Strata

To every stratum there are the fossils: Precambrian flatworms and Devonian fishes, Triassic dinosaurs and Jurassic reptiles. These are the certainties, each in his own place, bearing witness to evolution, to order.

So there's something a mite disturbing about a lump of coal with a 1909 coin embedded in it, a Neanderthal skull with gold fillings, a plesiosaur grasping an End Nuclear Testing Now placard. Then the business of a new world discovered hanging out ther in deep space. A flat earth, Oblique Area-true Projection on top, pretty much of a blank underneath. Like any normal hot-blooded 200-year-old multiple divorcée, Kin Arad decided it all needed a checking out, signed up her team – a multi-armed berserker and a huge, gentle cannibal, furred alien – and set out...