Boneheads

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When boldly going where no man has gone before, which—since Homo sapiens would not evolve for 90,000,000 years and the first member of the expedition had arrived on Indication One only three months ago—described most places in the northern half of the island, and particularly when this involves dense forest, common sense suggests marking the route.

Standing at the junction of two trails (one of which he must have traversed quite recently, without noticing the other) Jonathan Craile (M.D., F.W.C.P) acknowledged ruefully that common sense seemed to have deserted him.

The trails had been made, presumably, by rhynchosaurs—snouty, pigsized reptiles, the commonest large animals on the island. Their comings and goings had beaten the reddish earth as hard as cement.

The hunters who had sometimes acted as Craile’s guides in the wilder parts of the world—some still existed, even in 2089—might have been able to see traces of his moccasins. He could not.

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