Search Worlds Without End

Owen Spencer would never have agreed to lead the time-slip expedition back to the Jurassic period -- the Age of Reptiles -- had he foreseen the terrifying experiences in store for the small group making the expedition. Chartering the expedition was Dirk Masterson, a treacherous big game hunter, whose alleged purpose was to take pictures of the enormous reptiles that roamed Jurassic times. Even when Masterson smashed the jeep into the force field, destroying the only protection that stood between the group and the lumbering beasts, Owen could not be sure it was an accident.

Evan Hunter has written a fast-moving tale of people stranded on earth in its infancy and forced to pit their ingenuity and strength against mammoth reptiles. It might not have been so bad if Masterson, with his mania for big game hunting had not continued to shoot at every reptile he spotted. But his madman tactics repeatedly aroused the fury of the hideous dinosaurs, whose attacks drove the farther and farther away from the relay area that would slip them back to the present when the week was up.

The weird circumstances that made Owen's brother, Chuck, take over the leadership of the expedition and the even stranger adjustment of the time stream that left the party with the inexplicable feeling that somebody was missing makes Danger: Dinosaurs! an unusual and fascinating treatment of the ever-provocative time theme. The desperate search for the relay area, interrupted by fierce fights with flesh-eating monsters, and an earthquake that creates a chaos of stampeding animals give this story action that is as alien as any distant planet.

When the strange hourglass-shaped time machine crashed out of the twentieth century and into the Caribbean Sea of fourteen hundred years ago, Neil Falsen realized how unprepared he was to head the expedition that his father had organized back through time. Of the four men who had flown through centuries to solve the mystery of an ancient Mayan god, two had died in the shattering crash. Only Neil and ship's pilot Dave remained to cope with the language and customs of a people who had disappeared into the darkness of history.

It was confusing enough not to know which century the machine had fallen into. But Neil was sure his eyes were playing tricks when he spotted a Norse ship cutting proudly through southern seas. How ancient Vikings, Mayas and two twentieth-century Americans met - and fought - amid the splendors of a civilization that today dots the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico with its ruins, makes a tale as unique in telling as it is in content.

In scenes that throb with drama and thunder with excitement, Dave and Neil found frightening evidence of the approaching Mayan collapse. With a common modern device, Neil stepped into a tense religious ceremony to prevent human sacrifice. Without realizing it, he discovered the secret of the white god among the Mayan Indian dieties.

One of history's most intriguing suppositions forms the basis for this tale of the secret behind the legend of a lost civilization.