Gabe and Ali Milland were planet scouts reporting to Gil Morrison, Governor of Timoron; they'd made two previous trips to the planet Pacifica. They'd hosted a Canth team that wanted to experience building and sailing a boat on that planet-wide ocean. The cedar strip sloop worked well, but they hadn't expected to confront a plesiosaur marine reptile in an open boat at sea! With no knowledge of how aggressive such a creature might be, Gabe had steered them abruptly into shallow water to impede an attack by the gray-green giant: longer than the 28-foot sloop.

Now they had returned, this time to host a 3-person research team from Uppsala University, who thought that the University people knew all there was to know of plesiosaurs! The study of fossilized bones from the Jurassic Period was radically different from the study of living, swimming 30-foot Pacifican plesiosaurs! Gabe could only guess, but these very large creatures, on a planet that had never had a Chicxulub extinction event, might just be intelligent