Laff smiled indulgently. His scatter-brained cow had a skittish nature, but none could fault her dedication to motherhood.

  A muffled chirrup issued from within the mound of decaying plant matter. ‘There, I told you!’ Vetta honked emphatically. She eagerly began excavating the nest with her forefeet to carefully reveal the eggs. Laff joined her in straddling the mound and together they expectantly watched as the first of their new brood emerged from the precious ovals of white.

  'Hah! They're all bulls,’ beamed Laff, minutely scrutinising their hatching offspring.

  Temperature played a crucial role in determining the sexing of Duckbill young. An overly warm nest produced males, while a cooler mound reversed the gender assigning process to make the clutch all female. This simplistic adaptation of reptilian biology ensured an even ratio of bull and cow juveniles to repopulate the herds despite the apparent randomness of the process.

  Vetta did well to hide her disappointment. Last year's brood had been the same and she missed mothering a dozen or more daughters. However, as she looked downward at the chirping hatchlings scurrying about her and Laff's feet, the cow's parental instincts kicked in and she began to meticulously groom the nearest of the infant bulls.

  'That's queer,’ remarked Laff.

  His mate stopped licking that particular calf and looked up concernedly. ‘What's wrong?'

  'The last egg hasn't hatched.'

  Vetta peered nervously into the opened nest. Sure enough the nineteenth egg was unbroken. Infertile eggs were not uncommon, although normally an entire clutch failed, not just a single example. Suddenly aware of its importance to the interested parents, the egg began to wobble. A crack appeared in the smooth shell and before long a tiny head poked out of the oval casing.

  'Oh, he's just a latecomer,’ laughed the relieved cow. The blinking calf wore a comical expression on his face, heightened by the ludicrous eggshell cap atop his head.

  Laff studied the infant. ‘There's something different about this one. He's not like his brothers.’ The siring bull nosed his newest son, knocking off his askew headpiece and splitting apart the remaining shell to free the newborn. A peculiar birthmark in the likeness of a starburst adorned the youngster's forehead.

  'He's different all right,’ agreed Vetta. In the absence of daughterly cows to mother, she instantly adopted this specially marked male as her favourite. ‘He's a funny little fellow. I think I'll call him Chappy. Any objections, Laff?'

  'Not one. Now will you please go and feed.'

  Vetta finally assented to her mate's urging to leave and forage. ‘When I return I'll bring some choice tidbits of greenery to feed our brood,’ she called back to him before disappearing into the adjacent woodland.

  The Duckbill bull settled into the scooped out mound and his sons immediately started clambering over their large, patient father. The hatchlings would remain nest-bound and diligently fed by their parents in shifts for the following four weeks until they were of sufficient size to mingle with the herd. Laff and Vetta would then relinquish all parenting responsibilities for their offspring in favour of communal life, where the calves would loosely form groups based on age. More often than not they would attach their bands to the fringe of bunched yearlings from the previous breeding season to learn the all-important survival skills by imitating adult behaviour.

  'You're certainly a character,’ Laff said of Chappy, pleasured by his offbeat calf's antics. The bull with the birthmark was playfully chasing his own tail while his brothers busied themselves annoying their sire.

  The fatherly bull became pensive. Duckbills were renowned in the saurian kingdom for their excitability, much as the Thunderfeet were for sobriety and the Shieldhorns for aggressiveness. Laff was the exception to the rule, for he was a studious thinker and contemplated his aberrant son. While Duckbills were indifferent to physical oddities, the disfigured calf did present a certain strangeness. Laff identified with that label and as a result perhaps bonded closer with this one hatchling than his siblings. Without knowing why, he intuited that what distinguished Chappy from his nest-mates was more than simple appearance. The specially marked hatchling's uniqueness was more than skin-deep. This strikingly individual son of his was primed from egg-release to lead a groundbreaking life. He sensed it.

  The rainstorm continued its easterly course over the sopping fernland, drenching the already waterlogged prehistoric landscape further, as a gradual lightening of the cloudy skies heralded the oncoming of a misty dawn. Instinct warmed Laff that he was witnessing only the start of the rains. In two to three months, when the new hatchlings were strong enough to travel, the Duckbill herds would heed their racial urges and migrate along the western coastline of the mid-continental seaway dividing the landmass to winter in the bountiful northern summer. But for now he was content to watch his boisterous young at carefree play, happy in the knowledge that his cow would soon be back to satiate the hunger they were working up.

