The helicopter lay tilted at a crazy angle. One of its rotor blades was crumpled. Half across it, as if he might have fallen as he tried to bull his mad way over it, lay the mastodon.
Something crawled across the ground toward them, its spitting, snarling mouth gaping in the firelight, its back broken, hind legs trailing.
Calmly, without a word, Adams put a bullet into the head of the saber-tooth.
V
General Leslie Bowers rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. He stopped to bang the conference table with a knotted fist.
"You can't do it," he bawled at them. "You can't kill the project. I know there's something to it. We can't give it up!"
"But it's been ten years, General," said the secretary of the army. "If they were coming back, they'd be here by now."
The general stopped his pacing, stiffened. Who did that little civilian squirt think he was, talking to the military in that tone of voice!
"We know how you feel about it, General," said the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. "I think we all recognize how deeply you're involved. You've blamed yourself all these years and there is no need of it. After all, there may be nothing to it."