'
She studied him, disbelieving. A bizarre thought had just occurred to
her. 'Are you telling the truth?'
'Why would I lie?'
She threw back the upper fold of the fur, searched among the books. She
quickly found what she was looking for: PREHISTORIC EARTH, ESSAYS AND
ILLUSTRATIONS. She checked the index, thumbed the yellowed and clumping
pages.
Her mind fell back into itself. Sure enough, sketched there in relative
detail against the background of a large den, was the figure of a great
prehistoric beaver, '.....eight to twelve feet in length.'
Recovering herself, she moved hastily to sit beside him.
'Do they look like this?'
'Yes, more or less.'
She flipped through the stiff, distending pages---Mammals of the
Pleistocene. She stopped at a pair of saber-toothed cats, lurking
hungrily near a tar-pit. 'What about these?' Have you seen
them?'
'Yes, but it is not a good likeness.'
Her mind raced so that she hardly heard him. Was it possible? Had life
reverted to its primitive, violent stages before Man, evolution in
reverse? Her scientific education told her no, it couldn't happen.
But was anything impossible here? She doubted it. She turned the pages
again, stopped at the illustration of a lesser species of cave-bear.
Again she showed him the book.
Pages:
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