"I know what you're thinking," Gawain said. "Obviously I met one dragon too many! But in my defense, I do want to say that I was successful for five years and had almost amassed my target level in bonus money. I would be alive today if that last dragon I faced had been genuine. But you see, it wasn't; it had been mislabeled. Oh, I don't blame the natives-not much, anyway; they were a fairly primitive tribe in South America and they spoke a mixture of Amerind and Spanish, while I spoke the language of champions, English. Normally language is not much of a barrier; my armor and sword bespoke my profession, with the dragon design on my shield; and as for the women-a man never needs a language of the tongue to speak his use for them, especially when he's a warrior. These things are fairly standard, anyway; the conquering hero always gets his pick of the local virgins. After all, it's better for them than getting chomped by the dragon!"

He paused a moment, his lips twitching. "Funny that some of those girls don't seem to see it that way."

He shrugged and returned to the main theme. "But I think they were honestly ignorant of the nature of their monster. Of course, I should have checked it out in the Dragon Registry-but I had traveled a long way, and the nearest civilized outpost was a half day's trek distant- couldn't use a standard flying carpet for this, of course, since those things are coded into the tour computers, and that would have given away my business-it would have delayed me a day just to do that, and maybe alerted the Dragon Patrol. So I tackled that dragon blind, as it were. I'll never do that again! I was cocky and foolish, I know- but I was familiar with the specs on just about every type of dragon in the world; I figured I was okay this one time.

"So there I was, afoot and armed with sword and shield, as is proper for such encounters, and I boldly braved the lair of the monster. And monster it was! I could see claw marks on the big trees some ten feet up. A real challenge! I marched up to its cave and bellowed out my challenge, and the monster came charging out, no fire, just growling-and then I realized my mistake. That was no dragon-it was a dinosaur! A largely bipedal carnivorous reptile-allosaurus, to be specific; I looked it up after it was too late. It was supposed to be extinct; I think Satan revived it, just to take me down a peg."

Now Norton spoke. "Isn't a dinosaur much like a dragon?"