  Chapter Two

  The stoicism of space was broken.

  Three days had elapsed since the awesome detonation of a ruinous force had split the giant asteroid asunder and sent its marred bulk reeling into the starry depths. The field of astral rocks remained in a state of utter turmoil, continuously smashing against one another as they aimlessly tumbled in paths of unending collision.

  Centred amidst this ring of gyrating and crashing stellar boulders hung the Neptune-sized planet, forever revolving around the dimming star in its lonely orbit. Miraculously left untouched by the random destructiveness surrounding it, the solitary biosphere seemed abnormally tranquil in comparison to the turbulent asteroid belt. Devoid of natural satellites, the moonless world did however play parent to dozens of metallic structures locked into geostationary orbit high in its upper atmosphere. Fashioned by artificial means, these glinting cylinders of featureless silver, some measuring two miles in length and 400 feet in diameter, were themselves host to a swarm of thirteen-mile-long solar arrays that powered the gigantic habitat drums. In all, close to fifty objects drifted serenely above the mosaic of alien ocean and land patterned abstractly 22,000 miles below.

  A tiny globe of gleaming metal detached itself from one of the orbiting stations, emerging from a small circular port on the curved underside to slowly arc upwards in a steep ascent away from the cylindrical hulk dwarfing it. When barely a thousand feet separated the glossy ball from the huge edifice it came to an abrupt halt, engulfed by a cone of translucent bluish light emanating from the mother station to hold it suspended in uncertain limbo.

  The starsphere was exquisitely perfect in shape, its globular configuration flawlessly rounded and glabrous. Scarcely more than nine feet in diameter, the orb's polished metallic exterior appeared seamless. No joints of any description marred the shiny, spherical hull.

  Lingering only a moment longer, the starsphere broke free of the restraining tractor beam to resume its upward momentum. The ball hurriedly climbed further into the extremes of the planet's dying atmosphere, spurred on by the hasty approach of a pair of larger spheroids of silver reflected in its mirrored surface following their emergence from the very portal their smallish stable-mate had exited from a minute earlier. Swinging left of the enormous cylinder, the escaping globe rapidly gathered speed and left the atmospheric confines of the world below to enter the frictionless envelope of star-studded space. The unexpected approach of a third silvery orb blocking its planned route prompted the speeding starsphere to veer onto a new course. Flying back on to its original track, the targeted space-faring ball narrowly missed colliding with its two immediate pursuers before once more gaining the freedom of unobstructed space by sharply executing a right-angle turn possible only in a gravity-free environment. But once again the fleeing craft found its escape cut off by the unswerving advance of a fourth chaser rising menacingly from the planet itself.

  A radio transmission abruptly crackled through the soundless black. ‘Pilot, this is B-Space Authority. You are again ordered to cut your engine and hold your current position to await towage back to ComConSat Forty-Two. This is a directive from the Prime Council itself. Comply or things will be worse for you.'

  The anonymous being piloting the renegade starsphere responded to the terse command to halt with unabashed irreverence—he blew a raspberry in reply.

  'I am instructed to forcibly detain you, G-66,’ said the persistent caller. ‘By this very act of theft you are in clear violation of the First Principle. Desist immediately and return to base.’ When no compliance was forthcoming, the Controller authorised the use of necessary force. ‘Sigma-Delta Response, ready grid trap and vector on target.'

  Forming into a precise square, the quartet of tailing globes became linked together by an intricate latticework of flickering energy beams and flew in perfect unison, poised to cast themselves over their evasive companion like a fisherman's thrown net. The flier of the stolen orb took the only option remaining to him and aimed his craft for the vortex that was the disrupted asteroid field. It was an impromptu move the harrying starspheres did not anticipate, their reckless quarry taking them totally by surprise as he zoomed out of range. The stunned hunters recovered in an instant to renew their chase with unwavering determination. Still the errant starship sped on. The tracking spheres increased their pace, confident that the flight of their game was coming to a foreseeable end. No rational being would fly into the ringed wall of spinning rocks lying ahead.

  The rogue pilot monitored his would-be captors nearing, but did not slow as expected. Instead he heedlessly plunged his starsphere into the wheel of swirling asteroids. The fleeing globe wove its crazy way through the confusing jumble of bouncing rocks under the expert guiding hands of its daring pilot. Executing snap evasive maneuvers that should have warped and split the rigid metalled hull, the starsphere relied on the cushioning effect of its force shield to maintain structural integrity and deflect the impacts of the smaller rocks it could not dodge.

  The four orbs doggedly hounding their slighter counterpart pressed on, but were not as fortunate in their passage through the maze of agitated boulders. Snaring a bulky rock in their readied energy grid, the spheres were brought to an immediate halt and spun wildly out of control because of the unplanned capture. The two leading globes careened into one another and exploded in a ruinous fireball, shredding the net. With their connection severed, the two surviving balls were thrown apart in opposite directions by the sudden release. One of them shot clear of the eddying rocks and dived out of sight towards the planet, but his luckless wingman was ejected into the heart of the belt to crash sickeningly into a planetoid. Rebounding off the colossal stone, the spherical craft was wrapped in an angry cocoon of electrical discharge spelling untold damage. Crippled and powerless, it was buffeted by the flow of churning rocks and soon lost to view, the wreckage becoming just another rolling piece of astral rubble.

  Whether by sheer luck or exceptionally skilled navigation, the lone starsphere zigzagging through the rocky turbulence slipped into the serene, empty reaches of space on the far side of the belt. Distanced enough from the bantam planetary system, the compact ship engaged its unimaginably powerful stardrive and promptly vanished from sight and sensor trace. Accelerating to over half the speed of light, it was propelled through the dark stellar vastness at an incomprehensible 100,000 miles per second. Plotting a parallel course to that taken by the charging Earth-bound asteroid half a week earlier, the sphere's fugitive occupant switched the piloting of his craft over to automated systems and relaxed.

  The trek of the Saviour had begun.

  Chapter Three

  'Bronte, where are you off to?'

  The adolescent Thunderfoot cow stopped in her tracks and swung her massive neck in answer to the pointed question. The treeless fernland was unbearably hot beneath the late summer sun blazing from a cloudless afternoon sky painted a brilliant wash of cerulean. The cooling shade of the adjoining forest beckoned strongly to the immature female. Eight years had passed since the stormy night of her hatching and Balticea's granddaughter had grown into a typically rebellious teenager. ‘I'm only going deeper into the wood to look for food, Aunty Flo.'

  'What's wrong with feeding with the rest of the herd, young lady?’ her guardian bluntly asked, motioning at the two dozen Thunderfeet scattered on the timberline of Mother Forest with a flick of her smallish head.

  'Nothing, I suppose,’ Bronte replied sullenly, ‘only there is tastier greenery in the forest that only I can reach. The horsetails out here are brown and tough. Poor fare for a growing teen.’ The elder cow was unmoved by the plea, so Bronte added suggestively, ‘I promise not to wander far.'

  Florella sighed despairingly. ‘You know your grandmother frowns upon you entering the forest alone because—'

  'I'm the sole heir to her matriarchy and shouldn't put myself in danger. I know all that. I'll be careful.'

  'Balticea's going to have my hide,’ muttered her aunt.

  Bronte took that as ‘yes’ and ambled away into the pines without further ado, a happy bounce to her thundering steps.

  'Make sure you're back before nightfall, or we'll both be answering to the Grand Matriarch,’ Florella called after her. ‘And watch out for Killjaws! She'll never forgive me if you get eaten.’ She then reared on her hind legs and, bracing her forefeet on the trunk of an unlucky fir, used her bulk to topple over the tree to reach the understorey of succulent ferns sprouting in its shadow. In this way the Thunderfeet routinely cleared the woodland and extended the flatland that supported the steadily changing ecosystem.

