In the movies they call it a “smash cut”—when the scene shifts so suddenly and abruptly that the viewer is knocked off balance, if only for an instant. That’s what it was like when Puck attacked the nanotyrannosaurs—which we hadn’t even known were there—smashing the silence into a thousand pieces as the animals burst into the clearing thrashing and gnashing their teeth and one of the predators broke off in pursuit of the man with the knife—the man who, only an instant before, had been holding the weapon to Lisa’s neck.
Not that I knew it was Puck yet. That wouldn’t come until after the mini-tyrannosaur had bitten off the man’s head and shoulders (and swallowed them whole) and returned to the fray; after which I snatched my pistol up from the ground and tried to find an opening—mortified t
