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down its pulsing throat.
    And quick fear welled up within me—
    “ Professor! ” I squawked, grabbing at my hip with shaking fingers, trying to fumble open the snap on the holster strapped to my waist, where a well-oiled .45 reposed.
    I ran around to the other side of the chopper, and stopped so suddenly a viewer might have thought I had collided with an invisible wall. For there he stood, sun helmet askew, pince-nez tilted to one side, a bruise on his cheekbone, but otherwise (as far as I could see) all in one piece. He stared after the reptile as it waddled unhurriedly away to finish its meal.
    “Eh? What, my boy?”
    “Just wanted to make sure that wasn’t a piece of you that pint-sized croc was nibbling,” I breathed, woozy with relief.
    In his rapt, entranced state he scarcely heard me.
    “Oh, by Linnaeus, Lamarck and Lydekker, my boy, isn’t it purely wonderful ,” he murmured dreamily, gazing after the retreating reptile.
    “Ugliest damn croc I ever saw,” I said rudely. He blinked vaguely.
    “Eh, my boy?…Yes, you’re right…well, it is not exactly a true crocodile, but close enough, close enough…give the poor creature another thirty million years or so, and it will evolve into your true and genuine Crocodylus niloticus …unless, of course, evolution and its forces have been suspended here, as I more than half suspect to be the case…how beautiful!” he sighed, staring after the repulsive creature.
    “Beautiful?” I repeated, with a snort. “All depends on taste, I suppose. Give me Ursula Andress in a bikini, and you can keep all the dwarf crocs in the world…”
    But he was paying no attention to me, staring after the reptile. “Protosuchus,” he whispered, “as I live and breathe!…and hitherto found only in Triassic strata in Arizona…a descendant of the phytosaurs…utterly remarkable!”
    “You mean that was a dinosaur ?” I demanded, my voice rising into a squeak at the end.
    “Yes, my boy,” he said dreamily, “that was certainly a dinosaur.”
    Welcome to Zanthodon , I thought to myself, feebly.

PART II: THE UNDERGROUND WORLD
    CHAPTER 5
    LAND OF MONSTERS
    Now that my fears concerning the Professor’s safety were relieved, we had time to compare notes. It seems that the helicopter had emerged so suddenly into the vast open space, that it had taken Potter quite by surprise.
    As I had not instructed him how to land the chopper—there being no particular reason to teach him that—he did the best he could in the few moments available to him.
    We checked out Babe, and she was a sorry sight. Although not as much a total loss as she would have been had the gas tanks exploded, she was still a long ways from being airworthy. One rotor blade was snapped off short; another was bent. We would require the services of a blacksmith in setting that part of the damage to right. And where, in all of this incredible cavern-world, could we expect to find a smithy?
    The Professor—predictably—was fascinated by his discovery. While I peered and poked and pried at the undercarriage, trying to ascertain the extent of the damage, he stared about him in dazzled wonder.
    “Incredible, my boy, simply incredible!” he breathed enthusiastically. “Zanthodon is even more miraculous than I had dreamed…those trees over there are Jurassic conifers, extinct in the upper world for untold ages.”
    “Yeah? And what are those feathery bamboo-type things?” I grunted, nodding at the tall growths which fringed the lagoon.
    “Cycads, my boy…tree-ferns, likewise extinct. Utterly marvelous: a paleontologist’s dream come true!”
    He had expected to find some interesting fossils, so I can readily understand his excitement at finding them alive and well, flourishing here beneath the earth’s crust where the temperature was humid, subtropical, and—above all— stable .
    “Did you expect this place to be so big?” I inquired, rising to my feet and dusting off my knees. He shook his head, sun helmet