  Bronte plodded gaily through the sun-dappled conifers, treading a worn path regularly used by the forest denizens. At nearly forty feet in length she was approaching sexual maturity and the adult size when she would no longer be able to move through the treed landscape with ease. For now though, Bronte luxuriated in the freedom denied her bulkier oldsters. Humming quietly to herself, the carefree cow enjoyed the pleasantries of the waning day. Sparrow-sized prehistoric birds bedecked in colourful plumage flitted overhead amongst the branches, twittering merrily. Insects buzzed between the flowering shrubs that had recently appeared and were fast becoming the dominant vegetation, pollinating the white, funnel-shaped magnolia blossoms. It was turning into a glorious evening.

  She came across a stand of cycads and nibbled on the tough, abrasive foliage. Possessing weak jaws and peg-like teeth, the Thunderfeet were, like the majority of dinosaur species, incapable of chewing and so swallowed food whole. Bronte expertly stripped the fronds and the plant matter passed down her gullet into a gizzard lined with gastroliths. These ‘stomach stones', pebbles deliberately consumed by the mammoth herbisaurs, pulverised the digesting plant material in a perpetual grinding action set in motion by the powerful contractions of the muscular bag. The material then passed down the lengthy gut to be further digested by microbes. Sauropods were essentially then walking fermentation vats with copious flatulence the embarrassing byproduct. On top of that, the ‘gastric storms’ raging in their active stomachs produced a ceaseless rumbling that often embarrassingly interrupted conversations.

  Having cropped her fill, Bronte moved further into the conifer wood, depositing in her wake a quarter ton of fertilising dung on the forest floor. She strayed farther than she intended to and found herself entering a progressively changeful forestscape from the one her forebears knew. Pines, firs and redwoods were now becoming established alongside the traditional cycad and gingko stands, as was the new broadleaf vegetation. Oak, maple and sycamore trees spread in profusion, while the flower-bearing bushes increasingly superseded the fern undergrowth. This, the unseen hand of evolution, also shaped the future of the Thunderfeet. They, in turn, were being squeezed out by smaller, more adaptable species of plant-eating reptiles and were unknowingly the last of their breed.

  A throaty bellow sounded up ahead and Bronte froze. Was that a Killjaw roaring? She stood ready to shuffle away, for her elephantine kind could not run, when a four-legged form slid noiselessly from the afternoon shadows to confront her. ‘Chappy!’ she exclaimed irritably. ‘You scared me half to death.'

  The Duckbill bull came onto his hind legs to greet the Thunderfoot cow on an equal footing and snorted. ‘You should see the expression on your snout, Bron. How did you like my impression of a Killjaw call? I sure had you fooled.'

  'I guessed it was you all along,’ retorted the cow. ‘It sounded more like the tortured cry of a lovesick Shieldhorn.'

  Chappy broke into raucous laughter. ‘Whoever said Thunderfeet don't have a sense of humour.'

  Bronte levelled a disapproving stare at the chortling Duckbill but quickly joined in his infectious chuckling. She found it nigh impossible to stay mad at her clownish friend for long and the hilarity of his trick was plain enough. ‘What are you doing all the way out here?’ she enquired.

  'Following you. You took your sweet time getting away from the herd. We were supposed to meet at midday.'

  'It's harder now. Grandmother watches me like a Lizardwing.'

  Chappy honked in disgust. Balticea was a continuous thorn in the foot of their friendship.

  The pair had been firm pals since calfhood, when the outgoing bull yearling had one day wandered from his mob and stumbled across the hidden Thunderfoot nursery. The wayward Duckbill had been promptly shooed away by the guardian adult, only to worm his way back into the crèche time and time again. Plainly fascinated by the Thunderfeet children, he entertained them with his mischievous antics and was begrudgingly permitted to visit by the overseeing cows, particularly Florella who appreciated the budding closeness between the outgoing, rascally bull and her shy foster daughter. Chappy had struck up an instant rapport with the likewise disfigured female calf, the two drawn together by their unusual birthmarks. They say opposites attract and it was true in this case. He was day to Bronte's night, his maddeningly cheery disposition offset by her introverted nature. It was a seemingly oddball relationship that worked until Balticea's recent interference. The Grand Matriarch had stepped in when she deemed their fellowship improper and banned Bronte outright from consorting with the Duckbill. Chappy smirked. Since when did teenagers do what adults told them to?