Down here… Mean place, my mind wandered as I waited. I pulled out the Morning Star and studied the skull at its end. “’Alas, poor Yorick’,” I muttered to it. “How long have you and yours been down here? Ten million years? More? Since before the other dinosaurs died? Is this lost Atlantis, or the source of the legends of Hell? How long did it take you folks to grow intelligence? And is this all you’ve done with it?”
The skull, of course, said nothing.
My throat felt sore, so I stuffed the Morning Star back in my belt and took out the canteen. The water had an unpleasant metallic taste; I wondered if it came from the battered canteen or from the stream flowing over mineral beds.
This was, I thought drowsily as I watched the lizard-carcass roast, a very mean place. I was bothered by the lo
