“Cut that,” said Travis sharply. “Everyone on his feet!” They were ready to leave the Machine.

The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the jungle was the entire world forever and forever. Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled the sky, and those were pterodactyls soaring with cavernous grey wings, gigantic bats out of a delirium and a night fever. Eckels, balanced on the narrow Path, aimed his rifle playfully.

“Stop that!” said Travis. “Don't even aim for fun, damn it! If your gun should go off” Eckels flushed. “Where's our Tyrannosaurus?” Lesperance checked his wrist watch. “Up ahead. Well bisect his trail in sixty seconds. Look for the red paint, for Christ's sake. Don't shoot till we give the word. Stay on the Path. Stay on the path They moved forward in the wind of morning.

“Strange,” murmured Eckels. “Up ahead, sixty million years, Election Day over. Keith made President. Everyone celebrating. And here we are, a million years lost, and they don't exist. The things we worried about for months, a life-time, not even born or thought about yet.” “Safety catches off, everyone!” ordered Travis. “You, first shot, Eckels. Second, Billings. Third, Kramer.” “I've hunted tiger, wild boar, buffalo, elephant, but Jesus, this is it,” said Eckels. “I'm shaking like a kid.” “Ah,” said Travis.

Everyone stopped.

Travis raised his hand. “Ahead,” he whispered. “In the mist. There he is. There's His Royal Majesty now.” The jungle was wide and full of twitterings, rustlings, murmurs, and sighs.

Suddenly it all ceased, as if someone had shut a door.

Silence.

A sound of thunder.

Out of the mist, one hundred yards away, came Tyrannosaurus Rex.

“Jesus God,” whispered Eckels.

“Shit” It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It lowered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior, Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh.