Edmond Hamilton

“ Monsters out of earth's dawn, thundering through a Twentieth Century city! Mighty dinosaurs of the Mesozoic age, the most terrible creatures ever to appear on this planet, bridging the gap of millions of years to crash through the little town! Rowan stood rigid as they thundered on toward him, heard their mighty, throaty bellows as they overtook the fleeing mob, and then saw them trampling over that mob as bulls might trample ants, smashing them beneath gigantic feet, annihilating them with sweeps of the huge tails, thundering, crashing on. ”

“ Rowan was never afterward able to recall all that he saw and heard in the minutes that he crouched there. He knew that other brontosaurs rumbled past, bellowing, ridden by the lizard-creatures whose pale rays swept and stabbed in great circles of fiery destruction; that other tyrannosaurs swept by with swift and mighty leaps, pawing human victims from the wreckage at the street's sides, pouncing and whirling like gigantic cats ”

“ The broad avenue seemed quite deserted and empty, and they sprang out into it, toward the central plaza where lay the lake of fire and its ascending and descending disk. But suddenly Morton turned, pointed back. Far down the street behind them a great mass of huge figures was moving toward them—a mob of mighty dinosaurs and lizard-riders which was coming rapidly up the avenue.
"They're coming now!" cried Morton. "They've gathered—they're ready—they're going to go up the shaft, now!" ”

“ Then they sat silent, for a time, in the darkness. It was a silence and a darkness torturing to Rowan. On earth above, he knew, the news of the terrible attack on Brinton would be flashing out, would be spreading terror and panic over all the world. And soon, now, would come the outward, resistless sweep of the lizard-men and their dinosaur hordes from this cavern world. Unless they escaped——
Hours fled by as they sat there, while from outside came the unceasing hurrying of lizard-men and dinosaurs through the giant corridor. ”

“ Around Rowan flames were shooting up in great roaring bursts, and beyond he saw one of the great brontosaurs rearing up against the side of a building, saw that building's walls collapse and crash beneath the huge beast's weight. From right and left came other mighty crashes throughout the city, and an unceasing, thunderous clamor of sounds, the deep and terrible bellowing of the dinosaurs as they crashed across the town, the screams of their victims trampled beneath giant feet, the hiss of the flickering beams, the roar of bursting flames. ”

“ The next moment Rowan had thrown himself suddenly aside, and as he did so felt the great pterodactyl sweep over him by a few feet, glimpsed a beam of pale light that flickered down from the upheld globe and struck the street beside him, cracking and rending the pavement there with its intense heat and scorching his own shoulder as it grazed it. ”

“ As they marched on down the street, attracting but little attention from the hurrying lizard-creatures, Rowan saw that in the great gray buildings on each side the doors opening into the street were of immense size, forty to fifty feet in height, and saw here and there a giant dinosaur entering or emerging from one of those great open doorways in obedience to the command of its lizard master. ”

“ For through the streets were pouring masses of the lizard-men, bearing tools or weapons, hurrying along on taloned feet or riding huge brontosaurs, who tramped majestically along the street's center while the walking crowds clung to its sides. Here and there, too, moved other dinosaurs, almost as huge, bearing burdens or ridden by lizard-men, the reptilian beast-servants of a lizard race. Tyrannosaurs there were, moving along in their swift, hopping gait, the fiercest and most terrible of all the dinosaurs, yet servants, like the rest, of the green-scaled lizard-folk ”

“ Crouched there at the street's edge he huddled, the buildings around him a storm of leaping flame, while down through that lane of fire there thundered into the town from the east the creatures of a long-dead age, the mighty beasts of earth's youth extinct for millions of years. ”

“ As told by them, the two had left their car at the swamp's edge and ventured for more than a mile into the morass, without finding any trace of the missing scientist. A mile in, though, they had abruptly come upon some things quite as inexplicable as the absence of Morton. These were great lanes of destruction which some force had torn across the forested swamp, wide paths in which the trees had been smashed down and crushed as though by the passage of some gigantic creature or creatures. ”

“ Now they were to the great beast, pressing past it and between its great body and the corridor wall, its mighty bulk looming above them awe-inspiringly in the great corridor. As they ran past it the huge beast half turned, half stepped toward them, but as Morton repeated his strange high cry it halted again. The next moment Rowan breathed for the first time in seconds, for they were past the brontosaur and racing on down the corridor toward its open end. ”

“ They had spread out in great numbers over what is now North America, the most habitable portion of earth during the Mesozoic age. They had built strange cities, had developed their knowledge and science in myriad ways, and had learned how to conquer and subjugate the great reptilian creatures who swarmed then on earth, to make servants of them. The great brontosaurs, more tractable than the rest, they used as mounts and beasts of burden; the fiercer tyrannosaurs and allosaurs were their beasts of war ”

“ Young Rowan himself instantly volunteered as a member of the posse and was accepted.
To those in Brinton, however, the disappearance of the scientist was almost a secondary consideration beside the strange tracks and pathways which had been found in the morass. Morton's disappearance, after all, might be due to his stepping into a quicksand, but no natural force or forces could account for the lanes of smashed trees and the giant tracks. No animal on earth, of course, was mighty enough to cause those tracks and pathways, yet what could have done so? ”

“ And on the mounds and spots of solid ground along these pathways of destruction they had found strange large tracks, which could have been made by no conceivable living creature but which were entirely unexplainable otherwise. ”