Warren Murphy Destroyer 092 The Last Dragon

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.""Dinosaurs are classified into orders, such as saurischia, which are lizardlike, suborders like sauropoda, the four-footed herbivores like our own Old Jack-""Can I explain this to him?" Remo asked plaintively.Nancy leaned back in her seat."If you can.""Chiun, try to follow this.Back before there were humans, dinosaurs ruled the world.They were giant reptiles.""Not all of them." Nancy said quickly."Some were birds.""Like Pterodactyls, right?""Wrong.Like Triceratops."Remo hit the brakes.Nancy almost landed in the front seat with them."Triceratops!" Remo exploded."Yes.""Triceratops with the three horns? Built kinda like a rhino?""Yes.""A bird?""Yes!""Since when?""Since they came on the evolutionary scene during the Late Cretaceous period.We now know they were Ornithischia, bird-hipped.""They're birds because of their freaking hips?""Simplified for the twelve-year-old mind, yes.""Bulldookey," said Remo."Birds don't grow horns and run around goring other Page 62ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlanimals.""The modern ostrich does.""That's the bird that hides its head in the sand at the first sign of trouble?Right?""True," Nancy admitted."Then I rest my case.No way a Triceratops would hide its head if a Stegosaur trotted by.He'd bite the other guy's head off, and hide that.""For your information, a modern ostrich can kill a full-grown lion.""With what? His fluffy tailfeathers?""No, by pecking the lion into submission with his beak.Ostriches are fierce and mean-tempered, and if you place an ostrich skeleton beside an Iguanadon skeleton, you'd see what I'm talking about.""I'd see squat, because one's a reptile and the other is a goofy bird.End of story.Where did you get this crap, anyway?""You can look this up in any modern encyclopedia.""Wanna bet?""Certainly.Let's say ten thousand dollars, shall we?"Nancy offered her hand to shake on it.Remo hesitated."Too rich for your blood?" Nancy asked sweetly."I have to think this through," Remo muttered."I thought so.""Thought what?""All talk and balk, that's you."Remo frowned."Little Father, what do you think?""Only a fool would wager against a woman who owns a dragon," the Master of Sinanju said thinly.Behind them, the train was rattling along, getting closer.The steam whistle blew one long blast when it rounded a shallow turn and the engineer sighted them."Unless you're looking forward to abandoning ship," Nancy suggested, "I suggest you start us rattling along again."Fuming, Remo got the Land Rover going.He was silent a while, then he asked,"Triceratops didn't have feathers, did they?""No.""Good."Nancy couldn't resist."But you know, Pterodactyls had hair," she said in a bright voice."They did not!""Sorry to pop your bubble, but you should really read up on these things.""You are both talking nonsense," snapped Chiun."Why would we do that?" Nancy wanted to know."To dissuade me from living to the fullest span of my years."Nancy frowned."Say again?""I'll tell it," Remo said."One of his ancestors had a close encounter of the dragon kind a few centuries ago, and made off with a whole skeleton."Nancy perked up."Do you still have it, Mr.Chiun?""The proper form of address is Master, and no, Yong consumed it to the last finger bone and wing rib," Chiun said flatly."Your ancestor ate a fossil skeleton?""No, he drank it.""Chiun's ancestor supposedly slew a dragon," Remo explained."A true Chinese dragon," Chiun sniffed."Not like your ugly thing.""Thank you," said Nancy."And he ground up the bones to make some kind of medicine, so he could live forever, or something," Remo added."In the East, dinosaur bones are sometimes ground up and mixed in philters,"Nancy said thoughtfully."They are believed to be very beneficial.How far along did your ancestor get, Master Chiun?""He squandered one hundred forty-eight winters," said Chiun."Squandered?"Page 63ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Chiun thinks he should have saved a few bones for his descendants," Remo added."Oh."They drove along in silence.The sun was climbing the sky, turning it the color of brass.The jungle birds were screeching and calling.Somewhere a hippo bellowed.And Nancy began to sweat profusely.She noticed that Remo and the old Oriental named Chiun were not sweating and wondered why."We don't sweat," Remo said unconcernedly."Nonsense.All mammals sweat.Or pant.""We don't pant either.""What is a mammal?" asked Chiun."A dinosaur is a reptile and we're mammals," Remo explained."Does that mean monkey?""A monkey is a mammal, just like us," Nancy said."Just like you.I am Korean.""What does that mean?" Nancy asked Remo."I am not like whites," Chiun said stiffly, "who believe they are the offspring of monkeys.""That's a fallacy," said Nancy.Chiun indicated Remo with a long-nailed finger."Tell this baboon.""Hey! I resent that.""Humans are descended from a monkeylike primate ancestor, not a monkey per se.""Some have not descended very far," Chiun sniffed."Chiun's people think they're descended from the Great Bear that came down from the sky, or something," Remo explained."Bears are mammals, too," Nancy said."But that still doesn't explain why neither of you are sweating in this heat [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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