Professor Ruddle, a brilliant but jittery physicist, is about to send the hard-luck drifter Galahad "Gooseneck" McCarthy on the first trip through his time machine. Their clash is immediate and comic: Ruddle fears the catastrophic consequences of changing history, while McCarthy cares mainly about the promised hundred dollars and a hot meal. Beneath the banter, though, each man proves sharper than he first appears, and their uneasy partnership drives a story of scientific hubris, caution, and common sense colliding. When Ruddle finally pays up, straps a camera on McCarthy, and sends him into the Cretaceous Period, the adventure turns from argument to peril. In a blazing prehistoric world of tidal water, monstrous jungle growth, and circling pterodactyls, McCarthy follows orders to document the landscape and attempt a tiny, supposedly harmless test. But the deep past is anything but simple: his "easy money" mission quickly becomes a comic, eerie confrontation with a landscape where even a small mistake can have enormous consequences, and where something hidden beneath a rock may be far stranger than he bargained for. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
