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Eighteen space explorers had died or disappeared on Nacre, a planet dominated by mushrooms, spore-clouds, a dim sub, and strange one-eyed creatures called mantas.To this forbidden planet came three more scientists to explore, discover and record. They barely understood what their mission was, and the significance of the mantas they were able to bring back with them to Earth. Subble, a government investigator, was sent to interview them-to learn how they succeeded where many others before them had failed.Subble was a very particular kind of investigator--one who could be judgmental without bias, who could kill without guilt, whose only real job would be, eventually, to die in a job well done. He couldn't know when that eventuality would arrive. He could only keep trying...The trio of scientists he confronted was indeed strange: Veg, the brawn of the group was a vegetarian. Aquilon, the beauty, ate everything-she was an omnivore. Cal was the brains of the crew. His emaciated body could only survive by drinking the blood of animals ... a carnivore. Just as the three of them discovered one another's dark secrets, Subble was able to learn the true meaning of the relationship between Aquilon, Veg and Cal...between omnivore, herbivore, and carnivore-and the effect they had on the mantas and ultimately, on Earth's survival.

The trio of scientists had been ordered to survey the planet's flora, fauna and mineral resources, and from the very beginning of their mission everything they observed led to one startling conclusion-the mysterious world was virtually identical with the Earth of the Paleocene period, 70,000,000 years ago at the very dawn of the age of mammals!

Their names were Cal, Veg, and Aquilon, the most resourceful-and rebellious-of Earth's explorers, and with them came four alien companions, the mantas. Strange flying beings, half-animal, half-fungus, the mantas possessed the keenest senses of any creatures in the universe, a gift which immediately saved the mission from complete disaster.

Detecting strong vibrations coming from a great distance, the mantas warned the humans, and Cal realized that it could mean only one thing: an earthquake-one large enough to produce a tidal wave that would totally inundate the small island where they had set up camp. Veg, the strongest member of the team, constructed a crude sailing raft, and the party put out to sea to escape the doomed island. It was the beginning of an incredible series of adventures which would lead them to discoveries as momentous as they were deadly. Sailing for weeks, the raft took them to a region vastly different from the island they had left behind. And when a brachiosaurus, supposedly extinct in the Paleocene period, nearly swamped the raft, they knew they had reached an area of priceless scientific value-an isolated enclave of the Cretaceous period where the full spectrum of the golden age of reptiles was present!

But just as incredible as the dinosaurs was another creature they were soon to meet-Orn, a man-sized bird who belonged to the most advanced species ever to develop on this world. Unsurpassed racial memory enabled Orn's mind to reach millions of years into the past, and it was his presence that led the three humans and the mantas to open revolt. Determined to prevent man's destructive exploitation of this world, they must pit themselves not only against the creatures they wish to save from extinction, but also against the all-consuming greed of Earth's powerful authorities.

As rich in scientific detail as it is in breathtaking excitement, Orn is a masterwork of the imagination and a tribute to the creative genius of Piers Anthony.

X involves the three scientists attempting to return to Earth from another dimension inhabited by hostile machines. Interlopers from other realities (using technology similar to that of the scientists' government) guide and hamper the explorers. A secondary story tells of a multidimensional cellular automaton energy being named 0x and its attempts to share living space with an infant human male, a fledgling creature of Orn's species, and one of the manta-carnivores; their developing relationship leads to attempts to learn the reasons for their strange isolation from others of their kind, which eventually ties in to the story of Cal, Veg, and Aquilon.