*****
You've hiked through Snake Canyon once before while visiting your Uncle Howard at Red Creek Ranch, but you never noticed any cave entrance.  It looks as though a recent rock slide has uncovered it.

Though the late afternoon sun is striking the opening of the cave, the interior remains in total darkness.  You step inside a few feet, trying to get an idea of how big it is.  As your eyes become used to the dark, you see what looks like a tunnel ahead, dimly lit by some kind of phosphorescent material on its walls.  The tunnel walls are smooth, as if they were shaped by running water.  After twenty feet or so, the tunnel curves.  You wonder where it leads.  You venture in a bit further, but you feel nervous being alone in such a strange place.  You turn and hurry out.

A thunderstorm may be coming, judging by how dark it looks outside.  Suddenly you realize the sun has long since set, and the landscape is lit only by the pale light of the full moon.  You must have fallen asleep and woken up hours later.  But then you remember something even more strange.  Just last evening, the moon was only a slim crescent in the sky.

You wonder how long you've been in the cave.  You are not hungry.  You don't feel you have been sleeping.  you wonder whether to try to walk back home by moonlight or whether to wait for dawn, rather than risk losing your footing on the steep and rocky trail.

[If you decide to wait, turn to page 5.]

You wait until morning, but, as the rosy wisps of dawn begin to light the eastern sky, a chill and forbidding wind begins to blow.

[If you brave the freezing wind to see more of the world about you, turn to page 16.]

You resolutely trudge along a rocky ridge.  It has been cleared of whirling snow by the fierce wind, which bites and blows against your body.

The world seems transformed, and much for the worse.  You must find a house or a cabin -- people who can help you -- or you will die.

As you ponder your fate, you stumble and fall, plunging into a deep crevasse.  You black out and later awaken, still shivering, but in a warmer place at least.  By the dim amber light, you can see that somehow you have fallen back into one of the chambers in the Cave of Time.  A passageway leads to the right, another to the left.  Does one lead to the future and one to the past?

[If you enter the left-hand passageway, turn to page 24.]

You follow the left passageway.  It leads upward to the surface.  before you, a grassy meadow slopes down to a clear, fast-flowing stream; beyond it are pine-covered foothills stretching in the distance toward snow-covered peaks.  You might be in Wyoming in your own time, but, whatever time it is, the world you see appears to be a hospitable one.

You notice a herd of buffalo grazing.  But nowhere can you see a house, or fence, or road, or any sign of human presence.  It is possible you are living hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago.

You gaze upward.  One of the puffy, white cumulus clouds is moving in a strange fashion.  It is descending!  A spaceship is landing right before your eyes, only a few hundred yards away!

[If you go up to the spaceship, turn to page 40.]

You cautiously approach the spaceship and, to your amazement, see that it is resting a foot or so above the ground, without any visible mechanism keeping it aloft.  there are no engines, rocket exhausts, port holes, landing gear, antennae, or any equipment you might imagine a spaceship would need.  you realize it must be the product of a supremely advanced civilization.

Trusting that such people have learned to be loving toward others, you approach the ship.  A portal slides open, but all you can see within is shimmering blue light.  A large cube is thrust out through the portal and lowered to the ground by mechanical arms.  The top of the cube is withdrawn, leaving a pallet on which lie the sleeping forms of three men and three women, dressed in shrouds of animal skin.  Their bodies and features remind you of pictures you have seen depicting the earliest men on earth.  You have an impulse to jump aboard the spaceship before the portal closes.

[If not, turn to page 83.]

Much as you would like to see the inside of the alien ship, you have no desire to be whisked off into space. You step back to what you hope is a safe distance and watch what happens. In a moment the portal closes, and almost instantly the ship rises, silently, straight up. Within a few minutes it is lost from view. You walk over to look more closely at the primitive looking people sleeping on the pallet. They begin to stir and stretch and rub their eyes as if waking from a long sleep.

[If you return to the hill and try to find your way back to the cave of time, turn to page 84.]

You run up the hill and out of sight before any of the primitive people awaken. You must find an entrance to the Cave of Time. You search in the high rocky ground for some opening. Hours go by; dusk is fast approaching. Just as you are about to give up hope, you spy the entrance to a cave under a rock ledge. You eagerly step inside and have only a moment's awareness that it is the den of a saber-toothed tiger.

The End