never mind, my boy,” said the Prof grandly. “Ah, waiter…can the management of this estimable establishment possibly cash a one hundred dollar bill, perchance?”
The Nubian rolled his eyes widely.
“A hunnahd dollah Ahmericain ?” he inquired, reverence throbbing in his hushed tones.
“Precisely,” sniffed the Prof.
And so I got hired. It seems the Prof had finished up his work for the Egypt Exploration Society and still had a fat wad of
“Value, my boy? Dollars-and-cents, you mean? Practically worthless…but the value to science —”
“I thought so,” I groaned.
He looked prim. “I perceive, my boy, that you consider me a science-for-the-sake-of-science fanatic…not so at all, I assure you. Fossils are worth little on the open market, that is true, unfortunately; but the region into which we are traveling is known to contain rich fossil beds ranging from the Upper Jurassic to the Lower Cretaceous…we can expect to find the remains of brachyosaurus, one of the largest of all giant saurians, and we can hope for gigantosaurus and perhaps even dichraeosaurus…also iguanodonts and even small pterosaurs. When Werner Janensch of the Berlin Museum excavated in and about those regions back in 1909, he discovered a spectacular skeleton of brachyosaurus and discovered over fifty specimens of kentrurosaurus, an African relative of the stegosaur.”
“You’ve got my head swimming,” I confessed. He snorted.
“I assure you, my boy, that a well-preserved and complete skeleton of any of the above reptilia will be an intrinsically valuable find.”
“How old is this underground place you hope to discover?” I asked, more to swerve the conversation away from all those jaw-cracking names than from any other motive.
“I believe that Zanthodon was formed in the middle of the Mesozoic, which means it has existed for something like 150,000,000 years.”
One hundred and fifty million years sounded like a lot of years to me, and I said as much. I also pointed out that he said the Ahaggar region abounded in Jurassic and Cretaceous life forms: and now he was talking about the Mesozoic.
He disintegrated me with a look of vitriolic contempt.
“Mighty Mendel, boy, didn’t they teach you anything at University?” he snapped. “If not, then pray permit me to inform you that the Mesozoic Era began some two hundred million years ago and terminated about seventy million years B.C. It is divided, I will have you understand, into three major subdivisions; and these are known as—taking the earlier period first—the Triassic, which lasted 35,000,000 years, the Jurassic, which was of similar duration, and—lastly—the Cretaceous, which extended for some sixty million years.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. And rapidly changed the subject entirely.
And about time, too.
* * * *
So I got myself hired to go volcano-hunting and dinosaur-digging. Well, I’ve had worse jobs, I suppose.
Of course, I could have turned the Professor down flat when he tried to hire me. His wacky scheme sounded dangerous and uncertain from the beginning. But, if you will recall, I had left my last employment with about seventy bucks in my jeans, and by this time, after grubbing around Port Said for a couple of weeks, the exchequer was down to less than fifty. Which wouldn’t last long.
To be blunt, I needed a job. Any job.
This fact the Prof figured out back during our first conversation together, when we had drinks at the Cafe Umbala after I rescued him from the two muggers. I had been ordering my meals there for the past two weeks, and when the check came and I tried to coax Tabiz to put the bill on my tab, it turned out to be a bit too heavy already.
“Never mind, my boy,” said the Prof grandly. “Ah, waiter…can the management of this estimable establishment possibly cash a one hundred dollar bill, perchance?”
The Nubian rolled his eyes widely.
“A hunnahd dollah Ahmericain ?” he inquired, reverence throbbing in his hushed tones.
“Precisely,” sniffed the Prof.
And so I got hired. It seems the Prof had finished up his work for the Egypt Exploration Society and still had a fat wad of
Readers choose
Jillian Hart
Jana Leigh
David Talon
Phyllis Smallman
H. A. Guerber
Danielle Steel
Belladonna Bordeaux
Amanda Hamm
Aubrey Stone