TOM WAS BLINDED BY the bands of intense light and was slightly disquieted by the huge acceleration he felt. As the light dissipated, he saw a landscape out of any child’s book of prehistoric animals. The land was clothed in a variety of ferns, including some trees that looked like ferns. There was no grass to see, but everywhere you would expect it, he saw a rich carpet of mosses instead. A slight movement in the ferns showed a moist-skinned Tetrapod, a primitive, but large amphibian form that moved on its mysterious mission a hundred feet away from the nearby stream where it must have originated.
He focused on the near horizon, and one of the structures that he took to be an oddly formed Hill moved in its place. Looking carefully, he saw that it was a single huge animal, with a bodily fo
