One hundred million years had come and gone since the forest and the grasslands had begun debating their boundaries in these tropics. This little savanna had seen her children go through many changes in that time, and some changes were extraordinary. Take the rock hyrax, for example. Presently, this tiny rock dweller is the closest living relative to the mighty elephant. A million years ago, the hyrax had grown to bear-like proportions. Through the ages, this mammal’s surroundings slowly became more favorable for smaller animals, and so the hyrax began to shrink. Now it lives on rocky ledges where it dines on beetles and fears the hawk. Oddly, the hyrax still resembles its giant cousin.

Yet the oddest change that this ancient land had seen was new. It had just happened. It resulted from an evolution far stranger and more perverse than the shrinking of the hyrax. Though this change to the local scenery was very recent, its remnants bore the scars of time already, and the scars were in the form of rust. For heat and moisture fan the aging fires in the tropics, and metal forged by man will burn so soon. This was the secret of the place that beckoned to the boy from the far-off village. Approaching, he saw them, as he knew he would, from the savanna’s southern boundary. At first, they were only dots in the middle of the plain where they had ceased to function only months before. From high in a silk tree on a gently sloping limb, the boy sat and stared at the modern hulks. They looked foreboding. Once they had been formidable, thought the young climber. Now they were merely strange and still. They ignored the carnivore’s approach, paid no heed to nearby grazers, and took no note of the bird’s descent. The hulks were skeletons. They were tanks—German tanks. The boy knew nothing of tanks. He wondered why they were here.

When the boy had seen that the morning hunters were satisfied, he decided to venture out to where the great skeletons rested. The grassy lea was not safe because high refuge became sparse. But he was unafraid. He was swift. His eyes and ears were uncannily sharp. And, besides, he had his good bow ready. Doubtless, he would have faced a lioness if necessary.

The sun was just beginning to climb as the youth came near his derelict quarry. The morning had grown warm already. Now that he was close, he happily surveyed the great machines that the distant “dots” had become. Ever mindful of the world around him, he began his play. His ears remained alert against threats that brushing grass might whisper, but he was heedless of the rising swelter. He climbed all over the crazy things—in and out of turrets, through rusting hatches, and underneath where the oddest “feet” that he had ever seen supported the metal hulks. He swung from the long cannon and peered into an empty barrel. The boy had no inkling that vast destruction had once spewed forth from that quiet, dark metal pipe.

(Continued below)