He was a small shriveled man, with thin gray hair above a thin gray face. Even here, he wore stiff-collared shirt and sober tie. One of the hardest things to take about him was the way his long nose waggled when he talked.

“In charge!” Herries spat expertly into a gobboon. “Sure, I direct the prospectors and the drillers and everybody else on down through the bull cook. But who handles the paperwork—all our reports and receipts and requests? You.” He tossed his right boot on the floor. “I don’t want the name of boss if I can’t get the stuff to defend my own men.”

Something bumped against the supervisors’ barge; it quivered and the chips on the table rattled. Since there was no outcry from the dock guards, Herries ignored the matter. Some swimming giant. And except for the plesiosaurs and the non-malicious bumbling bronties, all the big dinosaurs encountered so far were fairly safe. They might step on you in an absent-minded way, but most of them were peaceful and you could outrun those which weren’t. It was the smaller carnivores, about the size of a man, leaping out of brush or muck with a skullful of teeth, which had taken most of the personnel lost. Their reptile life was too diffuse: even mortally wounded by elephant gun or grenade launcher, they could rave about for hours. They were the reason for sleeping on barges tied up by this sodden coast, along the gulf which would some day be Oklahoma.

Symonds spoke in his tight little voice: “I send your recommendations in, of course. The project office passes on them.”

“I’ll say it does,” muttered young Greenstein irreverently.

“Please do not blame me,” insisted Symonds.

I wonder. Herries glowered at him. Symonds had an in of some kind. That was obvious. A man who was simply a glorified clerk would not be called to Washington, for unspecified conferences with unspecified people, as often as this one was. But what was he, then?

A favorite relative? No…in spite of high pay, this operation was no political plum. FBI? Scarcely…the security checks were all run in the future. A hack in the bureaucracy? That was more probable. Symonds was here to see that oil was pumped and dinosaurs chased away and the hideously fecund jungle kept beyond the fence according to the least comma in the latest directive from headquarters.

The small man continued: “It has been explained to you officially that the heavier weapons are all needed at home. The international situation is critical. You ought to be thankful you are safely back in the past.”

“Heat, large economy-size alligators, and not a woman for a hundred million years,” grunted Olson. ‘‘I’d rather be blown up. Who dealt this mess?”

“You did,” said Polansky. “Gimme two, and make ’em good.”

Herries stripped the clothes off his thick hairy body, went to the rear of the cabin, and entered the shower cubby. He left the door open, to listen in. A boss was always lonely. Maybe he should have married when he had the chance. But then he wouldn’t be here. Except for Symonds, who was a widower and in any case more a government than company man, Thansoco had been hiring only young bachelors for operations in the field.