प्लॉट

A company provides big game hunters with expeditions to the past to kill dinosaurs. They only have one rule that's there to protect the time line: Never ever get off the beaten path. Violation of this rule is punishable by hefty fines.

In the future, a time travel agency offers "The Time Safari", where clients may kill dinosaurs, specifically selected by the team, in order to not change the environment and consequently past. During one expedition, the traveler becomes scared and leaves the protective path, with catastrophic results.—Gislef

In the future, Douglas Keith sweeps to victory over his opponent, Kurt Deutscher, the American election. At the Time Safari Inc. company, Eckles arrives and approaches an agent, who is discussing however Deutscher would have brought about a dictatorship. The agent shows Eckles photos of dinosaurs they took yesterday, and then take Eckles to a room filled with guns. He introduces Travis, the expedition's guide in the past, and tells Eckles to do what Travis says.

Travis gets Eckles' biographical computer card and confirms that he is the great game hunter. Eckles says that he's bored and there are no new horizons, and Travis makes Eckles sign a waiver to make sure that the company isn't responsible if Eckles dies. Once Eckles signs, Travis leads the expedition to a time sphere. They go back millions of years in a minute, and Travis extends a metal platform. He says that the intention is to keep the hunters from touching anything in the past, and says that the company pays big fees to the government to keep their franchise because of the danger of them inadvertently changing the past.

The party goes out on the path, and Travis explains how by killing one mouse, they could change history in a time reaction that echoes through the millennia. Eckles doesn't take him seriously, and laughs.

Travis explains that their target is marked with white paint, and he went back a day earlier and confirmed that the Tyrannosaurus would die in three minutes after they shot it, when a tree fell on it. They only kill animals that wouldn't mate.

They spot the Tyrannosaur, and it eats an old kill and then approaches the hunters. Travis tells them that they must time their shots with the tree falling. Eckles panics and says that they can't kill it. Travis tells him to go back to the machine, but he steps off the path despite Travis' warning. He tells the other hunters to fire and they do, and Eckles opens fire and sprays the jungle with bullets. Travis' finishes off the Tyrannosaurus, and the nearby tree falls over. The guide glares at Eckles, tells him to come over to him, and then drops a knife at Eckles' feet and tells him to dig out his bullets. Eckles wonders why, and Travis tells him that they don't leave anything in the past.

Eckles does as he's told, digging in the dinosaur's bloody corpse, and another Tyrannosaurus smells the blood and approaches. Travis asks Eckles that he'd like to leave the hunter there, and when Eckles gives him the bullets, the guide tells him to go back to the sphere.

The group takes the sphere back to the present. They enter the office and find that Deutscher has won, and the company is now a dictatorship and the welcome sign is in a different language. Travis talks to the agent, who says that there was no election. Travis looks at Eckles, furious, and then confirms that there is a dead butterfly stuck to the bottom of Eckles' boot. The guide draws his handgun and shoots Eckles dead.